Something you probably didn’t know about the SuperBowl.
7 Feb
By which I mean: An AWESOME day!
Sunday I learned a Very Important Lesson:
The single best time to go shopping at Target is approximately 15 minutes before the SuperBowl kickoff.
The place was a ghost town. I was almost knocked over by a tumbleweed rolling down the cleaning products aisle. The only other customer I made eye contact with was a woman about my age whose native language was not English.
Lest you think I’m making some racist generalization: I’m not speculating. I know English isn’t her first language. Let me explain.
After finishing with my shopping list, some scented candles caught my eye. I left my cart at the end of the aisle and worked my way along, sniffing every last thing on the shelf and reveling in the fact that I Had Target Practically to Myself.
I nearly hyperventilated, what with all the sniffing. So I didn’t really see the expression on the woman’s face when I returned to my cart, made some kind of odd eye contact with her and headed toward the register to pay.
But about halfway to the register, I looked down and was confused. Somehow, my cleaning supplies and yoga pants had morphed into diapers and baby clothes. Because I was light-headed from the candle sniffing, it took me a minute to process what had happened.
And sheepishly, I turned around to find the woman walking behind me, looking some combination of angry and puzzled that I had taken her cart away. I made a sweeping gesture and started falling all over myself with apologies. I mean, really – in a store with only two shoppers – how do you end up stealing someone else’s cart?
Fortunately, she must have been as blissed out as I was about the store being empty, so she was quick to forgive. She simply smiled, shook her head in an understanding way and said, “Estúpido de mierda.”
And that is how I know she is not a native English speaker. And also? That shopping right before the SuperBowl is the best.
If this had been in my cart, I would not have asked questions.
The only thing keeping you from winning a Darwin Award is your vet.
5 Feb
This week one of my Facebook friends posted the following:
Coworker just told us a story at lunch about a friend with a boa constrictor. Guy was crazy about the snake and let it sleep with him. The snake stopped eating and so he took it to the vet. The vet told him the snake was sizing him up and preparing to eat him.
What? The? Hell?
I can understand letting a cat or dog (or perhaps even a ferret) sleep on your bed with you. But a snake? Aside from the fact that they have no fur (a requirement for being snuggly), they’re cold -blooded. I imagine cuddling a snake would be like sleeping on an unheated waterbed, where your body heat is slowly leached out of you and you wake in a state of near-hypothermia.
If forced to root for the snake or the guy in this scenario, I’m going with the snake. Of the two, he’s clearly more intelligent, and although I’m sure he’s just rolling with his biological wiring, I like to imagine him plotting with a ruthless calculation that would do a movie villain proud.
For example, this is how I picture him silently responding to his owner:
Owner: Look, Mr. Slinky – a nice rat for you! Mr. Slinky: No thanks. You eat the rat. Owner: C’mon. Just give it a little squeeze. Mr. Slinky: I’ll show YOU a little squeeze. Eat the damn rat already. Owner: What’s the matter? Why won’t you eat? Mr. Slinky: Just saving my appetite. Go on. Eat the rat. Let’s fatten you up. Owner: Well then, I guess we’re going to bed hungry. Let’s snuggle. Mr. Slinky: Sounds good to me. Owner: Mr. Slinky, you’re tickling me! Mr. Slinky: Hold still. I can’t get an accurate measurement on your girth. Owner: OK, Mr. Slinky. That’s enough. I need to get some rest. Mr. Slinky: That rib cage might be a problem. Owner: Mr. Slinky, do I need to draw a line down the middle of this bed?
5 Ways in Which My Yoga Instructor Resembles Tobias Funke.
4 FebI’m pretty sure my yoga class was led by Tobias Funke this morning. If you don’t know who Tobias is, he was a character in Arrested Development. Here is a highlight reel to give you a bit of flavor:
So now that you have a taste for Tobias, here are the parallels between him and my yoga instructor:
- Both consistently project a STAGE VOICE to project when communicating and over-enunciate for dramatic effect. DownwarD. DoG.
- Both have mustaches that hail from another decade. By which I mean the 1980s.
- Both present a vibe of confused sexuality.
- Both wear nut-hugging shorts.
- Both play the flute. I’m just going to leave it at that.
Warning: Not very pithy, served with a dose of politics. Sorry.
31 JanThe other weekend I had a quintessential DC moment. It was a Sunday afternoon and I was out for a walk. I’d ventured down to the MLK library and walked back past Franklin Square, where homeless people were huddled around eating food that had been distributed by So Others Might Eat.
This is NOT the S.O.M.E van. But wouldn't it be awesome if it were? "Oh hells yeah! I'm gonna get me some wildlife from this van!"
Whenever I see the white S.O.M.E. van, it reminds me of my first winter in DC, when my college friends Brent and Marcus (my then-roommates on Capitol Hill) volunteered to help deliver food. I remember Marcus’s eyes, wide like saucers, recounting the experience after their first time out.
“It was crazy, man,” he said, and I swear his voice had a slight tremble. “We pulled up and it was like a bank heist – we’d be all organized and spring out and start handing out the food as fast as possible. Someone would stay at the wheel in case things got violent and we needed to leave fast.”
Another casualty of delivering food? “People get sick. If it’s the first thing they’ve eaten for a while, it just doesn’t sit well,” Marcus explained.
Apparently Marcus wasn’t exaggerating, because last weekend when I was walking, just after passing the group of people who were eating their S.O.M.E. meals, I looked up and accidentally locked eyes with a man standing with one hand on sign post, projectile vomiting. If you’ve never made eye contact with a stranger puking, I don’t advise it.
The thing that made this experience weird (other than the eye contact bit) was that he was just very matter of fact about it. So calm that I actually found myself scrutinizing the pile of vomit as I walked past it to make sure my eyes hadn’t deceived me. (Confirmed!)
And once he’d finished tossing his cookies (or – more accurately – clam chowder, by the steamy looks of it), he turned around and successfully hailed a bus and disappeared. HAILED A BUS. I didn’t even know a person could do that.
Dude. Only in Canada. They have KITS for this.
Estimates of DC’s homeless population range from 6,000 – 12,000 people. To put that in perspective: my hometown in Michigan has a population of 5,800.
There’s something wrong with this picture. Even with high unemployment rates, we live in a country where most homes have multiple televisions, cars and an extra bedroom. And yet we leave people to sleep without shelter, to scrounge their next meal, while we argue over tax rates for those of us fortunate enough to have a job.
I swear, I’ll get back to the pith (and vinegar) in my next post. I just figured this might be a good reminder – right when we’re in the throes of filing taxes and acutely feeling how much money we didn’t get to hang onto this year – of exactly what we have.
To quote a friend: Love your neighbor, not your wallet.
UPDATED: Unless your wallet looks like this. In which case, you totally should love it:
pithypants 