The blackout continues

Yes, power has not returned to my house for the second night in a row. My roommates and I sat around talking and playing cards. Not a bad way to pass the time, but I think we would have been happier to do the same under electric lights opposed to clandestine candlelight. I hope to dear god that the power comes on tonight, though I read that it could last till Friday. Our food is gone, but at least I can say yet again, I am not alone in my misery. Oh, an it seems that this misery has also gone across the Pond and London had their own blackout fun. The funny brits don't call it a blackout, they call it a power cut. I wonder what they call a brownout then? A power scratch?

For the holiday week-end. Enjoy!

Some information about the ancient city of Myra, did you know St. Nick was the bishop? The inhabitants of Myra were called Myrians. Did you also know that in latin myra means extraordinary, wonderous or marvelous? Not a bad name.

A blackout of my very own

I guess since I missed the blackout of NYC by two days, I get to have fun by having a blackout at my house. This is the second time in less than a month that we haven't had power for more than six hours. The power went off last night at about 6pm, was off till I left the house at 11:30 am this morn and who knows if it's back on. Misery loves company and at least I'm not alone. The good side to it. For about the fourth night ever, we had all four roommates in the house at one time. We all sat around in the candlelight and talked and ordered out for wings and pizza. It was a very enjoyable night.

Speaking of the night, Mars is the closest it's been in centuries. If it's not too cloudy outside, I would say take a look, you can't miss it in the south-east sky.

From Molly: I'm a Practical Pump

Skim latte and 20 minutes of that morning show: this sounds like how you might start your days if you're a Practical Pump. Maybe it's that you're the kind of person who looks put together—whether in jeans, an ultrahip suit, or a drop-dead dress. Or perhaps it's just that when you look good, you project a stronger sense of who you are. People take your ideas more seriously and think of you as a leader when it comes to everything from the boardroom to the barstool. You can be independent without being Gloria Steinem. Even in a chunky heel you can pull off a delicate spaghetti strap camisole with no problem. So straight-laced isn't necessarily your MO. You make that perfectly clear when you're feeling a little devilish. Whatever your take on looks and life, it's very clear that you never go out of style.

Which shoe are you?


SHOES, how are your shoes hanging?

The waning days of summer

So, I haven't gotten any better about the blogging thing, but damn it, I've been busy.

The Washington Post has come out with their yearly Best Bets list. It's not that surprising, best pick-up joint: Tony & Joe's, wooo, that was suspense, best cup of coffee: Tryst, I would have never expected that, right. But if you're new to the city, you can see where everyone else goes and seldom deviates from.

Speaking of being new to the city, the love of my life, Jennifer will hopefully, finally, move back to DC this week-end. I personally will be capping off the unofficial end of summer with a very traditionaly east coast end, I'm going to the Outer Banks, woo the beach, my turk and some scuba friends for three days of fun in the sun, that's a great way to 'end' the summer. Hopefully the weather will hold out. The downside to this: the insanely high gas prices. Well, after spending tons of money to burn it in my car, I at least will have the beach, my turk, friends to look forward to on the way down and then I can come back to DC and see the ever lovely Jennifer.

If you haven't been to the beach at least twice this summer, you should go, summer's almost over!

On a completely side note: Liars make me sick and sometimes; I wish there weren't also-rans in the world. I wish that some people would get lives and backbones, but I guess if you were spineless through life, you can't grow one once puberty has passed, but I would give points for trying.

Bad blogger

So, for the past few days I've been a very bad blogger. Can I blame it on the blackout? Or maybe the MSBlast worm? No? Well here's the real reason, I've moved and been out and about way too much in Washington, DC, while also trying to get my room and house ready for visitors. Unfortunately there hasn't been that much ballroom dancing, but there has been the last movie of Screen on the Green, remind me never too see a movie that drags on like Space Odessey: 2001 ever again at Movies on the Mall, a lot of hanging out with one of the funniest people I've met in a while (a quote from him:"Yeah, I checked them out. God, I forgot how ugly that bitch is. Eeeewww. Not with a ten-foot pole....I'll bet that's about the best ass he can get." Too bad he's leaving for Japan in a few weeks.), setting up my new room and house for all the people visiting/returning this week, and a WAFC end of the season team party. In WAFC my team ended the season 4th out of 27 or so teams. Not bad. I was told we could have taken it all. Oh well another time.

So, the summer is winding down. Just a couple weeks until the unofficial end of summer, Labour Day. If you hadn't gotten a chance yet, I would suggest taking a bike ride around the monuments in DC. It's a great way to end the summer and see some of the site in a new way and all in one day. You can pay for a tour, get a free one or plan one on your own. In addition to that, I'll cap my summer off with a trip to the Outer Banks Yay, the beach! Very traditional east-coast way to end the summer. Hopefully I'll even be able to get a few scuba dives in. Woo-hoo. Also, I'll be braving NYC this week-end. I hope that all the power is restored by then. My old college roommate Alanna was at NYU when the power went out, didn't even realise the power was out till she went outside, NYU has their own generators. Well, she had to walk it from NYU to Columbia, her sister lives near there. For those of you who don't know Manhattan all that well, NYU is one end of the island, Columbia, the other. That was over a 125 city block walk. I really hope that the subway is running by Sunday, it wasn't running today, and there's no way I'm humping it all over Manhattan.

Speaking of the blackout, I had my own blackout fun yesterday. I went to pick up Fuat from the airport. He had a direct flight from Amsterdam to Dulles. I had no idea there was a blackout affecting the Northeast and Canada. When I arrived at 3:30 there were people who had been waiting two hours already. Rumors abounded from the greeters for the international arrivals as to the cause of the delay. I know this, the computer system that they use to double check foreign travelers and inbound citizens was affected, it was taking the foreigners more than double the time of a US citizen to make through customs. International flights had been re-routed from NYC to Dulles and about 1,000 international passengers arrived in less than two hours. Almost all of those passengers had to be processed through customs. I waited about three hours for the Turk to make it through. It was worth a three hour wait with hundreds of others to pick my Turk up.

Yay, the Turk is back! My heart is in MD now.

Way too much fun

I would like to start off this post saying that MH is quite possibly one of the funnest guys I have met in a very long time. And he comes from Williamsburg, which is not a fun town by any stretch of the imagination. So, he told me about a great site, great, great great site. So, for fun:

Boy:

HOT or NOT 2.6 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 14 votes

Girl:

HOT or NOT 4.2 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 73 votes

Oh, yes, vindication.

I'll do a real post in a few.

Go

I found out today that the Statue of Libery is closed. You can't walk up the three stories to look at the view from her crown. That definately goes on the list of things I wish I had done before 9/11, god knows I had gone to NYC enough. Actually, I came close once, my friend Alanna and I braved going all the way down to Battery Park on a very rainy and dreary day. We got there only to find out that the last ferry had left 15 mintues before. Oh well, at least I could look at it, and I guess that's all you can do now.

Thankfully the Washington Monument isn't closed yet. So, if you haven't had a chance, you should go up it now, especially with a republican in the oval office, who knows when they're going to decide that Amercians visiting national historical sites is not imporant enough to adequately secure the site against any threats. Yadda, yadda, sacraficing something now so future generations can enjoy it, whatever. If someone wanted to take a rpg or any other light armaments to the monument, they wouldn't have to be inside it to do that. Moving on....You don't even have to wake up early in the morning to wait in line for timed tickets. You can order your tickets in advance and pay a $2 fee. What's $2 to get an unparrelled veiw of Washington? I mean, it's the tallest thing around, DC building codes see to that.

Metrosexuals and other things

Well, I heard the term again last night, metrosexual. If you don't know, is supposed to be a man who is very conscience of his appearance. He wears designer clothes, he uses hair and beauty products and he gets spa treatments and might even get some plastic surgery, but he's a MAN. Hmmm, I don't know what to think of this. In a way, it's not so masculine. Someone on TV was saying this is a great thing becuase a girl can now talk to her boyfriend about hair products and which salon to go to. I don't think I'll be doing that anytime soon. Yes, I have taken my boyfriend to the same salon that I go to, and got him gel or mousse or something, but we don't sit down and have conversations about it. I was like, hey, I have a hair appointment, you need a haircut, why don't you come too? He was like, yeah, why not, how much does it cost? And that was it. No talk about how good the stylist was and whether or not he could get a manicure will getting a haircut. I knew someone once, very concerned about his appearance and it was ok, because he wouldn't pluck the hairs between his eye-brows (no, he did not have a full out uni-brow and he was blonde, so that helped too), said it was too feminine to do that. He had a line, there's caring about your appearance, then there's being metrosexual and weird. Well, at least its not cacthing on in Washington, DC. Or it hasn't yet and I really hope that it doesn't.

In other news, it's a small world I live in. My co-worker Kevin, dated Jeanne Haddaway all through college and grad school, yes that would be six years. Jeanne did MSL the same time that I did. Jeanne has now been appointed a delegate to the State House. Good for her. Now I have yet another example someone who did "fake" events, ie Model UN, parli debate, MSL, and went onto the real thing. It's not just African countries who send former Model UNers to the UN. Gov. Erlich (damn republican, give more money to the schools) has taken someone who did fake state legislature and put her in the real state legislature.

A safer world

In an effort to make us safer, some in government are finding new and exciting ways to scarily put information about you and me into a database for cross referencing. Washington, DC's mayor, Anthony Williams has jumped onto this bandwagon and wants four states on it with him. Hmmm.....this is all very scary. Florida has a crazy cross-referencing "counterterrorism" database and guess what they want to call it. Yup, you guess it, the Matrix, and the Fed is backing this program. You would have thought when they were naming it, they would have not named it the Matrix, a movie that had it's sequel released this year and is about computers controlling humanity. And they named it the Matrix. And no one thought it was a bad idea.

Let's not forget in our headlong dive to be more safe that we not give up the rights that we and everyone before us fought hard to get and keep. This is very well said on Chris's page:

The following is taken from George Lucas, Filmmaker and creative genius behind the Star Wars saga. The following quote is transcribed from the "Star Wars Episode II : Attack of the Cones" DVD Commentary, concerning the origins of Senator, Supreme Chancellor and Emperor Palpatine / Darth Sidious:

Lucas: This idea of a democracy being given up [during Palpatine's rise to power] and in many cases being given up in a time of crisis; you see it throughout history - whether it's Julius Ceaser, or Napoleon, or Adolf Hitler - you see these democracies under a lot of pressure, in a crisis situation, who end up giving up a lot of the freedoms they have and a lot of the checks and balances to somebody with a strong authority to help get them through the crisis. It's not the first time a politician has created a war to try to stay in office.

Pay attention to Mr. Lucas, people - he's right on the money.


Speaking of giving up freedoms, Phil has thrown his hat(August 6th entry) unofficially into the govenor's race in California. If you're there, be sure to vote for him.

Not really

Not really much to post about. I read this interesting article about how diplomatic immunity can screw someone over. I fully understand the need for the Vienna Convention and diplomatic immunity, but definately, sometimes diplomats abuse it. They are representatives of their country to another country, diplomats should always remember that and act accordingly. Oh well.

In other news, I've been invited to the staff of AMUN. Hmmm....hang out with Adam Wolfe, a very DOM, for a week-end? I don't know. But then again, the other Adam will be there, and he's always fun.

Tomorrow, I might tackle the issue of metrosexuals, supposedly the phenomenon is not catching on in DC.

Where did my Turk go?

Ever changing

Well, you might have noticed the new name and description to the blog, why the change you ask? Well, as of this week-end I no longer live with three skinheads, I am now a resident of not-quite a college town. Woo-hoo. The room is fabulous and soon will even be more fabulous once I change it from a box forest to a room to live in.
I've been out of sorts lately. I don't know what's it's been. Fuat is out of town, but that's not it. I'm keeping up with my social life, to the great detriment of my packing to move out, so it's not being a lonely loser sitting at home waiting for someone to call me to hang out or for the person who I'm dating to call me/hang out. I think I figured it out the other night. This is the first time I'm leaving a place that I'm living in willingly. The other times I've left it's the end of the semester and I've got to get out of the dorms or the person I'm living with has gone crazy and a relative from another continent has shown up "without warning" (how someone books and takes a flight that lasts over 20 hours and costs close to if not more than $1,000 without telling the person they expect to stay with, I don't know) or I've just had to move becuase I was squatting. The skinheads, they were a sure thing, the house, that was a sure thing. I had a room, basically unlimited storage, roommates who really didn't care what I was doing and the rent was very cheap. Under $400 for everything including phone, cable and cable internet. Now I'm upping the cost by about $150 for the same and doubling my commuting time to 20 mintues. In the end, it's not bad. Actually, it's great. It's just really weird for me to leave a place that was do-able. Where I moved to is better, but I just have an odd feeling about it. Oh well, give me a couple of weeks I'm sure that it will work out.

Along with my move comes a moving my blog to typepad. I'll continue to post here, but I'm going to start on updating the template on my typepad blog and won't update the one here. As of today you too can get typepad. Woo-hoo. If you are interested in typepad backchannel me, I might be able to help a brother out, that is if I like you. Do I like you enough to help you and make things better for you?