theparkerfamily.org

Tag: Mount Pleasant

  • samber market

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    sparklet and i were in samber market today — buying our usual array of beer and ice cream — when sparklet started flirting with one of the incredibly nice korean owners of the place.

    the nice lady grabbed a little bear keychain from off the wall, and gave it to us gratis.

    i love mount pleasant.

    p.s. sometime when i’m feeling brave, i’m going to ask the owners about their life story — their english isn’t great, but there is a picture of the husband in full marine dress uniform behind the cash register.

    something tells me there is a great story there.

  • thank heaven for little girls

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    i was walking around the neighborhood today, trying to get baby sparklet to take a nap, when i passed a stressed out mom dealing with three boys on bicycles.

    one of the boys was babbling about how his bike was a rocketship, and how he was having a really hard time making sure it didn’t explode.

    i smiled, inwardly, thanking heaven for little girls.

    half a block later, i see a 6 year-old girl in a fancy pink fairy dress, pell-melling down the hill at full speed, oblivious to the traffic, screaming:

    i … am … SUPER PINKY!!!!!

    now *that’s* more like it.

  • firsts: saturday market

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    photo of the week // week thirty-one

  • the zoo

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    See All the Photos on Flickr:
    the zoo

  • almost there

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    our entrance to the zoo (the bridge, by the petting zoo) has been closed for construction since february, which has put quite the crimp on our spring. wondered by today, and its all back to normal. of course, we didn’t have enough time to make it past the sign, but maybe next week.

  • good friday

    unlike last year, we didn’t go to awesomest Good Friday pagent ever — sparklet was in bed asleep — but Darrow Montgomery from the City Paper went and shot a couple of rolls.

    my favorite is the guys with the lightsaber in the middle.

  • nanny, nanny

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    we have a nanny(-share)!

    back before christmas, we found a great family about six blocks away (still in mount pleasant) and started interviewing candidates earlier this year.

    we had a couple hickups along the way, including one candidate who said (as the wife of a diplomat) we weren’t required to pay taxes on her salary … which was great, until we check with hillary clinton’s state department and found out (less than four hours after we sent the email!) that it was sadly not true.

    for the record, it’s amazing how the gaze a tax-and-spend progressive starts wandering at the notion of (legally!) not paying taxes.

    so, we forged on and finally found our nanny. she’s got a decade of experience — including tons of early-childhood education study — and a real drive to get the kids out of the house. the crazy thing is that she’s also a DC-native-who-still-lives-here, which (baby sparklet excluded) i thought only existed at the hypothetical/mythological level.

    anyway, she starts for us on March 1st … the other family joins in on April 1st (their baby is a bit younger) when the whole nanny-ing operation will switch over to run out of their (much larger) brownstone.

    but the main thing is that we’ve got a nanny we love — which is a good thing, because it’s a little late to get baby sparklet on any daycare waiting lists.

  • exodus

    we’re back, and it looks like DC had every bit as much “fun” as we thought while we were gone.

    while we were out, one of our favorite ways of keeping up with the snow was by following darrow montgomery’s photos at washington city paper’s blog. the above photo was taken about 100 feet from our place (for those who know Mount Pleasant, that “open” sign is at Heller’s Bakery) during the height of the second storm.

    i can’t really fathom what it must have been like.

    in the end, our long weekend in Austin for Auntie Nadine’s wedding turned out to be an 11 day journey. and, based on the size of the snow drifts, it seems being “stuck” in 40 degrees-and-rainy Austin was probably the best option.

    still, it’s good to be home.

    PHOTO: the above photo is courtesy Darrow Montgomery and/or the Washington City Paper. check out the rest of Darrow’s work, and the City Desk blog.

  • how at&t has made me hate my iphone

    I think I should have guessed something was wrong last fall, when i accidentally left my iPhone in the car overnight. the next morning, when i realized what i had done, i secretly wished that my window had been smashed in and my iPhone taken.

    Rock bottom came two months later, when I dreamed that my iPhone was stolen … and i woke up bummed that it didn’t actually happen.

    Don’t get me wrong, i love my iPhone. It’s arguably the best thing that I have ever owned. it’s just not a phone — because for it to be a phone, i’d have to occasionally get AT&T coverage within the borders of Washington, DC.

    It turns out that my problem is a mixture of the science behind AT&T’s network, and location-location-location. The range of each cell tower shrinks as more and more people us that particular tower. In DC, all the towers are on the beltway. When the network gets busy, the coverage retreats from the center of the city towards the edges … which is exactly where I don’t live.

    So, once the new version of the iPhone came out (and another gazillion people started using AT&T’s network) my reception went from spotty to non-existant.

    When I walk around Mount Pleasant on an average day, I get limited, spotty access to AT&T’s vinatge EDGE network. I’ll average about two hours of cell coverage a day in my house, but more often than not those tenuous bars disappear as soon as I try and make a call.

    In Columbia Heights, I don’t even get that … my phone tells me I’m roaming. Last week, I actually ducked into the Columbia Heights metro station because I needed to make a call. As far as i can tell, the best chance of getting a signal up here is to go underground.

    To date, my only hope for salvation comes because Gizmodo.com is giving away a new Google Android if you write in to them and tell them why you deserve one. Which I did.

    I need it because I’ve had 36 dropped calls in one day … because I regularly get voicemails a week after they are sent and text messages the following morning … because I now give my wife’s cell phone number out to friends and family … because I can’t stand the thought of riding out the last 6 months of my current phone contract.

    So far, they have had 12,000+ comments, so I’m guessing i’m not going to be first in line to win. Either way, my contract with AT&T is up this summer, and once it expires, i’ll be long gone.

    It turns out that it doesn’t matter how great your phone is, if your network blows chunks.

    PHOTOS: Street in Mount Pleasant, DC by Chambo25 via a Creative Commons license; Darth Phone image courtesy Gizmodo.com.

  • first christmas, part 2

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    IMG_1050, originally uploaded by [ecpark].
    truth be told, we knew going into today that sparklet’s first christmas was going to be a little underwhelming for her — we’re still at the stage where the only thing about Christmas that captures her attention are the Christmas tree lights, and the tree’s been up for four weeks now.

    we got her a couple of small things centered around Raymond Briggs’ The Snowman, but this was definitely the calm before the storm … we slept in until 10 am, dawdled around with breakfast until noon, didn’t start unwrapping presents until 2 pm, and took our dear, sweet time. i’m pretty sure that’s the last time we’ll be able to say that.

    if sparklet has a christmas of awe and wonder this year, i’m thinking it’s going to be when we go to see the Christmas lights display at the National Zoo. she’ll stare at our little tree for hours, so i can only imagine what will happen when she sees dozens of displays at two or three times the size.

    Explore the Photo Set:
    first christmas