ZippyLand

States I've visited...

Courtesy of Mandy...visited is in red, not-yet-explored is green. If you are cooler than me, you can make your own 'Countries I've visited' map, and stick out your tongue at me too.

create your own visited states map

Links & Funnies

Everything I have ever felt about the Atkins diet can be summed up in this week's Onion infograph:

On the opposite end, a very cool site that gives insight into the 2004 candidate(s) who share the same political views & importance of issues as you. Thought I pulled it off Stanford Professor Lawrence Lessig's (newly found) blog, but apparently not.

Back to funny links: the National Space Society has helped create an incredible new dimension of music, which can be purchased here and has the endorsement of no less than astronaut & Rolling Stone Editor-in-Chief Buzz Aldrin!!!

MoveOn.org

I have been getting my MoveOn.org emails but have had such a loaded work week that I didn't pay close attention to them - however, Ernie enlightened me to the travesty against free speech this week. MoveOn.org has a commercial that they have paid to show on SuperBowl Sunday but CBS has decided it is too controversial to air. Ernie makes the point that they were willing to play the 'drugs fund terrorism' commercials that were a big strech factually. Having watched the commercial myself, I can't say I find it terribly upsetting...it just seems like another reality to resign myself to.

Mots

I'm all about aging my thesaurus - it's getting a litte yellowed & it used to live in a good bookstore. It looks as if it should have a slight dust musk when you smell it, which will come, with time. The lexicon has shifted a bit; obscure words will grow palatable as grime scents the pages.

*R-13*

Alexandria Weirdness (part 2)

It was already an offbeat morning, as I left the house to find two cute contractors working on something in our small ground floor hallway. I pulled up to the stoplight outside of our apt. building and noticed an older woman, probably in her 70s, being helped by a young lobbyist (my guess only) who was waiting for the bus. She had blown a tire on a nearby curb and had pulled her car off to the side in our parking lot.

I rolled down the window and he asked if I had a cell phone for her to use - she looked as if she had just rolled out of bed and was dressed in a long black wool coat and flip flops. No socks, and the temp was at a solid 8°F w/ windchill. I got out of the car and she was practically screeching how her husband couldn't do anything for her, that calling him was of no use, that she was on the way to a doctor's appt. and the doctor would be furious with her. It was all very odd.

She got in my car and kept moaning & moaning, and nothing I said made her feel better - I had to run a quick errand across the street and I just kept hoping that the car would warm up so her feet wouldn't freeze.

I drove her to where her husband worked (the Mailboxes store down the street) -she kept saying he was too old and wouldn't be able to help her; then as I drove away, I thought - he has a job, he must be somewhat functional.

I won't lie - as I drove to work, a vision of Eunice MacCready from Cloak & Dagger leapt into my head. The kindly old woman, who ends up being the spy missing two fingers!!! I used to have nightmare upon nightmare of that woman.

P.S. To make it weird², I just pulled out my wallet to buy a soda & an extreme smell wafted out when I opened it. The woman had kept trying to give me $6 for helping her and I refused over and over, but she slipped it under my cup holder while I was running the errand, and I didn't see it 'til I got to work. It has now made my entire wallet reek of mothballs. *Sigh*

Oh, sadness

A blue day in Zippyland, as our beloved Carmen leaves our little windowless office in death-Tysons, onto a more lucrative job in a swanky Connecticut Ave. office. Everyone cried as reality struck home.

Then I find out that the country is losing hot soccer players to Europe - Brian McBride goes to Fullham and Clint (Cliff) Mathis probably to Hannover.

Europe must send over some of its hot soccer players! Or else!

It's just no fun when the weather's this cold and there's no snow to play in.

Driving around a little aimlessly...

That's what I've done this weekend, so far. I'm learning where more and more restaurants are, always a worthy goal. Met up w/ some of the Costa Rican fellow vacation-ees for yum tap beer & parked my car 3 times in the death parking area of dupont and east of it...got S'mores coffee and had champagne brunch. Bought some good books, lusted after some greyhouds at the bookstore adoption. Awww, god. They were beautiful.

Yow!

And can I just say, Andrea, that you win for sexiest picture of the New Year??

*Special thanks to Margaret for the unauthorized use of her pic*

Alexandria Weirdness

So I'm driving down the crowded but attractive Washington St. towards work this a.m., looking at the cute storefronts and still spaced out from waking up, and I come to the stoplight next to my CVS. I look over and see the guy walking his three extremely fluffy samoyeds; I don't know him but I've seen him with the dogs enough.

All of a sudden I see him let go of their leash and start running like he's being chased by the law - his face is a picture of shock and I can feel his adrenaline radiating across the street. I think, why would he just let go of the dogs like that? Then I spot a man in front of him, running fast but without the same maniacal gait - and I look back to the front of the CVS and see a teenage girl with her mom, with a shocked blank look on her face and about to cry. The light turns green and her mom dodges in front of our line of oncoming cars over to the bakery, I assume to call the police.

As I drive on, I keep looking down the streets to see if the men are still running but I don't see anything else.

I just keep hoping that the samoyed guy is ok, and I wonder what he's done to the criminal, if he actually caught up and grabbed him.

My Summer Vacation (in the middle of Winter)

Yes, back in the U.S.A...I'll try to pretend I'm not completely depressed about the return to warm jackets and freezing temperatures. I'm excited to hand out all the presents collected and to share my pics. At least I can get one of those things done!

All my thanks goes to David, whose amazingly cool camera took great shots and weighed the least out of anything I hauled around during the trip, except maybe the pack of kleenex.

Here they are, for a better explanation please see me in person ( ;
Mexico-Costa Rica pics