Blog of Chris

“the very core things that make up our government like wars or interrogation or border patrol, jailing, any of those types of things that you would think would be sacred things that would happen with the state are now being turned into for-profit enterprises. And if you want all these things to be, if you want corporate ethics to be our national interest, then you have the situation we’re in now. But right now, when you think that we’ve out sourced everything to interrogation, which means torture is a cost-plus enterprise, I think you can see a complete spiritual bankruptcy to this whole neo-con movement. It’s a nightmare beyond anything you can really imagine.”

Read a full article on the new movie, with some of the commentary between Cusack and Bill Maher.

This is another gem I dug up from my file server…

-C

I was digging around my file server today, for no particular reason, when I stumbled across this ad I made for my old car.  I sold it prior to leaving for Iraq in 2005, along with my boat, bike, and several other things I wish I hadn’t sold.

I loved this car so much that I almost bought another one when I got back from the desert.   I had a lot of good memories in this car.  I can remember seeing it in Baltimore shortly after I got home.  It still had its trailer hitch and roof rack…  I wish I could have it back.

-C

Last weekend, my friend Nick Strocchia  snapped this photo of me feeding my dog a celentani noodle with chopsticks.  I love the look on his face.

I know, he should not be eating people food…

-C

I am in the process of finishing up the very last project in the renovations of my first floor.  The stairwell to my basement has an L shaped knee wall, which never had a cap put on it because I couldn’t find oak pieces that would fit it properly.  This meant that it had to be custom cut, and would therefore be expensive.

Luckily, I know a Carpenter, and he had a good idea to make the cap out of oak veneered plywood, something he could accomplish with leftovers from another job, saving me money.

The downside to the plywood solution, other than having to do more prep work to dress up the trim joints, is that it’s thin, and less strong.  This wouldn’t matter if I was going to cap the wall normally, but I wanted to have a triangle shaped cap over my L shaped knee wall… it will give me a place to put a potted plant, or serve appetizers at parties.

I’ll post pics soon.

-C

As of today, I am officially the Commander of the 244th Engineer Company.

A change of command ceremony and promotion to Captain are soon to follow.

-C

a strong, innate desire to rove or travel about.

My resources are limited, despite the last few weeks being profitable for Charm City Networks. This means my ability to rove or travel about is limited, and generally means I am headed to D.C. for the weekend to see friends and family, escape the clutches of Baltimore, get out of the house I spend ever so much more time in these days, and get in some good stick time in the Audi. I am starting to sense a trend developing here, mostly due to the fact that if I am not drilling with the Army, or have some long-planned event in Charm City, I am in D.C. or its suburbs on the weekends. It’s a drive, and it involves packing up the OPster, and I find that it bothers me less and less. The thought of moving has crossed my mind on more than one occasion, and something tells me it’s not as far off as I previously thought. More on that later.

On Friday afternoon, I bugged my cousin Shelly about her recent disappearance from the face of the earth… even though she has a good reason, I was intent on hanging out with her this weekend, if only for a few hours. She ended up having several friends over at her place in Silver Spring, and we watched Caddyshack, played some board games, and hilarity ensued. O.P. came face to face once again with Andy (Andypants, or just pants) the Greyhound, though this time he was much bigger and thus much more annoying to the mellow former racer. They made it work, though O.P. got more barks out of Andy in one evening than he’s probably had since Shelly and Leigh got him. O.P. has to learn the hard way…

On Sunday, Jeff, Leigh and I got a late breakfast at a diner in Silver Spring. I enjoy little places like this because they’re unique. (So unique that I forget the name of them). In the waiting line they have these framed picture puzzles with drawn out renditions of your favorite cliches. “Cat got your tongue… liar, liar, pants on fire, eat your heart out, etc…” They were pretty cool, but you only get a few minutes to peruse them. When I get a chance, I’ll probably order a print of one for my house if I can find it on ebay.

We shared a love for the recently popularized blog, Stuff White People Like, and I came up the idea for a blog called “Stuff White Trash People Like.” The first post will naturally be about Nascar, with Mayonnaise Sandwiches soon to follow.

I intended to hit the dog park in Gaithersburg before taking my weekend adventure to Georgetown, but mother nature was against that plan, and proceeded to rain on my parade with torrential downpours. Nevertheless, the G/W parkway was still a joy to drive on. It bring back a lot of memories, some good, some bad, but all very relevant. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, there’s just something about these high speed approaches into D.C. that moves me.

By the time I got to James’ house, the rain had stopped. We played some Call of Duty 4, and proceeded to L street for the Leprechaun Lap, a St. Patty’s day bar crawl. This little drive into NW from the Palisades was awesome. As you probably know, it was over 60 degrees out for about 2 hours on Saturday, and I was happy to behind the wheel for at least 10 minutes of it. We had the windows down, shades on, and horrible trance music blasting as we drove through downtown, probably getting weird looks from everyone. We met up with Wilson, Lindsay and Stacey, made our rounds, and good times were had by all. We ended up at The Front Page, a newspaper themed bar and restaurant near DuPont Circle. The afternoon bar crawl crowd made way for the dinner crowds and the evening, “going out” crowds, and we were there to witness each transition and be a part of the magic. Given that it wasn’t really St. Patty’s day, I was shocked to see so many people declaring it so. It’s like when Halloween doesn’t fall on a weekend, so they pick the closest weekend night and it’s declared pseudo Halloween by those who choose to participate. For everyone else it’s just another night of drinking, and they probably get a kick out of everyone else’s pretend holiday. I happened to be wearing a green polo shirt, but that was strictly a coincidence.

I parted ways with James et. al. and headed down to K street lounge for Jennifer and Bethany’s joint birthday party. These are friends from high school that I have been seeing a lot more of recently. I was afraid they wouldn’t let me in because I was underdressed, but I didn’t have any problems. I didn’t last much more than an hour and a half before calling it quits, but in the meantime I was able to catch up a bit with old friends, gripe about clients and self employment, inquire about a mysterious crush that someone has informed me about, plan a dog play date for Sunday afternoon, get in some bad dancing, and even meet some new people who I should have met a long time ago.

On Sunday morning, James and I picked up Wilson and headed to ___________ near U street for brunch. Another trend is developing, but it seems that every time I eat brunch down there (at a restaurant whose name I can’t ever remember), I get another idea for a website. This time it’s called “What Would Wilson Do?” The merchandising would be lucrative.

After brunch, I packed up O.P. again and headed off to Rockville to visit Evan. He started a new job in MoCo, and just started renting a room from a friend down there. I figured I’d drop in to check out the digs and see what was going on. We ended up taking a trip to Circuit City so I could purchase a Garmin Navigation system, something my car has been longing for for some time.

From Rockville it was on to Kemp Mill, my old stomping grounds, the neighborhood where I grew up. I went down to the Shopping Center to buy a bottle of water and was shocked to see that the Giant Food that had been there for 25 years was now a Magruders. I proceeded to Bethany’s house, where in 4th grade she hosted a party for Science Olympics. She just got a puppy, half Beagle, half Yorkie, who was only a couple of months old. She was terrified of my giant puggle at first, but she came around and they played for a while in the backyard.

From Kemp Mill I headed to Alexandria, VA to visit my Dad, who has been home from Korea for several weeks now. He made me a hasty Duk Guk using whatever he could find in the kitchen, and then I gave him a lift back to the city. As it turns out the hotel he is staying in at the start of his current assignment is located immediately next to the first bar of the Leprechaun Lap on L Street. On Saturday we were probably only a few dozen feet away from each other and didn’t know it.

After dropping off my dad, I met up with Mike and Steve to watch the final episode of the wire on Mike abnormally large HD television. (on a side note, when I got home and got online, the latest post on stuff white people like was “the wire”) The ending was almost everything I expected, but it left a little to be desired. I won’t go into detail, as there’s not enough room in this already lengthy post.

So, back to Baltimore we went at 11 PM on Sunday night, after a very busy weekend… most of its events were relatively spontaneous, but all were worth the effort. Eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we’ll be back in the real world trying to earn a living.

-C

It’s a free advertisement for them, and I don’t get a dollar back from the many thousands I spent on my staircases, but the Iron Shop posted a photo of my stair on their website.

Check it out.

-C

Some of you have heard my various gripes with the city about my water.  To recap, mine is one of four houses that still pull water off a “single line feed” 3″ water main running down the alley between Haubert and Hull streets, a line that was cut off on one end to make way for train tracks on Marriott street in the 1950s, and and that should have been completely abandoned a long time ago.

Aside from that, I receive “estimated billing”, because the ancient water meter installed under the crawlspace of my house is not accessible to a meter reader.

Once more, I called the city to tell them that I need a meter installed…  several years ago, in response to the same request, they came and dug up the sidewalk in front of my house, not knowing that the water came in from the rear.  I got a new sidewalk out of that one, so it wasn’t a total loss.  Later they came by and dug a big hole in the alley, exposing the curb stop, where an outdoor meter should have been, but it wasn’t there…  a few months after that, they actually installed the meter vault, but there was still no meter.

Today, they finally came by to install the meter.  If I had not been home, the field crew would have been unable to find a meter vault in the front of the house, and would have probably put in a work order to have my relatively new front sidewalk ripped out again only to then find out (again) that my water does not come in from the street side.  I was home, and was able to point them to the alley, which they were confused about.  They installed the meter in about 3 minutes, and thus my 4-year-long quest for metered water came to an end.

Now, we shall see if they system works, and if the word about the alley meter actually makes it to whoever reads meters in my neighborhood.  My thought is that it will not, and that the meter reader will skip my house when he makes his rounds, and I will be charged 70 dollars for a 3 months of water, way more than I actually use.

We shall see…

-C