drewish.com

i declare this: dan day

Had a pretty amazing day. I've declared it Dan Day. The weather is unusually good. Went and got falafel for lunch/breakfast from the New Amsterdam Falafel Shop, then had a cup of good coffee at Tryst. Went on a pretty epic bike ride to find a radio tower I'd seen and take its picture. Ended up seeing a lot of DC that was new to me.

I was beat from fighting headwinds so as I neared the apartment, I stopped for a 6-pack. Decided that rather than going home, I'd like to go drink in a park. Found myself a stretch of creek and worked my way through half of it. As I sat there enjoying what was probably one of the best days of my life, I realized that at just about ever point I'd been doing what Dan would have done. I miss that kid. I hope he's having the time of his life gallivanting all over the Americas. If I have to buy him a fucking plane ticket and find him a job to get him to move to Portland I'm gonna do it.

more sights

yesterday krista and i got a little sight-seeing in. she took half day of work and we went on the tour of the us capital building. i'd turned my id in on my last day so we stopped by the office and joined up with one that had already been scheduled.

after that, i rode down the mall to take some pictures. at the the vietnam memorial i locked up the bike and walked along it. more than any other memorial i've been to, it attacks you on a very low, gut level. as i started walking along, the wedge of granite slowly rises up. at first it was easy to read each individual name, but it became harder and harder to separate the names. they just run together. it's a struggle to remember that each name represents not just a person who died, but a family and group of friends with a hole in it. as the granite rose above my head i felt like i was walking into a grave. i came up to a photo that someone had left along the wall, it looked like a color photocopy in a cheap frame. i imagined someone left one like it every day or every week only to have it collected up by the park service every night. seeing only one or two more offerings reminded me of part of a pogues song.

And now every April I sit on my porch
And I watch the parade pass before me
And I watch my old comrades, how proudly they march
Reliving old dreams of past glory
And the old men march slowly, all bent, stiff and sore
The forgotten heroes from a forgotten war
And the young people ask, "What are they marching for?"
And I ask myself the same question
And the band plays Waltzing Matilda
And the old men answer to the call
But year after year their numbers get fewer
Some day no one will march there at all

in a way i feel like it's already happened. all those people in vietnam died for what? I sure don't know. all i could think about was those who've died in iraq, and i don't feel like we've learned a thing.

it was a pretty sobering experience. my reveie was broken when i realized that i had to get home because we were supposed to meet my cousin steve and his wife rachel to go see the wizards play the golden state warriors. we at a little and then metro'd over to meet them. it was quite a bit of fun, the wizards were horrible but the people behind us were shouting some pretty hilarious things. the best part was about five minutes before the end of the game. the wizards were already down by about 10 points and they kept getting distracted and leaving one warrior open and he kept nailing the 3-pointers. every time he'd get one a couple hundred people would get up and walk out. by the end of the game the stadium was half empty. on the plus side i got a wes unseld bobble head doll.

last day

this trip has gone by so quickly i almost don't know what happened. today is my last day at work. i got the grip and grin photo with the congressman today on the east steps of the capitol. i'm really looking forward to getting the photo back. they're going to have a little going away thing for me in a bit. i was asked what i wanted to have at it but beer was, apparently, not the correct answer so i'm getting milk and cookies.

i've still got some time this and next week to go hit up the sights i haven't seen yet. then it's time to pack up, clean the apartment, ship the bike and get the hell out.

no taxation without representation

my mom forwarded this email from a family friend this afternoon:

-----Original Message-----
Sent: Thursday, February 17, 2005 6:20 AM
Subject: Chilling statistics...

According to icasualties.org, there have been 88 hostile fire deaths caused
by firearms since the beginning of hostilities in Iraq.  The remainder of
coalition deaths have been due to explosives or accidents.

What does this mean? If you consider that there have been an average of
160,000 troops in theater during the last 22 months, that gives a firearm
death rate of 60 per 100,000. The rate in Washington DC is
80.6 per 100,000.  That means that you are more likely to be shot and killed
in our Nation's Capitol, which has some of the strictest gun control laws in
the nation, than you are in Iraq.

The conclusion?  Under the tactics of the left, we should immediately pull
out of Washinton, DC!

here was my response:

I apologize for the tone of this email in advance but this little factoid has rubbed me completely the wrong way. Today we went driving around with a friend of Krista's family and got to see a lot more of the district so the humor is lost on me.

While I couldn't get that site to come up, the line about lies, damn lies and statistics comest to mind. Sure it was "only" 88 American deaths but a whole lot more Iraqis have been killed. The small number of casualties is a testament to the improvements in body armor and medical battlefield treatment that so few Americans have died.

But living in DC for the last two months had given me a new appreciation for how badly the residents of the District get screwed. The schools look to be falling down, the police cars look like they've been used in a demolition derby and the streets have pot holes big enough to loose a wheel in and Bush forced the DC to pay for his inauguration security out of their homeland security money. It's amazing what happens with no Congressional representation.

Now if everyone in the district was given body armor and medical evacuations to Germany when they were shot I'm sure the death rate here could be lowered. Heck, I bet most residents of DC would actually be pretty happy if the US did pull out.

death ride

sunday i met up with a coworker and another coworker's boyfriend and we went out on a bike ride with a bunch of folks riding for capitol hill bikes. we were under the impression that it was to be a coffee shop ride. out and back maybe 20 miles. apparently this week they'd decided to step it up. we ended up riding a little over 45 miles. i managed to stay up with the pack for the two-thirds of it but started boinking and ended up with a couple of other stragglers. people seemed pretty impressed that i'd managed to keep up on a fixie. it was the longest ride i've done on the john deere. krista commented that it looked like someone had hit me in the ass with a bat. i was contemplating padded shorts afterwards.

no shortage of blow hards

krista and i are down at tryst and i'm overhearing two chicken hawks discussing iraq, iran and other foreign events. it's pretty funny to hear people who's outlook is so divergent from reality.

highlights:

• exporting democracy is nothing like exporting a boeing 7E7. uh, actually it is. you think you can just fly one of those babies in, park it, and then wait for an airline to emerge spontaneously you'll be surprised. who's going to fuel it, repair it, fly it, order spare parts for it. who's going to train those people. a complex system relies on external infrastructure.
• they're talking about how we should do what ever we can to sabotage iran. great idea guys. i guess you forgot that iran has an army. you want to see an insurgency with real foreign fighters, start fucking around with iran. our little war in iraq has made clear to the rest of the world exactly what our limits are.
• one guy starts talking about how he's working on a piece for the hoover institute and then some story for the ny times review.
• the only think that they've said that i can agree with is they both seem to expect bush's social security changes to be a total mess.

as the poorman says there's only one good title for people like this: wanker.

weeee

had a good weekend. on friday we found the only restaurant that, at this point, i'd recommend in dc: amsterdam falafel shop, top your own falafel and eat some double fried fries. then we went and stocked away food so we wouldn't have to go out in the weekend's blizzard, that didn't really happen.

today was probably the worst day i've had, not because work was bad per se, but because i'm filling in for our receptionist and damn, let me tell you if ever there was a well earned day it's secretary's day. sweet baby jesus, i left a stack of unsorted mail on the desk, got through about half the faxes and just a even less of the whitehouse tour requests. i was doing stuff all day but i don't thinki finished anything. everytime i'd start to get going on something the phone would ring and i'd end up working on something else.

oh, and then all the anti-abortion wack-o's (who are here to mourn roe v wade) rolled into the office. you want to give us this rose in remembrance of all the not children? come on, you aren't even constituents, go bother someone else.

fuck bush

not much to say. went down to the protests. did the critical mass. it was all good fun. the one low spot that i would like to mention was the mutherfucking dumbass black bandana anarchists perched atop a bus stop trying to burn an american flag. personally, i'll never burn a flag or nor will i support it (that whole boy scout thing just made it taboo) but if you want to that's your business. but, watching them i couldn't quite make up my mind which was worse:
a) that the video footage of these morons was going to be used to represent the thousands of protestors that had come out
or
b) that the morons were too dumb to figure out how to light the flag on fire.
thinking about it a bit more, it was probably a combination of both. if they had, say, brought a cotton flag (instead of a synthetic one) or, say, soaked in gasoline it would have gone right up and that would have been that. instead they screwed around it for a good ten minutes letting the tv cameras get plenty of footage and giving the few republicans standing around a chance to do some (in my humble opinion) rather clever heckling. all i've got to say is fuck those guys. if the black bandana crew never showed up to another protest i'd be happy enough to piss myself.

riding in the snow, laughing at portland

we had an inch or so of snow today. dc is apparently even worse than portland when it comes to dealing with a bit of bad weather. that's pretty embarrassing when you consider that portland gets snow once ever ten years and dc gets it pretty much yearly.

i took my first snow-borne fixed gear ride home through the slush and snow tonight. it was actually pretty fun. traffic was super fucked again tonight so i did my fair share of riding between rows of stopped cars. i was just poking along trying not to wipe out.

in this town when it snows people just give up on traffic laws. stop lights apparently don't count if you might possibly skid if you considered stopping. i make sure to pull off for the tour buses full of republicans escorted by matching police cars with sires blaring and lights flashing. i wanted to be able to flip them off with two hands it just wouldn't have been prudent while riding, especially in the weather.

bush get's coronated tomorrow. i'm planning on hitting up the critical mass rides to celebrate. i plan on passing out copies of our last two issues. spaceman (who's in korea right now!) was good enough to ship them out to me.

funny-ness from back in portland:

• thief learns lesson in do's and doughnuts - some young republicans (who else would wear khaki pants?) try to steal the voodoo doughnut's giant donut. customers catch the bastards.
• fee flap focuses on secretive outfit with shady image - a jet used to fly suspected terrorists to countries where they can be tortured gets linked to a cia front operated out of portland. the city decides to do their part. "a manager in portland's licensing bureau, said no one at the city has raised objections to bayard's line of business. she said portland merely is investigating a possibly unlicensed company, treating it as the city would any other business."

riding (and skidding) in dc

rode to work today. had an interesting ride in this morning. when we got into town in was in the 70s, this week it's been in the low 30s. i'm not used to having to worry about skidding on the frost. the evening was much more fun. some dude decided to park his van downtown and tell the cops he had a bomb. as a precaution, they blocked off the surrounding blocks. by the time i headed home traffic was so amazingly fucked that i was riding from light to light between rows of parked cars. the hardest part was restraining myself from spitting on all the stalled cars with george bush stickers.

good day, bad news

i've finally figured out how to walk through the metal detectors without setting them off. take big steps, i have no idea why it works, but it does. met one of the other new interns yesterday, strangely her name is also krista.

a funny exchange while walking around the building:

coworker: you can tell that they're republicans.
me: how's that?
coworker: the ties.
me: i didn't see them.
coworker: they were horrible. republicans have horrible taste in ties.

i got to spend some time writing replies to constituent mail. it's pretty tricky because you want to be sympathetic (it was anti-bush) but you have to be careful not to promise anything or offer up an opinion that doesn't jive with the congressman's.

went over to revolution cycles after work to buy a bike pump to replace the one i didn't bring. it's a cool shop staffed by some very nice people. i plan to take some zines by when the box of them arrives. i was pretty surprised at how much track stuff they had. i'll have to find someone out here to distribute zines and get them to sponsor us.

as i was walking over there krista called to let me know that her grandpa had died. he had the full set of cancers and was not doing well for the last few months. my heart goes out to her and the rest of the family.

tour guide in training

this morning i got my congressional id and off i went to the capitol tour training. they went through some of the construction history and then took us on the tour. i can't remember if i'd ever taken the tour but it was pretty cool. it probably helped that we had the tour guide trainer giving the tour (i have no idea how she manages to remember all the numbers and dates) but it's just an amazing building. i think i'll drag kirsta down there on thursday and try out the tour on her.

the bikes showed up today. it'll be real good to get out and riding again. i'm pretty done paying for the metro.

also, in finally finished grand theft auto 3: san andreas. it's one of the best video games i've ever played (and the $200 for the ps2 and game was some of the best i've spent). before coming to dc i kept talking about how i wanted to finish up a bunch of projects. i thinking finishing up a game i've been playing for two months counts as finishing a project... in a rather loose sense...

my first day

today was my first day in in congressman's office. it was pretty good experience all in all. started off with a quick tour of the office during which i was warned not to use the bathroom in the office (not really a problem as there's a men's room just down the hall). it just happens to share a wall with the congressman's personal office and the flushing sound is a bit... well... distracting.

i spent most of the morning sorting through mail and faxes (my single favorite fax was the one with NO MORE MEXICANS covering the bottom half of the page) and then learning to answer the phones. i now have inordinate amount of respect for the receptionist, jannet, at ppi, my old employer. without breaking a sweat she'd work four lines and talk to you across the counter. using only a single line i'm able to confuse the names of the caller and callee and then promptly transfer them to the wrong extension.

lunch was nice. niles, the intern coordinator, stuck his head in and asked if i was interested in going up to a reception for a little free food. i'd been looking forward to gobbling up a few of the crumbs that are dropped during the whole lobbying process so i jumped at the chance. on the way over he mentioned that if we hurried we might still catch lance.

apparently the discovery channel was one of the sponsors and they'd brought lance armstrong and his team in for a little pr. i was a bit surprised how natural it was to see him. i suppose it's just the way he comes off as a very humble, regular guy. he was sharing the stage was a ten or twelve year-old kid who was a five time cancer survivor (and one smart kid, i'm sure he'll be up to something important) and lance spent most of his time talking about how amazing the kid was and what he'd gone through. as athletes go he's probably the one i respect the most.

afterward i got to talking to niles about riding bikes and mentioned that my friend works at river city. it turns out he'd worked there a few years back and still knows most of the people who work down there. at least i know who to forward all the bike mail to now.

the afternoon consisted of sorting files into binders collecting just about every bit of position and legislation he's signed onto. it seems like i ought to complain about it but really it was one of those tasks that puts you on autopilot and then an hour later you realize your done.

i sat in on the staff meeting this afternoon, about half of it was over my head, i spent the time just trying to pay attention and soak up what i could. i don't know what i'll say at the end of the term but i could really dig a political job.

saw me some capitol

this morning i got my new shave and new shirt on and went down to see the office where i'll spend the next two and a half months. i'm pretty excited. getting off the metro and walking up to independence ave i finally got a good look at captial hill. until today i felt like i was in some generic east coast city, now it's pretty clearly washington dc.

a trip to the crystal shity

kirsta and i made it safely to dc yesterday. we arrived at our apartment and were a bit suprised by it. it reminds me of the katherine house right after i first bought it. it needs a new coat of paint, different light fixtures and curtins. krista's first remark upon entering was something along the lines of "damn, i need another zanax".

this morning we decided to head out and do a bit of shopping. we'd heard that the crystal city was a pretty nice mall so we hopped on the metro to check it out. the only thing i can compare it to would be if you took park lane mall--scratch that--the strip mall anex, to park lane mall, removed the charm, burried it underground, and let it fester for a few years... we couldn't leave fast enough. the only up-side was that on the way down there we overheard some kids talking about how to get to the h&m. we stopped there on the way back and i was pretty impressed. i think those were the first new (non-bike) clothes i've bought in a year or so.

wandering back we found and stopped at: a really nice brew pub, an ethopian resturaunt, and a barber shop (it seemed to be straight out of grand theft auto, but after you play that game enough everthing seems to be straight from it).