Red Nose

Still Proud To Be A Caps Fan

Yes, I know.

I know my boys lost again, again in the playoffs, again in Game 7, after leading the series 3 games to 1. I know they lost to a supposedly inferior team that certainly wasn't inferior during that series.

I know, I know, believe me, I know. I was watching every step of the way.

I have read all the articles, listened to the commentary, heard all the bitching and moaning and the get-rid-ofs. Get rid of Green, get rid of Semin, get rid of Boudreau, get rid of George McPhee.

I am a latecomer to hockey fandom; I've only been a huge fan since January 2004, when my sister took me to a Caps game for my birthday. One game and I was hooked. I read books on hockey and learned the rules. I started watching hockey on TV. I suffered through the lockout. In 2007-2008, when the Caps went from worst to first and made the playoffs, we got our hands on playoff tickets for Game 1. Last year Joe and I splurged on season tickets. We renewed this year.

I hear all these people moaning and groaning and talking about how awful this defeat is. I can't help wondering if they could do a better job than these folks who have been doing it for years. I mean, who am I to question the wisdom of folks -- players and coaches and managers alike -- who have lived and breathed this sport for years and years and years? I am no one in this sport. Even though we go to all the home games and even though we watch all the away games on TV, I must admit that I don't know dick about the finer points of hockey.

Finer points, hell. I barely know the rules of the game, so I'm not about to go mouthing off about how horrible the team is and what they have to do and how only the Cup matters.

I was hopeful for a deep run in the playoffs. I didn't get it. I thought maybe, just maybe, we might win the Stanley Cup this year. We didn't. I was worried when I realized that our opponent in Round 1 was the Montreal Canadiens because we had trouble with them all year. I was right.

But.

I still love my team, my Caps, my boys. I do. I am not angry at them; I am sad for them. They played wonderfully all season long, setting franchise records, compiling the best regular season record in the NHL, and winning the Presidents' Trophy. Going deeper into the playoffs would have been a wonderful experience for them.

But let me tell you something else: I am so very grateful to this team. They gave me such a wonderful gift, a gift of such pleasure and joy and distraction from my mother's dying that I can only be grateful to my team. Yeah, the Cup would have been nice, but I'm really okay with it because of the phenomenal season the team gave me.

So thank you, Washington Capitals, for getting me through a tough, tough year. Thank you for the thrills, the joys, the heartstopping action. Thank you for the most fun I've had with sports in years.

My team. Always my team. I am still proud to be a Caps fan.

GO CAPS!

Church Street: Colesville Baptist Church

Okay, so Colesville Baptist Church isn't directly on New Hampshire Avenue, but the great big sign that points to it is, and that's good enough for me.

According to their website, Colesville Baptist is a pretty friendly congregation:

How friendly are we?  We believe that hospitality is a Divine command.  You are welcome here.  By the way, we are a big family united in Christ so, just like at a family reunion, you will see people dressed up and you will see people in shorts and t-shirts.  God doesn't care and neither do we.  Come as you are.  Only bring your heart, God does care about that!

Not only that, they give you breakfast!

That Number Is Unlisted Now

Joe and I got new phones this week, the snazzy Palm Pre Plus, our very first smartphones.

Although the phones were free (Woo!), the mandatory data plan will increase our phone bill by a fat chunk o' change each month. Therefore, I have resolved to use lots and lots of unlimited data so that I get my money's worth. Look out, YouTube!

Anyway, we did run into a couple of snags, the most notable being the fact that Verizon's nifty little Backup Assistant application only assists you when you're uploading your contacts. After it finishes doing that, it quickly wipes off its hands and hangs up its apron and clocks out.

Oh yes, there is a workaround. You have to export your Contacts from MyVerizon into a .CSV file, log into Google Mail, import the .CSV, and then sync your Contacts from the Pre.

This all worked fine, except that the Pre, who was being a cranky little bastard, only synced up 10 out of 114 contacts.

Gah. Then! Joe's phone, deciding to out-cranky my phone, refused to activate. Eventually we ended up at a Verizon store, where the lovely helpful sales associate (whose name I stupidly did not remember) activated the phone. I then asked him if he could transfer my contacts from my old phone to my new phone, because another Verizon store had done that the last time we changed phones. He could, for $10.

Sold.

Since then I have been playing with the phone. I downloaded a Twitter app, and a Solitaire game, and I figured out how to flick, and throw, and tap.

Then I thought I would go through my Contacts and clean them up. I tapped the Contacts icon and right there, under A, was Anna Wise.

Mom.

My heart dropped into my feet and, once again, my throat filled up with stones. I stared at the phone number for a minute. I thought just do it, just delete it, she's not going to answer if you call it, her number's unlisted now, stop being a baby.

I pressed Delete and it was gone.

In a rush I deleted her cardiologist, the assisted living nurse, the nursing home social worker, the hospice nurse, the hospice chaplain, the hospice social worker, the nursing home room phone, the nursing home nurse's station, the Leisure World number.

Then I wiped my eyes and took a deep breath.

It was freeing, in a way, this letting go of her many numbers. It was good. Like the dream I had last week, where we were driving down the road in a cool convertible, sun shining down and wind blowing, and I thought that I was wrong about her dying, because there she was! Right there!

But I realized that I was dreaming, in that lucid dreaming sort of way, and as soon as I did, Mom vaporized and the tiny particles of her swirled off into the sky like a plume of smoke.

I Go Topless

The lovely and talented Ian posted an excellent picture of his family from 1988 and challenged us to do the same. I knew immediately which photo I wanted to post.

Here we are, at Ocean City, in 1954. 

My older sister looks very stylish, doesn't she? How about my brother in his sailor hat? I love how both my mom and pop are smoking!

And then there's that little girl  in Mom's lap in her topless bathing suit! That would be me, all of two and a half years old.

Church Street: New Hampshire Avenue Gospel Chapel

Here's the New Hampshire Avenue Gospel Chapel, with its peaked roof pointing straight to heaven.

 

Here is their statement of beliefs. If they're right, I'm guessing that I'm going to need an asbestos wetsuit, what with that whole "lake of fire" thing.

Call Box Art

Throughout DC are old, emptied call boxes, used to call the police and fire departments in the days before telephones. They fell out of use decades ago, of course, but many still remain, sentinels of the past.

Over the last few years, Cultural Tourism DC sponsored an effort called Art on Call, enabling artists to transform the boxes into urban canvases, neighborhood by neighborhood.

I noticed one just the other day, as I was walking to lunch.

Here's a closer look.

I love how the light shines through the scene. It's tough to see the details, but it combines city views with natural elements, all in golds and greens. Here's what the note underneath the call box says:

The National Bureau of Standards

In 1901, the National Bureau of Standards began developing a large complex of 89 buildings on 70 acres west of Connecticut Avenue near this site. The NBS was devoted to testing new materials and establishing industry standards. The NBS physicists developed radio technology, which led to guiding airplanes with radio waves.

This artistic work reflects the history of technological scientific research in the Van Ness neighborhood and natural beauty of Rock Creek Park.

Artist: Anna Glist, Burke School

Art on Call is sponsored by Cultural Tourism DC, the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities, the District Department of Transportation and Office of the Deputy Mayor for Planning and Economic Development.

Additional Sponsors: Councilmember Mary Cheh, Advisory Neighborhood Commission #F, The Forest Hills Neighborhood Alliance, and Duron and Sherwin-Williams Paint.

The Call Boxes in Forest Hills are located at Albemarle and 30th Street, Albemarle and Linnean, Connecticut and Tilden, Connecticut and Windom, Ellicott and 30th Place, Tilden and Linnean, and the 2900 block of Upton Street.

I hope that one day every call box is a little piece of urban art.

Nice Surprises

Taxes Surprise

I just got done doing my taxes.

I must admit I was worried this year; I was sure we'd end up owing a ton of money. The details aren't important, but yeah. Worried.

But no! It actually turns out that we are getting a tidy refund! That's a nice surprise, for sure. Kinda makes me wish I'd done the taxes earlier, but at least it's a refund. I will sleep a little bit better tonight (I hope).

Stab from the Past Surprise

Yesterday I participated in the University of Maryland Access2Alumni event. This event is a combination career fair and networking opportunity for students; it's composed of a keynote speech, networking roundtables organized by major, and the career fair. I was one of the alumni at the Performing Arts roundtable -- I was the only one of the five alumni who is not actively in the performing arts. So, I got to tell the earnest and shiny young students just how their performing arts degree would serve them well even if they didn't become Big Stars of Stage and Screen.

The surprise came in the form of one of the other alumni at the roundtable, in that I dated him for awhile when we were students together at Maryland! Luckily, we parted as friends, so it was a nice reunion. He is still an actor, director, and theater group manager and more power to him for that! His ponytail is gone, though -- one of the costs of aging, I suppose.

Busker Surprise

As I left work today, I heard my favorite buskers tuning up so I had to pause to see what they would be playing. I was delighted when they launched into Every Breath You Take. Their bass and violin arrangement was lovely. Thank you, fellas!

Church Street: Our Lady of Vietnam

Mercy is the theme for Our Lady of Vietnam, a Roman Catholic community. (I gleaned this from reading the Google-translated version of their website.) I love their beautiful and graceful church, especially the large gong hanging over the front door.

The mission of Our Lady of Vietnam is to "live united and love each other."

I think, based on their site and the Google translation, that their patron saint is a Polish nun, St. Maria Faustina Kowalska, who had visions of Christ during her short life. In these visions, Christ inspired her to create the Divine Mercy devotion.

We could all use a little divine mercy, I think.

No Respect For The Dead

We buried my mother on January 28th.

This evening I went to the cemetery and saw my mother's grave. On Monday, I heard from my brother that the gravesite was a wreck, but I had to see for myself. This is what I saw.

See those wire things on the left? Flower stands, still there even though the wreaths have long since gone, stuck into my mother's and father's grave. See that slab of plywood under the mound of dirt? It's covering up my brother's grave. See that pile of dirt? Still there, after ten weeks. solidified mud with sticks and crap all over it. See that headstone just in front of the tree? 

My brother's headstone, still dislodged from his grave. See that other headstone, off to the right of the dirt pile?

My father's headstone. It belongs at the head of my mother's and father's shared grave, not way off to the side of a pile of dirt covering my brother's grave. It's been there for so long that it's sunk into the ground, thanks to two blizzards and several heavy rainstorms.

This is the way that Gate of Heaven cemetery treats the dead? This is what we get for our $1,904 fee, paid before the first clod of dirt was dug?

Shameful. Just shameful.

Believe me, the management of the cemetery has already heard from us. Believe me, they have not finished hearing from us. I don't care that there was a blizzard a week after the funeral; the gravesite should have been fixed no later than January 29.

They owe my mother and father and brother the respect due the dead; they owe us the respect due the living who have lost their mother and father and brother.

I am livid. I am beyond livid. Isn't it enough that we have to lose our mother, deal with her estate, sell her house -- now we have to chase down the fucking gravediggers and make sure they do the job we paid for?

I'm sorry, Momma. I'm so sorry.

Just Park It In My Driveway, Please

Seen on I-70, heading west:

Could it be?

Holy latte! Just what I needed!

(Oh, I know it's probably just an ad, but I can dream, can't I?)