Month: June 2007

Whoa, there

What’s going on at Mount Vernon Square Metro?  I’ve been riding the Green line to there and picking up the Yellow line to get to Pentagon City since March.  Yesterday, the Green line train overshot its normal stopping point by about half a six-car train-length.  This wouldn’t have been such a big deal, except that I usually sit in one of the back two cars – they tend to be less crowded as everyone stuffs themselves into the middle few cars.

I refuse to run for a Metro (Which is probably a little silly, but I don’t care.), but I will walk briskly.  Which I did, and I made it before they closed the doors.

Then, this morning, the Green line train stopped at about that same spot, half a train-length past the normal spot.  The Yellow line picked up at the normal spot.

What is Metro trying to do?  I don’t appreciate it.  I’m a creature of habit, which includes standing in the same spot on the platform every day.  And I expect the train to cooperate.

Perhaps the biggest food surprise Ive had in a while

Salsa Walnut Meat recipe at Gone Raw

When served on a (non-raw, non-vegan) organic whole wheat tortilla, this “taco meat” is fantastic.  I figured it would be edible, but this was way beyond edible.  This was good enough to request again.

I’d like to find a substitute for the walnuts so my mom can try it.  No matter how good it is, her walnut allergies would probably prevent her from enjoying it.

Weekend bus trauma

Well, trauma is perhaps too strong a word. But I did have a few “incidents” on the bus over the weekend.

First, on Friday, I was taking the bus down to the DC Improv to meet the wife and some friends. The bus driver decided that the light at Connecticut and Florida just north of Dupont didn’t really apply to him. A few cars thought that maybe it did, and registered their disagreement with their horns. No one was injured.

Then, on the way home from the 10K, we were on the same bus line, the 42, going north on Connecticut.  We were at the Q St. stop, and a gentleman in a large Range Rover decided that he wanted to pass the bus before he missed the light.  Unfortunately, his Range Rover was wider than the space between the bus and the Jersey wall.  Oops.  So he hit us.  I actually didn’t notice the impact, but the bus driver had to stop and call it in and wait for her supervisor or something.  So we walked the rest of the way home.

I was a little disappointed in the reaction of the passengers on the bus, some of whom expressed a lot of anger at the bus driver.  It wasn’t her fault that she had been rear-ended, or that she had to wait for permission to move the bus.  But try telling that to the angry people on the bus.

Anyway, I think the bus driver handled the whole thing well.  She called it in right away, then told the bus passengers what was going on.  She apologized for the inconvenience.  Not much more she could have done.

And riding the bus still beats driving in the city.

Lawyers Have Heart 10K

Fistrock

I ran the Lawyers Have Heart 10K yesterday. It was much more miserably hot and humid than the weather forecast had suggested. But my time was 56:04, only a minute slower than my previous 10K, which I ran in much cooler weather.

This race was much more crowded than my other one. The first mile was tough – not only were we baking in the sun, but it was like driving in rush hour traffic. There was always a slower person in your way, or a faster person cutting you off. But it cleared up later on.

I wore my flag football jersey in honor of our end-of-the-season cookout later that day. You probably can’t read the back of the jersey, but the name is FISTROCK, which is a reference to the Mystery Science Theater 3000 episode that lampooned the movie Space Mutiny. The jersey was cooler before BLASTBODY moved to San Fransisco. But it’s still cool. To me, at least.

Anyway, I had one moment during the race when I wasn’t sure I was going to finish. Have you ever had one of those where it’s quite clear that your internal temperature gauge is just about into the red? When your body sends a little message to your brain saying, “Hey, stupid, if you don’t cool us off pretty soon, we’re going to shut down.” I had less than a mile left, and I was again baking in the sun. But the feeling passed, and I finished the race. It helped that the last quarter mile was in the shade, downhill, with a breeze.

There are no hot moms here

In June, I have 30 hits from people who have Googled “hotmoms” and found this post. Okay, fine, I know people look on the internet for porn. NB: There is no porn here. There is plenty of porn on the internet, and I don’t feel the need to contribute any more.

_Edit: I can’t believe no one caught that I wrote “don’t feel the need to contribute anymore” instead of “any more”. I certainly am not claiming to have previously contributed to the vast collection of porn on the internet. I guess my mom and my wife must not have read this post yet.  Both of them would have caught that. _

Anyway, what I find strange is that Google Analytics tells me that, of those 30 visits, two are RETURN visits. Now, I suppose it’s possible that the two returning visits are people who have otherwise seen the site, happened to be searching for “hotmoms”, and decided to see what Complaint Hub had to offer on the subject.

But I prefer to speculate wildly and assume that two people have searched for “hotmoms”, found my site, and then searched for it again and returned. I’m sure they were disappointed both times.

Woefully behind

I have 2145 words done in my screenplay. I’m supposed to have 4669 done by midnight tonight. That puts me 2524 words behind schedule. But I’ve got nothing scheduled for this evening except writing and probably ordering sushi delivery, so I fully intend to do some catching up.

Edit: I’m at 2808 now. Still going, hopefully. The wife put on the NBA finals.

The Republican debate

Here are my notes from the debate. I watched about 2/3 before we were suddenly summoned to appear at Clyde’s in Gallery Place to hang out with a friend in town from NYC.

  1. Good for McCain being the only one with the courage to say that he doesn’t hate Mexicans. I mean, that English shouldn’t be the national language
  2. The Republican crowd applauded about 300 times as much as the Democrats.
  3. Lightning struck not once but three times while Guliani was speaking, interrupting the feed on his mic. A sign of something.
  4. The wife is proud of Guliani for sticking by his guns even if it kills him in the polls – that he’s personally against abortion, but thinks states should decide.
  5. Huckabee actually got up on stage and said he believes that God created the world.
  6. Wolf is not being equal in his time allotments – McCain, Romney, and Guliani get as much time as they want, the others get cut off.
  7. The wife really likes Ron Paul.
  8. Romney thinks that oil companies should use profits to reinvest in infrastructure, as if he as President should be able to tell private companies what to do with profits. That’s pretty insane.
  9. No one thinks gays and lesbians should be able to serve openly in the military. It boggles the mind who people DON’T want to allow to die for our country.
  10. Tommy Thompson made a funny joke about not sending Bush to the UN.
  11. Duncan Hunter is a coward and won’t answer a question about pardoning Scooter Libby.
  12. No one would pardon Libby “without an appeal process”, which is actually less insane than what Guliani and Romney had to say on the subject. Guliani thinks Libby’s sentence was way too harsh. I forget what Romney said, but it was equally insane.
  13. Ron Paul wants out of Iraq now, which is the first thing he’s said that I disagree with.
  14. Tommy Thompson has some good things to say about working for wellness before you’re sick to take some pressure off the health care system. You know the old saying about “An ounce of prevention . . . ” – well, he’d like to implement that with our healthcare system. I don’t imagine it’s quite that simple, but a good idea.
  15. It’s really too bad Ron Paul is unelectable. I like almost all of what he had to say, and he’s not nearly as crazy as the fringe Democratic candidates are.
  16. Romney speaks really well. A debate between him and Obama would be really fun to watch. Romney deflected a rather obnoxious but relevant question about religion pretty well.

Sorry for the downtime

The main site, complainthub.com, and the site to submit your complaints, submissions.complainthub.com, have been down since this weekend.  Sorry about that.  My hosting company upgraded from Rails 1.1.6 to 1.2.3 and forgot to tell me.  Thanks to Mo for pointing it out.  No thanks to Dreamhost for not telling me.  Actually, they’re a pretty decent hosting company.  If anyone is looking for hosting, let me know, if I refer you I get money.

And the submission site is still down.  I don’t know why.  I’ll try and get that fixed ASAP.  And by ASAP, I mean when I get around to it.