this is rare, and i am savoring it. the madness starts now. i have my camera w/ me at all times to watch tourists soak up the OBAMA emanating from our pristine, federally cleaned sidewalks. tomorrow is supposed to be arctic, and i imagine it’ll take me hours to get to work on the bus.

we’ll see how blog-alicious this weekend will be. there’s a chance i’ll be staying in/hiding out for much of it. i’m just too old for this.

is the same weekend as the inauguration.

if you’ve never been to DC MLK weekend, then you’ve obviously never seen hundreds of large and in charge men with asses hang out of chaps walking down 14th street to dakota cowgirl. (RIP dakota)

so awesome. i wonder what this confluence of events was like when bush was inaugurated (twice). texans, who wear chaps for work, rubbing shoulders with these guys, who wear chaps for play. my mind is exploding right now.

this happened a block from my apartment.

Car Wash Mishap Injures Two Employees

A car wash employee suffered seizure while driving a van out of a Northwest Washington car wash Tuesday, striking and injuring two fellow employees in the process, police said.

Earl Risby was outside, at 13th and O streets, Tuesday afternoon and watched as the employee at the Mr. Wash drove the white van out of the car wash so it could be dried. He watched in horror as the driver — who suffered a seizure, police said — ran over two of his fellow co-workers who were in the midst of drying off a blue SUV.

“I looked up and I seen the van come out — all of a sudden it accelerated,” Risby recalled.

“The back of the tire hit one dude on the leg. The guy in the middle of the street, it ran right over top of him,” he added.

i smell a lawsuit.

if you watch the video in the story, you can see my apartment in the distance at the :46 mark. the kicker of the story? the van was owned by metro. weird.

thanks houston, for the tip.

Hostage Halts Robbery ‘Like In the Movies’

Speeding on the Capital Beltway, James Spruill knew he had to act fast. His wife and boys were packed into the family car, and a masked man was in the back seat, jabbing a loaded gun into his 11-year-old son’s ribs.

Twelve hours earlier, two gunmen had forced their way into his Prince George’s County home. Spruill said they tied him and his wife up with cords from a clock radio and a PlayStation, holding them overnight in separate bedrooms and keeping the two children in a third. The men had said they would hold the boys hostage and use his wife, an assistant bank manager, to rob her branch in the morning.
…
“They were a bunch of amateurs,” he said.
…
Spruill said he was in the bedroom, preparing for work, when his wife called out. He rushed to the front room, where he saw two men wearing ski masks, one holding a gun to his wife’s head. The men tied up the husband and wife, separating them, and forced the boys into their parents’ bedroom.

The assailants spoke to their hostages in English but communicated with each other in Spanish. Spruill, bound in one of the boy’s bedrooms, said he stayed awake all night, planning and listening as the men rummaged through his kitchen.

“It was like in the movies,” he said. “You just had to think it all through and figure it out. I wanted to keep us all together.”

In the morning, the assailants said one of them would stay at the house with the boys while the other went to the bank with Spruill and his wife.

Spruill fabricated a story to keep the family together. He told the men that his aunt was expected to visit that morning. He told them that if he was forced to call her to cancel the visit, he would find a way to let her know the family was in danger.

The assailants were fooled into changing their plan. The whole family would go to the bank, they decided. But there wasn’t room for both would-be robbers in the car, so one would stay behind.

They headed for the bank, at Elton Road and New Hampshire Avenue. Spruill sped for much of 25 miles, hoping to get pulled over.

When Cameron (the police officer) flipped his lights on, the assailant pulled off his mask, showing his face for the first time. He instructed Spruill to tell the officer that they were headed to breakfast together.

On the right shoulder, approaching on the side away from traffic, Cameron asked for his license. Trying to alert the trooper that something was amiss, Spruill handed him his bank card. Cameron had by then noticed that someone in the back seat was making “suspicious movements,” police said.

Cameron asked for his license again. Spruill unbuckled his seat belt and lunged.

lauren asks: so who are you sleeping with at the express to get your blog quoted twice in the past two days??

12/23 edition

12/22 edition

yes lauren, it is pretty weird since my only contact at the express has since left for greener pastures. i’m just that good.

in bed.

i woke up, and magically i had a gazillion photos on my camera.

on a related note, why won’t flickr let me arrange the slideshow in whatever order i want? annoying.

minor fame.

a bunch of boring group shots, but this is mostly for the benefit of the people who were there. does anyone know how to get these on fishbowl dc?