greetings from our nation's capital

(and our nation's Capitol!)

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Welcome home!

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Well, we did it. We rented an apartment! We were going crazy in the tiny Vrbo, so we were extra glad to get out of there a day early.  Those of you who were playing along with the "House Hunters International" game: we ended up renting the 3BR version of apartment #4 ( see previous post ). Was that your guess? Here are some photos and a quick video (sorry if you get a little motion sickness, I sped it up by 2x!)  It  took four trips to get everything moved - one by Uber black ($) another in a taxi (that we hiked a few blocks to catch) and two on the metro. We stopped and bought a wheelie grocery cart after the second trip, so I filled that with the non-fridge stuff and it was pretty easy to move - although I wish I'd looked for the metro elevators more closely - too many stairs to bounce up/down!  Once we got everything moved and enjoyed the central air for a while 🫠, we unpacked and started laundry. I washed the new sheets but they're still a little... crunchy. ....
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Made it to Barcelona!

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Phew. Made it to Barcelona, reunited with my sweetie. Hooray! Of course, the Universe decided to poke me a few times along the way, to see if I was paying attention. [Picture: my two ~50lb suitcases and one giant duffel, plus my non-wheeled carry-on. Yes, everything has a luggage tag from SC!]  My plane was leaving at 9:20pm from Dulles. It had been pouring rain on and off all day, so we tried to make a run for it between rainstorms around 4:30pm. Unfortunately, so did everyone else in town, so we sat in traffic for an hour just to get out to the Tyson's area. [The traffic was made worse by the Presidential motorcade, which came out just as we hit 18th & Pennsylvania Ave. I made sure to blow some raspberries in his general direction. I might have also waved a few select fingers...]   It was about the time that we got to Tyson's that I realized that I had left my medication (and the handy little cold-pack travel case I bought for it) in the fridge at the house. ARGH. Mom sa...
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We (almost) live here now

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Bueno, pues... It's still very weird to think that we're not here on vacation. My job starts on Tuesday, so I've had a week of adjusting to the time change (finally getting more sleep), figuring out where things are, and getting used to the heat, with very little "to do".  Sadly, in true Fratkin-McCalpin tradition, we brought a heat wave with us. I was hoping that, because we're moving here, the universe would be more forgiving than our usual summer scorcher in Europe, but no... It's about 8 degrees (C, or 10-15 F) above normal and has been all week... And will be for at least another week. Oy.  The tiny little apartment we're staying in (while we look for our longer-term place) has A/C only in the bedroom, and faces northwest, but the afternoon sun is awful. I feel like I'm living in a cave - we keep the wooden shutters closed most of the time. On Thursday we started visiting apartments! The first one was enormous, with giant wood-paneled cabinets...
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