On the Rails: Snowfall
The first Friday in December we woke to the first snowfall of the year. It was just about perfect, two inches that didn’t stick to streets or sidewalks, so we didn’t need to shovel, but enough to make the neighborhood Christmas decorations, porch gourds, yellow leaves clinging to trees, winter berries, and creek rocks look festive. The only thing I would have liked was for it to stick around a little longer. Two days after it fell it was all but gone.
Off the Rails: Home Invasion
Five days later we had a less pleasant experience. Beth got up at six, which is her normal weekday time and discovered a stranger in the living room, standing in between my desk and an open window. It wasn’t a thief; it was an elderly man with dementia who thought it was his house. He’d come in and out through the window several times and had been engaged in 1) reorganizing items on the porch (he tied the rainbow flag in a knot) and 2) removing items from my desk and lining them up around the perimeter of the porch when Beth stumbled upon him. Beth called 911 and he was taken away in an ambulance.
When she called, I was still in bed and could hear her talking on the phone with someone, which I thought was odd at that hour, but she sounded so calm I wasn’t worried until she came into the room to tell me what was going on. By that point the dispatcher had told us to stay behind closed doors, so I never even saw the man.
In the end, everyone was fine, nothing was taken. In fact, the man left behind some items (a pillow and a hat) that aren’t ours and we suspect may have come from a neighbor’s porch. (I asked our next-door neighbors and they weren’t missing anything.) Both cats, even Walter who usually likes strangers, were freaked out and hiding in the basement. It was hard to find Willow, who most emphatically does not like strangers, and that was the scariest part, thinking maybe she’d been put outside with my computer monitor and had run away.
Riding the Rails: Travels
The next day Noah set off for Boston. He had some hotel points leftover from his trip to London last year and he’d decided to use them to see a concert. He took an Amtrak train from Union Station to Boston. He was there for two nights and one day. He took a historical walking tour and went to see the electropop band Pvris. I’m glad he got to have a little adventure.
North had an adventure, too. Instead of flying or getting a ride home for winter break, they opted to take the train, too. This was an odd coincidence, as neither of them has taken Amtrak before. Taking the train from northeastern Ohio means boarding a train at a little after one a.m. They got a friend to drive them to the Elyria station and spent the night and the next morning riding the rails. They said they slept “better than I thought I would but not as well as I would have liked.” They enjoyed the scenery, much of which was snowy and hilly, and it was considerably cheaper than flying.
We picked them up at Union Station. Beth and I had eaten lunch, but North hadn’t so they got a felafel sandwich and then we got dessert. Beth and North had ice cream, and I got coffee and a peppermint cookie/brownie mash-up. We admired the big Christmas tree Norway sends every year, which was beautiful as always. I was happy not to see any National Guardsmen or women at Union Station for the first time since late summer. I don’t know if this means they are recalling some of the troops. It would be nice if they were allowed to go home to their families for the holidays and even nicer if they didn’t come back. Standing outside Jersey Mike’s and Insomnia Cookies is probably not what they signed up for when they joined the Guard.
We got back home, North reunited with the cats, and Beth and I did a little work before eating our pizza dinner in front of a silly holiday romance. It was a cozy first night home. North went to bed early and slept for almost eleven hours.
The next afternoon we participated in the Takoma Cocoa Crawl. There were fourteen restaurants and coffeehouses in Takoma Park and Takoma, DC selling cocoa. We made three stops and got one cup at each. North chose Spring Mill Bakery which was offering half-price cocoa with a free gingerbread man. The cocoa was nice and creamy there. Beth’s choice was Red Hound because she remembered the orange-cinnamon cocoa there from last year. It was the highest quality of the three we tried, rich and complex. I chose Takoma Beverage Company because they had a hot chocolate bar where you could add your own toppings and I thought I could adjust the hot chocolate/whipped cream ratio to be more diabetic-friendly. I didn’t quite get it right on that score (I may have added too much crushed candy cane), but there’s always next year. Anway, it was a fun expedition.
Meanwhile, Noah was on a train coming home and he sent me some pictures of the walking tour, Christmas decorations, and the concert. He sent photos of a historic church, two former state houses, a historic cemetery where Sam Adams and other famous people are buried, a statue of Paul Revere, Christmas lights, and a surveillance robot from the hotel. He said at the cemetery, the tour guide pointed out a nearby bar and said it was the only place you could get a cold Sam Adams next to a cold Sam Adams. Not surprisingly, he said the concert, his main reason for going to Boston, was his favorite part. The venue was big, but he had a good seat, near the front. He got home around 9:15 Saturday night so Beth and I were able to chat with him a bit about his trip before going to bed.
It’s nice having North home for break, even if they aren’t quite finished with finals (one paper and one online exam to go) and it’s also nice having everyone under one roof again. This time of year, that makes me feel as if we are on the right track.