Area Happenings

I have been here for about two weeks or so, and adjusting nicely. Actually, so nicely that people keep asking me for directions. And, oddly, I've been glad to provide accurate instruction.

I've been going to Jazz in the sculpture garden. My cousin has a group friends who go to this and I've been tagging along. It's still quite warm in the evenings, but it's fun to go hang out with everyone. It is on friday nights, with live jazz, and you can bring your own picnic type things. We pretty much bring wine, cheese and bread to share, which is really fun, and a little surreal when you think of being in a public park in a major city.

I went to a whole foods to pick up some cheese for the jazz night, and as I was checking out, I noticed that the magazine rack at the check out stand only had two magazines filling all of the spaces. The Washingtonian, about Washington DC happenings and goings on, and Psychology Today. I thought that was the weirdest combination!!

The other day we were in our back yard when we heard a voice from over the fence. It was a very inquisitive sounding older guy, calling out "neighbor..?"
We went closer to the fence to start talking to this unseen neighbor, and he sounded like he had been drinking so he could work up the nerve to talk to us. He was requesting that we would work on our front yard. It DOES need weeds, and is horrible for mosquitos, so I agreed. However, as we are just renting, and have a tiny patch of lawn (maybe 10 x 10 feet) we don't really have the tools to take care of it. We did tell the guy we would see what we could do to take care of some of the bigger weeds (they may have been taller than me...).
That night we took out the trash, and while we were out, decided to just pull some of the bigger weeds. As we were doing this, the neighborhood transient-weird-guy came up and started talking to us, and telling us how better to pull the weeds. He was quite insistent about helping us, and we felt like we couldn't get away. AND, all of this was happening at 11:00 at night! What we meant as quick weed pulling while we took out the trash ended up as meet and greet with a weird neighbor.

There is a cool neighborhood coffee shop up the street. It has a lot of arty things going on, and lots of interesting people seem to hang out there (or, they could be posers, trying to look cool, hanging out at such a neat place, much like myself. Except I don't hang out there, just visit). I stopped in for an iced coffee, and noticed they did not have any straws. Well, more than noticed, because I distinctly felt the lack. Since I just moved here, and still have a lot of unpacking to do, I decided I had a solution for these coffee people. The next time I came back, I brought a pack of my green striped straws for them. AND, I got free coffee in return!