All Up Inside This Beltway

All Up Out This Beltway

2011-04-04T20:05:00.012-04:00

So when you run, make sure you run

To something and not away from.

– "The Weight of Lies," The Avett Brothers

After more than 3½ years in our nation's capital, it's time for a change. Mr. Smeath is leaving Washington.

April 22 (you know, Earth Day) will be my last day at the U.S. Green Building Council, and on May 2, I will start work with Western Governors University, which Time Magazine called "The Best Relatively Cheap University You've Never Heard Of."

It was one of the easiest hard decisions I've ever had to make. The Avett Brothers quote above really describes well my motivation and my mantra in this move. Returning to Salt Lake City is all about running to something, not away from something, and that's an extremely nice position to be in. Sure, I wish I could say that I was fed up with D.C., that I hate my current job and that I just can't wait to get out of here. It would make parting all sweet and no sorrow. But when it comes right down to it, there's something to be said for leaving behind something you love because you're going somewhere you really want to go.

When I moved to D.C. in September 2007, I was motivated by a desire to spread my wings professionally and stretch my legs personally. I knew no one in D.C., so I was leaving family and friends for a strange new city, taking a strange new job in an industry I had very little background in – which is kind of what it was all about. Jumping into a new adventure head-first that way led me to 3½ years of more personal and professional growth than I could possibly have expected.

But this time it's different. How do you decide it's time to return to loved ones on the other side of the country when it means leaving behind the new loved ones you've attached yourself to in your home away from home? How do you know when it's time to go back to what's familiar, your hometown? How do you know when the adventure is over?

Well, for one thing, I don't think the adventure is over. I return to Salt Lake changed in a lot of ways. Now that I know what's "out there," now that I've had the kinds of new experiences that come from uprooting yourself and heading out on your own, I think life in Salt Lake is going to be a fairly different experience for me this time around. I always knew I loved it there; now that I've tried somewhere else, I can really put my finger on what it is that I loved about it, and why I really can't wait to get back there.

Not to mention, now – when I finally become Uncle Doug in September – I won't have to rely on photos and phone calls!

And how do you decide it's time to interrupt your career path in one organization and start fresh as the new guy somewhere else? I have way, way too much to say about everything I've learned at USGBC. Our CEO, Rick Fedrizzi, has often pointed out that, for the vast majority of us who work there, USGBC will not be our last job, but it will almost certainly be our best. I happen to agree with him. If you don't work at USGBC, I can't really explain it, and if you do, you know what I mean. How many people get to spend the pivotal part of their careers, when they're still young and energetic and learning what they expect from professional lives, suddenly thrown into one of the world's fastest-growing, most-successful non-profit organizations? How many get to say they took part in transforming the entire marketplace? I started USGBC as a passionate believer in green building, but back then I had no idea what I was talking about. I leave USGBC as more than a believer – I'm sort of like someone emerging from an inexplicable spiritual experience who is forever changed, fundamentally and at his core, by what he's just been part of. I know that's dramatic, exaggerated and pretty over-the-top, but it's hard not to wax hyperbolic when talking about the green building movement and the against-all-odds optimism it represents for an environment, an economy and a human society desperately in need of that optimism.

So how do you leave behind an organization whose mission has so engrained itself on your soul? Well, you go on to work for an organization with a mission of its own, one that also resonates with you for its optimism and potential to make big changes for a lot of people. I still have a lot to learn about WGU, so I may be misrepresenting something I read, but I think it's the nation's largest accredited, non-profit online university. What that means is that it provides flexible, accessible, affordable education in a number of diverse degree programs – a mission of extending the benefits of an education in a more economically and socially equitable way.

So D.C. peeps, keep your eyes open (probably on Facebook) for news about going-away parties and happy hours. And Utah friends and family, well, get ready for me to jump back into your lives feet first! That is, if I can figure out the logistics of this pending relocation...

Oscar recap

2011-02-27T23:44:00.003-05:00

So here is my recap of my correct picks and my incorrect picks. I did very well, but I stand by my opinions and everything I got wrong was a mistake on the part of the Academy, not on my part. Just sayin'.

My correct picks

Supporting actor
My pick: Christian Bale
Winner: Christian Bale

Leading actress
My pick: Natalie Portman
Winner: Natalie Portman

Supporting actress
My pick: Melissa Leo
Winner: Melissa Leo

Art direction
My pick: Alice in Wonderland
Winner: Alice in Wonderland

Costume design
My pick: Alice in Wonderland
Winner: Alice in Wonderland

Documentary short
My pick: Strangers No More
Winner: Strangers No More

Original score
My pick: Trent Reznor (The Social Network)
Winner: Trent Reznor (The Social Network)

Writing (adapted screenplay)
My pick: The Social Network
Winner: The Social Network

Writing (original screenplay)
My pick: The King's Speech
Winner: The King's Speech

My incorrect, sad, pathetic, loser picks

Best picture
My pick: 127 Hours
Winner: The King's Speech

Best actor
My pick: James Franco
Winner: Colin Firth

Cinematography
My pick: Black Swan
Winner: Inception

Directing
My pick: Cohen Brothers (True Grit)
Winner: Tom Hooper (The King's Speech)

Documentary feature
My pick: Restrepo
Winner: Inside Job

Film editing
My pick: 127 Hours
Winner: The Social Network

Visual effects
My pick: Alice in Wonderland
Winner: Inception

My Oscar picks - now more scientific than ever!

2011-02-27T12:54:00.012-05:00

Every year at Oscar season, I love to try to predict the winners. Every year, I try to correctly balance all the variables for each film — did audiences like it? did critics like it? did I like it? — and then pick my favorites for each prize. But every year, I fall a little short — there are always many movies I haven't seen, so I can't weigh in completely, and besides, it's hard to choose between what you want to win, and what you think will win.

This year is different. For the first time in my 31 years, this time I've seen all 10 best-picture nominees, a fact that makes me a little proud and a little embarrassed. But whether it's a sign that I'm on top of the popular culture, or a sign that I need some new hobbies and a life, the fact that I've seen them all helps improve my picks a little. Also helping is that this year, I have a foolproof* method: math.

*Note: May not actually be foolproof. Probably isn't foolproof.

After every movie I watched this year, I went to Rotten Tomatoes and gave it a personal rating out of five stars. RT stores that info, so I can go back and remember my exact impression of each movie after seeing it. It also gives a percentage average for how critics liked each movie, and how audiences liked it. My formula is simple: I convert my star rating to a percentage and then come up with the average overall score for each movie. (You'll see what I mean, below.) I like this formula because it gives equal weight to my own rating, critics' rating, and audience ratings. Since I'm just one person, my personal opinion carries a lot more weight in this formula than the hundreds of critics and thousands of audience members, whose opinions are all diluted by each other's. Also, since I'm working off of star ratings, my rating is much more volatile — the difference between 4 stars and 3.5 stars is 10%. So while my pick probably won't be the ultimate winner, it maintains a personal flavor while still factoring in what critics thought and what audiences thought.

OK, here's the breakdown, ranked from highest overall score (i.e., my prediction for best picture winner) to lowest. And the winner is... (You'll have to scroll down because for some reason Blogspot is reading my HTML table weird...)

Title	My star rating out of 5	My rating as a percentage	Critics' rating	Audience rating	Average rating — overall score
127 Hours	4.5	90	93	88	90⅓
Toy Story 3	4	80	99	91	90
The Social Network	4	80	97	89	88⅔
True Grit	4	80	95	87	87⅓
The Fighter	4	80	90	90	86⅔
The King's Speech	3.5	70	95	95	86⅔
The Kids Are All Right	4	80	95	73	82⅔
Black Swan	3.5	70	88	86	81⅓
Winter's Bone	3.5	70	95	74	79⅔
Inception	3	60	86	93	79⅔

When I die...

2010-12-12T23:14:00.007-05:00

When I was in fifth grade, I was the worst kind of nerd. I was determined to get 100% on every assignment. My teacher didn't help things by giving us regular updates on how many points we had overall, how many were possible, what our overall percentages were, and what sort of grade that translated to.

I was never in danger of anything short of A+. Extra credit opportunities abounded, and I took advantage of every one of them. I probably was somewhere in the range of 120% when, in science, we entered the "circle of life" portion of the curriculum. It was all about the food chain and homeostasis and the way an ecosystem was one big machine in which every member gave as much as it took. I was fascinated by this idea.

Well, one day I came into class, and it suddenly occurred to me that our weekly extra-credit assignments were due that day. I didn't need extra credit — I was a nerd, remember? But I loved to build up that stock of extra credit to pad my grade and ensure that I remained in the A+ range. So I panicked. I looked over the list of extra-credit opportunities, and I settled on one: Write a poem about the food chain.

There were about 10 minutes until class started, so I decided I would take a stab at writing that poem. It was, after all, worth 10 extra-credit points, and I wanted them. Here is what I came up with:

There was grass on the ground.
It grew all around.

There once was a rabbit.
Eating grass was its habit.
It ate the grass on the ground
That grew all around.

There once was a hawk
With a nest on a rock.
It ate the rabbit
With the grass-eating habit
Who ate the grass on the ground
That grew all around.

The hawk choked and died
Nevermore to glide.
It fertilized the ground
And the grass grew all around.

I remember that poem well, not only because my teacher printed it up and hung it on the wall but also because it reflected my early understanding of how amazing our ecosystems really are. It sounds so nerdy — some things never change — but that idea really resonates with me.

I've spent my entire life engaged in one duty: ingesting organic material, metabolizing it, and turning the byproducts into parts of my body. Every cell of me bears components of some broccoli, a little chicken breast, a bowl of ice cream and millions of glasses of water. And lots and lots of other stuff. The food and beverage I have ingested in my life represent probably millions of miles traveled, tens of thousands of gallons of oil consumed, and thousands upon thousands of plants and animals whose lives were lost in the interest of feeding me.

When I die, I don't want all of that effort to be sealed up in a hermetic box, my entirety embalmed with chemicals meant to prevent my cells from breaking down, and then all of it encased in concrete before being dumped into the ground. It might sound a little hippie-dippy, but I want to become a tree. I want nitrogen-fixing bacteria to hang out at a party of worms, and for all of them together to identify the parts of me that most whet their appetites. I then want those bacteria and worms to excrete their little excretions, and for those excretions to become the soil that nurture the next generations of plant that becomes food for some animal, who poops me out to become yet more food for yet more plants, and on and on until I'm truly dispersed throughout the metabolic systems of countless types of flora and fauna.

But in our hygienic times, dumping my body into a hole and filling it with dirt isn't only culturally shocking — it's illegal. Cremation doesn't really thrill me because I harbor this irrational fear that despite being dead I still might suffer the pain of being melted down for parts. And besides, ash surely must be a less-effective nutrient than unadulterated moldering Doug, right?

So I have no idea what I want to happen to me when I die. What about you? If you were to write a last will and testament, what would you ask to have done with your remains?

Happy Holidays!

2010-11-25T13:44:00.003-05:00

So here I am, coming out of blogging hibernation, to offer once again my unsolicited opinion. But it's Thanksgiving, which officially kicks off the holiday season, and I want to preemptively disagree with a certain cadre of pundits before they launch into their wintertime assault on our collective sense of peace and goodwill.

Because to my mind, that's the most important part of this season, the common thread that ties together all the holidays and celebrations that our diverse country recognizes this time of year: It's the time of year when we focus on gathering with our families and friends; the time when we donate time, goods, food and money to help the people who have less than us; and the time when we imagine a more peaceful world.

But the last decade or so, it's also become the time of year when a few loud-mouths try to stir up trouble, to say, "Peace is nice, but what I really want you to focus on is war - a false war that we've made up, a conflict that doesn't really exist, but a great opportunity for you to feel like a victim and to hate your neighbor!" It's the "War on Christmas" conspiracy theorists, and before they launch into their yearly grinchiness, I have to explain why they are wrong, wrong, wrong.

It's not a war on Christmas. It's free-market capitalism. As conservatives, you shouldn't bemoan it; you should embrace it.

They always trot out lots of anecdotal examples of how the "secular-progressives" are trying to steal Christmas from the good people of America, but at the heart of their thesis is the phrase "happy holidays." They squirm with delightful victimization every time they hear someone at the mall utter that phrase, and they call on their fellow martyrs to save Christmas, Christianity, and perhaps Christ himself by joining in a mass rebuke of that phrase. "Down with 'happy holidays' - up with 'MERRY CHRISTMAS'!"

But my take on the rise of "happy holidays" - if its use really has increased as much as these pundits claim - is that it's a side effect of the free-market capitalism that our country is based on. If private companies recognize the religious and cultural diversity that defines their customer base, and if they recognize that wishes of good cheer and holiday salutations add to a positive shopping experience and create repeat customers, and then they recognize that a more generic phrase like "happy holidays" casts a wider net and manages to cover all their customers - not just the Christian ones - then that's just good business. That's capitalism.

It's not like any governments have been banning the phrase "merry Christmas." It's not that a junta of non-Christians has overtaken all of our retailers and decided to eradicate Christmas from our culture. It's no different from fast-food chains setting protocol that their drive-through operators say, "Would you like to try a Frostee?" instead of "Is that everything?" at the end of a customer's order. It doesn't symbolize a conspiracy to give America one giant cold headache; it just reflects the idea that, by asking everyone that same question, you're likely to sell a few more Frostees and pull in a few more bucks.

And by calling on all their employees to say, "happy holidays" instead of "merry Christmas," retailers aren't calling on their employees to denounce their belief in Jesus as the savior of mankind and to start a jihad against the faithful; they're simply realizing that by using the more generic phrase, they're more likely to reap the benefits of spreading holiday cheer among their Christian, Muslim, Jewish, agnostic, Sikh, Buddhist, pagan and other customers equally, bumping the repeat customer rate up by a percentage point or two and boosting the bottom line. With "happy holidays," it's really only the Jehovah's Witnesses they're alienating.

Back to those pundits and the angry masses they stir up. These people aren't truly afraid that their children's children will live in a world without Christmas. What they're upset about, and why it's so easy to fuel this idea of a war on Christmas, is what "happy holidays" represents. Because they do recognize that it's a result of the free market, and it terrifies them that they are part of an increasingly diverse marketplace. They long for the days when "merry Christmas" was sufficient because everyone was Christian. Of course, in America there never were any such days, but the across-the-board use of "merry Christmas" had the built-in assumption that white Anglo-Saxon Protestants were the "norm," which meant WASPs were the undisputed rulers of the culture and of the country.

That's the power of words: It's not so much what they mean, but the assumptions they embody that provide their greatest effect. And the move in the free market away from "merry Christmas" toward "happy holidays" represents the increasing assumption that the American dream is working, that someone who celebrates something other than Christmas this season is still a valuable and valued demographic. And in a capitalist society, being a target customer means you've made it as part of our culture. And that's a good thing.

And one more thought: Even if you don't celebrate Christmas, or Kwanzaa, or Hanukkah, or Eid (which of course isn't always a winter holiday), or any other religious or cultural holiday this time of year, the traditional "holiday season" here in America is bookended by Thanksgiving and New Year's, which are by and large secular, national holidays that celebrate two things we all share in common: an appreciation for the people and things in our past and present that have made us who we are to day, and an optimism for a prosperous and peaceful year to come. So if nothing else, next time someone at Target wishes you "happy holidays," don't assume they're belittling your love of Jesus; assume they are joining you in celebrating the common ground of thankfulness and hope.

Happy holidays!

My take on health care

2010-03-22T17:07:00.003-04:00

After a long hiatus, it looks like I'm blogging again. Sorry that my return to blogging is political in nature, but it took something like this to get me back to the blog. A lot of conversation is going on today about the health care bill, but a lot of it is happening on Twitter and Facebook. As great as it is that Americans are debating and discussing an important issue, this issue is too complex to be boiled down to 140 characters and status updates, and it tends to devolve into people trying to get off one-liners that are more clever than their opponents'. That's not helpful. I've had a lot of family and friends asking me why I support health care reform, and the only way I can give my thoughts on it is if I have more than 140 characters to do so.

I think the easiest way to explain my position is to lay out the problem and the various proposed solutions as I see them.

Most people who are covered get their insurance from a private insurance company through their employer. That's how insurance works - people pay into the pot even when they don't currently need health care so that people who do get sick or hurt can tap into that pot and pay for expensive care. But a few flaws in the system have made it so that people who need coverage the most can't get it - people who are sick, people who get into an accident, or people who are unemployed, self-employed, or employed by small businesses that don't have a large enough pool of people to qualify for affordable rates. Pre-existing conditions, dropped coverage when you get sick, and prohibitive premiums for individuals buying insurance without the backing of their employer prevent these people from getting the coverage they need.

The way to solve this is to have everyone in the country paying into the insurance pot so that there's enough money that the sick don't lose their coverage, that pre-existing conditions don't bar you from coverage, and that you can afford insurance regardless of your employment situation. There are a number of ideas that have been used to achieve that, and here is my description of them, listed from most liberal to most conservative:

Socialized medicine, like they have in England. In this model, the government runs health care. That means the service providers - hospitals, doctors, dentists, etc. - are government employees, and the costs are totally covered by taxpayers. This has always been deemed way too liberal for the United States and was never up for discussion in this health care debate. It's the kind of model where you're most likely to find that doctors are underpayed and therefore underqualified, where patients face long wait periods before they can get an appointment, etc.

Single-payer health insurance, like they have in Canada. In this model, health care providers are private companies, but they bill the government rather than an insurance company. Because the providers are private companies, there is more room for competition, innovation, etc., but there is still a strong government role, so there is arguably still a risk for many of the problems that go along with socialized medicine. In my mind, it's a workable system, especially because the insurance coverage is a nonprofit endeavor, so premiums, deductibles, etc. aren't jacked up to turn a profit. But again, too liberal, so no one seriously discussed this option during the debate either.

A plan that keeps private health care providers and private health insurance intact or at least in the mix. Within this option, there are a couple of approaches, again from most liberal to most conservative:
- A public option, the most liberal option actually considered during the American health care debate. In this plan, private health insurance remains as an option, which individuals and employers can continue to buy into. But there's an additional option, a government-run insurance plan, that individuals and employers can also choose. Health care providers (doctors, hospitals, etc.) are still private, but you can choose to buy insurance from a not-for-profit government insurance plan. Competition from the public plan forces private insurers to be less reckless in raising rates and cutting coverage, but the fact that private options remain means that those who distrust or dislike a government plan are free to remain on the private market. It's a lot like the education system: There are private schools, and there are public schools. Private schools are more expensive, but you are able to shop around for one that most closely meets what you're looking for; public schools face problems like overcrowding, tight funding, etc., but they at least provide SOME option for people who can't afford a private education. I really liked this approach and would have liked to have seen it given more of a chance in this debate, but again, conservatives were able to paint it as too liberal, and it died.
- The plan that passed. In my mind, the plan that passed is the most conservative workable solution to health care. There is no government-run insurance here (except, of course, Medicare, veterans' care, care for federal employees, etc. - government-run plans that already exist). The government does, of course, play some significant roles in this plan. For one thing, the government mandates that all Americans have health insurance. This is necessary to ensure that there is enough money in the insurance pot to cover people when they need it, but it also requires the government to create subsidies to help people afford this now-required purchase. (This is where the cost comes in, but remember that taxpayers already subsidize a HUGE chunk of health care coverage when people go to emergency rooms, when people go bankrupt because their health care costs too much and end up defaulting on their medical bills, etc. - not to mention Medicare, veteran's benefits, etc. The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office says this plan will reduce the deficit over the next 10 years.)
  
  So once we're all buying into insurance, the government is able to ban insurers from setting up bans on pre-existing conditions, dropping kids from their parents' plan when they hit age 21, increasing premiums willy-nilly, etc. And for individuals buying insurance on their own (rather than through work) or for small businesses with too few employees to be able to afford insurance on the open market, the government will set up health care exchanges. Those are basically like catalogs of approved insurance companies, companies that are required to follow certain regulations to be approved (regulations regarding pre-existing conditions and things like that). It allows individuals who are in the same boat (self-employed, unemployed, or employed by a small business) to pool their buying power the same way larger companies can. Basically, employer insurance plans are like discounts for buying in bulk - since you're buying insurance for a lot of employees, you get it cheaper - and on a health care exchange, individuals can also team up and get the same bulk discounts.

Of course, there are a lot of peripheral issues – abortion, coverage of immigrants, etc. – that muddied up the debate. But those are not central to the debate over which model of insuring all Americans is most cost-effective.

And, of course, there are a lot of flaws in this plan. For example, one way that health care costs could have been dramatically cut would be if we could import drugs from Canada, where they are much cheaper. This was illegal under the existing health care model, and it remains illegal under the new plan. But this isn't a sign of liberals mucking up the bill; it's the influence of big pharmaceutical companies and conservative/protectionist interests that want to protect the profits of American pharmaceuticals. Taxes on elaborate "Cadillac plans" that could have helped cover the costs of this plan were left out, partly because of the influence of unions and also because of conservatives' tendency to label ANY tax as excessive. And in a lot of ways, the private insurers win big because they now have 32 million more customers who are being required by the government to buy private insurance. But that's what happens when you want to lower health care costs by making sure everyone is insured but you don't want to provide for a publicly run, not-for-profit plan.

I'm sure I got some of the details wrong. I'm certainly no expert. But I have followed this debate closely and tried to wrap my brain around all the different issues, ideas, claims and counter-claims, and this is how I've been able to make sense of it. In my mind, the bill that passed last night is the most conservative option that stands a chance to clean up our health care mess.

As I see it, the only way you can deny that this was the right thing to do would be if you believed the health care system was working just fine as it was. But I can't imagine how you'd believe that. People who are employed by large companies that provide them with good health insurance may feel comfortable with the system as it was. But first, under this plan you don't have to abandon that coverage at all. And secondly, and more importantly, you will now be protected from being dropped by your insurer if you get sick or get into an accident.

I had a realization the other day. Under the health care system as it existed before this deal, imagine this scenario: If I went to the doctor tomorrow and found out I had a terminal illness with one year to live, I'd be in a tough situation. I have great insurance right now, paid for entirely by my employer. But the insurance company we use is a private company, and there's the risk that they would find a way to drop my coverage once I got sick. But even if they didn't do that, I'd have a problem.

I live several thousand miles from my family, and if I was dying in a year, I'd want to move back to Utah and spend my last days with them. But, of course, that would require me quitting my job and losing my insurance. And once I got to Utah, it would be impossible for me, as an unemployed individual with a pre-existing condition slowly killing me, to find new insurance coverage that I could remotely afford. So I'd probably be stuck, forced to stay in D.C. and keep my job so that I could afford health care at the time I needed it most. In my mind, that's a fundamentally flawed situation, and it's a situation that no one should find themselves in. It's why I believe that health care is a basic service that we should all be entitled to, just like military protection, education, fire and police protection, mail service, sewer and water, garbage pickup, etc.

The right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness hinges on the ability to do what you need to do to keep yourself as healthy as possible for as long as possible. This bill is the most conservative step we could take as a nation to work toward securing that right for everyone.

Targeted

2009-07-09T15:14:00.003-04:00

Do you know what this is?

It's a screenshot from this Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Web site (it's blocked most of the time, so the link may not work) in Iran. It's a collection of photos taken from the news and elsewhere of protests in the streets of Iran, and its asking Iranians who know any of the protesters to identify them.

Something about that is just absolutely terrifying to me. I've seen the video of Neda dying in the street, pictures of bloody protesters, the sounds of protesters shouting "Allahu Akbar!" from the rooftops, and it's all pretty powerful and moving. But the concept of a government using the Web as a tool to call on citizens to denounce their friends and neighbors – guilty of standing up for their belief in fairness and democracy – gives me this weird, chilled feeling. Imagine you're a student in Tehran and you read about this site and you nervously click on it... and you see your face and realize that the thugs who "police" the streets are looking for you specifically, and anyone you ever knew could potentially turn you in and give those thugs your name and address... Ugh. It just creeps me out.

Also, if you haven't seen this, please check out the best reporting on Iran so far. Unfortunately, the mainstream media haven't done this story and it had to come from "fake" news, but it gives the best picture yet of who the Iranian people really are and should go a long way to killing the stereotypes.

Real classy

2009-06-23T14:45:00.004-04:00

I recorded this last night while watching news coverage of our deadly Metro accident here in D.C.

As if you needed one more reason not to listen to that ridiculous show. (If, on the other hand, you like your "irreverent" radio shows to have a brain, might I suggest Radio From Hell? Available on the radio, streaming live online, or via free iTunes podcast!)

Hobnobbing here amongst the elite

2009-06-22T13:35:00.007-04:00

Just a quick update to let you all know that I'm surrounded by celebrities and/or pseudo-celebrities. First, a few images from last week, when I was walking my dog and about a block away from my house I stumbled into Paul Rudd. He was apparently in town with Owen Wilson, filming at my favorite pre-kickball watering hole, Adams Mill:

And then this, from the world of reality TV. The house where the cast of MTV's The Real World: D.C. is 0.6 miles from my house, as seen in this screen shot of Google Maps' suggested walking route from my house to the Real World house:

Please understand that I have no intention of walking to the Real World: D.C. house, and I haven't watched a season (or even an episode) of that show since the days of Julie, Melissa and Danny in New Orleans. But it's still a little intriguing to think I will live that close to a Real World house.

Now, check out these images I grabbed from the Google Maps Street View of the Real World house. Do you think the MTV people noticed the homeless man sleeping on the stoop? Do you think he'll still be able to catch a nap there when the show is being filmed inside? Ah, the "real world" indeed:

Civic Part Deux(ty)

2009-06-05T18:53:00.002-04:00

First of all, an apology for my previous post about jury duty. I may or may not have been extra-effusive because I had just recently indulged in a little post-kickball celebrating. This is not to say that I retract anything I said. I meant it all - I probably just wouldn't normally have been so geeky about it. Or, as Brian pointed out in the comments, I. Am. A. Nerd.

That notwithstanding, my jury service is over and I feel as honored as ever to have been part of the justice system. We found the guy not guilty on all counts, in a relatively quick 45-minute-or-so deliberating session that went surprisingly smoothly and was perhaps the most interesting part of the trial.

One comment I made in that previous post was that "I know I will make the right decision," and that caught some of you off guard. Let me clarify: I didn't say, "I know I will make the true and accurate decision." I said the right decision. By this, I meant that I trusted myself to follow my conscience and make the decision that seemed the most right. This confidence isn't from cockiness or delusions of Solomonic wisdom. It's because, as messy and complicated as questions of guilt and crime and bad human behavior are, and as complex as legal theory and legalese can be, the fundamental structure of the law as a whole is so simple. The bottom line is that every law is made up of a series of elements, basically "yes or no" questions, and each element is very specifically and meticulously defined. For juries, the law doesn't ask us to sit and ponder all the big-picture questions. It just says to go through each of those elements, one by one, and ask yourself, "Did the government prove, beyond a reasonable doubt, that this thing happened?"

And we decided that, in this case, the prosecutor did not prove that. Which is pretty remarkable because the defense attorney didn't do a particularly stellar job defending his client.

Turns out, we were all hung up on the same point, the same question, the same hole in the prosecutor's case. Basically, the case was about a guy who was pulled over for excessive tint in his windows but was found, upon search, to have a gun in his trunk. I am legally allowed to talk about the case now, but for the privacy of the defendant and my fellow jurors, I don't really feel comfortable broadcasting the details via my blog. Let me just say this: We just weren't convinced.

Am I certain that this guy is innocent? No. But we didn't find him innocent. We just found him not guilty - that is, not proven to have been guilty. We simply didn't receive the proof, and that's the burden of the prosecutor. Simple as that.

I think the prosecutor was surprised. It could have been the poor performance of the defense attorney or the fact that, on its surface, this kind of looked like a fairly straight-forward case. After the verdict, the prosecutor approached me as the jury foreman (oh yeah - I was elected foreman :)) and asked me if I could tell him what it was we were unsure about, as a learning experience.

And I think that's what this whole experience was for all of us jurors: a learning experience.

Oh ya know, just grazing

2009-06-04T21:21:00.003-04:00

Walking home from jury duty today, this is what I passed by in my neighborhood. Like, literally – in my neighborhood! As usual, my real camera was out of batteries, and these cell phone pictures are really pathetic. I must have been about 10 yards away from them!

Civic Duty

2009-06-03T23:02:00.002-04:00

Have you seen "Flightplan"? It's a mediocre 2005 movie starring Jodie Foster. I saw previews for it back when it was new. I never really wanted to see it. I knew what it was &ndash I knew it was chock full of action and suspense as Jodie desperately tried to find her missing daughter on a trans-Atlantic flight. Surely she's onboard somewhere. We saw her there. But is Jodie's character crazy? What's happening? I could have written this script. All I wanted to know was how it was going to end. The whole point of this movie is, of course, how do they resolve it? Is the little girl, or is not the little girl, really missing on that plane somewhere?

I never really wanted to see this movie. I never thought I would. Not worth renting, certainly not worth seeing in the theater. But I kinda wanted to know what happened to that little girl.

So there I was, early this afternoon, sitting in the Juror Lounge at the Moultrie Courthouse in Washington, D.C. I was summonsed for jury duty. I arrived at 8, and by 12:30, there had been three jury panels called and I was not on any of them. Lunch was promised at 1. I was struggling with a faulty wireless network, trying to get some work done during the brief intervals of Internet connectivity I could grab. And "Flightplan" was showing on the TVs throughout the room.

Fast-forward to 12:55. I'm starving. It's almost lunch. I've finished the last piece of the membership newsletter and I'm just about to get the wireless to work so that I can e-mail it to some awaiting coworkers so it can be sent out. And "Flightplan" is just about to resolve itself.

And they call a new jury panel. And they call my number.

So I missed the end of "Flightplan" and still have no idea what actually happened. And I was late for lunch, and the members had to wait a few hours for their newsletter.

But – I finally was called to sit on a jury panel. I've loved the idea of jury service since I covered the courts for the Deseret News and fell in love with our judicial system. I finally get to see what happens behind the scenes.

It was a long day. Lots of sitting and waiting and 15-minute breaks and then sitting and waiting some more.

At the end of the day, I made the cut. I was one of the final 14 people still sitting in the juror box after all the attorneys, the defendant and the judge had had their say. I am a juror for a criminal case. It may sound strange, but this is a dream come true.

I am in love with our American system of justice. I know that a lot of people bemoan their mandatory summons for jury service. I got the hunch that most of the other people who were called to jury duty today were annoyed by the meticulous, detailed, step-by-step intricacies of today. Waiting for their number to be called. Waiting for the judge to repeat the exact language of the juror qualification questions for a third time. Waiting for the precise procedure to play out.

I know that most people think legalities are trifling and excessive. I am really in love with it. Its exactness. The way it carefully and cautiously ensures a level playing field for defendant and accuser. Of all of America's ingenious systems, our judicial system is the most genius and the most amazing.

When I used to sit in courtrooms as a newspaper reporter, I usually had an opinion. I tried to remain as unbiased as I could for the sake of fair reporting. But I knew the cases' backstory. I heard the lawyers' chat in the hallway. I knew what the judge and the attorneys were talking about in the courtroom when the jurors were safely tucked away. I was impossibly biased, and I usually had a hoped-for outcome. I always wanted to be a juror, to see what that blank-slate feeling was like, to see if I could actually enter a trial completely free of preconception or bias. And here I am, about to be one-fourteenth of a panel deciding what will hereafter be considered the settled truth about what did and didn't happen in a specific case. And I can honestly say I have no idea what the outcome will be. I know nothing about the facts of the case, nor of the accusations or allegations. I don't know the defendant. I don't know the backstory.

I know I will make the right decision.

I know American justice is the final word in justice. I love this system – and now I'm part of it!

Hey lazy! Buy a bike!

2009-05-12T12:59:00.004-04:00

My Top 25

2009-05-08T15:29:00.005-04:00

So I normally don't do anything when someone tags me with something in their blog - I kind of hate coming up with "25 weird facts about me" etc. etc. But it's been so long since I've posted anything, and this one is kind of fun and easy (and interesting for me, even though it probably won't be for anyone else), so I'm going to go ahead and do it - and I'll tag anyone else who reads this and wants to be tagged.

MY TOP 25 MOST-LISTENED-TO SONGS, ACCORDING TO MY iPOD PLAYLIST:

"Apocalypse Please," Muse
"I Was Young When I Left Home," Antony with Bryce Dessner
"Thoughts of a Dying Atheist," Muse
"Time is Running Out," Muse
"Sing for Absolution," Muse
"Hysteria," Muse
"Butterflies and Hurricanes," Muse
"Choose Me For Champion," Rasputina
"You and Moon," Adem
"Falling Away With You," Muse
"1816, the Year Without a Summer," Rasputina
"A Retinue of Moons/The Infidel is Me," Rasputina
"Blackout," Muse
"Launch Yourself," Adem
"These Lights are Meaningful," Adem
"Sleepless," The Decemberists
"Cage in a Cave," Rasputina
"The Wanting Comes in Waves/Repaid," The Decemberists
"Stockholm Syndrome," Muse
"Incident in a Medical Clinic," Rasputina
"The Giant of Illinois," Andrew Bird
"Train Song," Feist and Ben Gibbard
"Knotty Pine," Dirty Projectors and David Byrne
"Annan Water," The Decemberists
"You Are the Blood," Sufjan Stevens

Kinda surprised myself there a little with a few of those... OK, your turn.

Spring

2009-03-26T20:38:00.000-04:00

Little D Hatching Out of the Egg from Class 1-208 on Vimeo.

Dishsaster

2009-03-25T20:07:00.003-04:00

When I started this blog a year and a half ago, the idea was that it would primarily be for, you know, keeping people up to date on the exciting happenings of life in D.C. And life remains exciting, if a little too busy for me to regularly update you all on the exciting stuff. Sadly, there is one kind of excitement that I regularly find time to blog about.

Domestic problems.

You know, like exorbitant electric bills, mold, dysfunctional heaters, and leaky walls and ceilings.

That last one — the leaky walls and ceilings — isn't just a post from the past. It's tonight's post, too.

This evening, on my way home from work, I got a call from one of the guys who lives upstairs. He told me that one of the girls who lives up there had been washing dishes earlier this afternoon and wandered off somewhere else in the house to do ... something. Something that made her forget she was doing dishes. Forget she had water running in the sink. Forget that water running in a full sink has to go somewhere, and usually goes downward, to the floor.

So one of her roommates gets home and steps onto a very wet kitchen floor. He suggests I check my walls and ceilings for leaks when I get home. I do so. I find some. I'm wet-housed. Again.

I'm at the point where I think not in terms of "oh my gosh I have water leaking through my ceilings and walls!" and instead think in terms of "hmmm how bad is this round of wall and ceiling leakage as compared with other rounds?" And this time — not so bad. I was able to find three points of leakage: the ceiling right in front of my bedroom door, the point where two pieces of drywall meet on a wall in my bedroom, and through the vent fan in my bathroom. The floors are a little wet but not swamped. Just a little localized splashage. A bucket catches the drippings in my bedroom, and a few rags sop up the wetness on the bathroom tiles. Within an hour, the regular dripping has stopped and there's just the remaining wet spots on the drywall.

I check with the people upstairs. They've let the landlord know, but the good news is that one of the guys who lives up there is a contractor, and he's already doing a bunch of work elsewhere in the house (probably for a rent discount or something). So he's going to replace the damaged piece of my ceiling and wall and take care of it all tomorrow. Not too bad.

But seriously. Who has a dish-washing emergency?!

Apparently...

2009-03-25T14:32:00.001-04:00

...I'm not the only one.

Also, sorry you've waited so long for a blog post, and this is all you get. It's been busy, and I've been brain-drained.

Kittens, inspired by ... surgery?

2009-02-22T00:16:00.004-05:00

What happens when you combine one of my favorite recent YouTube sensations with one of my absolute least favorites?

Power crazy

2009-02-17T22:15:00.003-05:00

This blog post was inspired by a Facebook status. More accurately, it was inspired by Shannon's comment on my Facebook status, in which she asked me to "please blog about this. Now." So when you find it boring, you know who to blame.

So it turns out that the price of energy is rising. You may be surprised to learn this, but apparently there's some sort of problem - you might even call it a crisis - regarding our various sources of fuel for things like, oh, vehicle operation and power generation. Now, I've heard that those prices have been going down lately, but I don't drive a car anymore and I certainly haven't seen such a reduction in my power bill.

In fact, my power bill has reached levels of absurdity. Levels of absolutely ridiculous, ludicrous, infuriating absurdity. I just processed a payment of $268.19 for one month's use of electricity. For a shorter-than-usual 28-day month. While wearing a blanket over my shoulders like a shawl so I can tolerate my 59-degree apartment. Which is my regular evening outfit as of late. So I don't run my inefficient heater any more than I have to. Because I like to save energy. I really, really believe in using as little energy as I can. And it's only partially so I can avoid spending $268.19 on electricity.

Over the summer, my electricity bill was lower than this. $25.89 in July. $26.59 in May. $38.80 in September. When it jumped to $185.02 in December, I was a little shocked, so I called Pepco, our local power utility, to express my concern. The poor guy had apparently heard similar calls from more than just me that day, as he immediately launched into his lecture on how power rates go up in the winter, and how when you start running your heater you're using more power than you typically do, and how these two facts together compound to create unusually high bills. I understood - after all, my bills last winter were pretty high, too. Of course, last winter my heater turned out to be broken, so I was running it hour after hour, hoping to get a little warmth, unsuccessfully - and this winter I have been running it only when absolutely necessary. But still, a hike in winter power bills is necessary, as demand surges and a supply-and-demand economy will react predictably. And besides, I thought - this year my heater has been fixed and is more efficient. And this year I have replaced all my bulbs with CFLs. Etc. etc. (More on my efficiency efforts will follow.) So, I figured, my bills will certainly go up in the winter, but they should still be lower than last winter.

Let's compare:

January 2008: $79.41
January 2009: $202.21

February 2008: $137.59
February 2009: $268.19

March 2008: $161.77
March 2009: I don't want to know

Just for the record, the following are efficiency upgrades I have made to my apartment since last winter, upgrades that I would think would result in lower, not higher, energy bills:

I have replaced all my apartment's light bulbs with CFL bulbs. The exception is the bulbs in my living room, which are on dimmer switches and can't be replaced by the standard CFLs. I never use my living room lights (relying instead on a 7-watt CFL lamp.)
I got my landlord to replace my wall-mounted, electric-run heater with one that actually works, so when I do run it, I only have to run it for a few minutes to get my immediate vicinity to a level of relative comfort. The rest of the apartment remains cold, but I've grown accustomed to wearing a shoulder blanket grandma-style.
I unplug all my "secret energy vampires." Those are the things in your house that drain energy even when they are not turned on. They include everything with a remote control, which is never turned off but is only in standby mode (TV, DVD player, Wii, etc.) It also includes rechargers, so I only have my computer plugged in when it absolutely needs a recharge - same with my phone.
I have been out of town more this winter than I was last winter, and when I go out of town, I now unplug EVERYTHING, including my microwave, my alarm clock, etc. I even unplugged my DVR for the entire 11 days I was home for Christmas because none of my shows were new during that time.
I often pull clothes from the washer and let them air dry for a while before putting them into the dryer, to minimize the amount of time I need to run the dryer.
I turned a couple of old pants legs into draft snakes. Draft snakes are basically long tubes of cloth filled with beans (I used kidneys) that you lay along the foot of doors to reduce draft. They work really well. My apartment is ridiculously drafty, especially at the front door. When I stand near it, I can feel cold air blowing in. With the draft snakes in place, I don't feel that draft. My door is so drafty, I have actually had to use one draft snake on the floor and one perched precariously vertically along the side of the door. It helps keep the apartment warm longer after I turn the heater off. Photo:

I have my concerns, my paranoid theories that something wrong is afoot that I won't be able to solve. My biggest worry is that some portion of the electric outlets for the apartment upstairs (home to six or seven energy-unconscious roommates) are being billed to my apartment. I've raised that concern with Pepco and with my landlord before, but I don't think there's any way that's going to be explored. I also wondered if the electricity meter out front was messed up, but I have learned to watch it in operation and it seems to be running at a rate that is proportionate to how many electrically powered things I have running inside. It also runs much more slowly than the meter for the upstairs apartment. So I think the bottom line is that I have an inefficient apartment - a dryer that takes longer than necessary to dry clothes, an old fridge that wastes electricity, a drafty apartment and a joke of a heater - and Pepco knows they can get away with charging ridiculous rates in the winter. When, oh when, will spring be here?!

Is this real life?

2009-02-10T23:03:00.002-05:00

So this is apparently the viral Internet video of the moment, and everyone seems to find it cute and hilarious. I feel like I'm one of the few people who finds it unbelievably disturbing and upsetting. I guess maybe it has its moments of cuteness, like when David discovers his fingers. But when he lifts himself out of his car seat and screams, when he asks, "Is this going to be forever?" and when he asks, "Why is this happening to me?", I think it's horrible. I feel like I should warn you not to watch it unless you're ready to be haunted by it for a long time, but like I said, everyone else seems to think it's just funny. I, on the other hand, think the same dad whose poor parenting led to this kid's need of oral stitches in the first place is securing his place in hell by YouTubing his kid's frightening drug trip. Every time I watch it, I feel like I am watching documented child abuse, and it has given me a few nightmares. I'm not kidding. You've been warned.

I follow the rules

2009-01-25T14:16:00.004-05:00

I have a reputation among my friends at work for being a stickler for the rules. One even used a label maker to affix the phrase "I FOLLOW THE RULES" to my work laptop last year. When my coworkers want to cross the street against a "Don't walk" sign, I hold back. When we were at Greenbuild last year, and they wanted to skip an all-staff meeting so we could make some progress on our demands in the press room, I got nervous. And when I sold my car this summer, they all thought it was hilariously unnecessary when I went out of my way to use my lunch break to walk to the DMV and return my license plates. "I still have my license plates from a car I sold three years ago," they said. "The DMV doesn't actually expect you to return your plates, even if it says so on their Web site," they said. But I did it anyway. And I kept the receipt.

And then, on Thursday, I got a letter in the mail. From the DMV. It was a NOTICE OF UNSATISFIED PARKING TICKETS. It accused me of failing to pay a parking ticket I received on Dec. 14 for parking in an alley at 13th and S streets. The ticket was attributed to a car with plates reading CX1904 - my old plates - but the car was a Chevrolet. It seems that either the parking enforcement officer incorrectly transcribed the plate number, or someone new has been assigned my plates but the DMV records have not been updated, or someone is using fraudulent plates with my old plates' number. So I called the DMV, and I was instructed to write a letter and send it to their office, along with a copy of the notice and my receipt for turning in my plates.

A receipt which I have.

A receipt which none of my coworkers would have had, given the same situation.

I follow the rules.

This just happened

2009-01-20T11:40:00.003-05:00

I, too, sing America.

I am the darker brother.
They send me to eat in the kitchen
When company comes,
But I laugh,
And eat well,
And grow strong.

Tomorrow,
I'll be at the table
When company comes.
Nobody'll dare
Say to me,
"Eat in the kitchen,"
Then.

Besides,
They'll see how beautiful I am
And be ashamed —

I, too, am America.

— Langston Hughes

Inauguration weekend

2009-01-19T19:52:00.010-05:00

Well, as you might imagine, it's been a pretty exciting weekend here in D.C. The estimates ranged from 1 million to 5 million, but there is no question that we have a lot of visitors in town. I've been trying to think of ways I could capture what it's like to have the entire city taken over by the inauguration, but it's tough if you're not here. I've taken some pictures, below, which will give you a glimpse, but the energy and excitement is really missing from them.

But first I have to opine a little - of course. Like I said, the energy around this inauguration is huge, and no question there are some very Obama-specific reasons for that: He's a historic president-elect, he's a man whose supporters really love him, and there's a lot of really big issues hanging over our country right now. But being here, surrounded by it, I've been thinking a lot about what is really so amazing and inspiring about inaugurations in general, and even if it's not on the top of the minds of everyone who's here to celebrate the inauguration, I think it's something that means a lot to all Americans, even if they're not totally conscious of it. It's this concept of the "peaceful transfer of power," and it really is pretty miraculous - more so when you realize that it's come to seem so mundane and taken for granted.

Try to think about it, to grasp how amazing it is that the most powerful position in the world is being willingly handed over tomorrow from one man to another - two men who agree on very few things regarding the specifics of how to run this country. Emphasis on willingly, on the fact that this is a peaceful transfer of power. We've had more than 200 years of this kind of transfer of power happening, so we really don't think a lot about it happening any other way. But it's so unusual historically, and even across much of the world today it's a luxury not every country enjoys.

We don't have to have wars or coups to get new leadership in our country. We don't have to wait for a dictator to die. We just vote, and everyone respects the outcome.

One of the history lessons I remember most profoundly from when I was in middle school was the first time I learned about the election of 1800. I remember my teacher talking about it as a "bloodless revolution," about what a test it was for the young country. When the Electoral College chose Thomas Jefferson as the country's third president, it was a historic first: the first time the presidency moved from one political party (the Federalists) to another (the Democratic-Republicans). The way that transfer of power played out would make or break whether American democracy actually worked. Would the Federalists peacefully get up and leave power, would they let a man they openly despised just walk right in and take charge, to lead the country in a different direction, just because voters declared it so? And when they did, it was remarkable because it was a testament to the power of a country founded on a fundamental, overarching principle, the principle of democracy, which was so important to those early American leaders that its ideals overrode their strong opposition to Democratic-Republicanism and their own egos, their own thirst for power.

I remember initially being sort of boggled by this concept. Was there really a time in America when there were question marks over whether an outgoing president would leave peacefully or would call out the National Guard to protect the White House, with violence if necessary, from the incoming would-be president? When you think about it, it's one of the most revolutionary things about America, and the fact that it happens so much more frequently in countries around the world today shows how influential and amazing it was.

When you think of it in terms of this current transfer of power, it's really astounding. After two years of Obama running largely against Bush's record, and of President Bush running on behalf of McCain so vehemently against Obama - as soon as the election was held, all that turned around and these two men worked together with such dedication to ensuring that the presidential power is handed over smoothly and peacefully. Many pundits see Obama's election as an enormous rejection of President Bush's eight years in office by the American people, and how does Bush react to that rejection? By doing anything he can to help Obama be successful from Day 1. It's the power of recognizing that in the gray area between all of our different opinions lie the truly workable solutions that will make the country better, and that we only get to those gray areas by working with the people we disagree with most.

Everyone is excited about this historic moment for different reasons. We are about to have a black president. We are about to have a president who sees our two wars, our economy, our foreign policy, our environment and our place in the world so dramatically differently from the way the previous president sees these things. We're about to have a president who, love him or hate him, is a stirring speaker and a really nice guy. But the underlying thing that everyone is aware of is this idea that things are about to change. And the reason that that fact of change has drawn so many people to D.C. to celebrate their country and ignore the bitter cold is this: the amazing ability of our country to change course when the majority thinks a course-change is necessary, and for all Americans - regardless of where people sit on the ideological spectrum - to accept that change because it's the way the vote went, and for it all to happen in a spirit of mutual celebration. I think this is why my Republican friends at work are as excited for this inauguration as my Democratic friends are: Here, in the city where we live, something miraculous, something we all take for granted, is going to happen again, for the 44th time, and we're all in it together.

OK, sorry, but I guess if you're ever going to tolerate someone waxing patriotic, a historic inauguration is as good a time as any. Now, enjoy photos.

First, I've tried to gather just a small sampling of the inescapable omnipresent reminders everywhere you go in this city that it's inauguration weekend. On the sides of buses, in restaurant windows, everyone is using the inauguration to advertise. The first one is hard to read; it's a sign above Amsterdam Falafel, my favorite fast food in my neighborhood, that says, "Welcome to Washington, Barack and Michelle."

This one is in the window of the French restaurant Napolean at the end of my street. Not sure how I feel about the use of a power-hungry emperor's image in an Obama campaign poster, but c'est la vie, I guess:

On the National Mall Saturday night, on my way to a friend's house in Virginia, I passed MSNBC's makeshift studio, where they've been broadcasting live for the last few days, in front of the Capitol. They were broadcasting "Hardball with Chris Matthews" (which, coincidentally, I'm watching on TV as I write this). I stood around and watched for a while. Chris Matthews with one of his guests:

Chris inside the studio, and Chris on TV outside the studio:

Pat Buchanan, inside and on TV:

Next, the big-screen TVs all over the Mall so the huge crowds can watch everything going on. These photos were taken Saturday night, too, before the We Are One concert on Sunday, so I'm not sure what they are showing, but I see Pete Seeger... Maybe a warm-up or something?

Setup along the parade route, with the White House in the background:

And photos from the We Are One concert on the Mall Sunday (the one with Beyonce, Bono, Bruce Springsteen, Josh Groban, John Legend, John Mellencamp, Tom Hanks, Marisa Tomei.... you get it).

The security was, of course, EVERYWHERE...

...but it all went smoothly, and everyone was very cool and respectful of the security processes. And the security personnel were very accommodating to the crowds. These firefighters were letting people hand them their cameras, so they could get crowd shots for them from the top of their firetruck:

Happy Inauguration, everyone! Whether you voted for Obama or not, here's hoping we're all together in hoping for the best from this new administration!

Why I'm Tired

2009-01-09T00:51:00.004-05:00

OK, so maybe posting this at 10 to 1 sort of casts doubt on my hypothesis, but as I am usually in bed well before midnight, I think this time-lapse video is a better illustration of what I think it is that causes me to wake up every morning feeling more tired than I was when I went to bed. Just substitute cat for dog:

See more funny videos and TBT Videos at Today's Big Thing.

Um. Zipcar.

2009-01-08T16:43:00.003-05:00

So I know that after my long absence from blogging, a comeback post talking yet again about Zipcar is far from exciting. Sorry. My well has run a little dry lately, without much of a drive to blog. Christmas and New Year's were amazing - nearly two weeks home with the fam was just what the doctor ordered. Things in D.C. are swell, and we're all excited/nervous for the chaos that is certain to come with Inauguration Day. Edison is still, you know, Edison. Maybe one day I'll find something more to blog about. Oh, by the way - congratulations to Brian for becoming an official blogger for the Tyra Banks show! Seriously: PROUD FRIEND!!!

But the point of this post is simple: Zipcar really was the right choice for me, even more than I thought it would be. I just took a glance at my five months' worth of bills from Zipcar, since I started using the program in August, and I was pretty much floored. Check it out for yourself:

Aug. 9-Sept. 8: $178.34
Sept. 9-Oct. 8: $215.19
Oct. 9-Nov. 8: $39.05
Nov. 9-Dec. 8: $319.56
Dec. 9-Jan. 8: $158.91
Total: $911.05

Five months' worth of all the car usage I have needed, including preplanned trips and last-minute jaunts, for less than $1,000. Compare that to when I owned my own car. My monthly car payment was $411. Insurance was $144.71. Those two costs alone, over five months, would have totaled $2,778.55. I have saved $1,867.50, if you don't count gas (which I don't pay for with Zipcar), maintenance and upkeep, registration, parking permits, etc. etc. Add in gas alone and I'm sure I have saved well more than $2,000. That's a lot of money! Hooray for that!

That's all. Something more exciting coming soon. Well... coming eventually. If you're lucky. :)

Things have been kind of bumpy...

2008-12-09T22:52:00.004-05:00

You know it's serious if I'm willing to post such a flattering picture of myself in order to solve this problem. I'm officially fed up with shaving. Look at that bloody neck! Just wait until tomorrow, when the blood is gone but it's replaced with what look like giant zits. My face was just not built for shaving.

But shave I must. I have tried lots of solutions. I used to use an electric razor. In college, it actually worked. I don't think my facial hair was as coarse back then, and I also don't think I was ever actually all that cleanly shaven. I've tried an electric razor again recently and it just doesn't cut it. But I have constant razor bumps on my neck, and every time I shave with a regular razor, those bumps become spots of blood which become even bigger, uglier bumps. And I'm serious - I've tried everything! I shaved in the shower for a while. A little better, but not much. For the last couple of years, I actually shave in the bathtub, which is a little better but wastes so much time and water and is just silly. I've tried lots of different shaving creams. I've tried bump-be-gone after shaves. I have avoided shaving against the grain. I've tried shaving slowly and methodically, and I've tried shaving fast and furious. But no matter what ... this is the result.

It's times like this that I wish I had a larger blog readership. I think I'm going to need lots and lots of advice before I solve this problem, and I just don't think I have enough blog readers to offer that advice. But let's try it anyway. Guys, how do you shave? What works for you? Surely some of you have dealt with this! I have resorted to shaving every three or four days recently in order to give my face a few days to recuperate, but I don't really think I should have to spend the rest of my life looking sloppy 75% of the time and looking like a vampire victim the other 25%. This must end! What can I do?!

No. Way.

2008-12-02T13:54:00.001-05:00

People are amazing.

Wow

2008-11-25T16:34:00.000-05:00

Greenbuild 2008

2008-11-23T14:28:00.003-05:00

Well, we did it. Greenbuild 2008 is over, and it was a success! The Greenbuild International Conference & Expo is our annual green building industry trade show, and this year it was in Boston. It was my first visit to Boston. We got there Sunday afternoon and were there until Friday afternoon, and every day I was in the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center from as early as 4:30 a.m. to 7 or 8 p.m., but there was still a little time out on the town - mostly just for dinner and then early to bed. So I can't really say I've seen a lot of Boston, but what I did see was fantastic.

The U.S. Green Building Council (my employer) has hosted Greenbuild since 2002, when there were about 4,000 attendees. This year, we had more than 28,000. More than 850 companies and organizations exhibited on the HUGE expo floor, showing some of the coolest, latest and greatest in green building technologies and products. We had more than 100 educational sessions, an opening plenary session keynoted by Archbishop Desmond Tutu, our first-ever Green Homebuilder's Day with Kevin O'Connor from This Old House and tons of excitement. Working a show is a lot different from attending one – I didn't actually get to see any of the education sessions or plenaries, though I will watch the plenaries online later – but I did get to hang out with Steve Thomas from Planet Green's Renovation Nation and help him find cool stuff to film for an upcoming episode. I saw the kids from Greensburg, the show about a small town in Kansas that was destroyed by a tornado and is now rebuilding the whole town green. I talked on the phone with Kevin O'Connor. :) I hung out in the press room and had some awesome dinners and had a blast with coworkers. Greenbuild is exhausting but really exciting.

I was too busy to even get any photos, so I had to steal a few from a coworker's Facebook. First, this gives you a tiny idea of what the exhibit floor looked like. Seriously, HUGE:

And here's the Leadership Awards party at the Boston Institute of Contemporary Art, a big party the last night of Greenbuild where we celebrate the winners of our annual Leadership Awards. It's a really great way to unwind after a long week:

Très adorable

2008-11-14T12:08:00.002-05:00

I've been wanting to post something as a palate cleanser from my non-stop blog explosion on Election Night, so that the entire front page of my blog wouldn't be all politics. (By the way, I know there are lots of people who visit this blog for when I post pictures of Hank and Roxy and the whole family. My Election Night rampage pushed my most recent round of picture posting onto the second page of the blog, so if you missed that post, be sure to click "Older Posts" at the bottom of this page.)

Anyway, I haven't seen the kids for a few weeks, but I found this really cute video of some kid I don't know. It's nice to see how imagination translates into any language! :)

Once upon a time... from Capucha on Vimeo.

On another note, I am off to Boston Sunday morning for Greenbuild, our big international conference/expo that we host every year. I'm going to be running around like a madman for the whole week, so don't expect any action on this blog for a while. But I plan to take pictures if anything exciting happens, and I'll fill you all in when I get back!

America rejoices

2008-11-05T01:09:00.004-05:00

I wish you could be here with me on D.C.'s 18th Street tonight. This video does it little justice. Strangers hugging, strangers of different races and ages. There were people hanging out of windows, playing trombones. Taxis and buses and carsful of whites and blacks and Hispanics and Asians, honking, screaming, crying. Grown men, black and white, crying on the street. Hope is back in the nation's capital. Hope is back in the nation. My batteries died in my camera, as they always do. But trust me: The ultimate American story was told tonight, and I was here to watch it. So were you, wherever you live. I know that your candidate may not have won. I hope I'm not rubbing it in your face. I truly believe tonight was a win for American conservatism, which has suffered so much under the recent partisanship and nationalistic extremism. Tonight was a win for moderation. Tonight was a win for a humble international policy, a reasoned domestic policy, fiscal responsibility, cultural unity and the death of that ridiculous Bradley Effect. We will heal our environment. We will regain our position in the world. We will be that city on the hill again.

Know hope!

"It feels different to be an American tonight"

2008-11-04T23:11:00.003-05:00

This is four years, four months in the making for me.

In July 2004, I saw Barack Obama give his speech at the Democratic National Convention. I wasn't excited about John Kerry. I was excited about Barack Obama.

For me, this is not a partisan issue. Yes, I tend to vote Democratic. Yes, I guess I'm politically liberal. But what does that mean anymore? I have cringed at the wasteful spending and the nation-building of President Bush, which really makes me politically conservative. Temperamentally, anyone who knows me will tell you I am pretty traditional and conservative.

I think more importantly, I am patriotic. I love America, and that love is based on hope and a belief that it always has something better to give than what it is giving. I saw Obama's 2004 speech, and I said, "This is a man who can bring us together. This is a man who can remind us that we are all Americans, we all have a common cause, we all are united behind the idea of a bill of freedoms that may currently be on shaky ground but will always be worth fighting for."

I knew Obama was the man who could remind us that we're all in this together. He will do that. I have been a little bummed to see the divisiveness that has come about in the last months of this campaign, and I know that there will be Americans who are not ready to accept this outcome. I am watching McCain supporters boo President-Elect Obama's name now. That is disappointing and leaves my constant optimism suffering a little. But the healing has to start somewhere, and I think it's starting now.

I have some very red-state people in my life whom I love dearly. I am so done with thinking in terms of red state and blue state. I think that what we are seeing tonight is proof that we will overcome that distinction. I am now hearing McCain supporters applauding the historic nature of America's first black president. The healing has to start somewhere.

Let's start it now. God bless America.

When Obama won Utah

2008-11-04T22:40:00.003-05:00

Oh, New York Times, when 0% of precincts have reported and you just have a few Salt Lake City numbers in, it's no good to color Utah blue. Still. This is something you won't see often in your life.

It's over

2008-11-04T21:46:00.001-05:00

Obama has 200 electoral votes. That doesn't include California's 55, Oregon's 7 or Washington's 11. The total there is 273, above the 270 needed to win. Plus Hawaii - his home state. Plus the possibilities of Iowa, Montana, Indiana, Missouri, Virginia, North Carolina, Florida. This could be a landslide. Our country could be more united behind this president than any president since Reagan. More later...

Election night fun

2008-11-04T18:57:00.002-05:00

There's an important message in this image, and I endorse that message wholeheartedly, but more importantly, there's just a lot of funny in this image. :) Enjoy!

Need your numbers

2008-11-04T11:22:00.001-05:00

I never thought I'd see the day when I would be one of those people who has to post a MySpace bulletin/blog post/Facebook message asking for phone numbers. I've never broken or lost a phone before. But last night, in my rush to do laundry, I threw my pants in the washing machine with my phone still in them, and there was no rescuing it. So my new phone doesn't know your number. Please text, e-mail or call me so I can put you back in my phone - or in it for the first time, if I didn't have your number before. Or, if you don't want me to be able to contact you, enjoy this opportunity to be rid of me!

DO IT!

2008-11-03T17:22:00.001-05:00

Better late than never

2008-11-02T16:53:00.014-05:00

I've had these photos and videos sitting around for more than a month, since my mom's visit in mid-September, and I just keep forgetting to post them. Better late than never!

We spent much of the visit - including my birthday! - at Virginia Beach. It wasn't the best beach weather, but that just gave Hank a great opportunity to show off his slick slicker - and to do a little dancing in the rain! (Remember, you can click any photo and see it lots bigger.)

An indoor pool meant that the weather wouldn't stop Hank from getting a little swim time in.

Looks like if you ask Julie, this evening in the big rocking chairs was cold cold cold. If you ask Hank and my mom, it was pretty comfortable.

Roxy enjoyed relaxing on her first beach trip.

And we all had a blast riding this "bicycle" built for four to hear the Knack play live on the beach. (And don't believe any of the front-seaters if they tell you they mastered the art of backing up. It was all me!)

Heading back to Richmond...

...where we got to see Grandma and Grandpa again - and even play a little Rock Band with them!

Mom and Julie, we already know you look alike! You don't have to dress the same to prove it!

We learned that Hank is secretly a Twister whiz!

And pretty darn good at Guesstures, too!

Not to mention a really great big brother! (OK, this photo was actually from a visit I made a few weeks later back down to Richmond, but it fits in here nicely.)

Back home in D.C., my mom and I stumbled unexpectedly on this drum circle going on in Meridian Hill/Malcolm X Park.

More good guys than bad guys

2008-10-22T11:50:00.005-04:00

It's about time I step back and remember that there are more people like this than like this. Sorry for the weird way the movie doesn't fit the frame. This is why YouTube is best. This particular player isn't resizing very well... Anyway, you'll get the idea. Meet the good guys:

Self-censorship

2008-10-16T23:40:00.002-04:00

When it comes to politics, I can be pretty awkward. I have a really hard time finding a comfortable place to draw the line when ranting about any of the many things I feel strongly about. Sometimes, I err much too far on the side of caution, missing opportunities to stand up for something I fiercely believe in because I don't like the possibility of confrontation or hurt feelings it might bring. Other times, I take and make politics too personal, blustering about why I'm right and you're wrong and risking damage to very important family and friendship relationships. This week, I was guilty of the former: I deleted a recent blog post after it had been up a day or two because I started second-guessing myself, worrying that I might upset someone who reads it and deciding that I'd rather be safe than sorry. But since then, I've had several people say they were sorry to see the post had been deleted, and since I honestly meant no disrespect to anyone with an opinion different from mine, I have decided to repost it. Of course, before I do, I have to do some clarifying.

Since I first heard Barack Obama speak at the Democratic National Convention in 2004, I had grand visions of a President Obama bringing a badly divided country to new heights of unity, all of us standing together behind a sense of common purpose and a shared pride in America and Americanism. I still see that potential. But recently, I have watched too many YouTubes of narrow-minded people expressing irrational fears about Obama being a terrorist, anti-white, a radical leftist, dangerous, un-American. These people, I am certain, represent a tiny fringe; most McCain supporters, I am certain, are good people who believe in their candidate as passionately as I believe in mine. But it only takes one unstable person to do something dangerous, dramatic and history-changing. Something I prefer not to mention because it is unspeakable, but something that I think could lead to unrest, violence, economic upheaval, international instability and racial and cultural polarization like we haven't seen in a long time. That's why I've been deeply uneasy with Sen. McCain's apparent unwillingness to condemn outright the worst statements of the lunatic fringe that have been showing up on all the YouTubes and Keith Olbermann's "Worst Persons" lists.

There is too much at risk here, too much potential for ruinous effects on the country Sen. McCain bravely fought for and was tortured for, for him to stay silent for fear of alienating a constituency he would do better without. I am suspicious that the McCain campaign - led not by McCain, whom I've always seen as honorable, but by cynical strategists who don't have the good of the country in mind - wants to stoke this anti-Obama fear, wants to let people believe the black guy with a funny name is too cozy with terrorists without the candidate himself having to come out and say it. And I know that the McCain who has long had the respect of this country's moderates and independents (and many Republicans and Democrats) would never have been able to stomach the kind of campaign that is now being run by the new McCain, an old man who knows this is probably his last chance and will desperately do what it takes to win.

That said, let me restate one more time: The scary McCain supporters I talk about are by no means indicative of all McCain supporters. By posting the second of the two YouTubes below, I definitely do not mean to characterize all McCain supporters - or even most, or even many, or even a substantial minority - as being like these people. I just mean it to illustrate how an absence of leadership from McCain when it comes to quelling this nest of hate and extremism really disappoints and disgusts me.

If you're still reading... Here it is, the post I wrote, then deleted, and now am posting again:

---

I don't believe John McCain believes Barack Obama is a terrorist. I'm sure he doesn't. They have worked together in the Senate as colleagues. McCain speaks respectfully of Obama, stands on the stage with him at debates, shakes his hand. He took the microphone away from a woman at a campaign event who claimed Obama was an Arab. McCain knows Obama isn't a terrorist, or a terrorist sympathizer, or "paling around with terrorists" like Sarah Palin claimed. If he had reason to believe that Obama was somehow in league with terrorists, that's a serious thing, and it would be McCain's duty to address it head-on. If McCain thinks Obama is a terrorist, he should ask him bluntly about it at every debate, call him on it in every speech he gives. He should call for an FBI investigation into Obama's history and his associations. It would be his obligation. Clearly, McCain doesn't believe Obama poses a terrorist risk to America - or, if he does, he is guilty of letting it slide.

So if McCain knows that Obama is not a terrorist, it is likewise his duty to squash any and all implications that he is. The next president will take office when we are in the middle of two wars, an economic crisis, a culture war that has split our country in half. The next president will need the support of an American population united behind a common cause, behind the shared purpose of making America safe and economically secure. He will not need to have approximately half the country suspicious that the new president is a secret terrorist set on taking over the government for radical Islamists.

But McCain does neither of these things. He doesn't openly accuse Obama of being a terrorist sympathizer and call on him to answer those charges. But he also doesn't take a proactive approach to killing those rumors. He treads the middle ground, which is the most cowardly and dishonorable place to be in an issue of this importance. He lets his surrogates (including his own running mate) imply - not too subtly - that Obama is a terrorist lover. He approves of ads like the one above, claiming that Obama is "too risky for America." With this ad, he isn't altruistically trying to warn the American people about a threat facing them. He sees the opportunity for a desperate last grasp at scaring Americans into voting for him. He feels he can take the high road with lines like this one from the ad: "Obama's friendship with terrorist Ayers isn't the issue. The issue is Barack Obama's judgment and candor." But who would honestly believe that anyone watching that ad is going to walk away thinking about judgment and candor? Who, after seeing the mug shot-style photos and the pictures of the Pentagon and hearing the serious scary music in the background would focus on "judgment" rather than "that guy with the funny name is friends with terrorists?!" This approach isn't going to win the election for McCain. What it is going to do is cripple President Obama's ability to take on the important issues we are facing, and McCain is letting it happen without any regard for how he is harming the country.

There are three weeks left until Election Day. At this point, I don't expect to change anyone's mind about which candidate they will vote for. What I am most concerned about is having a bitterly divided post-election country where nothing can get done. I'm scared of what people who buy into this innuendo are capable of doing. People like this:

Spicy, sweet and delicious

2008-10-12T21:09:00.003-04:00

My good friends Joe and Marie over at the DoughEatery introduced me to these really easy, really yummy honey lime chicken enchiladas. They make great leftovers, so they made for a few good lunches at work - and lots of coworkers fell in love with them the way I did. I feel like it wouldn't be fair to keep them to myself, so I've gotta share the recipe with you. I didn't have a baking dish large enough to cook all eight of them at once, but I froze half of the chicken in the marinade and was able to thaw it out and make the other four a few days later - and it worked great!

THE RECIPE:

6 Tbsp. honey
6 Tbsp. lime juice
1 tsp. chili powder
1/2 tsp. garlic powder
1 lb. chicken, cooked and shredded (I boil it and highly recommend doing the same)
8-10 whole-wheat tortillas
1 lb. monterey jack cheese, shredded (I used colby jack)
16 oz. green enchilada sauce (salsa verde)
1 c. cream (Land O'Lakes has a delicious fat-free version)

Mix the first four ingredients and toss with chicken in a large reusable Ziploc container. Marinate for a half-hour or more - I recommend more because the more intense the honey/lime/chili flavors are, the better these enchiladas will be. Fill tortillas with chicken mixture and cheese, reserving about 1 cup cheese to sprinkle on top. Mix green sauce with cream and any leftover marinade. Pour over enchiladas, ensuring that it seeps underneath. Sprinkle with cheese and bake, uncovered, at 350 degrees for 30 minutes.

What are the chances?

2008-10-09T21:13:00.003-04:00

So probably everyone knows I'm kind of a geek about lyrics. Sometimes I hear a new lyric and I just have to tell everyone about it. This one today is from the new album by the Streets, "Everything is Borrowed." In this song, a guy is sitting on the edge of a cliff, ready to jump, and an older guy walks by and, seeing what's about to happen, gives him some words of wisdom. I don't think you have to be suicidal to benefit from a little reminder that we're all really lucky just to be alive. Here's what the older guy said:

For billions of years since the outset of time
Every single one of your ancestors survived
Every single person on your mum and dad's side
Successfully looked after and passed onto you life.
What are the chances of that like?
It comes to me once in a while.
And everywhere I tell folk
It gets the best smile.

Maybe it's cheesy. Maybe it's just because it's that time of year when the days are perfectly cool and the nights are sort of blue from the moon shining through a hazy sky, and it's making me kind of sentimental, but I love that thought. I also love this lyric, from the same CD: "I came to this world with nothing / And I leave with nothing but love. / Everything else is just borrowed."

So now that you're inspired and enlightened... you're welcome!

Really nice video

2008-10-09T15:47:00.002-04:00

There is something indescribably moving about this video to me. I wanted to just embed it here, but for some reason you can't view embedded YouTubes in high quality - and this one needs to be viewed in high quality. On that note: Be sure to click "watch in high quality" at the bottom of the video screen. But seriously, go watch this video.

Time's tickin'

2008-10-02T15:34:00.001-04:00

ChaChaCha

2008-10-01T23:16:00.002-04:00

Have you heard of ChaCha? It's a free question-and-answer service: You text a question to ChaCha (that's 242242), and someone texts you an answer in return. That's any question you want. Who are the two senators from Nebraska? Why doesn't Rebecca love me? Who won the presidential debate? What is the definition of "omnidirectional"? What is the tallest dog on record?

And now, I am one of those people sending you those answers.

Anyone can be a ChaCha guide, if they just pass a few tests. I can log on whenever I want, 10 hours a day or an hour a week. I just answer questions as they come to me, and I get 10-20 cents per answer. It's fun, and addictive, and educational. Did you know Tokyo used to be called Edo? And the tallest living dog is a 42.2-inch-tall harlequin great Dane named Gibson?

A new room for a big boy. Also: Who is THAT?!

2008-09-11T21:24:00.005-04:00

Hank's old room got a big-boy makeover, and we got to check it out when Jimmie and Steph were visiting. But here's what's really great: I get to have a sleepover in that big-boy room in just a few days!

And it wasn't just the bedroom that got a makeover. In addition to becoming a big brother, Hank has been trying on a few new looks. Whatta ya think?

For Tiff

2008-09-11T16:37:00.004-04:00

In a comment on my last post, Tiff said she wants me to post some pictures of myself on this blog. Tiff failed to notice that, in fact, there was a picture of me in that last post. Here it is again, cropped for maximum Doug effect.

You can click on it and view it bigger. That's true, in fact, of most pictures on this blog.

Sorry for the diversion from my Jimmie-and-Steph-visit series. Look for some photos of Hank's new big-boy bedroom tonight.

Hanging out in D.C.

2008-09-10T22:03:00.005-04:00

Round 2 of my pics from Jimmie and Steph's visit in August. It's now been nearly a month since they got here, but I'm still basking in the memories.

Memories like...

Recovering from an awesome red-eye:

Wowing at the National Cathedral:

Checking out the National Geographic Museum:

And some fun dining experiences...
Like this yummy little cafe on 17th:

A Jimmie-Steph-and-Doug tradition, Lauriol Plaza (mediocre Mexican food - aka, the best in D.C.):

They have La Fro in D.C.?!

And, finally, man, how I love the falling waters at Meridian Hill Park:

Our next installment: Hank's new big-boy bedroom!

Barack Ovama

2008-09-09T21:52:00.004-04:00

I realized that I just have too many pictures from Jimmie and Steph's visit to post them all at once. So I will spread them out, by topic, as much as I can. Today, it's all about (oh please please please please) our next POTUS!

That's right. Every time we saw Hank during that trip - now almost a month ago! - he had his three heroes with him: Spidey, Mr. Dinosaur, and "Barack Ovama." This is a good blog post: It includes photos of three of my all-time favorite guys!!

(I'm talking, of course, about Hank, Jimmie, and Mr. Ovama.)

(Dad and Phil, please come visit so I can get some pictures and round out my top five!)

Hanna barbarian

2008-09-05T23:33:00.001-04:00

We have a tropical storm/hurricane coming. Hanna. She's fixin' to dump 10 inches of rain here. And I'm having a party here tomorrow night. With 35 people having RSVP'd. I don't want 35 dripping-wet people in my apartment.

I can't believe a year went by so fast

2008-09-05T11:05:00.002-04:00

I meant to post this yesterday, but yesterday was so busy that I was really only in front of a computer for a total of about one hour during the course of the whole day.

One year ago yesterday, I got into my car, pulled out of the old South Jordan driveway, and headed east for a new life on the other side of the country. I can't believe it's been a year - then again, I can't believe it's only been a year.

I don't have much more to say about it than that. I don't really want to reminisce about that day a year ago when I had to say goodbye to my home and my family. The last year has been really fun and exciting, but of course it's also been hard to be so far away from the people and places I love. And I'm in a good mood today, so I don't want to dwell too much on the bittersweet and get moody. :) I really just wanted to point out that I made it a full year as a non-Utahn, or at least as someone who doesn't currently live in Utah. I guess I'm still a Utahn, right?

Hmm. Pointless blog post. I promise, those photos from Jimmie and Steph's visit are still coming, eventually. My Internet at home has been down for a few days, so I haven't really had a chance...

Tax and spend?

2008-08-28T21:13:00.005-04:00

I just have to point you all to this pretty cool tool, which takes the specific details of Obama's tax policy and calculates whether you would see a tax cut or a tax increase under Obama's tax plan. It's from the non-partisan Tax Policy Center, not some pro-Obama group. Some people will probably see a tax increase. (Most won't.) But rather than rely on rhetoric that assumes Democratic president=higher taxes, you should check out the reality of it.

My brand-new cousin!

2008-08-22T21:53:00.013-04:00

What a fantastic week it has been! I just spent seven full days with Jimmie and Steph, and we had such a great time! We spent half the week hanging around D.C. and the other half in Richmond/Montpelier/Louisa, Va. It's never long enough, but it was awesome to have them here for a full week this time. (Last fall, they came for just a few days.) Anyway, in the coming days you can expect a post full of photos and videos from the visit, but first, this post, which covers just one day of that trip. And what a day it was! That day – Aug. 20, 2008 – we welcomed the newest member of the Jackson clan to the world – Roxy Viola Gisselman, born at 10:58 a.m. (I love this quote that Proud Papa Sam posted on the Gisselman family blog: "1058am: Roxy is cut away and 1 person becomes 2. For a quick moment, she is the youngest of 7 billion people on this planet.") And what an honor – we were among the first people in the world to see her!

We arrived at the hospital, got to the maternity floor, but we weren't sure exactly where to go. We spent some time peeking into the nursery at the other babies, but no Roxy... So we started to wander down the hall to see if we could figure out where we needed to go, and we were passed by a nurse wheeling the most perfect little baby girl down the hall. "Maybe that's her!" said Aunt Julie. "Who are you looking for?" asked the nurse. We told her; "Here she is!" said the nurse. And sure enough! There was Big Brother Hank's chin. There was that famous Gisselman Family Charm, the smile, the personality!

Here we all are stealing every peek we could get during that first hour or two of Roxy's life:

Already, full of energy:

And yet, perfectly capable of sweet serenity:

I may have gotten a little carried away with the photos of the new big brother holding his pride and joy, but what's better than one little Gisselman? One little Gisselman, and one very big boy!

No question that Roxy is already a huge admirer of her big brother. You should have seen the way she stared at this sign that hung on the inside of her cradle:

And now, some other people introducing themselves to Roxy.

"Hi! I'm your mama!":

"It's me! Dad!":

"We flew all the way from Utah to meet you!":

"Get ready for all the hugs and kisses you could ever need! I'm your loving – and fun-loving – Aunt Julie!":

"Just ask Hank about me – he'll tell you that your cousin Matty-Mo is the coolest cousin you could ever ask for!":

"How old is old enough to learn to play Rock Band? When can I bring her on my motorcycle?" asks Uncle Robbie:

Get a load of the new and improved Gisselman crew:

With funny teeth, lots of giggles and a little whoopie cushion, hanging out in a hospital room is a blast:

Nice to meet you, Roxy! Thanks for joining our family – we're better than ever now that you're here! And thanks, Terri, Sam and Hank, for letting us be a part of your family's special day! We love you all!!

Barack rolled

2008-08-11T11:59:00.001-04:00

The finger

2008-08-08T13:41:00.001-04:00

Watch some of my coworkers give the finger to climate change. I didn't know how cool this was going to be; now I really regret that I didn't participate.

SYTYCD - some thoughts

2008-08-08T09:35:00.003-04:00

When I think about it, it's amazing the percentage of my blog readers who watch So You Think You Can Dance, so I don't mind sharing a couple of thoughts about last night's finale.

First, watch this now, while you still can - it never takes long before So You Think You Can Dance YouTubes are pulled for copyright violation.

And now, some thoughts.

Hooray for Joshua! Definitely well-earned, and it couldn't have been a nicer guy. (I guess. I mean, of course, I don't know him, but he seems like a really nice guy.)
Bringing back so many people from previous seasons was a lot of fun, but where in the world were Sabra and Danny? Sabra's absence, especially, was weird, since she was the only previous winner not to appear on the finale. Strange that Jesus and Cedric, for example, and others who didn't make it all that far on their respective seasons, were there, but no Sabra and no Danny.
Wow. Was it just me, or does it look like Neil has been using heroine or something?
Was it just a coincidence that when the judges picked their favorite performances to recap, both the first and last ones of the night were Katee and Joshua (Bollywood first, and "No Air" at the end), and it just so happens that Katee was winner among the girls and Joshua was the overall winner? I'm not complaining – those were two of my favorite numbers from the season – but it's just another example of this show's sometimes-transparency.
I was kind of sad that none of the judges picked Mark and Chelsea's Mia Michaels weird-wedding dance as one of their favorites, but other than that, I think all of my favorites were represented.
It may have been cheesey, but I really liked seeing both Mary and Nigel dance.
I was annoyed with Twitch when, after Katee was named as the second non-winner of the top 4, and everyone was cheering for her, he turned around as he was leaving the stage and celebrated and acted like he thought the audience was cheering for him. He sort of made up for it with his seemingly sincere happiness for Joshua at the end of the show.
Strange, also, that several times Cat referred to the "top 20," saying, "Here are your top 20" and things like that, but Jessica wasn't there - and they really didn't mention her at all.
HOORAY JOSHUA!

Mold... I got a lot of mold...

2008-07-30T09:47:00.009-04:00

I know that only about 2% of the population - if that - watches "Squidbillies," so no one at all gets the Granny Squid reference in this post's title, but still, I can't help it. Every time I talk about this, I have to use that tweaked Granny quote. (In case you're wondering, the original quote is, "Moles... I got a lot of moles.") Granny Squid is hilarious.

But to the point.

I have had mold growing on the walls of my apartment. Coming from the West, that is such a strange concept. Mold grows on fruit and bread - and even then, only rarely. But out here, it's humid. I mean, crazy humid! And when water started leaking from my ceiling and the base of my walls, all that wetness resulted in this:

Gross. Dangerous. Unhealthy. Unsightly. Inconvenient.

But the couple who owns my house, as they always are, was very responsive, very helpful. The plumber came and figured out where the water is coming from: The ceiling leak is from a leaky shower upstairs, and the water puddling on the floors was coming through walls that were filled with water from a faulty condensation tube connected to my air conditioner. (It's likely that the tube has been leaking since it was installed, so this could be years and years of water finally breaking through.) He tore out the wall, and this is what it looks like now:

This remarkable little device, a dehumidifier, is drying the apartment out. I am absolutely amazed by how quickly the tray fills up with water. Pulled from thin air!

Once the wall cavities are sufficiently dry, the walls will be replaced and repainted, and my apartment won't look like this anymore

A strict new policy

2008-07-28T11:18:00.006-04:00

Yeah, I admit that my posts lately have been sort of single-minded, all about selling my car. I'm not the only one who's noticed. A certain someone, whom I won't name except to say it's someone to whom I'm related on both my mother's and father's side of the family, sent me the following message:

You sold it! Awesome! congrats
but now I think you should blog about something we all REALLY care about......
EDDIE!

Now it is my fervent belief that if this certain someone, to whom I am related fraternally, really wants to see Edison, he ought to come out for a visit. So fervent is this belief, in fact, that this will be my last blog post about Edison until that someone comes out for a visit. That's the only way this person will get his Phil - ahem, I mean, his fill - of Edison. (Of course, I reserve the right to change my mind on this strict policy, should Edison do anything particularly blog-worthy.)

So enjoy these random pictures and videos. They will likely be your last for a while.

And some video of Edison reacting to me making that water-drip-drop sound by flicking my cheek with my finger. I have often said that this dog-head-tilt is one of my biggest pet peeves when it's used in commercials as a way of letting us know that "my goodness this person's behavior is so wacky that even the dog recognizes it." But when my dog does it in the privacy of my own house, it's hilarious, and I'm not ashamed to post videos of it.

She's gone

2008-07-22T21:18:00.002-04:00

I did it. The Prius is gone. It now lives with the nice folks at the Rockville Carmax, at least until they sell it - which I am sure will happen pretty soon. I decided to go with Carmax because it was quick and convenient - they took care of everything with the bank and title and everything, and they bought it from me for more than I bought it for new, so I walked away with a nice fat check.

The car and I had some nice last moments together. I left work a few minutes early to make the drive up to Rockville. I had to be there by 7 p.m. because Carmax had to be able to call my credit union in Utah, which closed at 5. (I first went to Carmax on Saturday and got my quote for what they would pay for the car, but the bank was closed so I couldn't sell then.) On the way home it occurred to me that I would have just over an hour to make the highly unpredictable rush-hour drive that would include a long drive on 16th Street on the way out of town (always busy during rush hour), on the Beltway (ALWAYS busy), and on one more interstate. I'm not going to get there on time, I decided. But I went ahead and tried anyway. And the Prius and I enjoyed an unusually smooth, light-on-traffic ride all the way - sure, 16th was busy, but the lights are so well-timed on that road and even that stop-and-go was more go than stop. So we arrived in one piece, relaxed and with a half-hour to spare. Well done, Prius. Well done, Doug.

Sure, I miss my car a little. So many good memories with it - the excitement of learning all about driving this technologically awesome new car, the road trip with my bros to Santa Barbara, the four days of just me and Edison and the Prius cruising across the country with my dad in the Penske in front of me as I tried to cope with the fact that every mile was another mile between me and the rest of my family and friends. But I have to admit already feeling a certain amount of freedom. As I was driving to Carmax, I kept trying to plot out in my head what route home would be the best - and then it would occur to me that my only route home would be a traffic-free Metro ride. Walking home from the Metro past all the bumper-to-bumper parking along all the curbs, I realized I won't have to deal with that again.

Oh yeah, and that fat check!

Micki and Will, this is for you

2008-07-09T16:06:00.003-04:00

This made me really sad, for several reasons.

These guys clearly love their bird. They painted her portrait!

Here's hopin' for the best, Lola!

Zipcar update: This plan just keeps getting better

2008-07-07T21:59:00.003-04:00

This morning, I get to work and I have an e-mail from a woman who works at Zipcar. Apparently, she has a Google Alert set up to e-mail her when anyone posts blogs, news, etc., about Zipcar. She was alerted to my last two blog posts, in which I talked about my plans to use Zipcar. She looked through the rest of my blog and deduced that I work for USGBC. Through even further detective prowess, she figured I may well be the USGBC employee who had e-mailed them on Thursday with a question about the application process. I was, which meant she now had an e-mail address with which to contact me.

Turns out that Zipcar is planning a promotion called Low Car Diet. In this promotion, 30 people in D.C. are selected to give up their cars and use Zipcar, Metro, buses, bikes and other alternate forms of transportation for a three-week-or-so period this summer. Participants put together two written or video blog posts about the experience to post on the Zipcar Web site. Would I be interested, she asked, in participating? I would be.

In return for my participation, I get one year's membership fee waived. (That's a $50 value, although with my discount as a USGBC employee it would have only cost me $25.) I also get $150 worth of free Zipcar driving time - at my USGBC discounted rate. That rate is about $7.25 per hour (depending on the car), which translates to more than 20 hours. Actually, it's more than that probably, as there is a full-day (USGBC discounted) rate of about $50 (I don't remember exactly what it is). That means the $150 could be worth 72 hours! I also get an as-yet-undetermined amount of money on my SmartCard, which you use to ride Metro trains and buses. I get a membership in some local bicyclists' association, which would be cool if I had a bike. :) And I get to be part of a fun promotional event.

There will be a kickoff event later this month at which we symbolically hand over our car keys and pick up a goody bag. And then we start blogging! I'll let you know when and where you can see my Low Car Diet posts.

I knew this selling-my-car thing would be a good idea!

Car for sale!

2008-07-04T11:42:00.003-04:00

I think my previous post may have been my most controversial yet. Not that this is a particularly controversial blog, but my last post resulted in tons of comments, text messages, phone calls, etc., with some people wholeheartedly supporting my thoughts of selling my car and some people heartily against it. It's a tough decision, for sure, and it's probably especially hard for people who don't live in such a transit-friendly city to understand. But I've decided what I'm doing.

I'm selling my car.

Yup. I'm doing it. I've already signed up for my Zipcar account. (I get a discount because my employer has a corporate account!) Since my last post, I perused Craigslist and saw that the Prius that were for sale on there were asking much more than the Blue Book value, so I figure I can get even more for it than I thought. (Maybe even more than I originally paid!) Most of those Craigslist posts are through dealerships, no less, and the Prius is in such high demand, especially out here in the East, that dealerships have waiting lists as long as six months!

I am pretty excited about this decision, but trust me: There are mixed emotions. It's not the concern that a lot of people expressed. It's not that I'm worried about losing the freedom having a car affords me. Zipcar offers pretty close to the same freedom. (I've been specifically noticing Zipcar spots throughout the city since I've been considering this, and they are literally EVERYWHERE.) It's just that, as I said in my last post, I've wanted a Prius since they were first released in 1999 or 2000 or whenever it was. I've had a Prius magnet on my fridge ever since I had my first apartment in 2001. The day I finally decided to go ahead and buy one is one of my happiest recent memories. The day I actually drove it home is an even happier one! I am not really one to get emotionally attached to physical objects. Selling my old car, the beloved Talula the Protege, was tough, because she was my first car and I had her for so long. (I know, I hate it when people call cars "she" too.) But this one will be extra tough. Every time I've given someone a ride in the Prius, I've been That Cool Kid with the Prius. People are so wowed by it. And rightfully so. What a great car!

Then again, I haven't had the six or seven years to bond with the Prius that I had with Talula. In fact, the Prius doesn't even have a name. So that helps.

Oh, and did I mention - I am going to be saving SO MUCH MONEY! I will probably have an actual balance in my savings account for the first time since college! And no debt! And no worries about insurance or parking spots or regular maintenance or keeping it clean. No more will I fret when I see broken glass on the street (I see it all the time here!) and realize that cars parked in D.C. are anything but safe.

I may be jumping the gun. The Craiglist posting just BARELY went up. Maybe no one will want to buy. Maybe I'll find myself stuck with a car AND a Zipcar account. But I doubt it.

Girl, I'm gonna miss you:

Car for sale?

2008-06-28T16:49:00.004-04:00

You all know I love my car. I've had the Prius for less than a year-and-a-half, and, well, I just love it. But you also all know that I bought this car when I still lived in Salt Lake City and didn't know I would be leaving. Didn't know I would be moving to a city in which I very rarely actually need a car. And now I'm wondering if I ought to do something very scary: sell my car.

It's been very nice having my car while I've lived here. I've only used it about once every two weeks, but when I've used it, I've been glad to have it. Without it, I couldn't have taken all those trips to Richmond to visit relatives. I couldn't have taken Edison to the vet in Maryland - or anywhere, really, since you can't take dogs on the Metro or buses. I couldn't have picked visitors up from the airport or made big grocery shopping trips where I bought too much stuff to walk home or gone to Ikea to buy a new coffee table.

Well, actually, I could have, with Zipcar.

Zipcar is a service that lets its members use one of their cars when they need them, without having to pay for insurance or a monthly car payment or registration at the DMV. There are different plans, etc., but basically, the one I am considering comes with a $50/month payment, which goes toward your car use. So I am committed to using the car at least $50 worth, and when I use it more than that, I pay $8.10 an hour or $60.30 for a 24-hour period. The best thing is that that price includes insurance and gas! So even with heavy use, I couldn't see myself spending more than $200 a month on driving, rather than the more than $550 I currently pay for my car payment and insurance, plus gas. And Zipcars have reserved parking spots - a huge plus in a city where it sometimes takes a half-hour or longer to find a parking spot in your own neighborhood. And yep, pets are allowed in Zipcars.

Bonus: Blue Book tells me that my car right now is worth about $4,000 more than I owe on it! The beauty of owning a car that is in super-high demand!

But this is a hard decision for me to make. I have lived without a car before - in Logan, Utah, no less, where there is not quite the level of public transit available that we have in D.C. Still, it's nice knowing that I have a car right there when I need it. (Of course, the concept with Zipcar is that you still have a car right there when you need it. There are Zipcar locations all over this city, some closer to my house than some of the parking spots I end up with now.)

So I need your help. This is one of those decisions I need people's input on. Is this a terrible idea, or a brilliant one? Can anyone think of any possible problems this would cause that I've overlooked, or any other benefits that I hadn't thought of?

I posted too soon

2008-06-16T00:11:00.004-04:00

So I guess I should learn to be patient before I post on this blog. My last post talked about "Greensburg," a new show on the new Planet Green network. I talked about how in November some students from the town of Greensburg came to Greenbuild, the yearly conference and expo put on by the U.S. Green Building Council (ahem, where I work), and how it was my job to help them find their way around Greenbuild. I posted that I didn't know just what role Greenbuild would play in this show - I figured it would maybe make a small appearance somewhere in a future episode. But shortly after I posted, the kids went to Greenbuild! The last quarter or so of the second episode is dedicated to the kids' trip to Chicago. They talked to our president and CEO, there were clips of President Clinton's speech at Greenbuild, and it was actually a pretty pivotal moment in the show. I didn't realize that it was at Greenbuild that the idea of building the town's buildings to LEED certification first came up. So anyway, definitely track down Planet Green and find a rerun of episode 2 (it's called "Homecoming")!

Greensburg

2008-06-15T23:24:00.004-04:00

Just a quick TV recommendation for those of you looking for something interesting to watch during the summer downtime. I guess it's a double-recommendation: a new show for you to watch, on a brand-new network.

Discovery Home has been replaced by Planet Green, a channel dedicated to all things green. (Find out where to watch it here.) It just launched at the beginning of this month, and it's a really entertaining network so far. It has all the formulas for TV shows that are popular on other networks - home makeovers, celebrities, lifestyle makeovers, science and technology, etc. etc. - but it's all with a green twist. One of my favorite shows is "Wasted," which focuses on a different eco-disastrous family every week and shows them how to reduce their ecological footprint. If the family manages to reduce their footprint, they win the amount of money they are expected to save in reduced utility bills annually.

But the best show I've seen so far is "Greensburg." It is the story of Greensburg, Kan., a town of 1,500 people that was destroyed in 2007 by an F5 tornado. The residents decided to stay and rebuild the town - and they decided to rebuild it green. It's one of those Midwest, all-American towns full of people you can't help but love who all want to do the best for their community, and it's really interesting to see what they went through after the tornado and how they are pulling together to rebuild. The show doesn't sugar-coat the controversies that came up when city leaders decided to build green, either, which adds some drama and makes the show a lot more realistic.

I've been excited for this show since November, when the crew came to Greenbuild, the conference/expo that my employer puts together every year. I was given the duty of helping the cast and crew find their way around the conference, get into some of the educational sessions, etc. I'm not sure how it's going to fit into the show yet, but my understanding was that the Greenbuild part of the show will focus on some students who attended Greenbuild to learn all about building green.

Anyway, find Planet Green on your local cable provider, set the DVR to record "Greensburg," and enjoy! You've missed the first two episodes - it premiered Sunday night with two episodes - but I'm sure they will rerun it.

A little starstruck

2008-06-07T00:20:00.003-04:00

Blogging is a funny thing. It's sort of like walking into a very public place, getting up on a stage, and talking about whatever's on your mind. You know there's an audience out there, but you don't know much about that audience. Sure, you know of a few family and friends who are likely out there. But other than that, you don't know how big that audience is or who else is in it. And yet, somehow, you feel free to just talk and talk and not worry a whole lot about what you say or who's listening.

Throw into that a little tool called Google, and you have to realize that, if you happen to talk about someone by name, there's a chance they are going to find out and stop by to hear what you have to say.

Now, when I blog about well-known people, I think I'm pretty safe in assuming they won't ever be all that interested in what I have to say. I doubt Barack Obama is about to stop by to read my posts about him - after all, there are one or two other people out there blogging about him these days. Likewise, Hillary Clinton probably will never know that All Up Inside This Beltway thinks she's a nepotist who has lost all sense of propriety. That's all well and good. But with celebrities of slightly lesser-known status, there is always the possibility that their new-found fame is still novel enough that if you talk about them, they're likely to perk up and listen.

So I guess it shouldn't come as a surprise that Phucdat "Danny" Nguyen, aka Atomic Goofball, one way or another stumbled upon my recent post about his all-too-short stint on "So You Think You Can Dance," his appearance in a street dancing competition here in D.C., and his visit to Crafty Bastards in the fall. Still, it was an unexpected and super-pleasant surprise to find a comment posted by him on that entry, and although I am sure it was a one-time visit, I still have to say: Welcome to my blog, Goofball. And thanks for rocking our socks off. Keep doing what you do! (OK, so that site is currently under construction, but I'll bet it will be pretty rad someday!)

Oh! And speaking of starstruck, did I mention that I met Mo Rocca last week?

Only in America

2008-06-03T23:20:00.005-04:00

Just a few thoughts about tonight.

Tonight, the general election for America's next president began, and one of the two men chosen to represent their parties in that race is a black man. I don't want to overstate that fact - if Barack Obama looked like John Edwards or John McCain or John Candy I would be just as excited - but I don't want to understate it, either. A black man has a better-than-even chance of being the next American president. And he got there not by being a black man, and he got there not in spite of being a black man. He got there, and he's a black man. Historically significant for a host of reasons, one of which happens to be that he's black. He didn't win by insinuating that America owes it to its black citizens to vote for him. He didn't win by playing on our collective guilt or by rallying his "black troops" or by capitalizing on racial polarization. (Contrast: a certain woman who banked quite a bit on the one-dimensionally historic nature of her candidacy.) It's worth pausing and remembering the history that has brought us to this point, the significance of his race. And then it's worth moving on and observing that, above and beyond his race, this is an important day in American history.

Hillary Clinton still isn't giving up. She still can't get it through her head that nepotism and dynasty and selfishness are not American values. If she was an actress and wanted to put on a one-woman show to symbolize and portray what Barack Obama means when he talks about the "politics of the past," she couldn't have done a better job than she did in her speech tonight. In the past, being a good Democrat meant having an ax to grind, having a list of slights and fights and grievances to fight over. In the past, being a successful Democratic candidate meant rallying your angry troops to take on that fight. We're all sick of fighting - all of us except those people in New York City tonight chanting "Denver! Denver!" This is not going to Denver. This is over.

Hillary Clinton thinks she is the boss. She is demanding a private meeting with Obama to talk about the vice presidential nomination. She wants this story to be all about her, even as she has now become a historical footnote.

Most importantly, we now have a presidential race the outcome of which will, no matter what, result in a president who recognizes that torture is not a tactic America embraces. We have one candidate who lived through torture as a prisoner of war and who has seen how it belittles its victims and its perpetrators. And we have another candidate who instinctively understands that America is great because she is good, and when American ceases to be good, America will cease to be great. And, regardless of the outcome of this race, our next president will be a man who acknowledges the threat of global warming and who wants to tackle it.

America remains the best country in the history of mankind.

Time to say goodbye!

2008-06-03T18:42:00.001-04:00

Way, way past time, actually.

You are getting sleepy

2008-06-02T22:17:00.001-04:00

Hey! I know that guy!

2008-05-30T13:51:00.003-04:00

First, this assurance: Just because it's "So You Think You Can Dance" season doesn't mean all my posts are going to be dance-related.

That said, did anyone watch last night's show? You may remember my last post about stumbling upon a breaker/b-boy competition on the streets of Chinatown in D.C. last week. You may recall having seen a guy in a green shirt, standing on one hand. You may also recall seeing him in the background of a few other photos. That man was called "Goofball," and he was my favorite performer at the competition.

And, if you watched last night's "Dance" audition show in D.C., you saw him as well. Phucdat Nguyen, aka the Atomic Goofball. He was, as always, fun to watch, though his audition I think failed to show him at his best. He made it through to choreography, but as is common with most breakers on the show, he couldn't make it through that point. Ah, well.

Just now, searching through some YouTubes of Atomic Goofball, I just realized that I also saw him several months ago at an outdoor arts and crafts fair in my neighborhood called Crafty Bastards. Strangely, there are no clips of him on YouTube from the audition yet. But you can find some videos of him on his YouTube page, and I will embed a video from Crafty Bastards here. (And, after that, two of my favorite auditions from last night's show, just for fun.)

Dancing in the street

2008-05-26T20:24:00.004-04:00

Friday afternoon, I was hanging out in Chinatown, waiting for Brian and Spencer to arrive on the bus from New York for a fun-filled weekend visit, and I heard down the street the sounds of something happening. Hip hop music, people cheering, an MC talking... So I headed in that direction, and what I found was some kind of dance competition, right there on the steps of the old public library. B boys, b girls, breakers, hip hop dancers... Unfortunately, I only had my cell phone, not my real camera, and a cell phone really isn't the best way to capture how cool this was. But here are my best attempts. And at the end, thrown in just for fun, check out one of the coolest moments from Thursday's season premiere of "So You Think You can Dance."

It's over

2008-05-17T16:20:00.006-04:00

As usual, the Jazz just... can't... quite... make it...

(I'm writing this in my word processor at 2 a.m. Friday night/Saturday morning, still smarting from the Jazz loss that ended our playoff hopes. The wireless I steal from the bed and breakfast next door is down, so I am writing this post while it's still fresh and relevant, but I won't post it until the next time I have Internet access again.)

It was an exciting ending to a terrible, terrible, painful game, and I can't help but think that if the Jazz had just taken it a little more seriously sometime before the end of the fourth quarter they might have forced a Game 7. But instead, somehow, the NBA's best home team became only the second team to lose at home in this year's playoffs, making the home team record for the playoffs 21-2. I also wonder whether we'd be in this same spot if we hadn't so benevolently given up Fisher to the Lakers. Woulda coulda shoulda.

I'm also a little embarrassed that a handful of Jazz fans were so misbehaved – throwing crap at the Lakers bench and acting like children – that the national announcers on ESPN were compelled to make note of it. At least they recognized that it was maybe 11 people out of an overall attendance of 19,911 enthusiastic, well-behaved fans. But in a year when Utah's fans have gotten some bad press for being a little demonstrative, this doesn't jive well – especially during the first two games when the EnergySolutions Arena was filled with boos for Derek Fisher , which just looks bad since Fisher left for his daughter's eye cancer.

I have to address this idea that Jazz fans are so loud and so hard to play against because they are a bunch of repressed Mormons who have nothing better to get worked up about. What a joke. And I know that it was just one guy who said it, and he immediately recognized that he had messed up by saying it. But still. What a ridiculous dismissal of, basically, an entire state. An entire group of people, whose passion for their home team is dismissed because of a religious stereotype.

It seems clear to me. Utah has always been the butt of the nation's jokes. We only became a state after we officially relinquished polygamy. Even today, 112 years later, we only make national headlines when there's a story about polygamy, or liquor laws, or the occasional shooting at Trolley Square, or a runaway Federal Heights girl who turns up years later in a burka, hanging out with someone who goes by the name Immanuel. But those of us who have spent the bulk of our lives in Utah know that there is a lot to be proud of about our state.

It's just hard to put your finger on it. Yes, we have our awesome natural landscape and scenery, but now that I live in the East, I have learned how little people know about Utah's uniqueness. I have friends here who thought that Salt Lake City was in Idaho. People here often have no idea where Arches, or Lake Powell, or the Great Salt Lake or the Bonneville Salt Flats are. (Then again, there are the die-hard granola-types I work with who consider Bryce Canyon the best place on Earth and who say Zion is their favorite vacation spot. THEY, at least, know something about Utah.) The one thing that is clearly linked to Utah that we've always had to be proud of is the Utah Jazz. And I think we're all very past due for a little payback for our long-standing commitment to the team.

Ever since I was a little kid, when the Jazz were all about Karl Malone and John Stockton, the Utah Jazz have been a really good team, just a half-tier or so below the best of the best. Yeah, we had a couple years in there where we really sucked, but for the most part, I think we've all seen the Jazz as our best hope – other than the Olympics – of really getting credit for being a, ahem, Pretty Great State. And that's why it's so, so frustrating that we can never really make it all the way. This year, I would have been happy just to see us make it through the Western Conference. There's only been one or two years when we really deserved to be the NBA champions. But in those other years, all too often we crap out too early, earlier than we should. WE'RE THE BEST HOME TEAM THIS YEAR. We have a team that doesn't rely on one star player. We have Korver, and Williams, and Okur, and Kirilenko, and Boozer, and Mills, and Brewer... We're not Lebron James' team, or Kobe Bryant's team. We're a good, well-rounded team, with lots of key players. And we always have been. We've never had a showy, flashy player like most teams have. We've never really had anyone who wanted to win for their own personal glory. It's very indicative of the Utahn mindset, of being proud to be part of a collective that is much more complex, diverse and interesting than most outsiders would give you credit for. That's why Jazz fans are pretty hard-core about it. And that's why it's so painful every time the Jazz fall just... a little... short...

One of these days, the Jazz will finally be NBA champions. They have to be. It's overdue. If there was a championship that was based on long-term well-roundedness and overall sportsmanship and a team mentality, I think we would have deserved to win that one long ago. I don't know as much about basketball as some people. I don't pretend to know how to really compare the Jazz's glory days to the glory days of the Bulls or the Lakers or the Celtics, in terms of stats or players or whatever. But I do know that we have had a lot of personalities to be proud of, and we're a franchise that really represents its hometown crowd well. And THAT'S why we take losses so personally. THAT'S why we're so offended when referees make calls that seem pre-planned to screw us out of what we've earned. THAT'S why tonight's almost-come-from-behind ending to a pretty strong season stings a little more than it should.

I do have to note, however, that Utah is consistently strong at “So You Think You Can Dance,” which kicks off its next season this Thursday! So maybe it's good that the Jazz are gone and we can turn all our focus to the Next Great Sabra!

Flashback post

2008-05-14T09:33:00.004-04:00

If the last two posts on this blog bored you, look away - this one will, too. Two subjects in this post, wholly unrelated to each other but connected in some way to the previous two posts.

First, I forgot an important pet peeve, probably the biggest peeve in my life: loud, revving engines on the street, especially motorcycles. It sets my nerves on edge. It takes years off my life. How in the world can anyone think that's cool?

Second, similar to my post suggesting you all check out Build Green Schools to take a tour of a green school, there's this: This Sunday, ABC's popular and much-loved "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition" will feature, in its season finale, a home built for a Louisiana family whose home was destroyed by Hurricane Katrina and then again by a tornado. The home was built to be hurricane-resistant and, more excitingly, LEED-certified. LEED is the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design green-building certification system that was created by the U.S. Green Building Council, my employer, and LEED for Homes is our newest LEED rating system. It's the system that I work most closely with as I handle much of our homes-related communications, including the Green Home Guide. Go there to read a feature I wrote on the "Extreme Makeover" home and to find out more about the show, and then watch it this Sunday!

Tour a green school!

2008-05-12T17:35:00.003-04:00

Just in case any of you are curious, either for the sake of knowing more about what it is I do for a living or just because you're interested in the concept of green schools in general:

You should check out the resources page at Build Green Schools, one of the two Web sites I am in charge of at work. I just added a virtual tour of Great Seneca Creek Elementary School, a LEED-certified school in Montgomery County, Md., and it's a really interesting little tour! The coolest part is that it was put together by the school's fourth-graders, so you really get to see it from their perspective. (And I work closely with our LEED for Schools sector manager, who worked with the kids on the tour, so I can assure you that it really was the kids who took the lead on what they thought was most interesting and what they wanted to emphasize.) Anyway, I really enjoyed the tour, so I wanted to let you all know about it in case you were interested, too!

Leave it to peevers

2008-05-09T22:19:00.004-04:00

I'm playing catch-up on all my favorite blogs, which I sorely neglected while I was out of town and therefore not often online, and I find that Amelia and Tiff both have brilliant new posts listing their biggest pet peeves. I have been inspired to follow suit. But I have always found it hard to share my pet peeves when asked. I think I tend to put the things that bug me out of mind, so unless they happen to be bugging me at the moment, I really have a hard time drudging them up. So, congratulations, Tiff and Amelia, for being so good at constantly dwelling on all the things that ail ya. Kidding!

I think there's probably a healthy list of things out there that get to me, and chances are I will leave most of them out in this post simply because I don't remember them at the moment. I'm going to leave this new-post window open for a while so I can add new ones as they occur to me, rather than trying to come up with them all on the spot. That may mean that many of these pet peeves turn out to be things that are somehow connected to the things I see around me at this moment. Like a game of "I Spy." Or "I love lamp."

NIGHTTIME DOG DISTURBANCES: I guess you could say this one is a true pet peeve. You all know I love my Edison and that he brings nonstop joy, light and love to my life. But he's not always yips and giggles. Particularly not in the wee hours, when he finds it an ideal time to do any combination of the following: kick, reposition, lip-smack, reposition again, and, worst of all, FREAKIN' LIP-SMACK! Dude, get up and get a drink or something, if your mouth is so dry! His prime time is just as I am drifting off to sleep. That's when he always decides that he doesn't want to be under the covers anymore, so he makes a big production of getting up and repositioning himself IMMEDIATELY after I have drifted off. Lip-smacking/tongue-clicking all the way. I am not a violent person, rarely have a violent impulse at any time (even when I'm watching a Hillary Clinton rally), but I'm not ashamed to say that I have more than once envisioned some pretty horrific things happening to the little guy in the dark of night.

THE PSEUDO-FEMINISM OF HILLARY SUPPORTERS: I certainly don't think this is true of all Clinton fans, but I have had one or two women tell me that my support of Barack Obama and my sense that she should get out of the race now has something to do with my maleness and my failure to grasp the historic nature of this moment. Yes, I get it - it's a big deal that a woman has gone this far in a presidential race. And I have wanted to see a female president all my life. Just not this female. And I certainly don't think it does feminism any good to support a losing candidacy and overlook blatant cynical nepotist opportunism just because it's a lady who's doing it.

SHAVING: Ugh.

AWKWARD PHRASES EVERY AWKWARD PERSON USES WHEN HE/SHE IS TOO AWKWARD TO THINK OF ANYTHING ELSE TO SAY: "Here comes trouble!" "Happy Friday!" "Stayin' out of trouble?" There are many more, but luckily, I can't think of them right now. What peeves me more is when I find myself saying them.

"TMI": I hate it for lots of reasons. I hate that it's an abbreviation. I hate that everyone who says it thinks they are being funny when they say it. And I hate the concept of "too much information." We're all adults. We are all aware that people go to the bathroom/sneeze/blow their noses/whatever. Just because I am telling a story that happens to start with, "So I was in the bathroom the other day..." doesn't mean I have given you TMI. I didn't give any yucky details. I have given you just the right amount of I that I believe is necessary to tell you my story. I will decide if it's TM. If it is, then I will choose to filter myself. We are not in kindergarten. Bathroom does not automatically equal dirty joke.

COMMERCIALS FEATURING DOGS TILTING THEIR HEADS AND UTTERING A SOLITARY, INQUISITIVE WHIMPER: Maybe you've noticed, maybe you haven't. But a lot of commercials out there can't be satisfied with showing us some wacky person doing some wacky thing because of the extreme emotions brought on by a particularly exciting product. They have to let us know just how wacky it was by featuring a cute little dog - surprisingly often a jack russell terrier - tilting its head and making a noise we are supposed to interpret as meaning, "What the-?!" Haha. We get it. Even the dog is smart enough to see that you are off your rocker - but then again, you must really love those Cheetos to have emoted in such a silly way. This commercial convention was probably cute and funny the first time it was used. In 1968.

Learnapalooza

2008-05-09T16:11:00.003-04:00

The coolest stuff happens in this city! I just found out that tomorrow is Learnapalooza, an all-day free learning event. And not the kind of learning that some people might find boring... The list of workshops being offered - totally free - is amazing. I can't decide if I want to learn Turkish, learn how to juggle, learn how to get out of a speeding ticket, learn to samba, learn to understand Shakespeare, improve my pool game, learn to cook tasty and organic, or learn to read tarot. And actually, I could do almost all of those, since each workshop is just one hour long and they are held throughout the day.

Check out the entire list of workshops!

Hank underground

2008-04-27T21:32:00.002-04:00

My aunt Terri and uncle Sam and cousin Hank were in town this weekend for a visit, and we had a blast! We spent Saturday afternoon at the zoo. We saw a hyrax in a tree, and Hank observed that if he was on the ground, he would be a low-rax. We also watched a grumpy old gorilla grab a helmet, climb to the top perch where everyone could see her, and slowly pee into the helmet. Then, as everyone in the crowded viewing area screamed "No!! Don't do it!!", she slowly raised the helmet to her mouth and proudly drank every last drop. Then she lowered the helmet and stared at us with a look that said, "Are you shocked now? Yeah, that's right, I'm hard-core!"

Then today, Sunday, Hank took his first Metro ride to the Museum of Natural History! Check it out...

Waiting for the train:

Here it comes!

All aboard!

At the museum...

Hank and Terri, learning about diplodocus or, as Hank dubbed the long-necked dinosaur, giraffe-osaur or giraffe rex.

Ready for the 3D Imax!

Falling waters

2008-04-25T23:54:00.005-04:00

There is a park in the neighborhood next to mine called Meridian Hill-Malcolm X Park that is one of my favorite places in D.C. I first discovered it on a drizzly, cold November day when my mom was visiting and we were wandering around town. At that point, the park's water features had been drained for the winter, but it was still pretty clear how cool it was. Lots of random statues of people like Dante, Joan of Arc and President James Buchanan; big open spaces of grass with colorful trees all around and lots of little nooks and hidden places with benches; big, elaborate staircases and dramatic changes in altitude throughout the park. The centerpiece is a big water feature, a 13-basin cascading fountain that recirculates from two fountains at the top, down the cascade, into a pool at the bottom, and then back up to the fountains. All along the way are gargoyles with water spewing from their mouths. Anyway, the water recently came back for the spring, and today I walked through it for the first time. These photos won't come close to illustrating what a beautiful, peaceful scene it is, but at least you can see that it's pretty cool. You can click on them to see them bigger.

Name game

2008-04-19T23:07:00.002-04:00

So one of the really interesting things about where I work is the strange way that the world's fastest-growing nonprofit manages to hire over and over again people with pretty much the same name. Since I started working at the U.S. Green Building Council seven months ago, we have probably hired between 30 and 40 people. And yet there remain a pretty set number of names of employees here - maybe 10 different names? OK, that's an exaggeration, but for some reason, the people who hire USGBCers like to hire people with the same names. I will try to sum up, from least-interesting to most-interesting.

There are two Dougs. I am one of them.

There are two Joes.

There are two Megans.

There are two Jessicas.

There are two Toms.

There is a Rob and a Robert.

There is a girl Cory and a boy Cory.

There is a boy Courtney and a girl Courtney.

There are two Chrises and one Christopher.

There are two Nickies in our accounting department. There is also a Nick.

There are three Laurens. Two of them are on my team, the communications team. There was a fourth Lauren who recently quit. There is also a Laura.

There are two Ashleys. One of them is on my team, and the other is likely my best friend at work (our human resources coordinator).

There are several Jens and Jennifers. I'm not going to bother to count them.

There are two Bryan H's. That does not include the Brians.

In our IT/technology team there is a Namrada and a Narmada.

The manager of our LEED for Homes team is named Batya. A recently hired member of the LEED for Homes team is named Melanie. Her middle name is Batya.

I just saw the Pope

2008-04-16T13:49:00.003-04:00

Some coworkers and I were eating lunch on the roof just now and we heard a motorcade go sirening by. Typically, that's the president or vice president, which is exciting but sort of old-hat at this point. But this time, we realized, it might be the Popemobile. It was. We watched from above as it zipped through Dupont Circle below... Oh, Popemobile!

Give up, Groening

2008-04-15T00:23:00.003-04:00

I just finished watching this week's particularly bad episode of "The Simpsons," and I think it's worth noting:

Not counting its two-and-a-half years on the "Tracey Ullman Show," "The Simpsons" has been on TV for more than two-thirds of my life.
Including its two-and-a-half years on the "Tracey Ullman Show," on April 19, "The Simpsons" will be in its 21st year, meaning it will have been on TV for fully three-fourths of my life. (Well, not quite, since on April 19 I will actually be 28 years, 7 months and 2 days old... But I am not about to do the math on that one. Suffice it to say, sometime in the coming months, "The Simpsons" will be exactly 3/4 as old as me.)
"The Simpsons" made its "Tracey Ullman" debut on the day my baby brother turned 1 year and 11 days old. My baby brother turned 22 last week.
In its early days, "The Simpsons" was scheduled opposite "The Cosby Show" in order to help FOX move up in the ratings. "The Cosby Show" - which is now airing reruns on Nick At Nite. Nick At Nite - that channel that airs reruns of CLASSIC, OLD-TIMEY shows.

This is how I feed myself these days

2008-04-02T18:52:00.002-04:00

Thanks, Trader Joe's!

And thanks, Internet, for teaching me how easy and delicious it is to sear a steak on the stovetop and then cook it in the oven. :)

Cherry blossoms

2008-03-30T22:15:00.018-04:00

One of Washington's most popular spring attractions is the blooming of the cherry blossoms. Today, some coworkers and I headed down to the Tidal Basins to check them out, a week or so before the blossoms are supposed to "peak." We were hoping to beat the crowds. We didn't. But even with the huge crowds, it was a great day. It started with a visit to the National Museum of African Art, which had some really cool stuff. No photos are allowed, so you'll just have to come visit me and we can go see it in person. But I did get some photos of the blossoms on the National Mall and along the shores of the Tidal Basins. Enjoy!

I loved this policeman and the little kid wearing his hat:

And, apropos of nothing, a gratuitous dog shot:

Soy una celebridad de radio

2008-03-28T22:40:00.002-04:00

This is a point of great amusement in my life right now: Earlier this evening, I gave a 10-minute interview on BBC Radio South America in Ecuador. This is how I spent my Friday night.

Spread the word

2008-03-28T17:05:00.002-04:00

Now there's no reason not to recycle old ink cartridges and small electronics:

Free Recycling Through the Mail
WEBWIRE – Monday, March 17, 2008
U.S. Postal Service Starts Service in 1,500 Post Offices

WASHINGTON, DC — Free and green. Those are the goals of a pilot program launched today by the U.S. Postal Service that allows customers to recycle small electronics and inkjet cartridges by mailing them free of charge.

The “Mail Back” program helps consumers make more environmentally friendly choices, making it easier for customers to discard used or obsolete small electronics in an environmentally responsible way. Customers use free envelopes found in 1,500 Post Offices to mail back inkjet cartridges, PDAs, Blackberries, digital cameras, iPods and MP3 players – without having to pay for postage.

Postage is paid for by Clover Technologies Group, a nationally recognized company that recycles, remanufactures and remarkets inkjet cartridges, laser cartridges and small electronics. If the electronic item or cartridges cannot be refurbished and resold, its component parts are reused to refurbish other items, or the parts are broken down further and the materials are recycled. Clover Technologies Group has a “zero waste to landfill” policy: it does everything it can to avoid contributing any materials to the nation’s landfills.

Obama

2008-03-27T22:40:00.002-04:00

He is for those of us who find ourselves increasingly dismissed by both the partisan Republicans and the partisan Democrats. Those of us who are liberal in politics but conservative in temperament. Those of us who, I think, are in the majority in this country. And yet, somehow, this race has become so ugly that he isn't the inevitable Next President of the United States I once thought he was. And that really, really makes me sad.

Obama is being beaten down by a Clintonista machine that is DETERMINED to do whatever it takes to win. They realize now that they won't win the nomination this year, so their next strategy is to make Barack Obama, the unquestionable Democratic nominee of 2008, totally unelectable ("he can't answer that red phone, he gives too many feel-good speeches, he has too much hope...") so they can come back in 2012 and say, "See, we told you so. We told you that nominating Obama in 2008 would lead to yet another four years of a Republican in the White House." They will do whatever it takes to win. And I do say "THEY" intentionally - Bill Clinton is running for a third term, and so is Hillary Clinton. They aren't so much a marriage as a political team. And I have given them credit for a lot of things - I think the '90s were generally great, and they led us though it - but there is no question that the Clintons are giant opportunists who care primarily about themselves. They jumped into Somalia and then jumped out because they were scared of looking like failures. They ignored Rwanda. They instituted Don't Ask Don't Tell and the Defense of Marriage Act. They led the country through the psychological minefield of infidelity. Hillary made us believe that to be a feminist means you have to support a woman who only got to where she is by marrying well and allowing your husband to sleep around. And yet, somehow, they remain popular among a key group of partisans and nostalgists, a group that won't give them up even when presented with a real alternative, a man who is to liberalism what Reagan was to conservatism, a man who can unite ALL of us behind a common purpose, regardless of politics.

Obama is being beaten up by the right, by a Hannity-Limbaugh-Beck machine that really, really wants to run against Clinton because a) she would be so much easier to beat and b) if she did win she'd be really, really good for business in angry right-wing talk radio. He is being given guilt-by-association lashings for standing by and listening to an angry black preacher (the reality in this country, which you can choose to ignore or confront head-on) rather than bolting for political expediency. (And at the same time, the right wing, who hate McCain, is giving McCain a pass even as he proactively seeks the endorsement of theologians who said America brought Sept. 11 on itself by being so gay- and feminist-friendly.) The Rev. Jeremiah Wright has said some ridiculous things. So have a lot of people I have seen speak in churches I have attended. But the Rev. Wright has said some important things, too, just like a lot of people I have seen speak in churches I have attended. Everyone's spirituality is a personal journey, and you progress on that journey by listening to what others say and taking it with a grain of salt. Obama does not think Wright is always right; he does, however, recognize that he represents a major faction within black America that deserves to be recognized, that must be addressed. No, the United States did not infect blacks with HIV. No, Sept. 11 was not God's punishment for slavery. Yes, there is still a vast difference between the White American Experience and the Black American Experience, and Obama is able to see that. He doesn't leave his spiritual home simply because the preacher has some anger that he himself doesn't harbor. I firmly, firmly believe that Barack Obama is completely free of the baggage Jeremiah Wright represents. But I also am certain that this baggage will be a huge detriment to his candidacy, and that is WRONG.

Barack Obama should be the next president of the United States. You all know that I have some strong opinions, but that I hate to be too aggressive with them. But this is a cause more important than any I have ever felt in my life. If Hillary Clinton is nominated by the Democrats (yeah, right), I will vote for John McCain. As I vote for John McCain, I will probably be in mourning. This is a pivotal moment in American history, and I am watching as we are about to blow it. I didn't think we were capable of blowing it. Now I see how we are. He is being attacked by the right and the left. If that isn't proof that he's the best choice, I don't know what is.

I can't stop posting tonight

2008-03-27T22:26:00.000-04:00

Hillarack

2008-03-27T21:23:00.002-04:00

I think everyone knows where I stand on the great Hillary-Barack divide. But one thing I think we can all agree on: Thank heavens they hate each other. Thank heavens they aren't, you know, procreating:

Videos

2008-03-27T19:31:00.002-04:00

As promised, dog park videos. I've realized I'm really just posting these for the handful of people out there who miss Edison and just might think it's fun to see him in action - these videos are certainly nothing exciting. Dogs are a lot like kids - as soon as you point the camera at them, they stop doing the cute/funny things they were doing before. Ah well. Enjoy.

Our new favorite place

2008-03-26T22:42:00.010-04:00

Spring in Washington, D.C., is fantastic! The cold is finally (mostly) gone, the hot humid summer isn't here yet, and all I want to do is be outside. And the good news is that there is lots of great outside stuff to do here. The cherry blossoms, apparently, are breathtaking. We're about a week from them peaking, and I hope to get out to see them (you'll get photos). I already walk almost everywhere I go; now, I REALLY walk just about everywhere. (Last week, we went to Eastern Market, an outdoor flea market/farmer's market in the SE quadrant of D.C. I live in NW, but the weather was so nice, I decided to walk home. Factoring in the detour to Lincoln Park, that's a little more than 5 miles, according to the Gmap Pedometer.)

And maybe most fun of all, Edison and I have a new place to add to our list of favorite outdoor spots: Walter Pierce Park's dog park. Not that it's a new park; it's been there much longer than I have, less than a quarter-mile from my house. I had always heard rumors of a happenin' dog park near my house, but its entrance is not all that conspicuous so I never really knew where it was. Now that we've found it, it's a great place to hang out after I get home from work. Now, some pictures:

Edison loves to be part of the greeting committee whenever someone new arrives:

Conga line!

Follow the leader:

A new friend:

Learning to share:

Off to the action:

I have a few videos, but YouTube is down and I need to go to bed, so I can't wait for it to come back up. So look for a post in the next day or two with live-action dog action. :)

The world's newest musical instrument

2008-03-05T21:34:00.001-05:00

The Tenori-on. I don't really get what's happening here, but wow - I love the 21st century!

February Twenty-WHAAAAA?

2008-02-29T11:34:00.004-05:00

This is just unheard of! Feb. 29? Why, I never!

Happy leap!

And now, for your enjoyment, some happenings from Leap Days past:

1504 - Christopher Columbus uses his knowledge of a lunar eclipse that night to convince Native Americans to provide him with supplies.

1712 - Feb. 29 is followed by Feb. 30 in Sweden, in a move to abolish the Swedish calendar.

1916 - In South Carolina, the minimum working age for factory, mill, and mine workers is raised from 12 to 14 years old.

1940 - For her role as Mammy in Gone with the Wind, Hattie McDaniel becomes the first African-American to win an Academy Award.

1960 - An earthquake in Morocco kills more than 3,000 people and nearly destroys Agadir in the southern part of the country.

2000 - Six-year-old Dedrick Owens shoots and kills Kayla Rolland, also 6 years old, at Theo J. Buell Elementary School in Mount Morris Township, Mich.

We've got a biter!

2008-02-26T19:52:00.000-05:00

Thanks, Tiff, for exposing me to what has become my current favorite YouTube!

6'U

2008-02-22T22:32:00.000-05:00

I love "Six Feet Under." For some reason, I feel like this has become something that everyone just knows about me, but obviously, it isn't. And if you know me, you know that media - music, movies, TV - are something that I'm pretty passionate about (I love it or I hate it). So as much as I might think it's awful to say this, the entertainment I like goes a long way toward defining me.

"Six Feet Under" is, I believe without hesitation, the best television show ever created. I don't want to sit here and explain why: That just cheapens it and makes it sound really stupid and pretentious. But trust me. This is the best show, and if you haven't seen it, please, please try to find a way to watch it.

If you don't know "Six Feet Under," it's an HBO series that ran for five seasons, from 2000 to 2005, about a family living in and running a funeral home. Even if it wasn't the best show ever created, it was definitely, definitely the show with the very best series finale ever created. No question.

As soon as I discovered this show, midway through the second season, I watched every episode of it, maintaining an HBO subscription long past my ability to afford it just so I could continue to wait for the next SFU season to start. I did miss a few seasons because of moves and things that left me without HBO for a while, so as soon as I finished playing catch-up via Comcast OnDemand, I went to Amazon and ordered all five seasons on DVD. That was right before I moved (in my Prius, across the country, from west to east, for those of you who have seen the series finale - it wasn't intentional, just an eerie coincidence that I noticed the night before I moved). Anyway, I have spent the last four months rewatching the entire show, beginning to end, including directors' commentaries, and it has become such a big part of shaping my worldview that I feel like I need to go back to Season 1 Episode 1 as soon as possible and start again. I won't - I need to get a life - but I really want to.

(I am rewatching the final episode as I write this. Claire just said to her mom, "Thank you for everything. For giving me life!" And her mom just said, "You gave me life!")

I would offer to send everyone who's interested my DVDs so you can watch the whole thing, but a) I have hooked my mom and brother on it, so they get each season as I finish it, and b) I can't possibly send my precious SFU DVDs all over the place and risk them being damaged.

But seriously. Find a way to watch this show. From beginning to end. Please?

Friday mental health break

2008-02-15T10:41:00.000-05:00

Home is where the swamp is

2008-02-13T08:20:00.000-05:00

Boy, oh boy, do I have a story for you.

I guess the best way to tell this story is chronologically, just so you can experience it in exactly the same way I did.

I am supposed to be on my way to Orlando, Fla., right now for three days, attending the National Association of Home Builders' International Builders Show. I'll be honest - I wasn't really excited about this trip in the first place, but trust me, even if the events of the last two days were something I could have controlled, I would never have engineered something like this as a way of getting out of the IBS. (Yes, that's what they call the show - IBS. Apparently, no one realized how unfortunate this abbreviation was.

So I left work early yesterday afternoon so I could make my way to Silver Spring, Md., which is where my dog Edison goes for boarding when I'm out of town. (It's a little far away, but the difference is $16 a day vs. the $55 a day it would cost to board him in the city.) I gave myself plenty of time - more than two hours for what's normally a 30- to 45-minute drive. As I was walking home, it occurred to me that the weather could cause me some delays. I realized that when, walking down 18th Street, I slipped and went crashing to the ground. It was raining, but apparently it wasn't just rain. I was experiencing my first freezing rain. It was just starting, so most of the sidewalk was fine, but there were random, unexpected ice spots everywhere.

So I got home, grabbed Edison, hopped in the car and headed on my way. And landed directly in terrible traffic. Fast-forward two hours, about 6:30 p.m., when I called the boarding place to let them know that I wasn't going to be there by 7 (when they closed). No sympathy. No accommodation. Sorry, we leave at 7, and that's that. I finished the trip to Silver Spring anyway, and got there to find the place closed and no one there to help me. So I used the Google text on my phone to locate every pet sitter in D.C. I called all of them, and none of them could take Edison in a last-minute situation. Got home, tried all the pet sitters on Craigslist - no luck. I figured I should let my boss know what I was dealing with and see if she had any ideas, and she said she could watch Edison for me. So I brought him to her house, thanked her and apologized over and over again, and made my way home. By this time, it was about 9:30, and I still had to pack and get everything together for my 8:30 a.m. flight. After packing, I set the alarm for 5:30 a.m., went to bed, and slept in fits for about five hours.

And when I woke up this morning, that's when it really got ugly.

I sit here, posting this blog, in my flooded living room, waiting for word from my landlord about when a plumber can get here. You may remember from previous posts that I have had a little bit of trouble with sewage backing up in this apartment. But that was three months ago, and it's all been fine and dandy since then. Well, apparently the problem is back. I stepped out of my bedroom into a puddle, and down the hall toward more puddles, ending in my living room which was covered by about a half-inch of water. I checked the bathroom, and yes, sewage was backed up into my bathtub, just like last time.

I tried to discover where the water in the living room was coming from. It didn't seem to be leaking from the bathtub, toilet, washer, dishwasher, etc. It didn't really seem to be coming through the walls, either. It almost seems like it's coming up through the floor. I don't know much about plumbing, but that seems like a bad sign. Anyway, I checked outside and found that the entry-hallway that leads from the outside to my apartment's front door was a mess of wet carpet. I opened both the front and back doors and found the recessed entry areas filled with water. Each of those entry areas has a storm drain, and apparently they are no longer performing their function. It looks to me like there must be a blockage somewhere in the line out to the main line, and that resulted in nowhere for the overnight rainwater to go.

So needless to say, I missed my flight this morning. I called both of my bosses - my immediate boss and her boss, with whom I was supposed to be attending this conference. They were both very understanding and sympathetic, and they encouraged me to focus on my problems at home first and only make my way to Florida if it worked out. I called our corporate Expedia account representative, and she looked into other flights over the next couple of days and found none.

So I will not be enjoying sunny Florida this week. I will not be learning all about the homebuilding industry. Instead, I will be at home with a plumber and lots of soaking wet rags.

But I do like to be optimistic: Barack Obama KILLED in Virginia, Maryland and D.C. last night! :)

Correction

2008-01-30T17:18:00.000-05:00

In my last post, I said unaffiliated voters in Utah have missed the deadline for affiliating with a party before the primary. I was wrong. I went back and reread the rules and realized that I misread. If you are registered as a Democrat (or with another party), it's too late to change your registration to Republican in order to vote in the Republican primary. But if you are registered with no party affiliation, you can still vote in Tuesday's Republican primary, as long as you change your registration to Republican at the polling place.

In the Democratic primary, it is likewise too late to change your registration from Republican to Democratic in order to vote Tuesday. If you are unaffiliated, you will be able to vote in the Democratic primary, and unlike the Republican party, you are not required to affiliate at the polling place.

My mistake. I'm sorry. But my point still stands: If you are unaffiliated and want to stay that way, or if you have no interest in voting in the Republican primary (because you think Mitt Romney is a shoe-in, or because you don't like any of the candidates, or for whatever other reason), I still suggest considering voting in the Democratic primary. That was the point of the original post: I don't know a lot of people in Utah who consider themselves Democrats or even Democrat-friendly, so I wanted to point out that they may nonetheless have an interest in voting against Hillary Clinton on Tuesday, so they may want to do the unthinkable and vote in the Democratic primary.

I promise. I have not deliberately misled you. :)

Vote!

2008-01-29T20:09:00.001-05:00

Updated: Utah's primary day is Feb. 5, not Feb. 12. Corrected below.

Update 2: It's been brought to my attention that Obama has now opened a third Utah office. He now has offices in Salt Lake, St. George, and Park City! Also, his planned second visit to Utah on Saturday has been canceled, out of deference to President Hinckley's memorial service. (He called President Monson to offer his condolences.) That shows a lot of respect, if you ask me! (And now his wife, Michelle, who is just as awesome as he is, will be coming to Utah on Monday!!)

I'm sorry. I know a lot of people are bored by blogs like this, but this is my blog, and it's what I really, really care about, so indulge me a little.

I want to use this blog right now to encourage you all to do something you don't usually think to do in January/February: vote. I'm sure you've heard; we're in the middle of a presidential primary campaign, and while most everyone I know makes the effort to vote during general elections - especially presidential elections - people are often indifferent to voting in primaries. I'm here to tell you that that's sort of backward.

In a country whose politics are dominated by the two parties, partisan primaries are a very important part of the process. Out of the 16 candidates currently running in the two primaries, one will be president; but first, that field will be narrowed to two. Because primaries typically have smaller turnouts, the people who do vote have a larger influence on the outcome than they would in a general election. Also, unlike a general presidential election, there is no Electoral College, so your vote counts much more directly. Also, people often complain during elections that they're not happy with the two choices they have; those people should be in a big hurry to vote in an election where they essentially have 16 people to choose from.

To find out details about your primary election, just hit Google. I would suggest searching for the name of your city/county/state and the word election. (i.e., "Salt Lake County election." Elections in Utah are typically run by the counties.) The top result should be your local clerk's office, board of elections, or whoever runs your elections. Go there and navigate. You should be able to find out whether you're registered to vote, what party you're registered with, where you vote (usually it will be your normal polling place), when your primary is, etc.

The rest of this blog is targeted specifically at my readers in Utah, but the rest of you should keep reading, too. :) I am writing to Utahns for a couple of reasons. First, I know the way the system there works, so it's easier for me to explain. Second, my hometown pride makes me really want to see a big turnout in Utah. This year's primaries have seen much, much higher turnout than previous primaries, and I would hate for Utah not to match that level of interest. And I could see it happening, because so many people assume that Mitt Romney has Utah in the bag so they won't bother voting. So go vote. Utahns vote Feb. 5 - the first time in my life (and, as far as I know, the first time ever) that Utah has been part of Super Tuesday - a big deal in a historic election year that you shouldn't miss out on!

Now, if you are a voter in Utah, statistically speaking, chances are pretty good that you are an unaffiliated voter. That means you are not officially registered as a Democrat, a Republican, or a member of the Constitution Party. Something like two-thirds of Utah voters are unaffiliated. If you are one of those people, let me suggest something that you may have never considered doing in your life: Vote in the Democratic primary.

Bear with me. I have a few good reasons.

First, it's your only option. Because of party rules, Utah's Republican primary is a closed primary, while the Democratic primary is open. That means that to vote in the Republican primary, you must be registered as a Republican, but to vote in the Democratic primary, you can be registered as a Democrat or you can be unaffiliated. And it's too late to change your affiliation for the primary, so if you don't vote in the Democratic primary, you can't vote at all (until November).

Now I know that many of you have rarely or never voted for a Democrat before, and you don't really want to start now. That's OK! You can vote in the Democratic primary now and then vote for the Republican candidate in the fall. You shouldn't pass up on your chance to have your voice heard in determining the candidates seeking the most important job in the world.

But there's another important reason for you to vote in the Democratic primary: Hillary Clinton. Come on, do you really want Hillary to be the next president? Do you really want Bill Clinton to have what essentially amounts to a third term? I don't even want that, and I'm a Democrat!

More important than that, do you want to spend the next nine months mired in a campaign that involves the Clintons? Do you want to continue the divisive, red-state-vs.-blue-state hatefulness that has filled politics recently? That kind of politics has been the fault of both sides, and having a Clinton in the race is only going to make both sides gear up for a really ugly fight. The kind of fight that our country really, really doesn't need.

I would really encourage you to consider voting for Barack Obama. You may or may not have been paying attention to this primary season, but if you have been, I'm sure you've noticed the dramatically different campaign style between Obama and the Clintons. Obama really, truly knows how to disagree with someone respectfully. He has the ability to inspire all Americans, to rally us behind our common values and the common purpose we all share. He has adamant support of prominent Democrats, Republicans and independents, liberals, moderates and conservatives. Honestly. I have read op-eds, blogs, news pieces, etc. from some of the most conservative people out there who say that in the most important ways - temperament, attitude, decision-making style - he is the first true conservative in presidential politics in a long time. (Yes, in terms of policy, he is fairly liberal, but he's a Democrat, so he's supposed to be.)

Barack has two campaign offices in Utah. Hillary has none. Barack has been to Utah once to campaign and will be back again this week. Hillary has not come. She is sending Chelsea! This kind of attention to Utah, and to all the "little" states that have few delegates and little national prominence, may not be the most effective strategy politically, but it illustrates a candidacy that views America as a whole, where every state deserves attention.

Anyway, this has run a lot longer than I intended it to. But please consider what I have said. I have never been so passionate about an election in my life - and I am pretty passionate about politics. Even if you don't plan to vote for Obama, please vote anyway. Make sure that this year, when our country is so divided and so many people feel frustrated, you take your right to vote seriously, and you vote for the candidate that you really believe will lead this country - all of us - with integrity.

Adventures in eating

2008-01-26T13:14:00.000-05:00

Inspired by Joe and Marie's new food bloggery, I thought I'd share with you all my most recent culinary triumph. OK, that makes it sound like I often have culinary triumphs, and of course I don't. But hopefully I will be having more in the future, because I have realized that cooking for yourself is actually easier than trying to sustain oneself on macaroni and cheese and the like.

So I present to you, West African peanut soup. I guess it's derived from Ghanaian traditions, but it tastes to me a lot like something Thai. Either way, very yummy. You can eat it as a side dish, or do what I did and make a whole meal of it. I boiled some chicken and threw it in (during the last phase, when the peanut butter has been added and it is simmering) to give it a little more substance, but you don't have to. It's delicious with a salad, some crusty bread for dipping, and apples. It goes really well with apples, which you can also dip in the soup. (And this from someone who typically hates apples!)

Note: I probably don't have to remind you of this, but if you have small children, this is probably not a good recipe to try on them because eating peanuts too early in life can lead to severe allergies. And another thing: Don't feed this to anyone who already has peanut allergies, either. A'ight?

In other news, as I type this, there are men in my living room installing a new heater! It's finally happening! :)

Really not asking for that much...

2008-01-14T20:51:00.000-05:00

...Just a little heat in my apartment.

Hi everyone. Yeah, it's been more than a month since my last post. Sorry. When I realized that, I decided I ought to post, and so I am posting about the thing that's on my mind right now.

Heat. Or its absence.

You may remember from a long-ago post that I was on the verge of getting the broken heater in my apartment fixed. What with a month or so of deepest winter having gone by since then, and me still being alive, you might have assumed that said heat was fixed. Well, you're wrong. I still have no heat! And it's not for lack of trying. The nice guy who's been working with me on behalf of my landlord (who has been on vacation in Indonesia) has really done a lot of work toward getting my heat fixed. (The landlord, too, did a lot before he left, but unfortunately, he was working with a very unreliable contractor.) After two visits to my apartment by a new contractor, it was determined that my heating unit was obsolete, broken and unfixable. So the plan was to get a new one, a better one, a more efficient one, meaning that not only would I have heat again, but better air conditioning come summer!

So it took a little back-and-forth across the 12-hour-time-zone-differential between here and Southeast Asia to determine just which heating unit would be the best to buy, but finally, one was ordered, and it was on its way. And as these things often do, the delivery took longer than expected. But we had an installation appointment scheduled for Sunday morning ... until that was canceled because the installation guy was on call for something else and had to go do that something else. We rescheduled for this afternoon at 3:30 p.m., so I left work early to be here for the installation. And then, at 4 p.m., a phone call: Um, the wrong unit was delivered, so we have to try to find one we can get locally, and we won't have any idea whether that's possible until tomorrow midday.

And space heaters really don't do much, by the way.

On a related note, does anyone know an easy way to clean - really clean, not Febreeze - a couch? Mine just smells sort of doggy. Part of that is because I have had a dog for two years, and he has spent half of those two years sitting on the couch (and the other half of those two years, the couch sat in a dank, dingy storage shed). But it's become especially bad the last week or so because I have been waiting to give the dog a bath until I have heat (see - I told you it was a related note). I can't have the little guy running around damp in this cold, cold living room! So he spends his stinky days sitting stinkily on this ever-stinkier couch, stinking it up, waiting for me to come home from work. And I want to be rid of the stink. Rid of it in a real, legitimate way - not just by covering it up with some fabric-spray. But is that really possible without renting a shampooer or something?

There. Now aren't you glad you waited a month for that post?