ELP 016

Taken from my front porch just minutes ago:



The pot of gold, apparently, lies in Eckington. Never woulda guessed that one.

A new thing to read

Jenn and I have started a new blog, called West Capitol & J Street, NW. It's two residents' ideas on how to improve the city we inhabit. We're just getting started, but it already promises to be equal parts mundane and exciting, just like city life itself. If you find it a worthy exercise, share it with your DC friends. Share it with your other-city-living friends. We'd love to get a dialog started about the things that are right and wrong with DC, and how to either keep them going or make them better.

ELP 004: Winter Wonderland

I'm a big fan of snow. Problem is, we don't get that much of it here. So I was excited when the first storm of the season hit on Monday. So excited, in fact, that I took a picture of it. Here's the park behind my house, getting some snow on it.

I got tha fever. Butterstick Fever.

This town, as Wonkette will attest, has been seized by the ridiculously cute addition at the National Zoo: Tai Shan.

It's stoopid how adorable he is.

What's funny to me is how absolutely bonkers some folks have gone over this panda. I think we're all wanting to soak up as much time with it as we can, in whatever visceral way we can (PandaCam? Really?) because when he turns two, the 'Stick gets shipped back to China. Wonkette has her frequent Butterstick updates, which are probably fueling the frenzy as much as reporting on it. DCeiver's got his own particular brand of How-Fucking-Cute-Is-He-ism going on, interspersed amongst the exhaustive Lost reviews. But what I'm really enjoying, as reported in the Express today, are the advent of the rival Butterstick blogs. That is, blogs purporting to be written by the 'Stick.

They have a vast polarity difference between them. One, the newcomer, has 'Stick as a warm, meandering soul slowly discovering the little pleasures of life as a panda.

The other portrays Bandit (because "Butterstick" is verboten) as kind of a badass wannabe.

Each has taken notice of the other. It's now kind of in that awkward moment when two dogs you were hoping would walk around and ignore each other actually lock eyes, and it's only a matter of moments before the growling begins and all hell breaks loose.

At least, that's what I'm hoping for.

Rarrrgghh!

I should really learn to write when I'm less irritated. That said, here's my laundry list of all the little things that have converged to piss me off in the past four hours.

After a perfectly enjoyable (if a tad boring) day at work, I go up to Chinatown to wait for the 80 to take me home. Bus timetable sez that on Sundays the northbound 80 arrives there at 6:23. My watch sez 6:08. Cool. Even allowing for the 5 minute margin of error that this town thrives on, I'm still golden.

Tick... tick... tick...

6:23. No bus.

6:28. No bus. They've now passed the margin of error.

Tick... Tick... Tick...

Damn it's cold out here.

If one more smelly, hairy person gets up in my stuff and badgers me for money, I'm going to go ape shit.

Tick... Tick... Tick...

6:43.

Call the girl. Maybe she knows where this X2 bus goes. You know, the route that has a bus every freakin' minute. Girl sez I should just take a cab, but that seems silly to me. Cabs in DC cost too much.

Alas, she doesn't know the X2's route.

Tick... Tick... Tick...

6:48.

A mental list of the buses I've seen go through or near this intersection, in no specific order: 70 (4 of 'em), P6 (2), Circulator (3), X2 (4), 42 (3).

Maybe I should go back down to Olsson's to warm up. Or over to the sbux across the street. No, wait, they just closed. Damn.

Tick... Tick... Tick...

6:53.

Call the girl again. Maybe she can see me on the traffic camera. Hi girl. I like talking to the girl. I'm just annoyed. And now, the one fun thing I've devised to keep myself entertained over the past 45 minutes I have to stop because, oh look, there's my fucking bus.

So, as it turns out, either the 6:23 bus never showed up and this was the regular next bus, or this dude was really late. I'm learning, however, not to take my frustrations out on other people. But the other people waiting for the 80 have not even attempted learning this.

6:54-7:01: Wow. These people just will not shut up about waiting for an hour. That seems to be an awful lot of time to waste on a dude whose fault it may or may not be and who doesn't really care anyway.

I get home exactly one hour after getting to the stop in Chinatown. Note to all: bus service on Sundays in DC blows.

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There's been other stuff today this weekend that has annoyed the hell out of me, but I'm not gonna bother with it. All I have to say is that if there isn't at least 4" of snow on the ground Tuesday morning, there's gonna be hell to pay.

ELP 002: Popcorn Guy

In the Washington I see every day (and have seen pretty much every day I've been in the city over the past 5.5 years), there are no shortages of the following: clueless tourists, scared white people from the exurbs visiting some thing in the city, federal workers, and folks looking for handouts. All four groups annoy me in one way or another, but I've learned coping strategies for dealing with them all. Sadly, the When-In-Rome rule for dealing with the last group is largely to ignore them or say as little as possible to get past them. There's the occassional surprise, like the one I had tonight.

I was standing in Chinatown waiting for the bus to go home, and out of the corner of my eye I noticed a guy shuffling toward me. I looked his direction and immediately noticed that he was holding out a popcorn tub from the movieplex down the street and a large soda. He'd occassionally drink from that. You could tell Dude wasn't all there. He had as close to a "kindly" look as I've seen on anyone, completely not threatening, just somewhat vacant. And he wasn't looking for anything from anyone. He was offering me popcorn. Just holding out this popcorn bucket with this really pathetic-looking M&M charcter emblazoned on the side.

Now, my Candy-From-Strangers rule holds hard and fast, even here into my early 30's, so I declined. He shrugged and moved to other folks at the bus stop. One guy did take him up on the offer, they nodded and Popcorn Guy moved on. He held out his bucket to folks coming in and out of Metro, but he didn't have any more takers. So he shuffled off, down 7th Street.

Dude just wanted to share his popcorn.

Maybe I'm being hopelessly provincial about this, but it was, in its own odd, sublime little way, very refreshing.

Anyway, for your viewing pleasure, Popcorn Guy: