leafing through

One nice thing about working is it provides perfect fodder for my blog. I try not to overdo it for obvious reasons such as my paycheck. But on the otherhand, it’s therapeutic for me so the counterbalance is my sanity. I value both. This entry is brought to you by: my sanity.

Update on the elevator. This morning, two able bodied young men step into my elevator. One hits floor 3 and I groan on the inside and the second hits floor 2 and I realize this is karma. May I refrain from hitting the “close door” button out of meanness in the future.

My current tasking is consolidating and editing our organization’s quarterly performance report. I don’t know who wrote which parts but it’s like reading a resume written by a half a dozen technical folks whom I suspect love acronyms more than anything else in the world. I’m not even sure I’m reading English! The worst of it is, our old fogey management refuses to learn basic MS Office tools such as track changes. I’m resorting to strikethroughs and highlighting places I rewrote or even just pasting a [Before] and [After] so they can compare and see where I changed things. I need a chicken nugget.

This morning, I get so engrossed in reading about other peoples’ business in the paper that I missed my stop. Thus begins the unraveling of my morning. It takes me another 5 minutes to hop on the next train back. I’m hungry. Ravenous! I get into my super ultra secure office building where I have to not only display my ID, but they have to touch it. Because touching it will demonstrate that this piece of plastic is indeed the real mccoy. Then I go to the cafeteria to buy a paper cup because I forgot my water bottle at home. Mondays. Sheesh. On my way to the elevators, again, I get my ID fondled. It’s like walking anywhere in the vicinity of “security” requires a touch. Please, implant me with an RFID and be done with it. By the time I’m headed to the elevator upstairs, I’ve entered mean mode. Knowing there’s a guy right behind me slowly plodding towards my elevator, I hit the “Close Door” button a few times. Stupid unresponsive elevators. The guy makes it and he goes up two flights. Two flights! I get to my desk and proceed to eat both the breakfast and lunch I’d brought. Please pass the Xanax. Better yet, the pb&j.

I spent the last two days at work in a training class, sort of a fundamentals about what our agency does.  It was a little bit of history (Chernobyl, 3 Mile Island), a little bit of engineering (valves, springs, pressurizers, condensers, generaters), a little bit of biology (cancer, daughter cells, effects of radiation), and a little bit of chemistry (electrons, protons, fissioning).  Interesting, but long.  The levels of knowledge in that class ranged from me, ”what’s that doohickey thing there for?” to the not-me’s, “the control rod drive shaft sits in the blah de blah bee goo joh-vee!”  But that’s exactly why I was there.  Now I know what the condenser does.  Sort of.

Anyway, since the best way to learn is teach, I’m gonna impart some knowledge to you and maybe it’ll help me retain something. Plus if you haven’t noticed already, I just love factoids. And I love sharing them. Useless pieces of information that may or may not come in handy when you’re playing Trivial Pursuit, doing a crossword, or watching Jeopardy.

1. Sleeping next to someone will expose you to 1millirem/year of radiation.
2. Granite emits radiation.  This includes those beautiful granite countertops!  Same with living in stone or brick houses and marble fancy schmancy stuff.
3. If you live up in the mountains with lots of rocks like in Colorado, that’s another 90mrem/year.
4. We give ourselves 40mrem/yr just from the potassium-40 we have in our bodies.
5. According to the lady from the Environmental Protection Agency, making babies is the worst thing we can do to the planet.  Or as she puts it “breed ourselves out of a planet.”
6.  What do you call a bird that clucks and glows in the dark?  (Blog title).

Nicest thing about training is the location, with tons of restaurants, shops, and a Starbucks across the street.  We even had live music outside.  This duo performed songs from the 20s and such.  The singer had that olden days kind of singing voice.  Very relaxing. 

Next week, I have another training class in the same location.

In conclusion, wedding planning is quite a bit of work!

Even for her relatively small and simplified wedding, my friend still has a lot of details to work out. The invitations, the dress, the photographer, the cake, the dress, the food, the makeup, the hair, the dress, the seating arrangements, the flowers, the dress, the shoes. And finally, the dress. Today was dress day. The dress she ordered finally arrived and we met with a seamstress-friend of ours to take a look at it for alterations. Between lunch and the appointment, we had a few hours to burn so we went to the mall to browse at wedding bands. Yet another detail.   I learned a few new tidbits of information  about sparkly things:

• Palladium is another silver colored metal, not as expensive as titanium and probably less prone to discoloration than white gold.  Did I say titanium?  I meant platinum.  Whatevs, looks about the same.
• There are different ways to set diamonds: prongs, channel,  pave, and animal style.
• I am not the person to go to for questions about these things.
• Macy’s is having a sale on kitschy jewelry!  I got a pair of pearl earrings!

Today was the last day of one of my classes and I spent a lot of it playing Plants vs. Zombies. Two more left – almost there. Anyway, I didn’t realize how drained I’ve been this past week, today, I slept most of the metro ride home, came home, ate, slept another 5 hours, ate again and I guess it’s time to go back to sleep. Delicious. Maybe just one more episode of The Office though.

A bird pooped on me yesterday. It gave me a minor freakout on the inside. I envision the bird eating an insect or worm of some sort, partially digesting it before letting loose on me. To not scare passersby I calmly reached into my bag, grabbed a tissue and wiped my arm. Really I wanted to scream my head off.

I went to see the Legwarmers tonight at the State Theatre. They’re an 80s tribute band playing songs like Jesse’s Girl, Material Girl, Vacation, 99 Red Balloons. It was a sold out show! Most of the people in attendance really got into the spirit of the 80s dressed in leggings, fluorescent colors, tight pants on the guys, loud hair for the girls, and ridiculous makeup and jewelry. Wanna know where you can reuse that bridesmaid dress? If it’s hideous enough, you can wear it to a Legwarmers concert! 80s was known for kitschy and gaudy and boy was it ever. I should’ve laid on my eyeshadow thicker. This is the first of this kind of venue I’ve been to where there’s standing room only for the most part and crowded! We tried standing in the front but I could barely breath squeezed between people. Plus, I was too short to see above all the people. We wound up escaping to the upstairs section where there were seats and a great view of the crowd below.
This was an hour before the show. By the time it started, the place was packed!

Before the show we had dinner across the street at a place called Clare and Don’s Beach Shack. I ordered fish tacos and T got a crabcake sandwich. Both were delicious. Had I known the show was going to start at 10PM rather than 8PM (printed on the ticket) or even 9PM (the word on the street), we wouldn’t have scarfed the food down in such a hurry and maybe sat around to enjoy a drink or something. And maybe take a photo before inhaling said dinner. I would go back if I were in the area and I would recommend.

Regarding the State Theatre and Legwarmers, call me old fogey but I was deaf for a good 30 minutes after exiting the place so I wouldn’t pick the State Theatre to be my preferred venue. I like the Wolf Trap’s lawn seating for a picnic and music. The Legwarmers were fun though and I definitely wouldn’t mind seeing them again.

This is a trendy little boutique restaurant near Chinatown that specializes in chocolate. I just opened their website to get the proper names of the drinks we tasted and the music is buggin’ me. It’s the kind of music they have there though (didn’t bother me when I was there because it wasn’t set to repeat the same 5 measures over and over). House, is it? And there’s no shut the music off button on the site! Minus points! Anyway, overall impressions, nice romantic dark ambience, definitely draws women more than guys. I mean, no surprise, many women equate the pleasure derived from eating chocolate to having an orgasm. I didn’t have any of their savory foods but judging by the other items we tried, I suspect this place is just richness and decadence all around. Their chocolate martini, or as they like to call it, the Malted Milk Martini, tastes like spiked chocolate milk. Our server said their most popular drink was the co cojito (chocolate mojito). I liked them both but they were just too rich for me to want more than one.
The hot chocolate souffle had some chili pepper in it which was a nice touch. I love chocolate souffles but again, this one was over-the-top richness. (By the way, if you’re specifically looking for a good chocolate souffle, try Dino’s in Cleveland Park. No hot pepper in it, just straightforward dark chocolate ooey lick-the-plate clean goodness. For chocolate cake, McCormick and Schmick’s Flourless Chocolate Truffle Cake. Who knew a seafood chain could get it so right, right?) All this talk of chocolate makes me want you-know-what. As for Co Co. Sala? I’d recommend it to others to experience for themselves. I probably wouldn’t go back.

This is the quintessential trading in one bad habit for another. Instead of coffee, I turn to tea. So instead of Plants vs. Zombies on the computer, I turn to Fire Emblem on the Wii. And it’s terrible. I keep losing a key character and getting “Game Over,” replaying over and over, getting frustrated, turning it off, turning it back on, and over and over. And now I’m back to PvZ tonight, and tomorrow I’m sure I’ll be firing up that Wii again for more of the same madness. Ay caramba!

This year’s Folklife Festival on the Mall featured Wales, Las Americas, and Giving Voice (“African American oral tradition”).  I explored it on Friday when the weather was juuust right.  Breezy, overcast, warm, but not too hot.  It drizzled for a minute or so, but was otherwise a nice day.

I checked out the musical performance first.  It drew the most attention for its liveliness.  The kids seemed to get a kick out of dancing.   One 3 or 4 year old boy who had just his shorts on got so into the music he flipped right over.  Between the arm flailing and mad stepping, he lost his balance.  Pretty cute.

This year was the first time I tried the food. I stopped to take a picture of the arroz con pollo but the delectable fish sandwich from the soul foods display was too yummy to pause for a picture.

This here is a modern rendition of an old concept (Wales display), the living roof. Basically you plant hardy drought tolerant plants that can survive on a thin layer of soil on your rooftop. It acts as insulation and it’s also kinda’ pretty.

Another of my favorite exhibits was the medicinal plants section. They displayed a nice patch of garden filled with comfrey (heals connective tissues), wormwood (for upset stomach, colic, kidney trouble), cabbage (soaked leaves in vinegar treats sprains), leek (good for headache, snakebite, ulcers, deafness, boils, nightmares), borage (brings good cheer), rosemary (treats long term drunken habits, cold, sore throat), marigold (fungal infections, cuts, infections, sharpen appetite, help sleep), and marijuana (for a good time). Kidding on the last one!

This knot tying display and demonstration was another interesting one. It looks so easy when they’re doing it.

Overall, this year’s was among my favorite Folklife Festivals. My favorite was the one with Alice Waters’ Edible Schoolyard in 2005. I stopped by that one almost everyday during lunch while they were on display. Guess I’m partial to the mini-gardens.