Scruffy cats dashed out of old cargo equipment, rusted snowplows and underbrush to eat the food.

On a totally random note, this is just about the most random news article I've read in quite a while, but because I believe in sharing hilarious things, I thought I'd point out this little gem to my devoted readers (all twelve of you).

*****************************************************

Also, Happy Halloween!!!

Little Jaunt to New England

Alright, it's a little too depressing to keep seeing my last post after last week's crushing defeat for the Rockheads, so I think it's about time for an update, lest I keep getting reminded of my silly and optimistic enthusiasm. Ah well. There's always, uh, next year...

I had a little weekend getaway and flew up to Providence for Brown's family weekend to visit Alex. It was a mini Wamboldt-reunion, which was excellent, and I got lots of good food out of the deal. The highlight was a classic "this is why the Wamboldts can't have nice things" moment (if you aren't aware, this is a favorite game to play in my family... Every time somebody breaks something, spills something, trips, embarrasses themselves, embarrasses others, drops food, disobeys social etiquette, makes a faux pas, or generally does something that one might find awkward and hilarious, you just add it to the running list of "why the Wamboldts can't have nice things." It's definitely a little weird, but then, so is my family.). We had gone to Newport for the day, where "summer" is a verb and "salmon" is an adjective used to describe pants color, and decided to indulge in a little lifestyles of the rich and famous tourism. We went to The Breakers, the largest and most famous of the Newport mansions, owned by Cornelius Vanderbilt II, which was basically like a miniature (I use that term loosely) Versailles. It was essentially a European palace, no joke. My favorite part of the tour was that the dining room chairs weighed 70-100 pounds each (depending on whether the detachable armrests were on), and so for their dinner galas, the family would hire 40 men to literally stand behind each chair so that they could help the guests get out from the table. Incredible. Also, I forgot to mention that The Breakers was only a "summer home" for the Vanderbilts, so it got used for only about 6 weeks every summer. Again, incredible. The amount of sheer wealth and vanity that this all requires boggles my mind.

ANYWAY, I was trying to recount the "this is why the Wamboldts can't have nice things" moment. So when we were waiting in line for tickets to the Vanderbilt cottage (also fairly pricey, these dudes have a whole racket figured out, let me tell you), this elderly couple from one of the bus tours that go see every mansion in Newport offers us their extra tickets. Being total cheapskates, we gladly accept, and are all impressed at our good fortune. We go wait in line, smugly thinking that we got out of paying to see some rich people's house, and are quite pleased with ourselves until we get to the front of the line. The primly polished woman taking tickets, who looks as though she has never smiled a day in her life, looks at us, looks at the tickets, and then asks coldly, "Are these the only tickets you have?"

We sort of stumble and say yeah, at which point the woman goes inside and consults with another prissy looking woman, who also comes out and again quite coldly informs us that the tickets we are trying to use are meant for only one person. So much for trying to pawn off our free tickets, couldn't fool them. This is about the point where Alex and I begin to get the serious giggles, and start off a full-fledged family laughing fit. The fact that our family was basically being rejected at the door of a fancy-pants mansion by Newport society women was just too priceless not to make the obvious comment (see above). Shamed and scorned, we had to go actually buy some tickets and re-face the woman taking tickets, who somehow didn't remember us (you'd have thought we made enough of a scene, but no), but eventually they let the riff-raff in.

*************************************************************************

On the topic of my career...


Mom: "You should marry rich, get introduced to the President and become friends, and then you could be appointed as ambassador to a really cool country!"

Dad: "You can become a gypsy."


These comments came at different points over the same dinner. I'm not sure if it's possible for me to simultaneously accomplish both, but dammit I'm going to try. I'd hate to let my parents down.

Glory Day for the Mile High City!!!!!

THE ROCKIES ARE GOING TO THE WORLD SERIES!!!

So apparently, hell has frozen over, and the good ole' Rockheads somehow made it to the pinnacle of baseball-dom, or at least are so incredibly near to it. This is tremendously exciting news for someone who remembers going to their first few games back in 1993, and who has cheered them on for at least one home game every season since. Humor me for a second and let me just brag a little about our victory after so many years of mediocrity: the NYTimes informs me that this is only the second time that a team has ever won every game in the post season, the first being in 1976 with the Cincinnati Reds. (And yes, as memorable as that event was, I feel quite certain that this time it really is a victory for the ages, and will be remembered for generations to come. Seriously.) Admittedly, I'm no expert in the field of baseball statistics (pun intended), but this sounds like a sort of big deal to me. I mean, come on -- we just won 21 of our last 22 games!! I wish I were in Denver to join in the festivities... and by "festivities" I really mean drunken people rioting downtown.

I spent a while trying to come up with a clever title for this entry commemorating my dear Rockies' clean sweep of the playoffs, but very quickly realized that any/all would be too corny to dare post with any seriousness. However, our team's name just lends itself to such glorious puns that I just had to compile a short list of the favorites:

- ROCKtober (Var: ROCKtoberfest)
- ROCKstars
- We will, we will ROCK you
- Time to ROCK and roll
- This city's off its ROCKer

There, I warned you. Not clever.

Most of all, I'm just proud that we, a "nobody team/state," is in the spotlight. As the Times puts it, "Perhaps now fans outside of their region will get to know them." Damn straight.

Bad news for we over-analyzers...but beautiful nonetheless.

"I understand it all too well, Ivan: to want to live with your insides, your guts -- you said it beautifully, and I'm terribly glad that you want so much to live," Alyosha exclaimed. "I think that everyone should love life before everything else in the world."

"Love life more than its meaning?"

"Certainly, love it before logic, as you say, certainly before logic, and only then will [you] also understand its meaning."


- The Brothers Karamazov, Fyodor Dostoevsky

Mad Scientist by Circumstance, Not Choice

This must be obvious from reading my past postings, but I spend a lot of time thinking about employment: how to get it, what makes it fulfilling, whether it should define your life or merely be a part of it, what about it makes it worthwhile or worthless... I'm at a place where I'm cutting a sharp distinction between the work/life divide, although I hope down the line to somehow integrate those two facets of my life a little more. That is, like most people, I ultimately hope to find the proverbial "perfect job" which channels my skills, talents, ethics, and passion into something that changes the world for the better (and one which I enjoy doing), rather just being employed for the sake of earning money. But that lofty goal can wait for a while. Not an immediately pressing concern.

I met a guy my age about a week ago who had just moved to DC, and was telling me how it was so hard for him to land a job here. He was intelligent, witty, personable, and had just graduated from a top liberal arts college with an engineering degree, so it struck me as strange that he wasn't snapped up by some firm or another right away. (Admittedly, DC may not be the absolute best place for engineers, but there should still be some opportunities, I would imagine.) Anyway, when I asked what he ended up finding, he got extremely sheepish and told me he was just hired by a place called (creepily enough) MetalStorm Ltd. He'll be using his young and talented mind to design new forms of missiles and grenade launchers, which he knows will then be sold to the U.S. government and shipped to Iraq, where he admits that they will presumably inflict staggering damages on civilians and children, among others. I guess I can't hold it against him personally if this really is the ONLY job he can find for now, but I'm really struggling with the idea that he could accept such an appalling job even with the admission that it is, well, evil.

More than anything, I find it more than a little disillusioning (and disturbing) to find out that normal, good people can just "fall into" a profession like missile design. I mean, this really should not be one of those things that smart people just resort to because they have no better career opportunities. Yikes.

Happy Paralegal Week!!!

OK, so I'm actually a week late. Paralegal Week was LAST week, that is October 1-7, but I figure that it's alright to extend the holiday season a little and celebrate this glorious event just a bit more.

Apparently, Paralegal Week happens because BOTH the Mayor of DC and the Governor of Maryland signed proclamations to that effect. Several thoughts:
1. Proclamations still exist?!? I thought they went out of style in 1863 with the Emancipation Proclamation, which was, after all, a pretty bad-ass proclamation. It sort of tickles me that elected officials can still issue proclamations. I wish we could have a "royal decree" in favor of Paralegal Week, too. Maybe they do in the UK.
2. What the hell is wrong with the Governor of Virginia for NOT supporting my valuable contributions to the legal community?! I mean, come on. If both DC and Maryland support Paralegal Week, you'd think VA would want to join the bandwagon too, and reap some goodwill among the toiling masses of entry-level paralegals in the metro area (or worse: the PERMAlegals who do this as a career... shudder). Anyway, just in case you want to register your shock at the Governor of Virgina's complete callousness and utter disregard for paralegals everywhere, I have provided a link to his "contact me" page: http://www.governor.virginia.gov/AboutTheGovernor/contactGovernor.cfm
3. Just in case you still don't believe me that there are actual proclamations, I've posted one of them as proof that absurdity is alive and well. This is the one from the Mayor of DC's office, and it's really slick. See, even while lauding the "trained professionals who provide substantive legal assistance," he managed to slide in a little lefty politics about the voting rights of the District!! (The actual text cleverly reads: "Whereas, paralegals who live in Washington, DC serve the legal profession admirably, despite being denied full voting rights in Congress...") WHOAAAA there it is!! So maybe this whole proclamation thing was only an opportunity for him to promote his own political agenda, and wasn't actually about the paralegals at all!!! Oh my god. This realization is like discovering that the tooth fairy isn't real.
4. Um, don't actually contact the governor about this. OK, maybe that would be pretty funny if he started getting outraged emails over this. Haha.

So anyway, having nothing better to do for Paralegal Week, I decided to make cards for my coworkers, thanking them for their valued contributions to the firm and the legal community at large on my behalf. Then, I spent about three hours one day hand-delivering them to other offices, and chatting for a while, no doubt spreading the joy of the festivities wherever I went. As Xiaolu put it, "You are to Paralegal Week what Santa Clause is to Christmas. Minus the huge belly, of course." I can't think of a better compliment.

Laura thinks this story is scary, but it's really just funny.

I think I've been in a pretty oblivious state of mind recently. For whatever reason, I seem to be trapped in my own head more than usual, which in my case is significant. There is a lot going on right now that merits thinking seriously about - a sign of a fulfilling life - but it is getting to the point where I need to just "live" rather than continually analyze the process of living.

While on the topic of being TOTALLY oblivious to the world around me.... There's this crazy man who habitually loiters in and around the Dupont Circle metro, jacked up on maybe fifteen kinds of substance, who has this crafty little trick of riding the metro back and forth, claiming to need just enough money to get off. He wanders around yelling "One more dollar! Just one more dollar! Please people, can you give me a quarter? One quarter? I've gotta get off this train..." etc. Thing is, he ALWAYS needs "just one more dollar," and I have witnessed this little ploy several times before. Pretty clever, really. I bet if he were marginally less irritating, though, he'd get a lot more.

Anyway, last Thursday, I happened to be on his car in the metro (just my luck), and due to a lot of factors (me being tired, frustrated, hungry, and eager to get home after Arabic class, to name a few) it was just not the right time for me to be dealing with Mr. Nutcase. I consciously decided to ignore him and in order to drown out his steady banter, I turned up my iPod and started blankly out the window into the dark tunnel. (Yes, rude, I know, but then bad moods often trump civility, sad as that may be.)

After a couple of minutes lost in my own train of thought, I notice that the guy is standing RIGHT behind me, no longer chanting "a quarter? a quarter? anyone?..." but instead, something more like "Ma'am, ma'am, it's following you! That's what happens, it's gonna get you. Gonna get you, ma'am, gonna get you." He's grating my nerves at this point, so I pointedly don't turn around until, after maybe thirty seconds, I notice out of the corners of my eye that people are staring at me. Like, everyone in the train is looking at me, and since there's a crazy person behind me (which would normally command far more attention than little ole me) it dawns on me that something is up.

Finally, two people tap my shoulder, and gesture to my hand, upon which a two-inch long, bright red cockroach is perched. It's clearly been chillaxin' there for, oh, you know, long enough for people to notice. I think I pretty suavely shook it off (it landed on the next guy over, who was way more freaked out than I was), and luckily, was able to save some face and escape when the doors opened at my stop a second later (saved by the bell). How it escaped my attention that there was a COCKROACH on me for over a minute, especially when a crazyman is loudly pointing out that same fact to the ENTIRE train, is completely beyond me. But there you go. Living in my own world these days.

The Silver Lining

So after the blood donation fiasco, which I'm starting to think of as God's way of telling me not to try heroin, they wrapped my arm with a bright red gauze bandage.

When Colleen got home from work and saw it, the first thing she said was: "What, you're wearing an armband in solidarity with the Burmese?"

Sigh. If only I were that cool...

A Bloody Fiasco

Today I donated blood. I have donated blood before. It has gone smoothly.

Today was not like that.

I went to the Red Cross station at my assigned time to get my donation on, and dutifully went through all the rigamarole of checking in and giving my sexual/travel/medical history and whatnot. In the process, it is "possible" that I "may" have slightly duped the people into accepting my semi-malarial blood due to omission of details concerning several sketchy places to which I have recently traveled... (KIDDING!!! Even I am not evil enough to trick the Red Cross into accepting tainted blood... sort of.) But I pass the screening and am moved to the donation unit.

I get settled into my chair, and do my level best to remain reasonably calm during the run-up to getting jabbed in the arm. I can't decide if it's better to watch the needle go in, or to avoid looking at my arm at all costs, so I wind up doing both, twisting my head back and forth in a nervous manner while the volunteer sticks in the needle. My veins, I am told, are really small, so in order to find a serviceable one, the nurse had to apply an amount of pressure that would cripple Hercules (or that was my impression, in any case).

She stuck in the needle, and about 10 seconds later, my hand went completely numb. I informed the nurse to this fact, and she was able to reduce the pressure marginally so that the numbness became only a tingle. About thirty seconds after what we shall call "Adjustment #1" I start feeling really dizzy and weak. As someone who has fainted on more than one occasion before, I can recognize the run-up and, once again, alert the nurse. She came to adjust the pressure machine once again, flipped my chair back to a reclining position, and told her assistant to run and get my a Coke to drink for the sugar. As someone not used to being fussed over, I tried to keep a really nonchalant attitude and save a little face. This fell apart rather shortly afterwards, as you shall soon see.

So I finally get settled in my chair, and keep obediently squeezing the little rubber ball that is supposed to keep your blood moving. I relax for the next five minutes, and watch my blood fill the little bag. I thought for a while about what a generous, community-minded individual I am to go through this hassle and become fairly content, basking in my own goodwill... that is, until the nurse happens to notice that the bag isn't filling up anymore as I had imagined it was. It's actually not filling up at all.

The solution? She has to up the pressure yet again to try to make my puny little vein bleed, and, as expected, my arm goes numb. This begins a process of "increase pressure-make Krystyna's arm go numb-reduce pressure-make Krystyna's arm stop bleeding" which repeats about four or five times, each one because I am (politely and meekly) complaining.

At this point, I start getting worried that I'm not going to be able to fill the whole bag and that after all this torture, they're going to throw it away anyway. (This did not ultimately happen, thankfully, as it would have left disastrous psychological consequences and hindered me from persuing further selfless activities for fear of waste and ultimate uselessness.) Somehow, through what can only be described as a miracle, we hit a pressure equilibrium, I stay relatively un-numb, and manage to complete the pint.

The needle comes out, I wait my requisite five minutes before moving, go to the snack table, and eat about two cookies until a wave of intense dizziness hits me. The woman next to me notices my pallor and clear disorientation and flags over a different aide, who has to escort me back to the chair, where they tilt me back to a prone position, cover me with a blanket, and force me to drink water. As if I haven't already caused enough of a scene by commanding the attention of a good third of the Red Cross staff, someone notices that I look flush and then covers my face and neck with cool, wet paper towels. Keep in mind that this is in full view of about, oh, twenty or so people, many of them attorneys who work at my firm. Great.

All I could do was swallow my pride and lie there like the weakling they exposed me to be until I was ultimately given permission to move back to my old friend, the snack table. Ten long minutes later, they pronounced me to be fit to return to normal society, and I sheepishly scamper out of the room, grab a huge lunch, and hole up in my office.

My new theory is that they impose this two-month limit between donations not because that's how long it would take you to regenerate enough red blood cells, but so that you will forget about all the trauma that the effing process actually entails, and by the time the waiting period is up, will have re-convinced yourself that donating blood is a good and charitable idea and go eagerly forward to do it again.

In any case, today was truly a lesson in humility.

The Weekend Update

I usually like to theme my entries, but this weekend's activities don't seem to really align in any coherent sense. No matter, I want to share some stories anyway, so breaking convention, let's see the weekend's "Best Of," in no particular order!

- I went to fiddle lesson #2, and my teacher tells me that I'm doing really well so far; in his words, I "have a good ear" and will "definitely make a good player" (read: someday, with a lot of practice). At the moment, I can barely eke out an approximation of the theme from the Ken Burns' documentary about the Civil War, as apparently this is a good first tune to learn. I can manage any one of the 3,000 or so components of playing this danged instrument (i.e. finding the right notes, bowing in a perpendicular fashion, holding the bow correctly, keeping my arm loose...) if and ONLY if I'm focusing on that one thing. Put them all together though, and I sound... amazing. Colleen, I'm really going to test your patience for a while until I get the hang of this thing.

- After the amazing fiddle lesson, however, I definitely got lost in Northern Virginia, and spent far longer than I would have liked driving aimlessly around Fairfax County (damn them and their lack of street lighting and poor signage!!) before seeing a sign that pointed towards "Washington" and following it until I hit recognizable turf. My little "detour" took me past the White House and through a bunch of one-way streets in NW before I actually wound up at home. Needless to say, DC = not a very driver-friendly city. I feel lame to have been bested by the transportation authorities in N. VA, and I resent this feeling tremendously. The good news, however, is that I know the city well enough now to be able to drive around without a map and (ultimately) wind up where I need to be.

- Spent an entire morning hauling a futon across the city in my ZipCar for a friend. Payment included pancakes and specialty fall-themed TJ's beers, plus a chance encounter with a black and latino motorcycle rally.

- Had a ridiculously epic walk across the city on Saturday, which involved a number of excellent things. Some highlights included: eating fresh shrimp and oysters at a waterfront fish market, getting my picture with a man in a dog costume (although I'd like to imagine it was a young Drew Barrymore in her E.T. years), a geeky pilgrimage to the NPR headquarters (i.e. the mothership... haha), scavenging for seaweed in Chinatown, a contemporary art museum (more below), and, oh yes, the well-deserved Frappuccino for energy. All told, 6.04 miles and five hours of awesomeness.

- At the Hirshorn Museum (Smithsonian's contemporary/modern art collection), there were fewer bizarre pieces than I remembered from last summer, but definitely a few winners, like the seizure-inducing wall of video feed and a film of different things lighting on fire. First prize went to this dark room with a very dimly lit red wall in back. You had to hold onto a railing to walk into the room, and were expected to sit on this wooden bench in the back. However, since it was essentially pitch black and IMPOSSIBLE to see anything for the first minute or so after you enter, you basically had to make a fool out of yourself and stumble blindly forward until you hit one of the following things: the bench, the wall, or the person next to you. I managed to accomplish all three before finding a seat, whereupon I was molested by a young Japanese tourist who, in her desperate search for the bench, groped my ear and half of my face. Basically it was the funniest situation I've come across in a long time. I couldn't stop laughing, and once my eyes adjusted so that I could see the silhouettes of each newbie entering the cave, I had the luxury of mocking them just as I'm sure the people who were there before mocked me. I'm betting the artist designed it as some sort of social experiment which would force total strangers to become oddly intimate and vulnerable in a dark room, all under the pretense of modern art. End result: total hilarity.

- I had a brush with celebrity as I met the boy (drumroll please) who used to date MISS FINLAND 2006!! (No small accomplishment: she is exactly what you would imagine a Scandinavian beauty queen to look like. Go ahead, picture it. Yep, that's her.) Apparently, even dating MF06 is cause to be in the Finnish newspapers, and I was regaled with stories of how he is now a recognized personality in Finland because of their frequent appearances in the gossip rags. So if I ever make it to Helsinki, I'll be able to drop names and wow people with my cool connections. Ha.

'Nuff said. All told, it was a good weekend.