Wednesday (30 July): Today was rather uneventful. Another day at work. I’ve been suffering from a constant, if minor, headache since last Friday. This hardship I blame on the oppressive DC heat and on the tedium of life too much lived in a windowless office before a flickering computer screen. Perhaps this is my counterpart to proverbial “Potomac Fever.” I look forward to the restorative climes of New England. Readers (i.e. my sisters) need not comment with helpful the helpful suggestion that I drink more water. I have been resolutely doing so—to the point of raising the eyebrows of the young secretary whose desk adjoins the men’s room.
On a higher, happier note, I finished Pride and Prejudice this evening. Reading Jane Austen produces in me such euphoric effusions that I generally limit the practice to the summer months. Indeed I don’t know that I’ve ever read any of her novels during the other seasons, though this is more historical accident than romantic design. In any case, I finish the work fired with renewed ambition to become Mr. Darcy (minus, of course, the ten thousand a year), as well as rekindled with gratitude for being married to Elizabeth Bennet’s only living peer.
Lia and the girls went today to “The Goose Park,” where they had a picnic with the Lakes (with great effort, I resist terming them the “Ladies of the Lake”). The event was a success. They saw more than twenty-five turtles in or near the pond, and Eli’s aggressions toward Lydia were kept to a minimum.
Afterward, the ladies went shopping. By Julia’s report, “We were bad. But we got one more chance.” The badness in question involved, among other things, Eli’s getting her finger stuck in the shoulder of an Ann Taylor manikin. Fortunately, she was rescued from her plight by a helpful store clerk. Cashing in on her newfound freedom, Eli (and Julia) made a beeline for one of the store’s many full-length mirrors, before which they danced, sang, and admired. Perhaps the sole defect of the Champlin apartment, so far as the girls are concerned, is its entire want of full-length mirrors.
They then went to Target where the girls were, again by Julia’s account, “good” (“pretty good,” Lia corrected). Eli boasted of having obediently stayed in her stroller. “I asked to get out,” she did confess, “because I wanted to dance.” On second thought, she may have said this at dinner, and her reference may have been more proximate—i.e. she asked to be allowed out of her booster seat, was ignored, and so saw the need to explain her request. On any construction she is very cute.
A couple final notes of recent events:
This past Saturday (7/26) we drove down to Charlottesville to tour the campus of UVA and the home of its founder. Monticello was a marvel, in part because Jefferson himself was such a splendid curiosity and in part because he had so many splendid books. Our tour of the mansion was marred only by the dyspepsia of our guide, who thought it a thing beyond words astonishing that Julia should dare to walk about during her droning recitation of well-known facts about our third president. The campus of the school the aging Jefferson founded is lovely. All campuses, graced by the absence of their students, appear to good effect in summer but UVA’s especially so. Lia hopes I teach there someday, but my own hopes are more modest. I hope someday to have a job.
With a nod to Kirk and Gretchen Cheney, we lunched at Bodo’s Bagels, a Charlottesville institution which Gretchen admires extravagantly and upon which Kirk bestows all the loyalty that nostalgia can demand (he passed his adolescence in Charlottesville). In honor of the occasion, we called the Cheneys during our meal. Kirk insisted that we try something exotic, but it was too late, though Lia covered for us with some adroit dissembling.
On Sunday morning (7/27), we both spoke in sacrament meeting. Both of our talks went very well. Immediately after sacrament meeting, I taught the Sunday School lesson as well. We left church happy and weary.
In the evening, however, all our energy returned. We hosted for dinner the incomparable couple, Sander Daniels and Bianca Santos (known to the paparazzi as Biander Dantos), as well as Jess and Ashley Theodore, the other shining success story of our freshman ward (Jess is now a rising 3L at Georgetown).
It was a delightful evening. Eli greeted Sander with all the enthusiasm teenage girls afford their idols and all the adoration the Western media bestows on Senator Obama. “Sander! Sander! Sander!” she cried, as she saw him approach our sliding glass door. Not fewer than eight dozen times during the course of the evening did Eli gratefully remind Sander of the crowning act of gallantry in his young life. “Sander!” she often boomed. “You brought our princess castle and our hobby horses—AND YOU GOT THEM OUT OF THAT BLACK CAR!!!” (this was a reference to his having transported for us a few odds and ends from New Haven to the capital). Bianca swiftly realized she had a rival. At one point in the evening, Bianca dissented from something Sander said by hitting him with one of our couch pillows. Of this event Julia and Eli alternately and with boisterous mirth reminded Sander some seventy-three times. “Sander! Bianca hit you with a pillow!!!” the broken record screeched.
Though with fewer raptures, the rest of us really enjoyed catching up with the Theodores. The food was fabulous, the company convivial, and the conversation merry. We were sad to see everyone part. Eli stayed up half the night, singing Sander’s name and plucking rose petals onto her bed. “Daddy,” she quizzed me. “Why don’t you grow a beard like Sander’s?” Lia helpfully suggested that I’d been subjected to fewer ID checks. It was a good night.
On a higher, happier note, I finished Pride and Prejudice this evening. Reading Jane Austen produces in me such euphoric effusions that I generally limit the practice to the summer months. Indeed I don’t know that I’ve ever read any of her novels during the other seasons, though this is more historical accident than romantic design. In any case, I finish the work fired with renewed ambition to become Mr. Darcy (minus, of course, the ten thousand a year), as well as rekindled with gratitude for being married to Elizabeth Bennet’s only living peer.
Lia and the girls went today to “The Goose Park,” where they had a picnic with the Lakes (with great effort, I resist terming them the “Ladies of the Lake”). The event was a success. They saw more than twenty-five turtles in or near the pond, and Eli’s aggressions toward Lydia were kept to a minimum.
Afterward, the ladies went shopping. By Julia’s report, “We were bad. But we got one more chance.” The badness in question involved, among other things, Eli’s getting her finger stuck in the shoulder of an Ann Taylor manikin. Fortunately, she was rescued from her plight by a helpful store clerk. Cashing in on her newfound freedom, Eli (and Julia) made a beeline for one of the store’s many full-length mirrors, before which they danced, sang, and admired. Perhaps the sole defect of the Champlin apartment, so far as the girls are concerned, is its entire want of full-length mirrors.
They then went to Target where the girls were, again by Julia’s account, “good” (“pretty good,” Lia corrected). Eli boasted of having obediently stayed in her stroller. “I asked to get out,” she did confess, “because I wanted to dance.” On second thought, she may have said this at dinner, and her reference may have been more proximate—i.e. she asked to be allowed out of her booster seat, was ignored, and so saw the need to explain her request. On any construction she is very cute.
A couple final notes of recent events:
This past Saturday (7/26) we drove down to Charlottesville to tour the campus of UVA and the home of its founder. Monticello was a marvel, in part because Jefferson himself was such a splendid curiosity and in part because he had so many splendid books. Our tour of the mansion was marred only by the dyspepsia of our guide, who thought it a thing beyond words astonishing that Julia should dare to walk about during her droning recitation of well-known facts about our third president. The campus of the school the aging Jefferson founded is lovely. All campuses, graced by the absence of their students, appear to good effect in summer but UVA’s especially so. Lia hopes I teach there someday, but my own hopes are more modest. I hope someday to have a job.
With a nod to Kirk and Gretchen Cheney, we lunched at Bodo’s Bagels, a Charlottesville institution which Gretchen admires extravagantly and upon which Kirk bestows all the loyalty that nostalgia can demand (he passed his adolescence in Charlottesville). In honor of the occasion, we called the Cheneys during our meal. Kirk insisted that we try something exotic, but it was too late, though Lia covered for us with some adroit dissembling.
On Sunday morning (7/27), we both spoke in sacrament meeting. Both of our talks went very well. Immediately after sacrament meeting, I taught the Sunday School lesson as well. We left church happy and weary.
In the evening, however, all our energy returned. We hosted for dinner the incomparable couple, Sander Daniels and Bianca Santos (known to the paparazzi as Biander Dantos), as well as Jess and Ashley Theodore, the other shining success story of our freshman ward (Jess is now a rising 3L at Georgetown).
It was a delightful evening. Eli greeted Sander with all the enthusiasm teenage girls afford their idols and all the adoration the Western media bestows on Senator Obama. “Sander! Sander! Sander!” she cried, as she saw him approach our sliding glass door. Not fewer than eight dozen times during the course of the evening did Eli gratefully remind Sander of the crowning act of gallantry in his young life. “Sander!” she often boomed. “You brought our princess castle and our hobby horses—AND YOU GOT THEM OUT OF THAT BLACK CAR!!!” (this was a reference to his having transported for us a few odds and ends from New Haven to the capital). Bianca swiftly realized she had a rival. At one point in the evening, Bianca dissented from something Sander said by hitting him with one of our couch pillows. Of this event Julia and Eli alternately and with boisterous mirth reminded Sander some seventy-three times. “Sander! Bianca hit you with a pillow!!!” the broken record screeched.
Though with fewer raptures, the rest of us really enjoyed catching up with the Theodores. The food was fabulous, the company convivial, and the conversation merry. We were sad to see everyone part. Eli stayed up half the night, singing Sander’s name and plucking rose petals onto her bed. “Daddy,” she quizzed me. “Why don’t you grow a beard like Sander’s?” Lia helpfully suggested that I’d been subjected to fewer ID checks. It was a good night.
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1 comments:
hahahaha your girls are SOOOOO cute! The week sounds like it was a blast!
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