Where the streets have no shame...

So I'm driving into work this morning, taking a somewhat more indirect route than usual. This involves driving along some mixed residential/business streets rather than the usual slog up I-395.

I'm driving on 23rd Street in Crystal City. This is a fairly busy road when traffic is backed up, which is usually always. There is a woman standing in the street talking to a guy in an SUV who's half in the parking lane. She's on the driver's side, chatting as if nothing out of the ordinary is going on, except that all of us trying to get to Jeff Davis Highway have to pull into the oncoming traffic lane to avoid hitting her.

Traffic in DC is bad today, so I can't take my usual route uptown through eastern Georgetown. I get on the Whitehurst Freeway to Canal Road and go up behind Georgetown University. As I'm driving up 44th Street there's a contractor, standing by the driver's door of the ubiquitous white van, talking on his cell phone. I have noticed this behavior with almost every contractor who's worked in my neighborhood over the years. Is it just me, or do they really get better reception standing in the middle of the street?

Finally I turn north on 39th Street near G'Town Hospital. There is a man in a business suit, carrying a briefcase, walking up the street beside the parked cars. There's a perfectly good sidewalk on the other side of the parked cars. Good thing he's only a block away from the hospital...

Butterflies...

No, not the cute ones that pollinate flowers, I'm talking about the ones you get in your innards.

I have never been much of an athlete. In school I was forced to play soccer, which I hated, basketball, which I hated, and baseball, which I didn't hate but as with the other two I basically sucked. And football? Fuggeddaboutit!

The one team sport that I ever enjoyed playing was ice hockey. I grew up near a lake that froze over inn the winter, so pond hockey was a big activity once you plowed enough snow off to make a playing area. And I sucked at that, too, but at least I had fun.

I never played "organized" hockey until I went to a small boarding school in New York. My junior year I finally made third-team, and they put me on defense because I could skate backwards. Senior year I made JV.

In college I played in a few frat leagues, and after moving to DC I picked up the game again after an 8-year hiatus. Then came Abby. Those late night starts in Bowie and Columbia lost their charm...

Then my daughter decided she wanted to play.

Well, since I was paying all this money for practices, etc. I decided to skate and help out with practice drills and the like, and the bug bit me again. After 15 years! So now I've been playing on and off for the last 7 years or so in various "C" leagues in the area.

One thing, though. Before each and every game I get those dang "butterflies"! You'd think after all these years that stuff would go away. By this past spring they were seriously getting to me.

This summer I decided to take the season off. I have always said that I'll keep playing until a) it's not fun anymore and b) I can't for some physical reason. Condition a) was violated last spring, so I figured time away would be a good thing.

Well, I've just returned from my first game of the season. We lost ... nothing new there ... but it was fun, and I can still play a more or less decent game. So now I have to work on those butterflies. I still get 'em before each game. Maybe I should go see a good lepidopterist ...

That song from the "Pepsi" pavillion at the 1964 World's Fair

Yesterday we placed our oldest offspring on a plane at Dulles Airport. When we got home I used some web site to follow the progress of the flight to Frankfurt. This morning I did the same to follow the progress of her second flight to Accra, Ghana. Yes, Ghana. As in Africa!

This afternoon, about 24 hours after we parted ways, she called on somebody's cell phone from the city (?) of Hohoe, where she'll spend the next six weeks doing volunteer work. She called! We heard her voice! The weather's hot and muggy, her butt is sore from the lousy seats on the plane, but OTW she's fine.

Wow...

It really is a small world after all...

Now I can't get that silly ditty out of my head.

Opinions expressed here...

Yeah, you all know what they say about 'em. Well, here's where you'll get a random selection of mine. I'll be wasting most of this space talking about things that matter to me. Astronomy. The environment. Hockey. Idiots in Washington and elsewhere, generally lumped into the category of Republicans (I was once one myself until my wife wrested me from the Dark Side).

As Mark Twain once said, "The trouble ain't that there is too many fools, but that the lightning ain't distributed right." Wise man, that Mark...

Cheers,

StarryEyeGuy