Hick in the District

I started work yesterday, not much to report. It's about what I expected but I do get a super cool badge, with a picture that's better than my driver's liscence.

The Department of Energy is directly across the street from the Smithsonian Castle, contributing to perhaps the greatest architectural contrast anywhere in the city. After I got off work I had some time to kill so I decided to walk around The Mall, heading in the direction of the Washington Monumount. People in front of me would periodically stop, turn around a take a picture of something behind me, and being tired and jeg lagged, I didn't put two and two together. Curious, I turned around and was just about knocked flat. The Capitol Building is stunning, there's no other word for it.

After I walked around the Eclipse a young man jogged by me, stopped dead in his tracks and started to chuckle to himself before waiving and continuing on. "What are you doing here Mike?" It was Daniel Frankenstein, a former ASUC Senator from the ASUC Second Age. That was kinda random.

I'm glad to be here, everyone is extremely nice and helpful, and the city still has much of its Christmas decorations up ( though I have to admit I'm a little disappointed by the National Christmas Tree or whatever its called). I'm told it's surprizingly warm for this time of year, high in the 50's, which all things considered isn't bad. Everyone has told me to just wait for "sleet" and "snow", whatever those are.

My good friend Liz, who I’m pretty sure could walk across the Potomac if she ever put her mind to it, got me a temporary job working for the Assistant Secretary of Energy for Congressional and Intergovernmental Affairs in DC. I’m to start on the 27^th at 8:45 am. Chocolate mocha cheesecake and lemon bars to follow.

People who break a cookie in half and put half back on the plate. If you're gonna eat a cookie I spent hours and hours of talent and toil on, you had better blasted well eat the whole thing. I don't care if you do have diabetes. Or had a heart attack and two strokes. EAT THE WHOLE THING!!! Denny Crane!

Evaporated milk shouldn't be in the baby foods section, it should be in the baking needs section. And store managers shouldn't get so pissy when they're corrected.

In my never ending quest to acculturate you all with life in the Central Valley, I would be remiss if I did not include one of the curiosities the Valley is known for. The Vally has some pretty uniqe topography, sitting between two mountain ranges (who’da thunk?), the air is fed moisture by two large bodies of water: the San Francisco Bay and the Sacramento Delta (I’m not sure if it’s called that, but it’s up there and it’s wet). The Valley is also technically a desert so moisture doesn’t stay in the ground well (no pun intended) and water must be constantly irrigated so you all can be fat. It must also be known that it is hardly ever windy or even breezy. Zephyr is a common word out here. All these factors come together to produce some of the thickest fog found anywhere in the world.

And I’m not talking about San Francisco fog type fog either, that stuff is bathroom steam compared to what we get. The fog is so thick the National Oceanographic and Atmosphere Administration (NOAA) literally set aside an entire classification for fog in the Central Valley, calling it “tule fog”, named after the Tule (too-lee) grass that’s only found out here. Visibility in this fog is usually less than 50 feet, though it’s not uncommon to be unable to see more than 10 feet. And weirdest of all, it comes in bands, so in one place you can see a 100 feet no problem, but get passed that and you can’t see 15, only to see 100 again shortly after.

As a kid I remember going to the bus stop and being unable to see my front door from the sidewalk directly in front of our house (and we had a small house). At recess we couldn’t play hide ‘n’ seek because we’d all just go and stand in the middle of the playground and the poor schmuck couldn’t see us. You’ve heard of being unable to drive fast in fog? In our fog you can’t even jog briskly. While other schools had snow days or rain days or whatever, we had fog days. All the local radio stations would broadcast which bus routes were delayed because of the fog and school wouldn’t start until 11 or 12 when it would burn off enough to see a block away.

I had to drive to Modesto yesterday (more on why later, maybe) and the directions I got from Google Maps directed me to turn left on D st then right on 10th. Easy enough. You'd think. As I was driving down Highway 132 on my way to D, I came upon I street, and then H, and then G, F, E. Thinking D must be coming quickly, as any rational person would, I kept my eyes peeled for D, only to find C, B and A were the next in line. Ok, I thought, no big deal, I thought, I'll turn around, go back and find D. A, B, C, E...hmmm, try again. G, F, E,C...this isn't funny anymore. A, B, C...E ::glare that could freeze vodka:: G, F, E, C...%&#$*@&#%@*%$&!!! I repeated this game six or seven more times before deciding to drive on and find out what happens. D was five miles, or 10 minutes given the speed limit, down the road.

After running my first errand I had to go to UPS on E. Orangeburg. Here's were things get complicated. According to Google Maps, to get home from the...The UPS Store I had to continue on E. Orangeburg and make a left on Coffee to get to Briggsmore, knowing this, I knew the...The UPS Store had to be on Orangeburg between McHenry and Coffee. I knew, I knew it couldn't be on the other side of Coffee, otherwise when I wanted to go home, I would have to be traveling the other direction and make a right onto Coffee to get to Briggsmore. Google maps told me so, you'd think they wouldn't be wrong. So I turn off of McHenry onto E. Orangeburg knowing, knowing The UPS Store will be around there somewhere. (Keep in mind I'm driving my parents' GMC Sierra, which isn't the greatest for nimble city driving.) After going up and down every strip mall--and there are lots out here--three times, I decided to break down and ask someone for directions. But everyone I called was in class (even Reva, whose 3 hours ahead), so, hitting rock bottom and starting to drill, I asked a 76 station attendant where the...The UPS Store is. It's another mile and a half past Coffee.

This excursion should have taken me an hour or so tops. Two and a half hours later I made it back home.

Charter Communications, who does pretty much what Comcast does but since Comcast doesn't serve this area we have them, has been shutting down their internet access at 8 pm or so for the last few nights. Now usually it just goes down when its windy or rainy (which rarely happens in late November and December), but this has been consistent regardless of how inclimate or nice the weather is. Then they fire it back up in the morning.

If this is how solar energy is going to work after we run out of oil, we're screwed.