Good Gates Make Good Neighbors

I was chit-chatting with a guy who lives in NoVa and I said something about my building's electronic gate.

"Gate?" he says. "I didn't think they had gates over there."

I live in Southeast DC, not the wild, wild west. Of course we have gates!!

Who needs gates more than people who live in one of the worst parts of the city?

Religious Recession?

From Express:

"The U.S. religious marketplace is extremely volatile, with nearly half of American adults leaving the faith tradition of their upbringing to either switch allegiances of abandon religious affiliation altogether..."

I know these days churches talk about marketing and there is a push for them to be more business-like, but stock market language really cannot be applied to everything.

Spirituality isn't a commodity you can buy, sell, and trade.

I'm Melting!

I am serious student of the comics. And I've noticed that lately some of the old favorites are finally catching up to modern times...when Dagwood and that little boy from next door talk about iPods, you know something is up. But there was one comic that you could count on to remain stuck in the old days, until now...

Road Trippin'

I have a Road Trip article in the Washington Post's Sunday Source (2.24.08)

Check it out:

In Step with Jane Austen: A Novel Tour

It's cool and it's hot

It's funny the things that just pop into my head...

I profile restaurants for a local newspaper and I was trying to think of some way to describe something I'd eaten recently. For some reason the McD.L.T. came to mind. Don't ask me why. I barely remember that it existed. There are certainly more memorable sandwiches, but the thought of it hovered above me like a thought bubble in a cartoon.

So you know I had to Google it and I found this gem-a commercial starring someone who would become famous for his role in a sitcom about nothing.

Some of the hairstyles and clothes are coming back in altered forms.

Singing about food and dancing in the streets never goes out of style.

Getting a Lift

I was in an elevator when a woman got in and said "Three, please."

I was busy fiddling with my bags to assist, but a man who stepped in at the same time obliged.

When the elevator stopped on the third floor and the doors opened, well all stood there from what seemed like a while (though it couldn't have been more than 10 seconds).

"Oh, that's me," the woman said and made her exit.

I had pressed 5 when I got in and the man hadn't pushed a button for himself.

"This is you," he said when the doors opened on the fifth floor.

After last time, he wasn't taking any chances.

It Takes a Man to do a Man's Job

I'm watching an Oprah show with a matchmaking expert who expounded upon her "pickle jar" theory: that women are so used to doing things for themselves that they don't ask men to do anything.

Her advice: If you're alone, open the jar yourself. But if a guy is there, it is just as easy to ask him to do it.

This woman really does have some insight, but I have to laugh and play devil's advocate for a moment. The last time I asked a guy to help me open something, not out of any pretense, but because I really could not open it, he said: "It looks like you've got it."

So yeah, women need to leave room for men to be men, but if you leave that room and he doesn't want to be bothered, then just leave.