Tag Archives: DC

Perhaps you had to be there.

7 Jan

The other night my friend Betsy and I met up for dinner at a mussels bar in Cleveland Park. There’s another location, closer to our homes, but we’d deliberately chosen this one so we could get some exercise walking the 5 miles roundtrip.

As we walked home, just south of the National Zoo, we had to wait for a light to change at a crosswalk. We were standing there, chatting, when – all of a sudden – a loud robot voice said, “You may now cross the street. You may now cross the street.” Or something to that effect.

It was unexpected and creepy – and loud enough that it made us both jump. “What the hell is that?” I asked, as we both looked around, slowly realizing that we weren’t actually being assaulted by a bossy robot.

“I almost dropped my purse,” Betsy commented.

And that got us to speculating how funny it would’ve been if we’d both thrown our purses on the ground and run away screaming, as if we’d been mugged. I pictured her explaining it to her husband.

“What happened, where’s your purse?” I imagined him asking.

“I don’t want to alarm you,” she’d respond, “but I was mugged tonight. By a crossing signal.”

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Tip: Your ass is not a parking meter

28 Dec

Image Source: (c) 2012 - pithypants

Sometimes, when we’re having a lazy Sunday, Alan and I like to walk up to The Diner on 18th Street for breakfast.

The other weekend, sitting there nursing a tall Diet Coke, I looked over Alan’s shoulder and did a double-take. “Dude. There are at least two inches of visible plumber crack behind you,” I told him. “Turn around and look.”

Alan – game for anything amusing – slowly turned, his mouth full of egg. Had he been anyone else, I might’ve cautioned him to “swallow your bite” before looking. But Alan has an iron stomach and finds most disgusting things simply “curious.” (Don’t even ask him about watching a caesarean section unless you want to lose your cookies.)

This time, however, he took a big swallow to clear the egg before allowing his mouth to hang open. I took pleasure in watching his eyebrows lift in incredulity. He turned back to face me. “What? The? Hell?”

Exactly. Behind him. perched on a stool at the diner’s counter, was a young woman wearing low riders. Very low riders. So low, that every time she wiggled, her pants would tug down another few centimeters. By the time Alan looked, she was showing more than two full inches of crack.

“It looks like you should slip a quarter in there when you walk by,” I commented.

Alan agreed. “Can you imagine if we were seated directly behind her?” He mimed creating a paper wad out of the straw wrapper and tossing it at her. That line of thought prompted us to assess the people who were seated behind her, right at eye/crack level. Miraculously, no one seemed to have noticed. Yet.

And then our game began… as we wrapped up our meal, we kept surveying the other diners, watching for their reactions as they picked up on their scenic vista. As their lights slowly came on, we were rewarded with some pretty vivid double-takes, elbowing, and smirking whispers. By the time we left, the rear section of the restaurant was filled with tables of strangers all catching each other’s eyes as if checking to see who was in on the joke.

I suppose I should’ve gone over to the girl and – as if I were pointing out a downed zipper or toilet paper trailing from her shoe – alerted her to the issue. Call me shy, but I couldn’t find the words to approach a stranger and tell her her she’d shown her ass to the entire restaurant. Or maybe shy isn’t the word for it. Call me karma.

Maybe I’ll order a bunch of these and hand them out as subtle hints:

Image Source: http://starspangle200.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/Butt-Shirt.jpg

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What if I pay you in pebbles?

11 Dec

Yesterday I stopped by the library on my way home from work to pick up a book. My least favorite librarian, Rita the Regulator, was manning the check out desk. I’d actually surmised that before I set foot in the library, when I called from across town to see if they would be able to use my license rather than my library card.

This is how she answered the phone: “This is the Z- Branch of the District of Columbia Library. This is Ms. X- speaking. Go ahead.”

Um: Go ahead? Are we on walkie-talkies?

Anyway, fifteen minutes later I was in line, waiting to check out a book. Rita was informing the young woman in front of me that she had two fines she’d need to pay before she could borrow another book.

“If you’re going to pay cash, you’ll need to go to the main library – the Martin Luther King branch. Or if you’re going to pay here you’ll need to bring in a certified check or money order. Or you can go online if you’d like to use a credit card.”

The woman looked stupefied. “Well, how much is the fine?” she asked.

“Ten dollars,” Rosie told her. “Five for each item.”

The woman paused, looking thoughtful, then asked, “Will you accept canned goods?”

SERIOUSLY? I think you’ve gotten your wires crossed, ma’am. This is not a high school dance, a pub crawl or an office holiday party. Where else do cans constitute currency unless you’re ten years old?

Original Image Source: http://www.christmascharitiesyearround.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/Canned-Food-Drive-2012-resized.jpg

 

To Rosie’s credit, she didn’t berate the woman. In fact, her literal interpretation of the world must not leave any room for humor, because she simply said, “No. I’m sorry. We cannot accept cans.”

Good to know. 

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An SNL skit in my bathtub.

13 Sep

So now that my leak is fixed (knock wood), I’ve realized: Hiring a plumber is like paying someone $600 to throw a party in your place and barf on the carpet.

Don’t get me wrong – the guy did a great job. But…

So he shows up with his son, who is approximately 20 and is trying to become a plumber by apprenticing with his dad. I’m pretty sure the main reason his dad drags him along is so he can bill out “two men” instead of one, but ostensibly he’s learning something. The main thing I saw him learn was how to retrieve tools from the van.

Every ten minutes, the plumber would yell, “Jim! I need you to go to the van and get…” Fill in the blank.

But the first time he needed more than one item he also said, “Jim – stop. I think you’ll forget. You best get a piece of paper and write this down.” To which his son rolled his eyes and left. And within five minutes was calling his dad’s cell phone to ask what he needed from the van.

After about half an hour at my place (which, I’d like to point out is SMACK in the middle of the city), his son said, “Hey Dad! Do you think I need to lock the van?”

And his dad paused, looked at me like his son had just spoken Chinese, then said, “What the hell? YES you should lock the van, you dumbass!” with a big headshake.

I got to do my own headshake minutes later, when Jim Junior reappeared and said, “I need to use your bathroom.”

“We’ve turned the water main off,” I told him, thinking how long it had been since I had been able to use a toilet myself. “So you won’t be able to flush.”

He shrugged and said, “That’s ok. I’m not going to poop.”

All right then. Thanks for that. Go for it.

About this time, Jim Senior pinpointed the source of the leak. But it was in a difficult place to fix, so he outlined his strategy – which was surprisingly complex and – if all were to go well – would prevent him from tearing out an entire wall of stone tiles in my bathroom. I gave him a mental fist bump and wished him well, feeling confident until he asked, “Do you have any fire alarms we should disable?”

Um… why? Oh, because apparently he needed to use a blow torch for an extended period of time next to a wood panel in my wall. No worries, nothing to see here folks.

Rather than disable my smoke detectors, I retrieved my fire extinguisher and put it next to him. “You know how to work one of these?” I asked.

“Oh yeah,” he said. “Not my first rodeo.”

Oddly, his confidence did nothing to inspire MY confidence in him.

Miraculously, all went well and he didn’t start a fire in my building (to my knowledge). But while he was in there, he spotted another leak of the flip side of the wall, originating from my bathtub diverter. The next thing I knew, he was standing in my bathtub, blackening the bottom with his dirty boots, getting sprayed in the face with water while he used a chisel to remove pieces of the tile.

“Is it ok if this rug gets dirty?” he asked, pointing to my plush bathroom rug, which was already wadded up under him in the tub, wet with blobs of caulk. Um… a little late to ask, no?

About this time, using a pocket knife to whittle a fitting, his grip slipped and the knife sliced into his finger. Blood started spraying everywhere in my bathtub and he calmly said, “Well now, this isn’t good.”

UNDERSTATEMENT. I watched my poor rug absorb blood for a while before suggesting he might need stitches. “Naw,” he offered. “But if you have a BandAid, that might help.” I got him one, which he tried to apply, but it slid off because his finger was too wet. With blood. We tried that six more times before he ended up just sucking his finger and using the bed of his elbow to hold a flashlight. I’ll give him points for resourcefulness.

Since I have the double curse of being OCD *and* polite, rather than confront his messiness, I started chasing around the house, trying to discreetly clean up after him. The first time I bent to retrieve a wad of wet muddy grass that had fallen off his boot, I felt like Sherlock Holmes. “He lives in rural Maryland and mowed the lawn last night,” I said to myself, feeling clever.

But by the time I picked up the thirtieth clump of wet grass I was like, “This guy is a slob. If he killed someone, I’ll soon find organs in the pile of my carpet. No mystery here, folks.”

When he finished the work, he sidled up to my dining room table and pulled out a chair to write up the invoice. I’d like to point out that the chair he pulled out was a high-back chair upholstered with mushroom colored fabric, and he pulled it out with a hand that resembled a good steak: charred and bloody. I watched in horror, but mentally resigned myself to buying a new chair. After all, the dude had just ended a major leak.

I’d like to say I stayed calm and kept things in perspective, but the minute he left, I turned my place on end, scrubbing the floors by hand, bleaching my tub, and loading up the washer with throw rugs.

Perhaps it would’ve been less scarring to just order a demo company to knock out all my walls. Next time, I suppose. Because in a building that’s 100 years old, unfortunately there will ALWAYS be a next time.

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You say Dorito, I say Derecho.

1 Jul

Alan found me standing in front of the thermostat at 3am Saturday, using my iPhone as a flashlight.

“I don’t understand,” I mumbled. “Why does it say 70, when it’s so hot in here?”

Alan flipped on the hall light so we could get a better look at it. But still we stood in the dark.

“Power’s out,” he said.

And then I remembered waking up only hours before to terrifying booms and bright lights. Actually, it’s somewhat surprising I’d even fallen back to sleep.

“The storm,” I started telling Alan, who gave me a blank stare.

“It rained?” he asked.

“You have no idea.”

The next morning I headed out on my bike to scout the neighborhood. In a half-mile alone, I saw downed power lines and three large trees on their sides. And lining every path were limbs. The street looked like a wood chipper had just driven down it, mulching everything in sight.

I rode back home, where Alan was sitting next to a radio, listening to weather and news.

“I’m not sure what happened,” I told him, “But it looks like a tornado or hurricane rolled through while we were sleeping.”

Since temperatures were forecast to top 100 again, we loaded up in Alan’s car and decided to try our luck at my place in the city. Say what you will about the efficiency of DC government, but I’ll rejoice that someone had the foresight to bury our power lines, because my building was humming along in air-conditioned goodness.

Considering some 3 million people lost power, I felt pretty lucky.

The drive in, however, had done nothing to inspire confidence in what we would find. Trees were down everywhere, and we saw more than one car buckled under the weight of a trunk. “I feel like this storm deserves a name,” Alan commented.

Later, courtesy of The Weather Channel, we would discover it had a name: Derecho. Well, technically it’s not a name like “Katrina,” but it’s a Spanish word that describes the condition that occurred Friday night – kind of like El Nino. Technically, a derecho is a sustained and powerful windstorm that spans at least 240 miles and exceeds 58 mph.

Sounds like a lateral tornado, if you ask me.

My favorite thing about the word (aside from the fact that Alan looks like he wants to smack me because I insist on pronouncing it  with a rolling “R” like I speak Spanish fluently) is that people stopped calling it “a derecho” and started simply calling it “Derecho.” As if it were the storm’s name.

On Facebook, my news feed morphed into two camps (those WITH power and those WITHOUT) faster than Twilight had created Team Edward and Team Jacob.

It was like a personality test. People with electricity either a) Invited their friends over, b) Gave thanks to a higher power, or c) Taunted people who were baking in the heat. People without electricity a) Complained about the heat and/or their power company, b) Checked in from mundane places (ie. the grocery store) excited to be in air conditioning, or c) Meticulously listed the contents of their refrigerators and how much longer until all was RUINED.

Slowly, as people began regaining power, my news feed sounded like Handel’s Messiah: Hallelujah, indeed!

Other people found their solace elsewhere. “Mr. H went out and bought us a generator this morning,” my friend Sara posted about her husband. “The first thing we hooked up? The beer fridge.”

Another friend wrote, “Actually looking forward to Monday: at least work is air-conditioned and the fridge works.”

Gotta love Facebook! And for more than one reason…

I mean, it’s kind of like a dividing rod. Based on what I’ve been seeing, I think it’s safe to make a prediction. This time next year: there will be a miniature baby boom. Housewives devouring the smutty best-seller “Fifty Shades of Grey” + three million people without power? Doesn’t require much math.

The only question in my mind: how many babies will be named Derecho?

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