An awesome area of the US

I'm sitting here this afternoon knitting on my shoal scarf (the slowest project known to man, sigh) thinking that I really should go out and take a photo of the nearby (literally about 1.5 minutes walk from where we are staying) Iwo Jima Memorial monument, and then I think:

maybe tomorrow. The knoll is situated on top of a beautiful, lush green carpet of grass.

Grass. My enemy. Plus ragweed, oak trees, and cut grass clippings -- Washington is full of this stuff. I am taking double allergy medicine and eye drops and it is barely making a dent. To say I'm suffering is an understatement.

It is lovely weather for here -- 78% humidity. People are thrilled. I'm not so thrilled, considering we have been living in very very low humidity for years. But for those inclined, the Washington area really is one of the best tourist capitals of the world. I had a tee-shirt years ago that said: "I'm not a tourist: I live here." I did live here, but there are still some things I haven't seen or gone to.

I keep forgetting to take my camera with me when we go out. In the evenings, we cross a bridge where you can see the river, the Washington Monument and the Jefferson Memorial.

During the day I've been doing routine doctor appointments in the George Washington University area. The streets are full of dark-suited government workers, hospital staff, and students in shorts and flip flops -- a busy area! I keep wondering how the university students find a "cohesive" atmosphere in the urban area of the campus, but they all look like they are enjoying themselves.

We are seeing a few people, running into some people, finding eating out very cheap in comparison to Kz, and I am still trying to find a TV news show to watch that I like. There are SO many choices in everything here. A friend suggested I keep a journal with my silly "rentry" observations -- I feel slightly foolish though but seem to be calming down in trying to "find" things. We ran into good Foreign Service friends today and they've already started what we have ahead of us: buying a car and furniture. She joked "Crate and Barrel" and I joked "Pottery Barn."

I finished reading The Lace Reader -- I heartily recommend it, especially as it has a totally surprise ending. And of course there is the textile-related part to it -- the making of lace. I'll have to Google the book though to see if the "reading of lace" was a fortune-teller art or something made up by the author.