green, my ass

It's been a good while since I got a parking ticket in DC. About ten days ago they hit me while the 51 was at Eastern Market on a Sunday. I can almost guarantee they've changed the parking regs on 6th St NW since we've parked on all those blocks on Sundays at least 15 times. Fine, I'll pay.

I was impressed with the "Go Green option" on the tickets. For some reason, e-mail notification does not interest me at all...

tramps and stamps

This falls right into the Oxford comma and Billy Joel sucks department of “I didn’t see that diatribe coming.” Someone suddenly opens up on what might have been an innocent topic and before you know it the wraths of hell are upon them. I wonder if anyone has established an on opinion parking lots? I have! I have!

I’ll be succinct since I have something else to rail on about. If I’m driving through a lot looking for resting place for Galactica I don’t stop unless I see reverse lights on. Period. There are two sets of folks (see how I didn’t yet call them names?) in the lot scenario*: the vultures and the slow motherfuckers. The only one of the two who affect others is the vulture. If 'Bobby Sue" (nom de guerre: fukeris slowis) wants to take three days to load up her groceries, her baby, her other baby, and then spend an hour figuring out how to work her seatbelt and key, so be it. For all I care, she can sit in her car and listen to Lady Antebellum sing her favorite song.  If you decide to sit and wait for her to get settled in, figure out the equipment in her rig, and belt the last chorus (“But it was perfect; I never will forget; When we owned the night; Yeah, we owned the night !”) of the Lady then you are on my list. What you’ve decided to do is block traffic in that row (some of us are actually trying to depart the Circle of Parking), and will more than likely further exacerbate the problem by debating with the wedge you’re intercepting from the other direction, who also thinks he has the right to that spot, exactly what is going on in this now completely fucked up situation. Mix in a bit of bad space extraction ability from Bobby Sue and we’ve got a serious jam up. Keep moving, you won’t drive off the end of the earth. It’s like the internet, the lot goes on for a very long time. By no means am I condoning Bobby Sue, but in the grand scheme of life - my life - what you are doing as a vulture is actually expanding a bad situation (Bobby Sue) into a disaster – you are willfully taking everything a second step beyond the problem. Bobby Sue is simply one of the 325 million Americans who have no awareness of what is going on around them.

I promised another one: the Post Office. The endless chants of how the USPS is horrible and loses money all the time is complete bullshit. I don’t have the patience to link to all the studies and reports, but I’ll tell you that the USPS in the first quarter of 2012 (Oct-Dec) had revenues of $1.7B and operating expenses of $1.5B. Up through about 2007 the USPS did not operate at a loss. The USPS does not receive taxpayer money. The USPS does a pretty good job of getting my stuff from A to B. They also can be a bit of a pain in the ass if you have to go inside an actual USPS building. Around 2007 Congress passed some crappily named bill that requires the USPS to fund pensions forty years in the future. In order to meet this requirement the USPS has to pay about $5.5B per year in advance payments in one lump sum; the kicker is that the money is then used elsewhere to help alleviate the annual government deficit. When you read the “USPS loses $5B last year” headlines you have to understand that the $5B shortfall is the advance payment. No other government agency is required to pay 40 years in advance; they aren’t required to pay at all. If the DoD were required by law to pay, in a lump sum every year, pension and retirement benefits (including VA) for all the soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines, they'd have to cough up some unbelievable amount of money that would indicate that the DoD was operating at a $65B loss per year.  It’s easy to hit the low fruit when complaining about government, but the USPS thing (no doubt taken from the ‘going postal’ thing about 30 years ago) is such a hackneyed diatribe that it’s embarrassing. Don’t embarrass yourself.

Peace.

 * handicapped, ladies with kids (questionably), and old people are generally excluded from my ire.

claiming spaces

The kids are finally in school once again after missing seven days of class and eleven days of nothing-doing, overall. I’m not sure who was more punch-drunk from the blizzards: kids or cats. Lemon isn’t overly happy about piles of cold snow and ice underfoot; no worries, she’ll still kill when able. That's her outside on the snow this morning, pondering her kingdom...or queendom.

We got through last weekend and a Sunday dinner party with great fanfare. At some point between waking up that morning, and getting back from the The Lightning Thief with the kids, I contracted some bone-aching type of flu that was doused with a load of Tylenol and an early bedtime. It has somehow managed to hang around this week and I’ll sneak off to sleep early this evening.

There was an interesting bit on NPR this morning about how we’ve moved from the 'everybody help everybody' mentality that we enjoyed during last week’s strorms – when we all helped out neighbors in one way or another – to a 'batten down the hatches and take no bullshit' lifestyle. The most obvious battleground is parking space. Even out on The Hilltop there are only x number of street parking places that we've cleared for our houses. Unfortunately, those who don’t live on the street and are visiting need to park but they'd either have to find an opening at the dead end down the street or ask if there’s an available space from those that live here. It doesn’t take rocket science to sort out which house has cleared and ‘owns’ which spaces but apparently some visitors last week weren’t well versed in rocket science. While we were at the movie some blankedy-blank Audi driver 86'd our dug out plot of land. I thought, for a moment, they may have walked up the stairs and asked if they could park there for a few hours but I was imagining something that wasn’t possible. I eventually (four hours later) left them a note on their windscreen that let them know that courtesy sometimes helps and they should have asked. As expected, they eventually left but with no response or sorry pass along to us. From what I hear, the District streets are even worse with people blocking their spaces with chairs, ironing boards, and the occasional adolescent laid out on the ground holding the space until Mom gets back from the work.

My classes are going well as I wrap up mid-terms this week – nothing stunning to report aside from the massive chicken feast we had on Saturday night after we practiced fabricating chickens. We shared with the baking class and they provided dessert; all in the spirit of cooperation.

Here's a weird little icicle I came upon just off our front porch the other afternoon. Same shot in both; the flash changed the colors.

park it

I have a stern brace of parking lot rules – one is an effect on my driving, the second an effect on others. First, if I’m droning down a parking aisle and I see tail lights, I stop. This isn’t directly related to the second rule (don’t read ahead), and it has nothing to do with me actually having feelings for people, it simply seems in the best interest of me, mankind, and the car I’m driving to not attempt to squirt behind someone attempting a back out. I generally believe it helps my karma to defer to those backing and/or parking throughout the world. By my accounts only about 10% of drivers seem to follow my lead. The second (and more irritating if broken rule) is this: you cannot stop in a parking lot to wait for a space unless the white reverse lights are shining as you approach the soon-to-be vacant space. (Have I brought this up before?) Just because you see a family walking towards their Nina Totenberg-edition Hummer 2 doesn’t mean you can park your ride in the middle of the aisle hoping to get the space once two adults, two youngsters, one infant, four bags of groceries, a stroller, three dogs, and three new storage boxes are loaded up. I know you think it might be okay to just wait it out but please try to remember that I’m about to kill you (p.s. the sign that reads 'compact car' means a car, not a minivan, truck or SUV). What makes it all a perfect little scene for me is when three or four people violate the first rule while the Hummer Family is trying to back out whilst your crappy Vanagon is blocking the aisle. Simple rules. Please play along.

Do we need reporting from Pamplona on the running of the bulls? I think in the early days of 24-hour CNN it was ‘funny’ to watch people getting gored and trampled by bulls simply because it was some sort of real-time news. That was about 25 years ago and I’ve decided I no longer need to know, in headlines, that two idiots were injured on the second day of the running. What? It can’t be. People hurt? Bulls chasing people…that’s so funny!

Laurel and dad were here over the last five days and we had a wonderful time. We managed to survive the weather and fill Laurel’s requirement for Smithsonian and monument visits: the Washington Monument, Air and Space, National Gallery of Art, Natural History Museum, Library of Congress, a walk around the Capitol, lunch at the Museum of the American Indian, and the Spy Museum. We also snuck down to Rosslyn on the Fourth to see the fireworks across the Potomac. The forecast for yesterday was about 100 degrees so I convinced L. to skip the Zoo this trip and instead go swimming at the huge pool on base – excellent work on my part. Everyone has made it home safe and sound.

I’ll consider clearing up the reasoning behind the Metro limiting all day passes to travel after 9:30am.

T.