B had asked me if it was really raining or if it was just another liberal media bias hyping up a non-story. Well, safe to say, the rain and flooding the last few days apparently is one for the record books. So, yes, its been effin' wet. This was light rain I captured yesterday with the trusty camera phone.

So the slashdot comments got to me on the post about Internet to Blame for Lack of Close Friends

This comment was something that I wanted to save for reference, because it does feel and sound so true.

I find that the hollowness of American social life is not only due to the Internet, but to a growing American utilitarianism and sense of entitlement that stretches into personal relationships.

Friends and would-be lovers alike are more and more forming and maintaining friendships on the basis of "What is this person doing for me right now?"

If someone isn't making them a profit, or is (gasp) taking their time or effort without a mechanically measurable payoff of some kind, people are only too ready these days to "kick them to the curb" and look for friends who are profitable or represent a measurable gain of some kind, whether in prestige or job prospects or exclusive memberships or exploitable expertise/skills.

This mentality of "everything has a price and can be calculated as a cost-benefit" has already ruled American material life for years and led to a kind of spiritual bankruptcy that leads to cults, sappy new-ageism, under/overeducation, and other strange social pathologies and now it is polluting our social lives as well.

When everyone is busy being a self-interested climber in their relationships, is is any wonder that nobody seems to be able to find non-selfish-climber friends? When everyone is busy sensing that they are entitled to their opinion, their time, their wishes, their preferences without the need for discussion or compromise, is it any wonder that people suddenly find that no-one is willing to compromise or have patience with them?

It gets to the point that you socialize on the Internet merely because the stakes are lower. You're less likely to get screwed or hurt or exploited and at the same time you can justify the time expenditure to others because "spending time online" appeals more to the protestant ethic of endless "useful" labor than does a phrase like "hanging out with some friends at the bar."

People are working all the time, their social relations have now become part of work too, calculated like work, and so they are finding that relationships feel like work and are subject to all of the risks and pitfalls that occur in the workplace.

The solutions? Stop bringing work home, set aside time to be "home," don't try to measure what other people are doing for you, only what you are doing for other people, and try not to take it personally when people "kick you to the curb" for not being productive enough or razz you for being a "slacker" and not leaving work at 8:30 PM to bring it home and pound on it with some climber friends from the office until 1:30 AM while calling it a "social life."

Ok, so, yes we got robbed by the same guy just 10 hours after I saw him trying to break-in and let him go. He stole 2 bikes that I had chained to our back deck. 2 Trek Mountain bikes that totaled to be more than 1700 bucks. Yes, I called the cops and they gave me the "you shoulda known better and we're probably not going to catch the guy" lecture. And yes I have homeowners insurance. What pissed me off was that I felt violated twice. What also made me grateful is no one got hurt and I have such an awesome neighbor. He was the one that alerted me, he was also the one that called me and tried to chase the guy down. He's the same guy that caught some dude trying to breaking into my former sports car (I sold it when I realized that when you grow up, you can't play with big toys unless your income is 10 times the amount of the toy itself), beat the crap out of the guy, then called the cops. He also took out 2 hours of his day yesterday in 90 degree humid heat to help me fix and fortify my fence.

I spent the rest of the day running back and forth to Home Depot and fixing the rest of the fence up in our bug-infested backyard (even with that stupid fly trap) since the deadbolt I bought didn't come with keys (back to Home Depot!). I guess I was just having a bad luck day, which also solidified it when I went to go pick up the wife and got stuck in hourlong traffic. Why does Alexandria become a parking lot after 5pm? I mean seriously, cars inch forward. I drove through DC in less time and there was pretty heavy traffic there too.

All of this on just 2 bowls of Raisin Bran Crunch. I deserve some relaxation time and a cheap massage (time to go to Brookstone or Sharper Image and sit in one of those chairs again). My neighbors also deserves a nice gift from me, along with their dog that alerted us both times.

For those who don't know, I frequent Elevation Burger at least once a week, and this struck a nerve.

wash, DC Donslist > missed connections > you used to be Phat but now you're just Fat

Decent Burger in Falls Church - Where Did You Go?
Reply to: forlorn-171129225@craigslist.org
Date: 2006-06-13, 3:09 PM EDT

Elevation -- it was great seeing you a couple times earlier this year, when your burger was adequate (fresh ingredients, good sauce, but the meat lacking in texture and flavor) and your fries nearly put tears in my eyes with their fragrant, citrusy olive oil flavor and ideal outer-crunch-to-inner-squish ratio.

Lately I've been looking all over for you, but all I can find is some place pretending to be you. This "Elevation Burger" charges over a dollar more ($3.35 instead of $2.29) for the same cheeseburger you once made, and no, it isn't any better. Their fries perform poorly in the texture department, and lack that trademark kick from the olive oil that yours had. And they're charging more for them, too. The only thing they do the same is the cookie, but you know that isn't enough for someone unable to go more than 72 hours without a good burger. Call me. Please. And I'm sorry I called you fat.

* this is in or around Falls Church
* no -- it's NOT ok to contact this poster with services or gripes about grammar

---

Better – here’s the reply:

Hey Capital Icebox,

Thanks for posting your grievances in a somewhat humorous form. For someone like me who obsesses over the quality of the meat and fries and literally loses sleep over them, it helps to hear it from someone who obviously cares. I hear complaints, some small and some large, every week. Often times, because of the nature of the business, I’m not at liberty to give a very detailed response to those expressing some of their "fatter" concerncs. So I’m taking the opportunity here. I’ve never responded to a post before, but your kind and thoughtful approach inspired me to put off sleeping so that I might try to explain the other side of the story.

Doing what we’re trying to do - serve an organic Wagyu burger and fries cooked in olive oil isn’t a straight-forward task. There’s a reason (in fact lots of reasons) that no one has done it before. Most people thought I was crazy to try to do what we’ve done, but we’ve given over three years of our lives (including planning, researching, etc) to doing it, we're doing it successfully, and we’re not about to give up now.

Elevation Burger uses organic Wagyu beef which is almost impossible to come by. Sunnyside is out of the market and we buy from their supplier now. (All Sunnyside was doing, was getting almost mature cattle shipped to them from another rancher, feeding them for a few months and slaughtering them.) Getting consistency with this beef is extremely difficult. There are times (evidently you haven’t experienced them) when the burger has optimal juiciness, and then there times when it doesn’t. This is mostly a function of how the cows are raised, how long they're kept before slaughter and what they’ve had to eat in the last few months before being slaughtered. Unfortunately, I don’t have any control over this. If I had another half million to invest though, I would gladly try to take control of it. But even with all of these uncontrollable factors, what is the result? You get a burger that is the same size, and (usually) better in taste to what the “other guys” are selling, while at the same time nutritionally superior, and comparable in price (I believe the other guys are 14 cents cheaper for a single cheeseburger and we are 3 cents less for a double cheeseburger.) I don’t think you’ll find a better deal out there.

Add to what I’ve just said the fact that the meat we buy is twice as expensive as normal ground beef and that fuel costs (note that farming, cattle ranching and olive growing are energy intensive endeavors) are rising rapidly (and getting passed through to us through every single product we sell) and I think you’ll see that Elevation Burger, even with some of the inconsistencies you point out, is still an outstanding value.

I’ve talked about the beef, now let’s drill down into the fries for a moment: We’ve gone through hoops too numerous to mention and too convoluted to explain in order to make the fries that we make. (We're actually patenting the process). Are they always perfect? No. Are they pretty good? 98% of the time they are. Are they better than 92% of what’s out there? I think so. We have recently been at the mercy of the world Olive Oil market. Because of rapid reduction in world supply, the particular brand that we used, and that you used to find so appealing, unfortunately ran out of stock. What they are now making in their place is, I agree, not quite as nice as the old stuff. So what I do I do? Usually, after everyone is asleep and I’ve put in a 10 hour day, I surf the web and track down alternate sources. What follows is an elaborate and sometimes frustrating effort of obtaining samples, testing them, and trying to find something comparable. So far, I'm finding nothing that is as good as the stuff we are getting. And olive oil is just one half of the problem. Come August, the market will run out of the kind of potato we use, and then we will be compelled to switch to its red headed stepchild, the Norkotah. This will, again, change the experience slightly and will inspire many comments to me and to Don Rockwell I'm sure.

Over the last nine months I’ve given a lot of thought to the main issue that you’re raising, and I think it’s this: People want conflicting things. They want the uniformity and speed of McDonalds, but they also expect a fresh and 100% consistent product. Unfortunately, that isn’t going to occur unless you go to one of two extremes: 1. You become a monster chain with thousands of stores that has the ability to dictate to suppliers exactly what it wants or 2. You become a sit down restaurant that charges extremely high prices. This second option allows you to be ultra picky and pay premiums for whatever you want to buy, and still be profitable. But if you’re running a single-location, high volume restaurant and charging relatively low prices, the reality is that there is a tradeoff. If you want fresh and un-homogenized, un-McDondaldized product, you have to deal with the variation, the seasonal differences, and the perturbations of nature that manifest themselves in the food you buy and serve. Will we be able to strike a better balance between these two poles (i.e. fresh/juicy and consistent) in the future? I think so, but we still have some things to learn about buying, sourcing and controlling the production of the products we buy for use in our restaurant. We also will probably have to get bigger so that we have more leverage in the market place (but of course when we do that, someone will complain that we're too big, not realizing that bigness sometimes allows you certain prerogatives, that directly influence your food, that are not possessed by the little guy!)

Anyway, thanks for listening, and I hope that when you come to Elevation Burger, you’ll realize that the best way to enable us to achieve these goals is by continuing to support us.

Sincerely,
Hans Hess
Owner
Elevation Burger

PS. Introduce yourself to me in the store. I'll buy you lunch and we can chat face to face!

My neighbor just knocked on my door and told me some random guy was in my backyard. I thought initially it was the girl renting out our basement's boyfriend, but no, it was really some random dude. Looks like he was trying to access the house through my basement door. Of course when I confront him, he's like, "does novella live here?" Yeah, right, you were looking for her house. He knew he was in deep shit because he bolted for the fence door after I asked him to leave only to have it lock on him and he started jiggling it really fast because I started heading towards him. All this was going on while my tough as nails neighbor looked on. (who had alerted me in the first place by startling me from my Lost rerun)

Sometimes I'm reminded that I still live in a somewhat sketchy part of town and I'm glad my neighbor likes me.

I know I'm behind the curve, seeing how this all transpired like two months ago, but that's what happens when you stop trying to keep your finger on the pulse and have real life things to deal with...



The dude ranting is Brandon Davis and his grand-daddy was an oil tycoon billionaire. Which gives him the ability to do zero work for the rest of his life. It apparently also gives him the ability to get so high and go off and call some actress a "fire crotch" to a bunch of paparrazi.

When I was a teen, I wished I was a trust-fund baby. Or that I was heir to a great fortune. It would've been so sweet. If you're a trust-fund baby, you'd never have to grow up, you wouldn't have to deal with responsibilities, you probably wouldn't even have to clean up after yourself. You could do and buy whatever you wanted and probably get away with breaking a law or two while you were at it. Of course you probably would turn into this guy or Paris Hilton, where you get to turn into a big fat prick of a human being with very little regard to the rest of the world. Its hard to understand how these people came to be such callous individuals and I wonder if I were given the same opportunties to squander my life away like they did, would I have became the same? Which is to say, I'm somewhat grateful I did grow up a bit, and I do have a little humility. Although I wouldn't turn away a windfall now if I got one.

We went for a full day of shopping yesterday since I was in terrible need of a new pair of shoes. I'm quite picky about my shoes since this is a throwback of my former self from highschool. I could be wearing the rattiest of clothes, but my sneaks had to be awesome. It was a strange mindset that I guess never left me. We went to several stores over the weekend, but the City Sports store in Gallery place had zero stock on any of the shoes I thought looked decent. We ended up treking out to Tyson's Corner to the Puma store since I knew I wanted to buy my first pair of Pumas (to blend in with my hipster peers) and I also didn't want to battle with Georgetown traffic & parking (which was the only other Puma store that I knew of).

Once we got to Tyson's though, I fell in love. We went to the Apple Store to pick up Ms. LD's new iPod, and I got to see a MacBook for the first time. I know the MacBook Pros are the sweeter ones inside, but I am a sucker for the way the MacBook itself is designed. Of course the wife asked me what the hell was wrong with my powerbook right now? I could come up with a million geek reasons, but none would satiate a real justification to drop a thou for the sole reason of techno lust. So I'm posting up a paypal donate button to my nonexistent readers and pleading them to donate to my retail therapy fund. Or you could just click an ad that you might fancy somewhere on the site. I've made a whopping 41 cents on this blog's advertising since its inception, I'm so much closer to the bottomless hole I call tech-happiness. If I ever get one, I swear the content on this site will just zing with life, unlike half the posts I've made in the past month.

I could really care less about soccer, but when you take your co-worker out to lunch because he's about to change jobs, and he chooses to eat lunch at his favorite middle eastern strip mall so he can enjoy 3 things: The comradarie of his Tunisian friends, good food, and Tunisia vs. Saudi Arabia, you tend to get wrapped up in the game after the whole restaurant erupts into hysteria when Tunisia scores its first goal. Its also strange to kind of visit an authentic middle eastern restaurant. I guess this is what white folks sorta feel like when they venture out to Eden in Falls Church to sample the Vietnamese cuisine. Its also strange to walk into a restaurant with a guy that knows everyone. Its like I was walking into Cheers with Norm or something. Along with long conversations in Arabic, the grown men kissing on the cheeks was a bit of a foreign thing again to someone that grew up entirely in America where personal space is such a big deal. I guess my co-worker is lucky that he has a place to go where everybody knows his name.

When I was a kid, it was easy not to have my thoughts fettered with "who am I?" Then I hit adolescence, and it became the main motivation of how I thought and acted. I used to identify myself with the music I listened to and what movies I thought were worth watching. I slowly realized though that even while I still do think I'm cool because I own a 12" copy of New Order's "Run2" it really doesn't say who I am. So what that I think Rear Window is probably the best film ever made? I guess it wasn't enough to just be that.

I'm trying to remember what kind of person I was during high school, and besides the things I liked to do, I really don't know what kind of person I was back then. I can't really ask any of my friends from back then, well, because who knows if they even knew. We were all friends of convenience, neighborhood pals that figured out that we really didn't want to be friends for the long haul once we did figure out who we each were.

I got another one of those classmate spam emails that I still open in my email. They sucker me everytime to go back to that site to peruse the names and remember the faces that pepper my memories of walking the halls of school. Its funny, Dr. P asks me what highschool was like since it seems like such a foreign concept to him since he grew up in Italy. The idea of cool kids, cliques, and a caste system created by a bunch of teens just seemed weird.

I thought about how I all knew of the cool kids, but really, none of them interacted with me unless they had to. It was like they were celebrities. I know now I probably elevated them way too much in my mind, and they were just kids like me with no clue. No one had an agenda more than to figure out what the hell they were doing with their lives.

Its funny that my friends all wanted to be friends with the cool kids, but they had no idea how to break into that crowd. I guess I figured if those people didn't want to be friends with me, fuck them. I remember back in junior high, there was a guy that just moved to the neighborhood and at first, he was open to making friends with everyone, including me. Then he realized quickly that if he wanted to establish himself as a cool kid, he needed to not be friends with everyone. That meant me. Some people enjoy being accepted by people that treat them like badly but I guess I didn't want to be part of that. And now?

It means nothing, yet all of it still weighs on me. I didn't even go to my 10 year reunion a few years back. I didn't go for 2 reasons, whoever I still kept in contact with from highschool I made a conscious choice to, and because of that why would I choose to go revisit with people that really could care less to even talk to me? I guess that's what the irony is, since I'm sitting here going through classmates.com looking at the names. I guess its more like revisiting a feeling that is bittersweet. I fondly look back to most of my past, because well, it brought me where to I am today, and yet I also remember all misery that accompanied it. And yes, Ms. LD, will tell me that the misery was a necessary medicine of life, but I guess its hard to not become bitter or cynical about things. I guess nostalgia eventually takes care of that and washes most of that away. Hopefully.

Good reference and a good listen -> This American Life: Allure of the Mean Friend

Anyone who knows me, knows I made a spoof of Tom Vu's "Get Rich & Wealthy" informercial back in highschool. While I've never seen Tom Vu's informercials til now, and yet, our spoof is so spot-on, its crazy. I will NOT be posting my parody from 11th grade though, as I felt like a complete idiot starring as Tom Vu and hacking up my english for an "A." Rewatching it years later, I found that we really didn't know what the hell we were doing, and it looked quite amatuer-ish. But after seeing M. Night Shyamalan's first scary home movie that was included on the extras of the Sixth Sense DVD, I can say our video was Oscar quality compared to his, and if I had stayed on the same trajectory as M. Night, I'd be making American Express Card commercials! I can't seem to remember where I left that VHS tape though. Probably a good thing.

Driving home on Rock Creek Parkway yesterday, my wife mentions to me that she read an article on MSN about Keanu Reeves. Its funny that while most guys I know ridicule him, most women I know swoon over the guy.

What's also interesting to note is that while the man is one of Hollywood's darlings because of The Matrix, he's had a rough personal life the last few years. I recall seeing the in the Tabloids while standing in the supermarket, about how the poor guy had a stillborn daughter and then shortly after that the mother of that stillborn baby dying horribly in a car accident. Man, talk about rough times. All the money in the world (I heard he got 30 million for the Matrix sequels that were complete crap) was never going to bring the happiness that he lost. Apparently after that, he stopped showering for months on end, and walked around in clothes that he never changed and the same sole-less shoe for more than a year. If there was ever a posterboy for money and fame can't buy you happiness, he was your man.

The irony is he was always being cast in these movies where he was either a) enlightened b) the chosen one or c) clarivoyant. I guess if I was going through my dark phase and was contractually obligated to act, the acting ability Keanu's shown in his movies should probably deserve some type of oscar. Ok, maybe not.

My wife noted though that in this article that he's turned a corner and now that he's hit 40, he's adjusting to being a grown-up just like me. Welcome to the club dude, even if you do have it a bit easier with the millions in your bank to adjust to the bleak truths of reality.

Read the MSN article

When I was a kid, I remember distinctly laying in my bunkbed that I had to share with my older sister, I think I was about 8 and I thought, wow time is going by, how am I going to remember all of this? Of course me being eight also meant it didn't occur to me to try to write things down, and even if I did I wasn't able to articulate what I was feeling at the time. Now that I am able to articulate, I'm not sure if there's much to write about. When you're a kid, I guess every day is a day of discovery and the idea of a "routine" hasn't settled in yet. Of course by the time I got to highschool and found out lots of things were based on routines, it was kinda depressing. These days though, I actually relish the same routines I used to despise. Its funny how that works. I guess its because these routines are more based on me creating some semblance of stability and structure in what otherwise would be a pretty chaotic life because I'm more or less lazy and irresponsible by default. Its not something I'm proud of but its just who I am.

During college, I drove the family pickup truck. It was a barebones Toyota pickup and although it had air conditioning, it lacked basic stuff like a passenger side mirror. My dad was always getting on my case about not taking care it and getting the oil changed. I was lucky though, Toyota builds some really reliable engines that even if you don't take care of them and forget to change the oil for 5000 miles, the truck will still run. In fact, we had that pickup running up to the 200 thousand mark. The only reason we got rid of it was because the transmission went bad.

Anyway, I'm starting to realize that I don't want to treat myself the same way I've treated that truck. And while I'm young and can bounce back from not taking care of myself some of the time but not all the time. This is where the dreaded routines actually help I guess. We've been heading to the gym on a regular basis because I have a job that requires me to exert zero physical effort and if I wasn't blessed with lightning fast metabolism, I'd be a blob fatter than Jabba the Hut by now. However, inactivity and laziness still affect non-fat people like me. I didn't do a lick of physical activity during my college days and by the time I graduated, I was having all this back pain. It was quite embarrassing to go to the doctor and have them tell you due to such a sedentary life, my back muscles had actually started to atrophy. Basically I was sitting on my ass all day watching TV, playing video games, and surfing the net that I was slowly melting into my recliner. Not a good mental picture.

I started having to view and treat my body like any other machine. One that required maintenance and premium gas. Of course I'll still occasionally indulge in really crappy fast food sometimes, I try to make a conscientious choice about what I do with my body these days. Which basically means I try to eat food that also provide me with some nutrition and also keep myself active. Its hard to remind myself sometimes though, since I am inherently lazy.

It is also a bit daunting to go to the gym since the wife and I signed up to Results, which seems to be quite popular with the gay crowd in DC. Its not daunting because the dudes are gay though, but most of them are super BUFF. I mean, protein shakes, egg whites diets, hardcore ripped muscles. I guess most gyms have their fair share of those guys, but I guess it just feels like there's a disproportionate amount of these guys at my gym. I feel like the scrawny kid all over again that is out of place there. There's also a lot of socializing that well, I could care less of since I'm not that social by nature and I'm not there to make friends. But, I'm trying hard to make it our routine to go there and take care of ourselves. One step in the whole balance of mind, body and soul thing I guess.

I gave Paulina my camera last week to take pictures while we were at my parents house for a party. She just turned eight that day and I think she has a career in photography since I first let her use my camera when she was 6 years old. She even got her little sister to strike a pose, but I didn't think it would be right to post it up since I want to respect everyone's privacy.
 
 
 
  

After going to CostCo and the gym last night, we got home, made dinner and then turned on what I wouldn't realize to be the most absorbing night of television of this week. For the record, I refuse to pay the cable cartels any money to watch 500 channels worth of crap. So we swing it old school and only watch what we can get over the air. Since its June now, sweeps month is over and now all the TV networks feel its ok to just dump crap onto the air.

Which is why I guess they allowed the National Spelling Bee to be broadcasted on primetime network television. Which turned out to be quite compelling television. What was more amazing is that they actually hauled out the High Def cameras into the Hyatt/Hilton to have all the dorky/geekiness of these awkward kids and their parents reactions to their spellings to be beamed directly into my home in crystal clear 1080i resolution.


First realization of the night, my vocabulary and spelling skills are subpar. Where do half of these words even come from? I also figured out its good to use words that only medical doctors would know although probably not know how to spell. How many different medical conditions are completely unspellable? Also, german rooted, latin rooted, greek rooted, and persian rooted words are the best ones to stump 'em. Especially greek. Those tricky bastards!


"Can I have the etymology of the word?" I love how the kids completely try to kill time while their little gears are grinding in their small little skulls. I'm not even sure half the time they are listening to the guy giving out the answers. They keep rattling off more monotoned questions even before the mediator is done telling them the answers.
"Are there any alternate pronunciations to the words?"
"Are there any alternate definitions to the words?"
"Can you please use it in a sentence?"
"Does it have the greek root coli-"
"Can you say the word again?"


What's even funnier is the parents reaction to all of this if the kid spelled the word wrong. Everytime we saw a non-white family's reaction, MM would scream out, "You've brought dishonor to our family name!" Which I would have to say is somewhat true. I felt bad for Theodore Yuan since he sorta reminded me of how I felt when I was his age. Bad haircut, awkwardness, deep pubescent voice that didn't seem to match the baby asian face. What was hilarious was when he mispelled and they flashed over to his parents, most parents would've just felt bad for their kid, but not Theo's mom, she looked pissed that he got it wrong. Her son is number one! What was he thinking?! heh. He did bring dishonor to the family and they can never show their face again! Its funny because it might be true.


In any case, I found this article kinda funny because there is a twinge of disapointment that an indian kid didn't win. Or should I saw "South-east Asian" which is so ridiculous that why don't we subdivide and segrate and compartmentalize races more?


Also, a great headline from this Canadian paper about Canada's own entry into the Bee. "Word whiz Finola Hackett, 14, learns the true meaning of weltschmerz when she can't spell it."

Who knew spelling would be televised like Dodgeball on the ocho?

Such a funnily disturbing and annoying video that I had to post it.

So I took a tour of the area last night in the muggy evening tracking down 2 things. Free donuts at Krispy Kreme(courtesy of my sister's gift card that she passed on to me) and a Nintendo DS Lite because there were reports online that Walmart & Target had broke the selling street date (June 11) across the U.S. of A.

First stop was in Dupont Circle since that was the closest Krispy Kreme in the area. Driving around Dupont, there are 2 apparent things that always grate on me when I drive in the city. Taxi drivers have no regard for the road rules or the people they supposedly are sharing the road with. I don't know how half of these jokesters got their licenses. The other thing is the amount of clueless drivers on the road. Do they have a route planned out? Do they not care that their careless driving impact other drivers around them? I used to think that Maryland drivers were the worse in the area (which they still are) but now I've amended that thought with that most drivers in this area just don't care and are completely self-absorbed. The idea of sharing the road is completely lost on them.

Getting to Krispy Kreme was relatively painless otherwise, parking was found a scant block away. After trying to figure out how much was on the card and if it was going to expire which was much more involved due to the woman behind the counter telling me to call the automated 800 number because they couldn't check my balance, only to stop me mid button pressing of menu selections to tell me that they could check the card. I planned on draining the whole 10 bucks on the account by getting a dozen assorted donuts and a frozen Kreme with coffee but found out that they didn't have any cold drinks although no explaination was offered up. So I had to be satisfied with 4 glazed, 4 crullers, 2 apple filled, and 2 custard filled chocolate glazed donuts.

After that, I had to head to Potomac Yard out in Virginia since that was the closest and only other Target I hadn't checked that was close to me. I had checked the 2, one in Falls Church and one in Bailey's Crossroads with little luck. The two that I've been to were your regular Targets that seemed to be kept up well. The one in Potomac Yard was a bit different, I don't know why but the whole place just felt a little ghetto. Its like store management weren't on top of their game, on top of which it looked like people from the city and Alexandria were flooding the stores so it was truly not a good shopping experience. Ultimately, my hunt for a DS Lite was fruitless. The only thing that I thought of was the Target that was getting built in the city in Columbia Heights, and I hope to god that they know how to keep that place up to par of all the suburbian Targets, otherwise, it'll be just like the one in Potomac Yard.

After all this driving around, I stopped by Gallery Place to pick up some dinner since MM was already asleep from her long day that I only needed to worry about feeding myself. I felt like some Chipotle and decided that was the closest one on the way home. Why do they even try to keep Gallery Place like its Chinatown? I don't think any chinese people even live there anymore. At least not at the volume of chinese folks are like in New York City. 97% of the shops in the area are non-chinese even though they have chinese characters strewn all over their awnings and windows. Add in the fact that whoever decided to try to dress the place up like its Time Square. There's just one problem, the roads are too small to justify it being like Time Square. I'm starting to avoid driving down 7th on weekends unless its absolutely necessary. Way too much traffic.

However, street parking on a wednesday evening was relatively painless as opposed to the usual times. I parked only a block away near the Coyote Ugly and walked to the Chipotle pretty easily. I realize why I don't eat there that often after I got home though, they use way too much onion and cilantro to give their food their flavor. My mouth and stomach are usually paying for it later by heinous breath and my old-man stomach gurgling and telling me its going to be paying me back in lots of gas.

I liked the fact that I got to drive around and see a lot of the area in a relatively short amount of time, but I was also just glad to get home and enjoy my overly oniony and cilantro-y dinner.