Feelgood By Numbers

There are things which come into my life unbidden. I don't know if I could count them if I tried. One of them that I am currently enjoying is The Go! Team. I know that I didn't have their complete album previously because I looked for it, over and over. I thought to myself "I like this one song, I must have their whole album somewhere", but alas I never did. And then suddenly, there it was in my ipod.

Am I delirious? Did I buy this album at some point from itunes, or perhaps download it from some sort of nefarious source? But as I listen to it, it sounds like Dan's (my relationship with him is something else that came into my life without me looking or asking for it, and which I wouldn't give it up for the world) music, perhaps he gave it to me? A mystery.

It's a beautiful day outside. Not quite as awesome as over the weekend, but kind of perfect. True to my word, I've been back on my bike this week (I didn't make it on Saturday or Sunday, since rereading book six and then reading book seven took a little longer than I expected). I woke up early this morning and rode down past the White House and the Department of Treasury before turning towards home. I'm hoping to get out early enough tomorrow to go around the Mall.

Otherwise things proceed apace. I'm trying to switch my cats to an all raw diet, but they don't seem to be taking to it quite yet. I guess we'll see whose will is stronger. Though Dodger was puking all morning, so if that continues we'll have to call it quits. Maybe he's sick because his system has gotten so used to eating crap? That would be pretty sad.

O'Tasty

O'Tasty
Originally uploaded by Rachel Ariel.

Last night I needed to buy quart grocery bags and wet cat food. Because today I am in Florida. It was not warm enough to go outside and sit on the beach, so instead I slept, because I only got four hours of sleep last night, because I decided it was reasonable to take an 8 am flight.

Anyway, getting back to the grocery store.

My sister was in town and at the grocery store with me. And there we were, standing in line, waiting to buy the ziploc bags and the cat food. There was a man in front of us in line buying two bags of frozen fish and some other stuff. I don't recall exactly how we ended up in conversation, but we did, and he spoke with a thick Jamaican accent. And that's when it got amusing. He told us about how he likes to go to the Jamaican bar on Georgia Avenue. How he goes to the bar on Friday nights and drinks two beers and feels "much better". About how he's glad that alcohol is legal, and how he thinks you should be able to drink and smoke the weed if that's what you want to do to feel better.

But don't smoke the crack.

Then he started singing the refrain from "One Love" and talking about drinking and smoking, but not the crack. Then it was time for him to check out. And he went through the whole thing about being Jamaican and "One Love" with the cashier, sans the comments about crack. And she found it just as amusing. And my sister and I could not contain our laughter. We clutched one anothers' hands and resisted the urge to collapse into fits of giggles.

Then he asked for my phone number.

Because he wanted to take me with him to Jamaica in October.

I told him I didn't have a phone (thank you to all of my friends who did not call me during that five minute period of my life). He said "How will I find you?"
I said "Oh, I come to the grocery store quite frequently"

He found that acceptable and went about his business.

Started making plans to kill my own kind

A note on absenteeism. This has not been an easy couple of weeks for me. Unfortunately there is very little of it that is mine to talk about, but in the interest of completeness and honesty, right now is not an easy place for me to be. Things get better in bits and spurts, but it's not quite awesome. And by not quite awesome I mean at least I don't quite feel like I'm drowning in this moment.

As is my wont, when I get stressed out I create small, or sometimes large projects for myself. The current project that is percolating is one in which I see all of the monuments and museums in DC in one weekend. This is a baby idea right now, and i have two days in which to nurture it. How many hours will it take? Is my goal of only walking a reasonable one? How many miles will it be by the end? Should I go to museums that are closed, or am I exempt from those? Does the library of congress count as either a museum or a monument?

Does anyone want to join me?

There's so much beauty it could make you cry

It surprises me to be able to say that since leaving college one of the things I enjoy most on the weekends is sleeping in, but not sleeping in too much. I was never like some of my friends who could, and would easily sleep until 4 or 5 in the afternoon. But more often than not I wouldn't get up until about 1 or 2. I love that now, on the weekends, I can wake up at 9 and feel like I've been great and wondrous gift of an extra hour and a half of sleep. Actually making a concerted effort to get six or more hours of sleep a night has made this seem reasonable.

This morning I awoke after being up far later last night than I have been in weeks. And by far later what I really mean is 2:30am. I wasn't doing anything interesting, I was recovering from the adrenaline rush of trying to fix a crisis that arose at work. It involved airplanes and airports in New York and possibly Homeland Security and I can probably blame President George W. Bush for the fact that I was up until 2:30am. I'm gonna roll with that unless I find out on Monday that it was someone else's fault.

Anyway, what caused me to wake up at the same time this morning that I do every other day of the week? A strange crashing sound out my window (which, despite a "freezing warning" was open because I live on the third floor of my house, and we all learned in kindergarten or something that heat rises... so it's freezing down in the kitchen, and a tropical resort in my room). I bleary-eyed looked out the window and could make no sense of the situation. And then I remembered that I've worn glasses for the last ten years of my life, and making visual sense of the world below would be aided by actually putting them on my face. And then I saw the dog.

Far below on the sidewalk was a dog I have noticed in my neighborhood before. I notice this dog because in an age of Human Societies, and a concerted effort to reduce the population of mutts in the world, it is very rare to see a.... shall I say, "intact" dog. But intact he is. Independent of his anatomical correctness, the dog looks sort of like a cross between a greyhound and a great dane. He has the height and face of a great dane, but the body and build of a greyhound. Anyway. The glorious sound that brought me out of slumber at 7:30 this morning, the crashing of metal against metal was caused by this dog.

Two cars, swerving to avoid the dog? Someone distracted by his dangling bits, crashing into a lightpole?

Nay my friends. The dog’s owner had tied him to a wrought iron patio chair, and apparently the dog had decided he no longer wanted to be where he was, and so he left. But he took the chair with him, because you never really know when you will need a nice patio chair. And as he was running with his freedom down the glorious streets of North West Washington DC he came to an abrupt stop. His buddy, the chair, had become intractably lodged underneath the creepy black van parked outside my house.

This was when I began observing the scene. Uncomprehending, and still reminding my eyes of how to focus in order for my brain to process information, I saw a giant dog and a creepy black van outside my house. And like any good neighbor I stayed in my warm, cozy bed and opened the window a little wider. After a moment I heard the frantic calls of the dog’s person. Having recently spent untold hours calling for a reluctant animal who is doing what he oughtn't, I felt a twinge of guilt for not pulling on some sort of clothing and going out to assist the guy (at this point I didn't quite understand why the dog couldn't freely continue on his jaunt to the great dog park of freedom). But I'm kind of intimidated by any dog owner who, for whatever reason, does not "fix" his dog.

Guy arrived, dog was disentangled from creepy black van, and guy, firmly scolding the dog, retreated, chair in tow.

And, at 7:35 this morning I was in my cozy bed, with two small cats curled around me, observing this poor man's misfortune, and empathizing. From my warm cozy bed. If i stayed up all night and slept until 2pm I would never get to see these things.