A Typical Morning

I woke up without my alarm for the second time this week. I figured that I'd sleep in a bit this week because I don't really have any reason to get up. I'm on vacay before my new jobs starts (a week from yesterday!) and, other than finally submitting my DC Bar application, I had little in the way of responsibilities. Still, I was out of bed before 8:30am. Not sure why. I was just very awake. I know that I had been dreaming, but I can't for the life of me remember what.

I made myself a bowl of cereal then hopped on the interwebs for my morning dose of news and snark. The Republicans debated last night. Apparently the audience applauded waterboarding. Super. I should probably be shocked, but I'm mostly not. Jerry Falwell is still dead. I'm still feeling guilty about being happy about it. Like a good Catholic, I was taught to not speak ill of the dead and I certainly found some of the stuff I found in message boards yesterday a little extreme, even if he was a hateful bigot. But someone (and I'd credit him/her if I remembered where I read it) paraphrased what Bette Davis said upon hearing of nemesis Joan Crawford's death: “You should never say bad things about the dead, you should only say good. Joan Crawford is dead. Good." In the case of a person as unambiguously vile as Falwell, I'm loath to disagree. But I digress.

After realizing that America is still fucked and neither Wolfie nor Gonzo resigned, I went about folding some laundry. I did a ton of laundry yesterday in preparation for my trip to NJ (oh yeah, I'm going to be in NJ for the next few days). My plan is to have my apartment in as pristine a state as possible so that it'll be ready for me when I return from the Jerz and start work. I had just swiffed my floor when I decided that I'd love a coffee. Like most Washingtonians, I have a Starbucks exactly a block away. I threw on a pair of jeans and grabbed those things that are always with me when I leave my apartment: Wallet. Cell. iPod. Keys. Keys? Shit. Where were my keys?

I scoured my table but, because I actually cleaned it significantly yesterday, it didn't take long to figure out that they weren't there. Well, if not there, then where? Checked my desk. Dresser. My bookcase. Nothing. That's when I stopped, smiled to myself because I do this all the time, and checked my pockets.

Nope. No keys.

Had they fallen to the floor? Were they on my five inches of kitchen counter space? No. Did I toss them on the bed? Maybe set them down in the bathroom? No dice. I was getting a bit crazy at this point. What if I had dropped them outside? I can use the call box to get into my front door so, when stepping outside for a sec, I'll leave my door unlocked. No keys necessary. Then again, I don't like doing that late at night, so I always bring my keys. But what if I had dropped them somehow? I couldn't be 100% certain that my keys were in my apartment, so I didn't feel 100% great about leaving for an extended weekend knowing that my keys might be in the hands of nefarious peoples. (In case you're just tuning in, I'm a bit of a paranoid person.) I started panicking. I went outside and scanned my front porch. I checked to see if a neighbor had found them and put them on top of our mailboxes (our de facto lost and found). I returned to my aparment and started tearing it apart. I was moving stuff. Looked under the bed. Shook my garbage can to see if maybe I'd thrown them out. Nada. Looked behind the bed. Behind the dresser. Under the desk. Cleared off the table. Cleared off the desk. Went through my medicine cabinet. Under chair cushions. I looked in a pair of shoes that were under the table. Sweatshirt pockets. I started opening drawers. Drawers that I haven't opened in weeks.

No keys.

I was losing it. Where were my keys? I couldn't go to Jersey without knowing where my keys were! Where could they be?! Rechecked every place I'd already checked. Lifted up my bath mats. Looked on top of the fridge.

Pause. No. That's silly. They weren't IN the refrigerator.

I opened the refrigerator door. No keys. I looked in the butter tray. Nothing. Up. Down. Nothing. Then I pulled out the pizza box sitting on my top rack. There, in the back of my refrigerator, behind the pizza box from last night, were my keys.

Yeah.

So it goes.

Kurt Vonnegut passed away yesterday. Celebrate his life by buying a book.

Access the Times obit and definitely go read Graham's post.

Rest in peace, Mr. Vonnegut.

(Edited to add a link to Graham's post. In my defense, I titled my post before seeing Graham's. Great minds think alike.)

More death by Metrobus....

After a fabulous long weekend in Chicago, I decided to catch up on a bit of television. At one point, I noticed a local news ad mentioning a Metrobus death. At first I figured it was DVRed during a program from last Thursday when two women were struck and killed. Then I realized I wasn't watching a program from Thursday night.

Just a few days after my post on the problems with Metro and the recent tendency for Metrobus manslaughter, yet ANOTHER person was struck and killed by a Metrobus. This time it was the W2 bus in Southeast. Read about it in the Post.

There was a time when all I feared about living in the District were the high crime rate and the potential for terror attacks. Glad to know I can add "getting hit by a bus" to the list.

Thanks, Metro!

Spotlight on DC: Metro opens doors...to death & despair.

I originally started this post as a whine about the latest massive Metro delays. A few paragraphs in, I went to the websites for WMATA and the Washington Post but couldn’t find anything about this morning’s Red Line fiasco. Then I found this article about two women who were struck and killed by a MetroBus last night. “The two women were on Seventh Street NW in the Penn Quarter neighborhood and had the ‘walk’ signal to cross Pennsylvania Avenue when a northbound bus turned left onto the avenue about 6:40 p.m., said Lisa Farbstein, a Metro spokeswoman.” As a DC resident who walks or uses public transportation to get everywhere, this freaks me the hell out. Everyone who lives here has seen those buses barreling down the road. There’s a supremely unsafe crosswalk at 20th and O St that I use everyday to and from work. I’m usually pretty forceful about asserting my right to have traffic yield to me and often step out (albeit cautiously) in front of cars, but I refuse to mess with the buses. More than once I’ve arrived at the crosswalk and seen a D6 hurtling down the street like it’s a fire truck headed toward a five-alarm blaze. I can only imagine how fast the fatal 54 bus from last night had been going -- and how criminally inattentive the driver must have been -- to hit TWO people with enough force to kill WHILE MAKING A LEFT TURN. It’s one thing for a bus to kill someone while on a straight away (those things are heavy), but on a turn? Something’s really wrong here. With that bus – and with Metro.

This was the third fatal Metrobus accident since June 2006. In that month, the H8 killed a woman crossing Park Road on 16th Street NW. Just last month, another woman (ladies, please be careful) was struck by a bus leaving a bus garage while crossing Wisconsin Avenue NW in Friendship Heights. According to the Post’s article, I’m not the only one totally disturbed by this. D.C. Council member Jim Graham (D-Ward 1), a member of the Metro board, “said he will seek answers about whether the three fatal accidents since June are isolated incidents or represent a more systemic problem." I’m leaning toward the latter. How can one not think that something is seriously wrong with the way Metro is being run, as evidenced not only by these tragedies but by the shoddy service and dangerous instances of late?

The Metro trains have been plagued with all sorts of issues. An editorial from the Post mentions the minor stuff and this article covers the most recent major accident when a Green Line car derailed at Mt. Vernon injuring 20 people. This very morning, I was halfway down the nonfunctioning (shock!) escalator to the Red Line platform at Dupont when I noticed that there was hardly a place to stand. I didn’t know how long it had been since the last train, but judging from the crowd (and admittedly it was rush hour) it had to have been at least 15 minutes. A glance at the board revealed that the next train would be in 6 minutes, a train after that had no time next to it (never a good sign), and then another train would be around in 10 minutes. So I waited. Finally a train pulled up AND THE FIRST CAR WAS UNLIT AND NOT CARRYING PASSENGERS. There appeared to be some sort of equipment on it. Fine. But, really Metro? Don’t have the first car of the first train you send to a crowded platform be closed. Take an extra 5 minutes and send a completely free train. It’s just a PR thing – people don’t want to see an unlit car and be faced with closed doors after waiting that long. An announcement then came on asking people not to crowd the train because another was right behind it. I didn’t even try to board. The train pulled away leaving the platform looking no less crowded and another announcement came on: “We apologize. The next train will be in 6 minutes.” I don’t know if my fellow commuters appreciated me laughing out loud, but I couldn’t help myself. I said goodbye to a friend that I’d run into on the platform, and walked out. Of course this had to happen on a cold, slushy day. The walk down to the Blue Line at Farragut West was not fun (except for running into Josh). The Red Line is bad news. Red, underground, often on fire . . . I propose that the Red Line is the topmost level of Hell. It serves Upper Northwest (think big money) and downtown including Judiciary Square (think my professional peers). I can almost guarantee that a fair share of the riders are big time sinners. Unfortunately, I’m stuck to suffer with them.

Metro needs to get its act together pronto. Currently in the works is a proposal to extend Metro out to Dulles Airport. Anyone who’s tried getting out there would know this would be a boon of not insignificant proportions. Still, with word of a proposed above-ground rail (a terrible, terrible idea only favored because it’s cheap), I worry about how much more Metro can screw up. Pervasive delays, while a nuisance, don’t kill anyone. Cheap construction alternatives might. Unsafe bus drivers definitely do. To the Powers that Be at Metro: The system is broken. Please fix it.