End of Days! Where's my Nicotine?!!?!!

In preparation for Hurricane Irene (or, more likely when it hits DC, Tropical Storm Irene), I ventured down the street to the Safeway to get the necessities: cigarettes, pain killers, and peaches.  Saw the sticker above on a sign on my way.  Apropos, no?  The nice folks at the Ace Hardware on 5th by the Safeway had some good advice:  PANIC!  

It seems folks were, indeed, following that advice.  The Safeway was packed.  You'd think the world was ending.  The lines were all the way to the back of the store at every check out, much like they were before the Snowpocalypse 2 winters ago.  Got a kick out Safeway's placement of the Nicorrette next to the menstrual pain relievers:

But couldn't take the lines, so ditched the peaches, which require actual check out with a scale, and went to non-scaled customer service for the true necessity: cigs.  Then went down the street for a sub from Taylor Gourmet. You know, in case the power goes out and I can't microwave stuff in my usual mode of high-class cooking.  My hurricane preparedness tableau:

Yes.  I plan to read about popes while eating a sub, smoking cigs, and watching the rain.  

The Return of the Church Sign Edition

M street nw. Obvs, I was smoking when I took the picture.

A Holiday Carol Edition

I hate how, at this time of year, the dominant American Christian culture seems to forget that this is not a homogenous society.


If I could rewrite today:  I would have stolen the batteries and plug from the CD player down the hall before someone played Christmas music at our otherwise secular office holiday party.  Also:  on the way to the bathroom, I would have stepped on (oops!) the strands of red and green Christmas lights lying on the hall floor before they were hung up. 


And yet, what I would not have rewritten today:  seeing Scrooge.  Specifically, seeing Scrooge smoking a cigarette and drinking a coffee behind Ford's Theater before (after?  during?) a production of A Christmas Carol.  


I've previously posted a picture showing the view of the back of Ford's Theater from my office.  Today, mere minutes before the start of our office party, a co-worker looked out one of my office windows and saw this:

The windows My mad picture taking skillz are a little dirty sucky right now.  The closeup:

At this point, another co-worker banged on the window to get their attention.  It took a while, but they looked up and waved.  My mad picture taking skillz are even worse on this extreme closeup:

As the secular Tiny Tim might rewrite it:  Spirit Dedicate us, Every One!

Synchronicity Edition

Bear with me. This is longer than usual:

I went to the library after work tonight. The book I wanted was checked out. But, I found on the shelf a new novel by one of my favorite contemporary authors. I hadn't even known he had a new book. Not knowing about this book is, to my knowledge, my most personally felt side effect of the newspaper industry meltdown. The Washington Post stopped publishing the Sunday Book World section months ago. Now they print random reviews on random weekdays in the Styles section. But who has time to read an orphan book review over coffee before work? And, I don't want a week's worth of Styles sections cluttering my small apartment until I can get to them on a Sunday. They go in the recycling bag before I leave for the office.

But, I digress. While in the library, a friend called to tell me she had just auditioned for, and been accepted to, some kind of choir. I wanted to yell how excited I was, but I was in the library. So I hung up, checked out my book, and went outside to call her back. And light a cigarette.

I got sidetracked from calling my friend back when a girl asked me for a light. I handed her my purple lighter and she said she loved purple. She showed me her tattoo which said "Purple" in a fancy script. Synchronicity-lite. She let me take a picture:

The lighter stuck to her arm for the picture because the humidity was at 100%.

I called back my friend, who gave me the details of her audition at the Capitol Hill Chorale. The thunderstorm started moments later. I ducked under a bus stop shelter to avoid the rain.

I opened the book. The very first sentence compares "this" to war. The last sentence of that first paragraph reveals "this" to be a chorale group waiting to go onstage. Synchronicity.

Anyway, if you're interested in the book, apparently it was written for Playboy as a serial. Here's a review from the NYT. Damn the Post and it's serial reviews.

Rodent Edition

Bear with me. This is a multi-part story.

Part 1: Yesterday, I hailed a cab to go home after shopping at Whole Foods. My cab driver was a big guy, probably over 400 lbs, so his driver's seat was pushed very far back into the back seat to fit in there. It was easy to look at him while he talked to me. When I gave him my address he asked why I was shopping at Whole Foods when a new Safeway grocery store had opened on my block. I told him I wanted to get some things they don't have at the Safeway.

The cab driver said, "You must have a more sophisticated palate than I do." He went on to describe how, when he was growing up, the only cheese he ever had was Velveeta. He told me how little the Velveeta cost back then (I forget the amount) and how his mother made Velveeta mac-n-cheez, Velveeta sandwiches, and Velveeta on top of spaghetti with a sauce of Campbell's tomato soup and 1 lb of ground beef at $0.39/lb. He told me he had never had any other kind of sauce growing up but that his wife made him promise to never make it. He sounded wistful.

About a block from my building, for some reason, the cab driver started telling me about eating squirrels as a child. They'd bake them for dinner and then eat the squirrel brains the next day at breakfast. Then I was home. I gave him a big tip, went upstairs, and was blissfully distracted from thoughts of squirrel brains and Velveeta by talking with a friend while eating my Bali turkey burger, asparagus, and corn fritter.

Part 2: At work today, coming back from a cig break, I was in the elevator with a guy I don't know. Out of the blue, and in total violation of well-established stranger-in-elevator etiquette, he says, "I wish they'd make May 14th National Chipmunk Day." I don't know why, but probably because my friend Carrie has shared with me her obsession with prairie dogs, I responded, "Why not prairie dogs? Why chipmunks?" To which the elevator man replied, "They're tasty."

Wtf. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go cook up some beaver.