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Waiting out March

March 09 Calendar
Originally uploaded by Matt Schwarz

I'm anxiously watching the last days of March clicking down, wondering which is going to hold my fate.

Seriously.

This past August I spent the better part of a week in Lily Dale, New York. I've written a few (1, 2, 3) previous posts here about my experiences there.

As I wrote in those earlier posts, Lily Dale is a small town in upstate New York that is entirely owned and run by followers of the Spiritualist religion. "Entirely" as in they run all the hotels, restaurants, post office, fire department...everything.

Spiritualists believe that ghosts act as intermediaries between the living and God, often providing advice and guidance to the living.

So, obviously, Lily Dale is an unusual place.

During my first public service on my first day in Lily Dale, a medium named Brenda told me she had a message for me.

"I'm sensing a spirit…a maternal spirit, please…perhaps a mother or grandmother. Is your grandmother on your mother’s side in spirit, please?"

Assuming that "in spirit" was a euphemism for "dead," I responded "Yes."

"Okay, that's it," Brenda said. "Tell me, please, was she a little round in the bottom?"

Now how was I supposed to answer that? My grandmother wasn't really overweight, but she wasn't rail thin, either. Imagine how pissed off my grandmother would be if she traveled back from Grandma Heaven to deliver a message to her oldest grandchild just to arrive as he said, "Oh yeah, Grannie had a huge ass!"

I just shrugged my shoulders and said nothing.

"That's okay," Brenda said. "I feel the spirit that is reaching out to you is definitely Grandma."

Brenda paused for a moment.

"She wants to surround you with light and love right now and let you know that she watches over you and is proud of you," Brenda said. "She knows that you have a job that is difficult and demanding and she is proud that you do this work. She says that you will be given a wonderful opportunity to advance your career, in March. Yes. In March. It will be a good thing, nothing to fear.

"That…that is mostly it…she just wants you to know that she misses you and knows how much you loved her. She wants to leave you with blessings…oh. There is one more thing, please. Grandma wasn't much of a car person, was she, please?" Brenda asked.

"No," I replied.

"Well," Brenda said with a slight chuckle. "Grandma wants you to check your tire pressure over the coming weeks, please."

“My tire pressure?"

"Yes, she says that it is nothing dangerous; just make sure you are watching it carefully to be safe. That’s it. And I leave you with God's light and love."

Then Brenda got a message from some woman's Uncle Floyd and was off in another direction.

Tire pressure? Job opportunity in March?

I drove seven and a half hours to get there, just to have my dead grandmother tell me to watch my tire pressure and wait seven months for good career news? Others came to Lily Dale to connect one more time with the recently departed, find out what will happen to themselves and their loved ones, understand the afterlife and how to prepare for it, and finally figure out where Aunt Myra hid her jewelry. All I got was some car and career advice from a woman who couldn't tell a tire gauge from a meat thermometer…oh, and had been dead for more than twenty years.

Nine days after returning from Lily Dale a few friends and I were on our way to a movie. I was driving and my friend Joe was giving me directions. Bad directions. After turning the wrong way down a street, I attempted a three-point turn to head the other direction. In the middle of my second turn, I bumped up against a curb and heard a loud pop.

A flat tire.

The mechanic later told me it blew because it was only half full.

I should have checked my pressure, he said.

Needless to say, since then I've always wondered what was going to happen in March. Seeing that it is now late on Friday, and there are only two more business days to go, I'm fully expecting that either Monday or Tuesday will be very exciting.

We'll see.

Like looking in a mirror

mirrors
Originally uploaded by °flo

I was walking through Chinatown the other day when this guy walked up between me and the guy who happened to be walking next to me (yet slightly behind me).

"Oh my God," the approaching guy exclaimed. "You two could be brothers."

I was in a hurry and just kept walking along. However, I wanted to find a coy way to turn around and look at my suggested brother. What did he look like? Would I be happy to be compared to him? Would he be happy to be compared to me?

Eventually, curiosity got the best of me and I faked checking my cell phone and turned around. He was rail thin, about six foot six, and probably in his mid-60s.

My first reaction was to look him over good. My second reaction was to check for my wallet (it was there--I don't know why, but whenever I have a weird experience on the street I always check in back pockets).

But then the tall guy suddenly turned around and started walking in the other direction.

Maybe it was our eyes.

Come see me in Charlottesville

so fast he can't be captured on film
Originally uploaded by ericandkatherine

So if you happen to be reading this blog...and you happen to be in Charlottesville, Virginia...and you happen to have no plans today...you should come see me read as part of the Virginia Festival of the Book. The festival extends across two dozen locations across the University of Virginia campus and downtown Charlottesville. I'm reading and making bad jokes at the Albemarle County Office Building location at 2 p.m.

The author appearing after me is some nobody named...John Grisham (I hear he's written a few legal thrillers that have done okay). I'm sure this John whatever-his-name feels much better about showing up, knowing that the copious crowds who will come to see me read will probably be polite and hang around to hear a bit of him.

Only in Ohio

Stories like this make me miss Ohio. Though people have their own concepts about life in the mid-west, stories like only happens in places like Ohio.

Quote:

A transgender woman was sentenced Friday to four years in prison for killing her frail husband by forcing him to exercise.

A surveillance camera caught Mason forcing her husband around in the pool.

Chris Mason also goes by Christine Newton-John, the name she took after her 1993 sex change.

[Link]

Music to get married and eat barbeque by

My friends Meghan and Joe are getting married in May. Meghan recently asked a few friends, including me, to come up with playlists for their outdoor wedding reception afterward.

Her instructions to me: "Keep it upbeat...throw in some old stuff...about an hour...stuff people might dance to."

I take playlist-making quite seriously, probably waaaaay more seriously than I need to. So I started working on it almost immediately. Every few days I tinker--adding a few songs, removing a few, rearranging the order. I'll probably be fussing with it until the morning of the wedding.

Here is where it is at now, click to listen...

Who be the man? Metro driver be the man.

McGruff is a perv
Originally uploaded by NCinDC

Here is a life lesson from me to you: Never fuck with a DC Metro bus driver.

Thankfully, this advice does not come from personal experience. I'm the dork who says "good morning" to the bus driver when I get on and "thank you" before exiting.

I come by this advice simply by reading the paper.

The first was this story of a metro driver who pulled his bus up to a guy dressed as McGruff the Crime Dog, got out of the bus, punched the McGruff dude so hard he fell over, then got back on the busy and drive away. Yes, the bus driver did this.

The second is the story is this one, about an off duty Metro bus driver who decided to put on a mask and try to carjack another guy (who happened to be an off-duty police officer). Next came a shoot out between the off duty public servants, and now Metro has a job opening.

A quick review of both drivers' pasts reveals they were both convicted felons, which is completely fine by Metro. They will, by policy, hire just about anyone who has a couple years between them and their most recent offense.

Just keep that in mind before you flip off the bus driver who cuts you off in traffic.

Pretty in pink

Pink Rose
Originally uploaded by ~Kim's Picture Gallery~

Last Friday I got a phone from my friend Chantal. She'd received some flowers for her birthday and forgot them when she left for the day. She wanted me to bring them home, then to her place, so that she could enjoy them over the weekend.

No problem, I thought. Happy to do it.

After another colleague dropped the flowers at my desk, I realized that they were pink roses.

Now, while it shouldn't be a big deal for a guy to walk around carrying a dozen pink roses, last Friday I happened to be wearing a bright pink dress shirt, almost identical to the color of the roses.

I'm a big believer in pink dress shirts. I think it takes a man of confidence to wear a bright pink shirt. When they do so, they actually come off looking quite manly.

However, a pink dress shirt...and a dozen matching pink roses? What the heck, I'd give it a try.

I entered the lobby of our building and passed the security guard, who, while pleasant and always smiling, has never said a word to me, even once.

"Loooooking gooooood!" he exclaimed as I walked by.

I stepped out on to the street as a colleague was walking back into the building. He did a double-take (a double-take as in "I just saw a van plow through a group of school children," as compared to a "gee, you just blew my mind in a good way" kind of double-take).

"Wow," was all he could manage to say.

I received two other comments, from strangers, before I'd even hit the corner of our block.

I felt so self-conscious, like those around me thought I was some kind of 2009 version of Oscar Wilde, sashaying down Massachusetts Avenue with a dozen pink roses to mask the unGodly smell of our fair capital.

I didn't even want to imagine what my subway ride home was going to be like.

I immediately hailed a cab (and had no trouble being noticed) and paid $11 mostly for the ability to ride home alone.

The irony of this was that when I went to Chantal's that night, I forgot the flowers. Oh well.

Meghan's food blog

My friend Meghan is quite the foodie. She makes interesting and delicious things almost daily.

She has a page on Recipezaar which is an aggregation of her recipes, rankings, and comments.

We occasionally tease her that this is her food blog. For some reason, the idea of having a blog makes Meghan's skin crawl. Looking at the page, it is obviously not a blog. But Meghan gets so lit up, so quickly about this, that we often refer to it as her blog.

Recently I discovered the site Xtranormal, which allows you to type in a script and some animation instructions, and it converts it into an animated movie. I used it to document a typical conversation with Meghan about her food blog.

Chirp

When I'm outside or it's really quiet in the house, I hear this "chirp" sound once every few minutes. It's very subtle and easy to miss, just a little electronic ping from some unknown location.

It sounds exactly like a dying fire alarm battery, but it is so muted and so infrequent that we can't figure out where it's coming from. Sometimes I think it's from our next door neighbor's house, other times I think it must be from the building behind us or a bit further down the street (though that would be quite a chirp).

It seems that every time I hear it, it becomes harder and harder to place. I'll be outside with the dog and hear the "chirp" and look around trying to place it. Nothing. Of course, this has been going on for weeks.

This morning I went outside to walk the dog about 6:30 when I notice a few TV trucks at the end of our block. The couple two doors down was standing on their porch watching.

They said there was a fire at one of the houses on the corner. A few people were rescued, though one resident died.

Oddly, this house was the location where Katherine and Lolly's dog attack occurred the other week (where it happened, not where the dog lived).

When I got back inside and was giving Lolly her breakfast, I heard the "chirp" again.

Video from this morning below:

Caffeinated

U Street Starbucks
Originally uploaded by M.V. Jantzen

When we first move to the DC area, we lived in Rockville. To be more specific, we lived in a very nice apartment complex that faced two different strip malls.

Since we don't drink coffee (no particular reason why, we just don't), this worked out well for guests, since they could just walk one short block to a Starbucks.

Since moving into a residential-heavy section of the city, there is no retail to speak of within about six blocks. (I say "to speak of" because one block away there is a disgusting convenience store, a disgusting liquor store, a disgusting dry cleaners, and a disgusting medical supply store). So this past week Katherine and I decided to save our house guests the now-normal drive or long walk and bought a Keurig "K-cup" coffee-maker--you know, the kind that has a little cup that will brew exactly one cup of coffee.

This weekend we used it for the first time and, for a moment, it was the most fascinating thing on Earth. All three of us stood around looking at the coffee maker work. Breath-taking! Delicious! What will they think of next?!

All in perfect timing, by the way. As this story has just surfaced from one of the Starbucks closest to our house. It seems one of the baristas accidentally shot himself in the leg...with a handgun...that he was wearing at work.

Just to be clear: the coffee dude at Starbucks was packing...and it went off...at Starbucks.

Here's to the Keurig.