wet

In retrospect I was crashing on Thursday night, when I tried to go help elf pack and lasted maybe an hour and a half. Not that I noticed at the time; I figured I was just a little beat and sleeping would help.

So Friday night, instead of staying in and resting, I went out to the Carbon Leaf / Great Big Sea concert at Wolf Trap with a whole host of other people, including but not limited to uilos, shield_toad111, tamnonlinear (who loaned me a monkey book!), babushek, and a bread crab. And also an awful lot of rain. The rain was kind enough to hold off until we'd stuffed ourselves silly on bread and cheese and fruits and such, and then halfway through Carbon Leaf's second song the sky opened up. It cleared up for awhile at the end of their set, poured a bit more through the first half or so of GBS, and then began dripping again during GBS's second encore, and flooded everyone trying to leave afterwards. Rain enough to soak through my umbrella and drip on me. I've not seen that much water on "dry land" in a very long time, if ever.

It's been a good many years since I last saw Carbon Leaf. They've gotten better, and bigger. They didn't play "Mary Mac" (though GBS did) or "Torn to Tattered," but they did close with "The Boxer," which was nice. And "The War Was in Color" bowled me over.

Great Big Sea give a fantastic show. I spent a lot of it huddled under the umbrella trying to stay dry (being tired meant I got peopled-out by their third song or so) instead of up and dancing with everyone else, but it was a wonderful time nonetheless. Thanks to shield_toad111 for suggesting / reminding me of it, and tamnonlinear for a CD of their stuff some months ago.

Then on Satyrday we saw shield_toad111 off and, after a very slow early afternoon, wandered over to help elf move. In a rainstorm that looked eerily similar to Friday's.

Sunday was taken up entirely by writing, talking online, and playing Civ, often in some combination. Mostly this was in service to actually recuperating, since for various reasons I didn't get much of a break last weekend.

Then on Tuesday I met A. and a (friend? coworker? Fellow, anyway) in Georgetown for kayaking. (Not "for kayaking in Georgetown," as an earlier draft had it; it hadn't rained quite that much.) (Protip: do not drive into Georgetown. Doubtless you all know this already and are alternately snickering and staring in shock at my foolishness. Traffic is ugly, parking is nonexistent difficult, and Rosslyn's only a half-mile or so away.) I've not been in a small boat in probably fifteen years, and that was a canoe, so it was quite a different experience. Kayaking is a lot easier than canoeing, for me anyway. Different muscles but some of the same mechanics.

We put in underneath the Key Bridge, at Jack's Boathouse, and went down almost to the southern tip of Roosevelt Island before turning around to come back. The whole experience was simultaneously strenuous and peaceful: floating, steering, trying not to splash or drip too much water into the kayak, keeping pace and keeping up conversation. Calm and quiet, for the most part. Saw a bunch of ducks and adolescent ducklings, and drifted about twenty feet from a Great Blue Heron looking for dinner. A good evening.

When you've fallen on the highway
And you're lying in the rain
And they ask you how you're doing,
Of course you'll say you can't complain.
If you're squeezed for information,
That's when you've got to play it dumb--
Just say you're out there waiting for the miracle,
For the miracle to come