Get ready, world, for Wendy's first blog

This blog is for family and will have zero interest to anyone whose last name isn’t Griswold, Padgett, Reinertsen, or Vinson (and I may be exaggerating my potential readership here). Since I’m in Washington this month and since I have limited e-mail ability, I thought a blog would be a way that my family members could check up on what I’m doing. And if no one checks, well, at least it serves as an ongoing journal.

So although I’d like to say something about work, if I want Olivia or Ray to ever read this (actually, if I want anyone to read it besides, maybe, John), I better start with something besides work. Dogs, for instance. Capitol Hill, where I’m living, is thick with dogs. People walk every breed you can imagine (a mellow Weimeraner lives down the street, and yesterday I made much over a Yorkie being walked by an adoring couple), and there are dog groups at every park. At dinner time I often jog around Lincoln Park, at East Capitol and Eleventh, where there are always people standing around watching their dogs (who mostly stand around too), all circled by an endless stream of joggers—sort of like the tigers in Little Black Sambo. The Kelly’s have some sort of small terrier (Poppy) and their daughter and son-in-law and two kids, now living with them while their new-old house gets refurbished, have two adorable poodles always are mewing for attention outside my door. Then the guy who lives in the basement apartment has two “American Eskimos,” white dogs bred to be circus performers. So we are a five-dog household in a multi-dog neighborhood. This sounds like a lot, but barking is rarely heard and dog poop never seen; Capitol Hill is nothing if not neat. Dogs and flowers and bricks and old houses: that’s the visual image of the neighborhood. And joggers, but usually not with dogs, oddly enough.