smacky and bucky

I have no idea how to follow up a post about becoming a first-time father, so I'm going to do a 180 and post some random pics I found on my hard drive. I do confess they are all pictures I took, or thing I own. Here we go:

I really don't want to announce this on Facebook yet, but I have to tell someone, so I thought of the small circle of blog readers I have (all four of you?).

Here we go...

Ovechkin gives Jagr a thundering check that resulted in Russia scoring their third goal against Czech Republic on Sunday. The Olympic committee removed it from YouTube, but you can't erase anything once it's been on the Web.

Last night, in front of a capacity crowd (some of whom had paid over $2,000 for a ticket) USA upset favorites Canada in a 5-3 win. What made it sweeter (for me) was that even the announcers, just before the game, all said Canada was sure to win. They were more experienced. They had home ice advantage and the crowd on their side. It was quiet when USA scored the first goal of the night. It was riotous when Canada answered. Less than a minute after that, USA scored a second time to take the lead again. The crowd was going apeshit in the final minutes of the game. Canada scored to make it 4-3 with just over a minute left. They just needed to score again to force an overtime. They pulled their goalie to have a 1-man advantage on the ice. With less than a minute, an American player smacked a wicked angle shot into Canada's empty goal, giving team USA a security goal and sealing the win. By this point, although heavily outnumbered in the stands, the chant of "USA! USA!" was deafening. Now USA gets a day off and Canada has to play an extra game to get into the semifinals. This was the highlight of the entire Olympics so far. What an upset!

Team USA heard the pundits and responded. To use John Locke's go-to catchphrase...

This guy joins Domo and Sulu on my desk at work. He's from the movie Astro Boy (which I only learned today actually came out last November, thanks to De). For $5, he's ready to say "Hands off the iPod, buddy!" To the left of the robot, note the pack of casino-used cards from Treasure Island in Las Vegas, on top of which is an official Washington Capitals hockey puck. To the right of the robot is a bottle of sand from the beach at our place on the Northern Neck.

I witnessed something yesterday, right in front of my house, that I can't stop thinking about.

Yesterday afternoon, around 5pm, the UPS truck stopped in front of our house, delivering the final piece of our sectional sofa. The box wasn't heavy, but it was very large, so the driver (a female) had to open the back of the truck and get it out. I walked up to greet her and take it from her so she wouldn't have to haul it all the way to the door. As I'm taking the box from her, a silver VW hatchback drives up from the opposite direction and stops nose-to-nose with the truck.

As you probably know, we had three FEET of snow between two different storms last week, and the temps since have barely gotten into the 30s, so there hasn't been much melting to speak of. The county plows have hit out street, but as a result, snow is piled about waist high on both sides of the street and it's not going anywhere anytime soon. All this means that our street is one lane in most places, so cars have been taking turns on our block, waiting at the end of the block on either side whenever a car is already coming. It's not just polite. It's necessity. You can't get out of the way as there's nowhere to pull to the side.

Back to yesterday afternoon. The sees me take the box from the UPS driver and he honks his horn and sticks his head out the window and says "Why don't you pull to the side to let other people by?" The UPS woman calmly replies "There's nowhere to pull over." The guy starts raising his voice and has already left common sense behind, repeating that she has to pull to the side. (There is no side to pull over onto, remember?)

So as I am carrying this large box up my sidewalk, I turn around and say to the guy, "Why don't you back up and go around the block?" Not an unreasonable request, as he's only two houses into the block and could back up and go around in about 15 seconds (already longer than he's been sitting there yelling). His response to me was "'Cause I don't FEEL LIKE IT!" his voice raising with each word. The first thing that came to my mind was that this is the response a toddler gives when told it's time for a nap, delivered in exactly the same cadence. I shrug and open the door and carry the box in, muttering to myself as I close the door, "What a dick."

My wife looks out the window and says, "He's out of his car." And yep, he has gotten out of his car and is yelling at the woman. She pulls out her phone and starts calling someone, her supervisor or the police, we imagine. My wife opens the front door and calls to the woman "We have your back. We're watching!" The guy looks at us and yells, "Shut up!" He then proceeds to call the woman the "n" word and jumps back in his car, finally backing away and taking off.

The UPS driver says thanks to my wife and gets into her truck and drives off.

We called the police non-emergency number and give our account of what happened (along with the guy's license number), just in case he tried to make a call on his own and tried to get the UPS driver in trouble. We then called UPS and spoke to her supervisor and explained what happened and she promised to call the driver right away and make sure she was okay.

How did that escalate so quickly? He was looking for a fight the minute he pulled up. The aggression was so strong and so misplaced. He certainly showed his true colors using the racial epithet.

It's tempting to imagine responding in kind with aggression and violence, either in a Jean Claude Van Damme way and kicking his ass right there, or like Dexter and breaking into his house and scaring the crap out of him. But real life ain't like movies. All you can really do is report it, keep your eyes open, and be thankful people like that are generally rare.

Labels: psychopath, racism, sofa

It's been a decade since Sade's last release. Since we saw her in concert on her last tour, the couple we went with broke up and each moved hundreds of miles away. Laura and I bought a house, built another house, bought another house, sold a house, got married, got two cats, got a dog, got another dog, I changed jobs, etc.

I'm looking forward to listening to this.

About to spend another hour or two shoveling snow.

Here's two pics from yesterday: Our cat Maddie checking out the snow in the picture window. Love the way the black cat is silhouetted against the white... and the frame of icicles and snow drifts.

Government closed Tuesday.

Government closed Wednesday.

Blizzard conditions outside.

Additional 10 -12 inches on top of 24 already on the ground.

Gonna watch this movie now:

Few items:

(1) Federal government is closed today, meaning my office is closed too. Wheee!

(2) Here's a link to live cams at Graceland. Six inches of snow forecast there today! http://elvis.com/graceland/vtour/gracecam.asp

(3) Watching the Smallville Absolute Justice movie and I'm really digging it! The really got Stargirl down and Dr. Fate's costume translates great to the "real world." I love the reboot Johns did of JSA (Justice Society of America, the golden age precursor of Justice League) years ago, blending the golden age folks with the younger heroes. Now apparently they've split into two series? I don't know for sure. I don't buy new comics anymore.


(4) I've always had a soft spot for Stargirl. As Wikipedia notes: "In 1996, Geoff Johns' younger sister, Courtney, was killed in the explosion of TWA Flight 800. Johns would later use Courtney as the inspiration for the character Courtney Whitmore, the new Star Spangled Kid." That character is how his sister lives on. That's sweet, sad, and awesome. Courtney is in the exact center of the above picture.

(5) How cool would a JSA museum be?!?

Wife sent me a link to this site. Here's what I made:



De made one too!

Arlington, today:
The river, three days ago:

A few days ago I received an e-mail notice from A-Ha.com announcing the band's American dates on their farewell world tour. It turns out they're only playing three dates in America: Two in NYC and one in Los Angeles. Boom, that's it, off to the rest of the world, then breaking up. I had one chance to see them if was ever going to do it!

Well, it turns out that registering on their site years ago and getting their infrequent e-mail alerts was very smart. Yesterday I received a notice that their website was going to have a presale of some tickets for their American dates February 2 at 10am (three days before tickets are offered to the general public). This morning at I refreshed the site a few times just before 10 and added two tickets to my cart the moment I could. I was happy to see my shipping info was still stored from when I bought their latest release in MP3 form last year. By 10:05 I had my confirmation of sale and at 10:07 they announced that the presale was sold out. Whew!


Friday May 7, 2010, I'll be taking the day off, riding the train up to NYC and seeing the band with 2,000 other fans at Nokia Theater. (To put their American popularity level in context with their popularity in the rest of the world, in March they're playing an arena in South America, the same one Beyonce is playing the week before, and they regularly sell out stadiums in Germany!)