Kids' Artwork

I'm leaving this weekend for Milan, so I won't be adding any new posts until my return the following weekend. I'll post pictures for your enjoyment soon after I get back.

In the meantime, I'll leave you with this. The ATF sponsored a kids’ art contest to populate a permanent exhibit in the new ATF headquarters building in Washington. They requested artwork from ATF employees’ children that depicted what they thought their parents did at work....With hilarious results! You can see the whole mess here. Below are my favorites. There's no explanation of what the kids' interpretations were, so I've made up my own.

"My daddy is an obsessive-compulsive paper pusher."

"My daddy gets shot from cannons."

"My mommy is held prisoner in the top floor of the ATF headquarters by friendly Heaven's Gate cult members, who are happy the triangle space ships have come to take them home. The freckled giant warns his goat not to open the threatening-looking red door."

Kickball!

Kickball season is once again upon us, which means hundreds of DC-area young professionals in matching T-shirts are filling up the National Mall on Sunday afternoons and filling up our crappy post-game dive bar on Sunday evenings. It's 45 minutes of kickball and 4 hours of drinking!

Look at me go! I'm so fast I'm just a blur barely caught on camera! ...Ignore the guy in maroon to the right who looks like he just threw the ball to first base. It must be that my lightning speed disrupted the space-time continuum, and things that have not yet happened are mysteriously appearing in this photograph. Crazy.

Landscaper's Challenge

We paid good money for poop on Friday. A whole lot of it, and some compost and peat moss too. All this was in preparation for our weekend project--tearing out the giant shrubberies (!) in front of our house. They were planted when Ronald Reagan was president, so they were pretty stubborn. Now that they were old enough to have finished college, it was time to show them a little tough-love. Actually, there was no love involved. We cussed at them, hoping they'd give up and die, but ultimately it was a combination of cutting the giant tentacle roots and pulling them out with the truck that did them in. It was a 2-day job, and we're glad we didn't know that when we started, or we might have let them stay. We had the added "encouragement" of not having anywhere good to store the bags of cow manure etc. Driving to work all week with a bed full of poop wasn't an option!

Below are some "before" and "intermediate" pictures. I'll provide the "after" pictures once we get the new plantings in (probably next weekend).

Who needs an intercom when we can IM?

S: "Flying out of Pissburg is about $100 cheaper--probably not worth the hassle considering it's a 4 hour drive."
Z: "pissburg?..."
S: "It was initially a typo, but then I considered it a freudian slip and left it in."

Living in Oblivion

I was trying to think of a good 80s song title that would embody the links I'm about to share. Actually, I used to think this song's chorus was "I am so afraaaaaid...of living in a Libya." I didn't understand what the extra article in front of Libya was for, but it seemed like a valid concern!

Anyway, back to my original thought. The 80s are apparently back. My evidence--from retailers I used to think so highly of!--is here, here, here, here, and here. Don't even get me started on gauchos! Huaraches? No thanks, I learn from MY mistakes!

Tummy Station

Today was ordinary, but had some interesting spots. One of them was discovering a restaurant in a shady food court (my coworker's description) named "Tummy Station". Today was also the first nice day where one could sit outdoors comfortably, so a couple coworkers and I lunched outside and held a group study session; we're trying to cram a bunch of world and foreign policy history knowledge into our heads for an upcoming exam. We spent time discussing political impacts and interpretations of current events, thinking that would help us prepare for the essay. The excitement never stops, I tell ya!

Walking from my office to the Metro after work, I saw a concrete truck on its way somewhere unintentionally (I assume) adding a new layer of concrete all over the roadway. Cars in the adjacent lane were dodging out of the way to prevent having concrete dumped on them. I'm not sure the driver even noticed. Then I got on the Metro and encountered a woman in a low-cut top...with chest hair! There was a woman in my yoga class last weekend who chose to flaunt her French grooming habits by wearing a little cami, but this was way worse.

Unless my pointy-haired boss throws up a roadblock, it looks like I'm going to Milan (Italy, not Tennessee) in April! I've already had the opportunity to feel inadequate in the presence of French haute couture, and now it looks like I'll have the chance to look longingly into the windows of Versace, Ferragamo, and Prada!

Mercury in Sushi

This article says:

"Gotmercury.org proposes to take the study to various cities across the United States and educate sushi consumers on the risks of mercury intake, which can permanently damage the nervous system in fetuses and may cause temporary memory loss in adults."

So then how is sushi any different from beer? Anyway, I'm going on a sushi bender at lunch today.

Homer will kill us in our sleep one day

We saw this at a kiosk at the mall last night. The dog in the picture looks so much like Homer--sparse, ratty hair and unhappy-yet-tolerant facial expression included! So we, and by "we" I mean "I", bought this for Homer. For his part, Zach didn't try too hard to stop me...and he was the one to break it out of its package and put it on Homer right after we got home. On a more practical note, I thought this would be great for Homer on cold days. The hood will protect his ears, which have been getting so cold that he folds them all the way back to try to keep them out of the wind. Plus, how can you not love the little tassle?!?