On the Thanksgiving Train

The feeling of dread at a difficult pre-Thanksgiving trip today grew stronger as the precipitation percentages in the forecast rose ever higher. As the storm swept up the East Coast, I trudged home through the rain, wondering just how delayed and crowded the 8:30 train to NJ would be.

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The line to the train at Union Station stretched from Gates B and C, down the concourse, past Sbarro’s and the liquor/lotto store, around the corner, and past the front of the bookstore. The train was sold out, yet somehow, Amy and I managed to score the very rearmost seats in the rearmost car of the train. The seats were together for a couple, at the far end of the car from the restrooms, and right beside the exit, and had extra legroom and two A/C outlets. It was a quintafecta of Amtrak coach-class awesome. The train was somehow not too crowded, the trip went quickly, and there were no delays.

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All in all, a much easier trip than I expected, completely banishing all sense of dread I had earlier had, despite the rain and line and threat of complications from the Thanksgiving rush.

I’m over at Amy’s folks’ place now. Tomorrow (today, technically), Thanksgiving service at church, and then dinner at her grandma’s. Enjoy the turkey or tofurkey, those of you who celebrate Thanksgiving.

(Just two site notes: Weblog comments and trackbacks are off for now, due to heavily increased spambot activity — probably bottom feeders trying to take advantage of sysadmins being away for the holiday season. Also, the webcam is keeping an eye on Pandora for me, in the still image section. You may also occasionally see my neighbor pop in to feed her.)

NMWA

IMG_8745.JPG Amy and I spent yesterday afternoon at the National Museum of Women in the Arts — a museum we’ve been meaning to visit for years, but kept putting off because it isn’t free. But the day was open after lunch with Brandon, so we went in, coughed up the $8/adult, and took the plunge.

The big great hall of pink marble and crystal chandeliers (Disney-ish, as Amy described it) that first greets you on entry is definitely not the whole museum. There’s a sparse collection of classical and neoclassical work lining the mezzanine walls, but you have to go up the marble staircase at the back of the hall to get to the meat of the collection — the exhibition hall and more modern painting and sculpture works on the upper floors.

Full NMWA photoset here, and here’s a highlight from the “Amy Juxtaposed Alongside Big Scultpure Heads” series:

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Meeting Brandon W

After years of cross-linkage, silver ladles, and other miscellaneous adventures, I finally met up with Brandon today, as he visits DC for an SBL conference. We had an Indian lunch at Mehak near the convention center, and talked about church, weblogs, school, DC, CA, GA, and The Dane. Here is us, post-lunch:

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Con Man at Waterfront

White kid, about 25, medium height and build, spiky blond hair and a single earring, wearing jeans and generic university shirt, walking down M St SW across from Waterfront/SEU Metro station. He’s just hanging up a cellphone as he calls to me, “Hey, do you speak English?”

“Yeah, what’s up?”

“Oh, thank God. I live right behind the Safeway, and my dad is in Salisbury, Maryland. He’s dying, and I need-”

I interrupt. “Right.”

“Did you say, ‘right’?”

“Find someone else to grift.”

I walk off towards the Metro. (In retrospect I probably shoudln’t have turned my back on him; no idea if he was packing.) He yells, “Well, God bless you. I hope you have a good evening!”

I just repeat over my shoulder, “Find someone else to grift.”

Thank you, LOST. You have taught me well.

DC Metro Flipbook Ad: Target

A few people have been arriving at my old entry on the DC Metro “flipbook” ads, looking for the newer “Target” ad between Gallery Place and Judiciary Square, on the Red Line. Here’s a video I took of it, a bit dark, but you can see a person floating in what seems to be a space station, and a woman in a red dress descending a spiral staircase:

There’s a point in the ad where the scene breaks up for a bit, just when the lady in red appears; apparently that’s where there’s a couple of holes between screens to allow passage to the Shady Grove side of the Red Line. Sorry about the noisy kids.

Overheard on the Metro

“I can’t believe you’re still seeing him; isn’t he, like, twice your age?”

“I don’t mind, really. It’s so wrong, but at the same time, it feels so right. Besides, he’s a triathlete, and he’s got a hot body.” (Giggling) “He’s there in Colorado, I’m here in Washington, so he’s … convenient for me … He’s just what I need right now.”

“Wow, now the age gap between me and my boyfriend doesn’t feel so big.” (More giggling)

I might be way off on this, but here’s my translation:

“So wrong, but it feels so right” = “His wife hasn’t found out yet.”

“Convenient for me / just what I need right now” = “Sugar daddy money is good, but not too much messy committment.”

New Webcam Page

The original webcam page had a single still image uploaded every minute from the Unibrain Fire-I, my primary webcam on the iBook. I recently purchased a Philips SPC200N as a backup plugged into my Windows PC, to keep an eye on the cat when I’m out with the iBook. For a time, each cam would upload its own separate image, so there were two captured images on the webcam page, refreshing every 30 seconds, usually showing two different locations in or around my room. Then I signed up with Stickam, and added a remote live player with a chatroom to the mix. (PC cam only, as the Stickam player is incompatible with the Fire-I.)

Two images every 30 seconds with a separate live player was getting to be overkill, and you can’t have the PC cam app running with the Stickam flash app at the same time anyway, so I pared down the features a bit. Now it’s got just one still image refreshing every 60 seconds, uploaded from whichever webcam is on at the moment, plus the Stickam player.

At the moment the iBook cam is catching a time lapse of my african violets, while the the PC cam is showing live video of Pandora on the bed. Enjoy. It’s exciting stuff.

Skipping Austen for Karnow

The next book on the reading list was supposed to be Jane Austen’s Emma. I had already downloaded it from Gutenberg and converted it to Palm DOC PDB format and HotSynced it to read in eReader, but then my eyes alit on the first line…

Emma Woodhouse, handsome, clever, and rich, with a comfortable home and happy disposition, seemed to unite some of the best blessings of existence; and had lived nearly twenty-one years in the world with very little to distress or vex her.

…and I could really go no further. She sounds far too much like a Mary Sue character at the start, and I’m not feeling too patient with that. Instead, I’m going for something a bit meatier: Stanley Karnow’s In Our Image: America’s Empire in the Philippines, which I plucked off my uncle’s Filipiniana shelf about two years ago and had been meaning to read since then. Publishing date is 1989, which means it’s almost two decades out of date, but it should still be good for Philippine history up till EDSA and Cory Aquino.

Recent Reading: Wind, Sand and Stars

Most people know Antoine de Saint-Exupéry for his classic The Little Prince (Le Petit Prince), but Amy introduced me to another of his famous works, Wind, Sand and Stars (originally Terre des Hommes in French), via an aged, yellowing volume which she had picked up from her church library.

The book is a collected series of autobiographical vignettes from Saint-Exupéry’s life as a pilot, interspersed with philosophical reflections on the human condition. Published in 1939, much of the narrative takes place in the period between world wars, when Saint-Exupéry flew post between Europe and Africa, in a time before weather radar and air traffic control grids, when pilots flew more by a primal understanding of the air and the earth than by the few instruments their planes had.

To Saint-Exupéry, flight is both a triumph of human achievement and a glorious spiritual vocation, one which both figuratively and literally lifts up the pilot who takes on the mantle of the aircraft, giving him superhuman powers, responsibilities, and challenges. He never fails to stress the burden of the air courier to deliver the post, who stands head and shoulders above the common crowd, to face down distance and wind and weather and darkness and crashes and Islamic desert warriors, while at the same time treating these troubles with the nonchalance of a seasoned veteran without fear of death. There is an especially thrilling chapter about his crashing onto a plateau in the African deserts and nearly dying of thirst with his engineer in the cold, bitter night.

Don’t approach this, however, as a book entirely about the historical wonders and dangers of early flight, else the final chapter about his philosophical wanderings through the Spanish Civil War will leave you disappointed. These meditations have little to do with his tenure as a pilot, but much to do with war and death. I found this to be the weakest section of the book, especially with the somewhat fuzzy and postmodern conceptual denouement on the resolution to conflicts of human belief.

The prose of the English version occasionally seems a bit stilted. I imagine the original French must have had a magical, flowing eloquence, but the philosophical lilt does not always come out in the English as well as it did in Little Prince. Because of this I occasionally found Wind, Sand and Stars a difficult read, but this was certainly not a grave fault.

(Small side note: this was a very old copy of the book, possibly a 1939 first edition, hardbound in blue without a dust jacket. It was previously used by Amy’s pastor when he was much younger, and still bears his margin notes in pencil, along with hasty bookmarks made from torn sheets of blank newsprint, and newspaper clippings about Antoine de Saint-Exupéry pasted or inserted in various locations. This made reading the book all the more charming for its historical personality.)