Overheard this morning in line at CVS, 15th and K:

Girl (to disinterested boyfriend): Look at this Cosmo. Look at Demi Moore. She’s gross. She looks younger than I do and she’s like 50. Isn’t that disgusting?

Boyfriend: That’s Jennifer Connelly.

Girl: No, it’s not.

Boyfriend: It says it right there — Jennifer Connelly.

Girl. Well, whatever. Demi Moore is still gross. *giggle* What would you do without me?

Boyfriend (under his breath as she walks down the aisle to check something else out): Where do I start?

So, after a restful weekend, we dive headlong back  into the world of blogging on a federal holiday. Happy Presidents Day, yo. May you reflect on your favorite today.

My favorite president is Andrew Jackson. I like Andrew Jackson because he said, “Hey, so, I got inaugurated today and I’m having a party, so you can come if you want.” And they came. And they trashed the White House. A great example of “a good idea at the time.”

Anyway, on with the picture show!

This is a gift from the Type Writer, a great friend of mine from Florida. He got this as a decoration for our studios. This was inspirational. This will motivate me, I hope, to dig in and find the love I had for doing shows and get cranking again.

And now, today’s mail call:

It says I can create fabulous hairstyles instantly. I’d like to start the Vegas pool on how long it takes tonight before I get one of these stuck in my hair and I have to have Brandon cut it out with scissors. Takers? Anyone?

For those of you playing along at home, that picture above is a still from surveillance footage of then-Washington, D.C., mayor Marion Barry smoking crack. This little mishap is also responsible for the single most memorable quote of his political career: “Bitch set me up.”

So, you could imagine my joy when I learned that I could be that bitch, but it would have been, “bitch posted up.”

A couple of weeks ago, one of my co-workers asked me if I wanted to play in a charity basketball game that would be D.C. media types against the city council. I jumped at this chance. Why? Because despite his shady previous dealings, Marion Barry’s still a D.C. city councilman for the Eighth Ward. This … was my chance. This was MY chance to stuff a living legend as he went to the hoop. Nevermind I’m probably a few inches taller than he is. Never mind that he’s got, oh, almost 40 years on me. This was my time in the spotlight. A story to tell my kids.

“Yeah, back in 2009, Marion Barry cut left toward the basket and your Mom here threw up an arm and blocked his shot.”

Oh, but no. No, Jacque. Your chance to stuff Marion Barry is gone, relegating you to another event in your life that’s marked with the word, “almost.”

Feds want Marion Barry jailed

GAH!! Not paying taxes? Really? You forgot. That’s cool. I did once, too. Oh, wait. You forgot eight times? Woof. Yeah, that’s not going to be easy to get out of quickly. You’re probably hosed. This time, the 1040 set you up. Bad.

I’ll keep you posted in case someone springs him from the pokey and the dream comes back to life. But for now, I just have to stare up at the ceiling and think about the almost.

What the crap, Jacque? Really? HoHos? There’s a Subway literally 30 feet out your front door, yet you wander to your office vending machine and plunk out 70 cents for partially hydrogenated oil? Mmm. Trans fat. I really am throwing all caution to the wind in the face of turning 30! Tomorrow: An entire pound of bacon.

Seriously … could that be any better? I’m not sure it could.

“It would be better if they had free hot dogs. That would be worth lying and saying you’re media.  I would cover any event with free hot dogs.”
– Me, to a friend about the thought of gonzo journalists showing up to the Washington Auto Show

If you have Facebook, click on that little thingy to the right and add me. If you don’t have Facebook, that’s OK. I don’t judge you.

Here’s my “25 Random Things About Me” thing that I got all caught up in when it was spreading like an unfortunate sexually transmitted disease.

*****

1. I have the worst short term memory in the world. I’m not even kidding. I can lose keys as soon as I put them down, ask a question twice in a row and … wait … what am I doing again?

2. I’m almost never NOT cold. At my old job at West Virginia Media, I ran a space heater under my desk all day (even in the summer), much to the chagrin of both I.T. and the engineering staff. We’re not allowed to have them in my new office building, but I wear on my lap a blanket that a former employee left behind. When she comes back for the blanket, I’ll be sad.

3. I am legitimately, actually afraid of old people. Seriously. Not people in their 60s and 70s, but very, very elderly people. I think it came from the time I visited my great-grandmother in the nursing home in St. Clairsville, Ohio, and wandered off. I got latched on to by a woman with dementia who thought I was her child. I was 8 or 9 and it scared the living hell out of me. I’ve not recovered.

4. I always knew I’d end up in the field I’m in, in some fashion. Although I sort of flirted with the idea of being a lawyer, I wanted to be a lawyer that worked for newspapers defending them against lawsuits.

5. When I was a child, the greatest gift I ever remember getting was the typewriter I got for Christmas. This blue typewriter. I would interview my stuffed animals and write about what they had to say and type enough copies to hand out to my mother and father. I was a weird kid.

6. In terms of my life, I’m positive that something got mixed up in “cosmic shipping and receiving” and I should have been born in 1969. I can’t tell you anything at all about what people would find “cool” today (I read a lot for entertainment stuff for my job, so I can tell you what “they” find cool) but if you want to know how people rocked it in 1987, I’m your girl.

7. I’m generous to a fault. This is my one of my best qualities and worst flaws.

8. The best lesson I can say I’ve learned from my parents is to treat everybody — no matter who they are — well. My mother and father treated everybody they ever came across with kindness and respect, and except for the random tourist, I’d say I live up to that pretty well.

9. I let my sister labor under the delusion for 23 years that she was an accident. It started out like a funny prank, but apparently, she took it seriously.

10. I’ve already named my autobiography. I’m not important enough to have one, but when I do write it, it’s going to be called “A Good Idea at The Time” because that sums up my entire life in six words.

11. I’m a really bad procrastinator. I’ll actually rationalize some of it with “Well, I’ll do that in case I want something easy to do later.” I seem to procrastinate more on tasks that bore me, like laundry.

12. I quit my high school basketball team to clear the way for my sister. The coach didn’t want us playing together and in a thinly veiled way said he’d hold her back from the varsity team. I realized I didn’t care about basketball that much. My sister ended up going to college on a full scholarship for it. These things tend to work out as they should.

13. I have two cats — Inky and Walter. Inky was an abandoned black cat living outside the offices of the Clarksburg Exponent-Telegram when she jumped in my car in October 2008 (Hence the name “Inky”). Walter came from the Kanawha-Charleston Animal Shelter and he was days away from being put down. Walter is named after Walter Sobchak, John Goodman’s character in “The Big Lebowski.”

14. Even when I send a text message or an IM, I use proper spelling, grammar and punctuation. It’s a habit of my trade, I guess. If I’ve stopped using capital letters, my day’s really gone bad.

15. I love the TV show “Cheaters.” I know. I know. There’s something really funny to me about a giant white van rolling up and Joey Greco telling you that people who can’t sleep and watch UPN will see that you’re … a cheater.

16. I can’t get out of bed in the morning unless I hit the snooze button at least three or four times. I realize that has to be terribly annoying.

17. I can’t believe that it took me until 17 to get to this, but I’ve been to Groundhog Day in Punxsutawney, Pa., five times. I’m really bummed out that I won’t make it this year. It’s nothing like the movie. Seriously.

18. Though I complain, I secretly love every minute of riding the Metro. In just about eight months of riding it, I’ve seen such a slice of life that a lot of people never get to see. It’s also provided me with countless stories and photos.

19. I’m the most patient and least patient person in the world. It’s a hellish paradox.

20. I’ve done, in some fashion, for a few years, an Internet radio show. It’s gone through several, several incarnations but managed to hang together. It’ll be back after the Super Bowl. If I could have three hours a day on the air somewhere doing something I love as much as radio, I’d be over the moon.

21. Some of the most interesting people in my life today are people I never knew before this year or I knew them, but thought differently of them and finally got past that barrier to actually get to know them. I’m thankful.

22. I’m a fan of the New York Islanders. This happened because of a friend of mine in college who got me started on hockey and he was an Islanders fan. It stuck. I’m glad it did. Nobody’s an Islanders fan. It’s unique.

23. The scariest day of my life, though I never showed it on the outside, was the day I found out my father had a massive brain hemorrhage and nobody knew what was going to happen. Watching his recovery during the past seven months has been so awesome.

24. I layer clothing every day and it’s almost always some form of gray, black or red. I try to branch out, but I can’t. It’s painful. I love gray, black and red.

25. I really want to be a contestant on Jeopardy. I’d probably get killed in categories like “18th Century French Poetry,” but to have Alex Trebek say to me, “Ooooh. Sooorry, sorrry,” would make it worth it.

Here’s a video that has nothing to do with anything other than this song came up on my iPod the other day while I was on the Metro headed into work and it occurred to me I probably hadn’t seen the video since, well, the last time they showed videos consistently on MTV.

My friend Dan told me the other day that he still checks my blog out every day and every day lately, he’s been disappointed. And then my sister mentioned that I never update it anymore. I couldn’t tell you how many people still even bother checking in regularly. That’s the thing I’ve noticed about blogs … they ebb and flow. They’re like a comfortable sweater that you can leave in a drawer and pull it out when you need one. It doesn’t care if it’s been an hour, or six weeks, since the last time you put it on. I just wants to be taken around the block every so often.

I haven’t been to West Virginia since Christmas. I haven’t done a radio show since the week before Christmas. I don’t know the next time either will happen. I miss both.

My problem with the show is I just haven’t felt it in a while. I start thinking about wanting to do it, I get myself ready and then I think, “Well, I could do some laundry, or reading, or catch up with some people on the phone, etc.”

It’s 8 to 10 p.m. on a Sunday night because that’s the time I got myself into in its earlier incarnations. Then once we owned the stream, though we could have made it any time we wanted to, it stayed from 8 to 10. And then the NFL came.

It needs tweaking, to borrow one of my favorite phrases from a friend of mine. It needs some definite tweaking. I would rather work on my writing and develop ideas than put on a show that’s half-baked and forced, and I’m afraid I’d be doing that now. At least I’m honest enough with myself to say it out loud.

I’m thankful that I’ve had some time to actually spend here in DC without anything hanging over my head lately. For the Super Bowl, I spent it with a friend of mine and his wife and son. Yesterday, I had a GREAT time at the Auto Show with the gang from Richmond (area). I’ve been to a Georgetown-WVU game. I’m having lunch with two different people in two weeks and meeting an old friend for a Happy Hour hopefully next Friday.

It isn’t that I don’t want to go home. I miss my family terribly. But I felt the entire summer that I didn’t live in Washington. I stayed here five days a week and then got in the car to visit my sick father. I’m not complaining. Every single week I saw him and he got better was the highlight of my week. But that came at the expense of not knowing anything about where I live.

There’s a super Target three miles from my house. I didn’t know that until I went to the doctor last week and had an occasion to actually go down that road. I’ve never been to a Five Guys, but there’s one about 10 minutes away. I actually went to IKEA.

Maybe I’m introspective because I’m about 33 hours and 51 minutes away from turning 30, but who’s counting. My mother told me this morning it was a great milestone, and I told her it didn’t feel like one. Not so much because I’m dreading getting older — I’m already an octogenarian in a much younger body — but because I really feel like I’ve accomplished, at least professionally, what I’d hoped by the time I hit this age.

I’m in a major city. I’m working for a major newspaper. I’m actually an editor.

I’m still employed. I don’t feel like I’m at risk of not being employed. That’s more than a lot of people can say in these times.

So as I see the sun pour in here through the open windows, I’m starting to feel a little bit settled down. Months and months have passed without me feeling like I could actually breathe, and I’m finally there. Like it (most of the time) or not (only in heavy traffic), I live here. I still smile when I get off the train in the morning and look around at the buildings. I’m not disenchanted. Or hardened. I still find something new to appreciate every day.

Uh oh. Pollyanna’s arrived. I must be closing in on 30.

And speaking of that, if someone wants to get me a Snuggie, it won’t replace the electric blanket that Paige got me, but I’d love to wear it around my office.

Wow, I really can’t seem to break free from 1995 Bjork!

In trying to download a picture from my e-mail, I enjoyed this delicious nugget of technology from Google:

“Detailed Technical Info.”

Numeric  Code: 67.

I don’t know about you, but I’m overwhelmed with the detailed technical info relating to GoogleFail.

But, I digress.

As I got on a Red Line to Glenmont after 7 tonight, it was next to empty. Seriously, on average, there are more people on that train on a normal weekday than were on it tonight. When I transferred at Fort Totten, I ended up waiting only two minutes before an even more empty train to Greenbelt showed up. Quite, quite different than this morning.

I stared straight ahead, my head heavy, my eyes tired and my brain going over a million different things I’ve got swimming around in my head right now. I didn’t even realize I’d reached Greenbelt until the lights flickered and it registered that the driver said the train was out of service.

When I walked toward the door, I looked at the station map they post on the inside of the car. Someone added a stop.

I’ve been to Tripset. It’s nothing to write home about. Today, though, it was.

I’d say it is.

You know what else is America? I just heard on WTOP that a 68-year-old woman got hit by a train at Gallery Place-Chinatown, and she’s alive and kickin’. She now replaces Chuck Norris and Dick Cheney as someone you should fear.

“Getting hit by a train doesn’t make her dead, it makes her angry she’s missing the Inauguration.”