twenty-something years of "what have you been up to?"

Category: on the road

  • first days of september

    Peter can play "Knock, Knock, Knocking on Heaven's Door," on guitar pretty well now.

    It's Friday, so we made pizza. There's a Bob Marley concert on PBS, so Peter and I are watching it, singing all the songs, looking up the chords to Redemption Song. (Last week they showed a John Dever concert.) Then we flip stations and watch Sarah Palin. After McCain chose her, I had friends calling me to ask, "what does your family think of Palin?" I'm the person with the conservative connections.

    Tomorrow the Idol tour ends in Tulsa. A friend has an extra seat in the third row, and I'm not going, so that's something. My esprit d'escalier: ask David Cook to record your outgoing message on your phone. He's such a goof, you know he will do it. Why did I not think of this when I could have had him do it for me? I gave my friend Jane the idea though, and of course, he did it for her yesterday. The message is subversive, but you knew it would be.

    Dinner with friends from Niamey on Sunday. Other than that, no plans, except maybe buying some wool, it's suppose to be in the 50s this week in Moscow. Think we'll get to use our plane tickets on Wednesday?

  • oldest house in DC, built in 1765

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    Peter's sister Alex visited us from Seattle over the weekend. Yea! Saturday, Hurricane Hanna/Major Annoyance Hanna also passed through town and it rained so hard we took a cab to go four blocks to a bookstore. The beautiful day yesterday was a shocking contrast. We celebrated by going to three museums. The highlight: Vermeer's Lady With a Balance. I can't believe I've spent this much time in DC and never paid her a visit before. Gloriousness.

    We have plane tickets for next Wednesday, I hope the visas come through and we can use them.

  • care package to moscow

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  • not just any white house

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  • sitting on pennsylvania ave

    We may not know what country we are living in, but it's Friday, and at our house–or hotel–that means pizza. Last week we walked across the street to Papa John's, got the largest pizza they had and kids ate it in about five minutes. Dave and Elisabeth will not be surprised by this, when we come over on Friday, they don't double the pizza order, they square it. Last week, after vanity-sized pizza tragedy, Peter and I had to have cereal with red wine–c'mon it was Friday!–for dinner. So this week we walked across a different street to Trader Joe's and got all the ingredients for a white flour/pepperoni and a whole wheat/mushroom-onion-bell pepper. In Niger we missed Trader Joe's so much. Since it's our only grocery store here within walking distance (I don't count Dean and Deluca), I hope we are good and sick of it by the time we leave. I wonder what pizza Friday will mean in Moscow.

    Barnes and Noble is killing me, so today we got library cards.

    Library_books

  • what would you be buying?

    Peter is one of the few people in the State Dept to ever qualify for the wardrobe allowance, you have to change weather zones radically. Niger to Russia somehow qualifies, can you believe it? Would you be running around in a panic? I'm just blocking it out. I figure we're okay, as long as kids don't have to go to school the first day on ice skates.

    I picked up a scarf, Peter bought himself some boots. None of us have worn socks in a year and have a hard time wrapping our minds around the idea. And then I got semi-panicky for a minute and bought a coat, mostly because I liked the idea that it had a special pocket for my iPhone. (I'm joking!)

    Coat

    Then once we were in Land's End mode I bought kids some fleece, and we bought Stefan a coat. I read somewhere that in Moscow they think people who wear light blue are gay and beat them up. Of course, of the ten color choices he wanted the light blue coat. His second choice was orange. I'm sure people who wear orange get beat up for being…loud or for having bad taste.

    Camille wanted a new backpack so we got her one. I brainwashed/bribed Stefan to reuse his backpack from last year. Target is full of backpacks with green themes; I'd like to write "I'm reusing my backpack from last year," with a Sharpie pen, rather than buy a new backpack that says "Recycling's cool."

    Having gone to French schools forever, Camille thinks when we refer to the Revolutionary War we are talking about the French Revolution and refers to herself as "we, the French." Stefan asks if he was born in the state or the country of San Francisco, and tells people he was born in the city of Disneyland. So I bought a nice jigsaw puzzle of the US, although once we get west of Idaho, don't ask me which state is which until we get to Vermont.

    Peter says he has no idea what I'm buying this other crap for, what we really need are these:Sock_cronicallycold

  • let the tourism begin

    While Camille is at riding camp and Peter is in class, Stefan and I have all day to play tourist. We went to the Smithsonian's Natural History Museum one day and another day we all went to the Kennedy Center to hear a Hawaiian slack-key guitarist. Our nation's capitol is a great town.

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  • dc report and i do mean david cook this time

    The Idol show was about ten blocks down the street from where are in Washington, they're stalking me. Stefan and I had some free time, (what do we have besides free time these days?) so we headed down to see if David Cook would come out and talk to us. In the cab on the way there I wrote out the lyrics to The World I Know, the Collective Soul song he covers. I've been trying to figure out the chords on the guitar, and even with the tabs on the internet, still can't quite get it.

    David Cook was out for about an hour. Stefan gave him a Hot Wheels car, "Thanks, I need a car!" (he gave the one he won on the show to his brother.) And he wrote out the chords to TWIK for me.

    Stefan DC guitar chords

  • dc report and I don’t mean david cook

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    There's Camille in the long pants, walking to Trader Joe's. From where we are staying in Washington DC I can watch her go door to door.

    We were suppose to leave for Moscow on Sunday, but because visas to Russia take not seven days but thirty days, we are here until mid-September. Once we wrap our minds around this concept, it's okay, it just took a few days to get use to. I feel the most for Camille, a new country, a new school, and three weeks late. 

    To make up for it, Camille is at Rock Creek State Park everyday this week for horseback riding camp.

  • apple pie, chocolate raisins, root beer

    Photo+130 Random thoughts, sitting at my sister’s cabin at Donner Lake. My sister made yogurt parfaits for breakfast. The dog really wants one.


    Guess what country is the least green in the world? Newsweek article.


    Peter is sitting in Niger with his fourth day of no electricity. The generator is running non-stop and he says he invited everyone without a generator over for shower. Should I be worried?


    Idol tour opened last night, I can’t wait. Look.


    Stefan is playing cards with my parents and drawing all the lucky jokers. Zero is his favorite number, he tells us.


    Fire, fire, everywhere. When we landed in San Francisco I thought it was foggy, but smoke from so many fires in Northern California had made its way to the coast. Yesterday when we got to Donnor Lake the smoke in the air made the place look like a Bierstadt painting. Today the sky is blue but tens of thousands of acres continue to burn all around northern California.


    My sister says I have to get off her internet connection and do my laundry because we have to go exercise, or my rent will go up.