Musings

The Rotunda
Originally uploaded by jmsmall2005.

It is raining outside and my office closed at 2, making it a perfect day to curl up next to my fireplace with a book and a cuppa. Of course, we haven't cleaned out our fireplace to prepare it for winter or bought any firewood, and anyway I couldn't tear myself away from my desk until 4 (an appallingly bad habit I've developed on Fridays). No matter. The heat is working, the candles in the fireplace are lit, and the last bits of tea are getting cool in my cup as I sit here, listening to the sounds of a wet street and Nickle Creek.

Not bad for a Friday, even if I left two hours late.

I love everything about autumn--sweaters and jeans, colored leaves, soup, sifting through recipes for Thanksgiving--but this year it seems to have flown by and I've only had a hurried, fleeting glance at it. I think the small space of this Friday afternoon is just what I need, so I want to share it--and our fall happenings--with you. Just a few random things.

Belgian chocolate. It's really good, by the way, a fact to which my coworkers can all attest, since Jason brought back enough from Brussels to share with the whole class. He has been on a traveling spree, spending one day (and two days traveling) in Stockholm, San Antonio, and Brussels during three of the past four weeks. For the most part his sightseeing has been limited to the inside of a conference room, but in San Antonio he did get to have dinner with our good friends Jackie and Jason, who moved there last summer, in spite of the fact that Jackie and I had bonded over "Anne of Green Gables" AND "Persuasion." Sad. While he's been gone, I have accomplished...absolutely nothing. The fact that he came home yesterday and I had taken the trash out the curb was worth noting.

"Getting my trash kicked." I've gotten really into this step class at the gym, and I pretend that my legs have become very powerful and recently dreamt that someone asked me if I could run a half marathon and I confidently said yes. In real life, however, my legs are just really sore, and the idea of running a half marathon makes me want to lay down on the floor and kick and scream like a two-year old. Indeed, as my coworker Kaylyn says, the class "kicks my trash" twice a week. I am getting pretty good at it, though, if I do say so myself, and I wonder if perhaps this will fulfill the "take a dance class" resolution that I made for 2007. Thoughts?

Final draft. The past month or so I've spent frantic minutes and hours crafting, then recrafting, then recrafting a personal essay for my nonfiction writing class. The essay was supposed to be 1500 words, and somehow my final draft rang in at about 4079 words. And my professor says I'm not wordy enough... It has been quite an experience, actually. I wrote about Oxford--mainly our trip back there in April--and I fell right into the essay, remembering this particular Saturday afternoon at the library, writing a paper about Richard the Third, and how the misty, grey feeling outside seeped through the stained glass windows in front of my desk and mingled with the lamplight at which I studied, and how comfortable and happy I felt in that space. I've been looking for that space since I moved to Washington, DC, and I think I've finally found it again, right here in this little chair by my candle-lit fireplace.

Trader Joe's. Andrea encouraged me to check out Trader Joe's amazing cranberry sauce, so last Saturday I bravely gathered my grocery list and donned my baseball cap and made a trip to the Trader Joe's by our house. There are only, like, four aisle at Trader Joe's, but they are all confusing to me, and I admit to being there much longer than I intended. But I came home with my favorite dark chocolate covered almonds and these awesome branches of mini-pumpkins (Jason thinks they look ghoulish, I think they are adorable), as well as some tasty groceries, and I think I might be converted. Thanksgiving is less than two weeks away, and for a little while I was panicking about the fact that I haven't bought a turkey (Jason's family is coming here for the holiday, yay!), but the new Foodie Friends website has inspired me, and I've finally compiled a nice list of recipes, ingredients, and timelines so that I feel prepared. Well, sort of prepared. I'm sure a few panicked, last-minute calls to my mom and sisters will still be necessary.

Face of Paint. I'm not sure what possessed me to pull out the old Point of Grace "The Whole Truth" cd on Sunday, but I've been harmonizing to it on the commute all week. Ah, the memories. I talked to Jenny this week and told her I had found it, and without my even finishing the sentence she said, "Ah, and you've been singing your part, right?" In high school, Jenny, Shaanti, my dear friend Laura, and I broke out the four parts to Point of Grace's "The Great Divide" and sang it in church. We jokingly called ourselves "Face of Paint," and I have to confess that I probably took our brief musical career a little too seriously. Still, I have every intention of putting a few of the songs on my ipod and taking it to the cabin this Christmas to see if Shaanti and Jenny can remember their parts.

Dome Tour. Yesterday the Simpson staff ventured to the top of the Capitol Dome. It's tough to get a dome tour, since you have to be escorted by a Member of Congress, and most of the staff had never been on one before. It was an interesting comparison--this year's tour with my current coworkers, and last year's tour with the Otter folks, which marked the end of our time together. There are so many similarities between my new job and my old job (same building, same issues, same gross cafeteria food), but there are key differences, and sometimes it is hard to put my finger on them. Today I tried to call our Boise office and accidentally dialed the old Otter office Boise number--thankfully Rep. Sali's staff was out, because that would have been way too confusing. Actually, it was confusing anyway. Weird.