What?

In our eleventieth month of pursuing houses and misspelling chaise longue as chaise lounge we attempted to put an offer on a house and were firmly rebuffed. Apparently the seller was not interested in receiving only one offer, so they decided to try and drum up another offer in the next day.

Naturally S was outraged that the sellers wouldn't accept our offer. I pointed out that it wasn't necessarily grossly nefarious of them to attempt to make more money on selling their house. Even going so far as to suggest that we might do the same if the tables were turned. I'm not sure where this phrase originated. This application of negative intentions to people we don't know is pretty much characteristically human.

Example:
Guy cuts me off while I'm driving.
M: (Honk horn) Did you see what that idiot just did?
S: Calm down.
M: I'd like to calm down but that bleep is trying to get us both killed.
S: I don't see how you getting upset is helping.
M: Are you taking his side? Because that jerk just tried...and so on.

Example 2:
I cut off someone because I suddenly realize that I'm in the wrong land and need to get over. Car behind me honks.
M: Calm down buddy. I needed to get over. Can you believe this guy? Not letting me get over when I needed to get on the freeway. What a bleep.

I think a good portion of our educational costs should be spent on developing some sort of ethic that teaches us to not immediately attribute ill-intentions to the rest of humanity while letting ourselves off scot free.

Interpolation:
Sceot is the Old English for "a tax." Scot and lot was a medieval muncipal tax levied on residents. Someone who managed to avoid paying this medieval tax got off "scot free."

Anyhow, I'm thinking that if these people had thought to remove the toilet from the backyard, not turned the basement into a breeding ground for pure evil and buffed the floors then they might deserve multiple offers. As it stands, they don't. Times like these make me want to move back home to CA where all the houses are cheap and the jobs are plentiful and high-paying.

Here's a New Yorker cartoon that doesn't make sense and a quote that does:





-Do you remember when you were a kid, playing Nintendo and it wouldn't
work? You take the cartridge out, blow in it and that would magically
fix the problem. Every kid in America did that, but how did we all
know how to fix the problem? There was no internet or message boards
or FAQ's. We just figured it out. Today's kids are soft.

Offering again

We put in a bid on the house with the dungeon basement, kids in the attic crawl space house. Which, the biggest shock was that my whole family said, "What? You put an offer on that house? I guess I'll have to go back and read your post more carefully."
I can see that after thoroughly rereading my post that they make a good point.

And I quote: The trolls living in the basement appear friendly, but we've yet to open up negotiations due to the language barrier. Or. The squirrels in the attic are really like hearing the pitter patter of invisible ghost children's feet who eat insulation for fun. While we liked the back yard, we weren't sure about using a toilet without plumbing in the unfenced yard. We feel that defecating in public view might send the wrong sort of message. And so on.

Despite the various misgivings about the lack of central air, usable basement, et al. S and I concluded that we could make it work. That we could treat this child like one of those high school moves where the popular kids fix up the nerdy one, and it turns out the nerdy one has been uber hot all along and just hiding beneath glassed. But wait, the nerdy kid doesn't really want to leave behind their friends because deep down they know that the nerds were actually better people...and. I guess the analogy, (as usual) broke down a little while ago, but we're still excited to fix the place up.

On the way home from making the offer we discuss houses.

M: Here's my impression of what you want. I think you're looking for a three bedroom single family home, with an attic and basement for storage, with an open kitchen, granite counter tops, maple cabinets in a walkable neighborhood with a below average crime stats that has a Whole Foods in the basement. Then you'll say. "Is that too much to ask for" and start crying.

S: Did you just say a Whole Foods in the basement?
M: I think so.
S: That would be nice. (Pause) That does sound like me.
M: (internal smile).
S: You should probably put that on your blog.

Our move in party has been changed to a barn raising. We're expecting everyone to come and help us fix up our house eighties montage style. I'm guessing that it will take us about the duration of one really good song to make the place look like new. At some point we can also throw paint on each others clothes and laugh. At the end we can all have a beer and sit down on an old couch and admire our handy work. I'll expect to see you all there.

That time we used to look for houses

After concluding our housing blitz for the day, which included touring neighborhoods of DC that make you feel so unsafe that you're unwilling to get out of your car, which sent me into all sorts of deep spiraling depression about the state of our housing search and what it meant for our sanity that other couples could do in a day what we couldn't accomplish in a week. So I did what any mature adult would do and drove home unsafely in my car honking at people who were clearly just looking to turn somewhere that they were unfamiliar with. But worse, trying to turn somewhere in front of me. The person who is, as far as I can tell, the center of the known world.

Interpolation:

M: I’ve got to get dressed up before we go
S: What?
M: It’s the first time we’ll be meeting our new house. I want to look good.
S: I don’t think the house is going to care what you look like.
M: (Pause)…it might.

We spent the early part of the day looking at a house in a reasonable neighborhood for a decent prize with a toilet in the backyard.
M: Does the toilet convey? (Convey is the sort of word that you use frequently when discussing housing. As in, do the blinds convey? Does the hutch in the kitchen convey? Does the toilet thrown on the backyard grass convey?)

The upside of the house is that the ceiling appears to be suffering from some sort of water damage, and the hardwood floors were probably used for a brief time as an Indy car track. But, we need to talk about good things. The attic, which includes broken ladder access, something that should have been in the add, has two small beds and adequate crawlspace to chain up children. Mind you, only when they've been bad. The actual tenants had both kids sleeping in the attic and were using the second large bedroom as an office. "I'm sorry little Joey, daddy needs that little nook to look up grown up stuff on the internet, you'll be sleeping upstairs until you're seventeen."

Interpolation from a recent job interview
M: What is an acceptable reason for missing work?
Candidate: (Mulls it over) Swine flu?
M: Touche.

The house did have a backyard with a rusty chain link fence. I am a big lover of rusty chain link fences. Fences that allow you full access views of your neighbors old storage bin and trash cans. Again, a real plus. The back yard was also slanted, which is great for slip and slide, though it would lead you straight into cement. Kids need to learn to be tougher anyway. We then wandered into the basement where the previous owner was keeping a recording studio and I tried to break into my modestly speaking pretty damn good rendition of Whitney Houston's "I will always love you" (Josh back me up on this one) but was shushed by S. The basement was not the nicest thing in the world, but I could see closing it off and never speaking of it again. As though it were some outcast member of the family.

Friend: Oh, I notice you have a basement. Is that good for storage space?
M: (Lean in confidentially) We don't like to talk about him.
Friend: What? Is your tv down there?
M: Where?

On the plus side after visiting other portions of our less than fair city the original house looked positively inviting. Having police officers posted at all times on street corners did not lead me to believe that the parts of the city where we'd seen "cute" houses were up to snuff. Unless you were looking to sell it. So, though the interior may have included granite counter tops and maple cabinets, it seemed like they might be hard to enjoy while dodging gun fire on the way home.

S: I don't think I could live here.
M: But look at how cute the houses are.
S: Yeah, but I'd rather be alive than living in a cute house.
M: I think you need to reevaluate your priorities.

Thus, we ended yet another depressing day by learning of my sister-in-laws success in purchasing a home in a matter of minutes. Her and her husband decided to buy a house, and just did it. I'm now loathe to leave the house to buy potting soil with S.

M: I think this will do. (Hefts bag) If I can use heft there.
S: Is that the one with bark nuggets.
M: I think it has the longer chips.
S: I heard that the acidity is pretty high in that stuff.
M: (Puts bag down) Do you want me to get the soil instead?
S: Well, I'm just not sure I want the soil with the little bits of white in it.
M: I'm so depressed.

Interpolations around home-buying and whether it is okay for one member of the relationshiop to walk around the house singing the same song incessantly because it is stuck in their head. Note: Today it was "Proud to be an American" by Toby Keith. I have never heard this song in any context that was not ironic.


M: I'm proud to be an American because at least I know I'm free. (Note: Sung with vigor).
S: If I were doing that you’d shoot me in the head.
M: What if I switched it up a little, sang I’m proud to be part of a global hegemonic narrative.
S: The point is that I didn’t say anything.
M: Your pointing out that you weren’t pointing something out. Doesn’t that kind of defeat the purpose?
S: I’m saying that I’m not saying anything.
M: You're clearly the better person.

Andrew vs. what he thought was U.S. weekly

In my new job at the library I routinely pass by a small desk in order to exit the office. The desk is no ordinary desk though. It contains several copies of US Weekly. (For a long time I mistakenly believed the title to be U.S. Weekly, and thought the stories had a greater deal of credence than they actually do. I think that US Weekly is a precipitous step below People in terms of magazines. Though, to be honest, I know nothing about magazines except that I only get about 70 percent of the New Yorker cartoons).

Example:



On the cover of the aforementioned US Weekly's are stories about Jillian Harris' new fiance's betrayal of her on the show The Bachelorette. (I've been a long time ashamed watcher of The Bachelor and have occasionally even found time to watch the B-ette when duty hasn't called me away on Monday nights. I always have to explain to people who have downcast eyes and shaking heads when I say that I watch The Bachelor that I watch it ironically. The Bachelor is in many ways the funniest show on television because of the earnestness with which all of the relationships are treated. Apologies to lovers of Rock of Love et al, but I'm really more a fan of this faux earnestness because it allows me to feel a cynical sort of superiority, which rises above the base level superiority you feel when you watch ridiculous people behaving poorly. ((I do miss Elimidate though.)) The Bachelor allows you to watch somewhat sane and successful people have their dreams squashed. But the real kicker is that while I'm watching the show I can't help but get a little bit vested in who the guy chooses. This is his potential soul mate. It's not the sort of decision you want someone to f--k up. Unless you are a Grade A prick yourself. And I'm not even going to get into the social dynamics of what it might mean if we desire to see someone else really screw up. So while I maintain an external veneer of sardonic amusement, internally I'm really mulling over whether this guy is making the right decision. And I'm saying to S. "No way I would have sent her home. She's a winner." And I'm saying it with the same amount of seriousness that the show itself portrays).


Ergo; today I lost my long battle with US Weekly and sat down during my last ten minutes at work and skimmed the article. I say skimmed because I was afraid that other people would return to the office. Not afraid of not working, I'd completed my tasks for the day, but afraid of being caught reading US Weekly.

(Should I be afraid of being caught reading US Weekly? In short, probably. I am the sort of person who decries the lack of moral fortitude in Americans in general and our willingness to succumb to mindless entertainment in lieu of facing up to what is often a pretty bleak world that probably deserves consideration. Objectively, I'd say that I do ok. I have no idea who Kim Kardishian is, nor how to properly spell her name. I've never seen any episodes involving Real Housewives of anywhere. I think in general we're pretty masterful at avoiding thinking about a world that demands a whole hell of a lot of thought. I'm certain if you considered for a minute you could probably come up with a few. But it's also pretty damn hard to earn a paycheck, buy groceries and think really hard about things like where you food came from, what sort of culpable role do you play as a voting member of a global power like the United States who is neck deep in other countries business for better or worse (non-action in Rwanda vs. action in Iraq) and who you/me are a vital part of. Or more simply. What is the best way to spend your time? Opinions varying on this very subject throughout time and giving rise to various philosophies, religions et al. A result which often makes me feel guilty about any way that I choose to spend my time and ultimately just want to give up and watch the good old Bachelor. Which, perhaps if you're watching it in the company of friends and really discussing it, perhaps even that fits in the good).

Here's an extremely stupid philosophy cartoon that does nothing to illustrate my point:


I think it's funny because monkey's like bananas. It's unclear whether it's funny or not.

I put the issue of US Weekly back down after reading a portion of the article and slunk back to my desk. Though, to be honest, if a battle was being fought then its already been lost. I will probably watch The Bachelor if it comes on television, and I'm sure if I caught an episode of whatever show Kim is on then I'd love that too. I guess it's really a question of self-denial/what makes you happy/Pauline desire vs. knowledge of the good.

Apologies for the length of the post, but I look forward to discussing the vicissitudes of love on The Bachelor with some of you in the future. I know America hates a moralizer. Our country's motto being something along the lines of "If I'm going to f-- my life up I'd like to do it on my own terms thank you very much." Now picture and eagle with that written across its face. Majestic, isn't it?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DsyXRLNwOF0

A special thanks to Mike for providing a good forward that will serve up some nice epigraphs over the next couple of weeks.

"More often than not, when someone is telling me a story all I can
think about is that I can't wait for them to finish so that I can tell
my own story that's not only better, but also more directly involves
me."

Woops

Do you remember or have you ever been at a club/picnic/square dance looking at some pretty girl/boy/piece of furniture that appears to be looking right back at you with lustful desire. Or wholesome desire. Or whatever. Then you go over and ask this boy/girl/chimera/chaise lounge chair out on a date/dance and you are firmly rebuffed. It makes no logical sense. Hasn't this person/chair/dragon been making eyes at you all night? What kind of a signal does a no send? It seems to in fact send a no signal. Now you've got to remove the boot from your back and walk back over to your friends/alcohol/dearly beloved wall and pretend like nothing happened.

Friend: How did it go?
M: It could have gone better. It could have gone worse though.

This hasn't happened to me ever either, but imagine if it did.
The analogy never breaks down, but I guess I'll spell it out anyway. After essentially accepting our offer until we pulled it at the last minute the

Interpolation
S: If your sister wanted to move back to the United States could she?
M: Oh yeah.
S: What about Davide.
M: He's married to her. They'd have dual citizenship.
S: Are you sure?
M: I'm as sure about that as I am about which way North is.
S: Which way would you guess?
M: (slight pause to consider) Up.
S: No really. Which way?
M: Does the moon set in the east or the west?

The sellers, after accepting the identical offer a mere four days ago rejected our offer. Thank you very much Michelle wherever you are. I mean, how do you eat lunch with a guy for two weeks straight even asking him to go get a pretzel with you. A pretzel and then....I've let it go. The lesson here is that it's not wise to piss off the seller. Apparently they weren't excited about getting into bed with us again only to discover that we weren't really sold on the whole idea. Now we're looking at "cute" places in the city. Can I use quotes there?

This means that the party invite list will have to be dropped from the original ten down to five, and you may be asked to bring something and turn it into a potluck sort of get together. We're going to serve mixed drinks, but they will probably be watered down a bit. Sorry.

If anybody has any housing suggestions for the DC area please send them my way. Or, if you own any maps that have a big red X where you've hidden your life savings please send them my way. I'd just be interested in looking at the details you'd drawn. I love nothing so much as something done nicely to proper scale. I wouldn't touch your money.

Conversations overheard in the gym.

Guy 1 to girl: Yeah, but walking with good posture makes you look like a douche. (Begins walking rather douchishly to illustrate point).

Girl 1: I'm thinking of eating less, so that I don't have to work out so much.
Girl 2: I can't even afford to buy food.
Girl 1: I really think anorexia is going to allow me to spend a lot less time in the gym.
M: (Look on in amazement).

Presenting Offers/Resale Value

Two important terms that I've learned in purchasing a house are presenting offers and resale value. I sort of already knew resale value, but for the purposes of this blog post lets all pretend like I didn't.

I've learned that when we put a bid in on a house that it is not called a bid. It is called an offer, and it is presented to the seller. Every time our real estate agent says that she will be presenting the seller with our offer I'm picturing the guy (and yes it's always a guy, typically sexist) sitting back on a divan and being fed grapes whilst scantily clad real estate agents present papers for them to sign. I sort of have a Nero kind of figure in my mind. Which makes me want to buy a house really soon so that I can later have offers presented to me.
M: Is that ink gold?
Agent: I don't know. (Note: said with fear in voice).
M: Did you just present me with an offer that doesn't have f---ing gold ink?
Agent: I'm sorry. (Note: looks at the floor).
M: Look at my face. Is it a happy face? (The face presented at this point in time should not in any way shape or form be happy...maybe form).
Agent: N..N...NO. (lip should be quivering).
M: Well good because I thought you just presented me an offer without gold ink. Did I purchase a lion and have it brought across the ocean for my personal enjoyment?
Agent: I'm not sure what the right answer is.
M: No. I purchased it to tear agents apart when they don't present offers properly. (At this point in time the actor should gesture from his divan and a group of burly men should physically eject the agent from the house).
Scene.

The other important term that I've come to learn is resale value. Resale value is the single most important thing to consider when purchasing a home. Don't imagine what it might be like to live there. Imagine what it might be like for someone else to live there. This is the single best advice that I've received. In fact, I'm so jazzed about resale value that I'm thinking of purchasing a house and then, without making any changes, putting it back on the market. It's genius. As long as you buy a house with resale value you will never have to worry about selling it. So, why not start right away? Strike while the iron is hot? (Are we still in the iron business or should that phrase be changed? Strike whilst the keyboard is untainted? The whilst probably didn't help update the phrase. Strike before your computer's battery runs out of life cutting you off halfway through an intensely personal/unrewritable (now a word) essay/e-mail to the love of your life. I guess that saying is a bit long.

The gist of this housing thing is that it's always important to consider that resale value. I'm planning on not even moving our stuff in because I'm afraid that our stuff will make whatever house we buy look cluttered, and thus uninteresting to other folks who might want to buy it. I plan on squatting in the pull-down attic so we don't defile the place. Remember, the right house is not the place where you see yourself living. It's the place where you can see someone else living.

What We talk about when we talk about houses

You've got a fast car.
I know things will get better
You'll find work and I'll get promoted
We'll move out of the shelter
Buy a big house and live in the suburbs.

To quote the great Tracey Chapman, or as my wife would call her: the musician that she doesn't like at all and who sounds vaguely like a dude, we're once again offering on a house in Silver Spring. We've decided that it's important to have space between us and our neighbors, because neighbors are the sort of people who deal drugs and have barking dogs and who might say hi to you at a point in time when you're tired, and you really would rather not say hi or exchange pleasantries or the local going rate for Bob Hope and you just want to get back to your big house and watch your big television in the comfort of your home away from the world. Neighbors are the sort of folks who may occasionally yell at one another at night or play outside when it's warm. And maybe their damn kids will leave bikes in your yard and lower the property value and make you obsess about resale value.

I suppose that if we were moving to the south neighbors would be the sort of folks who would bring pie by the house, or stop in to say hello with down home goodness. Unless we moved to Georgia, and then they'd be the sort of folks who'd run a whiskey sill and play the banjo. (Internal shiver). Or maybe they'd be like the neighbors of my childhood who turned out to be our distant relatives. Though, according to the popular jokes folks in the south (like me) are closely related anyway. (Re-zoning of U.S. coming once I figure out what GPS stands for).

The long and the short of it is that DC has spit us poor yuppies out into the burbs. Can you be a yuppie and poor? Is the term hipster? I don't think we're hip enough to live in a hipster neighborhood. I don't think hipsters check crime rates. They look for cool local coffee shops and hole in the wall restaurants with good food. Where are all the poor yuppies like us moving?

The upshot of this whole process is that if we don't get the house that we already could have had that we'll suddenly need to become hipsters. We'll have run out of options. We'll purchase ourselves a small dog, and take up social smoking. We'll develop looks on our face that communicate to other people that we have experienced and known things like ennui, but we've overcome them and now have a brighter outlook on life. We'll frequent antique stores and eschew places like Whole Foods in favor of purchasing all of our groceries at local markets or restaurants. We will once again become people who frequently go to music concerts and look vaguely and intentionally bored. We will laugh at crime rates and talk about the thrill of living amongst the masses. We will walk naked down the street and set fire to all the houses! (Oh, sorry, got a little carried away at the end there. I'm not entirely sure that S would be down for that...I would).

Alternatively if that plan doesn't work out my friend Chris has offered to include us in his bike gang so that we can rob the hipsters ourselves. No matter what scenario our move follows it is going to involve me on a bike, which spells imminent doom.

I think I'm going to set my final demand as a house with a pool in back and a trained seal. Just think how amused everyone would be to see a trained seal eating fish and playing with a beach ball every time they came over to our house. We could call him Ajax or flipper or something, and train him to clap on demand and maybe give him a bow tie and a little hat. He could serve dinner to us and become like part of the family until we phased him out for the new model in his declining years, but somewhere we'd know that what we were doing was wrong, and that we were just moving on again to avoid for the moment the overwhelming feeling of sadness that sometimes accompanies being human. Anyhow, if you've a seal and a pool please send all offers our way!

P.S. When we get a house I expect to see all five of you people who have read this blog at our house warming. Come hell or high water. Though, if either comes, we may have to move the party indoors.

Work Orientation

9 A.M. Walk into the building where my work training and orientation is being held. Immediately realize that I've forgotten the paperwork that I so carefully placed out on the table that morning apparently for the express purpose of forgetting it.

M: Should I go back on a lunch break and get it?
Facilitator 1: Let me see if I can help you with that? (Shuffles paper)
M: Because I don't mind just going back home for it?
Facilitator 3: Go sit down! Note: said with the brusqueness that is characteristic to Eastern European women, in a tone that puts fear into the hearts of most Westerners who grew up watching films like Rocky IV.

9:15 A.M.-9:45 A.M. Engage in banter about various things with the people at my table. Watch carefully as someone else folds up their name tag and places it on the table, so I don't screw up my own. Arts and crafts were never a strong point. Had a future AU employee relate a story about getting on the metro for the first time and ending up in tears proclaiming, "We don't ride the metro in Kentucky. We ride horses." Awesome. Spend the rest of the day encouraging her to horse commute to work.
Calculate that the cost of hay is prohibitive.

9:45-What seemed like forever
Listen to the facilitator relate the benefits package while trying to set the world record for yawns in a single hour. Notice that I have mistakenly shaved after putting on my shirt. Brush the carpet from my shirt futilely.

Facts that I learned about American University.

George Washington wanted to start the university during his presidency, which according to Wikipedia took place a long time ago. In an almost Kafkan bureaucratic nightmare the university did not open until 1914, by which time George and Martha were no longer with us.

The first class at my prestigious university graduated in two year degrees, perhaps making it the Phoenix college of its time. No word on whether you could get a degree in the mail by sending in two hundred dollars and a barrel of hay.

Misnomers: Learn about the title of the university publication: American today.
Fac: It's usually published bi-weekly.
M: (In my head) I guess American bi-weekly just isn't as catchy.

Unintended Irony:
Facilitator: Now we're going to talk about harassment.
(A car horn honks in the distance simultaneously). Queue picture of man yelling "hey baby! as he honks.

1:30-3:00
Tour the campus where I've gone to school for the past three years. Learn that almost every building has 51 working faculty members. Secretly begin to suspect that she's just reading the same card over and over and that we're not listening closely enough to call her on it.

3:30-5:00
Wind up the day by learning how to access my already existing e-mail account. A day well-spent.

The sort of conversations that should have taken place but didn't:

Fac: Your health care options include Blue Cross Blue Shield or Kaiser Permante.
M: Which one of those plans will include death squads? I'm not comfortable being shot against a wall just yet.

Fac: Neither of these plans include death squads.
M: Is that something that can be changed?

Fac: The HMO Open access is a good deal.
M: Will all undocumented workers/immigrants receive health care from this plan?

Fac: The dental plans are as follows....
M: Will the death squads attempt to steal my fillings? Should I paint my gold ones an off-white?

Fac: You can be fully vested in the funds after four months.
M: Is there a way that I can guarantee that my retirement savings are completely invested in commodities futures? I don't really feel comfortable trading in anything else. I'd like to see some quick turnarounds and retire at forty onto a yacht.

Fac: Is this a question for the whole group or just you?
M: I think the whole group is interested in buying a yacht. (Looks around at a series of confused faces, pictures them climbing on the desk and saying "O Captain my Captain." Briefly tear up.)

Being a good renter

I spent the last few days in Austin, Texas trying to perfect the last few of my rental habits before we move into the big bad world of buying a house. In the process I also learned that renting out your house to six guys is a great way to make money, but you probably wouldn't want to watch them live there.

Note: for the safety of those involved no names will be attributed to the actions below. Note: I also don't condone any of the behaviors listed below except when conducted by friends who have none each other in excess of fifteen years.

1) Spilled a glass of wine on white cabinets. Tried to clean it up with napkins. Determined that it was impossible. Proclaimed cabinets stylishly streaked. Left a note for the owner asking for payment for our interior design experiments.

2) Swam laps in the 100 degree pool and upset the neighbor's dog. Woke up most of the still sleepy little residents. Further proving my point that all dogs do not go to heaven but are in fact creatures from Hades.

3) Spilled wine on the table downstairs. Proclaimed the wood finished in a more natural way. Talked about the rise of vampires and shows like true blood and probably increase in wine stained things. Charged the owner another twenty bucks.

4) Threw Cheez Itz box on the ground in disgust after not playing well at a video game. Used a coffee mug to break them into little pieces to they could be vacuumed up as opposed to using a broom.

Other fun things to do/not do in Austin.
5) Going clothes shopping with your five closest guy friends. Then spend time in the store asking one another how we looked in various shirts. I'm going to give this one a six out of ten on must do's in Austin. Anytime a large group of males have a get together clothes shopping should definitely be in the mix.

6) I recommend the community pool as well, where hippies play bongo drums and dance with hula hoops. However, the low point of the weekend may also have a come at the cp where a local denizen went for a swim in his g-string. Lets go Austin did not mention any chance of encountering local male nudity and should probably be downgraded as a result.

7) Complained about the heat at the community pool. Austin was roughly 1,000 degrees on a typical day.

8) Complained about how cold the community pool was when we jumped in. The pool, which was apparently just part of the river, was about 27 degrees, defying all laws/sense.

9) Didn't sleep more than five hours for four days straight. Sleeping is highly overrated, and so I spent the weekend trying to ween myself off it.

10) Encouraged friends to do things like: drive vans over curbs, jump off the balcony into the pool, jump off a bridge into the Colorado River, (we actually dissuaded that one). This prototypical masculine behavior was clearly a put on designed to ameliorate the clothes shopping fiasco.

11) Remembered that I like dancing.

12) Went to batfest. BATFEST! Watched a few dozen bats in a constant stream come out from underneath the bridge. Grew disappointed that all 1.3 million bats did not come out at once and black out the sky/attempt to take over the city. 75 percent of bats have rabies and at least thirty percent are vampires. Thus, not seeing rabid vampire bats take over the city was a too bad.

13) Tried to take a picture with a guy wearing a batman suit and was denied. The awesome part of this was the guy treated us as though we were idiots. I don't think you're allowed to wear a Batman outfit into a public event and then pretend like you'd rather remain incognito.

13) The coolest thing I saw in Austin: witnessed about forty people walking in the street randomly form into a group and begin dancing to the Cupid Shuffle, which was playing from the bar where we were. I don't think we do dancing in the streets in DC
very well or at all.

What we spent most of the weekend doing in Austin.
Playing a full season of Tecmo Super Bowl. Reveal. Josh and I won the Super Bowl.
Played games of pool, pretending not to care who won and lost.
Sat around the house complaining about the heat/making fun of each other.

Austin

Several people have mentioned that I currently live below the Mason-Dixon line. I'd like to remind all those people that the Mason-Dixon line is a metaphorical line that divides what I think of as the south, from what I think of as the north. Most cartographers are now using my remapping of the United States in maps given to children throughout the lower 48. (Offer excludes South Carolina).

The Mason–Dixon Line (or "Mason and Dixon's Line") was surveyed between 1763 and 1767 by Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon in the resolution of a border dispute between British colonies in Colonial America. It forms a demarcation line among four U.S. states, forming part of the borders of Pennsylvania, Maryland, Delaware, and West Virginia (then part of Virginia). In popular usage, especially since the Missouri Compromise of 1820 (apparently the first official use of the term "Mason's and Dixon's Line"), the Mason-Dixon Line symbolizes a cultural boundary between the Northern United States and the Southern United States (Dixie).[citation needed]

If any of the vast complaining masses can prove to me that D.C. has more in common with the south than the north, than by all means, go ahead.

The great part about being in Austin is that it typically cools off from about 102 to 98 during the evenings when we're out exploring the town. I started the day by swimming laps in our pool, which is about 90 degrees. I highly recommend visiting the south during August Brilliant!

In the airport the other day I watched a CNN story about the most annoying habits of facebook users. The great story that I'm so glad CNN is spending time on, I can't get enough of facebook coverage coupled with whether Michelle Obama's shorts are long enough. It makes me think that our mainstream media is extremely savvy. Anyhow, the "story" claimed that one of the most annoying things that people do is push their blogs on facebook.

Charges Answered: I also hate people who do things like push their blogs on facebook. Nothing is more annoying than constantly getting posts about some person you don't know/care about. Of course, in my case I'm making the simple assumption that people who don't want to read my blog will delete any postings from my account on their news feed. Ergo; if you're in the midst of reading this and suddenly discvoer you have an intense dislike for people who constantly post blogs, and you're wishing you were doing anything other than reading these words, by all means, just go to the news feed and block all messages from yours truly.

Why I blog: I blog because not many people read the fiction stories that I spent hours slaving over. The blog is a nice forum because people can get immediate access to things that I'm writing. Even if they are of low to moderate quality, and only vaguely interesting in the sort of way that novelty items are

Why we didn't get a house: (I think. For all I know we bought the damn thing while I was in Austin). I think we didn't offer on the house because we weren't in love with the house. Should we have been Maybe?
S: It just sees like as soon as this house went on the market people bid on it. I kind of feel like if everyone else wants it maybe we should to.
M: Just because everybody on the street wants to be with the hot girl doesn't mean that I want to too.
S: I'm not sure the analogy works
M: You just aren't listening closely enough.
S: Besides you're married.
M: Precisely my point.
S: Now it's definitely broken down.
M: Probably. But the point still stands.
Should you really "love" something that will be the biggest monetary purchase of your life? What does it mean when someone says that they "love" their house? Is it okay to love something that isn't human? Is the fact that we "love" our new hair cuts, and cars, and houses some sort of reflection of a society more interested in things than in people? If a person puts a great deal of effort into something, do then gain the right to really "love" it? Does a book as good as Howard's End have anything to say about this?

Would we have cold feet/severe anxiety about any house that we were buying? Don't you eventually just have to commit to something if you really want it, and accept that it won't be perfect, because nothing in life is, and learn to make it work. Isn't that what being an adult is all about?

Travels and travails in the heart of Texas

6:00 A.M. Wake up after six hours of sleep to the deathly sound of my alarm. Spend the morning discussing housing situation with S. Employ the term "I don't know" about a thousand times to show my degree of uncertainty.
6:20-6:50-Ride the metro train to Union Station. Why the heck are so many people on Metro this early in the morning? These people should obviously all be sleeping.
7:00-7:50-Wander confusedly around Union Station looking for a train. Get directed by employee to take MARC train. Walk to the train and briefly discuss with fellow passenger the non intuitive nature of the printed tickets.
7:50-8:00-Ride MARC bus to the terminal. Disembark and continue on my journey.
Things to note on my first flight to Atlanta. I was sitting right in front of a family of four It's strange, how much we loathe people for having children on a flight, looking at them as though they were some sub-class of human being. I mean, who brings kids on a flight? It's okay to have children, but they are suitable for car trips only. Our collective look says.
The couple behind me has four kids It makes you wish that the parents would show a litte self-restraint or practice recent inventions like birth control and the cycles method (joke duly noted).
The plane ride as punctuated by the voices of loud children. THe father calmly explained houses and occaisionally reminded his son to keep his voice low.
Not sleep 1.
Andrew 0
My second flight found me seated on an aisle with a baby, and with a baby in the aisle in front of me. Spend the whole flight shivering because the passenger in the middle seat has turned up the AC incredibly high because he's wearing a coat. It's 102 in San Antonio. Secretly curse my fellow passenger while shivering and in need of sleep.
Not sleep 2
Andrew 0

Place an offer on a house. Argue about retracting an offer on a house. Talk to real estate agent to gain reassurance. Put down new offer on house. Look at crime maps. Become discouraged that people commit crimes at all. Settle into a state of slight depression.

Canvas the bars of Austin, Texas. Stand on a rail overlooking the street as all the people pass by. Buy new clothes. Buy groceries. Ask my longtime friends how I look in a new shirt. Decry the non-hetero nature of our activity. Continue taking about it anyway.
4 A.M. Probably time for bed!

Headed South

This will mark my first trip South of the Mason-Dixon save for a few driving excursions in which I used the southern states for fast food and urinal stops. I'll be driving in from beautiful San Antonio home of.....the Spurs? I'm excited because I'll be traveling by car to the metro, then from the metro to a train, then to a plane, then to a rental car place to finish up in Austin. I'm trying to see if I can fit a riverboat cruise into the trip somehow. Ideas?

In other, and far less important news we're currently bartering on a house that we offered on. I didn't realize that trying to buy a home was like buying quilt squares at an outdoor market but apparently it is. It's also a bit like playing a game of really high stakes poker. Anyhow, we're pretty new to this whole process, and I think the owner is bluffing, Steph thinks he isn't, and I'm not even sure about the whole home buying thing. The whole process is mentally exhausting in the sort of way that it just makes you want to get it over with, which isn't the best motivation for getting a house. If anyone knows of a shrink who works specifically with home buyers let me know.

S: What are you up to?
M: Fantasy football draft.
(Minutes of silence).
S: I'm not ready for football season.
M: What? It's been like nine months since football season ended. You could have already had a baby.
S: I forget how much attention you pay to football.
M: Shhhhhhhhh.......I'm drafting.

Wish me luck in San Antonio, for all I know I may come back as the proud owner of a well, not brand new, but new to me house!

I'm going where?

S and I spent the evening with our Realtor cavorting through ramshackle houses in the jungles of Takoma Park. While I could see how some of the yards might adventitious for raising a brood of lemurs, the moldy basements, broken door knobs and minuscule kitchens left a bit to be desired. Although, in truth, if anybody is planning on starting a farm of prairie dogs or a moldy basement daycare, (that's pretty catchy. You can't tell me you wouldn't want to send your young-ins ((which is what we at moldy basement daycare call the children)) to a place that promised poor service up front. Isn't that all we really want from our daycare center people anyway?

Parent: Sample end of day conversation:
How was his day.
Actual: Oh, he did well. He played nicely with Alex and even learned to say red.
Moldy basement daycare answer: Your child is a cretinous punk. I'd like to blame him, but I can tell that he probably isn't getting any real parenting at home judging by the way you're avoiding him/her even right now. And you're telling him to play with his friends so you can keep talking to the teacher. Am I right? (Throws arm amicably over startled parent's shoulder).

Parent: Did he eat his lunch?
Actual: He tried really hard. I told him that he couldn't have his cookies until he finished at least half his sandwich.
MBDA: Your child threw a tantrum when I sat him down nicely on the carpet and tried to explain why I had to take away his lunchable and explained to him that it was in no way shape or form actual food and that if his mommy really loved him she'd have packed a damn lunch. Things sort of went south from there because your kid, and I'm just being honest here, is a little regressed in the intellectual department. I think he may have already licked some mold before he even got to us, and I want no part of his future insurance billing.

I was planning for my trip to Austin, Texas today when I received an e-mail that my flight to San Antonio had been changed. Needless to say I checked my ticket and discovered that in buying the cheapest/most convenient ticket from the D.C. area to Texas that I'd booked for San Antonio. Which, no offense to San Antonio it's probably a nice place to be, but I figured since I was meeting friends in Austin it might be a good idea to actually fly there. I called the airline, and they told me that for the mere price of 487 dollars I could fly into Austin as opposed to San Antonio. San Antonio is eighty miles from Austin, or in air time, about two minutes. However, apparently those two minutes in the air would cost the airline 480 dollars and far be it from me to complain. I'm just exited to check out the Spurs, the rodeo, and whatever else San Antonio has to offer while all of my lame friends who I'm supposed to meet up with go river rafting. S has now barred me from buying any plane tickets. Probably a wise decision on her part.

Andrew decides to bike

In order to facilitate our move from DC and to drop the cost of transportation I've decided to bike to work. Biking to work is going to have a number of upsides including the long overdue removal of the training wheels from my bike and the purchasing of some bright sort of shirt that all bikers wear. I presume that this shirt cuts wind density (made up) by 79 percent and allows you to bike like Lance Armstrong without being a complete jerk.
Confession. I didn't learn how to ride a bike until I was ten years old, long after other kids in the neighborhood had begun to pop wheelies and do jumps off ramps. Even then, my riding was a tenuous sort of endeavor. Confession. On our honeymoon we took a bike ride and as we began to leave I sort of veered wildly like a one winged bird towards the curb before correcting and was asked by the tour guide if it was my first time on a bike. "No, it's about my 1,000th. Is this your first time giving a tour. Because I hope you know that tips don't earn themselves. I'd have preferred a comparison to Greg Lemond."
Guide: Que?

Confession. I learned last night that I've been running about the world using the word segue as though it was a completely separate word. I learned that the word I'd been pronouncing (seeg) was in fact just segue. Confession. My mother told me that it is sump pump rather than the sub pump that I provided yesterday.

The real plus of riding the bike is that I get to shake my fist at motorists and have all the sort of indignity that is granted to you by virtue of riding a bike. Do bikers have bike gangs? Should I be purchasing a black jacket and growing a beard?

S is growing a bit tired of looking for houses, so we're thinking of renting another couple to look at houses for us. We'll be accepting applications next week, and we hope to be conducting interviews and have the position hired by September 1. Below is a transcript of the questions asked, which will be conducted in "Who Wants to be a Millionaire" style like that movie that everyone saw that was a little over hyped, yet still loved, like a movie version of the "Kite Runner." Irony duly noted.

Q: What is your least favorite animal.
A: A dog.

Q: What is my favorite type of house
A: American Craftsman.

Q: If someone is choking in a restaurant, do I a) provide the heimlich maneuver using textbook form b) Pretend like I can't tell for fear that I'll screw the thing up and break ribs c) Pretend to be choking to avoid even the remote possibility that I'll be asked to engage in life-saving procedures d) Do the heimlich in such a piss-poor manner that no one will ever ask me to do it again.
A: D

Q: If I could be any animal in the world what would it be?
A: Panther.

Q: If given a simple task to do that I'm new to, do I a) Perform it with grace and accuracy b) Inwardly panic, and start saying things like shi- when it doesn't go right c) Ask lots of questions to make sure I'm performing it well D) Train a walrus to follow me around at all times and sing show tunes to distract from any incompetence.
A: I'll take B.

Q:How many types of trees do I know?
A: Ten

Q: Do I prefer a sun room or a sitting room?
A: You don't really know the difference.

Q: Do I prefer a yard with trees or with grass to work on?
A: What the f--k's a yard? I've got a football game to watch.

Q: Are basements useful places to put all your junk or places to build large furnaces in order to dispose of neighbors remains?
A: The latter.

Q: Are chain link fences nice barriers to the street or hideous obstructions designed to keep people from ever wanting to live in a neighborhood?
A: That one.

Tiger Woods blows it!

No, I don't actually watch golf. Though, to be fair, I'm reaching the sort of age/physical decline that should make the sport infinitely more interesting to me. It isn't. However, when Tiger Woods blows it on the final day of a major it definitely makes the news on this blog. I mean, check out this quote from Tiger, "You have to make putts. I didn't do that. Today was a day that didn't happen." Now, does Tiger mean that today didn't actually happen? Because if he possesses that sort of Groundhog Dayesque power then I'm considerably less impressed with his past victories. If Tiger Woods actually has the God-like ability to make today not happen then why doesn't he use it more frequently? Why has he ever lost a major tournament? It's rare that a sports athlete makes me question the meaning of my existence. I may just be a dream going on in Tiger Woods' head. This scares me immensely.

I'm now going to record the days events in case Tiger Woods erases them tomorrow. We went out today looking for a: adobe house, A-frame, apartment house, attached house, beach house, bi-level, brownstone, bungalow, bunkhouse, cabin, Cape Cod, carriage house, chalet, clapboard house, coach house, colonial, cottage, country house, detached, dormitory, double-wide, duplex, farmhouse, frame house, galerie house, garrison house, hacienda, half-timbered house, house trailer, igloo, log cabin, longhouse, maisonette, manor, mansion, mobile home, octagon house, penthouse, prefabricated house, quadruplex, raised ranch, ranch house, row house, semidetached, solar house, split-level, tepee, townhouse, tract house, trailer, triplex, two-family house, Victorian, wickiup, wigwam.

Unfortunately we only found a house in Silver Spring that almost met our specifications. We made sure that it had a roof and at least two walls in each room. We checked to make sure the plumbing worked and that you could breed parrots in the ceiling to keep out the squirrels. (That's an idea for you Matt). The long and the short of it is that when you've been looking for a house for this long anything begins to appear good, providing it's outside DC proper. The previous tenant appeared to have been attempting to grow a jungle instead of a lawn. And had probably intended the grass to be overtaken by saplings and ivy. However, a little part of me that remembers tearing up my mother's back yard many summers ago was not excited about the prospect of tearing up a yard again. This time sans the allowance that made it all worthwhile.

The house also had a deck that seemed to be built for the express purpose of peering into neighbor's yards. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy watching other people go about their daily business from behind the secrecy of my binoculars. But it's a bit more obvious when you're standing on a fifteen foot deck from about twelve feet away with the set of binoculars. Perhaps I'm not thinking hard enough as the jungle could provide adequate cover for stalking my neighbors.

The basement was extremely large and included two sub-pumps. Said sub-pumps appearing from within giant holes in the cement in a Leviathan-like way, causing my fear of east coast basements to be reaffirmed. On the flip side, the basement was quite large and would provide adequate space for our bikes, boogie boards, wet suits, book shelves, canned prunes, and Gary.

The upstairs area was adorned with the hardwood floors that represent my generation's shag carpet. Aside: Is anyone else in their twenties/early thirties desperately missing the carpet of their youth? When you're staging a war between Transformers, G.I. Joe, and a set of My Little Ponies, it seems like the hardwood floors just wouldn't be as fun to scoot around on all day. What about running through a wall of pillows and falling onto the floor? or having a wrestling match?

The best idea I've heard in weeks:
Tom: You know what you should do?
M: What?
Tom: Take out a loan for your mortgage and spend all the money on vacations.
M: Vacations are way more fun than buying a house.
(Silence)
Tom: This may be an indication that I'm relatively new to the process.

Our day had other highlights as well including:
1) House with a nice foyer.
Realtor: I don't like the looks of this house.
M: Yeah, but look at these nice arches on the foyer.
(Minutes later after backing out of the house quickly).
Realtor: I'll do them a favor and throw away the electronic key.
M: Yeah, but I really like these arches.

2) House in a nice neighborhood that was a piece of crap.
M: This place has a nice big yard.
(Moments later after backing out of the house for fear of the ramshackle kitchen)
M: Look at the neighbor's yard. It has a really nice landscape.
S: Those trees look dead.
M: Yeah, but I think they're just using them as snags for the local owl population.
Realtor: It does have a nice big backyard.
M: Yeah, but it's a piece of crap house.

3) House that was too close to Georgia Avenue.

4) House that we were unable to enter.
This house was probably my favorite because we weren't able to get inside. The neighbor had a black beamer parked in the rear drive. And the fact that that had me extremely excited about the listing is probably indicative of a strongly ingrained class bias. But that class bias is probably beside the point. The real point is that the house that I haven't yet seen will always be the magical one that will end this journey through neighborhoods of DC that I'd only scene before on maps. Aside: I'm lying. I never look at maps. That's why God invented the GPS. The house is probably just as inadequate as all of the others. But I haven't seen it yet, so I'm allowed to still really be excited about it. This is probably why people who haven't had sex until their wedding night are way more excited.

Goodnight!

My last weekend

I'm spending my last weekend in style by working on Sunday. Nothing quite like the sweet feeling of not working made all the sweeter by working. S got her haircut today and I performed my husbandly duty of complimenting her on it when she got home.
S: (Turning her head from side to side in what could only be called a "girlish manner") Do you like it?
M: Like what?
S: My hair.
M: It looks different.
S: It looks different? (With the sort of tonal shift implied here that means something along the lines of, 'you better say something better than that if you know what's good for you.'
M: Yeah. It just looks different.
S: Do you like it?
M: Have you read those essays yet?
Note: The new haircut is fantastic it just took a little time to grow on me.....that pun killed a little part of me that probably won't ever grow back. I'll stop.

In other news, our continuing search for the perfect house continues. We're trying to rule out everything in the larger metro area, so that we can facilitate a move to rural Alabama and then commute in by jet. We're thinking that in the long wrong jet travel is going to be the most convenient/environmentally friendly way for us to work in DC.

I've now stayed up until 2 A.M. again, scouring the map of our humble city for great deals. I've now discovered that house hunting is about as addictive as cocaine. On the bright side eventually we'll reach an end point when we buy a house. Either that, or I'll start jonesing for housed even after we have our house, and S will discover me on the computer at 3 A.M. madly scrolling across neighborhoods and mumbling about access to transit and crime to density ratios.

8:00 A.M. Awake to find S already cleaning the house. Walk out to living room and demand that she return to bed.
8:30 A.M. Awake again and spend time searching for houses.
9:30 A.M. Threaten to make breakfast if S won't.
10:00 A.M. Sit down to a breakfast prepared by S. Insist that blueberries are freezer burned due to managements inability to plug in a refrigerator. Eat pancakes despite freezer burn.
10-12-Spend an inordinate amount of time picking up the house. I've learned that I really enjoy picking up the house, though it may actually just be a symptom of a subtle brainwashing being conducted by S. The results are still coming in.

S: I think they taste fine.
M: You'd say dirt tasted good if you'd cooked it.
Later
S: It's too bad these blueberries are ruined.
M: Point taken.
Note: I pretty much have the same policy. Whenever I cook something I'd like to think that it's inherently good because I've cooked it. I'm engaging in what lit. folks call the intentional fallacy.

12-2 P.M. Think intently about working out. Search redfin for houses. Threaten to leave the house and drive around various neighborhoods to look at houses.
2:30 Conduct daily argument about housing priorities/make wild unfounded claims about S's desire to thwart our attempts to buy a house. I've found that daily discussions about houses tend to arise and eventually become discussions about kitchen space/ideological beliefs/access to transit/individual vs. collective society/climate change/free time/just about anything else you can think of, which makes home buying a real pain in the ass.

S: I feel like you're the one who keeps changing his mind.
M: (Silent contemplation)...You might be right. Note: Not something I say often. Like most of the human species I believe that I'm right at least 99 percent of the time. I'm guessing that most of us are close to 75 percent and when it comes to inconsistencies in our personality probably closer to fifty 50 percent because we create elaborate safeguards to mask our own deficiciences. Case in point, accusing S of thwarting my attempts to obtain a particular house whilst attempting to thwart her attempt at buying a house.

4:00 P.M. Work out despite forgetting my iPod. Watch people do skating tricks on television. Try and decide if skating is a cool thing to do or strange. Inconclusive evidence by the time the elliptical had reached thirty minutes. Disembark. No doubt the proper word to use in this case.
I've always regarded skate boarding as a lower end activity. Activity in this case being used as a descriptor that places Sboarding well below your normal baseball, football, basketball sorts of things. However, these guys were really talented and my own inadequacies when it comes to balance sports (skiing, snowboarding, skating et al) probably make me biased against the whole endeavor.

5-7:30 P.M. Drive around to various DC neighborhoods attempting to discover their relative viability as housing options. And in the process you go through all the same sorts of conniptions that are usually conducted in the privacy of our home but with that strange feeling of individuality that characterizes individual travel in a city, particularly to places unknown. I believe it is Balzac's flaneur that sets the modern standards for this phenomenon of feeling incredibly alone in a crowd of people and simultaneously exhilarated.

11-2:00 A.M. Search for housing options/research surgery options for a torn labrum. It's too late for a word quiz. More tomorrow.

Housing failures abound

A variety of things to consider while searching for your house,
1) The house that you never get to see is always the one that got away. Every time I favorite a house and we leave town for some reason and come back to discover that the house is off the market I become convinced that it would have been perfect for us and that we've missed the opportunity of a lifetime. This is something akin to being a young single who thinks that the girl who just turned the corner and may have been smiling, or was it a frown? or did she just have something in her eye? is the perfect girl for him.

2)Don't spend time in the neighborhood where you are considering buying a house. A lot of real estate agents and parents and other authority figures will suggest this an important part of your home purchase, particularly if you live in DC. I fly in the face of that logic by saying that their is no reason to spend time in a neighborhood and try and get comfortable because if the neighborhood is uncomfortable it may prevent you from buying a nice house. And like I've always said, you can always change the people around you but a house will never fade. Wait, maybe I said something else like, "Personality will fade after the hundredth time you've heard a joke/story seen that same smile but good looks will last forever."

3) Other houses in the neighborhood you are looking in will always appear more pleasant than the house you're considering. You'll find yourself thinking how nice the french doors or landscaping appears in that house that isn't on the market and begin to hate your own selection. I think we should just put an offer down on the house we like best in a neighborhood, on sale or not be damned! Nothing says get the hell out like haunting someone's house by living in the attic for a month and walking around at night/making the sorts of noise that ghosts make. What noise do ghosts make?

4) Never drive down an alley trying to see if it's nice enough. As it turns out alleys are places where things like broken bottles, drugs, and here I mean not people but the drugs themselves, and conventions of beaten down sheds congregate. Thus, really making the whole alley a bit less appealing. Even if S is a smart growth person who loves alleys.

For Jenny:
Northernly or northerly?
directoral or directorial for the adjective corresponding to director?
disenfranchise or disfranchise?
disincentivize; jargon or real word?
disinterested is a synonym for uninterested? True or False?

5) Don't travel around a neighborhood expecting people to be rude. Chances are the people in your new potential neighborhood will be friendly and you'll be slightly off put because nobody in your neighborhood says "Hello" or "I like the colors on your shirt," and you'll feel uncomfortable and drive back home wondering why people just can't keep the damn compliments to themselves and stop accosting you with friendlieness on the street.






Northerly
directorial
disenfranchise though only through a language change from the original disfranchise
Jargon
False

Why humanity is destined to fail: an aside about elliptical usage

Today I listened to an amazing podcast by Saul Griffith, which managed to answer all sorts of question that I have about this climate change problem. Like most good folks raised in a God-fearing home I know that climate change is a hoax perpetrated by liberals who want to turn our great nation into a communist regime. On the other hand, if one were to actually believe these "scientists," which I use in quotes to indicate a high level of scathingness in reference to people who believe that the world is over 3,000 years old and who planted dinosaur bones under the Badlands, Saul Griffith provides an accurate portrait of what a sustainable American lifestyle would look like. Guess what, we do things like go to the theater and spend the evening with friends, we drive less, eat less meat, and travel less in general. I think I can speak for everyone when I say that Saul Griffith is a communist who wants Americans to live like cavemen but on the off-chance that he's right, then I think he presents a pretty compelling case for a change in our lifestyles which would actually bring about effective change without causing us to sacrifice things like friendship, pleasure et al. I highly recommend the podcast, but I'm guessing that you, like me, would rather watch a funny video.

In other news our apartment complex managed to fix our kitchen, but they mistakenly unplugged our fridge, with food in it, over the weekend. On the plus side we've got a new kitchen. On the down side, we have a house that smells like someone died, which is why I've been pushing so much for a house with a basement, you can just pile them up down there.
S: (Cleaning out the fridge)
M: You're not going to throw that milk out are you?
S: Oh yes.
M: It doesn't come out of the cow cold does it?
S: (Deep sigh)

Related to an earlier blog about dogs. The real downside to owning a dog is that they poop. Like most children I learned that poop is concentrated evil being released into the world and must be treated as such. However, dog owners everywhere just blithely reach down and pick the offending pile up with only a slight bag and walk around with it as though it's a charm. Then, they have the audacity to claim that the plastic blocks out the scent. I've taken care of a couple of dogs in my day, and one thing about dog poop is that it goes right through the plastic. Ergo; my advice to single men obtaining a dog for the purpose of attracting woman, or looking responsible upon the arrival of their pre-ordered Ukrainian bride, is to wash their hands thoroughly after each dog poop, or to teach the damn thing to evolve and use the toilet!

Anyhow, this podcast by Saul Griffith restored in me the vague sense that we might have a chance as a species. But that was before I went downstairs to exercise in our gym, where a sign clearly reads "Please exercise for thirty minutes if others are waiting." This sign clearly dictates that if any more than two people are in the gym that you must stop using the elliptical after a thirty minute time period or you are not a law abiding participant of the human race. Needless to say, two people peddled away for at least thirty five minutes while I was downstairs reaffirming my faith that nobody gives a damn except about themselves and that we're headed for doom. Which, you could probably note that this is a bit of an overreaction to improper use of an elliptical, to which I'd say, "you're wrong." Then, when one of the young people in question got off the elliptical another person immediately jumped on, despite the fact that she was the fourth person to enter the weight room after the two person limit had been exceeded. Ergo; in no way shape or form did she have any right to use the elliptical. And she turned out to be one of those people who goes maniacally fast while occasionally smiling, or perhaps gritting her teeth while staring at the ground. Don't get me wrong, I love a good crazy smile in "The Shining," but I find it disturbing/weird in the gym at my apartment complex. To wit, further proof that all of the small little sacrifices that we're required to make in order to make things work, or just share exercise equipment equitably, seem impossibly far away.
Now I've got to go needle S a little more while she tries to itemize the fridge after working a full day. I could offer to help, but that seems like too much to ask.

A return trip from Maine

Our return trip from Maine was shockingly pleasant. Of course, it's sad that a pleasant trip amounts to nine and a half hours spent in the car. My standards for a nice trip had been dropped immeasurably by our elven and a half-hour trip to Vermont. I'd like to say that the trip had a lot of highlights, but mainly it just involved me sleeping in the front seat only to be awakened by S who wanted me to consistently check on the map to see if we were going in the right direction.

Maps are confusing things designed for paleolithic man in my experience, and I'm not as sharp with them as I could be. Besides the folding, which just never happens for me, maps have too many lines, and they lack the friendly yet commanding voice of our GPS. The GPS is the tool of the modern homo sapien sapien designed for the fast-paced person who doesn't have time to develop a "sense of place" or take an interesting back road chock full of squirrel nests and pretty spider webs filled with dew, when the good Lord built highways throughout the United States to convey travelers at a maximum speed while listening to music that will damage their eardrums.

Maps are really only useful when doing some good old-fashioned gerrymandering or doing a skit involving the dangers of map use on the highways. Hello, tenth grade drivers ed.

S and I went out to enjoy the Perseid meteor shower this evening. We left our humble abode on this nicely cooking evening to witness the once a year phenomenon. The only downside to viewing this meteor shower were listed in the article as: light pollution-check, bright moon-check, and cloud cover-check. Ergo; we sat out on a bench looking up at orange clouds and mistaking the blinking lights of planes for clouds. I'm sure that somewhere else in the world the shower was great and wonderful, but I really don't give a damn. It sucked here.

Anyhow, I'm lying on my back looking up at the sky, trying to remember the last time I sat quietly in nature or left my house without any real intent to "do" something and all I could think of was all the things I had to do when I got back home. The clouds looked like nothing but orange obstructions. I forced myself to take a deep breath, and I found myself staring up at the face of Alf, the eighties cartoon character who ate cats, then Poseidon blowing out a puff of wind with an army of clouds behind him. (Apparently Kafka has a great story about Poseidon in which he is so overwhelmed with paperwork that he never gets to enjoy the sea).

And S and I remembered back to the last meteor shower that we had seen together, years ago in Santa Barbara. We'd been lying on top of my car with another friend watching the greatest meteor shower of our lives (assuming a normal life span) and not leaving until 2:30 A.M. And I remember everyone at my college talking about the most amazing meteor that burned through the sky at around three A.M. and I remember regretting it then, and every day since. I am sad that I didn't stay up to watch the best meteor, and if I had known, I would have stayed up longer. And it feels like a metaphor or a lesson for most of life, that could be taken either way. Either stay up later, or learn to have gratitude for the things you have experienced rather than those that you haven't.

But the strangest part is to think about that meteor shower, now seven years gone, and realize that it is the best meteor shower that I will ever see in my time upon this lonely planet. The saying is, "the best is yet to come," but sometimes it has already passed.

Dog days

Today I received a call from the library where I've been interviewing and occasionally working over the last few months, and they offered me a position which I heartily accepted. The reality being that at this point I would have taken a job chucking pig slop into buckets if offered, so the decision wasn't really all that hard or dramatic like when one of those people on Deal or No Deal has to decide whether to keep the money or open another briefcase. (How this show is an hour is beyond me and probably indicative of some sort of moral decay or deep intellectual malaise on the part of the viewing audience).

The saddest part about getting a FT job is that this blog was originally about the trials and tribulations of a young and talented individual scouring the job market to find his true calling, only to discover that he was not young or talented and that the job market had no real interest in his calls, and that when it did take his calls it would often say things like, "Oh, I would go out with you, but I'm washing my hair that night or I don't date co-workers...Michelle." And other such things which makes someone feel unloved. The blog having been at its inception kind of like an episode of Lassie, if Lassie had been a human being in his late twenties with a graduate degree in "things you're probably going to wish you hadn't spent money on when you see how much these loans are costing" (presumably this degree would acquire some sort of acronym or initialism) which is to say this blog is nothing like the show Lassie.
Acronym you pronounce the whole word. Like AWOL, An initialism is something like E.P.A. in which the letters are pronounced individually and not as a full word, except on the Simpson's movie.
Apologies for the above, but I've dogs on my mind as we've been staying with my sister-in-law (presumably she and her husband will visit us for the law suite as she's thinking of getting a degree in environmental law) and her husband who have a corgie puppy. Corgies (sp) are small dogs that have their tail removed by a rubber band at birth, which just seems cruel, and who enjoy herding sheep and peoples ankles. The one thing that this author noted while sitting outside with this pup and his brother-in law was the immense amount of attention that said dog/owner received from members of the opposite sex. I had long believed, not being a pet owner myself, that this was just another trope offered up by movies and was not grounded in reality. However, no less than five hundred women stopped by to pet the pup and ask questions about him (note: the dog is a female but everyone immediately assumes all dogs are male, which would obviously cause problems for breeding purposes: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vE-IPRlUhGg (Everyone also asks permission to pet the dog, and one rather inebriated woman, threw up her arms and said, "Ah a chichuah" (sp, I know, but I dislike them too much to check) with gusto that none of us saw fit to gently point out that the corgie looks nothing like the dog from the taco bell commercials. Said woman then trying to suffocate the dog in her cleavage.

My conclusion being at the end of the day, that if you are a single male past the age of twenty two or so, cruising bars is an obscene waste of time when you could just buy a puppy and sit on a street corner for an hour and get a thousand times the attention you'd ever get from a girl in a bar, who as noted before, would probably just be looking for a handsomer guy than yrs. truly, but will not overlook your amazingly cute puppy. Anyhow, perhaps this trope has been so overdone by the media that everyone is aware of it, but the stunning truth of this banal cliche was made clear today.

I don't know why the people at the Human Society haven't caught onto this idea yet. Instead of showing pictures of sad-eyed cats who need a home, they should have pictures up of a guy with his brand new pet surrounded by a bevy of women who are ooohing and ahhhing in ways that communicate both a love of the animal and perhaps an interest in such a caring owner. These ahhs would be complex. Sidenote: The interesting part is also that the owner gains credence by having older women stop by to admire the pet as well, which gives the added bonus of making the owner not appear creepy or needy in any way because he isn't just talking to the cute girls but the older women as well and just has a general and loving interest in his pet. Side side note: The particular owner of this dog, my brother-in-law, does not exploit any of these things and is an extraordinarily happily married man. But one would actually be engaged in some sort of intellectual tom-foolery to not notice the advantages of having a dog for the owner and pet.

And the real plus side of this whole pet-owning thing is that it becomes a mutually beneficial relationship in which the dog receives food, shelter, and love from all the single men who should be purchasing them. And, in the end, one can see these single men developing all sorts of good dog-owning habits like participating more in their community, and finding themselves genuinely interested in what the old women are saying, and maybe finding that they like both owning a dog, but also being interested in someone/thing else's well-being. Thus, preparing them to be a better spouse/husband for those very same women that they are hoping to attract. Anyhow, I'd better stop blogging soon and set to work on these posters for the humane society because I think we can really change the world with this idea. A dog for every single man!

thirty weddings and....I can't remember

Profoundly stupid things I've done while conducting a housing search.

1) Read in-law suite in basement as in law suite in basement. Ie, I understood the in law suite to be an area in your basement specifically designed for a law office. In my defense, which, lets be honest here, no defense really makes up for such mass stupidity, the first picture I saw was of some office chairs and a desk in a basement, and I'm thinking, oh yeah, I could see someone sending a fax from there, and I'm wondering what hours they keep and if it makes it harder to walk around upstairs during the day/sing along to Mariah Cary with the sort of verve that she deserves/commands. By my seventh house with in-law suite I figured out that it probably meant something besides what I thought or that DC had an incredibly high density of lawyers in a very small area all living in basements.

2) Confused crown moldings and trim. This is also really inexcusable, and probably a sign that I need to be watching far more HG TV than I am currently. I bet they have all sorts of stuff about crown molding, and light fixtures, and medallions, and other things that homeowner's need to know about in order to feel superior to those who don't own homes, which is the point of owning a home as far as I understand it.

I'm in Maine now, making my way up the Eastern seaboard. I really have just always wanted to say Eastern seaboard.

Highlights from the wedding
1) A one and a half year old running up onto the stage in the church hall despite his father's protests followed by the father saying to the child, who has only mastered dada and mama at this point, "Do you want a time out? Because we can accommodate that?" I'm not entirely certain how he expected the child to respond, most one and a half year olds not having quite made it up to the accommodate portion of the dictionary. I believe his answer was somewhere between "Can you rephrase that?" and "What the hell did you just say/dada."

Aside: I always loved my own father's questioning "Do you want spanks?" before applying a healthy does of TLC to rear ends. I think this is one the greatest practices ever invented, asking children if they would like a time-out or a spanking. Shockingly, in my many years as a child-care worker not one child ever said, "Yes, I'd love it if you could give me a time-out. I was sort of thinking I deserved one, but I was really just waiting for someone to ask." Not once.

Listening to the wind blowing through the trees around the church, which sounds like the ocean, or traffic, or just plain old wind going through trees. Watching the light fall between the small black lattices to make rectangles of light on the floor bisected by shadows. Feeling an overwhelming and indeterminate sadness as the now newly weds practiced for the big day, and thinking about how selfishness is the most natural thing in the world, but sad.

2) I'm nearly thirty years old as has been well-documented in this blog. Thirty being the age where you either acquire old-man strength from lifting obscure objects or fall into some sort slow and irreparable bodily decline. Shoulder surgery here I come! Anyhow, I'm thinking that the weddings will be scarce in my future or I'll just be some old hanger on who young people call cute. The sort of person who retires after the cake cutting to watch episodes of Macgyver (sp) loved that show! And though I'm happy to be moving into that stage of life I'll miss dancing at weddings, which is only permissible while you're under the age of thirty according to certain strict by laws laid out by the Adam's brothers at the outset of our fine nation. Ergo; if you're getting married in the next year be sure to invite me so that I can do some dancing before I retire to the buffet table for life, trying to pick off food that the caterer's are packing up.

Congratulations to Katie and Pete on getting married and doing the whole Lord of the Rings tour while in New Zealand! Enjoy levensies! (No idea on how to spell this/they aren't actually doing the whole tour just the trip to Mordor to get rid of their rings in a lake of molten lava. Don't ask).

Of Maple Syrup and traffic

We took a much needed break from the housing search to travel up to Vermont for a wedding. Needless to say I'm still searching for houses from afar, but I don't have to spend my weekend looking at them. My impressions of various states/regions

Washington, D.C.-On a good day and in the right light the District looks a bit like Paris. The tree-lined (a great line used in every home advertisement on Redfin even if the house is located in the middle of a parking lot) streets echo the boulevards of that great French city, and the old churches that dot street corners remind you that Washington is an old city. D.C. is also known for being a city that was planned to be the American version of Venice before planners realized that mosquitoes love water and malaria.

Quiz question 1-Correct spelling? Ideology or Idealogy? (Answers below. Don't cheat, unless you want to feel smart like I would, then cheat by all means).

Maryland-We mostly saw the freeway in Maryland, which though compelling offered little in the way of charm. Maryland is also known for that movie the "Blair Witch Project," which I never saw and which makes me dizzy to even think about.

Quiz question 2-He got his just dessert or his just desert?

Pennsylvania-We drove through Pennsylvania while I was sleeping. The only thing that awakened me were the near constant soul-killing tolls.
M: Why can't they just raise taxes?
S: Tolls are good because it discourages driving.
M: (Points to 1,000 cars on the road in traffic jam) They sure look discouraged.
Proceed to stop at station in Philly to pick up an EasyPass which they are out of once again.
Pennsylvania is also known for being home to that Quaker Oats guy who hasn't aged in years but always looks like someone's pleasant if slightly stern grandfather.

Quiz question 3-Miniscule or minuscule?

New Jersey-Driving through Newark it looks as though the earth has vomited up some terrible machinery that has lain dormant since the dawn of time--tall red and blue statues stand like mini-brontosaureses blocking out the sky line. A brief green hill is revealed to be a land fill surrounded on three sides by industrial run off. Jersey is also known for...uh.

Quiz question 4-It's not that big a deal or It's not that big of a deal?

New York-
M: I love this city!
S: These buildings are unsightly.
M: I think you just hate New York because I like it.
S: That's possible.
M: How do you spell minuscule?
S: P-E-N----
M: Very funny.
(Just then we pass a white billboard that has a picture of a doctor holding a needle behind a patient with the caption "Life is full of little pricks.")

New York-We opted to hit Manhattan at rush hour, which turned out to be a gross miscalculation on our part. Apparently lots of people live in New York. Who knew? New York is also known for the distinctive accent of its inhabitants who seemed to have been planted at various rest stops along the way to reinforce stereotypes about their thick accents.

Quiz Question 5-self-deprecating or self-depreciating?

Connecticut-Why do they have that annoying C? Wouldn't it be easier if it was just Conneticut? Connecticut is also known for being one of those properties on the monopoly board that are sort of useful and acquired early in the game.

Quiz Question 6-expatriate or expatriot?

Massachusetts-I believe that the Berkshires, our esteemed apartment building, are located in Mass. Our wonderful building who is refunding us in the amount of 200 dollars for our month-long roach infestation. S calling the woman who she spoke with about the refund as "wily." Massachusttes is also famous for being home to the Salem witch trials where teenage girls convinced mass amounts of people of witchcraft and had them killed. A proud moment.

Quiz question 7-presumptious or presumptuous?

Vermont-We finally arrived into the beautiful state of Vermont in time to see the dark. Okay, we had a nice view of the moon thinly veiled by clouds appearing brighter than I've seen it in months, and you could tell by the shapes in the dark that it was mostly rural, and pretty, and green, and all those sorts of things which city slickers secretly crave. We arrived at a farm house in the middle of the night and slept blissfully. Note: Almost blissfully. I have an extreme fear of being pitch-forked to death by an insane asylum escapee. Rational? No. Probable? Yes.
Vermont is also known for maple syrup and people who speak with pride about wearing layers, and who we secretly dislike for loving things like the cold and ice that the rest of us hate.

1. Ideology
2. Just desert
3. Minuscule
4.It's not that big a deal
5. self-deprecating
6.expatriate
7.presumptuous

Failure

Firstly, my wife asked me to remove the amount that we bid on the house in Takoma Park. Ergo; if you've been reading this blog in hopes of obtaining our exact financial situation and using it to create a fake account on e-bay and buying a house of your own...think again. Then proceed with the house buying scheme because it sounds like a good one.

We did not get the house that we bid on the first time. I for one, am happy. It would have been like marrying the first girl you kissed or something. This house was a flirtation, all the heady feelings of first falling in love that blind you to the cracks in the basement and the fact that it only has one bathroom. (Okay honestly, the house was pretty nice but it probably wouldn't have aged well or something. Insert other negative comment here to make me feel better, like in the end everything works out for the best. Except that that's not actually true, sometimes life just sort of idly kicks you in the teeth for no good reason.)

We're now conducting a more extended search in the Takoma Park area because hippies live in Takoma Park, and hippies are generally regarded as fun loving folks who might offer you some free weed if you stop by for dinner and then tax the hell out of you. Has anyone taken a look at the taxes in Takoma Park? Don't. They're horrifying. It's like seeing a roach on your...wait a minute, I've got to go kill a roach on my sink.

Only kidding. The roach infestation has been completely eradicated just in time for them to needlessly replace our kitchen. I love wasting as much as the next person, but it kind of sucks that we finally solved the problem and now we're replacing it.

Community Manager: The counters will be all black.
M: (In my head) Probably so the roaches will blend in better. We'll just think part of the counter is moving. Also, because we've been looking at so much granite/maple cabinets I'm expecting our new kitchen to be amazing...it won't be, kind of like most of life.

Community Manager: So if you could just move all of your earthly belongings out of yet another room that would be great. Actually we're going to charge you twice the rent and give you half the space. Is that a good deal or what?
M: I'm non-confrontational.

In other news I interviewed for two jobs at the library today making it my fifth and seventeenth interviews at the library respectively. These interviews are becoming like Catholic/Anglican mass where I can actually ask the question the interviewer is supposed to be reading. I think if I don't get either of these I'm going to just interview the next person on questions off the top of my head. How cool would it be to just interview the interviewer? Huh, I guess it wouldn't be that cool. You're right.

Int: Tell me about a time that you went above and beyond to help a customer?
M: Oh man, one time this guy was on fire and not like, oh ouch, I burned my leg slightly, but like a blazing f-ing torch, like the sort that would have lit a middle ages castle hallway to a pretty decent level and I threw myself on him and rolled around on the library floor with him until the flames died down. I then practiced CPR with perfect chest compressions until EMS arrived. But as the ambulance doors closed I kept asking myself if I could have done more. If like what I had done had been enough. Like nothing is ever enough. And then it came to me, I probably shouldn't have set him on fire, but he asked the most stupid question.

Int: Tell me about a time that you solved a complex problems, list the steps and the outcome
M: So I'm sitting in my fourth grade classroom. The sun is scorching, and coming through the window at an forty five degree angle and shining off the back of H's beautiful blond hair, and I'm staring at a times test on the sevens. The sevens aren't that hard, and all the other kids are ticking off fingers, or doing rhymes in their head to try and get it, when all they have to do is just memorize the whole damn thing, which is how I'm doing it back then. And that particular day, I've lost my pencil, and I'm new to school and shy, and then it just comes to me. 7X7=49 and I think of how proud everyone will be of me for figuring it all out so quickly, and how I can't tell my fourth grade self that it will never be better than it was with the times tables, when everyone was praising you so much for the simplest thing you ever did, which was memorize the times tables. You will never be so proud again. So I grab the pencil from H's desk and scribble down the answer and two years later, when I am in sixth grade, and still petrified of girls, we will got to Chuck E. Cheeses together and play games all day. I was so shy around her that I don't think we talked, just moved from game to game. But perhaps now that I think of it, it was probably my first date, pushing the air hockey puck across the blue space between us and letting her win without knowing exactly why.

Int: What the f was that about?
M: Sorry.

Int: Tell me about a time that you worked in a team environment?
M: One time I went shark hunting off the coast at Stinson beach on a large outboard rigger. And me and Capt. Ahab had to work all day to fight off this giant white whale who had swallowed Jonah. I'm sorry. Is it hot in here or is it just you?

Int: That's probably not appropriate.
M: Sorry.

Int: Tell me about a time that you kissed a girl but didn't really enjoy it/don't remember it?
M: What?

Int: Nevermind.
Int: This job requires you to move objects in excess of ten pounds on a regular basis. Can you do this?
M: Probably.

Int: This job requires you to use a computer. Can you spell computer?
M: C-O-M-P-U-T-E-R

Int: This job requires you to wear a shirt to work. Can you do that?
M: Can the top three buttons be unbuttoned?
Int: Negotiable.

Int: Tell me about a time that you dealt with a difficult customer. How did you solve the problem and what was the outcome?
M: Okay, this one time a guy came in, who this guy is clearly the devil, and I'm just sitting behind the desk reading a good book, no pun intended, and the devil tries to check out a book from the library about social justice or something, and I climb up onto the table and start warding him off with a cross and a piece of garlic, which, I'm not even realizing that I'm confusing the devil with a vampire I'm so scared at this point. And then public safety gets involved and this guy, who was so clearly the devil turns out to just be an English professor who was so high that he was actually hallucinating that he was the devil. True story. I guess the outcome was that I was fired.

Int: Do you sleep naked?
M: Not anymore.

Int: Why not?
M: I think this interview is over.

Of offering realtors and our place in the after life

S and I made an offer on a house today. It's sort of sad to think that we could be done counting cabinets and trying to tell from pictures of a washer and dryer from the ceiling level if the basement really is finished. I received the call about 4 P.M. that we needed to place an offer on the house immediately, and I left work, grabbed my super man cape and headed off to Silver Spring where I met with our real estate agent. Then followed a long conversation with her in which we signed roughly 1,000 documents.

Realtor: Okay, now this one says that you fully accept lead paint in your house and the new scientific studies that it actually increases children's access to happy places.
M and S: Initial enthusiastically.

Realtor: This one says that in the event of a fire, if you go in to save a pet and are crushed by a beam in excess of ten by ten that the prior owner is not liable for causes.
M and S: Initial with vigor.

Realtor: This one says that you're aware the house has termites but you f--ing love that kitchen!
M and S: Sign vigorously.

Realtor: This one says that you're aware of the water in the basement but you're willing to bet that in the event of a flood you can construct a raft made by the strict specifications offered to Noah in the Old Testament.
M and S: Sign with style.

Realtor: This one says that in the event of a cave bear attack from the jungle that is now your backyard, you will not sew the bear or any of its offspring.
M and S: This feels unnecessary but let's sign anyway.

Realtor: This paper states that in the event of your passing all the rights of your soul pass immediately into my hands and I am free to barter with any deity, including Roman and Greek as specified under different names for your place in the after life.
M and S: Sounds to good to be true!

Realtor: This one says that in the event of any haunting, (barring zombies and ghouls) that you will vacate the house for thirty days and have it irradiated by at least on of the characters from the 1980's movie Ghostbusters excluding Bill Murray.
M and S: Seems reasonable.


As we get in the car to leave.
S: What did you think of all that?
M: Of what?
S: Signing our life away.
M: I wasn't really paying attention.
S: We just offered x for something and you didn't pay attention?
M: We probably won't get it.

Thought for the day. Question: Are you a God-fearing man? The answer should really be yes either way. Either someone is afraid that God doesn't exist and their beliefs are a sham or they are afraid that God does exist and their belief in unbelief has been a sham.

Stephen Myers tips for living in NE DC

#5 Make friends with local homeless people. Who will attempt to sell your porn DVDs of dubious provenance out of their overcoat. Selling stolen goods out of an overcoat. Totally cliche, right? This also actually happened. Depending on your perspective, this benefit of NE living is either proof of its seediness, or will save you a trip to the adult store.

#6 Fourth of July in NE? Close approximation to World War III. Again, either bad or awesome depending on point of view.

#7 Actually awakened by spotlight of police helicopter circling nearby shining in my window.

As for his wife's thoughts on his former accomodations in DC: She now views my former living arrangements as some combination of Compton, inner city Detroit, and Baltimore as depicted in The Wire.