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29 Days 'Til Christmas
Wednesday, Dec. 01, 2004 - 4:23 PM
I'm sitting on a park bench in Freedom Plaza. This is the same park bench where six months ago I wrote an entry about a man asking a woman if it was weird for her that she was sitting on the high planter since it was at crotch height while he talked to her from a bench next to me. If I remember correctly, this is the first time I've been to DC since you left. I forgot how much I love it here. I'm facing the Starbucks where I just bought a grande vanilla Americano and added a splash of half & half. I had to wait for an employee to finish wiping off the counter to get the cream and milk. She walked off and I immediately dripped from the canister to her nice, clean counter. I wiped it off because I knew it was what you'd have wanted me to do. The familiar scenes that are fresh in my mind and some that have been gone for three seasons are warming me on what seems like the windiest day in DC's two hundred year old history. To my right is the aptly named Warner Theater. Aptly named since it resides in the Warner Building. At the other end of that building is the bank where I just deposited President Jackson for the sole purpose of relieving the monotonous boredom of waiting for Pete to be ready to go. There are four figures in my bank account right now. By Dec. 8, the bills that come with the maturity that seem to put a gleam in your eye dictate that there will be three. Three skaters just passed me. Skating is illegal in Freedom Plaza and one time Keri and I saw an officer drive down the one way street behind me in hot pursuit of these law breaking citizens. I won't tell anyone if you don't, though. As I walked to the bank, I realized how much I missed the Barnes & Noble just across the street where two summers ago Bethany, DJ and I sipped Frappaccinos and ate messy PB&J subs from Potbelly. How can that already be two summers ago? My least favorite part of New Year's is that they take down the wreaths that hang at 1301 Pennsylvania Avenue and her cousin building directly to my right at 1275 Penn. These are ginormous wreaths that are lit up with white Christmas lights and make you think you're in a movie when their heavenward facing sides become covered with snow. One New Year's Eve I spent the midnight hour hosting a LAN party at my office. The only two friends I had that were close enough to come, did. DJ again, and this time Amy instead of Bethany. "The only two friends close enough to come..." you're right... I'm such a geek. To my left sits the fountain where I woould nap during my lunch hour. It's turned off and drained now. Which is just as well since my hands are too cold to nap. One day while I was having a drink sitting on the fountain, enjoying the sunshine that never reached my office in the core of RRB, a man, whose clues all pointed to the deduction of homelessness, walked about three feet past me, climbed up on the fountain edge, opened his fly, and relieved himself into the fountain. That was a strange day. Movin' Out is playing at the National Theater -- a theater who resides in the same building as my Starbucks, just past the Hudson Deli and Wachovia Bank. The Hudson Deli used to sell Bawl's. They do no longer. Now I have to come to the convenience store adjacent to Mr. Goodcents to buy those. I like the Plaza during the cold season. I like seing the statue comemorating the service of Brigadier General Casimir Pulaski, who died as a result of a battle wound in 1779, behind the thin fingers of bare treetop branches. I like that the none-too-attractive excercise group that dresses like fools before making a spectical of themselves and thoroughly embarassing me find it too cold to do curls in the grass behind me. The air is crisper and the sky somehow sharper. From where I sit, I can see two clouds -- one large and slightly grey at the bottom and the other just a splatter of cottony white in the middle of a sky that's remeniscent of your eyes -- deep blue and demanding the awe of anyone that looks it's way. To my left is a small oasis from the city. It is a pond that is sunken into the earth and surrounded by trees. It's a place to go and forget that you're in a city for a few minutes. A place where birds chirp greedily for a crumb from your half smoke bun. The skaters are now filming their lawbreaking ollies with a digital camera. And my fingers have become brittle from exposure. I think I shall head back up to my sunless office now.
Speak Up
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