Photographer

I got a new camera for my birthday/Christmas, which means I can now take my own pictures of tumbleweeds. Yay! My pick for the blog was going to be one with horses in it, but I went with reindeer and cacti instead.

Home on the Range

I arrived at the Denver airport (on time) yesterday afternoon to find the place looking somewhat lived in after the snowstorm that closed it down for two days. The line for security stretched around the baggage claim (pretty significant, given the size of the airport), and there were announcements asking people to wait until four hours before their flight to get in line. Four hours!

Two hours down the road, the snow was melted but my sparsely-populated hometown had made international news for its own severe weather: a tumbleweed blizzard. The wind had been high and this summer must have been a bumper time for tumbleweeds, because they piled up so high at the front of my parents' house that they rolled over the roof and filled up the back deck--my mom could only let the dog out the side door. (Disclaimer: I have no idea where this photo was taken. One would think that when tumbleweeds make the international news there should be lots of pictures of them online, but no such luck. However, this could very well be Pueblo West).

Each time I leave Pueblo (it's a little east of Pueblo West, for the uninitiated) I forget just how desolate and depressing this place is. Maybe it would help if I didn't always visit in the dead of winter, when it's brown and windy most of the time, with no natural greenery to alleviate the stark ugliness of the box stores and paycheck loan places and the lonesome stucco houses.

Soapbox II

What do you do when someone writes a near 4,000-word cover article about you, culminating in this take-down?

And now, like a mighty t-rex that has escaped from Jurassic Park, Crichton stomps across the public policy landscape, finally claiming the influence he has always sought. In this sense, he himself is like an experiment gone wrong--a creation of the publishing industry and Hollywood who has unexpectedly mutated into a menacing figure haunting think tanks, policy forums, hearing rooms, and even the Oval Office. And, ironically, this leaves Crichton in the very role he and the science-fiction genre have always derided: the hubristic man of opinions, the insider, the expert.

Well, if you're Michael Crichton, you respond like this (yes, you need to register to see the full article, but it's free and very worthwhile).

Is the pen, in fact, mightier than the sword? Discuss.

Santa's in Town

This afternoon I went to TOWWAS's Christmas show: two and a half hours of wholesome holiday revelry put on by a talented group of singers (and dancers). Then I headed to the Froggy Bottom pub with a couple of fellow audience members for an early dinner. It was five o'clock and we'd stumbled on a pub full of Santas: it was Santarchy.

There were male Santas and female Santas, an Elvis Santa, a cowboy Santa, a Trojan-helmeted Santa, and a pirate Santa. There was a Santa in a long brown cape, a Santa in a union suit, an Santa wearing a trucker hat, and a Santa with blonde dreadlocks. One woman was wearing a red dress reminiscent of the evil queen in Snow White; another was wearing a velvety red top befitting a Renaissance festival. I saw white-and-red striped tights and red fishnet tights, and numerous reindeer antlers. Some of the Santas were making out with each other indiscriminately.

At some point, after we'd finally managed to get some food from the harried waitstaff and were finishing up, the Santas all disappeared as if sucked up through a giant chimney. But in fact they'd used a less magical mode of transportation: I found myself walking behind four of them on the sidewalk after I'd left the pub. They were singing "Santa Claus is Coming to Town."

How I know I've been working hard in tae kwon do

1.) Two of my knuckles are raw
2.) My abs are still a little sore from doing pyramids in Saturday's class
(if you don't know what pyramids are, count your blessings)

I've finally graduated to the advanced class at tae kwon do after trying to catch up with lower-belt requirements since August (I came in with a red belt, but each school's belt requirements are different). So far there hasn't been a class as crushing as some of the ones we used to have in Ithaca (once, in a fog of endorphins, I nearly ran a stop sign and T-boned a minivan on my way home), but I'm fine with easing back in to things.

Christmas

Maybe I just haven't been paying enough attention in other places I've lived, but it seems like people--or rather, institutions--in DC are very into the Christmas decorating. Really more like solstice decorating, since it's mostly tasteful trees and wreaths and snowflakes, no Santas or nativity scenes. Tonight I came home to find two motorized white reindeer on top of the overhang that shades the door to my building, a giant wreath and Christmas tree in the lobby, and--my favorite--the bank of monitors at the front desk was wrapped like a present (though not the monitor part).

Unfortunately I couldn't take pictures of any of this because my digital camera is still dead, so I borrowed this one off of Flickr. Thanks, dustmachine! But not to worry: I'm getting a new camera for Christmas.

Soapbox

I know that one of the virtues of blogs is supposed to be that they're ultra-current, but I'm going to buck the trend by writing about something I did on Tuesday.

Tuesday being the day Michael Crichton's new book came out. He gave a talk at the National Press Club in honor of the occasion, and I went because of a certain professional interest in the subject of said book, but also--I'll admit it--because Michael Crichton is famous.

He used the opportunity not to read from his new book, or even talk about his new book per se, but to pontificate. In case you're wondering, he believes that political decisions these days have nothing to do with science, and everything to do with, well, politics. Reporters don't check facts and hence feed the beast of poor scientific knowledge. What we need is a reliable system of managing information. Allowing genes to be patented is a terrible policy. Peer review is useless and only serves as a barrier to truly novel discoveries being publicized. In the future, people and organizations will be held liable for bad information they put out.

I was a little envious, frankly. Not that I'd have the hubris to try to draw out an audience of hundreds on a Tuesday night to listen to me lecture about what I think is wrong with the world, but if I wanted to, could I? No. Let alone get them to plunk down $27.95 plus tax for a pre-signed copy of my book. I have to content myself with regaling my five devoted readers with tales of what I had for lunch. Damn.

Speaking of soapboxes and science, I recommend this slightly-outdated article. I went (according to Fast Food Nation) to one of the first high schools in the nation to make an exclusive deal with Coke and post ads in the hallways, and even I found it disturbing.

Thanksgiving

On Thursday morning I flew down to Charlotte, NC to visit high school friend D.S. We made some Thanksgiving-esque side dishes and spent some quality time doing a whole lot of nothing. I'd never been to North Carolina before; my first impressions were:

• The weather is great
• The place is replete with SUVs and thin bottle blondes in tight jeans and high heels
• It takes half an hour to get anywhere.

Last night we ate a lot of cheap sushi with a couple of D.S.'s friends and then went to this club, which I found surprisingly fun. I guess I was due for some dancing.

We closed the place down, and back at D.S.'s place we had a long conversation about race and class and how some things about Pueblo weren't that bad. I went to bed at 4:00 and woke up at 6:30 to catch my flight to BWI, so the trip would have been somewhat brutal even if I hadn't had a middle seat next to a broad-shouldered man. I've developed a bad habit of sleeping through the drink service and waking up parched while the flight attendants are collecting the last of the garbage.

I arrived at my metro stop at around 11:00 and was cheered by the blue sky and fresh fall air on the final, pedestrian leg of my journey. Then I came home to my lonely cat and slept for most of the afternoon.

Winter

K was in town this past weekend, which gave me a reason to explore some new parts of the city: a jazz bar on U Street, Eastern Market, an amateur production of The Crucible. We also tried Ethiopian food, which may become a kind of rite for people who come to visit me. K flew out today, and the weather promptly went from comfortable-with-a-sweatshirt to unpleasantly cold. It hasn't taken long since moving from Ithaca for me to become completely unused to low temperatures, with dramatic results: last time the weather turned chilly I broke out in hives, and I'm afraid it might be happening again.

Hives! I am officially allergic to cold. I wonder if I could parlay this into being allowed to work from home?

Canadians

Today G.R. made a disparaging comment about how I hadn't blogged lately, which was nervy of him considering we're lucky to hear from him once a week. Rather than point this out I just said my life's been too boring to blog about lately. But that was before I arrived home to find a package from G.R.'s homeland, containing this awesome t-shirt. It's exciting if you're lazy, and you were a chemistry major, and especially if you only ordered it last week and selected the cheap shipping.

I don't want to sound prejudiced here, but is anyone else a little unsure of how to classify Canadians? They're a strange hybrid of foreigner and not-foreigner, fitting in well here apart from their superior enunciation and flappy heads. You can't teach them new words like "faucet." But once in awhile they say something that reminds you they do in fact hale from a different culture.

For example, today I had a drink after work with a Canadian friend who's lived in the U.S. for six months or so. We were talking about Al Jazeera; a friend of hers just moved here from Toronto to work for the new English version. Apparently all the non-anchor personel at the English Al Jazeera are British or Canadian because Americans don't want Al Jazeera on their resumes. There was an article in the Washington Post today that this friend thought was strangely biased against Al Jazeera, too, which led her to ask me, "Why are Americans so freaked out about Al Jazeera?"

To me Americans' automatic Al Jazeera-disliking reflex is such an obvious fact of life that I probably would never have questioned it. It would be like asking why cats hate vacuum cleaners (although a friend of mine thinks cats' ancestors were terrorized by a prehistoric feline-sucking Hoover, ingraining that aversion in their genes, so maybe that's a bad example). I could have said that post-September 11 Americans fear and despise all phrases that begin with "al," but I went with the less rascist explanation and said that the only time we ever hear about Al Jazeera is when Osama bin Laden releases a video, so of course we think they're the network of terrorists.

Here's my plan for salvaging America (and its reputation): Those of my readers who are not stealing cable should email their providers and ask them to carry Al Jazeera. We'll kill two birds with one stone: America will get more news of foreign lands, and we'll show the world we're not afraid of all things "al."

Rumsfeld: a remembrance

Glass Box
You know, it's the old glass box at the—
At the gas station,
Where you're using those little things
Trying to pick up the prize,
And you can't find it.
It's—

And it's all these arms are going down in there,
And so you keep dropping it
And picking it up again and moving it,
But—

Some of you are probably too young to remember those—
Those glass boxes,
But—

But they used to have them
At all the gas stations
When I was a kid.

—Dec. 6, 2001, Department of Defense news briefing (With thanks to Slate)

Another worthy link: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1761585

Taxation without representation

Being a registered DC voter on election day is like being that kid who's not invited to the party everyone's been talking about for months. Something I just learned last night is that we elect a "Shadow Representative" and "Shadow Senator" to go harass Congress to give us the vote. That seems pretty strange to me, not to mention sad. I voted for the Republican for Senator because I thought the Man might be more likely to give us the vote if we started voting Republican.

Speaking of Republicans, I think a prime example of how parochial the DC election is is this statement in the official DC voter's guide by a Republican running for at-large member of the council:

Growing up in Seat Pleasant, Maryland, Marcus believes that playing sports and his parents sending him to a local church to participate in Boy Scouts were major factors that deterred him from the dangers of the neighborhood he lived in. As a son of a former union president Marcus developed a strong work ethic and an understanding that business and labor need balance and communication to exist.

He went on to Bowie State University where he received his B.S. in Communications and his M.A. in Human Resource Development. Academically, he received Bowie State's Scholar Athlete Award in 2001 and 2002. Currently, Marcus resides in Southeast Washington D.C. He enjoys distance running, football, and golf.

Did this guy update his college admission essay and send that in? Granted, a Republican's odds of winning office in the District would only look good to a snowball in hell, but how about a little effort?

Requiem for a camera

I just got back last night from a conference in Baltimore. I like conferences: the living above my means on someone else's money, the hanging out that we call networking. By about the third day I was starting to miss my real life, though--interacting only with other people in my profession for that long had gotten a little intense. I also didn't want Rocky to go too crazy.

Then, yesterday afternoon, tragedy struck. I was walking around the Johns Hopkins undergrad campus and dropped my camera, and now it no longer turns on. Sure, I got the camera for free, but it came all the way from Australia which made it special, and it's very small and cute. How will I illustrate my blog without a digital camera?

Case in point: Shown here (in one of the very last pictures taken with the camera) is the inside of a bathroom at the conference hotel. I think we can all agree that a picture of a marble bathroom is worth at least 1,000 words.

Acid test

You are 58% of a Coloradan!

You live either in Colorado or a surrounding state! Or, you are from Colorado and you belong back in this state!!!

How Colorado are you?

Updates

I haven't been blog-inspired lately, but here are updates on a few things I've mentioned here recently:

• Blogging about my broken DVD player seems to revive it. It groans, it considers its options, but still it clings to life.
• I bought a new pair of glasses since the eye doctor told me I need to start wearing them more (my contacts are starving my corneas for oxygen). They're a pretty strong statement.
• It turns out I took the wrong online training at work, meaning I'll have to do it again at some point. I did pass the test for the wrong training, though, demonstrating my ability to... um...
• Chinese is hard. I don't know whether my grey matter has hardened noticably since the last time I took Mandarin (four and a half years ago), or whether it's just very hard to absorb a language when you only go to class once a week, but I need to hit the books harder if I ever want to learn a foreign language (and I do).

Friday afternoon at the office

I hope I'm not giving away any trade secrets, but here's a sample of what I'm "learning" in mandatory online training:

Time constraints determine which combination of validity periods are allowed among different infotype records for an organizational management object as it is created and maintained.

As an office worker, my eyes are glazing over. As a writer, I'm crying inside.

Another philosophical nugget:

A person is defined as an object that holds positions within the organizational structure.

Haircut

I got about five inches of hair cut off today. I'd been bored with my hair for awhile, and then I was watching Buffy Season 5 on DVD and thought I'd like something like Alyson Hannigan had. It's a little embarassing taking a promotional photo from Buffy the Vampire Slayer to the hairdresser with you, but I got over it.

I like it, although it doesn't quite look like Willow's (even leaving aside the color). You can see what it looks like (in bad lighting but professionally styled) if you're one of my Flickr buddies.

The screen for my computer came in yesterday, so I've entered a whole new age of computing. I can download things without first erasing other things, and run more than three programs at once, and burn CDs--in short, the possibilities are endless.

Shenandoah

This weekend, on a whim, I rented a car and headed into rural Virginia. I stayed at a B&B south of Madison, drove around, looked at trees, and read the current book-club book. Sunday morning I went for a 4-mile hike in Shenandoah National Park.

It was really lovely. I realized that since my weekend in Western Maryland at the end of August I've only left DC to go to other cities--New York and Baltimore, to be exact--or the Maryland suburbs. I think I should make a point of taking advantage of my Zipcar membership at least once a month.

In other (not unrelated) news, my DVD player seems to have finally given up the ghost. Since I've blown my budget on a new computer, it will have to function as a DVD player until I feel ready for big electronic purchases again. And don't leave me comments about how DVD players cost $40--I want a non-crappy one this time.

Mac attack

Today I got my new Mac mini in the mail. This is a huge step up from the G3 from the last millenium that I'm using now. The bad news is that the monitor to accompany this beautiful machinery is still with the UPS somewhere in Utah. So the CPU will have to languish in the box for a week or so.

Overheard 2

I rode the metro this evening next to a small group of high schoolers. I was reading the Atlantic and they were chatting and giggling; I wasn't paying much attention to them. Then, just before I got off, they started saying things like,

"Oh, yeah, we could form an ad hoc committee, but anything could be an ad hoc committee!"
and,
"But I don't think we should follow Robert's Rules of Order."

Sure, maybe this could have happened anywhere. Maybe they were in the equivalent of Boys and Girls State, like we had in Colorado (do they have those in other states?). But I prefer to think that Washington is the kind of place where conversations about ad hoc committees can happen anytime, to anyone.

Hot tip: Greg's brain is now your brain. Yes, you can find out everything you need to know on his new blog. A bonus is that he's decided to show off his knowledge of HTML by making it all green and plant-y.

Questions and answers

Last night I finally figured out how to use the corkscrew on my Swiss Army knife. The approach I had been taking was to screw it in, then attempt to use brute strength to pull the cork out. This wasn't working, even though I've been doing my push-ups. Finally I figured out that the key is just to keep screwing. The cork gets destroyed in the process, as shown here, but you can't be worried about niceties like a few bits of cork in your wine when you're fighting for survival in the woods.

The reason I needed to break out the camping equipment is that NCSV accidentally broke my corkscrew when she was visiting. It wasn't much of a loss--I think I'd bought it for $.50 at a garage sale--but I missed it last night when I wanted to pour myself a glass of $3 Chuck and watch Death in Venice.

It turned out I was correct in assuming it was a movie best enjoyed with a glass of wine. It was made in 1971 and the pacing was pretty glacial. It tackled heady questions such as the relationship between art, purity, and beauty, but for me the questions raised were more along the lines of:

-Did people really dress like that in 1971?
-Why is the Polish family speaking French?
-So that guy was married before he was gay?
-Why is he bleeding from the head?
-What inspired me to get this movie, anyway?

The first question was answered when I watched the extras: the movie takes place in 1911. Whew. For the rest, I can only conclude that I was a little out of my depth with this masterpiece of Italian cinema.

The Science of Sleep

It's been rainy today, and cold. DC smells clean now but it was a sad reminder that I really need to start wearing shoes and probably long sleeves when I go out, because sandals just aren't cutting it anymore.

Schmer and I snuck out of work early today to go see The Science of Sleep. It's written and directed by Michel Gondry, who directed Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, and it's very, very strange. The strangeness could be summed up by saying that the main character's dream life is more important than his waking life, and the two frequently blend together. Highly recommended for those who like their arty films served up with a liberal sprinkling of belly laughs.

Wo shi xuesheng

Today I started a weekly Chinese class. I took two semesters worth of Chinese when I was in college, but promptly forgot all but a few words. Although it starts to come back to me when I watch Chinese movies, and was also looking familiar to me last night when I finally, guiltily, reviewed a little. I skipped the very beginning course, where they teach you things like the four tones and how to pronounce "cuo," and was wondering if I should have been more ambitious--i.e. gone for a higher course. But I think I made the right choice, given that I really don't remember the characters and that this school uses traditional characters (whereas I learned simplified before).

The America I believe in

As loyal readers (all four of you) may have noticed, I don't blog about politics. In fact I don't talk about politics much anymore, not because I don't care but because I find the subject too depressing. But given what happened last week, I can't bring myself to blog about the fact that I'm going to have to start wearing glasses in public again for the first time since eighth grade.

As I understand it, Congress responded to persistent and reliable reports of American abuse of prisoners in Afghanistan, Abu Ghraib, Eastern Europe, and Guantanamo not by putting a stop to it, but by officially sanctioning George Bush's ability to define what torture is. Here's an excerpt from an email Amnesty International sent me on Friday:

It's a sad day for America and a very disappointing outcome for those of us who devote ourselves to advancing the global cause of human rights.

Yesterday, the Senate joined the House in approving an ill-considered and sweeping piece of legislation, the Military Commissions Act of 2006, that discards key human rights protections -- and our best American traditions.

This could have been a proud moment for America. Congress had the opportunity to correct the Bush administration's profoundly disturbing human rights policies.

This was an opportunity for Congress to advance the America you and I believe in. They failed to do so. In effect, they gave their stamp of approval to human rights violations. In the face of this set back, you and I must commit ourselves to working as long as it takes until we reverse the damage done yesterday to the cause of human rights.

Unlike AI, I'm not optimistic about reversing this damage, at least not in the near future. I'm pretty much just depressed and cynical. So I'm looking for suggestions on what I, or anyone else might do to constructively funnel our outrage. How do we get America to stop torturing people?

The larynx of my generation

I've long felt like an outsider among thinking twentysomethings because I didn't care for Garden State. I'd assumed I would love the movie, and I seemed to have all the characteristics of someone who would--so what was wrong with me? But hadn't I seen that ending about a dozen times before--anyone remember Friends? Now, dependably contrarian Slate has come through for me with some unapologetic Garden State bashing.

Rock & roll sleepover

This weekend three of my friends from Ithaca came down to visit, and we all went to the Virgin Music Festival in Baltimore. Since these friends know way more about music than me we didn't just roll in in mid-afternoon--no, we were there at 10:30 to make sure we didn't miss the first band. Fortunately, they were worth it: Kasabian (no, I'd never heard of them either). NSCV didn't pace herself at all. She was the only one in the crowd dancing during Kasabian, and boy did she put us to shame.

Other acts I saw (in chronological order):
Wolfmother
The Raconteurs
Gnarls Barkley
The Killers
Thievery Corporation
The Who
Red Hot Chili Peppers
The Flaming Lips

It was a lot of fun, if exhausting. I'll leave the reviews to the real critics (it's almost my bedtime) and share the language-geek anecdote behind this picture. I saw the sign hanging up at a booth selling some sort of roasted nuts (which didn't smell at all, by the way), and had to memorialize it. When I walked over to take the picture, I had to wait for a guy to take his own photo with his cell phone. As he started to walk away I said, "I guess we both had the same thought. It's just so bad."

Cellphone cam guy: "Yeah, me and my friends have this thing about Baltimore and its inappropriate use of quotation marks."

Me: "I thought it was everywhere, but this is particularly egregious."

Cellphone cam guy: "You're very cool."

Me: "You, too."

And then we went our separate ways.

Danger

HSBFF wanted to tour the Capitol, but tours are only offered there on Mondays and he didn't want to go on September 11, because it seemed too dangerous to him--a decision for which I mocked him. Instead he went yesterday, after a crack-addled armed man went for a run through the building. Oh goddess of irony, to what do I owe this blessing?

Kitchen island

My kitchen literally has no counter space. My microwave had been sitting in a box on the floor until last night. I intended to buy a kitchen island, and looked at many on craigslist, but there were logistical problems: getting a truck to carry it with, and perhaps timing the purchase so that there'd be a friend around to help me haul it to and from the truck.

But last night I saw a sign posted in the elevator and decided to take advantage of an even better resource than Zipcar and visiting friends: an apartment sale in my building. After all, people in my building face the same no-counter-space problem I do, and it's easy to talk them in to helping me haul stuff up to my place in the elevator. So I picked up this lovely kitchen island for $50, including the cutting board. It's perfect. The tea kettle was another $2.

Last night's other big event was that I got disc 1 of Season 2 of The Office, fresh out on DVD, and felt compelled to watch all six episodes (with deleted scenes) so that I could get another disc for the weekend. Satisfying, yes, but it took me until 12:30 and I felt more easily-annoyed than usual today.

Speaking of annoying, I've stopped getting HBO and Showtime. One disadvantage of stealing cable is that one can't complain about such things, at least not to the cable company. I'm stuck with hoping my premium channels will come back someday.

Weekend in review

Friday: HSBFF finally arrives in DC in the evening. We go out to Dakota Cowgirl to meet some friends of his for dinner. Our mustachioed waitress decides HSBFF is giving her attitude and swats him with her order pad. My veggie burger isn't bad.

Saturday: We head to the Mall, starting at the Library of Congress's Madison building, the inside of which resembles the public university in our hometown. The Jefferson buiding is much more impressive, especially the Gutenburg Bible and the replica of the 16th-century world map that named America America. We take pictures at the Supreme Court and the Capitol, then head past a "Veterans for Peace" demonstration to the National Archives. I'd been there before, but not for 12 years.

Tired, we stop by the White House to ogle a black-clad commando, then head home. Dinner that night is Ethiopian, which HSBFF likes but declares "pretty much like American food but with different spices." We attempt to make a coffee cake for Sunday's brunch, but thanks to an improper pan sizing disaster it becomes necessary for me to wake up at 6:00 a.m. and go to Safeway for more butter on...

Sunday: We bake a coffee cake and two quiches with no major disasters, also managing to make some excellent fruit salad and a small smorgasbord of cheeses and salami to go with the Italian bread. We head to the roof with all this plus mimosa ingredients to await our guests.

It goes pretty well, overall: about eight people show up other than us, although they don't eat much. I blame the heat. The cheese/salami smorgasbord isn't popular and soon comes to resemble something they'd serve in Mongolia. I take it down to Rocky, but even she won't touch it. Seemingly she only likes Meow Mix and plastic bags. Really: I can't leave plastic bags on the floor or she will eat them. But I digress.

After a few hours in the sun the brunchers are getting pretty warm as well. They trickle out, and I go to Adams Morgan Day with TOWWAS because HSBFF feels he has better things to do. I buy a 1989 Rand McNally World Atlas at a garage sale on the way back, complete with two Germanys, the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia, and Czechoslovakia. I figure it will be worth more than $2 some day.

Overheard

So here's what happened to me this weekend: my Internet stopped working. Then I went to New York City (the events were unrelated). The technicians just came and fixed the Internet, and fortunately didn't notice/comment on the fact that I'm stealing cable from their company.

A snippet of conversation I overheard on the bus from DC to NYC on Saturday:

"Oh, I despised her. Any girl who would hang out with dorks just because she likes the attention... that's why she went to Cornell, you know."

I was amused.

In NYC I met my best friend from high school (henceforth to be referred to as HSBFF), whom I haven't seen in two years because he lives in Seattle. We ate ethnic foods and walked around and went to some really gay bars and the UN. We stayed in a very crappy, overpriced hostel. I wish one of my good friends would move to New York so that I'd have a free place to stay there again.

On Sunday night we were walking down the sidewalk and saw someone we'd known in high school and hadn't seen since. I think this is a bigger coincidence than the time I was chatting with a girl in Ithaca and we realized we'd been in the same Turkish class... in Turkey.

HSBFF is coming to visit me on Thursday. He'll be my first visitor in the penthouse, not including my sister (who helped me move here).

Mystery solved (sort of)

Fri, Sep 1, 2006 at 12:55 PM

Well this could explain why my best friend didn't get this lil joke email. My sincerest apologies. See what I get for trying to do things half asleep? I am so very very sorry. Not sure what I did other than Williams was her maiden name. What a dork I am. Have a great day! Pamela

OMG! Another One!

Date: Sep 1, 2006 9:54 AM

Subject: Literati Notice #2

Reply | Reply to all | Forward | Print | Add sender to Contacts list | Delete this message | Report phishing | Show original | Message text garbled?

Mrs. Allison, Since it would seem that you did not receive our first notice, this is to inform you that on Friday, Sept 1st, 2006, all Literati games between DA baby bear and DA pinky fuzzball shall be played in Social Lounge 33. We appreciate your cooperation on this matter and apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused. Thank You, The Literati Staff Pamela [rest of signature withheld] I guess I'm going to have to email Pam back and let her know I'm not Mrs. Allison. Maybe she'll keep me on the mailing list anyway, if I'm lucky.

Message From the Ether

Actual email I just received:

Date: Sep 1, 2006 4:39 AM
Subject: Literati Memo

Reply | Reply to all | Forward | Print | Add sender to Contacts list | Delete this message | Report phishing | Show original | Message text garbled?

Mrs. Allison, This is to inform you that on Friday, Sept 1st, 2006, all Literati games between da baby bear and da pinky fuzzball shall be played in Social Lounge 33. We appreciate your cooperation on this matter and apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused. Thank You, The Literati Staff Pamela [rest of signature withheld]

Is this spam of some new and bewildering sort? Or did it just go to the wrong email address? Either way, I appreciate the touch of surreality it lends to my morning.

[And yes, I am aware that 'surreality' is not a real word. Shakespeare made them up too, you know.]

Pillow

Here's one for you Coupling fans: Today I spent $38 on a pillow. Why would I do such a thing, seeing that I come from frugal stock, and indeed the futon this pillow graces cost a mere $100? Well, I went to a three-story department store today after work that was in the final stages of its closing sale. It's called Hecht's, and it must have been pretty upscale until very recently, but it was kind of eerie by the time I found it. The first floor had nothing but store fixtures left, and some 70%-off rugs (originally priced in the $3,000-$9,000 range). Upstairs the selection was only slightly better. It looked like most of the affordable things had been carted off long ago, leaving, for example, a wide choice of dyed-pink foxfur coats.

But it seemed there must be something for me in this going-out-of-business sale. Wandering through the bedding section I spotted this pillow. It didn't have a price tag, but it was 70% off and I thought, how much can a pillow be?

$170, that's how much. By the time I found this out, though, I felt invested in buying the pillow. I'd been wandering around the store with it for awhile, having a last phone conversation with Nell before she disappears into Siberia, trying to find a cashier willing to ring me up... and after all if the pillow used to be $170 there must be something special about it, right?

I think it adds a lot to the futon. Unfortunately it makes the other two pillows feel bad--I think they cost $5 each at BigLots. I'm going to have to go donate some money toward stopping genocide in Darfur to atone for this.

Irony from an unexpected source

Pig
Originally uploaded by ChezShawna.

Today I got a box of cookies from my parents. It also included a small tissue-paper wrapped bundle with a note shown here (it says "I am a housewarming gift. Don't throw me away!").

I have nothing to say that would do this pig justice, so I won't try.

Zhongwen

Today I signed up for Chinese classes. They don't start til October, but it's a step in my doing-more-stuff plan. Seriously: I've spent $15 on public transportation since I got here, and I don't even have a car. It's a sad state of affairs. But soon I'll know Chinese and can explore China, which I've heard is pretty far away.

I'd like to express my solidarity with TOWWAS, who's trapped in some sort of cyber-limbo. I mean, didn't she have enough problems, what with the cough and the mysterious wisps of smoke emanating from her steering column? Google really needs to get its act together: today it started sending me someone else's email. She might be my alter ego--same name (different middle initial), a year older than me, same astrological sign. We've both lived in California and New York. But she's a lesbian. How do I know all this? Not because I've been reading her email (that would be creepy). It's the beauty of MySpace.

The Best Prize is a Sur-prise

The surprise was that Veronica Mars wasn't in my mailbox when I got home today. Why, Netflix, why must you fail me in my time of need?

So I watched the Charlie and the Chocolate Factory remake on stolen premium cable instead. I seem to be the only person of my generation not to have seen the original, so I didn't have too many expectations. This movie was a chance to ponder once again what a strange and wonderful actor Johnny Depp is. Also the interesting stereotypes. For example, to all appearances, Charlie lives in England. But when he's in the store and finds the golden ticket, suddenly people with American accents start offering him dollars for it. Because Americans are so vulgar we commodify everything? The kid playing the violent video game was, of course, from Denver... Columbine, anyone? I thought it was a little strange that he'd gotten so smart when his weakness was supposed to be TV. Everything he said made a lot of sense, but the moral seemed to be that with optimism and old-fashioned gumption, one can overcome the laws of physics and logic.

I did enjoy the movie, though, moralizing and all.

31 Days in DC

Well, I've been here a month now, and here's a short list of things I've done: unpacked, started a new job, acquired a futon and a cat, sold my car, started reading Wonkette, read Middlesex, watched 5/6 of the first season of Veronica Mars, met a half-second cousin, started a new blog, and gotten a haircut. The last might not sound like a big deal to normal people, but it had been six months. I was gently reprimanded about the state of my split ends.

I've become addicted to Veronica Mars, so much so that I added her to my MySpace friends. The final disk (in which the big mystery is finally solved) arrives tomorrow from Netflix--a big moment for me. Season Two is coming out this month, but I'm going to try taking at least a few months break before diving into that one. That might give me time to take care of some of the more interesting items on my to-do list, like finding a new tae kwon do school and taking Chinese. Not to mention decorating my apartment.

By the way, anybody have suggestions on what to do when your walls are so hard that nails bend when you try to hang pictures?

Success!

I did it! I sold my car. The upside of the pain I went through to do so is that I now feel convinced that I really, really wanted to sell that car. My life seems simpler already.

The DMV in Montgomery County was much nicer than the one in DC. There was a parking lot and no metal detector, the inside was painted a soothing shade of light blue, and there were skylights. The real shocker was that the staff were friendly and helpful.

Here's a parting shot of my car, which I owned for two years almost to the day. Goodbye, Grommit, and thanks for all the memories.

The Crushing Difficulty of Simplification

WARNING: This entry contains extensive bitching and graphic scenes of frustration.

As readers of this blog know, I am attempting to simplify my life by selling my beloved car, Grommit. I recently got Grommit's title in the mail from the bank where I'd just paid him off, along with a letter asking me to make an appointment at my local DMV to get the bank officially released as lienholder on the car. The bank is in California.

I put this task off for a week or two. On Monday, however, I found a guy who wanted to buy the car (yay!) so decided to get the title business taken care of. So yesterday morning I went down to the DMV, which inexplicably is located very near the Capitol so of course has grossly inadequate parking. Having miraculously managed to secure a space on a street a mere 4 blocks away, I walked in, stood in line and explained the situation.

Of course the woman behind the counter had no idea what I was talking about. She suggested I go to the DMV in California. When I convinced her this was not the best course of action, she told me that I would need to

1.) get a DC drivers license, requiring
a.) proof of address
b.) my social security card, and
c.) my birth certificate

2.) surrender my current California title and wait 10-15 days for DC to mail me a new one.

So I marched out in a huff. I hope they learned their lesson.

Then I moved on to plan B: get my form filled out at the Maryland DMV while transferring ownership to Mr. Buyer, who lives in that state. I was scheduled to meet Mr. Buyer at the DMV this afternoon but called ahead to try to determine if plan B would be feasible. Maryland DMV worker was also confused, but seemed to think it could be done. She did tell me, though, that we'd need to print out a bill of sale from the website and get it notarized before coming in. We should be able to get it notarized at any bank, though, she said.

Thus Mr. Buyer and I decided to meet at his bank instead of at the DMV so that he could procure a check at the same time that we got the form notarized. At least I thought that's what we decided. Mr. Buyer thought we were meeting at a suburban metro station. His directions included the name of the major road said station is on, plus the not-at-all helpful information that it was in a downtown-type area and had a bridge to a tall building. By the time I got there I was already ready to strangle him. I really hate driving in this town.

But I did get there, with only a little bit of backtracking, and Mr. Buyer and I were off. Mr. B is a skinny Iranian-American kid with pungent B.O. It's worth noting that he's starting medical school soon. He told me to turn left to get to his bank, and half a mile or so down the road said we'd passed it and had me turn around. It turned out we should have turned right in the first place. He apologized. We eventually got to his bank, where the notary had gone home for the day. A bank employee had us wait for 10 minutes while he called another branch to make sure their notary was on duty, then printed out a MapQuest map for us. This seemed like a nice touch until we were three miles down the road and were most assuredly not on the right track: it was time for another U-turn.

(Later, on closer inspection, I determined that the directions we'd gotten were not actually from one branch to the other branch. There were from some unidentified location in that suburb to the branch we needed to go to, and they'd directed us in exactly the wrong way.)

After about 6 miles of fruitless searching for the branch, during which we became increasingly discouraged about the possibility of reaching the DMV before its 4:30 closing time, Mr. B and I concurred we should just go to any bank for the notarization. I thought this was a good idea because I thought Mr. B had mentioned earlier that he'd already been to the bank that day to get the check for the car--another miscommunication. Mr. B thought this was a good idea because he is an idiot.

There are lots of banks in Rockville. A substantial proportion of them, we found, close at 3:00 pm. Finally we found one that was open (until 7:00!) and had a notary on duty. It was unlikely we'd make it to the DMV on time, but at least the whole excursion would accomplish something. Or so it seemed.

We sat down with the notary. She put our names in her book. She told me to sign my part of the bill of sale.

"This would be the time when you give me the check," I said to Mr. B.

He didn't have it. He apologized profusely.

I hadn't been exactly nice to Mr. B so far that afternoon. He's easily the worst navigator ever to sit shotgun in Grommit. But at that point I lost my cool a little.

"How," I asked, "did you plan to buy a car?"

More apologizing as we left the bank and got into the car yet again. Oh, he thought he'd just get the check when we got the bill of sale notarized, he forgot, this was his first time buying a car, etc.

He decided that the best course of action would be to go back to the first branch and at least get the check today. He apologized some more, and I wished he'd stop because I felt like the ball was in my court to tell him it was ok, and it really wasn't. If I weren't a 20-something vegetarian I would have been worried about my blood pressure. As it was I was worried I might commit vehicular homicide.

I dropped him off at the bank. We decided to meet at a DMV in a different suburb (one closer to the city) at 9:00 am to continue the odyssey.

Stewing in my car on the way back home, it occurred to me that I could make myself feel better by enjoying my car while I still had it. And the obvious way to enjoy my car was to take advantage of Rockville's plethora of box stores and strip malls. My first stop was at the Container Store, where I bought a handy cart (shown eons ago at the start of this entry). That's what people use to shop for groceries when they don't have a car. My other stops were Ann Taylor Loft (no luck this time), Baskin Robbins (nothing like a milkshake to calm the soul), and Trader Joe's, where I stocked up like a girl who won't get back to Trader Joe's for a long, long time. It worked: I recovered much of my equanimity. Only to lose it again when I got back into the traffic hell that is the District and almost hit a blind man.

Will I manage to sell my car before grinding my teeth down to nubs and losing my new job due to absenteeism? Stay tuned.

The Apocalypse

That's right, guys: sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but I hope you've already built your bomb shelters. I'm sure there will soon be a shortage of concrete. This newsletter was left outside my apartment door this evening.






But perhaps this provides some cause for optimism. Do you think they'll deliver to my bomb shelter?

In other religious news, I think this must be the best snippet to come out of the Mel Gibson anti-Semite debacle: "his twistedly homoerotic spank-movie The Passion of the Christ..."

Free Lunch and Other Anomalies

Notable events from today:

-The whole office went out to lunch at Vidalia to celebrate certain recent accomplishments. It was fancy, as you can see from my rather blurry vegetarian entree. Also it took about 2 1/2 hours.

-I got a parking ticket. I'd been so absorbed in looking at the sign that said people with my permit number were allowed to park there that I failed to notice the sign underneath it prohibiting parking during rush hour. There was a stupid $100 mistake. I'm hoping, though, that being that I'm about to ditch my out-of-state license plates (and the car, for that matter), I can stick it to the man by just not paying it. It's worked for me before (knock on wood): I still owe the city of New York $65.

-Which serves as yet another reminder of the advantages of not driving. I listed the Beetle for sale this evening. The idea leading a simpler, car-free existence held a lot of appeal for me, even before the ticket--I just wish I didn't have to give up Grommit to achieve it.

-It's the last day of July! And what a month it's been.

Exploring

Jeanne D'Arc

I am a lazy person. I've been in DC for over two weeks now, and have I been downtown to admire the monuments? No. Have I finished organizing my apartment? Found a new tae kwon do school? No and no. Do I have a rollicking social life that consumes all my time and thus prevents me from doing anything remotely productive? Also no.

However, I am happy to report that yesterday on my way home from work I finally went to see the park across the street from my building. And I have pictures to prove it.

This one, for example. Not being an expert on these things, I'm nevertheless pretty sure this statue of Joan of Arc has no artistic merit, but it seems like a cutely quaint thing to find in a park, particularly since the plaque is in French.

For lunch today I got ambitious enough to venture out to Meze. I've been reading Middlesex, which takes place partly in Anatolia and probably gave me the idea that I wanted Mediterranean cuisine.

I can't claim this was really exploring because I'd been there with K and been pretty excited to find a real Turkish restaurant. Today I got to see their brunch menu, though, which includes Turkish breakfast. Some months ago I got a sudden craving for Turkish breakfast, which includes olives and salty cheese and cucumbers and a hard-boiled egg, among other things, but at the time the only place I knew of to get it was... Turkey. Now I know where to go my Turkish breakfast fix.

Bookish

Today on my walk home there was a woman in front of me reading a book as she shuffled along in her flip-flops. As I passed her I noticed she was also holding a highlighter, and some of the lines on the page she was on were highlighted. I was impressed with her dedication: I haven't even tried watching videos on my iPod while I walk.

To Drive Or Not To Drive

Today I got an auto insurance quote for D.C., and it wasn't pretty. Then I got some more quotes, and they weren't much better. So the question I'm thinking of just selling my car rather than spending oodles of money to keep it parked on the street all the time except for the 1-2 times a week when it seems more convenient to drive through D.C.'s notorious traffic and find parking than to just walk or take public transit. I can always rent a car for weekend excursions, right? To be honest, convenience comes in third in my reasons not to sell my car, the first two being:

1.) I really like Grommit, he's a very distinctive accessory, and I literally just paid him off (should be getting the title in the mail any day)
2.) It will be a pain in the ass to sell my car

Neither of which should really tip the balance toward the spending of oodles of money (not to mention time at the DMV!) to let a car languish by the curb.

Still, I'd feel better if I knew someone who'd give Grommit a good home. Anyone want to adopt a car? He won't be free to good home, but I might knock some off the blue book value for the right person...

Or maybe better insurance news will come in the morning.



Speaking of adoptions, Rocky is doing better. She's still hiding when I come home and not eating as much as she probably should, but she's acting much more like a sweet, affectionate, non-terrified cat. [TOWWAS: I remember telling you a long time ago that if I started a blog it would have to be about my cat. Case in point. Although to be fair, I would have included a picture of my car too if it weren't nine floors and a long, long hallway away. I didn't even have to get up to take a picture of Rocky.]

New Shoes

Yesterday after work I went shopping. I wanted some summery office clothes, but I ended up with three pairs of shoes, a book, one very expensive undergarment, and one lonely skirt. In my defense, I found the shoes at a pricey shop in Georgetown where everything is made in Europe and both cute AND comfortable, and they were on sale. Being that walking is my main mode of transportation now, I feel good shoes are important.



By the way, the second pair are the first pair of flip flops I've owned since I was a little girl and wore the plastic kind. Yes, I'm a little behind the times.

I was thinking as I was taking the metro from work to Georgetown and then home how strange it is to actually be living in a city. I'm always a visitor in cities, unless you count Colorado Springs (really just a spiral of suburbs around a pitiful downtown) or London (where I spent three weeks once).

On the way home I bought a bag of cat treats and a can of tuna cat food for poor Rocky, who as far as I could tell had not eaten in the two days since I'd brought her home. It worked, sort of: Rocky the scaredy-cat has eaten a few treats, but more excitingly she's venturing out now periodically to demand attention. She still spends a lot of time under the bed and in the closet, but when in the closet she's not huddled in the corner or in her covered litterbox. She's just hanging out in the closet.

So it seems Rocky may decide to end her hunger strike and live with me after all. More updates to come.

Rocky

I really think a yellow Beetle has the power to incite goodwill in the hearts of man. Two cases in point, both drawn from this evening:

1.) I'd parked my car on the street on Sunday, and when I came to get it this evening I saw it was in an "emergency no parking area." Had been for two days. It was in front of a building that seemed to be in the process of being demolished, in fact, and there was a dumpster just behind my car. Yet Grommit had not been towed or ticketed.

2.) Upon reaching my destination I couldn't find legal parking, so decided to squat in front of a "diplomatic cars only: romanian embassy" sign. It didn't have hours posted, but I thought no one would need to park at the Romanian embassy at 8:30 p.m. However, as I got out of my car a guy came out and told me I couldn't park there.
"Not even for ten minutes?" I asked.
"For ten minutes, ok. But no longer," he answered in his (presumably) Romanian accent.

And you know what? I'm pretty sure I was there for 15. No ticket, no tow.

The occasion for which I broke out the car was to go meet a cat named Rocky. Until this evening Rocky lived with a guy who works on my floor and his family, but they got a new dog a while back that makes Rocky very nervous, and had decided the cat would be happier in another home, one with no dogs. I was forwarded an email to that effect yesterday afternoon, when I'd settled in just enough to start thinking seriously about acquiring a four-legged roommate.

Unfortunately Rocky, like most cats, does not like being transported. She (yes, Rocky is a she) meowed all the way home, and although I miraculously avoided getting lost on the trip, I seemed to hit every red light. She meowed as I walked a block to my building and down the long hallway to the elevator and into my apartment. When I put the cat carrier down in the walk-in closet and opened the door, she still stayed there meowing for half a minute or so. She was traumatized.

I closed the door of the closet, thinking it might be easier for her to get used to one room at first before exploring the apartment, and also not wanting her to escape when I opened the door. I went back down to the car to get the kitty litter donated by her former owner, and when I came back I found Rocky wedged into the corner of the closet as far as she could go. She meowed piteously, but I really didn't know what I could do for her; it was one of the saddest things I'd ever seen. So I took this picture. Then I decided to put a box in front of her to see if that helped her agoraphobia, and in fact she did stop meowing, though she's still got her nose in the corner. Poor thing.

Inside the Beltway

Until recently I lived in Ithaca, New York and blogged on MySpace. Now I live inside the Beltway and blog on Blogger. Here's a little rundown on what I've been doing lately:

Last Tuesday I went to my last tae kwon do class, then played Ticket To Ride with some friends. It's a board game that involves building train lines across a map of North America, and I came in dead last in the first game (I'd also done pretty poorly the last time we'd played). But for the second game I got paired with another serial loser and... we won! It was a historic moment. Also it was a very late one, which was unfortunate because on Wednesday I had to go pick up my sister at the airport very early.

I'd flown her in from Denver to help me move, and being that it's very expensive to fly from Denver to upstate New York I sent her to Rochester in an effort to save money. Rochester is an hour and a half from Ithaca, which can seem like a long time when it's raining hard the whole way there and the whole way back. We stopped on the way into town to admire Taughanock Falls, and it occured to me that I hadn't been there since I was in Ithaca for the very first time interviewing for my job there. It was a nice bookend to my time there.

Then we rested for a bit, picked up the moving truck, and started loading it. Thursday morning we got up early with the intention of leaving town at 8:00, but by the time we'd finished packing the truck and the car and cleaning the apartment it was 10:30. K had to drive the truck since she can't drive my car (it's a standard), so we caravaned down to the capital. It took forever, and of course we were just north of Baltimore when rush hour started, which didn't help. Finally got to my building at about 6:45, when the loading dock theoretically closed at 7:00, so all we could do was frantically unload some boxes and trash bags full of bedding in order to camp on the floor.

Later that evening we headed to 18th Street in Adams Morgan for dinner. I started to worry that I'd moved into too hip a neighborhood, but the food was good, and, ignoring our sweaty selves, so was the atmosphere.

Saturday and Sunday I hung out with TOWWAS and shopped and tried to unpack (a slow and still-incomplete process).

And yesterday... I started work! I commute on foot, which is nice except for the heat wave. How hot is it? Walking into an air conditioned building from the street feels shocking, like diving into cool water. But people assure me this is 1.) temporary; and, 2.) as bad as it gets, which is comforting.

The cool thing about the walk to work is how many errands I could potentially take care of on the way. It's only 20 minutes, but along the way there's Safeway, CVS, 7-11, four dry cleaners, two liquor stores, a hardware store, a day spa, a shoe repair place, two Subways, a Starbucks, and numerous promising-looking non-chain restaurants. Not to mention that I can catch up on my podcasts!