Misadventures in D.C.

Let's not mince words here -- this blog is now dead.

I hesitate to say it so officially.  After all, most people don't consciously acknowledge such a passing, letting silence speak for itself. And wow, I have more than eight great years of epiphanies, celebrity sightings, work embarrassments, rants, and cultural adventures dutifully recorded here. But it's become very clear to me that I'm never going to update this thing again.

We've had a shockingly long and rewarding relationship... but to be honest, I've been two-timing on Livejournal for quite some time. Social networks like Facebook have usurped the primary purpose of this site: to keep in touch with friends across geographical distances.

Rest assured that I still remain in D.C., with misadventures to spare.  I will totally miss sharing them here.  In a small but very real way, doing so made my life in DC more ALIVE, and more alert to all the pleasantries and quirks and beauties that fill each day.

The weird thing, of course, is that blogging now seems... well, so QUAINT. So old-fashioned, this idea of taking the time to construct paragraphs of text, telling a story, fleshing out an idea or thought through the process of writing about it. We've been reduced to brief one-sentence status updates (or worse, in the case of Twitter: 140 characters).  It's easier to stay in touch than ever before. Yet our communication becomes more superficial with each sign of "progress."

You will never learn as much about me on Facebook as you might have here. But such are the sacrifices of life, and mine grows busier -- and richer -- by the day.

I still READ my friends' contributions on this site, and will continue to do so.  And I am accessible via email and the aforementioned FB.  So please, let's stay in touch.  The original desire that drove me to create this blog still lives on, and I certainly don't want to miss hearing your own life's misadventures!

I don't know what it is, exactly, but the intersection of 7th and H attracts all the crazy people. Yesterday there was a guy singing at the top of his lungs. Other times it's the dancing man who hops around in furious circles to a tune only in his own head. And then there's the black supremacist militants who break out their loudspeakers every Friday afternoon to pound the ears of those returning home for the weekend.

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Related to this, on my walk out of the station, I noticed a conspicuous item hanging on one of the escalator construction signs -- a random bra. Who left this there? Why? Did it just "fall out" of someone's bag?

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Finally, I was walking up a broken escalator the other day. All the other ones were broken as well, so there was traffic going up and down in both directions -- not a convenient thing in the middle of rush hour. The young professional woman in front of me had these bright blue slip-on shoes that I was admiring in my direct line of eyesight. Then, one of the shoes simply fell off her foot, and down a few steps below hers. She let out a little shriek, and the slow climb up the stairs stopped while she quickly fussed to find and then return the shoe to her foot. Meanwhile, I grinned, while studiously trying to stifle my laughter until I could sprint past her and out of sight.

A few weeks late, I know... but, still, in advance of January's inauguration, I'll call this poem "Thank You America."

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I promised I’d write an election poem
But my pen, I fear, has been rusted
From excessive disuse from my teenage years
A shame, since at one time I trusted
I could rhyme without eliciting
Total pity or embarrassment.
Well… no matter. I’m not easily deterred.
I’m older, but still a semi-literate gent.

And besides – the subject of my writing
Deserves the praise and cheery prose
That comes most easily in verse.
Thank god – election returns weren’t close!
Change has come to America!
And with it, a new administration
With a heavily Democratic Congress
That, together, can start fixing this nation.

After years of living in this capital city,
Dreading to pick up the daily paper
To scan the latest in shady back-room dealings,
That constant, so-sad-it’s-funny caper
That’d became our backward government:
What a relief! A new man is in charge!
And not just new, but someone smart
Who uses sentences that are large,
And reads books, not just acts the part.

Out with the old, and in with the new
A period of healing and one of hope
But not without challenges - that’s to be sure.
It’s increasingly hard for the poor to cope
With soaring expenses and shriveling pay.
An absence of jobs; banks closing by the day.
These are tough times, and it’s silly to count
On the government to solve all our issues.
Still, it’s heartening to trust in the good sense
Of a man sure in his skin and his shoes,
And in whom I can feel pride, and not need tissues.

Last night was an extremely exciting night in Washington DC.

I cannot imagine a similar amount of elation in the streets if the Redskins won the Super Bowl. Celebrating at a friend’s house, the end of Obama’s acceptance speech was met with a symphony of car horns outside our open living room windows, accompanied by the cheers of neighbors and pedestrians venturing out to share the occasion with others.

We soon grabbed coats and participated in the victory scene ourselves. I can’t express how shocking or heartening it was to see our divided city come together like it did last night. Kids from the projects joined together with drunken hipsters and cab drivers in one unscripted, spontaneous expression of joy. It made Obama’s words of unity and hope come alive, seeing the barriers that typically divide us come tumbling down.

While I didn’t volunteer or donate to the Obama campaign, I feel like draping myself in an American flag today, in pride for what my country has accomplished.

At the special friend's urging, I took a brief trip up to rural Pennsylvania this weekend, acquainting myself with a corner of my home state that I'd never before experienced.  Falling leaves and Fallingwater made for a postcard-perfect setting, and I developed a fascination with Frank Lloyd Wright that I was not expecting. 

For those willing to brave the 3.5 hour drive from the District -- and especially for those who love great architecture -- I'd recommend the trip highly.



( Read more... )

The Washington Post is embarking on an ambitious, six-week search for the best cupcakes in DC.  I admire this important effort, as I like cupcakes myself -- but, honestly, I'm more interested in finding the best chocolate croissants in town.  It looks like I may have to launch this effort solo.

Yes, Kramerbooks has amazing pie, Krispy Kreme makes the warm donuts I love, and Thomas Sweet produces rich, delicious,  locally-made ice cream.  Yet I still lament DC's lack of cafe culture -- particularly the good French stuff.  It's all congregated in Georgetown, where the charm of the streets indeed recalls Paris, but where I almost never visit.

Then again, instead of schlepping to all of metro DC's bakeries, perhaps I should stop by Trader Joe's this weekend and pick up this highly recommended product?

If it seems like I'm on vacation every other weekend, rest assured it's just perception. Still, it's true I did use my passport for the second time in two months, spending last week in London and Berlin with the special friend. We caught up with old university friends, and met his sister and her family in England. We also were gleeful attendees at our first gay wedding -- yes, same-sex marriage is now legal in Germany, apparently -- which meant the standard array of drinking, eating and dancing... all with a scenic German twist.

I came away from the week armed with a few important lessons:

1. A piece of cake a day keeps the hunger away.

Only on holiday can you justify interrupting every afternoon with a pit stop at a nearby patisserie or cafe to indulge your sweet tooth. Somehow it escaped my attention until last week that DC really doesn't have any sort of cafe culture! They're everywhere in London, making chocolate croissants and Napoleons a 3pm currency I'm having difficulty abandoning.

2. Ten hours of sleep a day isn't extravagant -- it should be standard.

Who needs coffee when you give into your body's natural desire not to be disturbed? It's almost cruel, having to use my damned alarm clock every morning.

3. Navigating foreign countries is much easier with someone who speaks the native tongue.

I visited Berlin in 2002, and came away completely intimidated by the city. It's sprawling, somewhat gray, and filled with a rich history that can be incredibly difficult to understand when you can't interact authentically with its residents. This time, I spent it with folks with a history there -- and it was as if a black-and-white sketch had suddenly come to life.  I'd love to spend more than 3 days with it next time around.

If it seems like I just got back from vacation, you'd be right. Nevertheless, I'm on the road again tomorrow evening -- or more accurately, in the skies again -- en route to London and Berlin. While there, I'll be catching up with friends, attending a wedding and meeting the special friend's family. Looking forward to the voyage! I'm likely to update while there, and certain to take lots of pictures to share upon return.

After an unfortunate incident in June, my good friend sent me a card reminding me of all of the reasons I love living in Washington. The list was remarkably long, and including things like:

-- A diverse, politically minded, young and international population
-- Access to a thriving art/music/theater scene
-- My string of incredibly good roommate luck
-- Fantastic ethnic restaurants
-- Hearing the sexual escapades of my neighbors through the walls

However, even good things have their limitations. Two months away from the presidential election, I find myself completely saturated by daily updates on the horse race. Living in DC does not help. Am I the only one who finds it telling that at quizzo this evening, four separate teams (including ours) had some variant on the team name "Lipstick on a Pig"?

Despite this fact -- and believe it or not, I had no hand in the naming above -- Sarah Palin has completely exhausted me. I admired her convention speech for its charming insidiousness -- she's an excellent public speaker, and a completely frightening vice presidential candidate -- but really, I don't want to hear her name for another two months. She truly has become the "celebrity" that John McCain wants the entire country to think of Obama . She refuses public interviews, and won't respond to critiques of her record, yet somehow manages to captivate million of folks too captivated by gender and personality to look at the actual issues.

I've taken to putting my hand over front-page Post stories detailing campaign strategy, and find myself spending more and more time with the Style section. It's a hard thing to do, since I'm so emotionally engaged, but it is unhealthy to leave so much of my daily moods to this kind of journalism. Fall may be my favorite season, but much of me wishes November 5th would come sooner rather than later.

A mother’s job is to inflate the self-confidence of her children… but even my mom would admit that I sucked at sports as a child. I somehow managed to brave eight years of soccer in grade school, when I forced my brave parents into a tour of my county’s mediocre fields each weekend.

If I proved adept at stumbling into opposing players in this sport, I elevated it into an art form in basketball, where I had no skills other than chasing the kids with the ball. Then when I achieved my growth spurt, I resorted to standing firmly planted near the basket, where I could most easily hide my ability to dribble the basketball squarely into my feet, thereby kicking it out of bounds and into the hands of the other team.

In high school, I decided to try volleyball in an informal league affiliated with my church. It was there I distinguished myself in at least one feat of academic prowess – managing to hit the ceiling of the auditorium in every game I competed in.

When I was growing up and displeased my mother, she grounded me by thrusting me outside to play with the other children. My home was in my room, where I could play Nintendo for hours – hockey and football games, ironically – for hours on end, accompanied by my friends Junk Food and Air Conditioning. A degree of physical laziness, or at least ineptness, seems hard-wired into my genes, which I fight through only the spottiest of efforts, like climbing the escalator at the Dupont Circle metro every evening on my way home.

For some reason, tennis is the only sport in which I have an honest-to-goodness interest. Until I have the time and cash to pony up for lessons, though, I am content to play spectator at the U.S. Open each year. The special friend and I went up on Sunday to watch the evening session, where I found our last-row-in-the-stadium tickets rewarded by an amazing view of the Manhattan skyline at sunset. The vista was matched my the quality of the men’s tennis, and the whole engrossing spectacle of the tournament. 

  

It's a shame I can't take off work all week to see the thing all the way through to the finals!

The first thing I read upon setting foot in my apartment Sunday night was a Washington Post feature about how trying something new and unfamiliar "provides a welcome jolt to the system."  This sentiment perfectly captures how I feel about last week's adventure in Mexico with Pattiquest.  I don' t want to overly exaggerate the experience -- while new for me, it was hardly exotic as Kuala Lumpur or Kabul -- but it did open my eyes to fresh perspectives, and a deepened understanding of our important southern neighbor.

Like most foreign vacations without tour guides, my interaction with locals was limited largely to hotel and restaurant staff.  Nevertheless, everyone we met was uniformly patient, friendly, and understanding with my broken Spanish.  I expected to stand out more than I did -- Mexico was gracious enough to allow us to comfortably blend into the color and culture of everyday life.  And there were unexpected bonding moments too.  We got lost mountain biking in the Oaxacan countryside on Friday, and had an amusing and disconnected sequence of introductions with local children in the dirt roads, each asking us where we were from and trying to explain how to get where we wanted to go (which, incidentally, we never quite found!). 

My favorite was when a striking girl, no older than nine, waved to us as we walked past and shouted "Hola gringos!"  It was as if the entire country did the same thing for us throughout the week.

It feels like a long time since I´ve had to make use of an internet cafe -- two years, perhaps? I´m glad to be out of the country again, somewhere sufficiently exotic to warrant the temporary borrowing of another computer. Right now I´m in the middle of one of the central commercial districts of Puebla, surrounded by shoe shops, toy stores, and other run-of-the-mill merchandise that feeds the daily existence of folks here.

It is day three in Mexico, on my very first trip south of the border. I´ll confess, I didn´t know what to expect until reading Let´s Go on the plane ride here, and have consistently and pleasantly been surprised by the experience. Given the dearth of light-skinned travelers in Puebla´s downtown, the city seems to be off the map of most folks like myself ... and that´s a shame, because there´s a wealth of friendly urban character to Puebla, with a shabby-chic Euro feel that comes from its rich colonial history and the diversity of its residents.

How have I been occupying my time? In ways utterly predictable to this urban wanderer -- we´ve been doing tons of eating, museum-hopping, and strolling along narrow streets filled with charming architectural touches, like blue tiles and ornate balconies. Impressive, centuries-old churches dot the landscape here, functioning as an aesthetically pleasing satellite system for the main Cathedral in the city center, which awed me just as the best in Europe in its scale and gilded splendor.

For all the wandering, though, I´m also appreciating a consistent nine hours of sleep each night -- pattiquest and I are in no hurry! -- and the afternoon hours we´ve dedicated to reading and sipping cappuccinos. In every vacation, you have those carefree moments of pure leisure that call something like the following to mind: "My goodness, can´t every day be just like this?" As much as anything, it is this permission to do absolutely nothing, this freedom from daily obligation, that compels me to travel -- and makes me wish for much more vacation time than I will ever have.

In the meantime, I´ll be enjoying what I have, heading off this afternoon for Oaxaca, where Patti and I will be spending the rest of the week indulging in what most Mexicans consider the culinary pinnacle of this country. More updates then!

Am I the last Washingtonian to visit the new Nationals ballpark?

At the end of the team's losing season, a review of the experience seems outdated by now. But I did enjoy the open design of the stadium and the good food. Its location next to the Anacostia River makes for picturesque sunset views too (especially with an Italian sausage in hand).

I hadn't been to the Navy Yard area in years -- talk about rapid gentrification! I remember when I used to dart from the metro station to the Saturday night warehouse clubs, passing empty, menacing lots and abandoned buildings. If that was "night," now it's "day" -- I literally wouldn't recognize the place without the metro as a signpost. Shiny new office building have made the area a modern-day L'Enfant Plaza -- metallic and blandly corporate, but a huge improvement and a neighborhood with lots of potential.

I also appreciate how ballgames in Washington are so different from those I grew up with in Philadelphia. Here, the overweight suburban men wear Obama stickers, people of all ethnicities join in the fun, and I even spotted quite a number of gay men in the stadium! And only one drunken fan screamed at devotees of the opposing team -- that's a new record for me.

It seems these days that I go through spurts of tedium, immediately followed by quick bursts of cross-country activity. The past few weeks have brought the latter. Here are a few humble highlights, illustrating the very weird diversity that is my life.  (Indeed, you might be interested in exploring some of these places yourself!)

For a good ol’ time, head to Nashville… 

That’s what my friend and I did the weekend before last, skipping to Tennessee for our friend Sarah’s wedding. What an event – and a lovely introduction to everything the city has to offer! 

The ceremony itself was as charming and authentic as the bride and groom themselves. And the reception – hosted in Nashville’s Symphony Hall – inspired all of us to hit the floor to the grooves of an 11-man soul band, fronted by a wrinkled man in a Superman costume.

I’m not sure if I’m made out for a second career as honky-tonk bar manager, if my brief experience evading boots and beer stains in Nashville’s strip of downtown clubs is any indication. Nevertheless, I was thoroughly grateful for the chance to enjoy the city in such fortunate circumstances.  (Thanks again, Sarah!)

   
  

Inside my fridge right now sits an enormous platter of my favorite types of cheese.  I splurged yesterday at Trader Joe's, before playing host to a lovely gathering at my place last night, and am now confronting the problem of what to do with it. 

Like junk food and dessert products, I try not to keep too much cheese in my household.  I've been so successful with this that I completely forgot why it's necessary.  I'm a rather squeaky-clean kind of person, with few vices, but I simply cannot control myself when it comes to cheese.  I had it for dinner last night, completely gorged for breakfast, and just spent a half-hour in my kitchen telling myself "just one more bite," until I had finished all of my baguette and found myself nibbling on a piece of Parrano like a ravenous squirrel.

For me it's almost neurochemical.  I simply feel good after eating delicious cheese -- and the more of it, the better.  It's a feeling of pure pleasure; a warm, "everything's alright" kind of high.

Of course, a glass of V8 can only go so far to counteract some of cheese's less positive attributes, and my body is likely craving other things too -- like nutrients.  I really hope I don't eat everything that's left over.  However, if I do, I'm just letting you know that I can't be held responsible.  This mound of dairy goodness is practically begging for it.

It's hardly my favorite time of year in DC, but as anyone who lives on the East Coast knows, it's unavoidable. My strategy this year has consisted of ample air-conditioning, as always, along with ample Ella Fitzgerald -- particularly, "It's Too Darn Hot," which is perhaps the one song that can make me feel jazzed about the swampy thickness of the summer air in this city.  (Anyone with mixed feelings about humidity is practically required to download the tune on iTunes.)

There are other antidotes, of course.  One I just discovered this afternoon -- an establishment called Tangysweet, a new Dupont Circle frozen yogurt shop with the sleek hipness of an LA hole-in-the-wall.  Forgive the metallic walls, with their color-shifting plastic protrusions, and you'll quickly experience some seriously satisfying goodness that lives up to its name.  I've abandoned all thoughts of TCBY, and will be returning to this deliciously cool haunt as frequently as I can remember.

Of course, my other summer standby is the malted vanilla milkshake at Potbelly's -- which, if you ask nicely, they will make with skim milk and frozen yogurt.  It still feels decadent, and never fails to cool me down on that hot uphill walk to my apartment.

... from the Philadelphia Parking Authority.  (Don't ask.)

My question is this -- as a Washington, DC resident, do I really have to pay them?  What jurisdiction does the PPA -- or any out-of-state parking authority, for that matter -- have over non-residents?  I'm tempted to leave them be, as a few of them have been doing just fine collecting dust for two years.  That said, I don't want federal agents pounding on my door at 3AM either.

Facial hair has always come easily to me, but for some reason I've never let it grow for more than a week at a time.  I've decided to change this -- at the risk of alienating coworkers and drawing quizzical looks from those who know me well. 

Here's the current progression after a week and a half.  I'm gonna give it at least another week or so -- who knows what fun will happen?

"The man who is swimming against the stream knows the strength of it."

--Woodrow Wilson