February 03, 2009

Divine grace, indeed

Today at lunchtime I reached into my backpack only to find that my wallet was missing. I searched around in various pockets and thought briefly about what might have happened to it, but my lunchmates were waiting impatiently -- so after asking if one of them could spot me some money, I put it out of my mind until later.

When I got back from lunch, I gave it a little more thought. I had gone bowling last night as part of a team social for work. Because the bowling alley we went to was on a military base, I'd had to get out my wallet to show my ID at the entrance of the base, which meant there was a good chance that I left it at the bowling alley. And yet, I figured one of my coworkers would surely have picked it up and given it back to me. With that in mind, I thought perhaps I'd just left it at home somewhere. I mentally retraced my morning movements around our apartment, but my subconscious couldn't really remember anything. So with more calm than usual, I decided not to worry about it until I got home later that evening and could confirm whether or not my wallet was really lost.

On the metro ride home from work, I pulled out my cellphone for the first time all day. I confess that I have pretty crappy cellphone etiquette -- not that many people besides Alan call me, so usually my cellphone stays buried at the bottom of my purse or backpack, and I can go whole days without checking it. Today, though, I had a missed call from an unknown local number at 10am. I immediately became concerned, and listened to the accompanying voicemail. It turned out to be from someone from my State Farm office, telling me what I expected to hear: that someone had found my wallet. That person had called the only phone number in my wallet -- the one listed on my auto insurance card -- and had left her number with State Farm, and now the State Farm agent was passing along her number to me.

I was halfway home, but got off the train at the next metro station, not only to ensure consistent cellphone reception (although my provider, Verizon, is the only one that gets reception in the underground portions of the DC Metro, it can still be sketchy through tunnels), but also to avoid the embarrassment of having everyone else around me on the train hear that I'd lost my wallet. As I dialed my wallet-finder's number, I noticed with some trepidation that my cellphone battery was down to one bar. Luckily, it held out, my finder picked up, and, happily, she sounded just as relieved as I was that I'd finally contacted her.

"I was about to go over to your house to see if I could find you!" she told me in between my gushes of "oh my gosh, thank you so much" and "I can't believe you've gone to so much trouble already!" We arranged to meet at the metro station where she lived. "Okay, but just wait inside the station, I'll come down there so you don't have to pay the exit fare," she said, to my further disbelief -- so considerate! I told her I'd call again when I got there.

Ten minutes later, we finally met at the turnstiles of the Cleveland Park metro station. Upon seeing her -- a short, motherly lady in her late thirties or forties, Filipino maybe? she had a slight accent that I couldn't quite identify -- I asked, "Can I give you a hug?" She handed back my wallet and I gushed more thanks while searching for a $20 bill I could give her (which I didn't have, but she refused to accept anything anyway). She told me that her grandfather had actually been the one to find it, sitting on top of one of the car racing machines (which I had played) in the arcade room at the bowling alley. She hadn't wanted to leave it with the bowling alley, she said, because she had left her wallet at a Burger King once, and later, after she'd gotten it back from the manager, she found charges on her statement. And -- this was the part that made me feel incredibly grateful on top of everything else -- I learned that she and her grandfather hadn't been at the bowling alley until this morning... which meant that my wallet had sat in the arcade room all night without anyone finding or taking it.

I think I must have shaken her hand a dozen times before we bid goodbye. As I headed back toward the platform, she laughed and waved after me, "Be careful, don't lose it!" My final stroke of good fortune happened several minutes later, as I was trying to send a text message to Alan: my cellphone finally ran out of battery.

On the train ride back home, I couldn't get over just how nice this woman had been, and felt a renewed faith in the goodness of human beings. I had a piece of paper she had brought down with her -- a Mapquest printout showing directions from her address to mine. I thought about using that to send her a thank-you note, but guessed that she didn't include an apartment number with her address. I wondered if I could figure it out with a little online research. It was only then that I realized that the name she had given my State Farm agent, the name which I'd called her by all night -- "Divina Grace" -- might not have been her real name after all.

December 08, 2008

Seasons

On Saturday Alan and I braved the winter cold and went out with some friends. "Going out" is something I haven't done much of recently, and since we didn't leave our apartment until after 9pm, it felt like even more of a special occasion. Look at us, staying out late the way young professionals are supposed to!

We took the metro downtown and met Kim and Daniel at the National Christmas Tree in front of the White House, and to my surprise, even at that hour, there was quite a crowd of people there, huddled around the nearby firepit, taking pictures, trying to find their specific state tree among the circle of regular Christmas trees surrounding the giant one. It was pretty impossible not to feel a little bit of the holiday spirit, especially since we were all bundled up with our heavy jackets, scarves, gloves, and earmuffs, with our breaths making thick white puffs in the air.

I had brought my camera with me, of course, outfitted with my new image-stabilization lens ("Kim and I both forgot to bring our cameras," Daniel said upon our arrival, "but we figured you'd have yours"; I'm glad I didn't let them down), and we took the requisite photos of the four of us in front of the big Tree. They came out about as well as I could have hoped, considering that it was nighttime, we were backlit by a giant glowing tree, and we had to get a random passerby who didn't know how to use my SLR to take it for us.

Afterwards, we walked the five blocks to Tonic Restaurant & Bar in Foggy Bottom, where we found a table right under one of the heating vents and defrosted with some beers. Alan left soon after to meet up with some other friends of his who were headed to Georgetown, while Daniel, Kim and I had another round, passing the time talking about work, how our Thanksgivings went, Christmas schedules, inauguration, and! plans for a possible weekend trip to New York City one of these days. When the bar started to grow empty, we finished up our drinks and got ready to head out, putting on our coats and warm things again. We walked to the Foggy Bottom metro station and waited for our trains: Kim's, a westbound blue line train, came first, so we bid her goodbye; Daniel and I boarded the next blue line train in the opposite direction and rode together a few stops before Daniel had to get off to transfer.

It was only then that I got out my cellphone to check the time and saw that it was past 1am. I had a missed call from Alan, too. After calling him back and learning that he, too, was on his way home (in his friend's car), I spent the rest of the train ride in the relative quiet of the late-night metro-riding crowd, my slight alcohol buzz wearing off, happy at how quickly and how pleasantly the evening had gone by. I think it was the first time I'd been on the Metro that late, and the first time I felt that I wasn't such a stranger in DC anymore.

November 24, 2008

These are a few of my favorite things

Okay, I take back what I said in my previous post. There is one thing that's changed since Alan and I got married: we have a lot more stuff. Even though we got rid of (sold, donated, gave away) a lot of our things when we left California, we later got lots of nice wedding presents, and then once we moved to DC, we bought new furniture, an HDTV, and various other essentials for the home. All this, despite the fact that our apartment in DC is probably two-thirds the size of our old apartment in California.

It especially feels like we have a lot more kitchen stuff. Which, don't get me wrong, I am not complaining about. We do have a nicer kitchen here in DC -- granite countertops, stainless steel GE Profile appliances, a gas stove! -- so in that respect, I suppose, it justifies the increase in our material possessions.

It also inspired me to make a list of my favorite kitchen things, things that I've found to be particularly useful in our new apartment -- even though I'm guessing most of the people that still keep up with this weblog (comment and let me know who you are!) probably don't care. I was also partially inspired by this post at Not Martha, listing things that the author likes in hopes that they might make good gift ideas. In the same vein, maybe my list of kitchen things will be a source of gift ideas for some of you.

Continue reading...

November 19, 2008

Hello again

So, this time last year, I was participating in National Blog Posting Month, attempting to write a post every day. That was a fun exercise, but these days I feel like I need better reasons to post. Granted, I've gone through a lot of transition these past couple months:

(quick summary, for those of you who don't follow along with me on my Flickr stream, or my LiveJournal, or wherever else I play around on the internet these days)

June: left the Bay Area, moved back to Georgia
August: got married (!!!), went on our honeymoon to Costa Rica
September: moved to Washington, DC

I guess my excuse is that I'm too busy "transitioning" to post anything here, but at the same time, aren't transitions usually GOOD reasons to post? I'm sad I never wrote a sentimental "Goodbye, Bay Area" post, because certainly, there are things I miss about it -- the weather and accessible farmers' markets are only the first things that spring to mind.

And getting married, of all things, definitely should have deserved some reflection. Although, I must tell you, being married is pretty much a non-event. The wedding itself was, and I remember it as a happy blur, a joyous celebration, a relief (I didn't sleep a wink the night before). But if you asked me how life has changed since Alan and I got married, I would be hard put to give you an answer. In fact, when Alan and I went on a weekend trip to New Orleans a couple weeks ago with some friends of his from Georgia, at first I would introduce myself as Jennifer and then qualify that with "Alan's wife" -- but that always felt rather strange, and I stopped doing it after a while. I suppose one day I'll get used to it.


I feel like there should be more, a reflective thought, a clever conclusion, but I think this'll have to be it for now. Baby steps, I guess.

November 04, 2008

GOOD JOB, AMERICA

We can hear cheering and celebration outside our apartment, people screaming, "OBAMA!!!! OBAMA!!!" It is truly awesome and amazing.

July 15, 2008

EPIPHANY

I just found out that Carl Kasell's (of NPR's Wait Wait Don't Tell Me) name is spelled... well, "Carl Kasell." I always thought it was spelled "Karl Castle." The radio is weird.

Also, in the process of googling him, I found that Carl is on Facebook. Who knew?

April 13, 2008

spring break travel

The last week in March was Alan's spring break, and we spent it by driving up to Portland and Seattle. We spent one day in Portland, three days in Seattle, and the rest of the time in transit. It was a lot of driving, and it was pretty rainy most of the time we were there, but despite both of those things, the trip was pretty fun.

I finally finished posting pictures from the trip on Flickr: view the set or slideshow (I just discovered the slideshow option recently, and very much like the way they display your pictures -- just make sure to activate the photo captions by clicking on the "i" button in the middle).

There are a lot of pictures (more than I've taken in a while, anyway), so I wanted to list some "highlights"...

Portland:
-catching a free classical concert at The Old Church
-the Classical Chinese Garden

Seattle:
-Pike Place Market, of course (I liked the fish best)
-eating lunch at the Uwajimaya Grocery's food court in Chinatown
-braving the wind at Gas Works Park
-the view from the top of the Space Needle (the sky cleared up for this!)
-the gorgeous Seattle Public Library
-our rather unsuccessful day trip to Olympic National Park
-taking the ferry from Bainbridge Island to Seattle downtown
-seeing locks (the water kind) in motion
-the Experience Music Project

Flickr Photos

Powered by
Movable Type 3.2