My New “Roommate”

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I guess it’s time I came clean on this: I’ve been living with someone, and we have shared a bed for over half a year now. She’s much younger than me — less than half my age, in fact — though far older in some ways, and I care for her like a daughter, providing her with the food and shelter she’d otherwise be unable to provide for herself. Her name’s Pandora.

She was one of two cats in Patrick’s care in Baltimore (same housemate who gave me the Admiral), Jasper and Pandora, who had formerly belonged to a neighbor in Little Italy. You’d never guess these two cats were from the same litter: Jasper is a short-haired gray and white tabby with golden eyes, while Pandora is a long-haired all-white Persian with one green and one blue eye. Mixed breed, yes, but pure cuddly snuggly affectionate ones, the two of them.

When I moved to DC, I told my housemate that if two cats ever became too much to handle, I’d gladly take Pandora off his hands, since my apartment allowed a cat per tenant. He kept me to that promise two months later. It was a Sunday morning, and as I was about to leave for choir practice and worship service, the phone rang.

“Do you still want the cat?”

“Sure.”

“Okay, I’m coming over.”

“Wait … now?”

“Yeah, I’ll be there in an hour.”

“Ack! I’m going to church! Meet me this afternoon.”

And so, that afternoon, I had a new roommate. Her Friskies are by the microwave, her litter’s in the bathroom, she sleeps beside me at night (and in my reading chair in the daytime), and if I had collected her sheddings from the time she came in till now, the resulting hairball would have its own zip code.

Pandora

A Year

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Today marks a full year since the night Amy and I became each other’s significant other. I didn’t write about it much at the time because things were quite uncertain back then: I had just finished a year of graduate work, she was going home to New Jersey in a week, and I was thinking of moving back to Washington.

So far, things have turned out far, far better than we expected. For that, we give thanks. Happy anniversary, Amy, my love.

Growing a Green Thumb

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Norfolk Island PineI decided to start dabbling in plants while I was in Baltimore, when my housemate in Little Italy asked if I wanted to have a try at nursing his old, browning Norfolk Island Pine back to health. Regular misting and a bright place by the window did it well, along with pruning of old, dead branches and some extra plant food in the soil.

Shortly after, I bought a pot of 6″ Kalanchoes on sale at Whole Foods: flowering succulents with thin woody stems. The Kalanchoes turned out to be a fairly hardy shrub, shooting up to over a foot high after the flowers had dried out, and turning into a veritable forest of tangled stems and fragrant, fleshy leaves. Much later, I would move the Kalanchoes to a larger terra cotta vase, and prune cuttings from it to replant in a new pot with fresh soil. Today, the cuttings have shot up higher than their own parent, while the parent itself has been sitting out the winter in a dark closet in an as-yet-unsuccessful effort to bring it to bloom once again.

Two Kalanchoes and an African VioletAmy, herself possessed of a green thumb far surpassing mine, was also kind enough to give me a little African Violet, although I tarried on bringing it home for so long that the flower had withered away by the time it finally joined my garden. Still, I water it and feed it a few drops of African Violet Plant Food, and I hope to see a bloom in time.

I’ve named the plants and assigned them Navy ranks to assist their self-esteem. The Pine, having seniority, is designated “Admiral Norfolk.” The parent Kalanchoe is “Commander Kal,” while the pot of kalanchoe cuttings (which now is doing better than the Commander) is named “Lieutenant Cho.” The African Violet, being smallest and newest to the group, is “PrivateEnsign Jamal.”

Now, whenever I water or feed my plants, I can say I’m “supporting the troops.”

BASH Bible Bot Battle

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Funny chat transcript from a Christian IRC channel. (For those unfamiliar with IRC lingo, someone got the moderator bot to kick out the Bible bot by having it quote KJV Num 22:21 to the channel. Apparently “ass” is a kickable keyword.)

World War 2 Memorial

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The World War II Memorial on the National Mall is open. I’m on my way there now. Pictures at 11.

Update, 10:56pm: Photos here.

Update, 11:40pm, some impressions: The National WWII Memorial sits at the Eastern end of the Reflecting Pool, where the Rainbow Pool used to be, between Lincoln Memorial and the Washington Monument. It is large, wide, oval, and sunken six feet below grade, so that the Reflecting Pool cascades into the Memorial fountain. Two huge pillars flank the Memorial, representing the Atlantic and Pacific theaters of war, consisting of four columns, beneath which bronze eagles lift victory laurels.

Lining the oval are several smaller pillars, each one representing a state or territory which fought in the war. The ordering of the pillars was a source of confusion initially: the Philippines, for example, was on the side of the Atlantic pillar, and Florida on the Pacific side. A park ranger cleared up the issue, explaining that the pillars are arranged in the order that they joined the Union, starting with Delaware and Pennsylvania, then alternating between north and south through the sequence, with no connection to the position of the Atlantic and Pacific pillars. Binding the states and territories is a twist of bronze rope.

The south face of the Memorial is dominated by the Field of Stars, a huge wall covered with 4,000 gold stars, each representing 100 deaths in the war, before which is a plaque: “Here we mark the price of freedom.” (I’m a bit leery of the slightly impersonal “assembly line” coldness of assigning a hundred lives to a star, but when one realizes that Iraq from March 2003 till today would be just eight stars — eight in a year, compared to four thousand in five — well, that’s humbling.)

Bush-dislikers will really dislike this memorial stone, but don’t get into a tizzy over it. Chester Arthur’s name is on the Washington Monument, Warren G. Harding’s name is on Lincoln Memorial, and Nixon is on the Moon. We don’t note our memorials for the names that are on them; these memorials represent far bigger things than the incumbents at their construction.

Mga kapwa-Pinoy, ito’y para sa iyo. And any US Marines out there, this one is for you.

(And one more thing, any DC TV news junkies know who this guy is and what network he’s from? He looked familiar, but I couldn’t find him on any of tonight’s newscasts.)

RIP, Nick Joaquin

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Filipino author Nick Joaquin has died. We read excerpts from Occasional Notes On The Process Of Philippine Becoming in high school, and The Woman Who Had Two Navels in college, and got to see him speak once in Ateneo, on stage with his cooler of beer. Yet another national treasure passes on.

Non-Bombs and Pants

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Firetruck at Union StationI emerged from the Union Station Metro last night to flashing lights and milling, murmuring crowds, as security personnel called out, “the station is being evacuated.”

“There’s been a bomb threat, bomb threat,” said a homeless man at the doors, as others sighed, “a fire, a power outage, a bomb threat, now how will I catch my train…” A firetruck was parked out front, while crowds of people, hundreds thick, gathered below the pillars and arches. I snapped a couple of photos and headed home, wondering what the news would have to say. (There was nothing on the evening news, but it would later turn out to be a smoke alarm going off.)

I ran into Reggie, my local homeless guy, along the way, standing on E Street with a rag and a bucket to wash parked cars. He had only shorts, tennis shoes, and a t-shirt on, and had discarded his torn, dirty pants the day before. Sparing him a dollar, I told him it would be getting colder tonight, but I had a pair of pants that was a bit small for me, but might fit him. I brought the pants down from my apartment, and they did indeed fit perfectly. We talked a bit, about being homeless, about rats coming to eat his scraps, about how passing tourists would always give him food, but never thought to give him anything to drink, about feeding the hungry and clothing the naked, about Iraq. He thanked me for the pants, and I told him that they had been looking for someone to wear them, and here he was. I passed him another dollar for drinks, and headed home.

Then I fed the cat, watered the plants, ate dinner, talked to Amy, watched Enterprise, and slept.