tails of the city
I took the Metro home from work tonight and, woefully underdressed for the 38-degree evening, decided to stop at Cosi for hot coffee to fortify me for the 15-minute walk home. I was probably about 20 steps out of the store, ready to turn down 19th Street, when this gigantic -- when I say gigantic, I mean absolutely insanely unbelievably gigantic -- dog bounds around the corner and slams into me. Puts its paws on my shoulders, literally, and sticks its huge doggie face into mine. I spill half of a very large coffee, complete with milk and Equal, onto its back.

The dog's owner comes around the corner, chasing after it with a leash, and begins apologizing profusely. (Because this is my life and not a Meg Ryan movie, the owner is a graying man who is at least old enough to be my father and wearing a rainbow flag pin on his coat besides. Figures.) I, in turn, am also apologizing profusely about spilling coffee all over his dog which, in the meantime, is hopping up and down with unfettered joy. His mammoth horse-sized head is swinging to and fro. His monstrous tail easily would have taken out any passing compact car. His paws could have trampled children or small adults. A non-dog person would have been horrified, but, of course, I loved it, despite the loss of most of my coffee. I really think the universe is trying to tell me something if random dogs are singling me out like this. Can I have a puppy for Chanukah? Please?

no time, but...
... I can't leave that thing up there about being miserable when I had such a good weekend. The pre-Thanksgiving turkey was brined and cooked in a hilarious turn of events Friday night, and a day later, 20 people and lots of food sat on the floor on cushions to eat it and talk to each other. It was one of those times that added up to more than the sum of its parts... halfway through, I looked around and had one of those so-many-people-I-care-about-are-in-one-room frissions of happiness. Really was warm and lovely and great.

OK, now it's back to work. (Later, we will go back to take it easy's regularly scheduled doom and gloom. I read an article in US News this morning that made me want to rip out my hair -- we can talk about it later, though. Concentrate on the happy pre-Thanksgiving and almost-real-Thanksgiving for now. :) )

bleh
I'm having one of those days when the world seems like a very harsh place and I'm just trying to duck out of its way so I can get on with my small, unimportant life. Avoid eye contact. If I can't see it, it can't see me either.

I've been working on the stuff about the trials for the two sniper suspects for so long that it's basically unreal to me -- a story, a page full of words, a loose bunch of details that need to be spelled correctly and posted quickly. An abstraction. Then this kind of testimony crops up and I remember that it's too real, unbearably sad, horrifying.

I know that losing perspective is a defense mechanism, and that it lets you think on a different plane so that you can operate objectively and make dark jokes about terrible things. I know a lot of journalists have to do it to stay sane. But the horrible jolt you get when you come back to earth and remember what you're really talking about might not be worth it. I feel awful. Too callous and too sensitive, too everything.

all artistic-like
This weekend, I went to The Corcoran to see an exhibit called "Beyond the Frame: Impressionism Revisited." A sculptor named J. Seward Johnson has basically taken a bunch of famous paintings and made them three-dimensional -- life-sized statues, hills full of fake grass and poppies, fully decorated rooms that you could step into and around.

There's something sort of trivializing and naughty-feeling (trying and failing to resist the liberal-arts pull of the word "transgressive," but at least I wrestled it inside the parentheses) about the whole exhibit. It was packed, and there were kids all over the place, touching the statues, climbing on everything. And the thing was that the exhibits didn't really create a feeling of anything the way that looking at -- or into -- a painting does. You'd think it would draw you in more, but it didn't, really.

That said, it was pretty cool. Johnson's statues are actually amazingly cool and not trivial at all. There was a lot of playful self-referencing in the exhibits, too, that showed a different level of awareness of the project. But I don't know, maybe I'm too snobby, but it didn't really have any kind of emotional impact at all.

Intellectually: cool. Practically: not so much. Except maybe the Van Gogh bedroom. My roommate had to drag me out of that one, which was, in fact, rather incredible. It sort of made you feel like you weren't really standing on the ground.

coaxing, gently
Come on, leafygreen, cooperate.

enemy terrirory
Scotty Claus suggested to me on the phone tonight that perhaps writing something here for a change might be a good idea. So to placate my innumerable (Scott + Carl = 2) West Coast readers, I figured my newly acquired DSL and I could cooperate to make his dream a reality.

One of my friends, who works for the defense department, is going to Iraq, probably for six months, and I had dinner with him last night to say goodbye. (He is an excellently secretive military employee as ordered, and I have absolutely no idea what he does at his current job, why he is going to Iraq or what he will be doing once he gets there. He soldiers with his brain and not with his brawn, but I don't know more than that. I am also deliberately not using his name or talking much about his reaction or feelings because I know D*nald R*msfeld stays up late every single night reading my blog and I don't want to screw up my friend's career. OK? OK.)

Anyway, I think I was playing the role of pep talker -- despite how much work it will certainly be, and how it's more than a little dangerous, and how far from home it is and how long six months will feel, this is an unbelievably cool opportunity. It's someplace no one from this country will ever get to see otherwise. Way more importantly, he's going to be a part of something so much larger than himself, something that is so important on a global scale. Talk about making a difference. If people as smart and capable as he is are in charge over there, I feel a little better about the whole thing.

But later, he pulled his dogtags out. Then I got it. He's really going away, and those pieces of metal are hanging under his shirt for only one reason.

I'm not sure how I feel about it now. I still think it's incredible and important, but there's an awful lot of dread and worry for him mixed in. And I'm still not that crazy about this whole thing. In case you were in doubt.

My pal Donny R. and I are going to go check the new fun blogs I am now reading, and then I am going to go to bed. Maybe tomorrow someone will explain to me why it seems as though we have traded weather with Iraq, and now it's 85 degrees in November.