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Whether out of nervousness or excitement, I woke up abruptly at 3:45 this morning, ready to face an abundance of plans on this last day before the start of the spring semester. The unexpected interruption of a good night's sleep even allowed me to enjoy an unplanned viewing of the Australian Open men's final, as it unfolded on the other side of the globe. The unseeded French player Jo-Wilfried Tsonga took the first set from Djokovic, and I settled down to follow a match that clearly wouldn't be over in three sets. As the match wore on and both players began to look more exhausted, I boosted my own energy reserves with a breakfast of leftover lentil and potato curry. Meanwhile, Djokovic seemed to have found his groove, winning the championship in a four-set match.
Getting ready for this afternoon's coupon redemption adventure with Raj shouldn't have needed more than a few minutes of packing. Reasoning in this way, I overlooked the fact that my cell phone had very little charge left in its battery. By the time I had parked my bike on campus to unload my supplies in case I ended up crashing in my office tonight, the cell phone charger in my house was essentially irretrievable. With the remaining charge, I jotted down on paper the necessary contact information of the two parties I would meet today, and then left a few frantic voicemails informing them of my predicament.
After a quick lunch in the CSS building, I biked to the West Hyattsville Metro station. I saw the announcement that a train to Branch Avenue would be arriving in one minute, so I dashed up the stairs to the platform. A pleasant ride to the end of the Orange line brought me to Vienna/Fairfax only ten minutes later than the estimated 13:00 arrival time that I relayed to Raj in my voicemail message. As it turned out, he hadn't even checked his voicemail all morning, thanks to a cell phone glitch of his own. Luckily my own phone still carried a slight charge, and we were able to find each other at the Metro station without any further technical trouble.
I took the passenger seat in the front of Raj's car, and we drove to the Fairfax Micro Center. Raj brought along, for return or exchange, the replacement case fan that didn't quite fit his old Dell case. I brought the two coupons for free USB flash drives, without which we might never have decided to undertake this trip together. We entered the store with no specific schedule in mind, but the sight of the long lines on a Sunday afternoon suggested that we might be there for quite a while. Obviously not everyone was there to redeem coupons for free merchandise, but there certainly were a few such people in line when we were ready to check out.
Raj and I browsed the various sections of the store, checking out case fans, video cables and adapters, bargain bin software, and computer books. Micro Center also had a short aisle of movies and music, nowhere near as extensive as that of Best Buy. Nevertheless, Raj was prompted to ask which movies I had seen lately. With so many students away during the winter term, the Hoff theatre had sensibly cut back on its offerings, so movie nights at my house featured DVDs on the computer, VHS tapes on the basement TV, or OnDemand movies through the house subscription to Comcast. Raj's question, however, brought none of those memories to mind, and I began to think about how lucky it was that the semester would soon be starting, and the campus would soon be overflowing with plenty of entertainment options.
Passing the video game display, Raj and I lamented how out-of-practice we had gotten in the years since we played games like Quake, DOOM, and Unreal Tournament more frequently. Even the skills we learned from those relics of an earlier era seemed hopelessly unsuited to the immensely more complex games that other patrons were playing in the store's display. We quickly moved on to the rooms with more serious merchandise, such as laptop bags and programming books.
After searching the aisles of books in vain for a study guide geared toward the Sun Java certification, Raj and I called it quits and got in line to redeem our coupons. Just ahead of us was another pair of shoppers who also had coupons for free USB flash drives. The marketing blitz obviously brought plenty of new and returning customers into the store, but thankfully the supply of flash drives hadn't dried up by the time we got to the register. Raj and I exited into the windy outdoors, each of us richer by one flash drive and at least an hour's worth of conversation.
My father and sister would be arriving in Rosslyn later this evening, so Raj and I still had another hour to spend together in Vienna/Fairfax. I suggested finding a park where we could walk around. Raj remembered one just a few minutes' drive from the shopping center. We were so eager to make the most of our short time together that we got started on the walk before Raj realized that his mom might want to know about the detour we were taking. Once we allayed her concerns with a brief phone conversation, Raj and I began our tour of the park.
Snow and ice covered parts of the trails we took, giving us reason to navigate the terrain more cautiously. A solitary jogger, meanwhile, seemed to have no trouble racing through the ice and snow. He disappeared from sight after passing us and turning round the corner. Raj and I noticed only a few other people throughout the rest of our walk, although none as daring as the solitary jogger.
Although I still had plenty of time before my father and sister would arrive in Rosslyn, the end of our walk through the park provided a natural stopping point for my afternoon reunion with Raj. In total, we had spent about three hours of the day together, recalling shared memories, reflecting on our current endeavors, and enjoying the pleasant winter scenery. Raj dropped me off at the Vienna/Fairfax Metro station, where I waited for the next outbound train to take me to Rosslyn.
Even though the train dropped me off in Rosslyn almost an hour before my father and sister would arrive, I foolishly worked up an appetite by racing up the escalator to street level. In the waning daylight I hoped to be able to locate a decent restaurant where the three of us could eat, but the closest options seemed to be in Georgetown across the Key Bridge. My cell phone had enough of a charge left to let me access my voicemail, which gave me a more precise estimate of how soon my father and sister would get to the hotel. In the remaining time before they showed up, I made my way to Georgetown and took a preliminary look at the restaurants along M Street.
I accompanied my father and sister to their hotel room after they checked in, hoping to borrow a cell phone charger to replenish the battery. After unpacking a few items from our bags, we walked across the bridge to have dinner in Georgetown. Restricting our attention only to the restaurants on M Street, we eventually settled on the Japanese steak house called Benihana. The grilled vegetables, meat, and noodles were pretty tasty, as we expected when ordering meals with names like pollo picante. Our chef put on a good show at the grill, too, providing food and entertainment at the same price that Leopold's would have charged just for the food.
Because I want to help the opening shift at the co-op tomorrow morning, I decided not to spend the night in the hotel. Instead, I rode home on the Metro and slept in my office, on the eve of the first day of spring semester classes.