i love DC!!

i live in southwest DC. now, who on earth would think that a movie would be filmed in my building! a Russell Crowe movie no less...an academy award-winning Russell Crowe!
it took me nearly a year and a half to find this building when i decided i wanted to live in DC near the Potomac. no one, even if they'd lived in the 'metro area', which, by the way, includes northern virginia and it seems, all of maryland, knew where the hell southwest washington was! but when i found it, it didn't take me long to realize; 'YES, this is IT!!' i had read a story in the washington post one saturday describing the area. being from san diego, it seemed perfect.
so, some movie company is filming right here in my ever-loving building! how exciting is THAT??
anyway, i just had to share my excitement. i'll share the name of the movie when it's released. and you know how long THAT can take.

one of my boss' favorite stories....42

Answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything
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Redirected from The Answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything

The 42 Puzzle, as it appeared in The Illustrated Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy The Answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything has a numeric solution in Douglas Adams' series The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. In the story, a "simple answer" to The Ultimate Question is requested from the computer Deep Thought—specially built for this purpose. It takes Deep Thought 7½ million years to compute and check the answer which turns out to be 42. Unfortunately, The Ultimate Question itself is unknown - suggesting on an allegorical level that it is more important to ask the right questions than to seek definite answers.
When asked to produce The Ultimate Question, the computer says that it can't, but can help design an even more powerful computer (the Earth) which can. The programmers then embark on a further, ultimately futile, ten million year program to discover The Ultimate Question, a process that is hindered after eight million years by the unexpected arrival on Earth of the Golgafrinchans, and then ruined completely, five minutes before completion, when the Earth is destroyed by the Vogons.

The author was presented with many readers' theories about The Ultimate Question and The Ultimate Answer in his lifetime, all of which he rebutted with his own somewhat apocryphal explanations.

or, in the words of my boss...'Eet ees what eet ees'.

smells.....

Some people just do not realize when they don’t bathe and instead pour on some kind of fragrance it just makes them really, really stinky. It’s bad enough to encounter these people in a public place like the mall or maybe a restaurant that isn’t guarded by someone who may not allow a stinky person inside….but when they’re encountered in the elevator or cafeteria at work? OMG!

Then there’s the lunch hour smells….there’s much ethnicity where I work. Nice people, but oh the smells. Makes me want to ask the powers that be to ban microwaves so there is nowhere to heat this stuff up!

Smelly cars should be banned. I thought the reason we had cars tested for emissions was to keep them from bellowing heavy, toxic gases or, by golly, emissions! It’s really disgusting to be behind a car puffing out gray stuff! Ugh!

Perfume sprayers...…the ones who spray themselves when they come in to work, and just before they leave. Come on, do it in your car, or before you leave home or when you get home! Some of those ‘fragrances’ have to be worse for us than cigarette smoke! I worked with a woman who died from toxic fragrance smell. She would get horrible headaches when she had patients who wore too much perfume. One day she simply keeled over and died. Cause of death? Brain aneurism caused by allergy to heavy perfume! I’ve NEVER heard of anyone dying instantly from cigarette smoke!

Smell-affected people unite!

Obama & the preacher-man debacle

i have been a fan of Obama since he spoke at the democratic convention in '04! i didn't notice he was black then...and guess WHAT? he is just as much WHITE as he is BLACK! i don't get it. are people really so racist? what makes a difference if he's half jewish, half swedish, half african?? granted, there's that whole slavery issue, none of which his family was a party to, nor were many other african-american families in this country! get a grip, a-holes!

OMG...i was raised southern baptist. i 'know' these preacher/pastor guys! they just say things! i went to 'church camp' every summer until i was 15. southern baptist preachers (SBPs) are the biggest racists out there whether their skin is black or white. i was told i would go to hell if i didn't stop hangin' around with catholics. SBPs seem to have their own spin on the bible.

for Obama to have to justify knowing and respecting this guy for 20 years is ludicrous! he went to church, got religion, the guy was his pastor...i doubt the last 20 years this preacher-man has yelled constantly about race and this damnable america. and hasn't someone you've respected said stuff you haven't agreed with? come on!

i swear, if it wasn't for the media takin' this crap on like it's a sequel to some major movie drama and youtube didn't exist would this be important? an issue? known about? do ya reckon hillary's 'team' put them up to it?

i say the whole preacher/pastor debacle isn't gonna hurt Obama at all...people have got to be smarter than that! don't they?

dog lover's nightmare

i have what my daughter calls a boston terrier/chihuahua mix. in reality he is a registered boston terrier with traits dating back before breeders started making their noses extremely flat; he's brindle, which is rather rare and he has an actual nose. he does, however, have rather large ears; this would be the reason my daughter swears he is at least 1/4 chihuahua...not that there's anything wrong with that.

mr pimms is 5 1/2 years old. i got him when he was 3 months. at 5 months i took him to pet smart for puppy training. i particularly wanted him to get along with other dogs so i could take him to the dog park. he wasn't afraid to take on anything that approached him. a huge bearded collie that must have weighed 100 pounds but was the same age as mr pimms became his best friend. they ripped around the dog park, bashing into trees (sometimes people), causing the other dogs join in. mr pimms is a legend at the dog park now for having been 'the one' to train the other dogs how to play.

all of that fun came to a screeching halt a few months ago with the addition of two dogs owned by a cop. a lady cop. having never owned a dog before, she was clueless about these large dogs she had adopted, a big male and a fairly large female, both shepherd mixes. the male, Ike, was pretty aggressive. he hated mr pimms. keeping in mind that she's a cop and knows there's a leash law in DC, she would let them both off leash a block from the dog park and they would come running from out of nowhere. that was the end of our daily trip to the dog park for a few months. there were many complaints about these dogs. Ike had attacked a small furry white dog, nearly killing it; he had chased numerous cats; had attacked many dogs at the dog park, including mr pimms. the owners in the building in which the cop lady lives had let her know that she or the dogs would have to go. before the powers that be had a chance to have a hearing about what to do, copy lady had Ike put down, and gave away the female. what a tragedy! Ike was a beautiful dog. he would have been a great dog for someone with a yard. common sense did not enter into this picture. the only positive here is i can take mr pimms back to the dog park without the fear of him being attacked. a fear that never would have had to be there in the first place.

leaving the mansion....

All this bs about the governor of ny…what the hell. I am amazed that people react to the stupid stuff men do! Face it people, they’re animals. They do what comes naturally. It’s always been that way. We shouldn’t be shocked by anything they do in regard to their sexual instincts, desires, or manifestations thereof!

What is pathetic is watching the wife of this current newsworthy asshole standing at the podium with him looking like a wounded puppy! She’s been ridiculed for being there, laughed at for being there, applauded for being there! Give me a break! It’s another one of those ‘what would you do?’ moments! This particular asshole has 3 teenage daughters. Daughters forgive their dads for nearly anything and everything they could possibly do. Trust me. I know this to be true! So…my guess would be that most women will forgive their spouses for just about anything. In the past women forgave because they were too afraid to be ‘out on their own with the kids’…Not so much anymore. Today some have better jobs than their spouses and are STILL afraid to lose them. In the big picture all (okay, only 99.9%) men are animals and will stray no matter what, women still think they can’t live without them!

‘We have to stay together for the kids’….’he promised he’d never do that again’….’he feels so guilty’….I think there’s something we all have to understand, here. Men will never change. We live with that, or we don’t bother with them unless absolutely necessary. (perhaps for our own sexual instincts, and stuff….)


So what should happen to this guy? Not that anything will. He is not only the governor of ny but he was born with a silver spoon (if you’re younger than dirt, you probably have no idea what that means or why people say it). It means he was born into wealth. So will he, like ‘johns’ caught on the street picking up hookers, go to jail? Nah. Will the hooker go to jail? Not likely either.

 

Do you know what you'd do?

having a child with very young children gives me pause. pause to reflect on when my children were very young. i had a fabulous, intelligent, gorgeous husband who gave me beautiful children, had a fantastic job, helped around the house (including cooking), and everyone loved him. what happens between the time the children are young, and when they start to mature, is way beyond what anyone can figure out. people change. children grow and change. shit happens. before i go further i have to say this man gave me the 'best years of my life'. he allowed me the freedom to learn to fly, and to persue nearly any other dream i might have had. him being the entrepreneurial man that he was gave us the opportunity to do and see things most young couples don't get to do and see. for the most part, the children were involved in all that we did just by being. they led stellar lives themselves. as teenagers they had vehicles, friends, and 'stuff' that most of their friends envied. amazingly, they've grown into wonderful adults. i attribute that fact to good genes, not how we raised them.

something happened in our marriage. i like to blame it simply on alcohol, but in reality the alcoholic he became was likely caused by the disease he caught while in viet nam...called post traumatic stress. the problem became obvious about 12 years into our wedded bliss. i won't go into the gory details. it was tough living like that for the following 9 years, for both of us. the proverbial straw that broke the camel's back came with the affair. i'm guessing it was his way of getting out of a bad situation; a life he couldn't quite handle.

so what would you do? i flipped out. i couldn't work for a year. i did really stupid things. i figured if he could have an affair and leave us for another woman, i could have a boyfriend, kinda like the frying pan into the fire stupidity! the boyfriend was a total loser. absolutely gorgeous, but stupid as a rock. some things just don't matter when you've lost every credible thought you've ever had. gradually i went down the road to destruction...of myself, my kids, the house we'd lived in for 17 glorious years. the hurt from the devastation was deep. i can't tell you what happened in my life over the following couple of years. i didn't do drugs. all that i went through during that time would make a lot more sense had i done drugs. i have no excuse except to say my emotions got the better of me.

why the emotions? why not see the reality, file for divorce, take the asshole for everything we'd worked so hard for for 21 years? i have no idea. it is just what happened. i lost it. i had loved this man totally for most of my adult life. him leaving us, no matter what we had to go through, was beyond my comprehension.

i read somewhere it takes 6 months for every year you were married to recover from a breakup. that's a little over 10 years in our case. that pretty much says it. it'll be 15 years on st. patricks day and i've pretty much been over it for the last 5 years or so.

leap to the present. i now see this estranged husband on nearly a weekly basis at my daughter's home. a few years ago he suffered some health problems and she convinced him to move close to her. he lives 80 miles from us, has gotten rather feeble, so he stays at her home for days at a time. this allows him to see his grandchildren. keeping in mind she was the only child left at home when the shit hit the fan and came with me when i left california for a new life, her forgiveness of her father is sometimes hard for me to fathom. i manage to be cordial to him. he's suffered more than he deserves, but sometimes i just have to attribute that to 'divine retribution'.

 

 

so...i'm a southern california snob

born and raised in the sunbelt...not just ANY part of the sunbelt, but the california sunbelt. the land of beautiful people. i never gave that much thought until i moved to 'the other coast' and my daughter spent a few days in ocean city, maryland and relayed horror stories about the people she saw there. she was totally freaked out! i thought she was just homesick so i talked a new east coast friend into taking me there. now granted, people are people, and you can find all shapes and sizes just about anywhere. but this was different! along the boardwalk there are restaurants and small shops and at the end of the boardwalk is a ferris wheel, other rides, and those games where you throw balls and stuff and win stuffed animals...you know what i mean - people you see there are in a word, strange. not strange in the sense of the word we all know, but really, really strange. not all, certainly, but the majority. there were families of big-headed people. really! big heads. i'd never seen families with big heads. not just abnormally large heads, BIG heads. there were misshapened families...not just the mom, or just the dad..but whole families of misshapened people. it's a scary place. i'm thinkin' generations of intermarriage must play a role here. ocean city isn't the only place for this phenomenon, but probably more evident because it's a popular vacation spot, and a beach city. yikes!

i rode the metro to and from work the first year and a half i lived here. among the multitudes of strange folks on the metro there was one dude who wore a see-through plastic square on his head. yep. it was put together with duct tape. couldn't really call him a 'bubble boy'. i guess you could, but he was more like a 'box-boy'. the sad thing was, no one stared at him, he was like 'normal'.

i'm guessing the real reason i was so shocked by the 'difference' in the looks of people here is people have always moved to california for basically three reasons - jobs, weather, or to be one of the beautiful people, and growing up i didn't know that, so i presumed with the exception of a few now and then, all people looked like californians. mid-western, white-bred, blond, blue-eyed sturdy folks with maybe a little mix of somethin' else. sure there were hispanics, african americans, asians, all of that, too...but can't say that i saw too many strange lookin' folks.

maybe it's the long, cold winter. i've heard that about maine.

ya never know...

so, i have this great friend, Sousan. she's from Iran (she likes to say she's Persian, it sounds more intriquing). i met her the first month on my current job, nearly 8 years ago. she's my age (oldish) but looks much younger as she has beautiful skin of which i am totally jealous! when i first met her i thought she was french because she has a really cool accent even though she's lived in the US for 40some-odd years. she speaks farsi with her family, hence the accent.

we have basically the same views on life. i was married for 21 years and have 3 kids; she has never been married but had a 7 year 'thing' with 'some guy' many years ago. she does regret never having kids but has a niece she raised from babyhood who may as well be her own daughter. her brother's wife took off when her niece was born. she also has 3 grandnephews and a grandniece, so knows what it's like to be a grandma. we share stories all the time about 'the kids', hers, and my grandson and granddaughter. they all range in age from 1 year to 4ish.

Sousan 'gets it'. it's really difficult to find people who 'get it'. you know what i mean. if you're having a conversation and say something 'off the wall', they just get what you mean.

we absolutely do not spend enough time together, but figure while we can, we need to work, save money for retirement, and play when we can. the problem with being our age and still having to work is we're too tired to play when we do have the time. sometimes we discuss women we work with who are at or near our age and plan to retire when they hit that golden number of 55 or 60 or 62 or whatever that number is for them. they're able to retire either because they had a great job they previously retired from with a tidy sum, or perhaps a spouse who will have a tidy sum at retirement. so, since neither of us had a great job we previously retired from, she never had a spouse, and my spouse turned out to be a louse, we contemplate whether or not we would be up to having a spouse or significant other to depend on for that day. we discuss this often, and generally come to the same conclusion each time; it just wouldn't be worth it.

a few years ago we talked about buying a house together, one we could literally split down the middle and each live in half. that conversation still comes up now and then. it's a do-able idea that may someday come to pass....but for now, we play when we feel like it, and work because we have to...