Jed and I finally got hold of each other by phone last night and caught up. It's been difficult to reach each other since he's been busy with his large extended family, and I've been in and out myself. He called me from the family room of his parent's house in New Jersey at about eleven in the evening last night, just as Mel Gibson was killing the evil Brit near the end of "The Patriot", the movie I'd dialed up on the hotel video system. I was amazed that his family had all gone to bed. But he said that they sometimes go as early as 9.30. I know that whenever I visit my family (who usually stay up until 11.30), it dredges up a lot of memories and feelings from childhood, and it seemed to be doing the same to Jed. He told me some things he hadn't told me before, about how difficult his parents had been when he was growing up, and it helped, perhaps, to explain some of Jed's temperament to me.

I know what it feels like to be pulled in many different directions, and, since he's not out to his family (who are extremely religious - Roman Catholic), I half expected him to say that he wouldn't be able to come up to stay with me after all. But he confirmed that he's coming on Friday (and bringing a big snow storm with him, apparently).

I'm not a great fan of talking on the phone. Without the eye contact, and the body language, there's a disconnect I feel, and this is particularly so with Jed, who's voice doesn't have a lot of inflection. He also finds it difficult to say goodbye, and, before I got used to it, his abrupt departures and cold-sounding goodbyes would leave me wondering what I'd said to upset him. So sometimes, after talking with him on the phone, I feel very mixed emotions; sparks of love and greater understanding, but a certain remoteness too. Ain't people strange?

Working out in the gym this morning, I noticed that there were many more people than on previous days, and it finally began to feel a little bit human. But people in D.C. are not as obviously friendly as they are in California. Strangers don't nod, or say hi, like they might in similar circumstances back home. I managed to break the ice with everyone, though, in quite a spectacular fashion. I was running on a dodgy treadmill, listening to Rachmaninoff's 2nd Symphony on my walkman, and watching a cute young guy with rolled-up sleeves on a TV show that's new to me, "Judge Joe Brown". The speed on the treadmill would sometimes vary by a couple of tenths of a mile-per-hour. Not only that, but everytime you touched the console, you'd get a sharp electric shock. I'm not sure whether it was the dodgy machine, or my inattention while watching TV, but all of a sudden, one of my feet slipped off the side of the treadmill, and I went flailing, ending up on my butt behind the machine, whick kept on whirring at 8.0 mph plus or minus 0.2! "Quite a dismount!", one old man smiled at me. "Are you okay," contributed a girl. From the rest I received sympathetic smiles, before everyone refocussed their attention on Judge Joe Brown, who was now sternly quizzing the young cutie. With only a grazed knee and bruised buttocks to show for my fall, I switched machines, and ran on for another twenty five minutes. You have to get right back up on that horse, when it throws you :)

It was after two, once again, before I finally left the hotel, and, creature of habit that I am, I drove back to Afterwords for the same lunch I had on Christmas Eve. I squeezed my dirty green Pontiac rental into the slimmest of parking spaces only by gently nudging the car behind me, to encourage it to roll backwards a little (something you could never do in hilly San Francisco where everyone curbs their wheels and puts their handbrakes on).

Since my friend Bob was due in from Ohio around 4.30, there wasn't time to do much, so I drove over the Potomac to Virginia and took a walk from Theodore Roosevelt Island back down the river's edge. It was frosty cold, and the air cut my cheeks, but there's an exhilaration to being outside on such a beautiful cold day. I found the view of the Lincoln Memorial that I was looking for by creeping down to the edge of the river, and across a little frozen creek (not without some risk!)

It was nice to get back to the warm car and beat my hands together. It was time to head back to the hotel over the Arlington Memorial Bridge, where I stopped to take another photo.

Finally, back home to see if Bob had arrived. He called shortly after I got in to say that he was running a couple of hours late. So I have time to finish off this entry, at least.

Tonight, Bob and I are having dinner with another friend, Chris, at a nearby restaurant, and then Chris is going to give us a late-night tour of the printing plant where the New York Times is put together. More on that tomorrow. Later :)