I just had to put this picture up...we got a good laugh out of it! She did it all herself!

RUN!

Yesterday started off with more exercise than I was expected. I left the apartment a whole 2 minutes later than I usually do to walk to the bus stop. The closest bus stop enroute to the train station is one block down and one block over from our building. As I left our apartment and turned the corner, I looked down the street to see the bus turning the corner a whole 9 minutes earlier than it usually does! Keep in mind that the mathematics involved in my getting to work are very complicated; I am sure it could be considered a branch of astrophysics. If even one cog in my plan is slightly off-kilter, I'm sunk.

So I did the most logical thing I can think of at 5:38 in the morning and started running like I was wearing pants made from steak and there was a hungry, albeit slightly wounded, cheetah chasing after me. I made it around the corner and saw a woman getting off the bus, and one getting on; I thought: "I can make it!". I made it about 40 feet from the bus and was yelling and waving my arms and...watching the bus take off. Not just gradually though...no, no...he stomped on the gas. Another block and a half later I realized the bus driver was a fascist and I stopped running.

Now I had 10 minutes to get to Penn Station before my train left. I could have ran all the way there, but I decided first I would check my wallet to see if I had enough cash to take a cab. I looked: $4.75...pay dirt! That seemed like enough, so I hailed a cab and watched as the cost of my trip slowly approached the asymptote that was the amount of money in my pocket. "How much?" I asked the man. "$4.60," he said. I sheepishly hand over my awkward combination of bills and change, say "thank you" and run in to the train station.

For the first time ever, I did not sleep one wink of the 55 minute train ride in to DC. Maybe it was because the running had my adrenalin pumping...or maybe it was the guilt for only giving the cabbie a $0.15 tip.


-N

Lost in a crowd

Wow, was that protest in DC last weekend? It seems a lot longer ago than that...
During my lunch break last week, I waded through a sea of people to reach the mall and the hoards attending the Iraq war protest. It was surreal, if nothing else. I went down 7th st. at about 300, well after the actual protest had ended. I've never seen so many people in my entire life; it really made me think about how awesome the March on Washington must have been.

I enjoy people watching. It's fun to watch others interact, listen to what they say-even just sitting back, blurring my vision and taking in the Impressionistic blur of movement and colors is soothing. Being there made me realize something: a lone person in a group of groups becomes cloaked in there own anonymity. I had no reason to be there; I wasn't protesting, or protesting the protest, I just wanted to see what it was like. I felt like a ghost bobbing between the people playing frisbee on the lawn and the people using their picket signs as a crutch to lean on. No one seemed to notice me because I was alone.

The unfortunate thing about the whole protest was the nature of most of the signs. Many of them accomplished nothing other than displaying the carriers' disdain for the president. Now, I don't agree with the war (I'm not even touching that right now), but does it really do any good to gather together united under a banner of "hatred?" I don't care much for the administration either, but I don't think anything is being accomplished by engaging in hatred. Hatred makes people kill other people (or bomb them), not liberate them.

-N