Dour, 電通-controlled, family-centric Belgian Neocolonialism, enthusiastically jaded observations, support for state-owned neoliberalist media and occasional rants from the twisted mind of a privileged middle-class expatriate atheist and とてもくだらないひと projecting some leftist ideals with my ridicule of Tucker Carlson (from The Blogs Formerly Known As Sponge Bear and Kaminoge 物語)
*see disclaimer below
In any language, it came as something of a surprise this morning. Sure, the forecast called for snow in some of the counties surrounding the District of Columbia, but the weather prognosticators on the local TV news assured us yesterday evening that Washington and its immediate vicinity wouldn't receive any of the white stuff. So I wasn't expecting to see this sight from our apartment balcony when I woke up this morning:
Admittedly, it wasn't much, but it was probably the most snow this area has seen all season. According to this evening's news report, it was the latest snowfall in the D.C. area since 1990. Unfortunately, it all fell too late to have a snow day declared, so I had to go to FSI this morning as usual. I don't usually drive there, so I wasn't inconvenienced:
The grounds of the National Foreign Affairs Training Center looked better with a light coating, and Ben Franklin didn't seem too put out:
Suburban Arlington was a lot more scenic than the mean streets of downtown Washington, where I had to go this afternoon to pick up visas for my wife and daughter. There, it was just raining, with all the snow having already melted away.
Meanwhile, on the home front, the snow didn't put a damper on Amber's day. As you can see from the pictures below, she took advantage of the weather to enjoy the start of her spring break:
To go under the knife or not? is a question that will be answered sometime in the middle of next week, so opportunities to give the knee are workout appear to be rapidly diminishing. With beautifully clear skies today (and rain in the forecast for tomorrow), the choice of whether (no pun intended) or not to go out for a walk with my daughter was a no-brainer. The two of us thus headed out to Huntley Meadows Park in Hybla Valley, Virginia, in the suburbs of Alexandria, fighting the weekend tourist traffic through Alexandria's Old Town district and the congestion along US 1. It was worth the trouble, for despite being only 1.5 miles (2.4 kilometers) in length, the trails we traversed this afternoon took in some nice scenery as we made our way through a 500-acre (202 hectares) freshwater marsh. My knee was thankful for the short distance and level ground.
First things first: fueling up with a bacon cheeseburger, little hamburger, small order of fries, a Root Beer and a strawberry punch at Five Guys.
Amber uses my binoculars to scope out a possible squirrel nest sighting
Wherever there is a fallen tree that needs to be walked on, my daughter will be there
After a short walk through the forest, the wetlands make their first appearance
Turtles were taking advantage of the relatively warm weather
Behind Amber you can see the results of the hard work done by beavers. Although it's difficult to make out from this angle, the small tree to the upper right of my daughter that appears to have been almost completely snapped in two has been neatly gnawed on by a beaver.
More views of the wetlands. There were plenty of ducks and geese making their presences felt this afternoon, joining the gentle cacophony of croaking frogs. Spring is almost upon us.
Another view of the wetlands, from a two-story observation tower. A volunteer guide had set up a telescope for visitors to look at the various fowl in the water.
Following our short jaunt through the wetlands, we visited the nearby Historic Huntley, a secondary residence and summer retreat built in 1825 by a grandson of George Mason, one of the creators of the Bill of Rights. We missed the last tour of the day by about an hour, so we couldn't go inside, but we were able to walk around the grounds.
At the urging of my seven year-old daughter, the two of us went out for a long walk this afternoon and all indications are that my left knee is fine. Granted, today's "hike" was hardly that - a 3.5 mile (5.6 kilometers) stroll on paved, level road around a man-made body of water called Lake Artemesia in College Park and Berwyn Heights, Maryland. Still, there were no problems with the knee, and the only discomfort I felt was in my hands each time I took my gloves off in the 40°F (4°C) weather. It'll be interesting to see what the MRI results will indicate tomorrow morning.
The beginning of the Northeast Branch trail took us past the runway of the College Park Airport. Established in 1909, Wilbur Wright (Orville's brother) trained military aviators there. It was also the site of the first controlled helicopter flight in 1924. For all that history, the airport was deathly quiet this afternoon, with not a single take-off or landing while we were in the area. The Metro Green Line and train tracks on the western side of Lake Artemesia, on the other hand, were constantly seeing use (Amber counted an 81-car freight train at one point).
Amber poses by the Northeast Branch. This creek runs south to eventually flow into Washington, D.C.'s other river, the Anacostia.
Animal tracks on the muddy banks of the Northeast Branch. I'm guessing that they of deer (top) and raccoons (bottom).
38-acre (15.4 hectares) Lake Artemesia was created in the mid-80's when Metrorail dredged sand and gravel from a smaller bass and goldfish farm (also called Lake Artemesia) to extend the Green Line roadbed, then transformed the excavated area into its present-day form.
The northernmost end of the lake, and the best spot for picture-taking, according to a passing park ranger.
Amber took this picture
A lot of birds could be seen this afternoon. Today's wildlife highlights: the above-mentioned animal tracks, and seeing a seagull pluck a small fish from the lake. Today's wildlife lowlight: coming across a rabbit that had been cleanly decapitated. So clean that it couldn't have been done by an animal, hence a somewhat disturbing find.
Things have been a little quiet lately. Not in real life, mind you, where the past week has been a blur of citizenship interviews and oaths, passport and visa applications, medical examinations and the ongoing struggles with studies of Mandarin Chinese. But in my little corner of the blogosphere, there hasn't been much to write about. Mainly that's because in my free time I haven't done much since banging up my elbow and knee on Old Rag Mountain last month. I certainly haven't been able to do any serious hiking since then, and instead of walking around different parts of Washington, D.C., we've been spending our weekends between either going to stores or parks, or just being lazy at home. Hopefully, now that I'm feeling much better, I can getting back into a few of the old habits, and thus have a few pictures to post here.
Today wasn't a terribly exciting one, but at least my daughter and I did get out of the apartment for a little while. Seeing as my friends Jeff and Barbara will be visiting us at the end of this month, and how that will entail picking them up at Union Station in Alexandria as they arrive by train from New York, I decided to use the afternoon to plot the best route between FSI and the station. Amber came along and kept herself busy on the station platforms. In wasn't long before a southbound Amtrak train rolled in...:
...followed not long after by a northbound one:
Mission accomplished (as in I now know how to get there), we drove across the road and up the hill to the George Washington Masonic National Memorial. Although it was after closing time and rain had started to fall, it was still fun to walk around the tower and take in the view from atop Shooter's Hill. With all the things we have to do between now and our scheduled departure for Shanghai 上海 in the middle of next month, the Washington Memorial will probably have to wait until we get back in two years' time. Unless, of course, I fail my exit exam and/or I need an operation on my knee, in which case...
The memorial stands 333 feet (101 meters) high
The view looking towards Old Town Alexandria, as well as the Metro and train stations, from the steps of the memorial.
If the weather cooperates tomorrow, I'm planning on testing out the knee with a light hike somewhere in Maryland. On Monday, I meet with an orthopedist to go over the results of the MRI I had done last Wednesday, and find out whether surgery might be needed on what has turned out to be an arthritic knee. Speaking of the MRI exam, while I was lying there on the table listening to the sounds emitted by the machine, I was reminded of those industrial music tracks I used to hear in the wee hours of the morning on KDVS. In particular, I wondered if anyone had been inspired by these sounds to mix them into something musical. YouTube has answered that question.
It was a snow-enforced holiday for Amber and me today, as the local school district and the federal government respectively closed down for what is being called Winter Storm Saturn. As it turned out, things weren't quite as bad as predicted - instead of the 6-12 inches (15-30 centimeters) the forecasters were talking about, the actual snowfall in our area was about 3-4 inches (8-10 centimeters). And while it did snow heavily throughout most of the day, the warmer-than-expected temperatures meant that much of the snow that landed on asphalt and pavement turned into slush or water almost immediately. Still, there was enough of the white stuff on the ground for the kids to go outside and have some fun, and to remind us that winter isn't quite done with us yet.
The view from our balcony today
Amber finally got to try out her new disc snow sled today
Instead of a snowman, Amber constructed a...well, my first thought was a snow stupa, but she called it her "snow tower". Later, however, for some reason it transformed into a "snow worm".
When I lived in Japan, I used to love visiting the local Buddhist temples when it was snowing. Here, I had to make do with the local cemetery.
Things have been kind of quiet recently as the ongoing frustrations of trying to grasp the complexities of Mandarin Chinese combined with my relative lack of mobility, the result of last weekend's hiking accident on Old Rag Mountain. I'm feeling much better, with my left side feeling less and less stiff with each passing day, and I no longer think it's necessary to keep my elbow and knee bandaged up all day long. I'm still taking the muscle relaxers and painkillers, however, and tomorrow morning I have an appointment to see an orthopedist. Hopefully all will go well, as I'm dying to get back out on some trails, though I think I'll avoid for the time being those routes that require climbing over large boulders in order to reach the top.
One thing that Amber and I did do this weekend was to see a show at the Annette M. and Theodore N. Lerner Family Theatre, in Bethesda, Maryland. The performance we attended this afternoon was Anime Momotaro, an interpretation put on by Imagination Stage of an old Japanese folklore tale, Momotarō 桃太郎, know in English as the "Peach Boy". The most-commonly rendered version of the story goes like this (according to Wikipedia):
...Momotarō came to Earth inside a giant peach,
which was found floating down a river by an old, childless woman who
was washing clothes there. The woman and her husband discovered the
child when they tried to open the peach to eat it. The child explained
that he had been sent by Heaven to be their son. The couple named him Momotarō, from momo (peach) and tarō (eldest son in the family).
Years later, Momotarō left his parents to fight a band of marauding oni (demons or ogres) on a distant island. En route, Momotarō met and befriended a talking dog, monkey and pheasant, who agreed to help him in his quest. At the island, Momotarō and his animal friends penetrated the demons' fort
and beat the band of demons into surrendering. Momotarō and his new
friends returned home with the demons' plundered treasure and the demon
chief as a captive. Momotarō and his family lived comfortably from then
on.
Today's performance, however, softened the tale quite considerably, making the ogres out to be misunderstood, rather than just being simply monstrous. There was also a nice moral added to the story about how one shouldn't bully others, as well as on the futility of using violence to solve problems. All of this was presented in a comedic and energetic fashion that all the children present, my daughter included, found highly entertaining. I enjoyed it as well, and thought the use of kōken 後見, those black-hooded stagehands seen in noh 能 and kabuki 歌舞伎 productions, to be a very clever touch to the production.
Photography and video weren't allowed during the show, so I don't have anything to share from today's performance. You can, however, read a couple of reviews from the Washington Posthere, and below is a clip courtesy of YouTube:
If you have children between the ages of 5-10, and Anime Momotaro rolls into your town, I highly recommend taking your little ones to see the show. They (and you) won't be disappointed (and if you haven't figured it out by now, it's in English!).
After the show, Amber posed with a couple of the actors. Here she is with Phillip Reid, who played several roles, including "Monmon", one of the ogres.
And here she stands next to Momotarō himself, Jacob Yeh.
