Friday evening ramble

The power went out just as I was leaving the house this morning. There was surprising order on Route 1, given the absence of functioning traffic lights; cars were voluntarily stopping to let each other go by, and to let me cross. When I got off the metro in the afternoon, I was thrilled to see the traffic lights lit, an indicator that the city had gotten its power back. The wind here, and in DC, was fierce. On my walk home from the metro, I asked a woman sweeping glass out of her car whether someone had broken in, but she said it was the wind that did the breaking, and pointed to a couple of other cars in the same situation. I came home to my car windows beautifully intact, but there was a massive branch that had fallen right in front of my back door--just where I'd stand to turn the key. A few feet away, a lawn chair had picked up and turned over. Gracie keeps asking to go out, but I'm afraid she wouldn't withstand the wind. She's not that heavy, or, at least I'm not willing to find out.

***
I had dinner the other night with a friend I hadn't seen in a while. When I got to the restaurant, which was pretty empty at the time, I thought I saw him, already at a table, except I was thrown because the person at the table had facial hair, and my friend had none the last time I saw him. I told him as much when I was sure it was him. He told me he wasn't convinced it was a good look for him, but he'd tried it for a fundraiser and got hooked on the ease of not shaving. I shrugged, didn't have an opinion one way or another--just hadn't recognized him because of the new look.

Later, he'd mentioned that he'd read my blog over the holidays, and thought mom's behavior--the harping on the weight gain--had bordered on mean-beyond-funny. I said that it was past the point where the content of the harping bothered me; it was the harping itself. I told him it would be as if the first thing I'd said to him, upon not seeing him for half a year, was "that beard doesn't work for you." Our dinner conversation might go something like this:

G.: What are you thinking of ordering?
A.: That beard doesn't work for you.
G.: Right, you've said that. This pad thai looks good.
A.: No, really--that beard doesn't work for you.
G.: Um...

[Pause]

A.: That beard doesn't work for you.
G.: [Shrug]
A.: I wonder why you're keeping the beard, when it clearly doesn't work on you.
G.: Well, for one thing, my wife doesn't mind it.
A.: She's just being polite.

And so on.