Four from the Past (All Follow-ups to Previous Columns)

On a blazing hot summer day like today, I'm inclined to laziness, which means taking the easy route of revisiting some topics I've dealt with before, starting with one from the cooler days of mid-spring, ending with the one from just last week when it was already pretty much like today.


First, from my column of May 7 on the new Georgetown Safeway:

Safeway Revisited. I've been back a few times, and am still a fan, though a bit of the thrill has worn off. That happened on my second visit, after the opening week hoopla was over and the greeters, aisle-guides, and checkout ushers were all gone, and shopping returned to being a more humdrum experience of negotiating a maze of aisles while checking off a long list of needed grocery items, until the cart was full and it was time to stand in the checkout line, get checked out, and haul the stuff home. This is not the fault of the store, of course: It would be unreasonable of me to expect all those first-week added helpers to continue to offer personalized shopping assistance on an ongoing basis. However, I must report that my most recent trip to the Georgetown Safeway did include a bit of serendipity: I was told I had been randomly selected to receive a gift from the bakery department and was then offered my choice of a free carrot cake or chocolate cake. I took the carrot cake and shared it with the Rosedale Annual BBQ Picnic on June 20. It was all gone within minutes, while I was still on my main course, so it must have been good!


Second, following up on a discussion-within-a-discussion in the Wedding Gifts Column, Part II (May 21):

Who Needs So Many Vases? There were two comments on vases as wedding gifts in that column, both decidedly negative. What do you do with that unique, artistic vase you've received if you happen to think it's ugly as dirt? This, apparently, is a common enough problem that it cropped up again in Ask Kelli's June 23rd column, and she said it's fine to return it if you can figure out out where it came from. I certainly agree with that advice, but the problem with the vase-not-from-the-registry is that you are unlikely to be able to discover its origins, at least not without having an awkward and potentially feeling-bruising conversation with the giver of the gift. Now being 22 years past the window of receiving opportunity for wedding gifts, I'm not very likely to be saddled with an unshapely vase for that reason, but just this week I seem to have ended up with the "what do I do with these vases?" question, all the same. You see, my adult daughter has a summer job with the Commission on Presidential Scholars, which last week put on a four-day series of events honoring 141 of the nation's top high school students. There were dinners in their honor, receptions, a photo op with the President, official tours of museums, and more. At each of these events there were floral arrangements on the tables. After some of them, the staff members were told they could take the flowers -- in their vases -- home. My daughter took advantage of this offer twice. The flowers have since faded, but I now have two leftover vases.
They're not bad, actually, but they're nothing special either. One is a clear glass cylinder, the other an opaque glass pitcher. I also have a half-dozen other vases that once held Valentine's Day flowers, Mother's Day flowers, birthday flowers. Right now they're taking up a lot of room on a back shelf. I guess I could add them to the next Value Village pickup. But I'm wondering, do these things even have a thrift shop resale value? Perhaps I should just put them in the recycling. I'm thinking that vases are becoming like wire hangers -- but at least those you can return to the dry cleaners once you have more than you want to keep. Maybe one of our local florists could establish a drop-off collection so that glass flower vases can be reused. If anyone knows of a florist that already has such a program, please let me know! Just send the florist's name and address to alllifeislocal @ fastmail.net and I'll do a follow-up in a future column. (Well, since this is already a follow-up to a follow-up, that would be a follow-up cubed.)


Third, a follow-up on my column of June 14, on my overnight stay at a hotel in New York City:

Reviewing hotel reviews. After giving a thumb's up to the Park Central Hotel in my column, I decided to give the hotel a good write-up on Trip Advisor, the biggest and most popular customer review site. Before posting my own mostly positive review, I thought I'd look over the last four or five pages of reviews already on the site. Most were like mine, generally good, but I was surprised to read a few that made an overnight stay in the hotel sound like a descent into the lower depths of hell. These were not just negative reviews but reviews that included words like "BEWARE" and "Worst experience ever." (To read the actual reviews, look for those by: desertcrow, freqtravels_10, cricket 4445, bnormant, and sstfam). It seemed impossible to me that someone could have had such a terrible experience at a place that I, along with most other customers, had found clean, well located, well maintained, and competently run. Some of the causes for complaint in the intensely negative reviews seemed to me to be things that were either trivial or things that could have been fixed with a call to housekeeping (burned out light bulbs, for example) -- and even if not fixed promptly, hardly the sort of thing calling for such outrage on the reviewer's part. In most cases I found myself mentally taking the management's side, wondering if the customer had given the hotel a fair chance to put the problem right, or even whether the complainer was representing the situation accurately. (I especially rejected those negative reviews that included a slam to the "outdated décor" of the hotel's lobby, which struck me as attractively "retro." In my own review of the Park Central, I noted that having obtained the room at the bargain price of $100 per night, I was not expecting perfection, but, having found the room clean and comfortable and the service pleasant, I was quite satisfied by what I got for my money. In some future column I expect to come back to the problem of how to read between the lines of a business review, including how to detect when the reviewer has some personal axe to grind against the business, and how to recognize when someone is simply shilling for a friend or relative in the business. (Both of these are something we have to deal with everyday as listserv owners.)


And finally, a follow-up to last week's column (June 19) on the woes of World Cup soccer played to the ceaseless whine of vuvuzelas:

World Cup Cacaphony Continues. (Bet you can't say that three times fast.) The people at CollegeHumor.com have at least made it possible to laugh at the noise: http://www.collegehumor.com/video:1937652. And while you're there, you might get a chuckle out of this other soccer parody, as well:
http://www.collegehumor.com/video:1937652. I wish I could add a follow-up note here with the answer to the main question posed in that column: Where is there a sportsbar, either in Cleveland Park or in the vicinity, that is showing the World Cup matches with the vuvuzela noise technologically erased from the soundtrack? Alas, no one supplied an answer, and I suspect that is because there isn't one. Not too late, though, if you know of someplace and are willing to share it with the anti-vuvuzela brigade, Cleveland Park division; just send it to alllifeislocal @ fastmail.net.

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Published on the Cleveland Park Listserv on June 25, 2010.

One Night in New York

Two weekends ago I was in Austin, Texas for the wedding of a cousin on my mother's side of the family. On the last day of the Memorial Day weekend I was in New York for a funeral on my father's side. All I need is 3 more weddings to feel like I'm in a Hugh Grant movie. However, my purpose today is not to tell about the funeral (except to note with love and respect that it was for my very kind and talented Aunt Shirley, my father's sister, who was a professor of English at John Jay College, as well as an occasional concert performer in the piano duo of Meister & Schnitzer; she was 85). The purpose today is to run through the pluses and minuses of a DC-to-NYC overnight planned at the last minute.

On Friday the 28th I learned that the funeral would be held on Tuesday, June 1st. Since the service would start at 11:30 a.m., my first thought was to take a same-day flight into LaGuardia and fly home sometime in the late afternoon, but the moment I saw the cost of the air shuttle back and forth (about $600 round trip!) I started looking at train fares. That was better, but still not great: $106 for the regional (the slow train, not the $180 Acela) there and $74 for the even slower train back (leaving Penn Station at 8 p.m. and arriving at Union Station at 11:25 p.m. That had some appeal, but in order to make it to the service on time, after figuring in the ever-present risk of delays, I'd need to take the 7:25 a.m. train, arriving at 10:44 a.m., or maybe, to be really on the safe side, the 6:35 a.m. arriving at 10. Either way, it was going to be a very long day.

Bill, my husband, was the one to suggest the solution that worked best: Stay overnight. (Neither he nor my children could change their schedules to attend, so I was going solo.) That way I could take one of the super-cheap bus lines that take you to New York in comfort, with wifi and electric outlets at every seat, in 4 to 5 hours, depending on time of departure. The maximum bus charge is $25 each way. If I spent just $50 on transportation, I could still beat or equal the Amtrak price by finding a hotel for $130 or less. But was that possible?

Hotels.com to the rescue. Bill's search turned up the Park Central at West 57th Street near Columbus Circle, just 3 subway stops from Riverside Memorial Chapel where the funeral would be held. It got three-and-a-half stars on Trip Advisor along with generally good reviews. And a room on the night of the 31st could be had for an even hundred bucks. That seemed the way to go, so I grabbed it.

Next task, booking the buses. According to busjunction.com, the Bolt Bus (which I'd used in the past and had liked) was completely booked up on the way there, but I reserved a seat for $23 on the way back. To get there I tried a new bus -- well, relatively new, in service just for the past 8 months -- called the Tripper Bus, which departs from the Bethesda Metro station, ending at 34th & 7th Avenue near Broadway, just 3 subway stops south of the Columbus Circle stop near the hotel. The price was $25, or two bucks more than the Bolt Bus...but they give you a free bottle of water.

Now that I'm back, here's the report:

Tripper Bus Grade: A-. The bus was clean, on time, and had a good wifi signal the whole way. My only complaint is that the seats are upholstered in a scratchy, fuzzy fabric, and I was in shorts. The main annoyance of that trip, though, was not the fault of the Tripper bus but was due to a problem with the iTunes movie that I had planned to watch on my netbook to pass two hours of the time. Something went wrong with the download, and the movie kept freeze-framing on me. The dialog continued normally, so it wasn't entirely unwatchable, but it was still not what it should have been. (Upon my return I asked for and received a credit from iTunes.) I would certainly take this bus again, but would wear long pants the next time. After 4 rides, your 5th one is free.

Park Central Hotel Grade: B+. If I had been paying anything more than $100 for the room, I'd have had a lot of complaints (long check-in line; the shower water never got hotter than lukewarm; I was charged $3.75 to store my luggage for a few hours; the elevator system was confusing and slow), but hey, when you can get a safe, clean, quiet, centrally located hotel in walking distance of the theater district for that price, you really shouldn't grouse too much.

Bolt Bus Grade: B. I would have given the Bolt Bus an A but something went wrong with the wifi connection and the driver couldn't get it working at all during the trip. Fortunately, this time the movie that I had downloaded played perfectly, and I also had a good book with me. The bus was comfortable and on time.

All in all, taking into account the somber purpose of the trip, an efficient and hassle-free there-and-back. Plus one bright note: My aunt's only child, a never-married man in his mid-50s, introduced his fiance and let everyone know that wedding invitations would be forthcoming. I hope to be returning to New York in the not too distant future for that happy event. I will keep you posted.

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Published on the Cleveland Park Listserv on June 4, 2010.

Wedding Present, Column #2

In last week's column I asked for your help in choosing a wedding present for my cousin and her fiance, who are getting married tomorrow (May 22) in Texas. I listed four choices from their registry but said I'd consider off-registry ideas as well. I thought I'd get 20 or 30 emails in response and would simply report the totals at the end of this week's column, which would mainly be about something else. However, I was surprised to get 58 responses, and more than enough feedback to take up a whole column. Apparently, this is something many of you have strong opinions about! I had no idea it would be such a hot-button topic.

First, to the numerical results:

Coming in first place, with 10 votes, was the Martha Stewart Cutlery Set. (There were also 3 votes that specifically went against this item, or more accurately, against Martha Stewart herself, but I did not deduct any points for negative votes.)

Second, only one vote behind, at 9 votes, was the set of Pilsner beer glasses.

Third, with 8 votes, was money -- that is, cash, a check, or a gift card.

Fourth, with 5 votes, was the toaster oven.

In a tie for fifth place, at 3 votes apiece: the cordless hand vac, versus something else from the couple's registry other than the 4 options I listed. For example, someone said, "Buy them extra dishes from their china pattern. Dishes break. Also, if you want to invite more than 10 dinner guests, it's good to have more than the typical number of plates shown on the registry." Someone else suggested buying more pots and pans than requested, and a third vote went to a collection of practical kitchen things from the registry, such as potholders, dish towels, and small hand utensils.

The total number of votes for sticking to the registry was 38 out of 58, or 65 percent. People like using a registries because you know the couple won't have to return duplicates of anything. "Just give them what they want!" the pro-registry side writes. If it's something they will use everyday, they will think of you every time they use it. They won't re-gift it to someone else or let it sit in a closet until it finally goes off to Goodwill.

Now let me get to the 35 percent of you who hate registries. In a nutshell, registry gifts are: unimaginative, unmemorable, impersonal, and just plain boring. Many of the votes for cash or a check contained some version of this comment: "Why buy them something that they've picked from a registry? Just give them the cash and let them spend it themselves." The argument for gift cards instead of cash is that the couple must actually go out and buy themselves something with the card, but with a check, they might just spend it on their utility bills. You do want them to get themselves something nice, something they'll take pleasure from owning and using in their life together.

Seventeen of you, however, argued that a wedding present should be some special item that the guest chooses for the couple, thoughtfully, lovingly, as a token of your feeling for them, perhaps to become an heirloom to be passed down from generation to generation. Since people took the time to send in their creative ideas, I thought I would list all 17 of them:

- a work of art by a local Cleveland Park artist
- homemade cookbook with old family recipes
- 2 votes for a silver picture frame from Tiffany's
- a ceramic pitcher
- a unique serving dish
- an antique or unique piece of tableware from the Opportunity Shop in Georgetown
- a beautiful wooden cheese board
- a wooden box or bowl
- silver serving pieces
- a set of Wusthof knives (better quality than the Martha Stewart knives, according to Consumer Reports)
- a portable grill
- a picnic basket with nice, reusable plastic ware and a ground cloth
- a weekend stay at a romantic B&B or a dinner for 2 at a fine restaurant
- beer of the month club membership (since we know they drink beer, evidenced by the request for the Pilsner glasses)
- a unique or artistically designed vase or bowl
- a donation to a charity in their name

Some of the messages told charming or instructive stories about wedding presents given or received. Here are three of them:

"We were given a set of ceviche serving bowls, with handles in the shape of porcelain fish. The only trouble is my husband is severely allergic to fish. The bowls really aren't practical for anything else. I think they may have come from a shop that imports handmade goods from Latin America, no chance of returning them. So they sit, never used, on a back shelf in my pantry."

"I remember one gift, an unusual vase. I know my wife's friend took care in picking it out, but it just wasn't our style. But we knew of another couple getting married, and we thought they might like it. Just as my wife was carefully packing it up in bubble wrap to send to them as a wedding present, I noticed that on the underside of the vase, engraved in teeny-tiny lettering, were our names and our wedding date. Yikes! What a mistake that would have been! It's the registry for us from now on."

And here's one that explains why a set of knives might not always be a good choice for a wedding present:

"When my daughter married a man of Chinese descent, a friend gave them a gorgeous antique knife. I thought it was stunning, but my daughter's new in-laws were HORRIFIED. In the Chinese culture, a man and a woman are tied together -- symbolically -- by a red thread. A knife would imply a severing of that thread. The friend is a great person, but the in-laws will never get over this gift!"

Thanks to all who took the time to send me your thoughts, arguments, pet peeves, and deep-seated beliefs on this topic. And now...drumroll, please! The result: I decided to go with the second-choice winner, the Pilsner beer glasses. They look pretty in the registry picture. And when it's hot in Texas (when isn't it?) a cold brew is refreshing, served in chilled glasses. So this morning I went back to the registry, prepared to click and send. What I found was this: "Item Fulfilled." Rats! On to the toaster oven: Fulfilled. The Martha Stewart knives: Fulfilled. Even the hand-vac! And everything else, fulfilled, fulfilled, fulfilled. Lucky couple. But now what? Suddenly I see the virtue in the number three vote getter, the gift certificate. To my mind the most practical one is from Amazon.com. It can be used for anything at all: books (always useful for grad students), electronics, housewares, you name it. Problem solved, and I don't even need to worry about shipping, as the gift simply shows up instantaneously in my cousin's inbox. Just to make sure she doesn't miss it, I'll tuck a copy of the printed order form inside the lovely, handmade wedding card I'm bringing with me to the event.

I'm sure she'll love it.

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Published on the Cleveland Park Listserv on May 21, 2010.

Vote for the Best Wedding Present

In my last column in this space I mentioned that I’d be missing my kids’ school fair next Saturday to attend a cousin’s wedding in Texas. Now I’m thinking of what to get the happy couple. To make the process less of a guessing game for family and friends, they’ve set up registries at two different department stores. Some people object to being given a list of material desires, but I’m not one of them. I’m perfectly content to let them clue me in on what they can use as they’re starting their life together. They’re both grad students at the University of Texas, on a tight budget. Their wish list has nothing of the outrageous or extravagant about it; in fact, it’s a plain and practical list of kitchen implements and dining accessories. I just don’t know what to pick, so I thought I’d ask your opinion.

But before I present the choices, I need to explain why I’ve waited until a mere eight days before the wedding to get around to this task. I wasn’t always such a last-minute giver. A long time ago Bill and I were actually quite speedy present-pickers, responding soon after the arrival of the engraved invitation with the purchase and shipment of the object of choice. We changed for a reason. Three reasons, actually: Not once, not twice, but THREE TIMES, we sent a gift to a couple whose wedding never occurred. One of those times the cancellation call came just two days before the big event was to take place. And I do mean big: that one was to be held at a cathedral, followed by a 200-guest reception at a fancy New York hotel. All three times we had the gift sent back to us, which meant we had to mail it back, or haul it back to the store ourselves to get a refund. Now I know I shouldn’t complain too much of the inconvenience to us. Of course we’d far rather deal with the nuisance and minor expense of a store return than see a friend go through with a wedding that she (in two of the cases) or he (in one case) had come to see as a grave mistake.

However, after the third such incident, we decided it would be worth our while to defer the present-choosing process until after the marriage was on the books. According to Miss Manners, there’s no etiquette violation in waiting. So I was planning to stick to my policy of no presents till the couple had actually said I do, but then I woke up this morning with the sudden realization that … they had! That is to say, they are already legally husband and wife. I don’t know why, but I forgot that fact, announced some months ago in an email to all family members. We can thank Congress, the Department of Homeland Security and stepped-up immigration checkpoints for this wrinkle in the story. My cousin’s fiance is Canadian, and for the past few years he’s been working in Texas and traveling regularly back and forth between Montreal, where his parents live, and his home in Austin. The trips, which used to be fairly smooth sailing, had lately become an ever-worsening hassle, involving lots of waiting in lines and line-by-line scrutiny of his documentation. At some point he and my cousin decided it made sense to have a quick civil ceremony, to give him the friendlier standing of the husband of a US citizen, if not yet a citizen himself. They saw no profit in waiting until May 22 for this relief. That means that the ceremony at this event is actually going to be a re-enactment, a speaking of vows for the poetry and symbolism of the words, and for the enjoyment of the audience. The legal significance has been taken care of.

So there’s no chance that the marriage won’t happen, when it already has. And no need for my usual let’s-wait-to-see-if-it-falls-apart hesitation. That wake-up thought sends me straight to their registries, only to discover there’s very little left to buy. Hmmmm. Now what do I do? Usually when I wait until after the wedding is over, I have something in mind that I know that the couple still needs. In past weddings, the couple has been local, and I’ve been to their house and have a sense of their tastes and interests. Although I feel close to my cousin, I have always seen her at family gatherings on the east coast, never at her home in Austin. So I’m left looking over some very humdrum but practical items on her list. Nothing here speaks to me, saying, “This is just the thing for them!” Or “Wow, they’ll love this!” Here is what I see, followed by what I think:

o The Black & Decker Convection Toaster Oven. Sure, every couple should have a toaster oven. But could there possibly be a more boring gift?

o The Black & Decker Platinum LinX cordless hand vac. What this says to me is that it’s dusty in Texas. But would they interpret the gift as a subtle hint: “I think you need to clean more” ?

o A set of Pilsner beer glasses. Does it say that I think they sit around and drink beer all day?

o The Martha Stewart 20-piece collection of fine cutlery, in a nice wooden countertop display block. Sharp knives. From the collection of a convicted felon. Is this really the best symbolism for the start of a life together?

So you see my dilemma. Perhaps it would be best to ditch the whole registry approach and try to come up with something original, something that speaks to my own appreciation of them as a couple, but not so original that they’d feel stuck with it if it wasn’t to their taste. Something returnable, that is. I welcome your thoughts. Just drop me an email with your vote: alllifeislocal at fastmail dot net. You can vote for any of the four registry choices or suggest something new.

I’ll let you know next week how the votes came down, and what I did. I’d like to promise to follow your votes -- but I'm afraid that's too much of a commitment for me.

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Posted on the Cleveland Park Listserv, May 14, 2010.