September 2004 Archives

Did the Yom Kippur fasting thingy: went very well this year since I'm accustomed to not eating for long periods of time at work. Stayed at my rents' house for the night of Yom Kippur. Lots of self-reflection, per instructions.

In other news, FINALLY, the Subway opened in the Crystal City underground!!! Thus, for my first post-break fast meal I had a foot-long veggie max: yummy yummy.

This afternoon, my roommate and I cleaned the kitchen and got rid of the remnants of the leftovers from the party. We celebrated by playing virtual ping-pong. She needs to work on her trash-talking :)

Saw the WP headline "Election May Hinge On Debates". That's a shock; I next expected to see on the front page: "Fasting Makes You Hungry."

While not entirely accurate, pretty darn funny. From this site.

First impressions can be deceiving. I was at Barnes and Noble perusing books after services Wednesday night, when this nice fellow, who was striking up a conversation with everyone within a 15-foot radius, decided that I was his next target. He asked me what I did and I told him I worked for a polling firm. "Which one?"..."The Mellman Group"..."Is that Republican?"...No. Do I look like a Republican? Maybe; I have always dressed conservatively (actually that's why LS tried to convince me I was a conservative in elementary school--because I wore boring shirts).

Simple mistake I guess. But this next story is worse. I was invited to a Rosh Hashanah lunch at the house of the VP of the Mellman Group. I showed up only 7 minutes late; whoops, first one there. To make matters worse, none of my Jewish peers from work showed up. Thus, the house started filling up with people significantly older than me. Their kids were shepherded into basement...making me jealous as it turns out that I have little in common with thirty-somethings (be them married or single).

After a good hour of attempted mingling, I crack and proceed, unvited, down to the basement (I mean, who's going to stop me). Downstairs, the kids are fighting over the PS2. I look for a ball to entertain the four-year-olds with, but no such luck: the play area is too high-tech. Two eight-year-old girls decide too play chess though...great! that should be entertaining.

Ten minutes later a parent comes down: "Which ones are yours?" (Ack!!) "None, I'm just making sure they aren't killing each other." (A plausible excuse for sure.) Next, the father of one of the chess players comes down: "Oh, your daughter likes chess too?" (What?! No! She's 8! How old do I look! This is not Gilmore Girls. Sheesh.)

Is it that unreasonable that I find kids more entertaining than adults? Could this fact be so unusual that the in their brains the probability that I'm a father is greater than the probability that I enjoy playing with children?

Apparently, in the eyes of society, I'm an adult. When did that happen?

Happy New Year to all my Jewish, soon-to-be-Jewish, and Jewish-friendly readers :)

The Bush campaign and Republicans certainly know how to start the new year in style:

1) Don't comdemn a "constitutional coup" in Russia

2) Ease sanctions on a country your Secretary of State admits is committing genocide

3) Allow more guns in the District

Besides working today, I went camping in Shenandoah National Park this weekend. Overall, it was 24 hours jam packed with fun. I met up with the crew (which was the WW group plus some) Friday night--they were already roasting smores around a campfire. People were pretty tired from either a traffic-filled drive or work, so we went to bed in our tents pretty early.

I was in the "party tent" with four others. Disappointed at the lack of stories being told either around the campfire or at bedtime, I decided to rectify the situation myself. For those of you that know my repertoire, I told "Brass Rat" and "Ping Pong Balls" to my fellow party-tenters. Then we were content to sleep.

The next morning we had yummy cinnamon bagels (w/ cream cheese and jelly) and instant oatmeal. This trip was starting to be very reminiscent of my days at Camp Wigwam, as that food was also standard breakfast fare in Waterford, ME. Next was an easy morning hike--nothing too stressful. Lunch included pie iron pizza. After a short naptime, it was time to hike again.

This time we aimed for a waterfall. Getting to our destination required a quick car drive; four young women piled into the Data-mobile where I introduced them to everyone's favorite fire-mouthed feminist, Alix Olson. There were definitely some takers (I avoided the extreme political or sexual tracks--sticking with basic girl-power).

Back to the real goal: the waterfall. We overshot it by a half-mile, but after backtracking a bit, we found the ideal swimming spot, right at the foot of the waterfall. Ever since my spring break adventures in Yaxuna, Mexico watering holes don't phase me, so I decided to try the water out first. I expected to walk into the water slowly, but the floor dropped off precipitously and all of a sudden I found myself floating downstream. Luckily I was never in any danger since the river became shallow again within a few meters.

The best part about the watering hole was that swimming upstream against the waterfall's current was quite the challenge. The first two times I failed to reach the falls, but after visualizing the waterfall as the dastardly Red Team from Wigwam, I was successful.

Dinner was veggie burgers. For the nth time in my life I proved my incompetence at tending a fire. (As some Concord Deaniacs can attest to, I'm pretty bad at burning things.) But, with the help of ex-Girl Scouts, there was enough combustion to heat the Turkey burgers for the omnivores.

Night fell and although I demurred on a request to recite Miss Olson's poetry to the crowd, given the campfire setting I couldn't contain my appetite for story telling. This time I went with "Nate the snake," "Damn doors," and "Willoughby." I think the non-party tenters, who thus hadn't heard my previous stories, weren't really prepared for the format of my stories. At least that's my explanation for the (hmmmmm)....neutral.... reaction to "Nate the snake."

Pics here.

Pandering to the all-important swing vote of OB-GYNs, Bush promised yesterday to allow the docs to "practice their love with women" if elected.

Adam Nagourney then inquired as to whether such love-practicing was necessarily consensual?

LOTD: Win $100,000 by registering to vote or already being registered!

Haven't blogged in a while. Unfortunately, I think that's the way it's going to be until November 2nd. So, if you're one of those frequent checkers (I don't have too many...), you can start checking less often.

Party was a great success, expecially considering I was under the weather during the weekend. Special shout-out to co-worker Jen who helped make all the dishes. She loves cooking so much that she had to be dragged out of the kitchen towards the end of the party to get thanked. Anyway, over 30 people showed at various points in time, some of them decided to mingle (*cough*TJ crowd*cough*), and we even entertained some young kids. And now I have tons of left-over dip...what could be better?

In addition to the presents I received from my wonderful guests, I treated myself to some luxuries as well. I bought an external DVD burner. I have already sucessfully downloaded and burned The Phantom Edit, which is an undergound edit of Episode I with a lot of Jar-Jar taken out. I've always maintained that Epi I is a good flick without Jar-Jar; now I have proof. (Episode II, unfortunately, is another matter entirely; but the IMAX cut was a good start). If you're even curious, I'll be happy to have you over and watch it with you (or let you burn a copy). Unfortunately, the edit was done with the VHS version, so the quality isn't the best--although we did seem content with VHS for two decades.

On the topic of video quality, I was walking around Best Buy yesterday and HDTV is a lot cooler than I thought. They were showing Finding Nemo--which I have seen in several different formats--and the amount of detail you chould see was amazing. But when I went over to some shots of the olympics in HDTV, it still didn't look that great--I think because I'm so used to seeing people at a very high resolution (ie, whatever our eyes are). In conclusion, HDTV: great for cartoons, okay for sports. (And do you really need HD for the rest of TV? Sitcoms? Nightly News?)

LOTD: Hello. My name is Obi-wan Kenobi. You killed my Master. Prepare to die. I'm really suprised I didn't think of this indpendently.