A full 10 days after placing an order for 4 in-stock items, direct from Amazon, and receiving a shipping message 6 days ago, I still get this message when I try to track the package:
And you know why? Because they haven't shipped it yet, even though it says they have. So Amazon: I'm not signing up for your silly prime service. So quit intentionally delaying my orders if you want me to come back. There are plenty of other options these days.
Man, I meant to post this the day it happened, but unfortunately I was actually working at work, so I couldn't. I was telling my friend Dan this story this afternoon, and it reminded me to post it. There's going to be some colorful language here, so turn away if you don't want to read it (ahem family members)
I'm sitting in Farragut Square with my friend Kasey last Thursday eating lunch. There are a few interesting characters who hang out in the park all day long, from the hordes of bike couriers, to the sleeping homeless guys, and occassionally the severely crazy people.
There's a woman I've seen there before, usually talking to herself hanging out in the park. Well, I'm in the middle of a conversation with Kasey, but I see her making a beeline for us from across the park with her eyes fixed on me. So I'm listening or talking one, but I'm totally distracted with this woman walking up to us.
And she stops right next to us, bends down closely, looks severely pissed off, waves a finger in my face, and says emphatically:
Don't you EVER tell me to settle down again! If you do, I will find a FUCKING Highlander to come after you! Do you hear me?-speechless-
So last night we were headed back to our friend Jess's house in Columbia Heights following jazz in the sculpture garden, which is really a story in itself due the rain. I had all of our food and the blanket and stuff hanging on my bike, so I went home to drop it all off before biking over to meet The Bride and our friends Ben and Brooke who were walking over to Jess's
So at about 9:15 or so, I came by our rowhouse on Meridian, and laid my bike against the front steps, and went inside with the bags to set 'em down before coming right back outside to leave. So I'm inside for about 10-15 seconds, and I come outside, and as I'm coming up the basement steps, I don't see my bike wheel in front of the steps. "CRAP!"
I run up the steps, and my neighbor Josue sees me, looks at my face, and says "you just got your bike stolen, didn't you!"
He was walking up after parking his car and there was a guy walking up the street near our place. When he got to his house next door, he's going inside and sees the guy riding a bike across the street into the alley. Then I show my face, and he put 2 and 2 together.
We take off down to the alley on the S. side of Meridian place, look all the way to 14th, don't see him, and run around behind the building across the street. All this time, I have flip flops on and can barely keep 'em on running. We come back to the house, I grab shoes from inside, and we go to get in my truck and look through the neighborhood.
Josue and I both knew that whoever it was, they probably lived in the neighborhood, and the chances that they would bike it far away were unlikely. So we started driving around. After about 7-10 minutes, were getting ready to give up and head back. I'm coming south on Holmead, and right at Oak Street, there's a couple of kids on bikes turning onto Holmead towards us.
I see the first one, and can tell it's not mine by the shape of the handlebars. But as we get closer, the second one is DEFINITELY mine. So I swerve my truck in front of the kid as he turns north onto Holmead, so I block him in up against the curb.
He lays the bike down as Josue gets out of the truck and asks him something about "is that your bike." There are two couples walking by, and a lady sitting on her porch on the corner, so the kid just takes off up Holmead, leaving my bike on the side of the road. I grab it, and stick it in the back of my truck. The lady asks us, "did he steal that bike?" I said "yes", though I didn't know at the time that it wasn't the same guy who stole it. She said she knew him or something like that.
A cop came up pretty quick due to my truck parked basically across the road, we told him what happened, and he took off up Holmead to look for the kid.
After a few minutes, he came back and said he couldn't find him, and would I like to file a report. Josue says that neither of us could ID the guy who took it, the kid likely wouldn't be prosecuted anyway for receiving stolen property. I said there was no real point in filing a report, since I got my bike back, didn't get shot looking for it or confronting the thief, and we couldn't ID the guy who took it.
The cop said it was probably a crackhead or junkie of some kind who took it, which makes sense. It was an older guy, according to Josue, not a kid, and the cop said he probably biked around the corner and sold it for 10 bucks to the nearest 14-year-old and got his fix for the day. Jumping to conclusions, perhaps, but it makes sense.
Anyway, so despite being an idiot by leaving my bike outside, even for just 15 seconds, I managed to get it back within 15 minutes. He tossed off my bike lock and helmet, so I've gotta replace those today, but it's better than buying a new bike, eh?
The only other thing I really did lose is a convenient excuse to buy a new road bike, which I'd been thinking of doing since I'm still riding a 50 pound mountain bike to commute only. I guess I'll just have to save money for that instead.
For Sale: One Michael Vick replica jersey, size medium. This jersey was a gift a few years ago, was lightly worn during football season only, has never lived up to its potential, and is now too embarassing to wear. $1 or best offer. Consider adding a "1" to either side of the 7 and having a highly-prized "Eric Newman" or "Kurt Quarterman" jersey.
Overheard this morning while locking up my bike out front of my office on L Street:
FedEx guys are parked on the side of the street, and two guys sitting in the truck are chatting about all sorts of things right next to my bike. A UPS guy walks up with a package in hand to the open drivers' side door.
UPS Guy: "Man, I just want to know how I can get a job with FedEx....so I can sit around in the truck and talk all day. (Laughs)
Well, after much chastising from my family that "my blog never has anything personal" on it anymore, I figured it was time for a post about something other than Columbia Heights, DC, or urban affairs and growth-related stuff. For the record, I haven't read Malcolm Gladwell's book and he didn't pay me to write this.
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I'm not sure why I even started thinking about it several weeks ago, but for some reason it occured to me that this Christmas will mark 15 years since my dad died. I remember marking years as I've grown older....1 year, 2 years, 5 years, 10 years....Once the shock subsided of processing a number as huge as 15, I recalled that I was 14 years old when it happened...leading me to start counting days in my head.
I was born in October 1978, and Dad died in December 1992. I was 14 years and 65 days old. Once I counted, I discovered that 14 years and 65 days since that day passed back in February. February 20 if you really want to know.
So more than 2 months after the fact, laying on my bed after midnight, my wife sleeping next to me, I came to the conclusion that I passed a tipping point: I had now lived longer without my father than I did with him. For the rest of my days, the time I possessed a father here on earth will always be smaller than the other half — even as that "half" slowly racks up days, weeks, and years, transforming from half to 2/3 and 3/4 and 5/6, capturing an ever larger share of life. And by that time, my two older brothers will have also joined me in the space following the tipping point. Mom, for better or for worse, has many years to go to reach such a point, but has certainly had the most difficult road — one that none of her sons understand. Even now as a married man, hers is a pain I can imagine but can't comprehend.
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What does all that mean? I don't really know. I don't think there's any great significance to the fact that I'm the first in my family to pass this point, but it is a tipping point nonetheless. I was the last to join the family, and therefore the first to personally pass this moment.
Is life somehow different now? I'm not really sure. For a guy who always remembers when "the day" in December rolls around, I didn't even realize this when it happened. I had to break out a calculator to see if "it" had even happened. ("Hmm, I don't feel different", he said)
But I still can't shake the feeling that it "matters" somehow — that there's something worth noting. So here I am.
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I meant to write about this weeks ago, but got pushed aside in the midst of other things. But last night, at my community group for Grace DC, I was the designated "chestnut". That sounds corny, I know, but it's one of the ways we get to know each other and push past the surface to get at what lies beneath. Once every 4-6 weeks or so, one person gets "roasted" — that is, they share whatever they want to share about themselves for the duration of the meeting, and everyone else asks questions. Nothing is really off limits, but the expressed purpose of this group is "community", which encompasses sharing that which may make us uncomfortable (and letting others care for our needs).
So before last night, I remembered I had a video of me giving my "testimony" (ugh, I hate that word) in 1996 during a youth event known as GoldRush that we hosted at our church. I hadn't watched it in probably 5 years since my friend Jonathan gave it to me after digging it out of the archives. In fact, The Bride had never even seen it before.
So rather than try to go back and try to remember what 1992-1995 was like, since dad's death was by far the emotional and spiritual touchstone and turning point for me, I brought the time machine known as the VCR over and showed this tape, using the 15 minutes of "17-year old Me" as a springboard for the rest of the story.
Other than it being slightly embarassing to watch myself, it reminded me of how central dad's death was in my life in those days. A day didn't go by that I didn't think of it or act out of the anger that resulted from it. Things are different now, though the grief is certainly still just as real. As my friend Ryan wrote in the prologue of his new album, I finally began to heed God's beautiful and seemingly upside-down advice: "Put down...all your weapons. Let me in...through your open wounds."
I guess that's really the signifiance of this "tipping point": It's not so much that I've lived longer "without" than "with", it's that I've been incorporating loss and grief into my life longer than than I was just receiving love and parenting. Which got me to thinking about grief...
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A friend from community group emailed me today to thank me for my candor and willingness to share something so personal and emotional last night, mentioning that a friend recently lost a parent and that it was good to hear a story of how God cared for one of his children and was a "father to the fatherless". I wrote her back while at work, and told her this:
I would say that the greatest lesson I learned about grief is this: We hear very often about grief as a process that you go "through", or that it's eventually something you get "over". What really happens, and what I hope was evident last night, is that grief is really a process of taking something terrible that happened and slowly but surely incorporating that into who you are.I guess life on the backside of this tipping point will be much like life immediately on the side from which I came, right?. But it won't be like 14 years ago anymore than 14 years from now will be like today. Each year brings something new as I move into a different period of my life. I am forever marked by this, forever changed, and eternally different. I'm still deep in this tunnel of sorts that I was supposed to pass "through".
I'll never be the same as I would have been if it hadn't happened, and I'm certainly not over it. Last night was good evidence of that to me. But progress — if you want to call it that — happened when I began to dive deep into the grief and learned how to make it part of me.
It seems counter-intuitive, but that's my take on it. I will forever be a man who lost his dad as a teenager. That shaped me then, and it will continue to shape me — certainly as I have children and become a father myself one day. It's not necessarily any less hurtful now than it was 15 years ago, but I am much more at ease and peace with my dad's death being an inseparable part of who I am. But I still miss him unspeakably.
And that, my friend, is the process of grief.
You may not be at all interested, but I just wanted to save these for posterity once I went to the trouble of checking lots of boxes on the list.
— A six-year-old girl was killed in a hit and run on 6th Street NE just below Florida Ave near Gallaudet yesterday as her mother watched from their front stoop. According to the story, she wasn't in the crosswalk when she got hit by a green Toyota 4-Runner with tinted windows and Maryland plates. Just terrible...
I do think it's interesting that the victim's brother concludes that it was a man when he tells the chicken-shit driver to "be a man." I wonder what the gender break-down is on people convicted of hit-and-run.
— The ever lovable Tai Shan will be here at least two more years, after National Zoo officials were able to reach an agreement with the Chinese Government, which apparently loves Pandas almost as much as censoring the internet and squelching freedoms.
— Lastly, don't miss Rob Goodspeed's comparison of Mt. Vernon Square here in DC with its counterpart in Baltimore. In one of his planning classes at UMD, he compared the qualities of urbanism between the two while trying to explain why filmmakers chose Baltimore to stand in for D.C. The reasons likely have everything to do with buildings doing a poor job of framing the streetscape, the design of the convention center, an underused (BEE-U-tiful) civic building which is at the terminus of a closed street that no one walks on, and a massive agglomeration of negative space with no rhyme or reason. Learn yo'self something about some basic principles of good urban design and check out this post.
He's still in this thing? And JUST discovering MySpace? I'd have to say I don't like his chances. After all, Hil and Barack started sending me friend requests MONTHS ago.
Last Friday night, we went to my friend Taylor's house in NE for a little Spring party. At least, that was the idea. Instead, it was 30 degrees outside and we were all packed inside. Thankfully, we had a Wii to keep things interesting.
So the Bride decided to leave early with some friends who were driving. I stuck around for a while, trying to stay as long as possible while still being able to Metro home. So at 2:25 or so, I pack it up and head out the door, right as the snow starts falling.
I halfway ran/jogged across the miserable Giant/Home Depot parking lot at Rhode Island and through the acres of parking until I saw a northbound train pass through. I walked the rest of the way and got up on the platform at about 2:35. The Bride called while I was on the platform and I told her I'd be home in about 20 minutes or so. After watching a southbound train pass (more on that later), I hopped on a northbound train to Fort Totten. I know outbound trains run later than inbound ones, but I was pretty sure there was an inbound Green/Yellow line at about 2:50 or so from Fort Totten.
I was wrong. Uh oh.
The last one left at 2:44, meaning that when I got off the red line at Fort Totten and sprinted downstairs, I missed it by about 4 minutes or less. (Which also means I would have been better off taking that soutbound red train I saw to Gallery Place since the last green/yellow train comes through there at 3:15 or so.
As I ran down the escalator and saw the display sign on the platform with no trains listed, the station manager came on the loudspeaker and informed me that I was a dumbass. Except she didn't embarass me and instead just told all of us that there were no more Green or Yellow line trains going south. I thanked her quietly for the good graces.
By this point, the snow is really coming down. So I go over to the trusty street maps and without breaking stride, take a peek at which way to walk to get to New Hampshire Ave, which I know will take me all the way to CH.
I see one cab in the massive Ft. Totten parking lot, with a girl getting in the back. I don't have any cash with me, so even if I do manage to score a cab somewhere, I'm doing the dreaded post-midnight ATM visit somewhere on the way home, which is akin to begging someone to jam a gun in your ribs and empty your bank account. At least that's what I tell myself so I won't ever be stupid enough to make any ATM transactions after dark in the District. (or anywhere, for that matter)
It's just a bad idea.
So since I barely glimpsed at the street map, I failed to notice/remember that the green/yellow line runs east/west at Ft. Totten, and not north/south like I'm thinking in my foggy, sleepless, wine and cheese-saturated brain.
Upon walking through the parking lot, I promptly make a right turn instead of a left turn, heading back under the elevated red line track, which should have tipped me off that I was going the wrong way. Did I notice? Nope. So I tried to constantly head to my left while walking north on 3rd, and then 2nd NE, and eventually did get to New Hampshire Ave, where I was heading for.
Now here's where I get even stupider. I've managed to turn myself around in circles so badly that I probably couldn't have told you which way was up. So I turned right on New Hampshire and walked for three blocks until I saw Eastern Avenue — otherwise known as the road that lets you know you're about to be in Maryland.
D'oh.
So after whapping myself on the forehead, I walked the last 50 feet up to the intersection, and crossed it, so when I told all my friends this story, I could tell them about how I walked all the way to Maryland, and then back home.
Here's my route so you can see just how stupid I was:
As you can see, my wrong turn cost me at least a mile if not more. I didn't think I could cut across Gallatin Street and through the park, which would have saved me, oh I dunno, say a mile? Although I would have been a little leery about walking through the park at 3 in the morning. (More than walking all the way home from Ft. Totten at 3 in the morning, right?)
The snow is really falling as I start heading back SW on New Hampshire. My brown coat turned white with all the snow sticking to it and my hair was soaked. About 20 minutes down NH Ave, a cab passed me going the other way and slowed waaaaay down to see if I waved him over....
This is where my stubborn cheap streak comes in. I waved him on, figuring I didn't walk the wrong direction for 20 minutes and make it halfway home from Ft. Totten to end up paying 10 bucks for a cab ride home. So I waved him on and continued my pattern of running 2 blocks and then walking some. Ok fine, I was just running one block and walking 3. Geez.
About an hour and 15 minutes after I got off the red line train, I walked in my front door on Meridian Place. And let me tell you, I was tired. So I of course went back to our DC map to see how I had erred because I just couldn't sleep without knowing. And then I went to bed.
I started thinking about how far Taylor actually lives from me as I was telling him this story while we sat in the Verizon Center for the Caps game Saturday. (Can I tell you how sore I was just trying to walk 7 minutes to the CH Metro at noon just 9 hours later?) I suspected that I could have walked all the way home from Taylor's, and not only would I have gotten home sooner, but it would have been a shorter walk.
Thanks to gmap.pedometer.com, you can see that I was right. And so are you: I am an idiot.
My route, including stupid right turn: 4.35 miles
Walking straight from Taylor's with NO wrong turns: 3.51 miles
This song just came on my iTunes at random a few minutes ago and I thought I'd share the lyrics with you. It's by far my favorite song by Bill Mallonee and Vigilantes of Love. It's about Vincent Van Gogh and so much more, but I'll let you figure all that out:
Now i'd seen him despondent
A few times as of late
Sometimes the answer that love gives
Is the hardest one to take
I know he was prone to paint
The voice of his own fear
So Vincent he picked up the blade
And he put it to his ear
Look at yourself in the mirror
You're all rumpled red stubbled and gaunt
You walk a dead end path in a dry corn field
And now this morose response
Your princess she don't wanna see you
No your princess she don't wanna hear
So Vincent he picked up the blade
And he put it to his ear
Now look if you're gonna come around here
And say those sort of things
You gotta take a few on the chin
You talking about love and all that stuff
You better bring your thickest skin
Sometimes you can't please everyone
Sometimes you can't please anyone at all
You sew your heart onto your sleeve
And wait for the ax to fall
You there with the paint box
You there with paper and pen
Me i got this blunt instrument
I'm gonna play on 'til the end
And you know you come with empty hands
Or you don't come at all
You deal your best hand out in the marketplace
And let the chips fall
The package it comes wrapped up
There is a lesson here
Vincent he picked up the blade
And he put it to his ear
Now look if you're gonna come around here
And say those sort of things
You gotta take a few on the chin
Yeah you're talking about sin and redemption
Well you better wear your thickest skin
Sometimes you can't please everyone
Sometimes you can't please anyone at all
Sew your heart onto your sleeve and wait for the ax to fall
Thank God.. I don't think I could have taken another season of Joe T. mangling Monday nights. It's a good thing they're making the change now, because I'm pretty sure he and TK would have come to blows at some point this year when Theismann says something ludicrous and the un-athletic TK points out how stupid it is, angering the meathead Theismann to the point of physical violence. Hear, hear, Worldwide Leader!
I was looking at some old pictures and feeling sentimental of the time when I used to be able to go fly-fishing for trout within 50 minutes of leaving my house in Arkansas. A beautiful, foggy, summer morning on the White River...Mike, Jared, Chris, Michael, here's to you guys!
While watching the Return of the King tonight, I decided that this scene was perhaps my favorite in the whole trilogy. (Non-LOTR fans, bear with me). During the siege on Minas Tirith, Gandalf and Pippin are barricaded behind a door, and Pippin is coming to grips with the end of the journey and his own mortality. They have this poignant exchange — even more poignant once you've seen the movie before and you realize that the melancholy strains of the "Grey Havens" music and "Into The West" replace the sounds of battle as they talk:
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Pippin: I didn't think it would end this way.
Gandalf: End? No, the journey doesn't end here. Death is just another path, one that we all must take.
The grey rain curtain of this world rolls back and all turns to silver clouds...And then you see it...
Pippin: What...Gandalf? See what?
Gandalf: White shores, and beyond. A far green country... under a swift sunrise.
Pippin: Well, that isn't so bad.
Gandalf: No, No it isn't
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I didn't remember this description being attributed to Gandalf in the books, so I had to dig to figure out where it actually came from. As I suspected, it's Tolkien's words, but its a line from elsewhere in the book. In the first book, Frodo has a dream of the Grey Havens, Valinor, and the Undying Lands while staying with Tom Bombadil.
And when he reaches Valinor at the end of Return of the King, Tolkien describes it just like Frodo's dream of years before, "a far green country, under a swift sunrise."
This was one of my favorite things about the way that Peter Jackson and Co. wrote the screenplay, lifting lines from one character that might never have made it in the movie, and giving them to someone else to keep them in the story. And in the midst of the mighty battle for the city, Gandalf paints a picture of eternity for Pippin, using Frodo's description from the book.
This scene always makes me feel the same way I do when watching the end of the movie, as Frodo, Gandalf and Bilbo sail with the elves from the Grey Havens to Valinor, taking "the straight way" to the Undying Lands: haunted and sad as I think of them leaving — yet hopeful of the day when things will be as they should be.
Just like Sam says to Gandalf after he and Frodo are saved from the foot of Mount Doom, "I thought you were dead...I thought I was dead. Is everything sad going to come untrue?"
Yes, indeed. Merry Christmas.
