February 2005 Archives

Sent an email to my hometown Crystal City Soccer Club asking if they needed any youth coaches for the Spring season. I'm hoping my varsity soccer stint in HS plus my four years of camp couseloring qualifies me. I couldn't find a nickname for the team, so I'm trying to figure out the best one...Crystal City Cougars...Crystal City Capitols...what does my small readership think?

Went to see "Black Milk," playing at the Studio Theatre, on Thursday. The play is set in post-communist Russia and portrays the life of two swindlers in a small town's train station. The scenes represent the conflict between good and bad human nature. I'm not sure if this makes me a bad person, but at the end for some reason I wanted evil to win. Perhaps I'm just tired of formulaic happy endings. To find out which side won, go see the play: I recommend it!

Friday night a group of us saw Hotel Rwanda, yet another work that depicted the dark side of humanity. We had a discussion after the film about what the international community should do in ethnic crises. If refugee camps are at all similar to what the movie portrayed, then I would recommend packing in vulnerable communities into defensible camps. With a limited amount of civilian targets, perhaps the two armies would be more receptive to negotiations.

Saturday night was a Mardi ("It's-still-February-so-we-can-still-celebrate") Gras party at Leslie's. Over 70 people were there and YoCo and CJax happened by (more or less) randomly. I performed some "services" for Emily involving ice cubes, which earned me some beads.

And today I procured a new blue suit!

Current book: The #1 Ladies Detective Agency

Last night's West Wing Wednesday was held at a new venue: Amy and Chu's place. We, as a group, guessed the mystery woman in the episode was a hooker (keyed from the use of the word "professional"), but she turned out to be a US Senator. Yeah, we're definitely not sexist.

Also this exhange from last week's episode reminded me of getting ice cream in 0-degree wind chill on Elm St in January '04. Those were good times.

Josh: "Little cold for ice cream isn’t it? I mean, you coulda bought.. just cream."
Amy: "I embrace the cold."
Josh: "Ok."
Amy: "I luxuriate in the cold."
Josh: "Can I ask you.."
Amy: "I fight cold with more cold."

Chicklet and I were lotteried out of Avenue Q, so we went to see Fiddler On The Roof (starring Harvey Fierstein). Mr Fierstein was pretty good, though I feel that whoever played Tevye when I saw the musical as a teen was better. John Cariani, playing the nervous tailor who marries the first daughter, stole the show as he had the audience doubling over with laughter at almost every appearance. (Fiddler also played a mid-sized role in tonight's Gilmore Girls...you may ask how I know this...I'll tell you: I don't know.)

Saturday morning we went to B'nai Jeshurun, which is a mix between Conservative and Reconstructionist. (Ah, to be a Jew in New York, when a synagogue without a denomination can get hundreds at a Saturday morning service...) But, being young newcomers, a higher-up spotted us in the crowd and we were asked to do the second aliyah! (Clearly they weren't following strict tradition as the second aliyah should be given to Levites, of which neither Chicklet nor I are.)

Took the train home Saturday afternoon. Somehow I missed the Gates on this New York trip--but, really, it's just art, right? Saturday night was a Deaniac get-together, celebrating Barson's visit to DC. We had dinner at the Chi-Cha lounge on U St, and then walked over to Adams Morgan for Cuban dancing.

Sunday, my roommate Riki introduced me to French and Saunders (yep, the woman from AbFab) and their hilarious parodies of Episode I and FotR. Then I celebrated Matt Ching's birthday at a sports bar in Mount Pleasant where we watched Duke manhandle Wake Forest.

Left the game just before it ended to move on to Rain's slumber party. I joined an already-in-progress game of Fluxx, got pretty damn lucky, and won. Then, we played Taboo, which while not as funny as drunken WWW taboo, had it's riotous moments. (I set a personal best of scoring 10 points in 60 seconds one round.) I then consulted Jenny on her Risk playing--I would have played myself but I (unlike most of the partiers) had work on Monday. Thus, I had to skip out before the slumbering (I'll have to read some blogs to find out what happened.)

LOTD: Harry Potter on Recycled Paper Petition

I'm in NYC today, where I just finished my first real inside-strategy campaign meeting. I sat right next to Mandy Grunwald! Plus, I actually contributed one original and insightful idea, which was one more than expected.

Now I'm 10 minutes away from entering my name into the Avenue Q lottery. If that fails, Chicklet and I will head over half a block to Fiddler.

I'm off to New York this evening for a business trip. On the train ride, we'll be skirting Pennsylvania, where Junior Senator Rick Santorum (R-Gay Basher) looks to be in some trouble with his constituents. State Treasurer Bob Casey leads Santorum 46-41 in a hypothetical matchup. All I can say is :)

Friday night I went to dinner with the 'rents plus an uncle who was in town. We went to a Lebanese joint in Pentagon Row, which included the neat feature of backgammon at the tables. The glass over the table would slide off and beneath it was a fully-functional backgammon set. I played my uncle, and though I was slightly favored when all the pieces where "home," he rolled two doubles down the back stretch to win.

Saturday afternoon I celebrated Dean's victory via C-Span! (Woohoo! We're all Deaniacs now, baby.) In the evening, I celebrated with some former Salem, NH staffers in Dupont for a hour. Had to skip the larger Union Sq celebration as I had plans with Amy and Carrie. The three of us went to an Indian restaurant where I had this delicious carrot dessert (after a pretty good Saag Paneer entree).

Next we went to see "Hitch." The made up statistics that Will Smith quotes throughout the movie almost made me laugh at inappropriate times (perhaps only because I deal with stats for a living). In general, it was a very funny movie, and I do agree with the critics that Kevin James was hilarious. I had trouble sympathizing with Smith's character during the formulaic melodramatic segment, but that was really my only gripe. I'd say it's worth about an $8 ticket.

We capped the evening with a spontaneous trip to the Silver Diner, where we each ordered some sort of ice cream dessert. We coincidentally sat next to two of Amy's church friends. They had seen "Hitch" the night before and the cross-table talk/laughter (I think I did a reasonable Will Smith impression) confused some onlookers. The sugar high kept me up until 4am (I'm glad "The Natural" was on AMC to entertain me).

Sunday: Miranda, Maya, Brian, Marcie, and I hiked the Billy Goat trail in Great Falls, MD. Everyone finished unscathed, which is an impressive feat given the amount of rocks on the trail. We then met up with Nick back in Crystal City for Thai food.

I got stuck at work Valentine's Day evening, and arrived at the West Wing crew's party a bit late. Unfortunately, I was the 13th guest, and thus consigned either me or Leslie (who was the first to leave) to an undetermined period of bad luck.

None of the potential misfortune struck that evening though as most of the attendees got wasted, creating one of the funniest (if not the funniest) games of taboo I have ever been a part of. The competition soon devolved into "Who's Line Is It Anyway?" style where "the points don't matter" and the opposing team would chime in whenever they were annoyed at the active team's inability to guess the "obvious" answer. (A description of "milk" soon after "birth control" evoked a particularly lengthy burst of hilarity.)

From Hotline's Wakeup Call:

The DCCC "seems to have adopted a new and very basic recruiting tactic" for '06: "Simply call the Republican Member you are hoping to beat and ask him who the best candidate would be to run against him" (Roll Call).

More on Oklahoma City later; the more pressing issue is how people make their PB&J sandwiches. (This contentious issue came up on the ski trip.) Please vote for:

1) Peanut butter on side A, jelly on side B, close the sandwich.
2) Peanut butter and then jelly on side A, nothing on side B, close the sandwich.
3) Peanut butter and then jelly on side A, peanut butter on side B, close the sandwich.

"This is for posterity, so, be honest."

Oklahoma is a great place but next time I come here I will not bring a vegetarian to the cattle capital of the country!!

-Michael

Left with Jean and Miranda on Friday afternoon for a weekend of skiing in Bethel, ME. Miranda's bf Ben picked us up at "Manch-Vegas" (where the cheap and efficient Southwest Airlines dropped us off) and kindly drove us to the ski locale. We arrived too late on Friday to do anything other than stock up on food.

The weather couldn't have been better. Daytime temperatures were in the high 40s and low 50s--I skied without a jacket on both days. I was the only one who had to rent equipment and it took a couple of runs before I caught up (ski-level wise) with the rest of the group. (Though since Ben is a snowboarding neophyte, I didn't feel that I was holding everyone back.) Soon I was parallel skiing well, and doing my best at a John Kerry impression: left, right, left, right.

We skied until 4pm and then went back to the Motel to swim in the heated indoor pool and sit in the hot tub. I played monkey-in-the-middle with two boys (7- and 9-year-old brothers), which was almost as good a work-out as the skiing. Their father asked me if I was a Patriot fan, and I responded unhesitatingly: "absolutely." I didn't want to risk the chance that he was opposed to some Eagles-loving stranger playing with his kids. :) Eventually, I joined the "adult table" in the hot tub.

Sunday included more skiing. By then I was confident enough in my abilities to ski on my first ever black diamonds! The black-diamond "Downdraft" was extremely icy and that run was a touch more frightening than pleasurable, but I survived intact. I also attempted moguls, and let's just say that I've made wiser decisions in my lifetime. (Moguls were more than a touch more painful than pleasurable.)

The three of us actually got back to the DC area in time to catch the last half-hour of the Super Bowl (and crash the WWSB party). My prediction to the monkey-in-the-middle kids' dad that the Eagles were "toast" turned out to be true...although really I was just regurgitating conventional wisdom. Came home to find that I'm flying to Oklahoma tomorrow for work and will miss West Wing on Wednesday :(....sigh

I'm off to Sunday River for a weekend ski trip! I'm actually voluntarily missing a half-day of work (!) -- a sure sign that I'm becoming an adult.

Whoops, look what someone happened upon:
GOP Guide To Social Security Reform [2.6MB]

I found the "Why Not 100%?" Section on Page 75 to be especially hypocritical.

Worked somewhat late coding (yay!) in VBA to make the Mellman Group processes run more efficiently. Raced home and ate a quick dinner consisting of three comestibles I'm fairly addicted to: two vanilla yogurt granola bars, one velvety potato soup-at-hand, and a half-bag of baby carrots. Pretty healthy, I think...though, I should probably pop a multivitamin.

Had to eat quick so I could bowl with Marcie and Laura. Bowled two games right-handed and two left-handed. Overall, it was pretty terrible bowling, and none of my scores is worthy enough to post. But, fun nonetheless. (I successfully managed not to walk outside with my bowling shoes on this time.)

And Happy Birthday to my brother.