Brad Pitt Has Your Secret Shit: Rolling DC

well that was fun

http://community.washingtonpost.com/ver1.0/Content/images/store/7/11/571ae95b-fbbd-4342-ab72-2e44af61af9b.Large.jpg

Federal Govt. agencies in the DC area closed on Monday. Wooo Hooo!!!

Shoveling has not been fun. Not sure if I will make it to the Scream show tonight

wooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!!

this means a lot of people have a 1.5 day work week - Tuesday+half of Wednesday, NICE

Federal closure is making my Sunday night a pain in the ass as I try to figure out what to do with a bunch of new federal-site contract employees who are freaking out about how they are gonna bill.

DAMN U TOMBOT AND YOUR FED FRIENDS!

So who here other than I has to work tomorrow?

me

I do as well. From home though.

yo

based on my commute this a.m., Maryland wins the prize for the most retarded snow driving.

Like seriously people 270 is CLEAR and DRY so wtf u going 20 miles under the speedlimit in your HUMMER for?

my co-worker, who hasn't had the best year ever and just wanted to get home (see July posts here) sat on a stationary British Airways flight for 7 hours Friday night, then was stuck for 3 days in a hotel near Dulles. I think she finally flies to the UK today. She says spirits are surprisingly high but bodies are smelly.

Oh dear god SEVEN HOURS ON STATIONARY PLANE is like at least six hours too many for sanity.

happy birthday, quincie!

The Senate is working on X-Mas Eve morning for the first time since 1963

Yeah well my office is open (alas, I am not in it!) so least those bastards could do.

Thanks B!

Quincie, did you do a Jewish X-mas? My kid and I saw Avatar in 3d with the grandparents and cousins and then had Chinese food.

This movie is showing for free tonight courtesy of Solas Nua at 7 (doors at 6:30) at flashpoint, 916 G street nw, dc 20001
metro: metro center, gallery place/chinatown. Don't think I can make it.

the wind the shakes the barley
directed by ken loach | starring cillian murphy | 127 mins

as political tensions brew in early 1920s ireland, brothers damien and teddy (cillian murphy and padraic delaney) abandon their civilian lives and take up arms to liberate their country from the oppressive "black and tan" squads of britain. winner of the palme d'or at the 2006 cannes film festival, ken loach's provocative drama examines a microcosm of civil war in cork, ireland. liam cunningham co-stars.

Has anyone seen it?

Free popcorn too!

We did Jewish X-mas Eve! Chinese dinner that included actual Jews!

Excellent. Passover is March 30th 2010.

Oh god I'm not ready to do a seder! I still don't know all my Hebrew letters :(

New DC plastic bag tax in effect (money is to go to cleaning up the Anacostia River). New higher parking meter rates and increased parking meter times on Saturday expected to be operational everywhere in DC by mid-January (money to go to DC government as city deals with the recession and stuff).

In other news, I finally ate at 4-star Rasika's. I haven't eaten at other Washington Post 4 star restaurants and I'm not a hardcore knowledgeable foodie so I can't really say whether or not its 4 star rating is deserved. The food was tasty and it seemed unique--not your standard Indian food.

brrr

dear god in heaven it is cold

days like this remind me never, ever to move to Chicago

Yeah, at this point after this whole weekend I am basically opposed to the idea of wind.

sooo cold. i walked home yesterday from cleveland park and there was hardly anyone out. only what, four more months of bad weather?

still brrrr

Is anybody risking Restaurant week?

nah...maybe it's b/c i was young & naive but when restaurant week started it seemed like all the participants were pretty amazing. and expensive. getting an $80 peter luger steak for $20.02 ruled. getting a $11 app + $27 medium-blah entree for $34 or whatever it is these days doesn't. i'm sure there are still deals but having to search them out and call early violates the rw spirit that flickers on in my y&n heart

Restaurant week lunch rules! Dinner mostly sucks. 3 courses at lunch for $20 is great, and you can usually walk into even a fully booked restaurant at noon and get a seat at the bar no problem.

hmm, i should try that.

Anything new and exciting happening (or same ol' thing got you riled up or just the same ol' same ol' mid-winter doldrums)?

Sally Quinn's Washington Post Style section pieces on how Washingtonians (read elite well-connected politcal types) need to have more parties and need to follow her ettiquette ideas at such parties make me laugh. She analyzes Official Washington parties from Kennedy to the present today:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/01/26/AR2010012603507.html

Making friends is crucial. I'm only being partly facetious when I suggest that there should be some sort of in-house list where members of the administration (any administration!) are designated to go out a certain amount, in exactly the same way they make the rounds on Sunday talk shows.

This includes the president! Even senior adviser Valerie Jarrett said this week that Obama "likes the rigor of having a conversation with someone who's going to push him,." sShe told The Post, "There's really no point in him wasting time with people who simply agree with him all the time because it's not going to refine his position, it's not going to enlighten his position." In other words, he'll certainly accomplish some of that once he gets around town.

Indulge me for a moment on the topic of our cultural bellwether, "Avatar." In the film, the Pandora natives worship the goddess Eywa, who is the spirit that connects them to their planet. If there is such a goddess in Washington, I believe, it is the spirit of community. Those who live here want to welcome new friends. Washingtonians are open and willing to invite newcomers and make them part of their lives. If they can't do that, there is automatically a distance that is created so that if ¿ no, make that when ¿ the administration gets into trouble, there is too little sympathy or support

zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

i know right?
how is anything not dull with sally quinn, she is dull. the comments on that article are delightful!

I'm kind of impressed, it takes a special kind of tone deafness to argue that what we really need is closer personal ties between politicians and the media.

The comments are right on target.

I thought this one bit from Sally's article was especially funny:

Years ago, the city looked to the White House to set the social tone. Whatever style the president and first lady favored was the style adopted. The Kennedys enthralled the town with their youth, exuberance and glamour. They had round skirted tables at a state dinner, and suddenly everyone had round tables. The Johnsons came in with their down-home Texas barbecues and you couldn't go out at night without being served ribs and baked beans. It wasn't until Nixon that people started to do their own thing.

Yea, like D.C.'s poor, segregated residents during the Kennedy years were busy saving their money to buy Kennedyesque 'round skirted tables.' And yea, it took that Nixon to force people to give up imitating White House style. She is so clueless.

It's amazing that Sally's connection with former editor Bradlee allows her to still write in Style. I can't imagine that anyone else there is happy about that

Anti-terrorism drills on the subway this morning, so if you notice about 100 cops in yr metro station, that's what.

so what's the job climate like for liberal arts degree graduates who haven't had a steady job in the two years since they've graduated like?

also, any thoughts on Old Town Alexandria would be appreciated.

Do you know any Congresspeople?

The so-called charm of Old Town has never done much for me. It's a bit of a walk from the Metro and finding parking if you drive is not always easy. I could be wrong, but I think like Georgetown that the rents went up and thus lots of the quaint little stores come and go fast. Tourists and Virginians who don't like going into DC like it alot. I do like Eamonn's/Dublin Fish & Chip place (though I'm guessing some will say it is overpriced). I have not been to many of the more expensive restaurants there that get nice writeups by Sietsema or the bars that Fritz H*hn writes up on the W. Post Going Out Gurus blog.

got to move back to the US soon, and the most reasonable option is to move in with my with mother in Old Town Alexandria and find a job fast. Was just wondering what the area was like and if I should immediately look for jobs elsewhere to get the hell out.

I don't think it'd be too bad in that case. very walkable, but then I typically don't mind long walks and walk everywhere in DC when possible, no matter the weather. I really love Misha's coffee shop, it's a great place to hang out, super laid back, delicious coffee. there's a neat used bookstore a few blocks north of the metro. some nice restaurants. a cool thrift store. some boring chain stores. trader joe's. it's just not the kind of place I'd go to hang out on a friday night because it's all yuppie and stuff.

i love walking, and i'm guessing transport around isn't too bad? like, would jobs (however menial) not hire me because i'd be staying there with no car?

i don't think that situation is any of their business, just matters whether or not you can get to work on time. (obvs this might make jobs out in certain burbs difficult, but that would be true no matter where you lived, i mean a menial job in some strip mall complex in fairfax = impossible to reach on public transport.) there is a metro at king street, the yellow and blue lines are both passing through which is convenient.

most of old town (idk where your mom is at) is going to be about a 15-20 min walk at least, because the part right near metro is mostly hotels/restaurants, you have to go a ways up king st to reach the residential areas. there is a dash bus (virginia public transport) running up and down king st, it is free on weekends, i don't know about weekdays or how bad the traffic is on weekdays, but it takes you from metro all the way up king to the waterfront, and back. there are a lot of other bus lines that run from king st station and elsewhere in old town, i'm just not familiar with them.

http://wmata.com/ <-- trip planner @ metro website is pretty handy to figure out how you'd get around & how long it takes. but afaik it doesn't include all the bus lines that run in virginia --> http://www.dashbus.com/ is Alexandria buses only.