Rainy season

There are few things better than a pair of dry socks, especially after you've had wet socks on your feet for several hours.

*****

On Monday afternoon, I visited the headquarters of the Federal government agency that I work for. I normally work in a satellite office ten minutes from my house, but we had a meeting at headquarters, so I worked at my normal office in the morning, and then took Metro from Twinbrook to Union Station, exactly one mile from the building where the meeting was to take place.

A coworker, who has been on the contract with me for just a few months, also had to attend the meeting, so we traveled together. My coworker shares my Metro-riding philosophy: If it's not on the Red Line, it's dead to me. We agreed that we'd much prefer to walk the mile from Union Station than transfer to the Blue or Green Line to Federal Center. And we both knew that it was going to rain, and that it was in fact, raining. But we decided to proceed as planned.

It had nearly stopped raining when we got on the train in Rockville. But then it started again, and a steady, though not driving, rain was falling when we exited Union Station. For some inexplicable reason, my coworker had  worn high-heeled sandals, and she seemed considerably dismayed by the rain. I offered to take a taxi with her, but she wanted to stick with our original plan, so we walked through Columbus Circle and then around the Capitol building to Independence and our destination.

It was colder than it should be in May, but not freezing, and there was no wind, so the rain fell vertically, the way it's supposed to. I took some nice pictures of the Capitol building, which disappears behind overgrown spring foliage as you approach it, and then appears again through breaks in the trees. We had rain jackets and umbrellas; and despite wet socks and slightly wet pants from the knees down, a good time was had by me.

There it is! 

My coworker, unfortunately, did not like the brisk one-mile walk through the rain nearly as much as I did. But she was actually quite nice about the whole thing, and I felt a little guilty about how much I enjoyed what was obviously just a step up from the Bataan Death March for her.

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So dry socks and hot soup--those are the two things that can fix everything. I arrived to our meeting with wet socks (the dry socks had to wait until I got home), but thanks to the cafeteria in the building (how I love office building cafeterias), we had the soup. In a few minutes we were both--wait for it--right as rain.

*****
It's Wednesday now. After days of rain and March-cold temperatures, it's finally sunny and dry and almost warm. I'm hoping that it will be a long time before I need dry socks and hot soup and a sturdy umbrella, all on the same day. Still, it's nice that they were all there when I needed them.