The most boring decision I’ve made all year.

On November 6, 2020November 22, 2020 By StevenIn Life At Home25 Comments

Since I arrived in Arlington, I’ve been trying to find the One True Grocery, and my search has been unfulfilled so far. I mentioned back on the first of November that I’ve been to a crazy number of different grocery stores since my arrival, and I still haven’t settled into a grocery routine here.

When I moved to Germany, I did some of my grocery shopping at the Globus near the office, but the vast majority was at the Kaufland a few minutes away from my apartment. Since I was walking to and from the grocery store there, I fell into the habit of only getting what I could carry. When I repatriated, I started grocery shopping with a car again and the amount of food that I bought was significantly larger. I have a tendency to overbuy, and it’s something I’ve mentioned before in this blog.

Here in Arlington, I’m somewhere between the two extremes. I’m not buying a lot of food, and that is in part because the grocery stores haven’t thrilled me yet. It’s really tough to top Publix. I’ve been to many different stores here so far, and these are my impressions so far:

Harris Teeter – I Teetered my Harris on my first day in Arlington, and I haven’t been back. The one I went to was a two-story affair with a very confusing layout. It looked to me like what might happen if MC Escher was really into neon and wanted very much to make a knockoff of Whole Foods. I have not yet been to a second Harris Teeter to see if a different location might suit me better.
Giant Food – I’ve been to two different Giants now. The first one was like a dirty, poorly stocked Winn Dixie where nineteen out of every twenty people completely ignored the directional arrows on the floor. The second one was a bit better, but I still had trouble finding everything I was looking for.
Safeway – I’ve been to three different local Safeways so far, and the closest location off Lee Highway is the one I’ve actually gone back to more than once. They have a decent selection, and their Zebra Cakes are always really fresh. (Snack standards are important.) I was thinking that they reminded me a lot of Albertsons, but then I found out while fact checking this post that they’re actually a subsidiary of Albertsons now, so that tracks.

I haven’t bothered to shop in Target, Trader Joes, or Whole Foods, even though they’re reasonably close. I haven’t even seen a Wal-Mart, even though there’s gotta be one nearby. And last but not least, everyone keeps telling me Wegman’s is great, but I haven’t felt like driving half an hour each way for groceries.

If even a single one of these stores carried absolutely everything I wanted, I would keep going back to that one over and over again, but some things are just incredibly difficult to find.

For example, my favorite pickles are Claussen, but they’re not carried anywhere locally except for Wal-Mart. I did try Vlasic again, and I immediately regretted that decision. They taste like turmeric and existential dread.

As an aside, when I couldn’t find Claussen in six different stores, I turned to the Internet for reassurance that they were still being sold, and I was treated to the most delightfully unlikely sentence I’ve ever seen online:

“The Federal Trade Commission blocked the proposed merger on the grounds that it would have severe anticompetitive effects, leading to a monopoly in the refrigerated-pickle market.”

So that’s where things stand with the Great Grocery Selection of 2020. They opened a Wegman’s in Tyson’s Corner this week, so maybe I’ll finally give that a try this weekend. Or maybe I’ll finally give in and just go the Instacart route. If you’ve read this post all the way to the end, then bless your heart! It’s definitely not my most interesting work. If you’ve read this far, you deserve a treat, like a cookie or a White Claw or something. Treat. Yo. Self!

Treat. Yo. Self.

Do you have a favorite grocery store?

27/52 (and 6 of 30!)

The United States Air Force Memorial

On November 5, 2020November 22, 2020 By StevenIn The D-M-V19 Comments

One night pretty soon after my arrival in Arlington, I saw this giant pointy thing from the passenger seat of a rideshare.

I had no idea what it was, and the driver of my Lyft didn’t know either, so when I got home I set about looking for it on Google Maps. I knew approximately where I was when I saw the thing, and it was obviously huge so it didn’t take long to figure out that it was the United States Air Force Memorial.

When Lorrie came up for a weekend visit a few weeks later, we noticed signs indicating it was nearby while we were on the way back from a diner. I had been meaning to go check it out, so we decided to stop. I’m glad we did, because the place was pretty neat.

The United States Air Force Memorial is at the east end of Columbia Pike, on the grounds of Fort Myer just south of Arlington National Cemetery. It is a fairly new memorial, relatively speaking- groundbreaking was in 2004 and it was dedicated in October of 2006.

The three metal spires are all different heights between 201 to 270 feet tall. They’re meant to look like the contrails of three jets doing a “bomb burst” maneuver, with the fourth spire missing to suggest a missing man formation.

Near the spires are four 8-foot-tall bronze statues sculpted by Zenos Frudakis, representing the United States Air Force Honor Guard. Across from the spires on the other side is a free-standing glass panel with the image of four F-16s in a missing man formation.

On either side of the spires are large reflective granite walls with various details carved in them. One section lists all the recipients of the Airmen Medal of Honor award, while another section contains comments and quotations from various important Air Force generals and other notables. Near the drive in are large carved inscriptions from Presidents Reagan and Bush.

I learned during the writing of this post that when there’s not a pandemic on, the United States Air Force Band holds concerts here every Friday night in the summertime.

The view of the spires as you approach from the parking lot.

The Washington Monument is visible in the background, just across the Potomac River. — The view of the spires as you approach from the parking lot.

Have you ever been to the US Air Force Memorial?

26/52 (and 5 of 30!)

What really scares me.

On November 4, 2020November 22, 2020 By StevenIn Life At Home16 Comments

There was a thing in the news last week about a man who was waiting for a bus in the Bronx when a sinkhole opened beneath his feet and he fell fifteen feet into a hole filled with rats.

Around the same time that I learned about this, my sister posted her “Question of the Day” on Facebook, and in honor of the Halloween season, she asked what people were afraid of. I had already been thinking about this, and I answered the two things that truly scare me: Triffids and Sinkholes.

I will elaborate.

If you aren’t familiar, The Day Of The Triffids is a 1951 science-fiction novel by author John Wyndham. It’s been adapted for radio, television, and movies several times over. The Day of the Triffids was even the inspiration for 28 Days Later. Triffids are tall, venomous, carnivorous plants that can actually get up and move around. They’re not particularly fast, but they have a whip-like stinger that can blind and even kill a person. They’re originally cultivated because they produce oil but they get loose because of course they do. Things are made worse by a meteor shower (in some versions it’s just lights in the sky) that renders everyone in the world who sees it entirely blind. The rest of the story is familiar to anyone who loves Zombie fiction because with most of the world blinded, society collapses almost immediately. After that, it’s a dystopian post-apocalyptic wonderland, but with man-eating plants instead of shambling undead.

I want to state clearly that I know that Triffids are fictional. Of course I know they don’t really exist. Nowhere on Earth is there currently a known plant capable of killing and eating humans. That being said, if we were ever going to get a Triffid infestation, 2020 would be the year for it. Regardless, a thing doesn’t have to be real to be scary.

Sinkholes, on the other hand, are very real. And they terrify me. The guy in that news story at the beginning of this post was swallowed by the ground in seconds. Then he was stuck down there, unable to move and covered in rats, for at least half an hour before fire rescue could pull him out. He was afraid to open his mouth because he was scared a rat would climb inside.

This is terrifying, and it happens a lot. Do a web search for “man swallowed by sinkhole” and check out the terrifying results. In 2013, a Florida man was asleep in his bed when a sinkhole opened beneath him and just swallowed his whole bedroom. That guy didn’t survive- his bedroom was just gone, in a matter of seconds. They had to evacuate nearby houses because it was continuing to widen.

There are lots of terrifying sinkhole stories. In 2010, a sinkhole 65 feet wide and 300 feet deep opened in Guatemala and it took out a three-story building.

In Florida, sinkholes are particularly active and unpredictable. In Gainesville, near the University of Florida, there’s a 120 foot deep sinkhole that has been there for so long they’ve named it Devil’s Milhopper and they’ve established a state park to contain it. It’s so deep that it has a slightly different microclimate at the bottom than at the top.

Then there’s Lake Eola. Lake Eola is in a central part of downtown Orlando, and there are events there year round. I’ve been there hundreds of times. If you don’t know the area, you’ve still probably seen Lake Eola because any time a television show “takes place” in Orlando they inevitably show pictures of Disney and then pictures of Lake Eola. The fountain and the band-shell are fairly well known and often photographed.

Here’s the thing about Lake Eola though- the lake is a giant freaking sinkhole. Or at least it’s on top of one- roughly a hundred feet east of the fountain, there’s a twenty-three foot sinkhole. Meanwhile, the city has sprung up around it, skyscrapers and thousands of people living and working nearby.

And everyone is perfectly calm.

And nobody (except for me) is freaking out that we’re all pretending that a giant gaping whole in the ground is perfectly and completely normal.

Sinkholes are terrifying, friends.

What is scary to you?

25/52 (and 4 of 30!)

Notorious.

On November 3, 2020November 22, 2020 By StevenIn Life At Home10 Comments

While today is our national day of stress and anguish and generalized terrifying anxiety about the results of our presidential election, there’s nothing I can do except wait it out. I voted as soon as early voting began. The election is like a runaway train now- all we can do is ride it to the end. There’s nothing more I can do today, and being a stressball about it will only hurt my own well-being. I’m trying to put the rest of it out of my mind as much as possible until everything settles down.

Instead, I’ll think about Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Specifically, I’ll think back to when she was lying in repose at the Supreme Court back in September. Since the Supreme Court is only a few miles away from where I live now, I was able to wander past to pay my respects.

First, I walked past the Capitol building, where the flag was flying at half-mast.

The line of people waiting to walk past RBG’s casket was several hours long. It snaked back and forth between the buildings, then down the street, then down another street, and then down still another street. While I was walking the length of it, I saw people displaying their support in various ways. This mourner’s jacket was awesome. I’d like to think that she wears that jacket all the time.

Ultimately, I chose not to go through the many-hour line, and instead I walked across the street from the front side of the Supreme Court. This is where the media was set up, and I had a clear view straight up the stairs at the front. This was a perfectly acceptable place to have a moment of silence and contemplation for all that RBG did in her lifetime.

I also realized while I was standing there that I missed out on nothing by skipping the two-plus hour line. Even those who waited through the line still didn’t get very close, and my view from across the street was just as clear.

Plus, there was an unexpected benefit to going along the front side of the Supreme Court- the walkway across the street had become absolutely filled with tributes and art and messages of love and hope and gratitude for everything that Justice Ginsburg did. If I had not walked this way, I would never have seen them all.

I’m skipping my traditional end-of-post question, because they all seem trivial and empty on this one. See you all tomorrow.

24/52 (and 3 of 30!)

The Tale of the LoveSac

On November 2, 2020February 20, 2021 By StevenIn Life At Home18 Comments

I mentioned in the previous post that I purchased and returned an uncomfortable, inadequate sofa. This is the story of that sofa. It begins with the arrival of my previous sofa, on the day that the movers brought my furniture.

The Sofa was an Ikea Ektorp, a fairly comfortable seating arrangement, but one made of pressboard and held together with little metal fasteners and happy thoughts. When the movers set it back up, I noticed that there was a big ripped and stained hole in the cover.

No biggie, I thought, Ikea sofas are designed with replaceable covers and the contract with the movers included insurance for just this eventuality. I didn’t realize just how broken the couch really was until later when I finally tried to sit on it. It had a variety of damage to the undercarriage, and it wasn’t level in all sections. It had the look and feel of a sofa with a broken spine. I won’t bore you with a photographic record of all of the damage I found when I looked more closely, but here’s the most egregious part.

When I realized how broken it was, I put in a claim with the movers and they paid me replacement cost minus my moving insurance deductible. With that money in hand, I set about trying to find a replacement sofa.

I settled on the LoveSac Sactional. I’d seen them before, years ago. There’s a LoveSac store in the Town Center Mall in the Boca Raton. Aside from the exceedingly silly name, LoveSac’s idea of modular furniture is pretty neat. I like the idea of being able to design the furniture to meet your needs, choosing sections, sides, and covers to shape how you want.

I went to the LoveSac store in a nearby mall, not far from the Pentagon. I sat on several different chairs and weighed my options. After some deliberation (and a little waffling) I took advantage of a Labor Day sale and ordered my LoveSac Sactional, a two seats/four sides configuration. I thought it would be wide enough and if it wasn’t, I could always order another seat and side later to expand it. It arrived fairly quickly, packaged in a bunch of boxes.

Once the new sofa pieces were here, I disassembled my poor Ektorp and took its main pieces down to the trash room. I put aside the sofa pillows, not sure yet if I wanted to do something with them. This proved later to be a very good decision.

Assembly of the modular LoveSac Sactional was fairly straightforward. The two largest boxes contained the seat, cushion, and back pillow. The other four slimmer boxes contained the sides, and the two smaller boxes included all the covers. The boxes themselves had unboxing and assembly instructions printed on them. All the clamps and accessories I needed were included. It was difficult to pull the covers onto the individual pieces- it’s probably a lot easier with a second person. Ultimately, I was able to muscle them into a proper sofa shape.

I sat on the LoveSac Sactional for a few weeks, and I was dissatisfied in the following ways:

It wasn’t as comfortable as I had hoped. When I sat on the floor models in the store, I thought it would be fine, but at home I found that the foam seats were not firm enough. I sank into the foam every time I sat down- some people might enjoy this sensation, but I did not. I need a firmer seat.
I need a sofa with a taller back piece. The sides are all the same height- that means that the back support is only as high up as the armrests in the completed Sactional photo above. The pillows are taller than the top edge of the back pieces, which meant that if I leaned back, it was just weird, with the top edge sort of jamming into my back.
The Sactional wasn’t long enough to lay down on. Laying down on the couch after a long day at work or any time I want to pass out for a little living room nap is absolute bliss, and it’s absolutely necessary. Laying down on the couch is an important part of my life and I couldn’t do it on this one. The width of LoveSac seat parts are just a little bit weird- the modular sections of a LoveSac seat are 35 inches wide by 29 inches deep. You do have the option of doing the sections sideways, to change the width. I tried orienting it the other way and found that the back pillows were too wide and smushed together. 35 inches is a weird width- the two sections were just a few inches too short to be comfortable for laying down. If I had added a third section, I would have been able to lay down, but then my sofa would have been almost ten feet long.
Last, but certainly not least: LoveSac Sactionals are on the pricy side of things. They’re relatively well made and guaranteed for life against manufacturer defects, but I never really felt like the Sactional was worth the more than two grand I shelled out to purchase it. Mine was a relatively small example, too- for a bigger room, you could easily shell out eight or ten thousand dollars for a Sactional.

Ultimately, I decided it wasn’t for me. After 24 days of life with the Sactional, I disassembled the thing and boxed it back up to ship back to LoveSac. Fortunately, they have free shipping and a 60-day in-home trial, so this was quite simple.

Allow me to pause my retelling for just a moment to talk up how amazing LoveSac’s customer service was throughout this process. It’s easy to complain online about bad service, but truly excellent service is rarely commented on, and it should be. LoveSac was so great throughout all of this that I am willing to consider them again in the future- their giant beanbag thing, the hilariously named SuperSac, does look kind of amazing. Here’s how they excelled: First, their in-store help was amazing. Secondly, when I reached out to return it, the process was dead simple. They sent me FedEx shipping labels and boxes, and when I had boxed it all back up they arranged a FedEx pick-up to come to me and cart them away. All I had to do was disassemble and rebox them. Once the boxes were received back at the mothership, I was given a full refund. The service was effortless and so much less difficult than I expected.

In the time since I boxed up the LoveSac and sent it on its way, I’ve been using the cushions of the old Ikea Ektorp on their own without the rest underneath, just set up on the floor- I call this the Boneless Sofa. It’s comfortable enough, in a Bohemian sort of way.

Ultimately, I know that this isn’t a good permanent sofa. While the Boneless Sofa has been acceptable for the very short term, I do want a proper couch in the future.

I’ve already located a part of Falls Church that I refer to as the Arlington Sofa District- a place with at least five different stores that have sofas within approximately a single square mile. I’ll go there some weekend in the near future, sit on a bunch more sofas, weigh my options- and then I’ll probably just order another Ikea Ektorp.

This is my process. I’ll get there, eventually.

What kind of couch do you like to sit on?

23/52 (and 2 of 30!)

Whimsy. Tacos. The DMV.

Author: Steven