2000-08-29 - 986031596

On the internal soundtrack: "Rockin' Robin", some cutesy 50s song.

So, my parents visited this weekend. It was fun. I made them play Pictionary with me on Sunday afternoon and they liked it.

Poindexter made a spicy chili on Friday that had black beans in it. Dad thought he didn't like beans, but we convinced him to try a spoonful with two beans in it, and lo and behold, he liked it!

Poindexter and I don't like beans, either, but we like black beans. Little white beans (navy beans) aren't bad either. Especially when they're in a chili. I don't know that I'd want a pile of beans on my plate with nothing else on 'em.

We went to Mass with the folks, and then to dinner at the Warehouse Bar & Grill in Old Town. Food was very good (spicy seafood, mostly shellfish), service was rushed. Waiters filling our water glasses every five minutes (before we had a chance to take more than two sips), rushing around creating breezes and bumping into my chair, rushing us through the meal even though the restaurant was not full. If you're in a big hurry, it's probably a good place to go.

So all I am talking about is food. I can't help it. I'm at the time of the month (no, not THAT time) when my stomach feels like a black hole. I just ate some chicken piccata and I'm still hungry. In a few days this will let up.

My brother arrived last night, a day late. He's doing something at the Virginia office. He brought his laundry, of course, and stayed up late doing it. Then this morning he left an hour later than he planned and sat in traffic for an hour fifteen trying to get to Tyson's Corner. "I remember why I left this area," he said.

Tyson's Corner is the stupidest example of suburban sprawl I've ever seen in my life. I can't imagine anything worse, except perhaps L.A. It is one of the biggest centers for jobs in the area. It has about 500 huge office buildings, all the requisite stores and such, plus two huge malls and a movie complex. All that, and it has about three roads going into it. None of it is accessible by Metro. You can only get there by car. You can't even walk from one section of it to another, because it was designed entirely with the automobile in mind. It takes, literally, about 20-30 minutes to go a mile within Tyson's Corner at rush times. It backs up traffic on the Beltway for over 5 miles in each direction. It's just horrible.

People think that living in the city means a lot of noisy traffic. But you want to know a little secret? The traffic is all people getting in and out of the city. If you *live* there, there's very little traffic at all. Getting in and out of San Jose at rush times is a nightmare, but we lived a mile from the exact geographical center of downtown and we never sat in traffic during trips within the downtown area. If we even needed to get in the car at all. And from what I've seen, if you live in the District, you can always find a quieter route for intercity traffic. Stay away from the roads people are using to enter and leave and you'll be just fine.

Okay. Enough ranting.

Well, one more thing. Back in the day, people built their cities near water, or with water surrounding them. It was a protective measure (against invasions, I suppose, back when that was something you had to worry about on a regular basis) as well as easy access to transportion of people and goods (that is, boats). Most of the major cities in the U.S. that you can think of offhand -- New York, Washington, DC, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia -- are completely or partially surrounded by rivers, oceans, or lakes.

And it is that same quality that makes these cities a living hell to get in and out of nowadays. Hm.

Excuse me while I browse online for a house in Center City Philadelphia...

It looks like this is going to be THE month for family visits. My parents were just here. Poindexter's dad & stepmom are coming midmonth. Then his parents are here for 10 days. At some point I also would really like to go up to NJ and see my grandfather, whom I haven't seen in a while.

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