(President Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder at the National Peace Officer’s Memorial Day in the District. Photo White House).
I stopped at Willow last night after work. Yeah, no big revelation, but I wanted to kill a little time and ensure that the Bulgarians were out of the unit. I did not want to think too hard about what I was going to find when I got there.
It had turned into a glorious afternoon when I emerged from the office tower and ambled along Fairfax Drive toward the restaurant. Jon-without was at the apex of the Amen Corner next to Old Jim at the bar when I came in from the brightness. I handed him a copy of the map and directions to the original Boundary Stones of the District of Columbia which had surfaced in the whirlwind that hit the unit, and a web address to a site that locates stock of ammunition by caliber and vendor. Useful stuff, you know?
Anyway, we drank for a while as I looked at my phone on the bar, waiting for it to go off. The Bulgarians called about five thirty, and said they were clearing the unit. They asked me to leave it open in the morning, and I told them I would. There is a bunch of crap left, but nothing that I wouldn’t actually be thankful to have disappear all on its own.
We drank for a while longer, but it was not nearly as raucous at our end of the bar as it was for the Fish and Wildlife Service, who packed the front cocktail nook. Apparently the Fish Head was hosting a reception for the Honor Guard of the sworn officers in the Service who were in town for the National Peace Officers Memorial Day, where the President and Attorney General Holder presided earlier in the day.
You don’t think of the Fish & Wildlife Service as being a law enforcement element, but of course it is. President Kennedy proclaimed National Police Week in 1962, with the 15th being the day for the big ceremony downtown at the memorial to fallen officers.
Police were here from as far away as the UK. It is a pretty impressive event, very solemn, and then the AG had to go up and trade barbs with Chairman Issa about all the things in the Justice Department he had no idea about.
It was on CSPAN, where the commentators don’t tell you what you just heard.
I listen on the radio, sometimes. Chanteuse Mary stopped in for a glass of wine and then went home to walk the dog, Jon-without had an errand to run, and with the Bulgarians gone, I decided to go home and check out what happened during the day.
(Curl up and watch some TV?)
I walked in and was impressed. And depressed. The place resembled nothing less than a complete condomization of the front room. Nice and sanitary, I will grant, but nothing was going to be quite right for a long while. I began to think that a long drive in the country might be just what I needed.
I poured a drink and tried to figure out how I was going to live on the balcony for the duration.
(The usual place this blog is produced. Not for a while, apparently. Photo Socotra)
Copyright 2013 Vic Socotra
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