Hello Everyone, well August is upon us and I’ve personally passed the 4 month mark of being sheltered- in-place here in Washington. It’s been a quiet week for the most part which is a very good thing sometimes. I’ve been enjoying baseball games on the radio, long morning walks in Rock Creek Park and working on my book. Hurricane Isaias passed by us yesterday dousing us with some much needed rain and the heat and humidity seem to have backed off for a minute. Despite the fact that the pandemic is still in full effect, I feel pretty calm and balanced this week, and for that I am grateful. Perhaps it’s the break in the heat and the beginning of August – both of which signal that summer is winding down. There are many things I love about summer, but the heat is not one of them. Whatever it is, I’m happy to be feeling more like myself this week.
I was thrilled to see the passage of the Great American Outdoors Act this week by a bipartisan effort with the support of the president. This bill will give much needed funding to our National Parks in this country to try and relieve some of the backlog of maintenance needs which has piled up for decades. I love the American National Park System and have been on a lifelong quest to visit all four hundred and some units. This year I made a turn into the final hundred. These truly are our greatest treasures and they are even more special because as public lands they belong to all of us. Never listen to anyone if they tell you these are “government owned land”. They are not – they are yours and mine to enjoy and need to be maintained and preserved for future generations as well. Kudos to congress and the president for coming together to do something great. Beyond that, though, I’ve been trying to avoid the news as best I can.
This past Friday, as a follow-up to last week’s Christmas in July celebration, we had a Mid-Year New Year Party complete with some wonderful hors d’oeuvres and (a tad too much) champagne. Since the first half of 2020 hasn’t turned out very well, we were looking ahead at the second half with high hopes of a vaccine and a quick return to a more normal life.
Saturday I spent behind the computer writing about some of Washington DC’s oldest homes – a project which was supposed to be a single post but got too complicated so I decided to look at each property individually. It’s a project I will continue working on for the next couple of weeks. Then we got out our brewing equipment and got a batch of West Coast IPA into the fermenter. For some reason it seemed to take forever, but we got it done and it’s bubbling away in the basement as we speak. We’ve never brewed an IPA before and I’m looking forward to seeing how it turns out.
Last week I picked up an expansion (Traders and Builders) to one of our favorite pandemic board games: Carcassonne, which we have been playing a lot of in recent weeks. It took a whole game to get used to the new pieces and additional rules, but we really liked the expansion and played for several hours on Sunday afternoon. In the evening, I baked a couple of peach pies which was really fun - one for me and one for some friends I wanted to pay a visit to.
Monday my mom took me out to West Virginia to pick up Shadow Catcher. She came back with mixed results. The work done on the RV side of the vehicle was top-notch and I’m very pleased with what they did. The mechanical work I had hoped to get done was something they looked at and then recommended I take to a mechanic. It seemed somewhat unethical for a mechanic to charge me to tell me I should take it to another mechanic – as if they couldn’t have told me that upfront. They then charged me $200 to rotate my tires and change my oil, something I could have done myself or paid $50 in one of a million other places. I really wanted to like this place, and as I said the work they did on my sewage and water system was spot-on and worth every penny, but it would not be somewhere I could recommend to anyone. In some ways it was my fault because I brought them a list of things to do in the hopes of saving time and energy on my part. My normal (and future) course of action is to have things done individually, one problem at a time, so that I can price out each job and know in advance what the work will cost, saving any mystery or anxiety. It’s time consuming but worth it for the hundreds of dollars a year I save by doing things this way. Lesson (re)learned. I did get her to the carwash on the way home which felt good, and she drove like a champ all the way back to DC. And now begins the search for a decent and decently priced mechanic to do the work that they didn’t.
When I woke up Tuesday morning it was raining hard as the hurricane brushed past us on its northward trajectory. We decided to put off our weekly jaunt into the history of the region due to weather. It was nice to sleep in a bit and then spend the morning sipping coffee and reading my book. I’m rereading Edward Abbey’s Desert Solitaire, a book I enjoy but the pace of which can be a struggle. I’ve started it a dozen times, but I don’t think I’ve ever gotten all the way through. 2020 is my year for finishing things I’ve never had the time or patience for in the past. I spent the afternoon remembering and writing about my time in McDowell County in SW West Virginia’s coal country. Remember McDowell County? It was on everyone’s lips during the 2016 election as one of the poorest parts of the country with no jobs, high opioid addiction and a daily struggle to survive as coal mining jobs disappear. Sadly, as it has been in the past, it was quickly forgotten after the inauguration. It’s a beautiful and fascinating part of the country, with good people and an interesting history. I enjoyed my brief stay there and enjoyed looking back at it as I wrote. I definitely hope to get back there in the future. (Read my post on McDowell County HERE)
The rain cleared out in the early afternoon, and the sun shone through the clouds, but the humidity remained low and it turned into a beautiful evening. I sat outside and read some more.
Today I spent the morning back down in Georgetown. The weather was sunny and the humidity was still down, so I took advantage to get out and take some photos. It was nice to be out and about in the city and I am looking forward to more of that when the weather cools down. I even popped up to the campus at Georgetown University to take some photos of Healy Hall, which is a beautiful building on the National Register of Historic Places.
This coming week should be a good one and also pretty quiet. I’m going to do more of what I’ve been doing and try and make a long-term plan for some of these projects to try and keep myself on track. I need to set some weekly and monthly goals for myself and hopefully be able to gauge my progress as I go. I have very few plans for the weekend right now, but after two big weeks of “holiday” parties that’s probably a good thing. I do know I’m going to try and stay away from the news as much as possible as I don’t think there’s too much new in the news these days. Other than that, I’m just going to try and make it safely and sanely through the week because that’s all I can hope for at the moment. I hope y’all are doing okay out there, wherever you are. It’s been quite a year, but I believe there is an end to this whole thing in a future not far away. Stay safe, have a great week, and I’ll see you right back here next week. Thanks for reading.
-Mike