A Bolt in the Blue

During holiday weekend, I spent a lot of time in DC. Over four days, I spent every evening downtown. FridayI went down with my mom and sister to see the Folk Life festival. This year, the topics were Food Culture, Oman, and the Forest Service. I didn’t like the exhibits as much as those from some previous years.

Saturday evening, I brought the family back downtown for a tour of the monuments, memorials, and the waterfront on bike. I think that riding bikes is the best way to see many of the famous landmarks downtown. The weather was perfect for being out on a bike. The only thing that could have made it better would have been fewer people blocking the sidewalks.

Sunday night, I went to see the dress rehersal of A Capitol Fourth on the steps of the capitol. I got to see Barry Botswick, Gloria Estefan, Sharon Lawrence, The O’Jays, and Ronan Tynan. Gloria Estefan and the Beach Boys were the headline acts, but for the dress rehersal, the part of the Beach Boys was played entirely by musicians who were not yet born when the real Beach Boys burst into the music scene. Gloria Estefan was excellent, as were most of the other performers. They had some technical issues between O’Jays songs, so they were cracking jokes with the audience. Overall, it was an excellent evening and a fun time.

Monday night, I met up with The Gathering to watch the fireworks. The location where we told people to meet was fenced off because “that’s where the fireworks land.” We ended up getting equally good seats between the reflecting pool and the Lincoln memorial. It was a fun evening–even the reorganized Metro system with all the lines the wrong colors and my mad dash across the Memorial bridge on foot to get to the Arlington Cemetary metro station.

Once again, I’ve managed to slip into a cycle that doesn’t include posting. Blacksburg was fun last weekend, everything except getting a ticket on the 460 bypass coming into town. What really sucks about that is I was in the right lane going the same speed as the other cars, but I’m the one they decided to pull over. I enjoyed getting a chance to catch up with people who I hadn’t seen for over a month. Oh, and now I have Mill Mountain coffee at home. Mmmmm . . .

It’s been a fun week. Kinda. I moved my desk at work down the hall at work (not my choice), but it’s ended up being completely anticlimatic. Made lots of progress on my current project at work. Had an awesome service on prayer Wednesday night at The Gathering. The main downside was dealing with Verizon (see earlier post). Now I’m off to spend the weekend in Blacksburg, where the DSL is still down. So call me, since I won’t be online.

I’m trying to move my home phone line from Verizon to Verizon wireless, while keeping my Verizon DSL. Doesn’t seem so hard, does it? So far, I’ve spent about 10 hours on the phone and we’re still nowhere. They cut the DSL. I have a cellphone with the same number as the still active land line. And the incoming calls come to the land line.

It’s so bad it’s almost amusing. It’s not my name on the account. It’s not Kevin’s name on the account (which it was up until we tried to change it two weeks ago). Somehow in the switch, Andy (who lived there 3 years ago and I’ve never met) ended up with his name back on the account. A supervisor tells me it should be resolved in 24-48 business hours. Folks, this is why monopolies are bad.