Your leaking thatched hut during the restoration of a pre-Enlightenment state.

 

Hello, my name is Judas Gutenberg and this is my blaag (pronounced as you would the vomit noise "hyroop-bleuach").



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   across the Bay Bridge
Sunday, January 22 2017

location: eighth floor, Watergate East Apartment Building, Washington, DC

The four of us (me, Gretchen, and her parents) went walking to brunch at Equinox this morning. Equinox is that non-vegan restaurant just north of the White House that serves a vegan brunch that Gretchen's parents are ape-shit about. I'm not a big fan of breakfast, brunch, or the foods associated with them, but, as Gretchen had made clear, I was going to "lunch" (a meal I do like) and I was going to enjoy it, damnit!. We'd been to Equinox once before, and I'd found the experience not all that stunning, particularly given the price (not that I was paying). Today, though, the food appealed to me more, particularly the potato & squash "chowder." [REDACTED] For some reason, conversations tend to be better at Equinox, mostly because they're not so focused on logistics (food-related or otherwise). We talked a fair about the fixer-upper house on Brewster Street, which Gretchen and I have an accepted offer on ($65,000). A recent fly in the ointment was that the house had been deemed by the City of Kingston as "uninhabitable," so we needed to know what kind of bureaucratic hurdle that was going to be. Kingston is a bit of a hard-ass about some things, particularly plumbing and electrical work. (They don't like it when unlicensed homeowners do their own repairs.)
We must've taken a quite a detour on our walk to Equinox (the in-laws sure love to stroll!) because the walk back to the Watergate didn't take long at all. We passed a townhouse very close to the Watergate where a couple of clean little boys played with plastic guns on the sidewalk, taking full advantage of their white priviledge in this againly great land. On Virginia Avenue, the police were hassling a homeless guy who had just decamped from a grassy patch along the sidewalk. He, of course, was African American.

We didn't dilly-dally long back at the apartment before loading up our Prius and heading homeward. At the last moment, Gretchen parents had given us an old chest that looked like it should contain pirate treasure.
Google Maps is pretty good at navigating around traffic congestion, though we'd decided to make its job easier by not heading directly for home. All those pink-hatted ladies from the march were probably choking the New Jersey turnpike, and we wanted to avoid all that. So we'd decided to go through Philadelphia. To get us there, Google Maps navigated us south from the Watergate and then northeastward through the southeast side of Washington. When we stopped for gas, all the other customers looked like extras in a hip hop video, but with crappier cars. I was reminded of how, in Grand Theft Auto, you suddenly find yourself in a neighborhood where everyone wears sagging pants.
Google took us east from Washington on US 50 across the Chesapeake Bay Bridge, which I don't remember having ever been on before. It's like a museum of different bridge technologies, complete with a cantilevered section that looks like the Firth of Forth bridge. On the other side, Maryland was a series of large cultivated fields, most of which included large irrigation structures. We entered Delaware further south than I ever remember being in that state. There were some ugly towns in that partof the world; they featured big inflated houses in treeless lawns and the first megachurch I've ever really noticed in the wild.
Our first stop in Philadelphia was at Blackbird Pizza, where we ordered four vegan cheesesteak sandwiches, an order of habañero "wings" and a cæsar salad, all of which came to over $50. The plan was to have a sandwich for tomorrow and another for the next day. Tonight, though, we'd be dining at V Street, our other Philadelphia destination. We arrived and of course that one manager was there and she always treats us like VIPs. We spent a lot of time talking about yesterday's Women's March. There had been one in Philadelphia, of course, and V-Street had been mobbed afterwards by pussy-hatted vegans (and vegan wanna-bes). We had a good table near the bar and ordered all our favorites, plus a few new things to sample. I had so much faith in V-Street that I ordered the carrot asada even though I really don't like cooked carrots at all. I can't say I loved it; at its heart were five or six cooked carrots. But the toppings and sauces were great. Not only did we order a bunch of things (including a second round of Peruvian fries for "dessert"), but we got two different random non-menu dishes straight from the kitchen gratis. They love us there, but then again, why wouldn't they? Gretchen is a superconnector.
This reminds me; the other day Marissa (the blond Marissa who lives in Manhattan) had The Green Cottage (a local flower shop) deliver Gretchen a beautiful live purple orchid in honor of her birthday. With the orchid was a note reading

Happy Birthday to one of
our favorites in the whole
world! A donation of $100.00
was made in your name to
Planned Parenthood. Because...
Fuck Trump!

Love you xoxoxo, Marissa, David, Mushy, Tiny, Fatty & Fraaankliiin

And with all that was a bouquet of flowers from The Green Cottage itself with a note reading

Happy Birthday!!!
Flowers for you because
your card message cheered
us so!!!
From,
Everyone at Green Cottage

To Donald Trump, the Green Cottage is now "failing" and "sad," but not if Gretchen has anything to do with it.

We ecountered almost no congestion on the rest of the drive home, despite the fact that Google Maps routed us onto the New Jersey Turnpike only 30-some miles north of its southern terminus.
The partiers and house sitters had left our house in a tidy state, though of course someone had managed to knock a divot out of a big beautiful ceramic bowl that had been used to contain one of the pasta dishes. It's nice when people clean up your mess, but people just don't take proper care with dishes unless they actually own them. This is part of the reason I endorse (and promote) a protocol in our social circle where the people serving dinner or throwing a party are also the ones who clean it up.

It wasn't long after getting home and starting a fire that I went off to bed. Travel is exhausting.


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