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When at the end of the summer I tightened the geographic radius of my teaching duties (by handing over the Rockville meteorology class to a car-driving colleague), I lost the frequent reminders that distance from my home kitchen serves as an effective appetite suppressant. (Distance in this relation incorporates also the psychological stress imposed by sharing space with strangers in public transit, and the logistical toll that exposure to unexpected precipitation takes on my laundry schedule.) Today I relearned that lesson, taking the C4/Q4 buses to the Rockville station, in order to be present in the event that a 10:15 a.m. district court hearing would shed new light on the fate of my neighbors, who apparently had been renting from an absentee landlord named Carl Farmer. I ended up staying in Rockville only through the early afternoon, but the rain today encouraged such consolidation of my engagements that I stayed several hours past sunset in the Long Branch library despite the proximity of a home kitchen where dinner awaited.
Before rushing off to catch the C4 bus on University Blvd, I stuffed into my bag several discarded items from my recently-departed AirBnB guests, including plastic pill organizers from a pharmaceutical conference and leftover circuit elements from a quadcopter. These items would find a better home if left on the free table in the Science Center building, just a fifteen-minute walk from the Rockville District Court. My only worry was the suspicion they might arouse in the guards at the court entrance, but that concern turned out to be unfounded, and by 10:15 I found myself waiting outside the courtroom and recognizing my former neighbor but nobody resembling his landlord.
The court proceedings went quickly, as I've learned to expect from landlord-tenant cases, many of them dismissed automatically if the plaintiff didn't bother to show up. Such was the outcome of my former neighbor's case, whose voluntary departure from the premises obviated Carl Farmer's need for a judgment of possession. Now I'll just have to be on the lookout for a moving van bringing the effects of whomever Mr. Farmer finds next to rent the house.
I walked in the rain parallel to Rockville Pike, passing the shops and restaurants I often told myself I should visit before the end of my year of teaching on the Rockville campus of Montgomery College. I never did get around to sampling the Indian lunch buffet, the Great Wall supermarket, or even the Rockville public library. I would, however, make use of the Rockville post office, an errand deliberately planned for in my packing this morning of unwritten Christmas cards, envelopes, and postage stamps. These letters would finally get written in the scenic corner window of the 4th floor corridor for physics, engineering, and geosciences faculty, a hangout I first used after one of my early orientations to the department.
It was in the natural light of this corner window that I started reading---more than a year ago---the first chapter of Deer Hunting With Jesus, a reporter's account of the rural-urban cultural divide in America, which had been left on the free table the summer before I started teaching meteorology. Today the view from that window revealed overcast skies and a steady light rain, nothing so devastating as the summer downpours that soaked my shoes to the point where they needed two full days to dry out. The uninviting conditions provided the perfect backdrop for writing Christmas cards in the comfort of indoor central heating. I composed three letters, inserted them into the envelopes that I had pre-addressed back at home while still connected to search engines that could figure out ZIP codes, and then got ready for the walk back to the Metro station by way of the post office.
The rain continued to fall only lightly. Despite an abundance of energy that could have fueled a walk into the unknown territory on the other side of I-270, I decided not to tempt fate and stuck with the well-trodden route back to my home territory of Silver Spring. I exited the C2 bus before Piney Branch Road, taking a back route to the Long Branch library across the creek. In the library I had about an hour to catch up on the latest newspaper stories before the chess club started its games.
My participation in the chess games tonight kept me until past 19:00, making it a full 12 hours between meals today. Supposedly this kind of fasting trains the body better than the regularity of "three square meals" every day, so I might want to try this experiment at least once every week in the new year.