2002-08-01 - 1:13 p.m.

On the internal soundtrack: "Sweet Transvestite", RHPS

Well, yesterday evening we signed over more than half our savings to a man who feels no remorse for ruining his own roof. Yep, made our down payment. Well, I suppose it's not the house's fault.

Y'know, I'm beginning to wonder if he was renting that place out. He really didn't do *anything* to keep the place up. It's astonishing, really. Unless he's just really old. Or a miser. Could be both.

So, back to the regularly scheduled nonsense for a while.

I made the mistake, a few nights ago, of asking Poindexter (again) if he misses Virginia, and if so, what does he miss?

Now me, I have a weird thing where I forget stuff very easily. Whatever situation I'm in, that's where I'm at, and I don't think much about how it "used to be", although I do often think about "what will be".

Poindexter, however, has a clear memory of what he misses. He rattled off a bunch of things right away, without hardly having to think. He misses the house, our neighbors, and "how nice and attractive everything was" compared to the general shithole that is Philadelphia. Plus some other stuff, that, well, I forgot. One of 'em was the dirt-bike riding place out near Dulles, I think. We need to find ourselves someplace like that around here.

Well, that made me feel depressed. Because I miss our neighbors too, and our sunny house. And Northern Virginia *is* a very nice, pretty place, despite the sprawl. A significant part of Washington, DC is also extremely nice and clean. There's a lot of money in the DC Metro Area and it shows.

Now, none of this makes me want to move back. It's too nice being close to my family, and after living in the city for four months, there's no way in hell I could move to the suburbs again. If we moved back down there, I'd probably have to live in Dupont or Adams Morgan. Even Clarendon wouldn't cut it for me anymore.

But lately, we've been noticing some things about Philly that we really like, despite the prevalent worn-out dirtiness, and anyway our future neighborhood is very clean and pretty.

Poindexter, for example, is over the moon about the way the women dress here. "I don't know what is wrong with the women in the DC area," he said. The women here wear short skirts and tight outfits to WORK here, far as we can tell. And then in the evenings when we go out, there are low-cut shirts galore and skirts-up-to-here. "Jiggle, jiggle", Poindexter says. Meanwhile, back in DC, women are wearing boring black suits and black HOSE to work in the summer. I saw it with my own eyes. I think it's loosening up somewhat, but nothing compared to the relative flesh-fest that is Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

I like this, myself. Aside from the fact that I like looking at women and checking out their outfits/makeup/hair/etc., I like being able to wear next to nothing on the streets when it's 96 degrees out and not feel remotely self-conscious, because I know I blend in. Plus, skimpy clothes can be had for less than $10 per item at Daffy's. Good deal.

In Old Town Alexandria, when the girls go out in the wintertime, they like to wear slacks, a turtleneck sweater, and a blazer over that. It's really nice work attire, but at midnight on a Friday, can't we see something a little sexier than that?

The other thing that still surprises me sometimes is prices. Chicken breasts, as I've said, cost much less here. And then yesterday in the salon, I had myself transformed into a stinky poodle head (translation: perm and cut) and when I got the bill it was only $110. Total. I said, "Is that for both the perm and the cut?" and she said, "Yes." Holy cow. In DC, they would've charged me $110 just for the perm, since my hair is long, and then another $60 for the cut. Now, I did go to a rather popular salon, but it wasn't the most expensive salon in DC, either. And this salon is a fancy one in a hotel. So I was rather surprised.

Another thing, which is REALLY weird for me after living all my adult life in the DC area and San Jose, is that the majority of the blue-collar population here are native Americans. (Not "Native Americans", but born-and-raised-in-the-USA Americans of all colors and types.)

Now, I'm a big fan of immigrants in general, but the fact is that I have a really hard time understanding them until they've been here long enough to speak English with a charming accent rather than an unintelligible one. So when I have to deal with non-English-speakers for work that's being done on my house, or when I'm asking questions and trying to find out how to do something, it's very stressful. Back in DC, the woman who waxed my legs had a difficult accent, so as much as I liked her and her work, we couldn't CHAT. So when I got here and a native American about my age did the waxing and we yammered away for the hour it took, I was stunned.

Imagine how stunned I was yesterday when I got another native American to perm and cut my hair, and we chatted all through it EVEN THOUGH I WASN'T WEARING MY HEARING AIDS. I could read her lips in the mirror. It's an astonishing experience. It really is.

One last thing for today: The fruit cart. In the business district, there are a bunch of what my MIL calls a "roach coach", a horrible name for those little carts with hotdogs or Chinese food or Middle Eastern food or whatever in them. There are a few that say "FRUIT SALAD" on the outside, and for two bucks will give you a pound of fresh fruit salad. They have watermelon, green grapes, honeydew, canteloupe, pineapple, oranges, and sometimes strawberries. The best part is that they will give me ONLY watermelon when I ask. The other day I got some watermelon that had JUST been cut. It is SO GOOD. For TWO BUCKS, FRESH, and all the chopping/messiness taken care of by someone else. Wow.

Other random stuff:

It's REALLY easy to slip back into that Philly accent. People in the NJ area where I grew up have a similar one. I'm getting into a 50/50 thing with saying "wahter" vs "wooder" for "water". It's "Italian Wooder Ice", after all. Poindexter hates this. At least I don't seem to have much inclination to say "becAWse" instead of "becuz". But I think it's so cute how everybody else here does it.

We need to work on the cheesesteak thing. So far we've only tried Tony Luke's, which some people have recommended, but we thought was rather boring. Far too healthy. They cook the onions separately, it seems, and don't use much, if any grease. We'll keep looking. The big rivalry is between Geno's and Pat's, who have stores across the street from each other at 9th & Passyunk. But most people we ask say that they like someplace else. Jim's, at 4th and South, seems to be popular, so I think we'll try that next.

Speaking of cheesesteaks, I'm back to eating them, as well as Cosi sandwiches. The numbness has almost disappeared, too. Good deal. I'm in fine shape for my trip to Montreal next week for a conference.

Well, that does it for today. I'm going to check out the pool. Just for 20-30 minutes, tops, since I'm pale as a ghost.

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