ajmatt blog

We’ve had a beautiful fall here in the D.C. area. While it usually seems like leaves are red one day and gone the next, the fall colors have stayed at their peak for weeks.

Earlier this month, I dragged Matt out of the house, forcing him to take a break from his midterms and get some exercise. We drove up George Washington Parkway looking for pretty trees, and ended up at Theodore Roosevelt Island.

Of course, the island was the one place in the area where the deciduous trees are behind schedule (don’t they know it’s November?), but it was beautiful nonetheless, and we walked around the entire island.

In our photo gallery, you’ll see nature sitting right beside high-rises and monuments (watch for the Kennedy center peaking through the trees), proof that D.C. is built on a swamp, and—one of my favorite sights—a helicopter whizzing down the Potomac (and this one happened to be a presidential helicopter).

I’ve been blog tagged for the first time. Seven interesting things about myself? That’s a daunting task. I’ll start with my party-game standard.

1. I grew up without a TV, which means I have a pop culture gap that spans the 1980’s and 1990’s. I started paying attention to pop culture around 2003, and now have a photographic memory for celebrity trivia, which is occupying brain cells that might be otherwise valuable.

2. I thought I was unathletic growing up because I have no coordination. Then I discovered running in college, which I’m really good at, because all I have to do is go in a straight line.

3. My favorite book is A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, which I read about every four years.

4. Rainy days make me happy. It does not rain enough in Washington, D.C.

5. During election season, I turn off all the lights in the front of my house and pretend I’m not home when campaigners come to my door. (Unless Matt is home. Then I make him answer the door.)

6. I am exactly one-third of the way through NaNoWriMo. I am experiencing writer’s block right now, which is why I am blogging.

7. I am part of Gen Y (the older part of Gen Y, to be specific), and yet I don’t have seven friends who blog, so I can’t continue this chain. Friends who don’t blog: I find you interesting, too! You should email me seven things about yourself.

When the news is to depressing to bear, where does one turn? To the past, naturally. While surveying my LibraryThing account, I noticed I’ve recently toured: the plague years, frontier life, and the Great Depression. For free entertainment that will lift your spirits, head to your local library and pick up:

Company of Liars by Karen Maitland. Run from the plague through post-apocalyptic-like 14th century England. Hard times highlights: sleep outside in the rain, avoid the smell of death, and keep one eye on the living. My full review is here.

The Long Winter by Laura Ingalls Wilder. Laura does not need an introduction, and my first Little House reading as a “grown up” did not disappoint. The writing is simple and detailed; it’s not a coincidence that Ingalls received Newberry Honors for most of her books. Hard times highlights: mill grain with a coffee grinder and twist hay all day to stay alive.

Stormy Weather by Paulette Jiles. Chronicles the coming of age of three sisters during the Great Depression, through the worst of the Texas dust storms. Hard times highlights: make dresses out of sugar sacks and rugs out of pantyhose; get buried alive in a dust storm.

All of these books were well written, riveting reads. I recommend you revisit these lovely time periods, and then turn on present-day news reports and laugh at the doomsday anchors.

Yesterday I did one of those things that residents of the D.C. metro area never do: I went to a free local event. And kicked myself yet again, because it takes 30 minutes to get from my front door to the National Mall. 30 minutes! That includes driving to the metro, parking for free (all weekend and weekdays after 5:00), 10 minutes on the train, and walking two blocks.

Weather and tourists are two reasons I prefer home to the city’s culture, and yesterday I combated both. But mostly the weather—it was one of those lovely Washington days, as you can see at left. Cloudy, but so bright you needed sunglasses. And raining, but too warm and humid to wear a rain jacket. Getting wet was preferable to any sort of cover.

Because I allowed a full hour to get to town, I had time to kill before meeting my friend at the fiction tent. Rather than face the crowds on the mall, I visited the National Gallery of Art Sculpture Garden and took a few pictures. The garden is a little modern for my poor, linear brain (for example, is this construction or a sculpture?), but I do like this character (photo at left) peeking up over the bushes.

The Book Fest was so crowded this year that it was somewhat inaccessible. This is what the crowd for Salmon Rushdie looked like. It was only slightly smaller for the author I wanted to see, Philippa Gregory. But we did manage to push into the back of the tent and hear her speak.


Afterward, my friend and I walked over to the National Portrait Gallery to have lunch. It’s on the pricey side as museums go, but cheaper than your average D.C. restaurant. The setting is far superior to all other museums—seating is in a beautiful courtyard with trees, a waterfall floor, and a high ceiling made entirely of skylights. So you feel like you’re outside… but with air conditioning. Most telling—there were more lunching locals than tourists in our midst, solitary artistic-types reading and plugged into iPods.

For a few more pictures, visit our new photo gallery (a work in progress). Don’t miss this one—it’s my favorite.

Okay, that’s a negative title. I should say that this remodel went exceptionally fast, and for that I feel lucky. Had Matt and I done this on our own, we would still be tearing up floor and ripping at wallpaper.

There are those few things that hang on. Painting. A vent piece. A freezer door that doesn’t open all the way. Missing shelves. A mostly unusable living room full of junk we need to give away. A couch masquerading as a coat closet.

But oh, the results. Double the counter and cabinet space. A sink faucet that doesn’t drip (yes, we collected and recycled this water for the last six months). Cabinets that are not missing doors. No wallpaper. Energy efficient appliances. A double oven.

I put up some of the highlights in our new photo gallery. It’s in reverse chronological order, so start here and click “previous” to see five of the latest photos.

Worth highlighting all on its own is my favorite feature—my new spice drawer. I can see everything I own at a glance because… it’s alphabetized! What else would you expect from librarian who loves to cook?

There’s a hole in the wall…

What—you wanted pretty photos of Easter Island? Not a chance!

In our infinite wisdom, Matt and I (unanimously, without debate) scheduled our kitchen remodel to start 44 hours after returning home from vacation. (A return trip that included 3 flights, 4 airports, and an 8-hour layover.) Did we fully consider the task of moving out of our kitchen—without boxes!—during those 44 hours?

Not our best move, but after 1 broken plate, 3 heavy trash bags, and a mental list of things to donate to the Lupus Foundation, the job is done and demolition was completed this afternoon.

Along the way, we found a few strange things about living in an old house:

• We didn’t bother to clean out the inaccessible cupboards above the refrigerator that we never used… and they contained a set of china from the previous owner.
• The hole we cut in the wall is 4 inches smaller because of a random pipe in the wall… that the previous owner had barely missed when installing the (old) pantry.
• There were two full linoleum floors under ours, brown and puke green (the original, probably). Aside from ugliness, the underfloors were in decent shape.

The hole in the wall is going to startle me for awhile. Tomorrow: tile and cabinets.

Easter Island was incredible, lots of hiking, moais, caves, and petroglyphs - and we of course promise lots of pictures once we get to a stable, fast Internet connection.

Right now, we’re back in Santiago airport waiting for our connection to Calama, the airport closest to San Pedro de Atacama. This town is on the edge of the Atacama, the driest desert on the Earth. It should make quite a change from the subtropic weather we’ve been enjoying!

Matt and I like Santiago. It is beautiful, ringed with mountains, and mild and green even in the dead of winter. I would love to live here, if only to wake up to mountains every morning and eat at a different Chilean restaurant every night.

Santiago is typically used by tourists as a jumping off point to other areas of Chile. There are a few fun tourist stops in the city, but people usually only stay a few days before flying to the ski slopes, wine country, or Patagonia (none of which we are visiting on this trip).

So we planned for two days in the city, and visited six tourist spots yesterday afternoon and today. On the must-see list—Museo Chileno de Arte Precolombino (the Pre-Columbian Art Museum) and Iglesia, Convento y Museo de San Francisco (the Church and Museum of San Francisco). What can I say—modern art bores me, and I’m sucker for anything over 200 years old.

I put together a slide show of our photos, though only a few places allowed us to take pictures. (We broke the rules at the Museum of San Francisco, where we took a covert photo of a short door.)

Tomorrow: a five-hour flight to Isla de Pascua (Easter Island), and hopefully an afternoon hike.

Matt and I are midway through a five-hour stop at the Toronto Airport. “Didn’t they mention they were headed south?” you might ask. “Why fly through Canada?” It’s a good question—and one the customs agent asked.

We are headed to Chile, but stopping through Toronto was not much longer and much cheaper than flying through a more direct location. Our trip is not close to half way over; we face a 10-hour flight, scheduled to land in Santiago mid-morning tomorrow. It is the second-longest trip (total travel time) I’ve ever taken.

In the meantime, you can’t beat hanging out in another country, and a Canadian airport falls into that category today. Neither Matt nor I have been to Toronto before, and the flight in was beautiful. Add in foreign cell phone brands, a few extra languages, people watching, and staring at the departures board dreaming of trips to Tel Aviv, Dublin, and Beijing, and you have an entertaining evening.

Even if that weren’t the case, when you are overbooked in life for any period of time, 17 hours of forced relaxation is not a bad prospect. I think I could stare at the wall for most of it, but I do have an hour of Internet, a 600-page novel, and laptop power under my chair (how lucky are we to find a plug at an airport). I suspect that I will sleep well tonight, even sitting up straight in a narrow seat.

Finally, evidence that ajmatt kitchen is getting a facelift. Last night Matt and I moved halfway out of our kitchen, and we had our ugly kitchen wallpaper removed today.

On the plus side, we have already doubled our counter space, and I think the primer is a big improvement. [I'm tired; is this whole post littered with typos?]

The downside—our living room just got crowded… though it looks like a great opportunity to multitask, doesn’t it? I need a coffeemaker that close to my laptop all the time.

And now we will take a break from housework to travel to another hemisphere. Kitchen phase II will commence in a few weeks.