Yaay! I fixed the AC drainage issue (at least I think I did). It took $55.09 (actually $51.10 if you don't count the mistake the person made in ringing it up that I just now noticed), a hacksaw, several plastic connectors, 10 feet of 3/4 inch washer hose, and PVC cement. I cut out the old piping that was put in by a blind plumber with balance problems (I put a level on the pipe and yep, it really did try to drain uphill) and replaced the 5 right angle bends with a length of flexible hose. It seems to work fine and, except for the nasty ceiling tile, you wouldn't know anything had been changed. I didn't even hurt myself! I still think the HVAC system needs to be replaced sooner rather than later, but at least it should stop dripping for a while.

I'm really bummed. My air conditioner unit leaked today and ruined one of my drop ceiling tiles. I spent an hour this evening trying to get the drainage pipe unclogged but it is just so badly put together that all I could do was get a trickle started (by using an ethernet cable). I hope that is enough until I can figure out a way to fix it more permanently. Perhaps PEX tubing would work and be easier than PVC pipe. In any case, I am stuck with an aging (and gross) AC unit, a stained and cracked drop ceiling panel, a leaking kitchen sink, kitchen tiles that are starting to come up for some reason, and a carpet that has seen far better days. And no money to fix these things. I'm in a panic that I have ended up in a money pit with no better job prospects on the horizon. I also am all worried about showing off what feels like a rapidly deteriorating condo next week.

I feel like I'm getting sick again, which I suppose is to be expected after flying. I tried to run it off today (of questionable value) and, while I don't think it worked, I did -- for some odd reason -- run very fast. 6:41 miles which is the fastest I've gone since before I got sick last year.

Persimmon is so happy I'm home. He won't let me out of his sight and was all over me last night. It is cute, even if a little obsessively needy.

There may be armed dolphins swimming in the Gulf (probably not true but it makes you wonder) and yesterday was the anniversary of the closest we ever came to blowing up the earth. The world is a bizarre and disturbing place right now.

Well, exhausted but whole I made it home from Montana... today, I suppose, since the plane landed about 1 AM. Only about 3 hours late. I suppose there are far worse places to be stuck than the new terminal at Minneapolis/St. Paul. It was actually a fairly comfortable environment and they clearly did some sort of study: there were no TVs blaring CNN loops and even the electric carts had no beepers on them. It made a big difference. One thing I did notice was the unusual frankness of the announcements. A sample:

"Mr. -----, your plane to Amsterdam is leaving without you."
"Flight attendant ----, please come to gate F4 immediately, the plane is waiting for you."
"We need an electric cart from D5 to C4 for a tight connection. This is the third request I've made." (actually, I think it was the fifth)
"There is a problem with the number 2 engine on the plane. They are going to have to replace the ECU -- the Engine Control Unit."

That last one was for our plane. All were in a pleasant Minnesotan tone of voice, of course.

The cab ride home was horrendous. Suffice it to say I am going to try never to ride Yellow again.

I'll have more to post later on, but here is one shot from Aaron and Tracy's wedding -- perhaps the most-blogged event of the season. I had a wonderful time and the dancing at the reception should have been taped for posterity: no description will ever do it justice.

I just spent an hour in Minneapolis -- I have visited the city twice that I can remember in the past decade and never left the airport. Yet it is strange how so many things are instantly familiar; all these details that slip into your psyche when you grow up somewhere. You don't even notice them until you go away and come back with stranger's eyes. The shape of the trees, the flatness of the land, the way the streets are laid out, even the spacing of the street lamps -- they leave round pools of light with patches of dark in between, like a dotted line instead of the solid one on the East Coast. These all seem so familiar but I hadn't even noticed they had a distinct character until now. And all that without leaving the airport.

On a much more mundane note: Northwest Airlines now charges $1 for a little bag of trailmix. No more cookies, crackers, or peanuts of any kind. A shame but it's hard to whine when I was just talking to a nice flight attendant and she said how one of the other women working this flight bought a house 2 months ago in Minneapolis but got laid-off this week because of the bankruptcy.

It seems like I am already falling behind in updating this thing... I have been so busy lately, only I can't for the life of me recall what has been taking up all my time. I suppose running is a big part of it since that eats up about 3 evenings a week. It certainly is nice to be in shape again. The weather has been unseasonably warm, but I haven't really minded -- the heat this year felt good for some odd reason. Perhaps it is because I missed so much of last summer.

I had an eye exam on Wednesday so I could put in an order for more contacts. I really want someone to explain to me why eyes and teeth are not considered parts of the body covered under standard health care. $150 for the exam just doesn't seem right. At least my eyes are fine and my prescription hasn't changed at all... but it was still a nasty surprise. I did learn that blue eyes are more sensitive to the drops they use to dilate pupils. That's strange since I thought the color was just superficial. In any case, I spent the rest of the day hiding from windows and trying to find ways to focus on text. Embarrassingly, it took a coworker to point out that I could close my blinds instead of cowering behind my hand.

I made the mistake of going into the bookstore this evening to buy something to read on my trip to Montana later this week. They were having a 20% everything sale and I walked out with 5 books and a CD. I definitely cannot afford that, but I knew I would buy all these books eventually and it was such a good sale. Oh well, I'll put my reviews up here as I finish them.

Here is an interesting article from Newsweek detailing just how badly the administration handled Katrina. Interestingly, it highlights how directly responsible Bush was for some of the problems. While I thoroughly blame the administration, it is honestly unexpected to have a single person in his bubble cause so much chaos. I guess I've become accustomed to Bush dodging all responsibility to the point that I don't see him as having all that much power. Very scary. It is more comforting to believe the last 5 years were a group effort.

Does anybody else think it is raging hubris and stupidity for the president and the vice president to both go on long vacations to distant locations at the same time? While constantly reminding us we are in a deadly war? Either they don't take death, destruction, terrorism, national security, and a failed state seriously or they don't take their jobs seriously. It is just so deeply weird.

I think I'm getting over my cold or whatever it was. Apparently I caught it from Aaron and Tracy since they both had the same strange combination of symptoms. Whatever its source, I'm happy to see it go.

Beautiful weather again, although I feel like I didn't take full advantage of it today: I napped for about an hour after lunch. I suppose I needed it to catch up after feeling so drained from being sick. I did my grocery shopping this morning and bought cat food as well. This evening I managed a 5 mile run. It wasn't a very fast performance at all, but it wasn't bad considering I'm still not fully over the cold. The sun already is noticeably lower in the sky. Good: Persimmon now has sunbeams to sleep in during the day. Bad: it is hard to run with the sun so bright and low since it can be blinding.

Back to work tomorrow. Sigh.

I'm so very tired right now. I am waiting for Metro after an extremely long play at the Arena Theater (the home of my Barcelona chair). It wasn't bad, but it wasn't good either; pretty heavy-handed and scattershot. And did I mention long? About 3.5 hours.

Last night I noticed that there were a lot of library directors suggesting a registry for hurricane-displaced librarians looking for jobs, volunteer work, etc., so I wrote to our Executive Director and offered to quickly put together a website to provide this service. Overnight I actually dreamed parts of how to assemble it, what parts I would borrow from previous sites, what codebase and function structure I would use. I got the go-ahead to start on it this morning and I dove into it. Unfortunately (or fortunately), by 11 we had learned that Solinet -- a regional library network -- was going to open up their jobs database to all regions to cover this need so my effort would be redundant... something we don't want. I'm pleased the registry will be in place soon, but I'm getting more and more bummed out as the day goes on that I wasn't able to do something tangible. I don't completely trust the donation sites, and anyway, I literally have $8 in my bank account until the 15th. Oh well, at least I tried. It would have been nice, though.

This cold hasn't started my nose running (yaay), just sapped my strength and given me a sore throat and headache (boo). I hope it goes away soon. Oh, looks like Metro's here.

Whew, a couple of really frustrating days at work dealing with people seeming to do their best to undo what I've done. I will probably end up just accepting the situation: I've learned that talking to a brick wall only gives me a sore throat (although my sense of justice suffers, but that's nothing new given the past week's news). Speaking of sore throats, that brings me to...

I tried running off an oncoming cold this evening. I've noticed that sometimes I can stop getting sicker if I exercise as it is beginning. I'm keeping my fingers crossed, but I don't feel very well right now.

At least the weather has been gorgeous. Very close to perfect. I think the beginning of September may be one of the best times of year in DC.

I moved my blog over to my personal site which took a bit of maneuvering, programming, and guesswork. So far it seems to be successful, but I still need to re-do the style sheet for this page. Overall, I'm pleased with the fact that I could get it to work.

I'm hoping it isn't just me or that -- if it isn't -- it continues, but I'm getting this odd feeling that something might have shifted in the country. That the press woke up from a long sleep and started doing their job. That the people who are outraged now are not only the people who have been outraged for years. I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

I keep hearing about how little it took to turn a First World American city into a Third World scene. I think that is because we have been fooling ourselves that the underclass we have created in the US is anything but Third World already. We don't provide the basic services that other First World countries provide (health care in particular) and so the safety nets that the Third World lacks and that cause such horrible humanitarian crises don't exist here either. Now the call is for private donations and charity. Not that there is anything wrong with such generosity, just that those things now lacking are what the most powerful and richest government in the world should supply as a matter of course.

On a completely unrelated note: the weather here this weekend is absolutely beautiful.

I took the day off today to give myself an extra-long weekend and to try
to eat into my 450 hours of banked vacation time. I went to the Phillips
Collection in the morning to see a Hiroshige show. The prints were
really fun to see, but, as usual, the Phillips hung them badly so it was
very hard to view them well. I think that is one of the worst museums in
the city when it comes to curating... and strangely it is also one of
the most expensive. At least my plan to go on a weekday morning paid off
and there were not many people. I don't know how it would be possible to
see that show with a big crowd -- the rooms and prints are all so small.

I wandered over to Georgetown in the afternoon for some desperately
needed clothes shopping. I have put off buying anything for many months
to try to save money, and as a result most of my pants are falling
apart. I found 3 pairs of pants and a shirt that were all on sale. I
think I came between collections though, since the selection was pretty
small. Finally, I picked up some wine at Best Cellars. I had planned to
do some cleaning of my storage locker today, but then I remembered that
lots of what is in there is there because I had no way to get it to
Goodwill... and I still don't. I'll have to figure that one out before I
start unpacking things only to have to pack them back up again.

Look at how nice the landscaping around my condo building looks. They did such a great job with that this year.

To add to the op-ed piece I posted earlier about FEMA being dismantled by this administration, take a look at the credentials of the person they put in charge. This is the internet and rumors are rampant right now, but there seems to be much supporting evidence for the basic premise that a crony was put in charge of a skeleton agency which is supposed to protect us from real threats while billions were poured into Homeland Security which seems to have done little more than take away lots of nail clippers at airports. The only possible good that can come of this whole disaster is that Bush encounters a failure he can't sidestep or deflect.

[This is really a response to Melanie's comment on my last post, but it got long enough that I thought I'd put it in as a full post of its own.]

I think the mayor of New Orleans made a comment about race and class yesterday but I can't find it right now. There is a NY Times article, however that deals with the matter.

At least people are noticing now. Finally, the wastefulness and stupidity of our foreign policy is making an impact at home.

But the whole thing makes you wonder what the Department of Homeland Security has been doing for the past 4 years. I hear the government brag about how they can get bombs half-way around the world in a matter of hours, but they have failed horribly to help in a disaster with years of forewarning, an easily predictable outcome (even I called it beforehand), and 2 full days notice. You can't get much more convenient than that when it comes to catastrophes. Where is all the planning? All the preparedness? All the money? There is a Times-Picayune article now being referred to frequently that basically details everything that has happened in the past 4 days... and it was written 5 years ago. Terrorists (and most other major disasters for that matter) rarely provide blueprints of their plans, potential casualty figures, scenarios for avoiding destruction, and a nationally broadcast courtesy call days beforehand. Bush left his vacation on Wednesday. We all knew what might happen on Saturday.

Weirdly, I (and thousands of others around the country) have twice been to that Convention Center in New Orleans that is being described in such horrific terms. I have sat through meetings there, walked its enormous length, bought overpriced water from its vendors, and generally gone about my wealthy, upper-class business. To see people literally dying on that carpeting while the streets outside are under mob-rule is something I can't quite fathom.

The Washington Post has a blog entry on the transfer of funds away from disaster preparedness of the average and common kind. There is also an op ed piece from Tuesday that describes the systematic dismantling of FEMA under the Bush Administration. Meanwhile, Dennis Hastert argues against rebuilding New Orleans with federal funds. Yeah, it's not like those low-income people down there need help with putting their lives back together or anything. Note to Hastert: this is the sort of thing you are there for you imbecile.

Unconscionable.

You forget how much you depend on government (whether you want to or not) until a bunch of blind and self-satisfied idiots start ripping it to shreds in front of you.