Tag: Harvard Street

This morning, I got my first parking ticket since I moved to the city. They have emergency – no parking signs up in front of my house, and I thought that meant no parking between the signs. Apparently it means no parking just beyond the signs, either.

My initial reaction was, “I’m selling my stupid car. I do most of my driving these days when I have to move it for street cleaning. I can use the Zipcars right down the street”. But then I got some Sierra Nevada from Hi Market and talked to my wife, and I feel a little better about it.

Still, the thought of getting rid of the car is getting stronger. Already I think about it as a nuisance more often than I think about it as a convenience. I don’t really want to give it up, though. If Zipcars had manual transmissions, it would be easier. I know, I’m being ridiculous if I keep my car just because I want a manual transmission. But that’s my right, I think.

I’ve also been given a “you have 15 days to get your car registered in DC, clown” notice. Maybe I’ll go park it at my grandmother’s house in Virginia for a few weeks until I can get that taken care of. This is a huge pain. I don’t really have time to go to the DMV and get all this taken care of. I hear all sorts of horror stories about the DMV. I don’t want to subject myself to that.

However, one $50 ticket and fear of the DMV is probably not a good reason to sell my car, though. We do still use it about once a week. I don’t think I’m really prepared to get rid of it yet.

I’m back from the race. Official results posted here. I was 140th of 216 men. I was 30/47 in my age group, but my age group is 25-29, which is pretty competitive. Five of the top ten, including the top three, were in my age group. I finished in 55:04, first place was 31:27.

So, I’m pretty happy. I would do it again. My toe didn’t bother me. The dregs of my cold didn’t bother me.

Biggest bother of the day, actually, was the crowds of people for the cherry blossoms. It took us forever to get back home because of all the streets that were closed. If Metro opened a little earlier, I would have done that, but it was cutting it a bit close.

And now the Bay Bridge Run monkey is off my back. A few years ago, some friends and I planned to run it, and we never made it. We started training, and then gave up. But now I’ve officially done a 10k. Maybe next year I’ll be in town for the Bay Bridge Run, and I can do that one. I think it’s a tougher run – this one is all flat, but the bridge slopes a lot. Next year.

My race starts in about ten and a half hours. I’m honestly a little nervous. I’ve just had a weird 24 hour cold. I banged my foot on the door yesterday, and now have a cut on the top of my big toe. I’m not quite sure how this whole thing works.

But I can’t imagine it’s that difficult. I mean, you show up, you get a number and a little sensor on your shoes, you line up, someone says go, and you run. I’m really curious as to what it will be like. I imagine adrenaline kicks in when you’re surrounded by all those people. There are 793 participants, but many of them are doing the walk, not the run.

According to the participant list at the website, I’ll be number 360. That’s a pretty sweet number. So, if you’re going to be near West Potomac Park tomorrow morning at 8AM, you can come cheer us on.

Now I think I’m going to bed. Don’t want to be tired in the morning.

Perhaps the only good thing to come of this cold I’m coming down with is that it has given me the opportunity to sit in the sun and do some work at home, rather than at my desk at the office. I sometimes feel that our lovely sunroom is underused, as we spend much of the sunny part of the day at work and not at home. Not today, however.

Drawbacks include the fact that my 10K on Saturday will not wait for me to stop sniffling.

Edited to add: Very shortly after I posted this, the sun went away. Now it’s raining. Such is life.

Fresh on the heels of The Assassin’s Gate: America in Iraq, a new book arrived today from Seashell books via AbeBooks. While reading The Assassin’s Gate, I realized that it would be much easier to understand what has been and still is going on in Iraq if I had a better understanding of Islam. And, perhaps, of the happy fairy world where George Bush and his band of lunatics live. But I don’t think anyone has yet written a book on that.

So, I wanted a book on Islam. My sometimes-moustached brother-in-law recommended The History of Islam.

It has a nice inscription in the front.

Too bad I’m not Pop. But I hope he enjoyed the book.

Anyway, I have another book to read before I get to this one, but I’m looking forward to reading it and understanding a little more about the religion and the culture behind it.

I am so glad I made the three block walk down to Hi Market at the corner of Fuller and 15th NW. It may not look like much, but they have a great beer selection, and they have Vitamin Water. What more can you ask for from your local market?

They have the wife’s favorite, Sierra Nevada. They have Red Stripe (Hooray, beer). They have Magic Hat #9. And they have some other cool stuff. Awesome.

International Race to Stop the Silence

I’m really getting into this running thing, apparently. Three weeks from today, I’m going to do my first 10K race. I’ve never actually run that far, so this should be interesting. And the race fights child sexual abuse. I’m opposed to child sexual abuse. I imagine most people are.

My wife is actually not looking at me like I’m insane as I do this, so that’s a good sign. I mean, 10K is not all that far. 6.2 miles. I ran 4.1 today. I can do 6.2. I don’t think I’m going to finish at the top of my age group, but I don’t think I’m going to embarrass myself.

Anyway, it should be fun. And I’ll even have a few hours afterwards before flag football.

Tell me if this sounds like a nice Thursday evening.

It’s about 72 degrees out, sunny, pleasant breeze. At about 5:30, I walk to 16th St to catch the S2 bus down to K St and walk over to meet my wife and some coworkers at Bottom Line. A former coworker and good friend who moved to Philly was in town, and another former coworker and good friend who just switched jobs was there, too. We hung out until about 8 and then caught the 42 bus back (Never mind running diagonally across the intersection of 17th and I, that never happened). Around about Dupont Circle, we realized we had no food at the house. No problem, send a text to Google and get the phone number for Radius Pizza, which we’ve been told is some of the best in DC. Forty-five minutes later (A little slow, but tolerable), they arrive with a giant pizza. Wow, was it good. Expensive ($23 for a large), but a huge pizza, and one of the best I’ve had. Then we fell asleep watching the NCAA tournament.

And now it’s my last day at my job. I’m staying with the same company, but moving to a new project. I start the new on Monday (Unfortunately I can’t take some time off in between), and it’s on Metro, which is really cool. I’ve only had one commute in my life that didn’t involve driving, and that was just a winter break job one year in college. So I’m excited.

So, I’m in a pretty good mood. And rambling. You can tell I’m in a good mood when I start rambling about not much in particular.

Wirefly National Marathon

I just realized that my street is closed from 8:25AM to 12:05PM on Saturday as the marathon goes past. That should be interesting. Our flag football game is at noon, I think, so we’ll have to make sure we can get the car out. I don’t suppose parking around here is going to be easy at that point. Maybe we’ll have to take the bus or something.

A little while back my sister told me about Map My Run. It’s a site integrated with Google Maps that lets you plot out your running route, and share routers with others. It’s really cool in that you can add point by point to your route, so you can show how you turned left at that intersection and doubled back at the next one and all that. It also tells you how far you went, and lets you share a list of your public runs. This is mine, so far. I did the “Up 29th in Woodley Park” run today. 29th is pretty rough.

So far there aren’t a lot of runs mapped out in Columbia Heights and the surrounding area, but I’m going to do my part to change that. And now that I’ve told all of you, I’ll be embarrassed if I don’t.