I got off the metro and noticed how there were an inordinate amount of teenage boys hanging out at the top of the escalators. I emerged from the escalator and walked away from the station with my earphones on. Usually I'm listening to a marketplace podcast but today I figured I'd listen to some modest mouse. I had just walked past the barber shop when I felt a hand going into my pocket, so I automatically without thinking put my hand in my pocket to keep my iphone from being snatched out. I looked over and saw some kid in his late teens yelling "gimme your ipod!" I looked at him for a moment, taking in what he looked like, that he had short braids, a semi-dark complexion, beady eyes, unshaven peach fuzz, and a bright blue aqua hoodie. I then took in a deep breath and bellowed out "POLICE!" that could easily be heard a block away. The kid freaked, yelled, "oh shit!" and took off. I yelled out at him, "FUCKER!" and that was the end of it.

I called the cops when I got home to ask them to step up their patrol around the GA/Petworth Metro Station. This turned into multiple transfers, different phone numbers to call, and multiple call backs. Turns out that while Metro Transit police had an interest since it started out on metro property but since the actual incident took place on a public sidewalk, I had to call DC police. I ended up talking to both a beat cop and a detective that parked themselves in my living room for half an hour taking my report. They left telling me that they wished we lived in a world where a person could walk home from the metro and enjoy their music but we don't. The detective was very pessimistic about the city and it being "crime infested."

Shortly after, I got a call back from the metro transit police. Originally, they had told me they'd send out a car to take a "police info report" but then they were swamped or something and just took my account over the phone.

I don't know how I feel about the whole situation, either I can have these skirmishes or I can pay 4 bucks a gallon along with the 300 dollar car payment along with the 100 dollars for insurance a month. I dunno...I'm not sure if my days are numbered or not in terms of living in the city, but it sure does make me wish we lived in a more civil world.

I've been listening to Al Gore's "The Assault on Reason" audio book and its eery how much he hits it on the head about the media. Why are we so preoccupied about a washed up football player more than we are say,

1. the erosion of our civil liberties at the cost of the "war on terror"
   
   
2. no one really caring that our country is really in a war
   
   
3. that britney's ex-husband has a hit out on him

Ok, I was just making sure you were still reading. Seriously though, I enjoy my daily dose of inane pop culture as the next person...but its when I'm standing in line at the supermarket browsing the magazines, or when I purposely surf to sites like popsugar or TMZ. It shouldn't be a leading news headline when I turn on CNN or watch NBC/ABC/CBS's nightly news where journalism is supposed to be holding itself up to a higher standard.

There is something wrong when there is more news coverage about Obama making some remark about what Hilary Clinton is wearing rather than the actual public discourse on what these people represent and do they possess true leadership and vision to lead our country.

And of course, the reality that voter turn out in this country is pretty miserable. So much apathy. And yet, we care so much about whether some guy we'll never meet or truly care about, on whether he'll go to jail or not.

Wow, 2 months of radio silence. What happens when you start assuming more responsibility? I guess you have less time to play. Or maybe the time you have to "play" is looked as required downtime. I've lost the writing bug, at least temporarily. Which means updates to this blog will be even more sporadic.

I am however enjoying this cool weather in DC though, even though I hear its gonna be hot again soon.

I did make it down to the newly dedicated Victims of Communism memorial downtown which was nice. So I guess I'll post a slide show of those up.

So tomorrow is my birthday. And while it doesn't really spawn any great profound thoughts. It made me think of an interview I heard on NPR a couple of weeks ago with Will Ferrell. He talks about about how he and his writing partner usually shape his characters around this guy. The average guy with unearned confidence. And it got me thinking about how its easy to become that guy. To think become so self-absorbed into thinking you're doing something in life that's so important, but the truth is, its pretty lame. To have that arrogance and not have the humility to realize, maybe its not that important. I've become that guy a few times during my life, and I hope that I'm able to keep myself from becoming that guy again.

Every week, I'll get a handful of visits from what I can only assume as lonely dudes that think they have a snowball's chance in dating WJLA's hottie Allison Starling. How would I know this? They're coming from google with the search term "is alison starling married?" or "alison starling married." All because I mentioned her a few times in my blog. First thing's first. She's not married. Or at least I don't think she is, from seeing her ring-less left hand ring finger during a broadcast. Second, why would any of these guys think they have a chance in picking her up? Are you going to casually wait outside the WJLA parking lot and accidently run into her (because that's not creepy.)

I think Alison is slowly but surely beating out Krystal Koons as the most googled visit to my blog.

So after blogging about the fact that I never bump into channel 7 news personnel, I bumped into 2 this week! But, neither of them were around the Rosslyn Channel 7 "nerve center."

Yesterday when out to lunch around Clarendon, I walk right into who I assume is Pamela Brown after perusing the channel 7 website. I guess they were out doing a story about the ice or something, because my friend shouts out to her, "interview him!" and points at me, while we're making a bee line to the Baja Fresh.

Then tonight, my wife and I were out to a nice quiet dinner at one of our regular spots, Arucola, when suddenly after finishing my apple strudel, I see Gordon Peterson right in front of our table! I lean discretely over to my wife to tell her and she's like, "oh." Come on! Its a local celebrity! She tells me if it was Brad Pitt, then maybe she'd be a little excited. I get all giddy and she tells me to take a photo, then I tell her I'd rather not. I recall cajoling an acquaintance once to go say hi to WTOP's man about town, Bob Maddigan, and she walked away freaking out Mr. Maddigan. Then again, my wife's like, "so you can go up and tell Topher Grace that you're a big fan but you can't whip out your camera phone?"

Of course, my wife had no idea that we were sitting next to the real life Ron Burgandy. I mean, he's been in the business back when anchormen meant something. I didn't want to bother the man though, seeing how he probably just got off of work and wanted to have a quiet dinner with his wife(?) and friends. So I ended up taking a paparazzi photo. As you can see, my wife's skeptical shoulder is in view. In fact, while we walked out, she was like, "does he do the weather?" After calling me the biggest dork in the world, she then followed it up with, "if you get this excited about someone like Gordon Peterson, what's gonna happen if you run into Alison Starling?"

So I work a block away from the WJLA/Channel 7 News/Channel 8 cable news building now. You'd think being in such close proximity to so many local celebrities, I'd bump into one by now. But no, you'd be wrong. The only time I'd probably see Doug McKelway or news heart-throb Alison Starling is if I got to work at 6:50am just in time to see them do the "wrap-up" segment for Good Morning America when they're standing outside in front of the building. But I'm not that nuts about local news personalities to wake myself up at 5am to get myself to work just to get a glimpse of people standing in front of a camera outside.

In fact, everytime I go into the building to either get lunch from the China Garden or Baja Fresh, or to buy something at CVS, you'd think I might happen to bump into Gordon Peterson or Elliot Frances running an errand, but nope. Nothing. In fact, when you walk into the lobby and see the Channel 7/8 News entrance, its like the Wizard of Oz. Lots of video/server decks and blinking lights and monitors and not a soul in sight. You think with such a public area and them wanting to be in touch with the public, there'd be more of a Today show like setting, but nope. Its just a locked down fortress. Kinda disappointing. Maybe its best, to keep crazy bumbling fools like me from fawning over the "Talent."

I never really thought about how much money/time I put into commuting. After all, its just one of life's little things that you let inertia just carry you and not give any thought to how much its costing. In the past month, I started a new job that requires me to metro now instead of driving. This was a personal choice since we only have one car, and I've been dominating its use for most of its life while my wife had to deal with the metro, and then eventually me just giving her rides.

My commutes though, are a little atypical to the DC area. After all, with my old and new job, I commute OUT of the city into northern Virginia, while everyone else is coming in during the morning rush. If I took the car, it would take me 20 minutes tops to get to work. However, I take the metro, and on average, the commute to work averages anywhere between 40 to 60 minutes. Doubling, sometimes tripling the time to get from the house to my work area.

So I decided to break it down, if I could commute with a car or metroing, what would each way cost me?

With the car, there are a lot of visible costs. There's the car payment, insurance, parking fees, and gas of course. Then there's the slightly less visable costs, since I don't have to pay these things except occasionally. Maintanence is one. Which on average will break down to oil changes and 15k/30k type of services, which for an average car usually breaks down to about 1200 bucks a year. Then there's the environmental cost, although seeing how we own a hybrid, its a bit less of an impact. I worked it out to be about 600 dollars a month on average. This is with no money down on a car for around 20k (nothing fancy, regular small to midsize sedan) That breaks down to about 20 bucks a day. This also takes into account that my company is generous enough to pay for our garage parking in Rosslyn.

Meanwhile, with Metro, the only cost is the metro pass. And again, my company is generous to provide me enough Metrochecks to cover my commute 100%. But...the trade-off is time. Lots of it. Seeing how I spend on average an extra hour everyday on the metro, all that time can add up. There's also the inconvenience of freezing my ass off recently with the arctic blast that we've been dealing with. Also is the loss of mobility. Before, if I needed to run an errand, pick up dinner, or whatever, I could do it. Now? Not so much.

So while I might be saving 600 bucks a month not owning an extra car, I am having to pay with it in other ways. Time IS money. It never made sense when I was a kid. Time was abundant then! How did it become so scarce?

So I realized I'm getting less tolerant of people that are of the G.I. Joe mindset. You know how the jingle goes. "Knowing is half the battle! G.I. JOE!" I used to be the same way. I felt very mature because I could identify a problem/character flaw within myself but then what? If you've identified a problem and say, "yes, I know that's a problem" the first time, then yes, good for you. But then when it just becomes a habit to use it as a rationalization or an excuse, it ceases to be a positive thing. Identifying a personal problem and then say you're working on in when in reality you're not does nothing for me and I'm not going to give you a cookie for it. The rest of the battle and the war is working on it, or accepting it, own it, be it, and don't excuse yourself for it. Again, probably easier said than done.

Why are we working our asses off? For the money? Or is it for the status? A question that was posed last week on PBS on a special called "Status Anxiety" by Alain de Botton. Are we all just starved for societal love? Are we just all really that new little kid in kindergarten craving for social acceptance and that elusive feeling of feeling loved and safe.

The show really got me thinking. I mean why are we all running the rat race? Especially in this area. I mean, the GDP in this DC Metro area alone is probably more than several developing nations put together. Of course I don't have any scientific proof to that, but it sure feels truthy, doesn't it? I mean, seriously, the weddings industry in this region alone is somewhere around 4 billion dollars or so I heard on Marketplace in passing one evening.

The funny thing is, I found that living in this area has been more of a hindrance than a helping in really finding deep connections/bonds with people. In my experience, most of the people I come in contact with are willing to be around me if it suits them. Fairweather friends I suppose.

We happened to get Clerks 2 in Netflix over the weekend, and man, Kevin Smith gets it. Or so he does a very good job of eloquently grossing me out and preaching about what real deep friendships are all about. If you haven't seen it, you should, not just for the donkey scene. Between all the dick and fart jokes sprinkled with Star Wars and Transformers, there are real moments that friends share with each other that you can't get from 99% of the superficial people out there that you want to respect your supposed status. And you can take that to the bank.