In which I see a lot of the city, and get a new phone.

I last wrote two weeks ago, after that tree walk.  For the past week and a half, I've been noticing trees and thinking to myself, "That's a maple.  Oh, no, wait, maybe it's an oak?"  It's entertaining, but I'm not sure how much of what we learned actually stuck. 🌳🌲🌴🎄

That next Friday, I went with my roommate to the 6th and I synagogue, which is an old, historic synagogue that was only recently put back into use as such after having been a church for a while.  That weekend was the Pride celebration in DC, so that Friday night was Pride Shabbat.  There was a big turnout; the sanctuary was full.  (I don't know how many people usually show up there, and I'm really bad at estimating crowd size: it was full, that's all I know.)  The service was nice, with some additions celebrating the milestones that the LGBT+ community has achieved in this country.  The sermon was given by a speaker who works for LGBT rights abroad, in places that do not have as
many freedoms as this country.  The closing song was a Yiddish rendition of "Somewhere Over the Rainbow," which I had stuck in my head for the whole next week. 🌈 We stayed for the Young Professionals dinner, afterwards.  The food was delicious.  The dinner was rainbow themed, and there was a "drag trivia" game about gay pop culture icons, hosted by "Queen Esther".  I only had an answer to one question. 😟 But there were colorful jellybeans, and rainbow cookies.  I recognized a few people from the Shavuot event, and met a few more people.  It was fun, and I'm glad I went.

On Saturday, I met up with a friend of my family who we know from Harlingen, who now lives in DC.  We went to see a play called Hir, which was a complicated and difficult story about a discharged Marine who comes home from war to find his family is not how he left it.  His formerly abusive father has had a stroke.  The sister he remembers is now gender-nonbinary, and his mother has upended the house.  The family dysfunction goes from bad to worse over the course of the play. I don't recommend it.
After the depressing play, we got some ice cream, and then went to see the Smithsonian American Art Museum/National Portrait Gallery.  It's a nice museum to which I want to return.  We spent a long time looking at the portraits of the presidents, and also saw about 2/3 of the second floor.
We got some of the ubiquitous "Capitol Rides" rental bikes and rode down to the mall. 🚴🚴 It was downhill in traffic and terrifying.  I almost lost my hat. 👒 But I didn't fall, and I didn't get hit by a car, and I didn't veer into any of the parked cars, or run over any pedestrians, so I'll call it a win.
We walked from the Washington Monument to the Lincoln Memorial, and most of the way back.  We eventually took the metro to Adams Morgan, where we had dinner at a place called Lebanese Taverna, which, as you may guess, we had Middle Eastern food (hummus and falafel!), and then parted ways to go home.  We covered a lot of DC, and had a good time.

On Sunday, I set out bright and early (i.e., noon) to go buy a new phone.  This was going to be easy.  I knew what phone I wanted, and I knew that Best Buy had it in stock.  But Best Buy, though they could activate the phone with Sprint, didn't have the power to set it up with my existing phone number, so instead of letting them activate the phone and calling Sprint later, I decided to just take the thing to a Sprint store.  This turned out to be a bad move. First, it took me 30 minutes to find the dang place, because the directions I had were vague, but never mind that.  The (first) Sprint store told me my phone wouldn't work with Sprint.  Now, the internet said it should work with Sprint, and the box said on the cover "works with all major US carriers," so I knew there was a problem.  I brought the phone to another Best Buy (which happened to be closer to the Sprint store).  They assured me the phone would work on Sprint, but didn't have the ability to set it up there, and sent me to a different Sprint store, farther away.  There, the store people looked at my phone, typed some numbers into their computer, and warned me that it might or might not work.  "It's 50/50," he said. Don't trust people who say that.  I told them to set it up anyway, because if it didn't work as advertised ("all major US carriers") I was going to get my money back from Best Buy.  They did some things, turned it on, and ... it wouldn't place calls.  No good.  Sad, frustrated, and hungry (by now it's 5pm, and I haven't eaten lunch), I go back to the original Best Buy, which is near my home.  The person at the returns counter tells me this happens all the time, and lends me her phone to call Sprint.  Ten minutes later my phone works. Hooray! Five hours traipsing around the city, and it was this simple...  So, now I have a phone! 📱

Having the phone, I got in touch with my roommate and met her and some of her friends for dinner at Martin's Tavern, which is an old restaurant in Georgetown.  It was kind of American-Irish-Pub.  I had fish and chips which I thought were pretty good (though, as they say, hunger is the best seasoning).

That brings the story telling up to 11 June (but really kind of to the 13th, since I didn't do anything blog-worthy in those two days).  I am substantially behind, but I'd rather post this anyway, and try to catch up next week.