Got a 6am flight out of Dulles tomorrow, which should put me into Palm Springs around 10:30 am, just in time for a double double from In-N-Out.

Guess I should start packing. Be back in DC Monday night.

Oh, you don’t get President’s Day off? That sucks.

Roommate #3, originally uploaded by lfincher.

Just dropped a slobber encrusted tennis ball on my keyboard. Sure is adorable, though.

This may come as a shock to many of my DC friends, and I’ve already gotten my fair share of “virginia dude wtf?” instant messages, but I’ve finally moved out of the District of Columbia and across the Potomac River to the suburbs of Arlington, Virginia. Yeah, still in the DC metro area, unfortunately, but in a much nicer area. I haven’t seen a rat yet, and while we are still surrounded by people carrying firearms, they are U.S. Marines who actually know how to properly use them.

This all came about because my roommates and I gave our landlord notice on our house on Harvard Street in Columbia Heights. Since there is no way in hell I am committing to this area and signing a one year lease on another place, I am staying at my friend’s house while I try to figure out what to do with my life. I am considering the following:

1. Move to Houston. Find job in energy industry. Take GMAT. Go to business school eventually.

2. Apply for a Fulbright in Kazakhstan or Azerbaijan and write a research paper on oil or whatever.

3. Become a bounty hunter. I once read a Rolling Stone article about bounty hunters and it sounded like an exciting job. You get to kick in people’s doors and stuff.

Of all three options, I will grant you that the first is the most feasible. So while I formulate some sort of plan to accomplish this, I will, in the meantime, relish nights without gunfire, fighting, sirens, and the constant buzz of helicopters.

‘Cause it was saved:

The California Coastal Commission handed environmentalists a major victory and rejected the pleas of motorists Wednesday, voting down plans to build a six-lane toll road through San Onofre State Beach, a popular preserve in north San Diego County known for its scenery and famous surf spots.

Before a boisterous crowd of more than 3,500 people, commissioners decided 8 to 2 that the proposed Foothill South project violates the California Coastal Act, which is designed to regulate development along the state’s 1,100-mile shoreline. They reached the conclusion following hours of sometimes heated public testimony that pitted protecting the environment against the need to relieve traffic congestion in south Orange County.

[...]

The vote, which was greeted by an enormous cheer, followed 12 hours of public testimony from the crowd, of whom 2,500 made formal requests to speak, the largest number for a hearing in the commission’s more than 30 years of operation.

Some arrived by bus, brought by surf-industry companies opposed to the project. Others came as members of construction unions that support it. Some in the crowd carried surfboards as a symbol of protest. Others dressed as if attending a long-awaited football game.

My favorite sign: “They’re paid to be here” (latimes.com)

Admittedly, I was a bit puzzled by this paragraph in a NYTimes article about the proposed toll road:

Some supporters of the road say it would open up San Onofre State Beach, already the state’s fifth-most-visited state park, to people from inland cities. Right now, they say, the beach is dominated by a clique of territorial surfers.

WTF? San Onofre is the most chill place I’ve surfed. “A clique of territorial surfers” makes it sound like you’ll get hounded out of the water for being an inlander. It’s a STATE PARK.
Everyone’s gotta wait in the same line and pay the same fee to get in. If you want a toll road, move to New Jersey.

If this is indeed true, I will be the happiest person alive when this movie opens:

Jason Bateman has just confirmed to me that the creative minds behind Arrested Development (Mitch Hurwitz and Ron Howard) have put the wheels in motion toward a major motion picture of the Fox TV comedy so many of us adore. I’m told by insiders that Jason and other Bluth family members have received calls from producers (Hurwitz and Howard) asking if they would be willing to shoot a movie.

“I can confirm that a round of sniffing has started,” Bateman says. “Any talk is targeting a poststrike situation, of course. I think, as always, that it’s a question of whether the people with the money are willing to give our leader, Mitch Hurwitz, what he deserves for his participation. And I can speak for the cast when I say our fingers are crossed.”

If you’ve never seen the TV show you must run to your nearest Best Buy and purchase the DVD set IMMEDIATELY. You can thank me after you’ve watched the entire thing in one sitting.

Lucille: I bought it using the new unfrozen stock as soon as I received the memo.

Michael Bluth: You mean, the memo that specifically told you not to sell?

Lucille: Did it say that? I stopped after “unfrozen.”

Alright, so I ordered this book:

Elisabeth already got hers so we were flipping through it today. There are, uh, lots of math equations and what not. AND YOU CAN’T USE A CALCULATOR ON THE GMAT. This frightens me.

Also, it costs $250 just to take this damn test. And then there’s all those pricey GMAT prep classes or whatever. What a racket.

An Assault with a gun was reported on 2/01/2008 in the 1300 block of Irving St NW between the hours of 9:00 am and 9:05 am. The complainant reports that an unknown male pulled the complainants hair and pointed a gun to the complainants chest and walked away. The suspect is a black male 5’8, slim and is a juvenile. The suspect fled. – MPD PSA 304 Crime Report

Actually, it was more like 8:45am. I was walking to the Columbia Heights metro on Friday morning, in the pouring rain, listening to the iPod, when I heard a woman (around my age) about 20 feet in front of me scream. She had dropped her umbrella and the kid who was near her started to walk away quickly. She was probably 100 or so feet from the entrance to the metro, and was standing there, in shock. I approached her and asked if she was alright.

“That guy just pulled a gun on me.”

Whoa.

“Do you want me to call the cops?”

“That guy just pulled a gun on me. I don’t even know if it was real.” It probably was, I thought to myself.

“I don’t even know if it was real. What is wrong with this city?”

At that moment, I couldn’t really answer that question. But there is something really fucked up about a place where a teenager pulls a gun on you while you are walking down a well-trafficked street at 8:45am. It’s not really something you expect to encounter during your morning commute.

More half smoke art at Ben’s Chili Bowl, originally uploaded by lfincher.

Oh, I definitely will. I love Ben’s. Half of the photos on my phone are of their half smokes. This was my reward for helping Elisabeth move a couch from Silver Spring to Adams Morgan.

Previous art can be found here.

Wow, I actually received responses to my flip flop rant from TWO TSA employees. One posted a response on my previous blog entry:

Thanks for the link. We appreciate it.

We’re working to get unburied from the 1,500 plus comments we’ve received in the past 48 hours so I wanted to personally answer your questions. We will get to your post and publish it but for now:

Looking back since TSA’s inception, we’ve really been all over the map on shoes. First they were okay but nail clippers weren’t, then Richard Reid tried to light an improvised explosive device (IED) in his big, euro sneaker boots on his way to Miami so we started asking people with big, euro sneaker boots to take them off, then we started having passengers remove any shoe with a 1 inch heel or sole (you try measuring 4 million shoes per day moving through a checkpoint) which allowed all but the clunkiest flip-flops to pass on by. So…in August 2006 we went to all shoes off, all the time.

The reason is simple. Our intel folks, that are truly tied into the international intelligence community, are telling us that terrorists are still interested in using shoes to hide IEDs or their sometimes very small components. The plain fact is that explosives can be made to appear like pretty much anything, including flip-flops and by putting all 4 million shoes we see everyday through the x-ray machine we have a better chance of catching anything stinky (sorry, couldn’t help the pun).

Oh, also, we’re using blogger because it’s easy and free. Don’t want to be accused of wasting “Your Tax Dollars At Work.” We’re still pretty new at this so bear with us.

Look forward to continued comments from you and yours.

Christopher

Evolution Blog Team

and the other posted a response on the TSA blog:

Lindsey,

As an occasional Crocs wearer, ouch, that hurts. Can’t argue with you about the ugliness, but they sure are comfortable.

As both a TSA employee and a frequent traveler, I feel your shoeless pain. No one likes taking off their shoes, myself included, but until we get one technology that can get a good look at everything, including shoes, in one shot, all shoes – including flip flops – have to come off. Any shoe can be tampered with, and trust me, the last thing you want is the government trying to classify exactly what a “sandal” is. Yikes.
So you know, Ethel, one of our moderators, is actively working on solutions so you can keep your flip flops on.

Say what you will about the TSA, at least their blog staff has a sense of humor.

Actor George Clooney has been made a United Nations “messenger of peace” to promote the organisation’s peacekeeping activities around the world.

The Hollywood star has campaigned to stop the conflict in Darfur, Sudan.

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon hailed his “dedication to raising awareness and mobilising action on Darfur”.
Clooney pledged to build support for the UN’s “critically important work in some of the most difficult, dangerous and dire places in the world”.

WTF? I totally made this recommendation, like, over a year ago. OK, slight difference, I said Clooney should be the U.S. ambassador to the UN, but whatever, I think it’s apparent that the SecGen stole this idea from yours truly.