Later this week, Catherine and I are heading to Las Vegas for Mel's 21st birthday. I'm really looking forward to it. Vegas is a strange place. You come face-to-face with a kind of decadence that boggles the mind. The adult playground. So alluring, and yet, in many ways, so completely vile. In anticipation, I thought I'd tell story about my first trip to Vegas. So here goes: Part One - Storm Brewing.

My first trip to Las Vegas began with a bowl of Sugar Smacks. I've found many great adventures begin with a good bowl of cereal, and this one was no different. But it almost got off to a very different start. One without cereal. One full of doubt. But wait. I should back up a little. Cereal is only part of the story.

I was at the Grand Canyon, and I was mid-way through my post-college coast-to-coast solo road trip, which had started in Washington DC. The ultimate destination of the trip was the Grand Canyon. I yearned to see it. I figured it would certainly reveal to me certain truths. Truths about the earth. About the world. About myself. Yes, it's a horrible clich￩, but I intended there to be an element of self-discovery in the whole thing. I figured spending a little over a month on the road camping in the back of my pick-up truck would bring me that much closer to enlightenment, in a John Steinbeck sort of way. For the most part, it worked, I think. I'm not sure I ever 'found myself' in the pure Buddhist sense, but I did manage to find what can only be described as a certain feeling, a sort of mixture of fear, curiosity, and excitement. Whenever I get lost these days I try to remember that feeling and it helps to ground me.

So I had been camping at the Grand Canyon for the previous three days. I had explored the area, had hiked down into the Canyon and back up. Things were good. For a short period of time, I had no decisions to make about my next move. I just simply had to exist. I had reached my destination and, for a little while, I could just sit back and enjoy it. On the fourth day, during my morning excursion to watch the sunrise, I saw an ominous gathering of clouds out over the canyon. From that strange perspective, the storm was like no other I had ever seen and the whole thing actually made me a bit panic-stricken. I had to fight back an instinctive urge to flee. You could see lightning and dark swirls of clouds. What was strange, though, was that the whole thing appeared to be right at eye-level. And the swirling chaos seemed like it could land anywhere at anytime. I had been wondering if it might be time to make the move on to my next destination, which was Vegas. But I was full of doubt. If I left, I would surely miss the canyon. It would be a harsh change of scenery, and a part of me regretted giving up the quiet tranquility of the canyon for the loud din of Vegas. But Vegas seemed appealing in its own way, and I had to leave the canyon sometime. This was not reality. Besides, I had family in Vegas, and I was promised a warm shower when I got there, something I hadn't had in a while. What should I do? Like the imminent storm, my mind was filled with indecision.

I figured I'd decide over breakfast. I went back to my campsite and quickly realized I had little in the way of food. This was not good. I felt a hunger coming on and I had run out of cereal. I was also out of milk, and the OJ was running low. I wasn't sure I could stomach another granola bar, but it looked like that's where things were heading. Maybe this was a sign. Maybe it was time to leave.

Just then, I heard footsteps from behind me. I turned and saw a guy approaching with short spiky hair, faded jeans, and a bluish sweater. "You look like you're heading to Las Vegas." He spoke with an accent which I guessed to be German.

"Well . . . actually, I was thinking about it . . . " How strange was this? Who was this guy?

"Would you like some Smacks?"

"What?" I was confused and was trying to figure out how he had guessed I was heading towards Vegas.

"Smacks."

The offer was made in such a genuine, nice tone. Indeed, it seemed to be a gesture of friendship, and I wanted to take him up on it, but I had no idea what he was talking about. Maybe it was some kind of German custom, smacks. A sort of handshake maybe? I didn't want to seem rude, so I pretended to be thinking really hard about the offer. "Oh, well . . . I guess . . . man, smacks . . . sure! . . . I mean . . . "

He reached into his backpack. I figured 'smacks' was either going to be some benign token of friendship or he was going to shoot me. He took out a rolled up white paper bag of what appeared to be cereal and held it out to me.

"Smacks," he repeated.

Oh! Sugar Smacks! The clouds parted in my mind as I realized no granola bar would have to be consumed in my immediate future.

"Sugar Smacks!" I said. "Right on. I don't have any milk, though."

He reached into his backpack again and pulled out a quarter-gallon container of milk. I briefly wondered how long the milk had been in his backpack, then I realized I didn't care. God had sent me a saint baring gifts of cereal. I was not going to be picky. If this wasn't a sign, I don't know what was. Suddenly things seemed very clear.

"I'll get us some bowls!" I said.

We sat at the concrete table near my campsite and ate Sugar Smacks and listened to the thunder approaching. The guy's name was Alex and he was from Heidelberg. He was unusually direct and honest, which I liked. I immediately felt comfortable with him. He definitely seemed to be on the up-and-up. We talked a little bit about ourselves. We were both on solo trips. I'm not sure if the word had been invented yet in 1996, but I'd say now that his version of the 'solo trek' was a touch more 'Xtreme' than mine. While I had the comfort of a pickup truck equipped with an aluminum camper shell, Alex had nothing more than a backpack, a sleeping bag, and a walking stick. Also, I had come from DC, a mere 2,300 miles away. Alex had flown from Germany to Houston and had hitched his way from there. He was now trying to get to Vegas, where he would pick up his return plane tickets and head home.

As we talked, the thunder and lightning was getting closer. There was a strange electric energy in the air. And then I realized: Today was definitely the day to move on. The storms, the cereal. The signs couldn't be ignored. And it would be nice to have some company on the drive.

"Alex, I've made up my mind. Vegas it is."

He was happy with my decision. He helped me pack up the rest of my stuff and we were off.

On our way out of the park, we stopped for one final view of the canyon. The storm was just touching the south rim and it was beginning to hail.

We got in my truck and drove south toward I-40 with the storm at our backs.

link to this | comments (1) | File:  Vegas  Travel 

A lot of people I talk to were scared by things they saw on Sesame Street. I wonder why we all watched it anyway? The video included in the post above is another thing that scares me (for real). Thanks Jeff.

link to this | comments (0) | File:  Weird 

This info in this nuclear explosion site does not bode well for my building, assuming the target is the Capitol or the White House, or the default spot on the Washington map, which for some reason appears to be Adams Morgan.

link to this | comments (0) | File:  DC 

Oh, no.

Oh, shit.

Do you ever feel yourself about to do something that you don't want to do, and yet you can't really stop yourself from doing it? I'm about to do that right now. I'm about to get hypochondriacal on your ass. Here we go . . . sit back and enjoy.

Ever since a back surgery I had 6 years ago (and for about 9 years before that), I've had various aches and pains in my back, hips, and legs. I say this not to solicit sympathy (though feel free to send me gift certificates for massages, if you like). No, I've actually become quite fond of these various ailments and afflictions. Weird, but true. I mean, they are, after all, my ailments and, without them, I'm not sure I'd be the same person. I've come to understand and accept them. Without them, I'd be lost.

What I've come to realize is that everybody has something weird going on with their bodies, from irritable bowels, to bad knees, to kidney problems, to erratic hearts. If a disc issue, a bit of arthritis, and lingering nerve pain is all I've got wrong, then I'm okay with that. Really.

However, here's where I must qualify things: I do have a touch of the hypochondria. Just an intsy bit. It's not the crazy ugly sort of hypochondria that sends me to the doctor every week (I actually hate going to the doctor). It's more of the cuddly, adorable sort of hypochondria, the kind that peaks its fluffy head out every now and again and says, 'Look at me! Remember me? I do exist as a part of your personality." And when that happens, I have to stroke its ego a little and give in to an otherwise common-sensical grasp over my own health. Subsequently, when new complaints crop up, even though they could logically be considered signs and symptoms of something relatively benign, like my existing back problems, I become convinced that they are actually symptoms of much larger, more menacing issues.

So when I started having some pain in the region of my inner left thigh, lower abdomen, and left groin area, while my rational mind said, 'This is probably a side effect of your back issues, my panicky, throw-all-reason-to-the-wind mind said one thing: C-A-N-C-E-R. Of the testicular sort. (Now just so you understand where I stand in terms of maturity, every time I write the word testicle, or a variation thereof, I will hereafter chuckle a little bit to myself. You won't necessarily see this or hear it, but trust me, I'm doing it. I wish I could help it.)

So yeah, a quick search of the Internet told me that pain in 'that area,' when you're a 30-(ahem, something)-year-old male, can actually be related to any number of things, from a groin pull to (ah-ha!) lower back problems (okay, yes, this made sense), to bladder/urinary infections (maybe, but there was no burning sensations), to lack of sexual activity (wasn't sure what that was exactly, but it sounded really bad), to too much sexual activity (this must have been some strange dialect - the words 'too much' in front of 'sexual activity' didn't really make sense to me), to an STD (one benefit of getting a marriage license in Texas is the mandatory STD test - I felt pretty safe on this one). Yes, there were a broad range of possibilities, including the thing my mouse-clicks kept finding: 'that thing of which I do not speak.' The C word. Yes, the Internet can be a dangerous place for the casual hypochondriac such as myself.

The days and weeks went on, and despite my increasing awareness of a problem, I avoided going to the doctor for a good 10 months. Finally, I went to see a chiropractor because I was still of the strong conviction that this was probably caused by something back-related. After several visits and still having recurring symptoms it was the chiropractor who suggested maybe this was something else. The word she used was 'organic.' "Maybe this is something organic," she said. I had a feeling she wasn't referring to the kinds of vegetables I buy at Whole Foods. This kind of organic sounded completely unnatural.

This broke me. It was time to act! Thus began a series of trips to various doctors from orthopedics to urologists who performed various tests. First, I had an MRI of my back as a baseline, just to see where thing stand. It came back 'normal' for somebody who had had a previous back surgery. A term they like to use in test results is 'remarkable' or 'unremarkable.' My lumbar MRI was 'unremarkable.' I felt so inadequate. So normal.

Next, I had a hip/SI-joint x-ray. This test was more fruitful - it showed some arthritis in my left hip and SI joint. Ah-ha! I've read a lot about this SI joint thing, and a case of the arthritis in that region can lead to some definite issues. It certainly explained a lot of things that I'd been feeling for the last several years. Yes, this made sense. Now we were getting somewhere!

Still the doctors didn't seem very impressed. It didn't necessarily adequately explain the inner thigh/groin thing to them, so just to be thorough, more tests were ordered. The next one was an ultrasound of my pelvis and - ahem - gonads. (The words for 'balls' are so rich, aren't they?) This was by far the most enjoyable test, as it had an element of interactivity to it. Also, it involved the application of a slippery ointment to my nether-region, something I normally only get after a sufficient amount of begging. And the smooth metal device sliding gently over one testicle, then the other, sending waves of sound into my scrotum and a strange moving image onto the screen above me? That, my friend, was pure bonus. Nevermind the fact that the room, ointment, and metal device were freezing cold! I particularly enjoyed watching when colors appeared. I learned that whenever there was color on the screen, it signified blood flow and that this was good. I could make the screen light up with these colors by pushing gently ('Like you're going to have a bowel movement,' the technician told me.) Her name was Katie. She knew how to talk dirty.

So, yeah. The pelvis/testicle ultrasound, while vaguely stimulating (the same way dipping your balls in a glass of ice water was stimulating), was again 'unremarkable.' Only this time, I was quite glad to be normal. But, I'm kind of back to square one now. With some of the more serious (organic) issues ruled out, it seems to me to bring things back to the back/SI joint theory. So far the doctors I've seen tend to agree. But I'm pretty sure that's only because they really have no idea what else it could be. I'll be seeing a sports medicine guy soon to see what he has to say. He specializes in groin-related injuries.

So, for now, this is where the story ends. And, again, I'm fine with that. I've changed my workout routine over the last month to something a little less rigorous, and I think it has really helped. That, and a daily anti-inflammatory has put things pretty well under control. Also the weather has changed, which sounds weird to say, but it could be a factor with arthritis.

So there it is.

Phew!

Now that I've gotten all that out, I can safely put this post behind me and move on to other things.

Have a good weekend.

link to this | comments (5) | File:  Health 

Some great ways to make DC more green.

link to this | comments (0) | File:  DC  Environment 

There's a meeting tomorrow at the MLK library to discuss its fate. From what I've been told, renovating the inside of the library would cost more than building a new one. I'm for keeping the building as is and turning it into a center for the performing arts.

link to this | comments (0) | File:  DC 

We went out to Olney for an Easter Sunday dinner at my Aunt Jackie's house. And thanks to Al, who caught a huge 37-pound rockfish the day before at the opening of rockfish trophy season in the Chesapeake Bay, we had a delicious fillet for our main course. Al's fish, which was nearly the length of Jackie's kitchen table, was not even the biggest catch of the day, a fact that made me a little confused and in need of oxygen. I was so disoriented by the sheer size of the fish, in fact, that I forgot to snap a picture of it before Al sliced it up into two colossal fillets. We only cooked one of the fillets (the other was stored for later) and it comfortably fed all six of us.

Now I hate to ruin the vibe, but I have to digress on the undercurrent story here (pun intended), which is the one that the media has taken hold of and that you'll find if you do any kind of Google search for "fish" and "Chesapeake Bay." And it is this: bay rockfish and bass have been known to carry a disease called Mycobacteriosis. Our fish didn't have any legions and neither did any of the fish caught by the people featured in the WP article I link to above. One reason is probably because it is spawning season and most of the large fish in the bay right now are fresh from the Atlantic. But there is now doubt as to the reality of the Mycobacteriosis problem, and of course the fear caused by the media hype over this has had a huge impact on fishing in the bay. According to the WP article above, charter boats are not filling up, and the price paid at the docs for rockfish has dropped from $2.50 per pound to $1.50, despite the fact that there is no evidence that the disease could actually be spread via cooked meat. But let's be real: facts have nothing to do with it. If I had my choice of eating a legion-filled rockfish or not, I'd go with not.

There was a good commentary on NPR's All Things Considered recently by Terry Smith. It was about the deceiving beauty of the Chesapeake Bay and how underneath all that beauty is a wealth of health problems. According to the story, "vast stretches [of the Chesapeake] are 'dead-zones' where there is not enough oxygen to support life." Indeed, the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, which rates the health of the bay each year on a scale of 1 to 100 has given a score of 27 for the past two years.

It makes you wonder: will all fish be unsafe to eat someday? Right now we have major problems in water channels near our major cities, (San Francisco, New York, Baltimore) but what about other bodies of water? What about freshwater fish? I've been to some lakes in Texas that made me wonder. Doesn't it seem like we're running out of 'clean' water?

There was an interview I heard recently on NPR of author Mark Kurlansky. He wrote a book about the New York Oyster business, a business which is now pretty much extinct, but was once a vital component of the city. The book is called 'The Big Oyster: History on the Half Shell.' Sometime in the 1920's the oyster business disappeared, largely because New York oysters 'fresh from the Hudson' (a glaring oxymoron today) became remarkably unsafe to ingest. Mmmm. . .

Knowing all the information about the Chesapeake Bay makes this weekend's feast seem like more of an act of bravery than of culinary delight. But at least we know where the fish came from and how it was handled between the catching and the eating. The bottom line is this: who knows if we're ever really safe with anything we eat. Eating oysters from the Hudson: that's unmistakably a bad idea today. But eating fish from the Chesapeake: that still seems relatively safe. You just have to use common sense. I guess we can't think about it too much.

All I know is the fish I had this weekend was one of the best I've ever had! Thanks, Al!

link to this | comments (0) | File:  Family  Environment 

Ever since I abandoned MS Outlook as my email client, I've been struggling to find a good way to manage my calendar. Well, I do believe I have found it. And like other products I find myself using a lot these days, it has the mark of 'Google' emblazoned boldly on it. Yes, mighty Google has entered the calendar realm, and in so doing, has come a step closer to world domination, or becoming its own religion, or both.

There are a lot of theories out there about what part Google will play in our world 5, 10, 20 years from now. Business 2.0 printed a funny article about four possible scenarios not too long ago. The scenarios ranged from 'Google is God' to 'Google is Dead.' What would Nietzsche think?

So is Google benevolent? Time will tell, I suppose. I wonder sometimes if Google will actually become the great drug dealer of our time, doling out free software that makes us feel all nice and tingly and then suddenly withdrawing our lifeline and saying, 'OK. Now give me some cash.' Possibility? Like any self-respecting junkie, I don't really seem to care. All I know is that right now, it works for me and I'll keep mainlining until the supply runs dry.

So I've started a public 'events calendar' that can be accessed as xml or ical. Of course, it's only got one event at the moment because I don't seem to go anywhere or do anything these days, but I will try to rectify that by adding lots of events I would like to go to, but probably won't because I'm too busy being a hermit.

I'm also going to set up another calendar which I'll add family and friends to. So drop me a line if you start a Google calendar and we can share.

One other neat feature is that you can add various pre-existing public calendars to your calendar, such as holiday calendars which are divided up by country and/or religion. I've been wondering when Easter is and now I know: it's this Sunday. I must be sure to give a special thanks to Google.

link to this | comments (5) | File:  Tech  Google 

JF of 37signals thinks I should put a 'higher value on my success,' which apparently means spending $19 on his downloadable book full of his ideas (many of which I've heard already) and printing it out on a hundred some-odd pages of my own paper.

I'm all for self-publishing (obviously) and I'm even for charging for content, but as the face of publishing changes, people should be careful not to supplant the arbitrary prices set by 'big publishing' with their own over-inflated prices that seem justified because of a belief in one's own hype.

(Thanks, Virginia for the original post.)

link to this | comments (2) | File:  sxsw  Web_2_0 

I don't think this would have ever been something I would have considered eating for lunch before I married Catherine. Now it's pretty standard afternoon fare for me.

Granny Smiths and sharp white cheddar cheese? Bagels with cream cheese and salmon? Neither of these combinations is really all that strange, I guess, but I might very well have turned up my nose at a plate like that ten years ago. Now it's a treat. Other culinary delights I've come to appreciate as a direct result of knowing Catherine and her family: sushi, dim-sum, Indian food, pâte a la viande (Canadian meat pastry thing), brie and various other cheeses, some that smell pretty bad. It seems the more refined my taste in cheese, the more I can tolerate the smell of feet.

One thing I still haven't gotten used to: peanut butter and banana sandwiches.

link to this | comments (4) | File:  Food  Cath 

Last Friday it rained hard. It was one of those storms that came on suddenly, preceded by a fanfare of thunder and lightening. Catherine was out of town. I had walked to Dupont, partly to get some exercise, partly to return a movie at Blockbuster. Fortunately, the downpour waited until I got inside. (Ironic side note: the movie I was returning was 'The Weather Man.') I browsed the movies for a while to kill some time, but the rain was still coming down hard when I left. So I made a dash to the circle to take the bus back to Metro Center. I had an umbrella with me, but it made little difference with the slanting rain. I was pretty well soaked from the waist down.

If my timing for the walk was bad, my timing at the bus stop was perfect. I could see the bus as I was coming from the opposite side of the circle and thought I might miss it at first. Luckily, it was stopped at a red light, which gave me time enough to make it to the stop before it got there.

I like riding the bus on a weekend night, especially the 42. You almost always wind up talking to somebody. If you ride the bus during the day, with commuters, you tend to find people locked in their own worlds, listening to iPods, reading newspapers. On Friday night, you meet people not afraid to chat. And that's good, even if it's sometimes a little strange at first.

I found a seat on the bus. There was a woman in the seat across from me counting change from a plastic cup. She had at least $10 in small change and she was stacking it into piles in the seat next to her. And more importantly for her, she had a hotel key. She was proud of this and showed it off to me and the others near her. She was sleeping indoors that night and she was happy about that. She started talking about her kids, how she didn't see them much anymore, how they had grown up and made their own lives. She hoped they would have a 'better life.' She talked about goodness and how it isn't so easy to find anymore. Her voice was raspy and it lingered on each vowel. After she made a statement, her jaw would jut to the left as she waited for a response from me, which was usually some sort of affirmation of the sentiment she had expressed. What could I add? We talked about how the rain was long overdue. We shared a mutual excitement over the recent Terps Women's B-ball victory. Then she got off the bus one stop before mine.

As I exited the bus, I nodded to the driver. 'Have a good one,' he said. It was a standard farewell you make to people. Nothing special. But his tone - it somehow made me feel connected to this moment. To this city. This street. This bus. To this driver who had gotten me from point A to point B. To this language we shared and air we breathed.

"You do the same," I said. And meant it.

Outside, the rain had let up, but the sidewalk was still wet. I crossed the street and headed north on 11th.

It's really easy to be connected, in the Wired sense, to people across great distances. And at the same time, it's really easy to let ourselves become disconnected from the people standing a couple of feet away from us. Yeah, being connected, in the human sense, is a bit harder to do. And sometimes it takes a bus ride in the rain and a conversation with a stranger to remind us what that feels like.

link to this | comments (0) | File:  DC 

A big immigration demonstration is scheduled today in DC.

link to this | comments (0) | File:  DC 

At my YMCA, there is a room called the 'Red Room.' As you might imagine, the walls of the Red Room are a deep shade of red. If I were to name this red, I might call it 'Red Delicious.' The Red Room has it's own vibe. It has snazzy, modern exercise equipment which is even networked so that you can chart your progress online. This makes the Red Room sort of an 'elite' area, and the Y likes to make this fact evident with a list of rules on the wall.

Here are the Red Room rules:

1. No Cell Phones!
2. No Personal Bags
3. No Food or Drinks
4. Be Courteous To Your Neighbor
5. Wipe Down Machines after use
6. Have Fun!

One of the goals in the Red Room seems to be to create a sort of quiet meditation place, which is why the 'No Cell Phones!' rule is at the top (and emphasized with an exclamation mark.) There are no TVs in the Red Room. No music is piped through speakers. I like all these things about the Red Room. It's a place to unplug and think seriously about working out. Usually, I'm not a huge fan of rules, but in this case, I think they make sense and help maintain the inner sanctity of the Red Room.

But I'm not sure what the keepers of the Red Room were thinking when they posted the following rule above the drinking fountain: 'Water fountain is for Drinking Only.' Isn't this kind of a sad commentary on the state of America when a sign like this is required? I've tried hard to imagine the strange circumstances that might have lead to the need for this sign. I mean, what other possibilities are there for a water fountain?

There's a lot to be inferred by doing a close reading of this sign. First, the capitalization seems erratic, but maybe there is a reason for it. My first thought was that 'Drinking Only' was actually a proper noun, an employee of the Y, perhaps. In this case, the water fountain is only for that person's use. Strange, yes, but I guess I've seen stranger. Or maybe it's an encrypted message. If you look at the words that are capitalized, they are 'Water,' 'Drinking,' and 'Only.' W-D-O. An acronym? Wellness Determines Optimism.

Second, the phrasing of the sign: If there was only one thing that lead to the posting of the sign, wouldn't they just put a sign saying NOT to do that thing? The most obvious to me would be 'No Spitting in Water Fountain.' But by leaving it open it seems to imply that there were multiple wrong ways in which this drinking fountain was used in the past and so they needed a sign that was general enough to cover all bases.

So I'm opening this up to all of you. What other uses can you think of for a drinking fountain? I'll start things off: A very awkward and difficult to use bidet.

link to this | comments (12) | File:  Survey 

My grandmother is one of the best storytellers I know. With her it's not about the stories themselves, it's about the delivery. She might be telling you about a phone call she made, or a trip to the grocery store, but the way she frames it - with interesting character anecdotes and an intuitive sense of plot and 'conflict,' you find yourself glued to the narrative, anxiously awaiting what's going to happen next. Will she dial the phone or hang up? I must know! Even stories you've heard before seem fresh. You enjoy listening to them the same way you might enjoy seeing a good movie a second time.

But my grandmother's knack for telling good stories wouldn't ever put her on the best-seller list, because with her it's not about the written word. In fact, you wouldn't really want to ask her to write these stories down, because they wouldn't be the same. Her tools don't include pen and paper, or keyboard for that matter. No, this is old-school story telling, where the image is painted with strokes of sound and mannerism. The brush is the spoken word. If my grandmother were a techie, and 60 years younger, I think she'd probably make a great podcaster.

There's a certain magic in storytelling. It's like casting a spell. And, in that sense, my grandmother - and my grandfather, too, when he was alive - have always been sort of like magicians to me. I can remember as a small child during holidays or family get-togethers sitting at the kitchen table at my grandparent's house with the rest of the family and listening to both my grandparents tell stories and even though I was too young to understand the point behind most of them, I always felt there was a little voodoo in the air, a bit of the hocus-pocus. It was alluring, and a little scary.

Yesterday, I spent the day with my grandmother. She told stories and I listened. I told a few myself. I drove her downtown to look at the cherry blossoms at the tidal basin. It was too cold and windy to spend too much time outdoors, but it was fun nonetheless. I loaned her my jacket and hat. We laughed because we thought we looked funny, in April, bundled in winter clothing. Then we ate Chinese food at PF Changs in White Flint and did some shopping at Target. It was a wonderfully ordinary day. And yet there was a touch of the magical about it. And when I'm 84, it will be something I can tell my grandkids about. If I'm lucky, I'll be able to tell it with a bit of voodoo.

link to this | comments (4) | File:  Family 

While crime is down in the District, as a whole (go, DC cops!), property crimes (ie, muggings) are up in the two central districts (1 and 3) which happens to be where I spend almost all of my time. There's a pretty logical reason why this is the case according to the article above: these areas are considered 'transitional,' which is a kinder, gentler way of saying, 'being gentrified.'

link to this | comments (0) | File:  DC  News 

Michael writes of a magical land where they have a Starbucks inside of an REI. I hope someday to see this wonderful place. I hope someday to reach heaven.

link to this | comments (0) | File:  Ho_Hum 

A couple nights ago, I decided to work through the night. The nice thing about the still time between 11:00 pm and 5:00 am is there's pretty much nothing else to do, aside from sleeping, of course. So for those of us who are rapidly developing a nasty case of the ADD, it can help focus our concentration.

Anyway, as I was working, I realized that almost every time I glanced at the clock on my screen, it was on an '09' minute of that hour. This wasn't something I was trying to do. It just worked out that way. First, I saw 12:09, then 1:09, then 2:09 . . . 3:09 - you get the picture. After I slept for a bit and woke up, I also saw 12:09 and 1:09 pm the next afternoon. It was beginning to freak me out. Then as quickly as it started, it stopped.

Normally, I'd think this was just an interesting bit of coincidence. But recently I had a dream where I was driving a white truck in a flood. The next day I saw footage of a truck driving in flood waters in Hawaii. I think what's becoming alarmingly clear to me (and I'm sure to you, as well) is that I'm a psychic. It's the only possible answer. Or maybe - and this is even more alarming - I have the ability to will the future. So with this fact clear, I'm just wondering now what significance the number 9 has. Or if something important is going to happen (or has already happened) at [hour]:09 o'clock.

I guess we'll just have to wait and see. Until then, I'm going to try hard to have a dream involving hand-cuffs and Angelina Jolie dressed in a police uniform.

link to this | comments (3) | File:  Ho_Hum  Psychic 

Will we ever run out of cool ways to use Google maps? Even though it's not in DC yet, I love this site.

link to this | comments (0) | File:  House  Web_2_0 

When I was a little kid and I went places on vacation, I used to imagine that I had a miniature walkie-talkie device that would fit in the palm of my hand and that I could carry everywhere and it would connect me with my best friend at home. Back then, for the average 7-year-old, a device like this was more or less fiction, a product of my overactive imagination, but so were the reasons I might need to stay in constant touch with my best friend in the first place: usually some variation on the theme of my being an International spy.

The device I used to imagine back then, today is called my cell phone. I no longer need to use my imagination to conjure one up in my mind. Incidentally, just for the record, I also no longer imagine myself as a spy, traveling the world, embarking on dangerous and complicated espionage missions. But if I did, would it matter? Wouldn't that certainly make things more interesting? Somewhere along the line, reality has stepped in. It has made my cell phone boring and common place. And it has gotten in the way of all that free-form imagination that used to make the everyday seem exciting. Being in sync with the reality of things is a necessary part of growth, I suppose, but it's also kind of sad.

What's also sad is that today, while I have the exact kind of walkie-talkie device I used to imagine, while I'm one button away from the exact same friend of mine from 25 years ago, I only speak to him about twice a year.

link to this | comments (2) | File:  Childhood  Friends