From a Late Night House Concert

Friday night, P and I had a fantastic experience: we saw one of my favorite musicians, Matthew Ryan, at a house concert. Friends of a friend host these concerts in their huge living room a few times a year. Usually the talent is local, but lately they seem to be bringing in bigger names. I have a couple of Matthew Ryan's albums, so I was THRILLED when we got the evite for this concert. I am just in love with Ryan's craggy voice.

Ryan is currently touring with Tim Easton, who opened the house concert. I had not heard Easton before; he is an amazing guitarist. He played solo and was relaxed and very witty and joked a lot between songs. We really enjoyed his music and decided to drop a few bucks on his new CD. After Easton played, there was a break of about a half hour and then Matthew Ryan played with his band. He was FANTASTIC. He played the songs from his new album (which in my opinion are much better live). After running through those, he played many of his older songs, including some of my favorites--"Sweetie," "Return to Me," "The Little Things"--but not, unfortunately, my very favorite, "Railroaded."

Towards the end, Ryan asked if anyone had requests, and he played a few songs that people called out. During his part of the evening, Tim Easton had asked people in the audience what their first concert was and had called out that question to Ryan and then expressed something like grudging admiration when Ryan said it was Bob Dylan. (Imagine your first concert being Bob Dylan! Instead of, say, Journey.) So when Ryan was taking requests, someone asked if he could play his (Ryan's) favorite Dylan song. And so after a few false starts, he played an absolutely stunning cover of “Mama, You Been On My Mind.” Superb. Ryan is kind of awkward, clearly not as comfortable on-stage as Tim Easton, but something about him is very endearing. What a pleasure hearing him live.

Baby, it’s cold outside. And in.

Back in late December and early January, when we had a stretch of warm weather including a few 70 degree days, I had a great sense of unease about the world’s fate. It was like, every time I opened the front door and the warm breeze hit me, I could actually see the four horsemen of the apocalypse bearing down. In the blooming forsythia, I saw our planet’s impending doom.

Now I feel better because Washington has been in the grip of winter weather such as we have not seen in many years. I honestly can’t remember it being this cold for this long in the almost 20 years I have lived here. Of course, this unusually cold weather is part of the same phenomenon that resulted in the unusually warm weather in December and in the ungodly hot weather we had last summer (that would be Global Warming, for anyone who has been living under a rock, or in the White House), but somehow this FEELS better. Spring weather properly belongs in spring. Each to his own place, as the Great Gray Bridge would say.

I also have to admit that I like the cold (although I don't like the wind). I was raised in New England; winters are supposed to be cold. I find it bracing. It makes me feel strong. Hardy.

As the weather has gotten increasingly bitter, and stayed bitter, I have given up on any pretense of fashion. I know many will say that I, a Washingtonian, likely had little style to begin with, and that may be true. But whatever style I had has been tossed like so much jetsam. My stylish coat has been relegated to the back of the hall closet, and instead I’ve been wearing my Lands’ End parka in a lovely bright mulberry. Also large, thick, gray polartec gloves (I wish they were mittens). When it’s below 20 degrees in the morning, I wear long johns under my pants, because without them my walk to work is really unpleasant. (That walk includes the stretch of Massachusetts Avenue extending west from Union Station, and I swear it is the coldest, windiest spot in DC. It should have been called Alaska Avenue.) I have even, on a few mornings, snapped the hood onto my parka and huddled under it. I don't like doing this because my hair, although very curly, is extremely fine and doesn't adapt well to head coverings. It goes completely, hideously flat under hats. Like Rashida Jones’s hair on The Office. Apparently, she thinks that flat, slicked-to-the-head look is attractive. I, however, do not. Except for when skiing, I haven’t willingly worn a hat since I was 11.

The other side effect of extreme cold is that our house is like the Antarctic on the first floor and the Sahara on the second. This is partly because our double front door is deteriorating, lacks proper weather-stripping, and has a mail slot in it. Once a few years ago I went to Home Depot looking for a new mail slot—I thought surely someone would have made a better mail slot by now—and when I explained my predicament to a sales associate (“there must be some way to block the draft”), he looked at me very seriously and said, “You know, really, it’s like having a hole in your door.” Buddy, it IS a hole in my door. When it’s very cold, we stuff a hand towel in the mail slot, but I don’t know that it helps much.

Another problem is that our intake vent is in the upstairs hall, which means that all the warm air on the first floor is sucked up the stairs. It’s really quite frustrating, especially in the early evening when we are putting the kids to bed. It takes several hours for the downstairs (where the thermostat is) to warm up to 68 degrees (I set the thermostat at 55 when we aren’t home during the day), and in the meantime, the upstairs temperature rises to about 80. We eat dinner in turtlenecks and polartec jackets and then strip down to t-shirts when we go upstairs. Then, when the kids are asleep, P and I bundle back up for the trip to the Antarctic and once there, we huddle on the couch under a down comforter. I’m not looking forward to this month’s gas bill.

We have put off replacing the front door because it isn’t a stock size and will need to be custom built (and to historical standards since we are in the historic district), so it will cost a small fortune. But I think we are going to have to bite the bullet. Instead of a European vacation, this summer we’ll get a new front door! Good times.