Hilary Booth... of course!

Dining alone is always an adventure of some kind. They'll stuff you in some back corner near the kitchen or some odd alcove. They'll forget about you occasionally, as has happened at breakfast. There's no one to talk to, so I usually remember to have a notebook on hand... except when I forget a pen of any kind. Oops.

PF Changs is if nothing else unique in its issues. I only usually order one thing: crispy honey chicken. ( Wherein I have way too sensitive a palette )

I speak to you from the snowy wastes of Northern Virginia. The Snowmaggedon continues to dump more snow on us. Usually we get one massive storm like this every ten years or so. Mother Nature and Father Winter are clearly fighting again because this is our *second* of those storms. My faux balcony is completely filled with snow. I can only imagine what the rest of the neighborhood looks like. The wind is a low howl up and down like it's some lost wolf cub out on the streets. Or maybe it's National Zoo wailing about losing Tai-Shan... *catty is catty* I don't think we'll be digging out anytime soon. This is a bad one.

For those who haven't heard, there was a horrific crash on the DC's Metro system at evening rush hour. I am fine. I was home all day. I found out about the accident on twitter of all places when suricattus asked the DC metro riding folk to check in. I'm usually coming home on the orange line most of the time, but my last assignment was on the red line at Union Station. I probably would have found a way over to Metro Center to find a way home.

So the inspectors for the county just left. All they needed to do was verify the number of rooms and bathrooms. *breathes a sigh of relief* On the bright side, the apartment is cleaner and less cluttered than it has been in ages. I still need to attack the piles of paper. It's rather disconcerting having things so neat for a change. The bulk of my clothes actually fit in the closets rather than in haphazard piles.

On the minus side, I had a dentist visit this morning. Three fillings! However many hours later, my jaw and tongue now have sensation again. I hate getting numbing injections with a passion, but I hate recovering from them even more. I also didn't work the extra days this week. I was really only annoyed I didn't find out until after I'd come all the way into work, after the nastiest morning thunderstorm I've heard in DC in a long time. We usually get the nighttime ones that spook me. And less than fifteen minutes later, it was gone. Weird!

Hello everyone. Yes, I'm still alive. I'm still working for another month or so. The indexing has been a little crazy lately, especially with all the foreign languages involved.

I joined the throngs down on the mall for the opening weekend of the Cherry Blossom Festival this afternoon. I picked a lovely if extremely windy day to see the blooming things. The blossoms were out in all their glory. I did not make the full circuit of the Tidal Basin this time, stopping at the bridge before heading back. I anticipated a lot more walking today since I wanted to check out the Sakura Matsuri, the Japanese street festival, on the other side of the mall. They'd taken over the stretch of 12th st near the Old Post Office and Ronald Reagan building. They had a whole ton of vendors serving various food. The lines were insane though.

The other T included the more Japanese portion of our story with vendors offering their wares. Kinokuniya sadly looked rather picked over and depressing. Local groups also demonstrated different aspects of Japanese culture. I came upon the Go demonstration where local players would play against anyone, even a complete and utter beginner like me. I gamely lost like a football fan I am -- 23-7. Where some players would patiently show you the rules, my pro seemed to prefer to dump you into the deep end and then partway through start peppering you with questions or suggestions. Alas Akira or Hikaru (or dear goofy Sai) I will not be.

After a false start, I found my way to the J-pop corner. People were playing an array of DDR, Karaoke, and Guitar Hero/Rock Band video games. I couldn't DDR very well on a good day. I couldn't imagine it after a long day of walking around. Katsucon was trying to win people over, as were other artists and dealers. I was afraid I was late for the main star, Ai Kawashima, but she'd just taken the stage by the time I arrived. I'm honestly not too familiar with a lot of j-pop stars, but she performs one of the "One Piece" themes. She used a keyboard to accompany her. I liked her second song "Tabidachi no hi ni...". Unfortunately it's also the name of another song, a graduation song, so finding more info on it has been trying, aside from the video. I stayed through a couple of songs, before I decided to head home. I was exhausted.

Metro was insane, made only worse by a rather belligerent rider on our train cussing out someone. That he was holding onto a stroller only made me fear more for his children. I was grateful to finally get to my stop and escape the madness.

I've uploaded my photos onto Flickr, including some of the local blooming things at the library.

I was nearly awoken by the sound of music. Not the dulcet sounds of the radio, but the blaring of the high school marching band. They were having one last practice session before going off to some competition. I could do without hearing "West Side Story" again.

The cable company is coming tomorrow. My dvr/cable box is doing that weird thing where it freezes and resets completely. It's happen often enough to replace it with a new version. Hopefully that will solve the problem. I will lose whatever I've already recorded on it. I'm thinking certain shows are lost causes for me this year. If I haven't gotten around to watching them, it's probably not going to happen.

So I've been trying to make sense of my closets. I need to go through my pants and dump whatever ones don't fit anymore. I'm really missing my old long closet at my parents' house. Never mind how many clothes it could hold, the number of comics long boxes was just astounding. *grins* Why, yes, I'm a geek, can you tell?

I've also been watching old soap operas. Along with old Another World & Search for Tomorrow, AOL Video has old episodes of the half hour soap Edge of Night. I really wish I'd known about that soap when it was airing. The mystery plots would have appealed to me. It's serving to cleanse the palette of "All My Children", which is rather horrid right now. It is a little disconcerting when I recognize a familiar face. The weirdest is Denny Albee who plays a police detective on Edge. Another World fans might recognize him if his hair was shorter as the smooth and villainous Drew Marsden. Eureka fans would recognize his partner Deborah Saxon aka the delightful Frances Fisher still sporting her short red hair. Could Edge be considered an early AU? Originally it was supposed to be a daytime drama version of "Perry Mason".

Couple of links:
OTR on Wisconsin Public Radio: Over three hundred old time radio programs of varying types on WPR.
July 1942: United We Stand: Fascinating exhibit I seem to have missed when it was around. "In July 1942, seven months after the United States entered World War II, magazines nationwide featured the American flag on their covers. Adopting the slogan United We Stand, some five hundred publications waved the stars and stripes to promote national unity, rally support for the war, and celebrate Independence Day."

This afternoon I did something fairly radical -- I went outside for lunch. Usually I just make do with the cafeteria. There aren't any restaurants or eating places in my corner of DC. But the weather was gorgeous outside (sunny, warm, and not much humidity) and I wanted to stretch my legs. You can go a little nuts down here with no windows or outside human contact. There was a CVS a few blocks up, so I thought I'd go there. Until I spotted the time honored noble hot dog stand. Not fancy and not particularly healthy, but it would do. Instead of walking back towards my office, I went across Constitution towards some inviting park benches in front of a little pond. I should have either brought my camera or played hooky for the rest of the day. It was that lovely outside. It really did remind me how beautiful DC can be, for all its massive flaws. From the maps, I appear to have found the Constitution Gardens next to the Vietnam War Memorial. It even appears to have some sort of island in the middle which I didn't see.

The Metro system is enough to make anyone frustrated this week. Last night we had a train derailment at Court House that snarled traffic left and right. Tonight another delay left people scrambling all over the place. After waiting at Foggy Bottom through umpteen trains, I said "Okay, take the Blue and go to Rosslyn, you can catch a bus." And the buses were equally backed up. All this on the tail end of a stretch of the hottest heat wave in June. If Metro wants to promote public transportation as a viable alternative, they'd better get their collected rears in gear, now, before they lose their ridership from heat stroke!

Tomorrow the heat is supposed to come down a little... please let it be so.

The salesperson in the local FYE had an intriguing accent today, so being nosy I asked where he was from. A little town in England called Portsmouth. He admitted he toned down his accent at work, then he spoke briefly at full speed. I really must be watching too much British TV because I had no trouble figuring out what he was saying. He was even a fellow watcher of Dr Who and Torchwood, too. Almost makes up for losing my ultra geeky Suncoast guy. Almost.

Apparently I don't have to go over to Baltimore to ride the water taxi anymore. Alexandria has looked across the river at the new Nationals Park and decided they want a part of the action themselves. So they've started a free trolley down to the waterfront. At the harbor, you can catch a water taxi across to the Maryland side at National Harbor. The trip will run about $14 for twenty minutes. The water taxi service is run by Potomac Riverboat Company. Nifty way to link up the two sides of the river.