DC Rich & Famous Slumming it at Bulk Warehouse

The Washington famous (i.e. not really famous at all, a completely un-recognizable group of people with their noses in the air) apparently shop at my Costco. Sadly, the NY Times started doing this "Urban Eye" thing a while ago, and ditched their style e-mails, so I didn't catch this article until this morning.

The real question is do they go themselves all the time, or do they send their lackeys? I'd love to send someone to Costco for me. 1) I would not be distracted and browse and buy a lot of unnecessary crap* 2) Have you seen that place? It's absolute madness, so crowded! And I have a gift for picking the slowest line anywhere.

Anyway, better Costco than one of the others, considering they treat their employees very well (see here).

About those Washington elite, though. I wouldn't recognize them because I have the fortune to not work on the hill, and with the horrendous policy decisions going on right now, I don't think I'd WANT to recognize them. Heh. :)

*The wool socks I bought recently were totally not unnecessary, but I wouldn't have seen them if I hadn't be dawdling in the aisles of Costco.

If only I had this much spare time in the office

If I had this much spare time at work I would probably do the same thing.
Check this out:
http://www.jamphat.com/rap/

A little NSFW - not in terms of the graphs (yes, there are graphs! and charts!) because they are graphs, but maybe the text of some of them. Nice links to the videos on YouTube too.

Props to people's links on Gchat for this one.

Other fun things to do to keep busy:
Free Rice (if you haven't heard of this by now you probably don't have enough spare time in the office to play with it)
Throw Paper (only after you've given at least 50 grains of free rice)

The 38B

So generally taking the 38B is a pain in the ass* because it's occupied by a bunch of f'ing crazies. Today however, the not-single girl sitting behind me had the 38B's best conversation ever.

Scenario: she's reading some crazy book about design, and the guy sitting next to her starts talking to her. In. A. French. Accent.
They had some language barrier issues, but I learned that he came here from France (Provence possibly) 2 weeks ago to work at a new framing store over by Cady's Alley. He's also a sculptor. As we got into Arlington I think the conversation got a little more intimate... I think he might have asked her if they could meet up in the future, since he gets off of work at 6. I was stalling and waited until the stop after I usually get off (when she got off too) to see if anything interesting was going to happen.

So I was thisclose to saying to her "So I guess you're not single" when we got off the bus. But I wasn't going to be taken as snarky (it wouldn't have really been snarky, I was curious). So not-single girls, if you see the maybe-cute** Frenchman on the bus, make sure you let a single girl get a bit of a thrill on the way home.

*compared to the blue bus...
**I only saw his reflection is the plastic barrier that separates the part of the bus up the stairs from the rest of it.

2. I am a not-single girl, so I'm not saying that she should have let me sit next to him, but you know, girls go for those accents... He probably had pretty manly hands too.

Cab strike update

So yesterday leaving work the traffic was pretty light from my point of view. And the DC cab traffic was waaaay light.
Here's a non-striking DC cab (usually there are 5-10 of these in this lane):

Here's a VA cab (there were a whole lot):