Familiarity

Today I decided to go off campus for dinner again. I felt the need for something familiar, so I googled (I wonder if that as a verb will outlive Google?) Wendy's and found one a couple of miles away that I could drive to on streets I'm already familiar with. And as long as I was going out, why not see if I could find a Barnes and Noble as well? There were a couple of things I needed, so it seemed like a good evening's excursion.

Wendy's are much the same anyplace. They have decent salads. Add a baked potato, and you have a pretty good meal. The one on King Street is actually across the Arlington line and shares a parking lot with a 7-11 and a Taco Bell. As often happens these days, I missed the turn into the lot and had to turn around. During the drive there I found that King Street has an interchange with 395, which runs from the District to Springfield, VA, so I didn't have to backtrack and go up Quaker. That would have been closer than going all the way back to Seminary Road, which is the way I might have gone had I only been going to Barnes and Noble. I'm sure I could have driven local streets to Potomac Yard, but I'll leave that for a day when I feel like exploring rather than heading somewhere specific.

While all Barnes and Nobles are similar, no two have the same arrangement of sections. One interesting thing I noted at the Potomac Yard Center store was that the Religion section (Bibles, Christian reference and literature, Judaica, and minimal Islam) was separated from the New Age section by about half the store. In almost every Barnes and Noble I've visited those two sections are next to each other, if not contiguous. So with an unfamiliar layout it took me a couple of minutes to find the travel section. I needed a local atlas and a DC guidebook. The atlas was easy, though they have Rand McNally ones down here instead of the Hagstroms back home up north in the New York Metro area (wherever!). I love that it says "Your in-car backup to Internet directions" on the cover. Given my experience with Google maps over the past week...

The guide book was a different story. What I intended to get was the Eyewitness Travel Washington, DC. I like the Eyewitness Travel books. They're a nice size and have a nice variety of illustrations. But what about Virginia? Or Maryland? After perusing several different guides, including some other ones that covered only Washington, DC, I stuck with my original choice. The DC guide covers enough of the immediate surrounding area that it will meet my needs for quite a while. When I do get to the point where I'm ready to explore more of Virginia, I'm probably going to buy Backroads and Byways of Virginia: Drives, Day Trips & Weekend Excursions. Most of the basic information given by a guidebook can also be researched on the Internet. It's these more local excursion books that I find more interesting and more helpful in learning about an area. I may also invest in a book of local bicycle tours, too.

The unplanned purchase was A Guide to Historic Alexandria. I found several picture books about Alexandria and its past, but this one had some text. As a history buff, I want to know some of the history of my new city. And it will be something out of town guests can take a look at when they visit.

Working toward new familiarity.