jumbo thankfulness
Nov. 13th, 2010 11:52 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
winterbadgerI've missed a few days, so here are several thankfulnesses in one entry.
I'm just home from seeing John Gorka and Lucy Kaplansky at the Birchmere. They were wonderful! Lucy was talking about her daughter ("who's grown up--she's SEVEN now!" :-) a lot, and John kept forgetting what he was going to play next (and, in one case, the words to a song of his he was just about to sing). But each of them writes and plays magical music (or at least I find it so), so I had a great time. They've put out a new album together with Eliza Gilkyson, and they played a few pieces from that, which I liked, so I picked up a CD of it.
So I'm very grateful to live somewhere where there's a great supply of good music to be heard in excellent small- to medium-sized venues. I love the Birchmere, and I like Jammin Java, over in Vienna, the Old Brogue in Great Falls, St Mark's where the IMT usually has its concerts. I've only been to the 9.30 Club and the Lincoln Theater once, but they were pretty good too. The Ram's Head Tavern in Annapolis is not bad. Wherever I settle down after my wandering, it has to be someplace with good music venues.
I'm also grateful for the folks who were waiting for me when I got home. Sometimes I find them tiresome, or frustrating, or a nuisance, but I dearly love my cats--Nicholas, Phineas, and Busby--and I don't think I could have gotten through the last six years without them.
And where they were waiting--my cozy flat, which N and I happened on almost by chance when we were looking for a place to live together that would be between Baltimore (where she was starting her degree at JHU) and northern Virginia (where I worked). We saw this place on Craigslist and decided to take a look at it the same day that we got to another apartment in the area that was supposed to be having an open house only to find people moving into it! We drove over here, fell in love with the flat, and asked right away if we could have it. As I recall, the landlady wanted to check our references and called us back a couple of days later, when N was about to play a soccer match (at Four Mile Run filed, in fact, just down the street from the Birchmere--I passed it coming home tonight). We lived here together for just under a year and a half, and while there were some pretty painful times here, we also had some great times. I've lived here two years on my own, and I'm very fond of it. I keep thinking I'll move back to VA to be closer to work (it took me over two hours to get home Wednesday night :-(, but somehow the combination of the flat itself, the nice housemates, the pleasant neighborhood, the little park and stream across the street instead of another row of houses... it all makes it very hard to leave.
Lastly (for tonight) I'm grateful for President Obama's stimulus plan. Not only do I believe it has contributed to ten consecutive months of private-sector job growth, but where I live it has been responsible for transportation infrastructure repair and extension that woudl probably not have occurred without it. Specifically, I drove home tonight along New Hampshire Avenue, the Maryland portion of which has been a rougher, more uneven and pot-holed section of road than some backcountry roads I know that are regularly subjected to frost heave and which rarely if ever get repaired. The stretch around the intersection with 410 was especially awful--I was afraid I'd break an axle every time I drove over it. It's now smooth and even, thanks to work supported by stimulus funds. Thank you, federal tax dollars at work!
I'm just home from seeing John Gorka and Lucy Kaplansky at the Birchmere. They were wonderful! Lucy was talking about her daughter ("who's grown up--she's SEVEN now!" :-) a lot, and John kept forgetting what he was going to play next (and, in one case, the words to a song of his he was just about to sing). But each of them writes and plays magical music (or at least I find it so), so I had a great time. They've put out a new album together with Eliza Gilkyson, and they played a few pieces from that, which I liked, so I picked up a CD of it.
So I'm very grateful to live somewhere where there's a great supply of good music to be heard in excellent small- to medium-sized venues. I love the Birchmere, and I like Jammin Java, over in Vienna, the Old Brogue in Great Falls, St Mark's where the IMT usually has its concerts. I've only been to the 9.30 Club and the Lincoln Theater once, but they were pretty good too. The Ram's Head Tavern in Annapolis is not bad. Wherever I settle down after my wandering, it has to be someplace with good music venues.
I'm also grateful for the folks who were waiting for me when I got home. Sometimes I find them tiresome, or frustrating, or a nuisance, but I dearly love my cats--Nicholas, Phineas, and Busby--and I don't think I could have gotten through the last six years without them.
And where they were waiting--my cozy flat, which N and I happened on almost by chance when we were looking for a place to live together that would be between Baltimore (where she was starting her degree at JHU) and northern Virginia (where I worked). We saw this place on Craigslist and decided to take a look at it the same day that we got to another apartment in the area that was supposed to be having an open house only to find people moving into it! We drove over here, fell in love with the flat, and asked right away if we could have it. As I recall, the landlady wanted to check our references and called us back a couple of days later, when N was about to play a soccer match (at Four Mile Run filed, in fact, just down the street from the Birchmere--I passed it coming home tonight). We lived here together for just under a year and a half, and while there were some pretty painful times here, we also had some great times. I've lived here two years on my own, and I'm very fond of it. I keep thinking I'll move back to VA to be closer to work (it took me over two hours to get home Wednesday night :-(, but somehow the combination of the flat itself, the nice housemates, the pleasant neighborhood, the little park and stream across the street instead of another row of houses... it all makes it very hard to leave.
Lastly (for tonight) I'm grateful for President Obama's stimulus plan. Not only do I believe it has contributed to ten consecutive months of private-sector job growth, but where I live it has been responsible for transportation infrastructure repair and extension that woudl probably not have occurred without it. Specifically, I drove home tonight along New Hampshire Avenue, the Maryland portion of which has been a rougher, more uneven and pot-holed section of road than some backcountry roads I know that are regularly subjected to frost heave and which rarely if ever get repaired. The stretch around the intersection with 410 was especially awful--I was afraid I'd break an axle every time I drove over it. It's now smooth and even, thanks to work supported by stimulus funds. Thank you, federal tax dollars at work!
