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chomijiIt's snowing! It shouldn't snow this early in Washington ... maybe by the end of the month, or in January or February. But not in the first week of December. Some of the trees still have leaves on them!
Our snow-sprinkled house and front yard. The round thing is the end of the huge log that's all that's left of the poor chestnut oak that died on us (well, except for the pile of sawdust, which is also visible):
Snow-capped red oak leaves on the remaining tree out front:
These were taken with The New Camera, but they're posted to my Earthlink account. Gotta do that Flickr thing - I ran out of space uploading these, and had to delete some old stuff to fit them.
I'm home because I have 3 doctor's appointments today - I'm between appointments now ... .
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Date: 2007-12-05 06:07 pm (UTC)3 appointments on one day? thats a lot of time in waiting rooms, isn't it?
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Date: 2007-12-06 03:47 am (UTC)Yeah ... actually, the first one was the worst, because the doctor got stuck in the traffic slowdowns caused by the snow! The other two, I hardly had to wait at all, which was just as well: one was at 1:45 and the next at 3:00 pm. But they were only a couple of miles apart. Still, I got really tired of clearing he now off the car over and over again.
The house looks deceptively little in this picture ... straight back from the left side, there's another whole wing (you can see it, a little bit, beyond the glassed-in porch on that side), two stories and a basement, like the rest of the house, and because the lot slopes down on that side, the basement is all above ground. But this is the 3rd place we've owned ... we "traded up" each time because of the way the tax laws work here.
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Date: 2007-12-06 09:54 pm (UTC)wow, that is a pretty big house then. but it's still cute to look at. It's kinda surprising how easy it is to trick the human eye
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Date: 2007-12-05 10:47 pm (UTC)So you live in washington too?
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Date: 2007-12-06 03:51 am (UTC)Oooh, no snow in Paris, huh? Actually, I'm getting old and curmudgeonly about snow: it's OK for one day, but then I wish it would all vanish. At this point, I would send it to you if I could!
Yes, I do (well, just over the border into Maryland, but the DC metro area, anyway), and I really have to get together with smilla-san sometime - it's criminal to be in the same city and not take advantage of it. We do live on opposite sides of it, though.
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Date: 2007-12-10 03:50 pm (UTC)(I've got Xmas week off ... do you have to work then? We could get together ... .)
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Date: 2007-12-11 07:12 pm (UTC)We'll have to wait to firm up the "what" - I'm hoping I'll have to worry about my daily radiation treatements by then (it's an odd thing to hope for, I know, but it'll mean my treatments are back on track).
We haven't been to the movies just recently at all, but I imagine we'll try to get to The Golden Compass on Xmas day. I don't celebrate it at all, being Jewish, and Karl's prefectly willing to put it off 'til we get together with his family in early January - so ever since the first LotR movie came out, we've made a tradition of seeing a big fantasy movie that day. (Last year, it was Narnia.)
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Date: 2007-12-12 06:34 pm (UTC)I would love to see it at the Uptown, which is where we saw the others, but it doesn't seem to be showing there. The movie sites (Fandango, for example) aren't showing movie times farther than 12/20.
So are you busy on Xmas Day? Your family lives way out of town, yes?
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Date: 2007-12-13 03:13 am (UTC)Not an issue, the driving thing - we can't really make plans yet (for aforementioned reasons), but there's always the "we meet you at a Metro with the car and take you off with us" caper.
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Date: 2007-12-06 03:31 pm (UTC)Wrong Washington. I like in Washington STATE, not the city. (Why don't people just call it DC? There is ALREADY a washington and I get so tired of saying I like in washington and having people go, 'what's it like living in the capital?' Sorry, that's a longheld rant of mine.)
Paris is getting no snow. Not only that, but it is shockingly warm - there are days when I don't even need gloves, and I'm still wearing my leather jacket, not my nice warm wool one.
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Date: 2007-12-07 05:54 pm (UTC)>> There is ALREADY a washington <<
"ALREADY," huh? red-chan, we were "Washington" before the state was even a gleam in the tax collectors' eyes! XD And when people are from a large city, and you ask them where they're from, they give the city name, not the state: "I'm from Atlanta," for example, or "I'm from Los Angeles." And "Washington" is our city, here. It's not just us, either - my cousins in New York used to introduce us as "our cousins from Washington."
That's OK, I get the flack on the other side: my actual town here is Takoma Park, and people frequently assume I mean Tacoma, WA ... .
(And when you said "too," I assumed you meant "like smillaraaq"!")
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Date: 2007-12-07 10:59 pm (UTC)See, I have the other pet peeve - I'm actually from here! (I was born in Washington Hospital Center, right here in town.) And it kills me when I hear - as I did just this morning on Metro on the way in - that "everyone here is from elsewhere." And I'm a second-generation civil servant, to boot ... .
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Date: 2007-12-10 09:26 pm (UTC)I didn't really "know" downtown until I graduated from college and started working there, and taking the subway and walking. But between living in the area since I was born, and spending more than 25 years learning to more visitor-friendly areas of the city itself, I feel pretty confidant in calling myself a Washingtonian.
The Mr. went to Penn, so I learned a bit of downtown Philly as well - I used to take the train up there, and we'd walk or take the subway to get around. (He's younger than I am, and still had two years of college to go when we met.) "Market, Arch, Race, and Vine; Chestnut, Walnut, Spruce, and Pine." (Learned that from my uncle, actually ... .)
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Date: 2007-12-07 10:04 pm (UTC)See, since I came here, I've gotten used to saying the state, not the city, and actually.. when I'm traveling, I say the state often, especially if I'm on line, so... that didn't send up a flag.
And I don't think I even knew for sure where smillaraaq lived besides the northeast.
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Date: 2007-12-07 11:02 pm (UTC)Ah, but I didn't know you didn't know where she lived ... well, so we've each got a new story for our regional pride files!
As I mentioned to smilla (above), I'm actually from this area, and I grew up in Chevy Chase (about 3 miles from where I now live) - so I got lots of weird looks when I said that I was from there (because of the comedian, who was very popular in my high school/college days). So I got used to saying I was from Washington instead, and then explaining about the Washington 'burbs as needed.
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Date: 2007-12-07 11:15 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-12-10 03:56 pm (UTC)Yeah, people had a tough time believing that there was a town named after the comedian ... which of course it isn't!The other funny geographical oddity in the area is Silver Spring, which is just a "designated area" - if it were incorporated as a city, it would become the area's second-largest city (after Baltimore), with a population of 76,540 people; it covers 6 zip code zones ... but it's just part of the county (Montgomery County, MD). The geography/local gov't situation around here gets very strange.
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Date: 2007-12-10 04:33 pm (UTC)I bet the local goverment situation gets kind of wacky.
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Date: 2007-12-10 09:32 pm (UTC)The weirdest thing is the number of police forces. You have the state troopers for Maryland and Virginia. You have county police for all the counties in the area, and city police for Washington. You have city/town police for a number of the local cities (including here in Takoma Park). You have the National Park Police patrolling Rock Creek Park and the mall area. You have the Secret Service and the U.S. Marshalls. Metro Transit Police, the FBI ... the list goes on.
It's very strange ... .
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Date: 2007-12-11 11:08 pm (UTC)Heh, expecting the Shitty Paper (so-named by me and my friend K because it leaves black ink smudges all over you ...) to have something as organized as archives is like expecting the Marx Brothers to follow a script!
But I think I did read that one ... the City Paper is more or less required reading around our house. Of course, sometimes, the only features that get read are The Straight Dope, Savage Love, and News of the Weird.
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Date: 2007-12-12 09:11 pm (UTC)Probably the archive was run by one key staff member who has since departed and gone on to better things. That kind of stuff happens all too often (here, too).
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Date: 2007-12-11 12:48 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-12-11 11:09 pm (UTC)XD
Yes, and they inadvertently interfere with each others' investigations, too.
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Date: 2007-12-13 01:25 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-12-06 09:54 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-12-07 05:48 pm (UTC)Heyla, b3n-chan! How have you been? We were worrying about you just the other day ... don't hurt your back sledding, OK?
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Date: 2007-12-06 11:09 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-12-07 06:07 pm (UTC)Yup, a fairy-tale Dutch Colonial Revival with fairy-tale vinyl siding! LOL! I'm sorry, I love our house (it's got some lovely "Craftsman" interior details - dark wood posts and lintels around the doorways, for example, instead of the white-painted Colonial-style moldings that would be expected), but I have a hard time thinking of the outside as very special! The snow must be making it look better.
XD