Segways...why do they exist?

I work in a tourist town. Washington, DC. Every year I loathe the time when school trips begin and slow moving tourists abound. They don't know how to ride a public transportation system, they don't understand the weather patterns around here, and they are constantly taking pictures of things that are not in the least bit interesting. I've got stories for all three of these problems I have with these out of towners but my least  favorite thing about tourists in my town? Segways!

I take metro once a week. That's all, I'm not a regular metro rider but I do take one of the busier lines, red line, and I get off at Metro Center, the busiest of all stops. In my afternoons I am usually in a hurry because I have to make an appointment after work. I have to leave enough time for slow trains, and station holdings as well as walking from the stop to my appointment. An hour total it takes me. But, in the summer it can be frightening. Frightening because when I switch from orange/blue to red at Metro Center, the tourists are waiting in huge throngs on the platform and milling about trying to figure out which way to go...toward Shady Grove? Toward Silver Spring? And the way they do this is to get on an escalator, chat with their groups about it incessantly and then at the top (or bottom) STOP (!) to try and figure out which way to go.....AAARRRGGGHH! Really? You coudn't do this on the non-moving part of the station? You couldn't step aside for a few minutes to collect yourself and figure out where you need to go? Do you really need to crowd the escalator (Metro etiqutte is to stay to the right if you are not moving up or down the excalator as it is, they pipe in those instructions over the loud speaker constantly so it's not like it is news)? I have shit to do and places to go people! Sheesh...tourists.

When I don't take metro I take a commuter bus that conveniently drops me off 1 block from work Constitution and 14th, and picks up 1 block on the opposite side of the street from work which happens to be in front of the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History, the same Museum depicted in Night at the Museum 2: Battle at the Smithsonian. There are of course tons of tourists, all the time because well it's a museum and it is free. But, I always chuckle when it comes summer time and it rains in DC. Summer time in DC is a constant guessing game of weather pattern. It can be sunny in the morning, muggy then rain, then sunny again and then hot and muggy again all in the span of 12 hours. So I laugh when ill prepared tourists surely headed out on a beautiful sunny day find themselves only bombarded by rain mid-afternoon. And where were they when rain fell? The Smithsonian Museum of Natural History. And how do I know this? They are ALL wandering around wondering where the mall is (next block over dopes, you can't miss the huge obelisk in the middle of it called the Washington Monument) and wearing blue rain ponchos from the Smithsonian. It makes me feel better for some reason and I can deal with them clogging sidewalks and getting in my way of catching my bus.

Right next to my work is the old post office pavilion. It used to house a post office but it only served that function for a little while. You can read more about it here and here. For some reason there is a smallish statue of Benjamin Franklin in the front. I'm not sure why. Maybe having to do with Franklin's interest in printing or something but I don't think it has much to do with the post office pavilion itself. Anyway, tourists will take a picture of it and take pictures of themselves in front of it and it goes on and on. Really I can't understand this because there is an entire mall full of statues ten times better on the mall (Jefferson, Lincoln, Albert Einstein, Martin Luther King, Jr., Roosevelt etc) that should have their picture taken with you in front of it or on its own. This one seemed to have been thrown in as an after thought. But who am I to judge, right?

Finally, my fav...the thing that irks me most about tourists in DC.  Fat ass out of towners who obnoxiously zip by on segways! These things. I can't stand them and I can't understand why fat ass tourists smelling like sweat and sun screen dont want to enjoy walking along the mall and taking in the fantastic architecture that is the mall or other parts of DC?

Why do they choose to do this? Walking is so much better for you then zipping around on a segway trying to avoid others who are walking like normal people and taking up the sidewalk like the selfish fat ass pricks they are! I nearly got trampled by a whole herd of them yesterday. I decided to take a nice walk to the Lincoln Memorial. Nice long walk, about 4 miles round trip. I am basking in my endorphin high and the comfort that I am surrounded by beautiful architecture devoted to our great presidents, our fallen soldiers and others who have served our great country on a beautiful, warm sunny summer day and what do I hear, chattering, yammering and a cacophany of noise from 12 or so segway jerks zipping by on my left with no regard to others, not slowing down in a crowded area and staying all around completely oblivious to anyone except themselves. Fat ass jerks.

I have learned to come to terms with the fact that the tourists are a constant fixture. Sometimes they make me crack up; see this post here but for the love for all that is good in this world, please, please please, get off your fat pale asses, don't rent a segway and WALK around the mall. It is a beautiful place. I never take for granted the fact that I am there 4 days a week, 9 hours a day. I relish it and treasure it, and I walk it!

thoughts 1-22-2013

I hoped but it didn't work. So far 2013 is the worst of my life. Hands down, without a doubt. I feel jealous of those who have both parents. I feel in the small majority of those with none. But I am in the smallest percentile of those who lost both in such a short time frame.

It hurts worse than anything I have ever experienced. This is the worst in my life. I feel like I have nothing now and the irony of it all is the two most health conscious people I know got taken too soon and did not deserve this. No one does.

I can't write anymore now. I'm just angry. Angry at those who made it through ok and angry there is no rhyme or reason. Just angry...and hungry...maybe more later....


When will this get better? When will I start to feel functional? When will I find a comforting notion, something, anything? When will I start to get my appetite back? When will my mouth stop being so dry?
When will the hurt and the pain stop? When will it ever change? When will I stop beating myself up over it? When will I smile and pause and think warmly? When can I find reminders to be soothing instead of burning? When will the time pass as it once did? When can I stop thinking of life as this useless passage of time? How can I fix this? How can I get them both back? How can I do this? How can I manage this?

Here's to 2013

Here's hoping 2013 is better than the craptastic second half of 2012!

I have this apple

I have this apple that I ate yesterday. It was really tasty and my favorite kind: honey crisp. It was small enough that it wasn't too much for a snack and ripe enough that when I cut into it with a knife and tasted it, it was crunchy and sweet. But I didn't want to eat this apple.

I didn't want it for all it represented to me. It was a perfect little apple borne of something unhappy. I got this apple from a fruit basket. A fruit basket that was given to us by my parents' accountant. The fruit basket had loads of other fruits and chocolates and fruit spreads from a great, well known place in Brooklyn. But we got it because it was a gift to the aggrieved. We had it in our house instead of my dad. How can a bunch of fruit soothe in times of loss I have no idea. This was a tasty apple and I hated every bite I took of it. It was awful and I wanted to throw it against the wall.

But I didn't. I had an apple. It was a good part of my lunch, good for me and my fruit serving for the day. It was the worst apple I ever had.

I'm liking you a little less Brooklyn

When I go home now it's not the  same. I don't like you as much as I did before, Brooklyn. You're not the same to me anymore. You don't hold the same magic since my memories of past years seem like a distance life lived by someone else now. I don't eagerly await the time to go back. I don't long for experiencing all of what the other Brooklynites experience day by day. I don't want to be there as much since he's not there anymore.

My Brooklyn was my family in Brooklyn. Everyone together and we're no longer our group of five plus. And I hate that. I truly, truly hate that. It makes me so upset and it won't ever be the same again. And I hate that too.

I'm trying to like my new future, I'm trying to like where I am but I can't see forward at all, and I just never saw it past this. How could I? How am I supposed to figure out what to do now without you to guide me? I can find my own path sure, but you're not there for me to tell you how I'm making my way along it. You're not going to be there for me to tell you how I get through the tough spots. I want to ask you how you got through the tough spots. I want to bounce ideas off of you and get your thoughts,  I wanted to ask you why in the hell California has 4 basketball teams?!!

I wasn't done telling you everything I wanted to tell you about how I go about my day. I wanted to tell you so much more. I can tell you in my dreams I suppose or quiet times when I am reminded of something you said or a funny joke you made. But it's not the same and I hate having to settle for that. I hate that most of all. it isn't right and it isn't fair.

So I am dissatisfied with you Brooklyn. You haven't held up in my mind and you've lost a little bit of your sparkle. I'll miss you and think of you and still check to see how you're doing, Brooklyn. But you're a little less my Brooklyn.

I'm gonna be a writer

For a while I have been trying to figure out where my creativities should be focused. art? writing? photography? Music? I can like those alot but I am not drawn to them and go out of my way make it so I do them everyday. I just don't. If I were, I'd already have my camera, or my keyboard or new paints to swirl around. But what I do realize is that I like to write. The funny thing is I'm not a reader! Hah!

Such is life with irony and all. I don't like to read books. I think that came away when I was done with grad school. I can't do it anymore unless it is something I know ahead of time I am really gonna like: The Boys are Back I read in two weeks, Middlesex I read in 2 months, Petite Anglaise I read in a few months, first four Sookie Stackhouse novels I read in 1 year, currently reading Salmon Fishing in the Yemen. These are the only books I've read in the past 4 years. I have a few more but I never finished them: Dreams from my Father, The Wachoula Woods Accord, Animals in Translation (all non-fiction by the way; I think I should stick to fiction).

But I like more and more when I can write something and it can become something to bring emotion, or provide detail to something everyone  thinks but never says, or come up with a perspective that others may not have considered. Being in my head all day makes me want to be less of me and explore the rest of the world so writing seems like an easy enough way to do it. Once you do it enough you get better too, right?

I'll think on this some more and figure out what route to take.

It's gonna be good.

I'll probably change my mind in a week.

Too many things twirling around

I wanted to write about the awful weekend I had, but then thought maybe I should write about the serendipitous thing that happened a few weeks ago when I started my evening class, then I thought, maybe I should write about something I've been thinking about that should just be put down on paper and then I realized, I have way too many thoughts swirling around in my head and it is making me sick, truly, which is why my weekend was awful and it is driving me crazy!

So to sum up, I have lots to write but am too frazzled to get it all straight and coherent so I am choosing to write as whatever comes.

So what I am going to write about is taking it easy. I have been very focused on making my life as simple as I can ever since I was done with grad school. Things like that made my life very stressful, for many, many years and I no longer want to accept that life should be that way. Nowhere does it say that you have to suffer or struggle to get to where you want to be. And so, I take that to heart and make it what I live by. I never, ever feel the need to stress out about something because there is nothing in this world that is worth getting yourself physically ill about. Now most times I can tell myself and I can successfully convince myself of this, but I don't always listen to myself.

That's when I get caught up in something that stresses me out so much I can't function. I have had some background level stress for a while now. My dad is in the hospital. For 2 months. I know I am not dealing with it well. So it remains this low level, background stress that saddens me, depresses me and makes me full of angst and full of memory. So with a background level just pulsing, small pulses, everyday, anything else that comes along gets added on to it. So there is a small pulse in the background and then a more pressing pulse of stress on top of that. Think of it as two rhythms going on at once, different time signatures...that's bound to drive anyone batty with ill-timed music going off in their head, right?

So I deal with the one, maybe but the other just keeps pulsing along, low, slow, in the background. And something else comes along that sends a spike of stress through my system, so low and slow gets added on to super charged high intensity short lived spiked stress. No way to deal with that. My body doesn't know how. So I shut down and haven't recovered. My brain has gone fuzzy, my routine, turned upside down and things I planned to do, went by the wayside. I become disappointed, disillusioned and frustrated. rinse,repeat...

I'm going to try some meditation, and breathing. Some way to calm things down and turn things down to normal level, to turn the pulsing to low and as slow as possible. Now.