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Monday, June 11th, 2007

Ice cream victory

E-mail I received shortly before work today: "Congratulations! Your Dreyer's/Edy's Slow Churned Neighborhood Salute contest entry has been selected as a grand-prize winner!"

Exclaimation points for everyone. That's right, ice cream fans. My essay about my neighborhood ("My neighborhood is my elevator") is apparently one of 1,500 nationwide winners of an neighborhood ice cream party. The Edy's people are ready to give me the ice cream, and all I have to do now is let them know I indeed want it.

There's paperwork to be signed and notarized. Is this work a formality? Is it more? Do people really turn down free ice cream? Who are these people and why are they so crazy?

I'm not sure yet how to deal with the winnings. They consist of "Door-step Delivery of Twelve (12) cartons of Edy's Slow Churned Light ice cream" and "One (1) 'Party In A Box' (napkins, ice cream scoops, spoons, name tags, disposable camera, etc.)" A party in a box. That's a solid phrase. But are 12 cartons of ice cream not party enough?

How do I serve ice cream in an elevator?

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Saturday, March 31st, 2007

My entry in Edy's ice-cream-for-your-neighborhood contest

My neighborhood is my elevator. I live in a studio apartment and work at strange times, but it's the elevator where I see everyone. I don't know their names, but so many of them say hello. It's a big building, and you get the feeling we're all in the same boat. Working hard or going to school or raising a family in a happy home with a clear view of the sunrise.

The folks on the other side of the courtyard, they must see the sunset. But I imagine they enjoy it just as much. We're high on the hill here, and the horizon's a good one. An apartment building a ways off, closer to the river, stands in the way of any view of the monuments, but you can see for such a ways that it doesn't matter. You can feel Washington near you. Look off to the side and see the Georgetown spires. It's where I grew up, and it's what makes the other side of the river feel so much like home.

The faces are rarely the same in the elevator, at least as my shifts at work bounce around, but it's surprising how friendly they are so often. The people who work here, delivering packages or vacuuming the lobby or on their way to fix a clogged drain, set the tone for all of us. They're comfortable here, in charge and welcoming, saying hello more than all, doing as much as our addresses to make us feel part of the building.

You get the impression most of us are just passing through, off to more permanent homes eventually, but happy to have found soft carpet and grass and faces that make today okay for this year and the next. We all hear the bugles each morning and night from Fort Myer, sitting on the next hill over, and there's not just a duty but an emotion too that makes everyone here always say hello.

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