The very week KFC closed, what should appear in our neighborhood but a cherry picker full of dudes with flower baskets, decorating the light poles. I also noticed that the abandoned houses on our street now have plywood covering their window-holes; not only that, but the plywood is painted the same color as the house it decorates.
This is going to be a classy neighborhood, I tell you. Makes me wish K and I owned our place.
To this Eckington optimist's post about the closing of a neighborhood restaurant, I would add step zero: remove the bulletproof glass encasing the employees. And perhaps a step 0.5: install tables.
Yesterday I finally got my black belt. It's hard to take myself too seriously as a result when the test group consisted of me and one other 20-something woman and about a dozen elementary schoolers. Perhaps the hardest part of the test was sparring, in which teenagers kicked my ass in front of an audience of proud, photo-happy parents. But as someone who's been pretty terrible at every sport I've ever tried (with the possible exception of cross-country, at which I was merely mediocre), it's nice to have affirmation that four years of physical training has yielded measurable results.
Afterward I celebrated by hosting a dinner-and-a-movie get-together at Agent V's. Despite my fromagophilia I've lately become a devotee of a cookbook called the Veganomicon, and used its advice to make chickpea cutlets with mustard sauce and roasted asparagus. Then we watched The Long Kiss Goodnight. In my evite I'd described this movie as "a delicious morsel of so-bad-it's-good-ness," but I'd forgotten just how bad--and how good--it really is. Here's a sample.
The very week KFC closed, what should appear in our neighborhood but a cherry picker full of dudes with flower baskets, decorating the light poles. I also noticed that the abandoned houses on our street now have plywood covering their window-holes; not only that, but the plywood is painted the same color as the house it decorates. 
Yesterday I finally got my black belt. It's hard to take myself too seriously as a result when the test group consisted of me and one other 20-something woman and about a dozen elementary schoolers. Perhaps the hardest part of the test was sparring, in which teenagers kicked my ass in front of an audience of proud, photo-happy parents. But as someone who's been pretty terrible at every sport I've ever tried (with the possible exception of cross-country, at which I was merely mediocre), it's nice to have affirmation that four years of physical training has yielded measurable results.
