Tag Archives: DC

Apparently, I should be an Econ professor. Or the condo board president.

11 Mar

Image Source: Someecards.com

I’ve purchased two homes in my life. In both cases, they were condos, and that was a deliberate decision. I find no joy in my weekend being consumed by landscaping and home maintenance projects. Oh, I’ve done it (and I’m pretty sure it accelerated my break-up with my ex) but I don’t like it.

I like my responsibilities to stop at decorating and cleaning. Let someone else worry about the other bits. And by “someone else,” I don’t mean Alan. I’d rather spend my weekend hanging out with him than watching him execute home improvement projects.

My home-owning friends wag their fingers at me. “For the amount of your condo fee, you could pay someone to handle the maintenance on your home.” Perhaps, but I’d rather cut a monthly check and leave the planning and worrying to someone else.

Imagine, then, how annoyed I was to receive a certified letter from our building’s management association, informing me that each unit owner is responsible for having the exterior of his or her windows painted every five years. (Did I mention that my building is five stories tall? And historic?)

That’s right. Rather than bid out the entire building as a project and divide the bill among owners, the Board decided it would be best if each owner went to the city and requested a permit for exterior work, then found a company with the proper insurance and equipment, to paint his or her windows.

YOU. MUST. BE. SHITTING. ME.

Image Source: The Daily ShowI’m sorry. I thought I lived in DC, where 53% of the adult population had a college degree. Apparently, my building’s condo board is made up of either the 47% who didn’t go to college. Or if they went, then they clearly skipped ECON-101 and the lesson on “economies of scale.”

So I read my certified letter, in which I was told that I must have my windows painted by July 1 or I would face a fine of $500 and an additional charge of $5 for each day beyond that until I got my windows painted. And I fumed.

Then I did what any OCD person would do: I bit the bullet and added it to my “to do” spreadsheet, calling the recommended painters listed in the letter first thing Monday morning.

The challenge was that each painter responded the same way. “Sorry, we only bid out a job like that for the entire building. There’s no way we’ll come out and erect scaffolding just to do your unit’s windows.” Um…

By the time I exhausted the list, I was ready to deliver some kidney punches to the board. Instead, I dashed off an email to my upstairs neighbor, who is on the board. “Have you figured out how you’re going to get your windows painted?” I wrote, “Because I’ve hit a wall.”

Image Source: http://mediashower.com/img/213/slipping%20man%20off%20ladder.jpgNote that I kept it productive, stating, “I’ve hit a wall,” instead of, “I’m going to hit your abdominal wall. Until you pee blood.”

He wrote back a few days later, saying, “Hey – that letter was poorly worded. That only applies to the people on the front of the building, whose frames are wood. Ours are metal, so we don’t need to do this.”

HUGE SIGH OF RELIEF.

I’m sorry, I didn’t mean I wanted to punch YOU. That was a figure of speech. We’re good.

But I’m still left with a few questions:

  • How are the people on the front of the building going to get their windows painted?
  • Why did the Board spend $6 per owner, sending certified letters to ALL units in the building rather than simply those requiring action?
  • What percentage of my building’s residents have college degrees?
  • Why don’t more people put me in charge of things?

Sigh. I guess I’ll just rejoice that I don’t need to hire a cherry picker to paint my own windows next weekend. Because that would suck.

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The walking part is actually somewhat important.

15 Feb

Lincoln - pundit.com

I enjoyed my first DC walking tour so much that when we woke up last Saturday, I asked Alan, “Want to do the Lincoln Assassination Tour with me this afternoon?”

Alan, being both indulgent of me and a history lover, promptly pulled out his  phone and reserved two slots on the 4:30pm tour for us. It seemed like a clever plan at the time, but as the day wore on, it dulled a bit.

Alan needed to work for part of the day, so we decided to meet back up at 4pm and walk down to the White House together. As we shoved off from my place, Alan noticed me taking the stairs gingerly, almost sideways, at half my normal speed. “What’s going on?” he asked.

I’d done BodyPump – the intensive full-body lifting workout – at my gym the day before, the first time since Christmas. I felt a bit sore when I woke that morning, but nothing monumental. With each passing hour, however, my muscles contracted. By the time Alan returned in the afternoon, I was a bit crippled.

“Do you think a walking tour is a good idea?” he asked as we set out. I couldn’t even answer. It had seemed like a good idea, but now that I was actually trying to get somewhere on foot – not so much. But we’d RSVP’d, so there was no backing out.

As we walked down 16th Street, Alan kept checking his watch. That’s usually my job, because I’m preoccupied with punctuality. “Are we going to make it on time?” I asked, lumbering along like the Stay-Puff Marshmallow Man.

Alan looked at me for a moment. “Not if we continue at this pace. Can’t you walk any faster?”

I already thought I was in overdrive, but apparently not. This was a role reversal if ever there’d been one. Usually Alan is nudging me, asking if we can PLEASE slow down so he won’t over-heat.

We eventually arrived at Lafayette Park, where a group of a dozen tourists were gathered around the guide, who was patiently waiting for the late-comers to trickle in. Rather than blend with the back of the group – as I would’ve done – Alan walked directly up to the guide (same guy as last weekend) and announced to the group, “Sorry we’re late.” Then, gesturing to me, he continued, “She did a new workout routine and can’t really walk.”

Awesome. Let’s just put it out there. I gave a feeble wave to everyone as if I were a minor celebrity and loped off to lean against a post. Alan found me and sheepishly said, “Sorry about that. I guess I didn’t need to explain that to everyone.” Um, yeah.

So the tour started – and we stood in one place. As we stared at the White house, the guide set the stage.  And we kept standing – in the same place. The guide told us about the entire cast of characters, the Civil War, the grand assassination plot – and we kept standing right there. At some point, Alan leaned over and whispered, “I thought this was going to be a walking tour?”

It’s a lot to give people a two-hour lecture while standing in only six different spots. The information was great, but the tour needed to MOVE more. Especially because it was approximately 20 degrees and windy out. Everyone was rubbing their hands together, snuggling their mates, and generally trying to create a bit of body heat while basically standing still.

And that’s when I realized: I love walking tours, but weather is kind of an important factor for enjoyment. As the sun set and the temperature continued to drop, I started to become mentally surly. Although the guide was sharing good information, I would’ve tipped double if he’d scrapped his script and bottom-lined it so we could get out of there.

Lesson learned: I like walking tours – but only under the right conditions. Like when I can actually walk.

MEOW.

MEOW.

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Have I mentioned? I happen to like walking tours.

2 Feb

Image Source: http://www.freetoursbyfoot.com/washington-dc-tours

While you were at the gym, honoring your New Year’s Resolution, I was quietly tackling a couple more items on my 40×40 list. In this week’s update:

#7 – Take an official walking tour of DC. 

…

This weekend I took my first ever guided walking tour of DC. If you’ve followed this blog for any length of time, you know that I love DC and I love walking tours. I’ve just never made time to play tourist in my own city. Coming out of two weeks of near-zero temperatures, today’s balmy 52˚ forecast made me think the timing was right for a walking tour. And it was.

I joined DC by Foot for a “pay what you want” walking tour of the National Mall. I was hoping for a neighborhood tour, but they run a limited schedule during the winter, so the Mall was the only real option that worked with my schedule.

I’ve logged many hours on the Mall doing things that most tourists would find pretty cool – attending the Library of Congress’s Book Festival, playing kickball, watching a kite festival, enjoying Screen on the Green movies, witnessing presidential inaugurations, rallying against the Keystone XL pipeline – so I was worried I’d find the tour a bit disappointing.

Fortunately, I was wrong.

Image Source: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/f/fb/Jefferson_Pier_and_Washington_Monument.jpgThere were two things I saw on this tour that I had never noticed before: One was was the Jefferson Pier. It’s a small marker just west of the Washington Monument, indicating the original intended location of the Washington Monument – AND the prime meridian that L’Enfant proposed. Interestingly, while the meridian idea never took off, apparently whenever NASA measures distance in the universe, they use the Jefferson Pier marker as the starting place. Pretty cool.

The other thing I’d not noticed: The “graffiti” on the back of the WWII Memorial: Kilroy was here. Although I was familiar with the expression, I hadn’t heard the story of its suspected origin before.

Legend has it, prior to WWII James Kilroy was a rivet inspector in a shipyard in Massachusetts. At the end of each shift, he scribbled “Kilroy was here” to indicate where he’d left off. During the war, sailors started finding this phrase all over their ships – and when they compared notes with other sailors, they found that Kilroy had been there, too. Since it seemed Kilroy was inexplicably omnipresent, people took up scrawling the phrase wherever they went, helping Kilroy cover the globe – and bathroom stalls.

In any case, pretty cool that it became so linked with WWII, that it’s there, etched on the back of this memorial.

Pretty much.

Pretty much.

In addition to the knowledge I picked up along the way, I enjoyed a few of the unscripted aspects of the tour. For example, when we kicked off, at the highly trafficked corner of 15th and Constitution, our guide made a point of saying that was usually the noisiest place on the tour. His words must have jinxed us – because for the rest of the tour, we had hundreds of Canadian Canada Geese pass over us, honking more fervently than the DC drivers.

[Note: My original post called them Canadian Geese, but my dad, the ornithologist, told me I’d made one of the most common mistakes in birding. Apparently they’re Canada Geese. I don’t even want to figure out the mechanics of this grammatically.]

And when we were standing by the Washington Monument, a young guy walking by interrupted our tour to ask , “Do you know how many flags there are circling the monument?”

“Fifty,” our guide answered confidently.

“Really?” the guy asked, “Because I heard it was like 54 or something – the states and the territories?”

“Nope,” our guide said. “I’ve counted them.” The guy thanked him and started to walk away. Our guide continued, “Do you know what the other question I get here a lot is?” The guy shook his head. “How do they get them to all fly in the same direction?” our guide offered.

The guy stopped and stared and shook his head. “Whoa – you’re right. Now that I look at them, they ARE all going in the same direction… why is that?”

“The wind,” our guide said. The guy smacked his head. “You got me! Man!”

And that’s why you should always join the tour and pay what you can. Otherwise, you’ll be shamed.

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What do cops, donuts, politicians and toilets have in common?

15 Oct

Hint: there are probably many correct answers.

It’s only Tuesday, and already, this happened:

Pretty amazing collection from GBD, you must admit.

Pretty amazing collection from GBD, you must admit. Potentially worth burning for?

Which is not to suggest that donuts are a bad thing, or that I fell off my non-existent diet or something. No. These donuts? Demonstrated my office’s priorities. Let me explain.

Since I work in DC, most of the city – including our building – was shut-down for Columbus Day yesterday. But because my company is in the business of finding people work, we didn’t take the day off.  (Maybe the government could take a page from our book and the economy wouldn’t be in the toilet?)

We showed up to a darkened building, And yet we turned our lights on.

All was cool, until around noon, when the fire alarm went off – at approximately 4,000,000 decibels and accompanied by an eerie robot voice telling us to “leave our belongings and exit the building.”

We all looked at each other, balancing the competing concern of, “Do I really need to put my shoes on and leave my desk right now?” with, “Well, we do work two blocks from the White House, so maybe there really is an emergency requiring evacuation?”

And yet… as we all shuffled out the door, one of my co-workers called back, “Don’t forget the donuts!”

And as if we were moving in slow motion (probably because we were), another co-worker (whose new nickname is, “Hero”), turned around and ran back for that box of delicious pastries.

Because in case you didn’t study that photo closely, two of those mofo’s were covered in bacon. And that is worth dying for.

PRIORITIES. TRUE STORY.

Also, even before that box of donuts was rescued from a false alarm, this happened:

Hint: You're not doing it right.

Hint: You’re not doing it right.

That’s right. I went to the bathroom on a day when almost no one was at work and I found a stall out of commission. Because it was covered not by one toilet liner, but by four, folded in some crazy-ass way and lining each side of the toilet as if it were a pontoon boat. Seriously. It was so messed up I walked back to the office to get my camera to take this photo.

The good news is that later in the day, we FINALLY figured out who the seat pee-er is. I have to give credit to my friend Courtney, whose SpideySense was activated when a pink ballet flat poked into her stall in a way that indicated someone was squatting rather than sitting. Courtney emerged from the stall just as her stall-neighbor finished washing her hands and darted out of the bathroom.

With instincts to rival Sherlock, Courtney investigated the recently evacuated stall… only to find pee on the seat and an unflushed toilet.

CITIZEN’S ARREST.

It hasn’t happened yet, but here’s how that gentle conversation is going to go, now the we all know the culprit works one suite over and wears pink ballet flats:

US: Have you noticed someone keeps peeing on the seat and not cleaning it up?

HER, looking uncomfortable: Yeah – so disgusting!?

US: We’ve narrowed it down and are pretty sure we know who’s doing it.

HER, looking mildly panicked: Who? How do you know?

US: We have our ways. Signs track back to your office, so could you be our ambassador and talk with all the ladies there to let them know we’re close to a breakthrough so they can stop before we have to embarrass them?

HER: Gulp.

US: That’s right.

And – my Columbus Day wouldn’t be complete without a political tie-in of some sort, so then THIS happened as I was commuting:

Look! It's Uncle Joe!

Look! Blurry, but it’s Uncle Joe!

Yep. Hustling down Connecticut Ave on my way to get a massage, I noticed a crowd of people forming outside Brooks Brothers, and a security detail that was impressive yet not full-on presidential.

I stopped to ask an on-looker who they were waiting to see emerge from the store, and just at that moment, the police cleared the sidewalk, a few Secret Service guys came out of the store looking stern and self-important, and then out came Joe Biden, huge grin and no shopping bag.

He waved and smiled and – instead of making a beeline for his car (as I would do if my shopping spree had proven unsuccessful) he took a minute to shake hands and chat with the onlookers.

Whew. It was quite the day: Donuts, police… Toilets, politicians… Who would imagine seeing all these disparate things in just one day? It’s almost like they go together.

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We call this independence.

6 Jul

I live in our Nation’s Capital and I love it.

It’s a great city for so many reasons: It’s super walkable; there are hundreds of miles of bike paths around the area (56 miles in the District itself!); the architecture is pretty; each neighborhood has its own distinct personality; the residents are some of the best educated in the nation; the public transit system is clean and safe; there’s so much culture – museums, theaters, galleries – and most of it is free… I could go on. And on.

But one thing I do not like about living here: The tourists.

DC Tourists

See what I mean?

I know, I know. This city belongs to all Americans, so I can’t really get territorial.

But from April to September, DC is transformed into the urban equivalent of Walmart as loud people wearing Cheetoh-stained flag shirts and fanny packs crowd the sidewalks (four-across, no less!) with their mouths agape, making it hard for those of us who live here to get from Point A to Point B. I’m here to tell you that the stereotype of “Obnoxious American Tourists” isn’t reserved for how we behave in other countries.

So then, to continue the analogy: If DC is like Walmart for six months of the year, Independence Day is like Black Friday. People show up early. They push and shove to jockey into position. There are more people than real estate. And Neil Diamond is playing over the PA system.

Most locals either stay home and watch the fireworks from their roof decks or scoot out of the city all together, choosing to relax on a beach for a week while the inmates run the asylum back in DC.

Alternate Source: www.animalcapshunz.comThis year, since Independence Day fell on a Thursday and Alan had to work on Friday, we decided to stay in the area. The forecast was hot and humid, so rather than hanging in the District, I hopped on my bike Thursday morning to head to Alan’s place in Arlington so we could relax by the pool and grill up some steaks for dinner, far from the crowds.

We thought we were clever – hatching a plan that allowed Alan to avoid the District in his car on a notoriously crazy traffic day – but apparently we had overlooked a wee detail. Namely, the fact that it hasn’t even been three months since the Boston bombings.

Meaning: Homeland Security spared no effort in securing our Nation’s Capital, something I hadn’t realized until I was on my bike, trying without luck to cross Constitution Ave in front the White House.

As I came rolling down 15th Street, I saw a crowd ahead of me, blocking my path to Constitution Ave. I could tell they were watching a parade (as evidenced by the people dressed in old-timey gear, riding old-fashioned bicycles in circles while waving over the on-lookers’ heads), but this in itself didn’t deter me – I’ve accidentally participated in races, runs and parades before due to bad timing. (The most memorable was when I accidentally became the pace car for the Gay Pride Parade because I remembered to move my Jetta just as the cops where showing up to tow it.)

Image Source: http://www.jointaction.org.uk/media/Joint%20Action%20Media/News%20Pictures/X-Ray%20Bike%20Rider%20(colour)%20(smaller).JPGSo the crowd was thick, but I was going to try to wiggle through and cross – until I saw that the Mall had an eight-food chain link fence barring access to the other side of the street. Huh? (After Googling, I’ve learned the barricade actually ran 32,000 feet in length.)

I did a U-turn and asked a cop for advice about where I’d be able to cut across the Mall. He was friendly but useless. Apparently when they’d done the briefing for the event, he had only paid attention to his specific role – not the overall design of the parade route and city plan in general.

I thanked him for nothing, then rode back up 15th Street, where I asked a Secret Service agent the same question. As expected, he was more dialed in and offered good advice. I’d have to cut up to the Memorial Bridge and take that route out of the city. No problem.

Or at least – no problem until I got to the bridge and saw that it was blocked by a series of Metro Buses parked nose-to-tail, creating a rather effective barricade, with cops monitoring the only gap that remained. Turns out, the ENTIRE Mall – from the Lincoln Memorial/Memorial Bridge to the Capitol Building, was fenced in. The only way to get out of town was to pass through one of nine pedestrian checkpoints.

So I biked back half a mile, then stood in line with other bikers and walkers trying to get to (or across) The Mall. The police inspected my bag and wiped my bike down with the chemical/explosive detecting wand typically used at airports.

The security measures ended up adding 30 minutes and two miles to my commute out of town. A headache on a hot day, but it appears the efforts were effective since there were no major “events.”

Unless you count Alan fetching me from the pool later that afternoon, blood dripping off his hand at an alarming rate after he took the tip off his finger with a potato peeler. Guess next year we’ll have to put an eight-foot fence around his kitchen.

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