The things I worry about

So at the end of the workday, as I was preparing to leave the office for a night of carousing, the phone rang. It was a New York Times reporter looking for someone to interview. It was 5:15 p.m. He desperately needed to speak with someone that night (he was on a tight deadline).

An hour later, after acting as intermediary between the reporter and my CEO, I left the office. I didn’t confirm the interview (I was already running late), but both parties had home phone numbers, cell phone numbers and email addresses.

After my second scotch, an image popped into my mind. That image being of my CEO tapping furiously into his blackberry, trying to open the forwarded message I’d sent him with the reporter’s cell phone number.

Of course none of the people I was out with was familiar with the blackberry – they used an assortment of “other” PDA’s like Palm, Clio, Ipaq – not blackberry. So I was distracted from my conversations the rest of the evening. Even from the Atlanta Mister Big I met.

I woke up in a panic at 5:00 a.m. Unable to fall back asleep, I kept replaying these horrific scenes involving my Director, the CEO and lots of yelling. I arrive to work early to find that everything went off smoothly. While I was cursing my ineptitude at the bar, the CEO was giving a great 45 minute interview to the Times.

WHY do I do this to myself?

The road to genius

Richard Restak, a neurologist in private practice in D.C. and a member of the clinical faculty at St. Elizabeth’s Hospital, claims that anyone can achieve prodigylike performance. Every super performer has three things in common: intense practice, solitary contemplation and deliberate concentration.

“Anyone can be a prodigy if they devote the time to it. The superior performer is a genius because of the ability to enhance a skill by focusing on perfecting a facet for 4 – 6 hours a day.”

An interesting concept. You too can become a pro-golfer, Olympic gymnast, Nobel prize winning physicist, NBA superstar, Chess Grandmaster.

Restak asserts that if you practice long and hard enough it is inevitable that you will excel. How long is enough? On the average, 6 hours a day for 10 years.

So – suddenly you can afford 6 hours per day to practice something intensely for 10 years. In 2013, what will you excel at?

Luxury item?

For all you readers out there, how do you get your hands on books? Do you borrow from the library? Borrow from friends? Or do you purchase them at your local book store?

Hillary doesn’t believe many Americans purchase books to own.

And it may be true. But I shop for books the way Carrie shops for shoes. Granted, I haven’t dropped $40,000 on my hardcover, leatherbound and autographed tomes…. more like $15,000+ over a decade.

But am I really the exception and not the rule?

Do most people think twice before grabbing the paperback for $15.95? Do people really put their name on library wait lists to get their hands on Allende, Brown, Cunningham. DeLillo, Ellison, Fforde, Garcia Marquez, Holmes, Ionesco, Jackson, Kingsolver, Lewis, Minot, Neruda, Orwell, Parkhurst, Quindlen, Rice, Steinbeck, Tolstoy, Updike, Vidal, Wolfe, Young, or Zola?

Overheard on the metro

Do people realize how far their voices carry when they speak in public? I was standing at one end of the metro car. Two blonds were standing at the far end of the same car. They had been friends once and endured some long absence because they decided to catch up with one another – on the train.

The younger blond had just returned from some long trip. She was explaining to the older blond how “travel is the litmus test for relationships.”

How many of you agree with that statement?

In her inifinite wisdom and experience, she has decided to subject every future boyfriend/mate to the “Travel Litmus Test.”

Hmmmmmmmmmmmm…. Men of Washington be warned.

Liar, liar pants on fire…

Ladies and gentlemen… we have another one.

Vivian Gornick shocked about 50 students and staff at Goucher College in Baltimore, when she admitted to taking certain liberties while writing for the Village Voice and in her memoirs.

Ordinarily a Post story like this one (compliments of Where is Raed?) would give me chills. But now I find myself asking – how much of this is real?

And that’s a shame.

Some people deserve to be voted off the planet
The day is hot and humid. The sky is overcast, but the rain is slow to fall and offer some relief. It’s a miserable August day.
I was a little slow grabbing lunch today. I walked over to Cosi and was surprised by the long lines. I grabbed a salad and stood behind a young mother struggling with two little children and a cranky baby in her arms.
We were inching forward when this prissy cow marches through the front door, brushes aside the woman with kids in tow, and slams a tall cup of something in front of the cashier. In between the baby crying, the mom shushing, the dirty looks and loud comments coming from the people standing behind me, and the cashier explaining that she really had to go to the end of the line – I figured out that all this fuss was over a chai latte (vanilla and not spicy).
I wanted to kick her scrawny arse all the way back to Manhattan. The least this stupid New Yorker could have done was let the poor mom go ahead and take care of her kids.
But nooooooooooooooooo… the world had to stop, the manager had to be found and another grande chai latte had to be poured before the rest of us got any service.
Some people don’t deserve to share the air I breathe. If they’re going to be that self-absorbed I think they should find their own planet to fester on.
I know the theme of the day has been help thy neighbor… see Adam’s Silver Linings and Yeti’s Common Humanity…. but I’m not willing to consider that beneath all that hot air shines a heart of gold in that inconsiderate witch.

Poindexter resigns

John M. Poindexter scares the hell out of me. And although he’s resigning from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), I know he’ll be back.

He’s the mastermind of the Terrorism Information Awareness (TIA) System formerly known as the Total Information Awareness Program. The Pentagon changed the name of the program after groups started making noise, raising objections and protesting the idea.

I don’t believe the way to keep America safe is to spy on every person in the country.

My privacy is violated everyday (probably much more than I’m aware). There are security cameras everywhere. Each card in my wallet has a nifty little strip that tracks my comings and goings.

Want to know where I was at 7:43 this morning? Oh look… there I am entering the Metro Station. Check the cameras and digital system and you’ll find I made an exit at Metro Center. I drink my coffee with lots of cream and sugar – just check the camera at the intersection of 11th and G streets.

Sometimes more (monitoring, tracking, spying) is just dangerous….. to our freedom.

Some people don’t know how to take a hint

I checked my voice mail because I’m meeting friends out in an hour and needed to find out where. Well, to my chagrin I listened to a message left by a guy who just can’t take a hint.

We were good friends once. I met him at freshman orientation in college. My roommate adored him and for 2 years we went everywhere together. Best friends 4-eva.

To make a long story short —> I transferred schools, he dropped out and moved to LA, met some shady characters and picked up a nasty little drug habit. Over the next 10 years we exchanged postcards and randomly stayed in touch until he moved to MD. After he moved to town, I introduced him to my friends and we’d meet out every now and then, but the drugs became a HUGE issue.

So last year, I decided to stop hanging out with him. He still leaves messages on my voice mail. And now he’s moving into the city — to my neighborhood. I don’t return his calls, don’t reply to his messages…. what more can I do? What do I do?

And why doesn’t he take my year-long silence as a hint?