Visiting a classic

Okay, that title will probably fit a lot of the things I do on this trip. But in this case, the classic is Fenway Park.

I knew I wanted to see it, and a ticket to an actual game didn't cost much more than a tour. Watching an actual game seemed like a much better way to experience the historic park, even though as an Indians fan I should technically not root for the Red Sox, so I got a ticket for tonight's game.

I went to a game at Wrigley Field a few years back, and that ballpark definitely looked like it was built in 1912 — dusty, cobwebby, and with netting covering critical bits of concrete to make sure no chunks fell on the fans. I'm not sure what the state of the park is today. Certainly the field is beautiful, and it was an enjoyable experience (it would have been even more enjoyable if we hadn't scalped tickets for an obscene amount of money).

Fenway Park doesn't look like it's been around since 1912 — it looks like you've been transported back to 1912. Everything is clean and freshly painted, but looks like it's from a bygone era. The exception to the freshly painted rule was the seats in the section I sat in, but since those looked like they were original seats, they get a pass.

I left early, with the Sox in a comfortable lead. I would have stayed for the whole game, but this one went super long, even for the American League, and the sense I got from Boston's transit system thus far was that getting home was going to be a debacle if I waited to do it with the masses. But still, even though I had an exceedingly obstructed view (I struggled just to see the hitters), it was an enjoyable experience.

Flickr Uploadr is not happy with the slow hotel connection, so hopefully pics tomorrow morning.

Downtown DC to downtown Boston — that was easy

Taken in Connecticut, from the Acela.

Well, I'm in Boston, and the first thing I have to say is — it's a huge shame that the Acela only runs between Washington DC and Boston, because it's the best way to travel on this continent.

The seats might not be much wider than standard coach seats on other Amtrak trains, but there's a gargantuan amount of leg room. Even with my laptop backpack on the floor I had plenty of room for my feet.

The trains are remarkably quiet given the high speed. You do get a little squeaking, but most of the noise comes from other passengers. If I had it to do over again, I might opt for the quiet car. I might be biased, though, since a bit after New York a guy plopped down in the seat next to me and proceeded to have a lengthy conversation on his cell phone about real estate.

The thing that's most noticable is how buttery smooth the ride is most of the time. But the real "whoa" moment for me came when the train started taking turns hard enough that it was noticably banking into them. It's a very odd sensation at first, but after awhile I stopped noticing it.

The ride was so nice that, although I know we were going really fast much of the time, it was difficult to feel the speed. Looking out the window, though, provided a blurred confirmation that we were really hauling it.

The boarding process was easy, as usual. People behind me remarked on how much easier it was than getting on a plane. And I was able easily able to get what I wanted — a window seat on the right side of the train so I could see the ocean once we got into Connecticut. 

The scenery started with dense forests and backyards of little towns, gutted factories and row houses punctuated with graffiti. But as we headed into Connecticut, it gave way to tall church spires and houses ringing the water, sparkling in the sunlight. Rhode Island and Massachusetts were a mixture of everything.

We only saw billboards where the tracks paralleled the highway, and the Acela raced along, easily outpacing the cars.

I'll post pictures to Flickr later. Right now I've got a Red Sox game to get to.

My father's magic carpet made of steel

Maybe this train thing is genetic.

Anyone who's been around my dad when a train goes by knows he gets this slightly gleeful expression on his face.

"I love trains," he usually says.

I didn't pay much attention to trains for the first quarter century of my life. I had a positive association with them only as something my dad really liked, but that was about it.

But then I moved to the DC area. I started taking the train, and I was amazed at how simple it was. Show up a half hour before your departure time, snag your ticket and maybe a to-go meal or snack, get on the train. No shuttle from distant parking, no security line, no shoes off and laptops out, no anarchic rush to board and find enough space for your carry-on. And, especially, no stupid little quart bag.

I'll admit I could still care less about freight trains, save the part they play in keeping semis off the interstates. But passenger rail is something I rapidly came to love, even though it currently falls well short of its potential here in the United States.

Let's face it — not a lot about Amtrak hearkens back to the golden age of train travel, when men and women dressed to the nines sat down to gourmet meals in the dining car, and GIs with their gear bags waved goodbye to sweethearts and families on small-town platforms, headed for the great wars of the last century. 

Most Amtrak trains today are tiny silver tubes that fall significantly short on character. When Barack Obama rolled in to Washington for inauguration in a vintage 1930s train car attached to standard Amtrak stock, it looked downright comical, as if both came from entirely different universes but had somehow come to be hitched together through some train yard time travel mishap.

What Amtrak trains are, though, is comfortable on the inside, and generally cleaner and better-maintained than planes. Seats are as large as business or even first class seats on your average airplane, and there's legroom galore. No seat belt to keep buckled, and you really are free to move around whenever you want. There's no high-altitude pressurized cabin, and no recirculated, germ-filled air. And while there's noise, it's the more pleasant clack of the tracks and brief sounding of the horn, not the loud drone of an airplane. I'm not packing my noise-cancelling earphones. 

Until extremely high speed trains, like those in France and Japan, are embraced here, flying is still going to be the means of choice for a cross-country haul. Few of us have the time to take several days to cross the country, even if we have the chance to see some truly spectacular scenery along the way.

But for short to mid-range trips, I think more and more of us are going to choose comfort and convenience over saving a few hours. Many can't, though, until Amtrak adds more service, and high speed rail lines in uncovered areas become a reality.

I lived in Cincinnati a few years ago. You can get to Chicago from Cincinnati by train, in 10 1/2 hours going out, and 8 1/2 hours coming back. The trouble is, you'll have to leave Cincinnati at 1:10 a.m., and get back at 3:17 a.m. But if you could take a train at a convenient time between those two cities, wouldn't it beat flying into busy O'Hare, or driving into Chicago's mess of traffic? And what if that route was high-speed rail, and got you there in less time than it would take to drive?

There's a real chicken or the egg problem with train travel in the United States. People won't ride trains until they are more convenient, and Amtrak can't provide more convenient routes and times (even at standard speeds) until more people ride the existing trains.

It's why I took the Carolinian down from Washington to Charlotte for my sister's wedding last year. It was cheaper than flying, and maybe a bit more expensive than driving, back at the height of $4 a gallon gas (my car gets great highway MPG). It was also the longest of my travel options, at 8-9 hours in the train. But it was also the most hassle-free. And as I read, dozed, worked on my plugged-in laptop, and just enjoyed the view out the window all the way to Charlotte, I knew I'd made the right choice. I wasn't alone, either. The train was full going down and coming back, my own personal experience of Amtrak's record year for ridership in 2008.

That, and the significant support of President Obama and "Amtrak Joe" Biden for train travel, gives me hope that rail service in this country will get the funding and support it needs to improve and expand. Recent money allocated for high-speed rail is a huge step in the right direction.

I'd be lying to you if I said I wasn't fascinated by bygone means of travel. But in the case of train travel, it's pretty obvious that the past is also going to be the future. The question is how quickly we embrace it.

Right now, though, I'm mostly focused on the near future, and the fact that tomorrow I'll get to go the fastest I ever have on land — up to 150 mph. I am so ready for this trip to actually begin.

A ticket for a fast train

So Channel Six will turn travel blog for awhile, because in two days, I'll be setting out to really test my green mettle, on a trip with two simple rules — no planes, and no cars.

You would think this doesn't leave a lot of transportation options, but really, it does. They are, in order of preference:

1. Sail-powered ships

2. Trains

3. Non-sail-powered ships

4. Subways

5. Buses

If all goes well, I'll probably use all of these options at some point during my trip. Failure equals calling a cab.

This didn't start out as a green trip. It started out as a simple trip to Boston. Various circumstances (mostly, the economy) left me without a trip planned with friends this year, and I'm one of those people who goes a little batty if I go too long without traveling.

I checked flights to Boston, and the prices were good. But the more I plugged info into Farecast, the more I began to realize I didn't want to fly. I didn't want to go through the hassle, and I didn't want to be a part of all that jet fuel burned, all that carbon spewed into the atmosphere. 

Maybe I could cut my flying time in half by flying in and taking the train back, I thought. I checked the times for Amtrak's regional train back — about 8 hours, but maybe a good way to wind down on the ride home. Then I noticed that the regional stops in Mystic, Conn., another place I'd been interested in visiting. A night or two in Mystic would break up the train ride nicely.

Then I decided to drop the flight to Boston, too. Looking strictly at the in-transit numbers — 6 hours and 45 minutes for Amtrak's fastest train, the Acela, to get to Boston versus an hour and a half direct flight — the train wouldn't seem to compete. But any one-way flight would involve either: a more expensive flight out of Metro-accessible Reagan National; Metro and then a bus to Dulles; or Metro and then a train to BWI. When I started to consider the 2 hours early I like to arrive for a flight, versus the half hour I'm comfortable with arriving before a train, well, the train suddenly started looking a whole lot more competitive.

And then there's Union Station. The mall-ified-but-still grand Beaux Arts masterpiece is one of my favorite places in Washington. It easily bests Dulles' dated concrete swoosh, or BWI's extreme blandness. Somehow, it felt like I would be cheating on Union Station if I departed for my trip anywhere else.

The Acela's business-class seats are a little out of my usual price range, but I decided I would splurge and take the high-speed train up, to save some time and see what it was like. Then Amtrak offered a fare sale on the Acela, and that sealed my plans.

I'm a big fan of public transit, and after I decided to take the train, it didn't take long for the rules to develop. Or for me to add another city and state to my itinerary — a day trip to Portland, Maine.

I've been thinking a lot lately about the future of travel — about what happens when we run out of oil. I'd like to think that you could still make this trip in that era. So this isn't one of those multi-day sleeper car rail trips where the journey really is the trip. This is just a trip where rail is a more relaxed, greener means of getting from point A to point B, one that's likely to still exist in 50 years.

Now let's see if I can stick to the rules.

The deal with me and fruits and vegetables

So I've made some Facebook posts over the last week that, if you don't know about my weird dietary restrictions over the last 10 years, probably made no sense.

I have oral allergy syndrome. This basically meant that my pollen allergies were so bad, my mouth and throat mistook fresh fruits, vegetables, and nuts for pollen, and swelled up whenever I ate them. Needless to say, I went many years without eating them. Cooked was okay, canned was okay, but fresh was off limits.

Then I figured out by accident (okay, I was at a party and had some drinks) that if I was drinking alcohol, I didn't have any symptoms. After my initial discovery, I began working my way through fruits and veggies I hadn't eaten in years, and figuring out a lot of good alcohol + fruit pairings in the process (chardonnay and green apples, banannas and guinness, etc.)

But obviously I couldn't be drinking all day just so I can eat fresh fruits and vegetables. This, and the fact that I started sneezing my head off even more once I moved to  Maryland, led me to start getting allergy shots. I've been getting them for almost two years, once a week up until recently.

And they are so worth it. When I realized last week that I was almost unbothered by a pollen count that would have had me marching through the tissues, I thought it was time to give the fruits and veggies a non-alcoholic try. So I tried a strawberry. Nothing happened. I tried an apple. Nothing happened.

I went nuts. Every day this week, I've been at the salad bar at work, loading up my salad with crazy things, vegetables I'm not sure I've ever had raw, even when I was a kid (the food allergies kicked in during my late teens) -- things like raw broccoli and peas in the pod. Things don't always feel quite the same as they would if I ate a piece of toast, but if there's anything, it's just the slightest twinge of the old reaction.

I'm learning how to redefine my diet. No more delicately forking carrots out of my salad (lettuce, oddly enough, was always okay unless it was really stemmy), and handing cucumbers and tomatoes over to the normal people at the table. Things everyone else takes for granted, like being able to snack on an apple, or a bannana, or some carrot sticks -- I get to do those now.

The allergy shots were a huge time commitment, and sometimes made me feel downright bad. I'm really sensitive to the serum, and a dose too high too soon made me feel like I'd been whalloped with the flu. But now I know they are so worth it.

Ajax vs. Scope

I don't have any April Fool's pranks for the Internet, so this is my piece of hilarity for the day -- my new cube decoration. Blame Target for selling the foam swords.

Cross-posted at www.carriegarzich.com.

IA existential crisis...err, Summit

The existential crisis

I have to admit that there was far more spirited discussion and angst at this year's IA Summit than I have ever seen (or would ever have expected) at a professional conference.

General themes: Big IA vs. Little IA; IAI vs. IXDA; big documentation vs. little documentation; and, of course, what does it mean to be an information architect?

There was a central thread to the discussion that felt very circular to me, and I futzed around in InDesign a bit to try to capture it:

It's probably healthy to discuss these things in public. I think some of the tone of the debate was concerning, though. And I'll admit I went to the sessions that were likely to prompt debate. Once a journalist, always a journalist -- I felt compelled to follow the story, and this was the story of this IA Summit.

Whether we call ourselves IAs or something else, many of us started in this career by categorizing and defining things. But our nebulous-by-nature career doesn't fit well into any one bucket.

We may never define IA. This debate is not going to change the fact that some of us are innies, and some of us are outies; some of us are agile, and some of us are waterfall; some of us need heavy documentation, and some of us can do light documentation; some of us have huge business constraints, and some of us have lots of freedom.

Everyone's reality is a little different. Eric Reiss put it best in his "House Divided" session: The true definition of IA is whatever you do.

In many ways my day-to-day responsibilities might better fall under the definition of interaction design or user experience design. But it doesn't bother me to be called an information architect, and when people outside of the industry ask me what I do, I tell them I help make the web site easier to use. I think any of the job titles you hear bandied about for what we do can be boiled down to that description.

All of the fuzzy-bounded disciplines, and their knowledge sources and conferences, are places to meet cool, smart people, and learn things that help me become better at my job. I think that's why most people go to the IA Summit. Those of us who go for those reasons, I think, could happily find ourselves at a 20th IA Summit, still getting the same benefits.

Hopefully by then the debate will have progressed.

The sessions themselves

I had a chance to see some really good sessions, and some of the best stayed completely above the whole IA debate. Some of my favorites:

"Revealing Design Treasures from the Amazon" (Jared Spool) - Jared pulled out YEARS worth of Amazon.com screenshots in this presentation that was both highly entertaining and full of nuggets to make you think. The room was packed for this one and I hope everyone found it as worthwhile as I did.

"Strategies for Enabling UX to Play a More Strategic Role: What Will Work Where You Work?" (Richard I. Anderson and Craig Peters) - Some of the most important moments at the IA Summit are over lunch, dinner, or drinks, not in the sessions, and that makes me wonder why more sessions aren't structured like this one. We sat in round table groups, and led by the instructors, discussed UX's strategic role amongst ourselves. I really hope they do more sessions in this format in the future.

"ROI - Retaining Our Interest" (Eric Reiss) - Aside from the obvious entertainment value of a session that starts out with bloody mary sales, this one also had some important lessons. My main takeaway: sometimes proving your case is more about emotion than numbers.

"Unify Your Deliverables!" (Nathan Curtis) - We already use EightShapes' documentation system at Marriott, so I didn't learn as much from this session as I'm guessing others did. But I was still excited to see the new Unify system unveiled.

That's about all I've got. A slush pile of IA Summit and Memphis pictures and video are posted on Flickr.

Cross-posted at www.carriegarzich.com.

Memphis

So I am back from the IA Summit in Memphis. The conference itself was not your average conference, and I'm still trying to get my thoughts together about what I want to say about it. So, for today, just Memphis the city.

By the time I got to my hotel from the airport, I had about two hours of time during normal museum hours to go and see something. My friend Norah was in town for a separate conference (what is it with Memphis and conferences lately?), and we had talked about trying to make it to Graceland. But she was swamped at her conference, and I decided Graceland would not have been nearly as fun by myself, plus it looked like a haul to get there. So I ended up going to the Civil Rights Museum.


I wasn't quite sure what to expect. I knew that it was connected to the Lorraine Motel, where Martin Luther King Jr. was shot. It ended up being one of, if not the most, emotionally moving museums I've ever been to. The museum takes you through slavery, through separate but equal, through Rosa Parks and sit-ins, a very detailed account of the history of the civil rights movement that still works well if you only want to skim some of the extensive text. All of this takes place in what looks like a warehouse more than an old motel.

But when you reach the end, April 4, 1968, there are two restored rooms from the motel, one of them Dr. King's. Looking into those rooms, and out on the balcony, you feel a sense of place and a power that wouldn't be there if the museum was located anywhere else.

It's not an easy or a fun museum, but I would definitely recommend it. It has a second half, following the motel side, that takes you through the boarding house across the street and the hunt for James Earl Ray.

After the museum, I walked around taking pictures to kick off the massive glut in my Flickr account.

I found Memphis really interesting in that there didn't seem to be distinctive "bad" and "good" neighborhoods. I'd walk past a newly renovated industrial building, turned into condos, and immediately next to it would be a boarded-up building. There were gated communities within a block or two of piles of broken beer bottles and ramshackle loading docks. And later, during a walk to midtown (more on that in a bit), we would encounter a block of thriving bars and other businesses, immediately followed by businesses that could have failed anywhere from last year to 50 years ago. It really seems to be a place where things survive on their own merit, not because they're located in a hip neighborhood.


On Friday evening, after some delicious deep-fried burgers at Dyer's on Beale St. (so worth it until I get my next cholesterol test), fellow Kent grads Roger, Carrianne, and I started the walk to a blues club in midtown Roger wanted to check out. It was a two-mile hike, which should be totally doable, right?

Well, there are short two-mile hikes, and long two-mile hikes, and this one definitely fell into the long category. We walked through quiet neighborhoods, past soulless strip malls, and then into some of those odd thriving/abandoned areas I talked about earlier. We never made it to the blues club, but I'm glad we went -- it was a chance to really see Memphis, and take some weird pictures of the abandoned and the amusing. We stopped for some delicious martinis at the Side Street Lounge, so we were still rewarded for our effort.


We stuck to Beale Street on Saturday night. Beale Street is interesting in that there's such a range of things you can do. Want to have some beers and listen to really good blues? You can do that. Want to drink hurricanes from a bucket and listen to a cover band? You can do that. Want to wander the street drinking beer and/or frozen rum drinks until you have the courage to go sing karaoke? Yep, you can also do that.

For me, the highlights of Beale Street that night were wandering the A. Schwab museum/store and taking pictures of all the floors of bizareness there, and wrapping up the night at the hole-in-the-wall Juke Joint, with some really, really good blues up on the stage.

All in all, I really enjoyed Memphis, and wish I had built in more sightseeing time. I'll admit I got pretty startled the first day by one panhandler -- apparently I've become desensitized by DC's aggressive panhandling laws. Once I got my hackles back up, it was totally fine, though.

At some point in my life, I want to ride the City of New Orleans train from Chicago to New Orleans, making stops along the way. A stop for some more time in Memphis will definitely be warranted.

After all, I still have to see Graceland.

Ode to my StationMasters map

So this weekend I was in DC's Golden Triangle district, aka the Golden Carrie is Disoriented district, and needed to walk from a store near the red line stop where I'd gotten off to a non-connected orange line stop. Why these two stops, which are in one place only a block apart, aren't connected by a below-ground pedestrian walkway is a Metro mystery.

At any rate, I had to do a quick map check. One of the helpful Golden Triangle tourism people asked me if I needed help.

"Nope," I said. "I've got it."

And I really did, despite my very fuzzy sense of direction. When I first moved here, this might not have been the case. I was persistently coming out of Metro stations and heading in the wrong direction. But since then, I've discovered the StationMasters map.

If you've come to visit me since then, I probably gave you one. If I didn't, remind me next time. They are the best maps I've encountered for getting around a city because they actually orient you around the way you've been traveling -- by the subway.

Stations aren't marked as some median point on the map (I'm looking at you, Google Maps); instead, every exit is displayed, including the direction you'll be heading in when you make the exit. No more walking a block to discover you'd been heading towards 11th St instead of 9th and instantly marking yourself as lost bait. And each mini-map is oriented around an individual Metro station, which makes the map you need easy to find -- just flip to the Metro stop you used.

As an IA, I think this is a perfect use of information to help explain a physical space. But as a traveler, I mostly just wish StationMasters would take their excellent maps to other cities. They could start with Boston -- I'm heading there in May and sure I'll be walking the wrong way out of the subway without fail.

You can check out the Station Masters map here. They also sell them at the Metro Center Barnes & Noble (and probably other Barnes & Nobles in the area).

Cross-posted at www.carriegarzich.com

A proposal: Rules for the grocery store self-checkout

When I moved into my condo, one of the great things about my new spot is that I live about three minutes' walk away from a grocery store. Talk about convenience. I envisoned myself keeping nearly nothing in my fridge, and running over whenever I needed something. Treating my nearby Giant as my own personal refrigerator.

The problem with this in reality is that while the store is fairly easy and quick to navigate, checkout is always an arduous process. Even in the self-checkout, what is supposed to be perfect for the few-items-in-and-out shopper, always seems to be populated with people who have checkout crises.

So, in the interest of allowing us all to zip through the self checkout as intended, I would like to propose the following rules:

1. If something has an issue scanning, leave it behind.

Right now you may be envisioning this sort of dramatic scene, which is clearly the reason why people continue to attempt to scan an item that fails...

You: Frozen peas, I can't get you to scan.

Frozen peas: You have to leave me! I'll never make it!

You: I won't leave you frozen peas! I haven't left a vegetable behind before and I'm sure as hell not going to start now!

Frozen peas: Leave me! I'll manage somehow by myself!

You: I'll never forget you, frozen peas...

2. Buy produce only in limited quantities and only if you know exactly what it is.

Alternately, if you don't know what the produce item is, but you are willing to guess blindly, that is also acceptable.  Like the woman who rang up her apples as anjou pears in front of me once. Now that's taking one for the team.

3. Anything scooped into a container or bag without a bar code is not an acceptable item for self-checkout.

I'm looking at you, bulk granola guy.

4. Use the self-checkout only if you have less than one-half cart of groceries.

While everyone appreciates the skill it takes to purchase all your groceries for the year in one fell swoop, your piled-high cart is best checked out by a pro. With that much stuff in there, odds are things will go wrong with at least three items.

5. Bag well, and bag fast.

6. Wait until the person in front of you is bagging their last few items.

7. If the person behind you does not wait until you are finished bagging your last few items, it is perfectly acceptable to "accidentally" put anything awesome they jam into your stuff in your bag.

8. If you forget something, do NOT go back for it.

This is, in fact, the douchiest of self-checkout maneuvers.

9. Pay only in formats acceptable for 2009.

This may seem limited, but it includes cash in $20s, credit cards and debit cards. Excluded: personal checks, jars of pennies, and any form of change that requires more than 10 seconds of counting.

10. Take your receipt.

While this is not as critical as the other items, nobody really wants to take your receipt PLUS their receipt, leaving them with a receipt well over five feet long and the dilemna of what to do with a piece of paper that has part of your credit card number on it.

11. If you use the self-checkout and someone has to come and help you three or more times for things that are not system errors, never use it again.

It's possible that the self-checkout has serious usability problems. It's also possible you are just too stupid to use self-checkout. Best not to risk it.

Change feels oh so good

It might take me a week to process this whole experience. The one thing I know so far is that every time they play "Hail to the Chief" and show Obama, I get tears in my eyes. It's, like, Pavlovian. "Duh duh duh duh duh duh naaaah. Duh duh duh duh duh duh naaaah." And....weeping.

I figured something would bowl me over emotionally — didn't realize it would be exactly that.

Some random things:

- Walking in was super cold, and very surreal once we started walking with the crowds on I-395. I'm pretty sure that is the only time I'll ever walk down the middle of an interstate highway. The same spirit of joy that has been in this city all weekend you could still definitely feel walking out.

- Joe Biden with the hands out when he walked out — so totally Joe Biden and so totally the next mildly tongue-in-cheek American greeting. "Heeeeeeey!"

- Only Aretha Franklin could have pulled off that hat and rocked it like she did. Only Aretha Franklin could have deconstructed "My Country 'Tis of Thee" and built it back up again and made it her own like only she can.

- When can I stimulate the economy by purchasing "Air and Simple Gifts" in MP3? It was so amazingly moving, even moreso since Obama technically became president while they were playing it.

- John Roberts, you had so much less speaking to screw up than Obama. You couldn't have practiced, like, 30 words?

- Obama's speech didn't have quite the same emotional resonance that, say, New Hampshire did. But, it touched perfectly on all the things it needed to, and I think Obama has already raised the bar so high for himself in terms of public speaking that he can really only meet the crazy-high expectations we have for him. Not to mention the fact that we may only recognize the "ask not what..."-type line in that speech months or years from now. I feel like people actually expected the history books to be inspired to rewrite themselves to include this speech. No matter where it ranks in history, it did have exactly the right message, and it was a speech for now (which we need), rather than history (which will take care of itself).

Rocking the stay-cation

Eileen, Melissa and me at the Inauguration concert.

When I first started thinking about Inauguration weekend, my reaction was like a lot of locals here, including my friend Eric — with a giant onslaught of people coming into town, I was going to hole up in my condo and drink beer and watch CNN for the entire weekend.

But then my friend Eileen decided to make the trip out, and I'm so glad she did. Not only do I get to hang out with Eileen, who I haven't seen since Montreal, it's also forced me out into the madness. 

The really cool thing is, the madness is not actually that mad. Yeah, there are crowds, but everybody is very easygoing and happy. This entire city seems to be just filled with glee, and that vibe you just can't get off of CNN.

Even the restaurants we've gone to haven't been too packed. With so many locals shut in, local places weren't crowded at all. So if you are a local, I definitely encourage at least going out and having a beer and meeting some people and feeling the glee.

In your face, short sale

So there's a good reason why I haven't had a post in a long time — I've been stumbling along the road to home ownership. I didn't want to post anything while the whole thing was going on, because this one was close enough that I didn't want to jinx it.

But it came through, and now I own a lovely condo in downtown Silver Spring, MD. Those of you who've been reading this blog since the beginning know that I've always been on a quest to find a great coffee shop, and I've always wanted to live really close to one. Ideally within a short walking distance.

And now I'm a max 5 minute walk from Mayorga Coffee Factory, which I picked out pretty early on after moving to this area as my favorite coffee shop in the area. So, finally, after years of not living near anything (except Target and the metro at my last apartment), I live near LOTS of stuff, and I'm really excited about that.

Getting here, though, had a fair amount of drama. The thing about condos is they're not very big, so there aren't as many variables about them as, say, a house, that you can judge them on. I had a pretty small list of requirements for my new place, and a lot of nice to haves. But a lot of the places I looked at would have required compromises — jettisoning some furniture, living farther from the metro than I wanted to, street parking, etc.

I looked at a lot of places and saw a lot of places that would work okay, but none that jumped out at me. Then I walked into this one, and immediately, I could see myself living there. It met all of my requirements AND all of my nice to haves. The problem was, it was a short sale.

If you don't know what a short sale is, you're not alone. I didn't either when I first started looking, but there are a lot on the market right now because of the housing crisis. Basically, it's where someone owes more on the home than it's worth, and they make a deal with the bank to sell the property at a loss. It's a step before foreclosure, and many don't go through, so making an offer on a short sale is a bit of a gamble. This one was even more of a gamble because there were already two other offers on it.

I thought about it for awhile, and decided that the place was worth the gamble. As my sister likes to say, if it was meant to be, it would be. So I put in an offer. And then my realtor and I went several weeks without hearing anything. The property was eventually listed as being under contract, and that's when I gave up on it and decided I was going to have to start making those compromises.

I was almost ready to make an offer on another place that was smaller and farther from the metro, when my realtor called. The property had been listed as under contract because they were getting too many offers on it (there were 15!), but mine was one of the top offers, and they were going to make a decision the next day.

And they chose my offer! My sister is right — if it's meant to be, it will be. What came after was still not easy — my bank, Wachovia, nearly failed before they could fork over the money for my mortgage.

My furniture's moved in now, and in a sort of bizarre epilogue to everything else that happened, I woke up my first official morning there and smelled something burning in my foyer. I could hear beeping in the hallway, and, eventually decided that it was probably someone's smoke alarm going off. I waited to hear if the beeping would stop, indicating they got what smelled like a cooking fire under control. But it didn't stop.

I decided to grab my laptops and exit the building to see if there were fire trucks outside. No fire trucks. I didn't really want to be the person who called in the fire department for a little cooking fire, but at the same time, I'd rather be the asshole who calls the fire department than the asshole who doesn't call the fire department when there's a real problem.

So I called 911. The dispatcher told me to set off the building alarm. So in my first morning at my condo, I evacuated a high rise building. The fire department got there super quick, and it turns out it was indeed a cooking fire, but that the people had left something cooking, and weren't in their unit.

That's been the largest bit of drama since I moved in, though. I've been caught up in the holidays lately and not as able to take advantage of living near all this stuff, but there will be plenty of exploring in order in the new year.

Naked man and Spoonman (Virgin Fest)

So Melvin and I had a shorter trek to make this year to see Underworld. Last year we had to go to New York, and we were prepared to go to New Jersey to see them at All Points West this year, but then they were announced for Virgin Fest in Baltimore. A 45 minute drive to see Underworld!

But first, the rest of the festival. We thought it was going to take a lot longer to get there — that there was going to be a giant line of cars heading into Pimlico. But that was not in fact the case. So we were there WAY early with plenty of time to catch Cat Power's set to start out.

I wasn't quite sure how she was going to sound live, but she sounded great and did a good, bluesy set. I love the way she completely reinvents songs for covers, and she did a cover of "Fortunate Son" that was very much reinvented.

We headed to the other stage after that, for Gogol Bordello's set (we wanted to be able to get a decent spot for Lupe Fiasco, who was on after them). I had never heard of Gogol Bordello, and I'm not necessarily sure that I'd put them on my ipod, but they put on a hell of a show. Their lineup at the beginning of the show included a fiddle and accordion, and by the end they had out a marching band bass drum and the lead singer was banging on a bucket. Fun times.


We moved up close for Lupe Fiasco's set, and I realized it was TOO close not too far into the set when the crowd surfers started going forward from far behind us. The crowd was pretty hepped up already, and they were flinging all kinds of things in the air — frisbees and water bottles. We saw a girl get hit in the head with a frisbee, and at one point a gallon jug full of water went up and came back down almost in slow motion. It didn't look like anyone got hit in the head with that one. I got kicked in the face by a crowd surfer at one point, but no serious harm. After Lupe's short but great set, we retreated farther back on the lawn where we could chill out and listen to Bloc Party and The Offspring — if the crowd was that wired for Lupe Fiasco it was only going to get worse, and I needed some rest to be ready for two hours of solid dancing during Underworld.

Bloc Party's set sounded good but they didn't have a lot of stage presence. They just pretty much went out there and played. The crowd perked up a lot more for The Offspring. They sounded exactly the same as they always have, but I tell you what — nothing that's happened as I approach 30 has made me feel as old as seeing Dexter Holland look more like a guy who just dropped his kids off at soccer practice and grabbed a microphone than the lead singer of the punk band of my high school days. Yikes. It was fun, though. As they kept bringing out more hits, I kept going, "I forgot about this song!" They closed, of course, with "Self Esteem," and it had the crowd jumping all over the place.

Then it was time to head over to the dance tent and scope things out. In the midst of our pizza eating/Underworld-prepping, Melvin and other people around me started pointing and giggling. I turned around to see what they were pointing at, and there was a naked man standing not too far away from us. He looked more disoriented than drunk or protesting something, and eventually he wandered behind some bushes as the crowd continued to grow.

I'd been trying to figure out what to do with the beach towel I was using to sit on the lawn, as I didn't want to lug it through the Underworld set. Melvin wisely suggested we give it to the naked guy, so he chucked it over the bushes. Naked guy picked it up, and we thought he was going to use it to cover up, but instead he just put it around his neck. So that's the story of what happened to my beach towel — Melvin gave it to the naked guy.

And then it was time to find a good spot for Underworld. We were able to get pretty close this time, but not scary close.


Again this time, I had expectations for Underworld, but this time they were actually based on having seen them live before. Once again, they met and maybe even surpassed my expectations — although the "Dance Tent" venue was not as good at Virgin Fest, Underworld sounded as good as they did last year, and maybe even better.

About that Dance Tent — I suppose it was a good idea in terms of making it dark enough for lights for the day acts. But by the evening, the grass that had served as the floor was pretty ragged, and once the concert started, the air got hot and stifling with all of the dust the crowd was kicking up. Not quite the same as astroturf and open skies at Central Park. But Underworld can't be blamed for that.

The set:

1. Crocodile — This was the only song they played off of the new album, which surprised me. I thought we'd get "Ring Road" or "Glam Bucket" at least. This was called the Dance Tent, though, and Underworld definitely kept the pace up the entire show.

2. Spoonman — !!! Worth the price of admission. For the entire festival. There was a transition period and then they played the distinctive "muuuuuurwgh" They wound into it slowly, got up to pace, and then went through another slowdown where Karl was reading the lyrics. Then they kicked the pace back up to close it out.

3. Rez/Cowgirl — They rolled this out early, and the crowd went nuts from the opening blips of Rez. I preferred the more unique arrangement they did in Central Park last year (still my all time favorite rendering of this), but it was still note-perfect.

4. Pearl's Girl — This might be my least-favorite song off of Second Toughest in the Infants. Being my least favorite song off of my all-time favorite album, though, is still pretty damn good, and I've really enjoyed this song both times live. That big helicopter beat down low really hits you.

5. Push Upstairs — They did this brilliant, sneaky transition out of "Pearl's Girl." We were in that song, dancing away, and then all of a sudden it morphed, and twisted around, and it was "Push Upstairs." And once they got to the song, it was great — huge on the bottom, and Karl Hyde really selling it on the mike.

6. New Train — This came on all stealthy and foreboding, and then they built it up to the big crescendo, with the lights flashing on the chords.

7. You Do Scribble — They wound things down after "New Train," and then came back with this rarity — a big surprise, but a nice fit — which built slowly on the blippy instrumental, Karl coming in at the end with the vocals.

8. Two Months Off — I was surprised on this one when they started blowing up the giant inflatable tubes, as I'd thought there wouldn't be room on the tiny Dance Tent stage for them. But with a lot of maneuvering by the stage hands — they were still adjusting them well into the song — they got them up and placed and I'm glad they had them. The colors in the tubes really add to the effect, which I think you can see in my pictures. The song, as it was in Central Park, sounded excellent, and was immensely great to dance to.

9. Rowla — I love that they bust this song out live. It sounds different than it does on the album, and it's perfect to dance to. HUGE on the bottom, and a little faster paced.

10. Shudder/Born Slippy .Nuxx — They did that little cymbal crash from the beginning of Shudder/King of Snake, and I thought at that point that was what they were going to launch into. But then...they didn't. And the transition went on, and it became clear that it wasn't "King of Snake," but instead the long-drawn out intro to "Born Slippy .Nuxx" — the same one they did in Central Park, which I think has some of the original "Born Slippy" mixed in. Gradually they started to slip into more recognizable bits of the song, and more and the crowd started to recognize it and anticipate what was coming. When they hit the big, signature chords, and everybody went nuts. The pace was frenetic, and by that time I had inhaled so much dust I had a hard time even shouting "lager lager lager" with everyone. Amazing, as always.

11. Moaner — We never did get "King of Snake," but if the tradeoff was that I got to hear "Moaner," it was so worth it. They came at this one with EVERYTHING, and it was extremely intense, with the huge undercurrent of bass, and Karl singing the vocals in an almost desperate way, and all of the lights flashing with the music.

12. Jumbo — They closed out the show, as they did in Central Park, with "Jumbo," which is my least favorite Underworld song. It wasn't bad at all — it seemed like they sped it up a bit to stick with the whole "Dance Tent" thing. I was just hoping for something different this time around, preferably "Ring Road," or even "Dirty Epic" (which would have thoroughly blown my mind). Still, though, it was a nice way to wind down at the end of the concert.

That's all I've got, words-wise. But I have pictures and video clips up at Flickr.

Big old update

I saw Underworld again last weekend and want to post on the awesomeness that was that. But first I figured I should post on some of the things that have happened lately.

First off, my sister got married! Here's a picture of Jess and Mike at the reception. More pictures are at my Flickr if you want to see.


I also went to the beach for the first time in awhile, and now I totally want to go back. We did a little weekend trip down to the Outer Banks (Kill Devil Hills), which I'd never been to. It was a lot less built up than other beaches on the east coast I've been to, like Myrtle Beach and Virginia Beach. The laid-back attitude was nice. More pics up at Flickr.


I am also looking at condos in an attempt to move out of Rockville, which is basically one giant strip mall. I want to move somewhere walkable, and preferably finally achieve my goal of living within walking distance of a decent coffee shop.

I actually made an offer on a place last weekend, but it is a short sale and there were already two other offers on it. So the odds are not so good for that one, but I figured it was worth a shot.

In the interest of posting something

I kept meaning to post a link to this blog post in The Consumerist (my new favorite blog) about Mazda destroying a bunch of brand new cars. It's terrible that they had to do it, but I'm glad they did (especially since it sounds like materials were recycled where possible). As a Mazda owner, having Mazdas out on the market that could have problems as a result of hanging at an angle and being exposed to salt water would have been bad for my own car's resale value. Check out the Wired article about how the Cougar Ace was saved, too -- pretty fascinating.

Speaking of Kiwi, he began his life of crime this year...


I have to hand it to Montgomery County -- the traffic cam tickets are at a good price point for you to just resign yourself to paying them, especially since you don't get any points on your license.

Philadelphia

As I get older, I'm finding myself getting more and more interested in history. I think it's because I can learn it now on my terms, which means knowing what happened and the relationships between events, without the excessive memorizing of dates.

Although I have been oddly interested in naval history in the age of sail, I'm starting to find all history more interesting, including U.S. history. So when my friend Patricia and I got to talking about how we hadn't seen any of the historical places in Philadelphia, it turned into a Memorial Day weekend trip.

Philly was a lot of fun and I really enjoyed seeing Independence Hall and the other historic sites. I was glad I saw them not too long after visiting Boston last year, too. It helped me piece together things. And it was especially nice to go there by train — in two stress-free hours from Union Station in DC, we were there. It was odd to feel like I was on vacation without the grief and aggravation of getting there.

The photo below we took just as they were kicking us out of the room. In the background you can see the only actual period piece there — the chair George Washington sat in. More pictures are up at Flickr.

Walkthrough

Still kind of shook by this fire. One of the things that has been oddest has been being on this side of a news story. When I went out into the parking lot Monday morning they were doing a press conference with the fire department. I looked as I went past but then I drove on to work.

I've been catching some of the news reports online. The nice big signs in the background for Halpine View were recently installed -- I think they were trying to spruce the place up. I initially couldn't remember them doing any walkthroughs of the apartments to check smoke detectors and the like, but I went through my apartment file and found this:

So the smoke detectors, theoretically, were checked in November last year. I haven't seen that anywhere -- the management company has been less than willing to talk to the press. So I didn't know quite what to do with it, and I thought I'd post it as my short-lived foray into citizen journalism. The building with the fire should have been checked on the same day as my building. It apparently hadn't been inspected by the pros in quite some time, though.

I'm planning to look for condos before my lease is up. Sprinkler systems? Suddenly a factor.

Apartment fire

I walked out of my apartment this morning and was like, "why is there crime scene tape across the parking lot?" The further I walked, the more I saw. Turns out the apartment building next to mine was gutted by fire. One person died and other people had to jump to get to safety. It all happened in the early morning and I had no idea what was going on. Really scary.

Travel mania

I have not updated lately, which is really to be expected from me, anymore. But I have been posting pics to Flickr of my recent travels.

In March it was the now-annual Cincinnati St. Patty's. More photos.


And I just got back from Costa Rica. It was a work trip but I did get some time to explore and chill out, which was good. More photos.