My New (First Class) Guitar

For Christmas, my Aunt and Uncle bought me a guitar. I’ve never played a guitar before and I had never really considered learning to, but I am now the proud owner of one and so far I’m excited to learn. Let’s just say the three chords I know how to play are sounding great.

Anyway, when I was transporting the guitar from Utah to D.C., I took it with me on the plane as my carry-on luggage. They normally can store large or odd shaped items in a closet near the front of the plane, but my first flight was on a smaller plane and there wasn’t enough room for it. I asked the flight attendant about it and he said there were going to be enough empty seats, so he could just find one and buckle it in.

Later on, he came back to my seat (which happened to be in the last row. You know, the one that doesn’t lean back at all because it’s up against the back wall of the plane) and told me he had found two empty seats in First Class and he had laid the guitar across the seats and buckled it in. At this point I’m imagining what two First Class tickets would cost and of course my first question was if there was anyway I could swap seats with the guitar or at least sit next to it.

Let’s just say while I have never flown First Class, my guitar has.

Sad.

My Old Man Humor

I've always teased my dad about two things:

1. His age
2. His sense of humor

One of the the saddest days of my life was the day I realized I have the same sense of humor (although I like to think mine is slightly more sophisticated and my sense of timing is better). I've had many a friend tell me my jokes sounded just like jokes their dad would tell.

At work today I was getting on the elevator and as the doors were closing a man came around the corner and wanted to get on. I quickly pushed the "Open Door" button and the man slipped on to the elevator. The following conversation ensued:

Elevator Man: "Thank you. You were very quick with that button."
Me: "I've had plenty of practice. I even considered being an elevator operator once."
Elevator Man: "Oh really? What made you change your mind?"
Me: "Too many ups and downs."

Thanks a lot dad.

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.