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?