A Perfect Evening

Tonight was the best night I've had since coming to DC.

The weather was beautiful and the sky was pretty and the architecture of all the buildings in Dupont Circle with their turrets and towers were just fun to explore, and I had a nice meal in a cute Greek restaurant with a glass of white wine, and a bird sat next to me on a blue-painted fence and watched me, head cocked to one side, as I ate my dinner.

And afterwards I walked around for a while, and sat by the fountain and eavesdropped on two middle-aged men trying to remember how the rules of Pig Latin worked (they got it wrong), and wandered into stores and looked at these weird shoes that have soles like rocking-chair balances and claim to add "+9 Resistance To Your Abs, Thighs, And Butt!" (I wanted to take out my pen and add "And Ogres!" to the sign... but resisted. +9 resisted.)

And I kept thinking that, even though I don't yet have a real job, I'm so glad I picked DC -- if only because when I look up, I can see the sky. When I lived in Minneapolis, the buildings were too tall. The streets were always in shadow.

But the best part of the whole adventure was that, for the first time since my arrival, Anne was dressed like the other girls. I was wearing my black linen dress, the one that, where I come from, would have been reserved for "special occasions" but is, of course, de rigueur for the young women in the city. I wasn't walking around in a man's white undershirt and blue jeans cuffed at the ankles. And that, my friends, made all the difference.