Gary BUTTERWORTH Online

The other night, after visiting my grandmom at the hospital, my mom and I went to Echelon Mall for some ice cream.

I thought of a fun game to play: trying to name a store that previously occupied the location of all of the current stores.

Strawbridge’s, Fashion Bug, Babbage’s, Xhilarama, that luggage place….
Combined, my mom and I have been going to the Echelon Mall for more than 60 years, so we did pretty well.

My trip to DC (May 11-15) was similiar to our game, only more bittersweet.

I lived in the DC area for about 2.5 years, and I was last there at New Year’s. 
I can’t exaggerate; I haven’t been away for all that long at all.  Sure, there were lots of new restaurants, and bus routes, and new metro maps, and little things like that that stuck out as being new and different.  But really, not all that much had changed.  That’s part of what made it odd.

It was kind of surreal, actually.  It felt a bit like The Twilight Zone:

• I stayed at the same youth hostel that I stayed in when I was looking for an apartment, and the same people were working there.  (But this wasn’t the start of a life in DC.)*
• I rode the red line to get to where I was staying.  (But I got off one stop before my old apartment.)
• I spent a little while in Silver Spring (but I didn’t live there anymore, so it was just for a haircut)
• I had dinner with two awesome friends in Dupont Circle (but I’m no longer dating their sister/cousin)
• I walked the same streets as before (but they were no longer my streets)
• I spent several hours at my old office (but I don’t work there anymore).

Don’t get me wrong; it was a wonderful trip.  Just a little bittersweet, as you’d expect.

Some highlights (because I love unordered lists):

• Being bought lunch by my old coworkers.  It was my first time having desi food in months: “Butter Chicken for Butterworth.”
• Seeing a Hershey Bears Calder Cup Champions Coca-Cola can.
• On the street, randomly running into the parents of one of my high school friends from NJ.  (They were visiting their son, my friend, who is a Navy pilot.  He flew himself up here for the weekend from Alabama.  How cool is that?!)
• Catching up with SO many wonderful friends and coworkers, including some I didn’t even expect to see.
• Meeting one of my online friends for the first time!
• Visiting the EU Embassies, as I mentioned in a previous post. 
  I walked from Dupont Circle, up Mass Ave all the way to the National Cathedral, and then to Cleveland Park (!!!), visiting Slovenia, Luxembourg, Italy:
  
   and Finland in the process.
  
  Finland had people in traditional dress, so that was my favorite.  Had I gotten an earlier start, I could have visited more, but I was happy to sleep in and visit four.
    It was a really fun event, but the lines were a little long, and there weren’t enough shuttle busses.  Hopefully, they’ll have it again!
• The beautiful views from the National Cathedral.  (I’ll have a post on this, one day).
  
  

In other news, my grandmom will be home tomorrow morning.  That’s just one day shy of being exactly 6 months since the day I moved back to NJ.  You just know I’ll have a post on that!

Link du jour: Interesting article about the best and worst places to work in the Federal Government. 

*Staying at the hostel gave me an interesting idea for a TV show.  Imagine, for example, the show Cheers.  But, instead of having “Cliff” as a character, each night, have a different mailman sitting in the same stool, having the same sort of conversations.  That sort of rotating archtype is exactly what you find in a hostel.  It’s fun, comforting, and interesting.

Filed under: Life, Posts with Pictures, Reminiscing, Travel, Washington, DC/Silver Spring, MD