Happy Internet Day!

This is the story of the day the Internet came streaming back into my life.

My roommates and I have been talking about getting the Internet for a while, but we finally broke down and signed up. The only other obstacle was figuring out that we don't have any phone jacks that work in the house. After an hour or so of following cords, wires and cables from the basement to the attic, we finally found the main box and plugged the router in.

And now my connection to the outside world has been restored.

I haven't had reliable Internet connection since I moved to D.C. (almost a year ago). For the most part, it hasn't been too bad. One day I told my boss I didn't have Internet and I think he was genuinely concerned for my welfare.

I use the Internet at work all day, so I can take care of the necessities but certain things have fallen by the wayside. One being keeping up on the best YouTube videos. But more importantly, this blog has been sorely neglected. I have been horrible about keeping it up to date and now that I have the Internet at my house, I will try to be better about posting updates. I have a list of things I'm going to go back and fill in too.

It's just good to be back.

Guess Who's Coming to Dinner

What do all of these people have in common?

Condoleezza Rice
Morgan Freeman
Barbara Streisand
Clint Eastwood
Glenn Close
Randy Travis
George Jones
Idina Menzel
Taye Diggs
Michael York
James Brolin
Nancy Pelosi
Barbara Boxer
Patrick Leahy
Bob Schieffer
Roger Daltrey
Pete Townshend
Dave Grohl
Julie Chen
Joss Stone
Twyla Tharp

Let's just say I love my job....

There's Someone I'd Like You to Meet

I haven't stopped laughing yet. It's been three days.

"I'm Sorry, but I Can't Get to the Phone Right Now..."

Answering machine recordings are odd social experiments in themselves.

First of all, what’s funny is I still refer to an “answering machine” even though I haven’t seen one in years. So when I say answering machine, I clearly mean voicemail.

Anyway, I’ve always found it interesting to listen to different people’s recordings they have on their voicemail. I think it can tell you a lot about a person. Sometimes they’re funny. Other times, the person sounds absolutely miserable. You can always tell when one of your friends is looking for a job, because their recording is all of a sudden very professional and they enunciate unusually well.

My favorite phrase that everyone seems to love to use on their recording is, “I’m sorry, but I can’t get to the phone right now…” I love it because it’s such a lie. How can you physically not be able to get to the phone? That sounds ridiculous. Or at least, I thought so until today.

My roommates and I went to Costco tonight to do a little shopping (obviously there’s no such thing as a “little” shopping when you go to Costco, but you know what I mean). On our way out, we saw that all of the carts were stacked in front of the pay phones. I thought it was sad because what if someone really needed to use the pay phone? How would they get to them? Luckily, Robbie was there to figure it out.

So here he is, crawling over shopping carts to try and answer the phone. But by the time he got there, they had hung up. While he was by the phone he did find an old man’s cane though. But no old man.

We tried looking for him among all the carts, but I’m afraid we may have been too late.

The Longest Continuous Escalator in the Western Hemisphere

Just when I thought I had seen everything there is to see in our nation’s capitol, Wikipedia proves me wrong.

Random fact time: the longest continuous escalator in the western hemisphere is located on the Red Line of the D.C. Metro. Wikipedia also informed me that the shortest escalator in the world is in some mall in New Jersey. It has three steps. I have no idea why you would even build an escalator that small. Perhaps to increase tourism. But I digress.

My dear friend Emily Mueller came out to visit me here in the District and I thought it would be a great opportunity to visit such an historic spot. We rode the red line train all the way out to Wheaton station and stared up at this huge escalator. We timed how long it took to get to the top and it was almost three minutes. That doesn’t sound long, I know. But when you’re on an escalator three minutes seems like a long time. We were having fun riding up and then back down the other side and I thought about how it may be fun for us, but it must suck for the people who commute through Wheaton station every day. You’d have to add a whole chunk of time to your commute just for the escalator. And what if it broke down? I couldn’t imagine having to climb all of those steps.



Anyway, I’m glad I finally got the opportunity to ride the longest continuous escalator. Simple pleasures for simple minds you know.

Don't Feed the Animals!

One thing I love about D.C. is all the free stuff there is to do (granted, most of the free stuff is subsidized through tax dollars. So thank you for paying your taxes so I have entertainment on the weekends)

This week we decided to take advantage of the Smithsonian National Zoo. The craziest part about the zoo to me is you’re walking up a busy street with high-rise apartments on both sides and all of a sudden there is this big opening and you walk into a zoo. There’s even a 7-11 across the street. I guess I’m just used to the Hogle Zoo in Salt Lake where you have to drive up the canyon away from the city before you get to the zoo.

I was also surprised at how big it was and how much there was to see. When we walked in we decided to get a map so we could make sure to see everything we wanted to see. When I asked the lady for a map, she told me they were five dollars. I told her no thank you, to which she replied, “but the money goes to support the zoo.” I of course said, “Yeah, and so do my tax dollars.”

Needless to say we ended up wandering around aimlessly. But we did get to see a lot of cool things. We saw the famous Pandas of course, Mei Xiang, Tian Tian and the baby, Tai Shan. (Random side note: I just searched the Smithsonian site to find the spellings for the names of the Pandas and discovered that you can get Mei Xiang, Tian Tian and Tai Shan ringtones. I don’t know about you, but I believe ringtones have gotten a little ridiculous, but that’s another blog in itself).

We also got to see the birds, reptiles, felines, bears, giraffes, elephants, hippopotami, etc. The hippopotamus even had a huge red rubber ball to play with. I was glad to see the zoo keepers were replicating its natural habitat as accurately as possible.

The highlight for us was the Ape/Orangutan Habitat. There was this one ape that was definitely a crowd pleaser. We walked in and all of these people were gathered around the glass looking into its area. This ape would throw up all over the glass, lick it up, move down a few feet and throw up once more. He was doing this over and over and the people couldn’t get enough. It was disgusting for sure, but we just couldn’t take our eyes off it. Then I looked around his habitat and there were empty pizza boxes everywhere. He must have had a crazy block party the night before and was still recovering. Apparently the pizza man missed the sign that said, “Please don’t feed us, our zoo diets are great.”

So I highly recommend the zoo as a day o’ fun for everyone. Just make sure to take some money so you can pick up a map and whatever you do, don’t feed the animals.

A Little Advice

Word to the wise…



If you leave a can of Pepsi in the freezer for too long, it will explode. My roommate learned this after conducting some fairly scientific experiments.

Just wanted to save you some trouble.