Hick in the District

where the Lt. Governor is a part time position.

You're on my list Nebraska.

This started out as a United flight operated by US Airways. US Airways subcontracted out to America West, who has now subcontracted out to that airline that transports felons. I'm pretty sure something died in here last week and they still haven't found it.

The first time I flew out of this airport I was delayed 2 hours and then sat 2 hours on the tarmack. This time I landed after my connecting flight took off. A chili cheese dog at an airport bar seemed like a good idea, as did the Manhattan. The chain smoking bar wench across from me sounds like she's 12 and looks like she's 12 trying to look like she's 16. Streaked highlights are never a good idea.

Metro added 45 minutes onto my trip to DCA and I missed my flight. I got another and now I'm sitting at the gate watching a CNN special on 9/11. ::shiver::

I'm not talking about Boston Legal this time. No, I'm blogging from my new blackberry pearl. Who wants to touch me? I said who wants to touch me?!?

AIM away messages need to let you put in more characters.

What, rouse thee, man! thy Juliet is alive,
For whose dear sake thou wast but lately dead;
There art thou happy!?! Tybalt would kill thee,
But thou slew'st Tybalt; there are thou happy too:?!,
The law that threaten'd death becomes thy friend
And turns it to exile; there art thou happy:
A pack of blessings lights up upon thy back;
Happiness courts thee in her best array;
But, like a misbehaved and sullen wench,
Thou pout'st upon thy fortune and thy love:
Take heed, take heed, for such die miserable.

But look thou, stay not till the watch be set,
For then thou canst not pass to Mantua;
Where thou shalt live, till we can find a time
To blaze your marriage, reconcile your friends,
Beg pardon of the prince, and call thee back
With twenty hundred thousand times more joy
Than thou went'st forth in lamentation.

Put the ball in the air. I'm moving to Vermont. Rutland, Vermont to be specific. Campaign work, yada yada.

In DuPont circle there's what I used to think was a pretty cool bar/pool hall named Buffalo Billiards. The DC Cal Alumni group had us meet there to watch the game on Saturday on one of their large projection screens, which in theory makes sense. They have the space and it's a bar, and they serve food. With pool tables. Awesome.

A large group of people showed up to watch the game, which surprised me given it was the holiday weekend at the end of the August recess. I’d say between 50 and 70 folks were there, crowded around the furthest screen on the right side of Buffalo’s as you walk in the front door. There was one long table in front of the screen, so people got chairs and tables from the middle of the restaurant area and brought them over. The bar tender got on the loudspeaker to tell us we had to put them back after the game, which we were cool with. The game goes one, we eat, we drink, we curse and cry, and long about the middle of the third quarter a bar tender/waiter turns the game to the Comcast channel guide and orders us to put the chairs back or he’s not going to turn the game back on. No one moves, we can hardly believe what we’re being told to do, and the guy gets more belligerent. Being courteous Cal fans, we put the chairs and tables back, and since we’re getting screwed, we leave. As the mass exodus is filing out the manager comes on the loudspeaker to snivel at us "uh…you guys don’t have to leave, you can still watch the game standing…" Verbatim, I kid you not, he expected us to stand for hours, and pay for drinks. This being complete crap I closed out my tab, and watched thunderstruck as a different bartender starts mocking us in a parodied, exaggerated tantrum and ends by saying "who cares about Cal, they suck."

Now I can understand if they needed the tables and chairs for other people who were coming in to enjoy a burger or fries or something, but there was next to no one else in there. Assuming they did actually need the tables, they could have certainly been more polite about it, and EVEN IF they needed to be forceful with us there was no call for the personal and institutional disparagement leveled at us by the staff. I'm never going back there and I don't know of one self respecting Cal fan who is. Hope their empty tables were worth it.

will make sneezing painful. The movie should come with a warning lable.

Things haven’t been going so well lately, which has kinda sapped my motivation to keep you all up to date on what’s been going on. But this last week something really snapped me back into reality.

After a particularly rough day, I went home and just wanted to relax on my futon pad with a good book. I’ve been reading Meg Greenfield’s “Washington” and if you want to know how things work out here at an interpersonal level, it’s just the book to do it. Anyway, I misplaced it and was more than a little miffed that this was another example of things just not going right.

I decided to grab another book from the living room’s library and just settle in for the night. I suppose I should have told you all about this library. The living room has two book cases built into the wall, running the length of the wall and packed from floor to ceiling with books on everything from the psychology of sex to Newt Gingrich’s book. I’m not brave enough to read “The Exorcist” but there are two copies for good measure. I ran across a very slim children’s book, not more than twenty 6” x 6” pages, tucked away next to one of the cabinet’s sides, titled “Johnny and the Eggs Virus”.

It’s an old book, with all the pictures in black, white or blue, simply written in the voice of a six year old boy speaking to the reader. Johnny recalls conversations he had with his mother, other kids, doctors, nurses and a social worker. Johnny has overheard all these folks talking about how Johnny has the Eggs virus, which intrigues him. Curious, Johnny asks just what the Eggs virus is, and is corrected. Johnny doesn’t have Eggs, he has AIDS.

The rest of the story recounts Johnny’s conversations with adults explaining what the rest of his life will be like. He will have to take lots of medicines and sometimes he might have to go to the hospital for a long time. People will be afraid of him, but not those at the clinic, they will be his family who will talk to him about his disease. The story ends with Johnny observing, in a very Tiny Tim like atmosphere, that life would be better if everyone were able to talk about what separates them.

I couldn’t do much after finishing the book but sit on a wooden stool wondering what poor parent had to buy and read aloud that book to their young child who had just been diagnosed with HIV, and try to make them understand just what it was they had and just what it meant. There’s not much that could go wrong in my life that could compare.

when he leaves the comfort and safety of his parents' cocoon to strike out into the cold and bitter world to make a place for himself. And for some reason they will insist on visiting.

My folks are flying in from Waterford tonight to stay in my barrenly naked room, which has a futon pad, a lamp, mice and cockroaches, in a house with an unmarried couple and lesbian, and is owned by the gay life-partners next door. Hilarity to ensue.

There's a woman who works here at DOE who I have to deliver things to all the time, and who is now working in our office because her suite is being renovated. She's totally nice, but I don't know how to interact with her; her name is America.

For most people who are older than me who don't want me to address them by their last name I will prefer to affix a title to their first name. "Do you have any reports to be taken back, Mr. James?" " Miss Arlene, should I have these taken by courier or hand-deliver them?" "Did you get that concurrence package, Miss America?"

“When are you coming back from Dirkson?” I have to pick up a package and then I’m coming to America.”

How am I supposed to great her in the morning? "Good morning, America!" Uh, no.

Its the little things I miss about California. Things like being safe on your walk home, not having things stolen out of your room, being able to buy beef jerky just about anywhere. What is this, the east coast?

People who steal metro checks ($270 worth) out of my room.

I'm ok with them stealing my sweet maglite, but this just pisses me off.