The Miracle of the Parking Spot

This morning I was on my way to the metro, when a kind passerby told me the metro was closed. No, it wasn't snowing, but the metro was closed anyway. Welcome to Washington, D.C. ... So, I decided to take the risk of driving to school, hoping the parking lot would not be full. While walking to my car, I picked up a couple extra metro-bound passengers. Traffic was manageable. My student account was at zero, but I was fortunate enough to be able to get wifi on the street next to school and deposit money in my account. Even though I arrived after 9am, the parking lot was not full, and to my joyous surprise there was a parking space available for me. Not just any parking space though--one that my car could actually fit into! The school parking structure is so poorly designed that if other drivers are not considerate, it is incredibly difficult to get into a space with cars on either side. Someone with a lot more foresight and power than I have was watching out for me. Today is a great day.

Toilets

I was very tempted to include a picture with this post, but the rules of civility prohibited me from doing so. Yesterday, I observed again the poor planning on the part of my school's engineers/architects. The bathroom on the third floor near the financial aid office was obviously designed for anorexic midgets who do not carry backpacks.

First, the doors to the stalls open inward. I'm assuming this is the case because doors opening outward pose a threat to the unsuspecting bathroom passer-by. (If handicapped bathroom stalls can have outward-swinging doors, why can't non-handicapped stalls have the same?)

Second, the stalls are incredibly small. I am not an exceptionally large person. In fact, at 5'5" and size X, I'm pretty sure I'm about average. So, it surprises me when I have trouble figuring out where to put my feet in the bathroom stall.

Combine the first and second observations: an exceptionally small stall with an inward-swinging door. This leaves about TWO INCHES between the toilet and the door when it is being opened or closed. Now, remarkably with my acrobatic skills comparable to those of a spy evading laser beams, I manage to make it in and out of the bathroom stall. But seriously! Didn't these people realize that students have backpacks that have to go somewhere? Not to mention coats (for which there are no hooks), scarves, books, etc.

Despite my frustration with the school bathroom, it was a comparatively pleasant experience when compared to my ride on the Circulator from Union Station to Wisconsin and M Street NW. Apparently, some unfortunate soul had not had the privilege of using a bathroom designed for an anorexic midget sans backpack and had decided to use the Circulator as his personal toilette. Aromatic evidence was present to support this conclusion. Yes, nauseating.

You wish you've got mail...

Yes, that's right, readers... two posts in 24 hours. You know that you've been snowed in for too long when 1) checking the mail for your mis-mailed W2 form is one of the most exciting parts of your day and 2) when your W2 form doesn't come and doesn't come and doesn't come, you start checking out what other people got in the mail as you ride in the elevator with them.

Tonight the elevator was full and the young man next to me received an envelope from Columbia University's SIPA (School of International and Public Affairs). I imagine this envelope was from SIPA's admissions office and this young man was about to receive exciting news. Good news or bad news, he was getting answers tonight. (The envelope was thick enough that it wasn't just a "hey, we're still thinking and we'll get back to you" letter.) I found myself wanting him to open the letter in the elevator (I probably would have), and I wanted to share in his respective joy or sadness.

Yes, readers, not only am I a creepy facebook stalker (another story for another day), I also read other people's mail in the elevator. Good thing school has started again.

Sage Advice

I have informally adopted an older brother who I occasionally call for advice or comfort when I don't understand things (things=boys, most frequently but not always). So last night I called "brother" to ask him about the incomprehensibility of boys, particularly "boy." One particular part of this exchange stands out to me as both enlightening and entertaining.

Brother: What did you do before boy asked you out last time?
Me: Absolutely nothing.
Brother: Why don't you try that again?

Inconceivable! What logical girl would have ever considered doing NOTHING in order to get a boy to ask her out? This is just one reason why I always wanted and have informally adopted an older brother.

Dear Mr. Enzo Angiolini

Dear Mr. Enzo Angiolini,

Today I walked through Nordstrom's to 1) buy my sister a birthday present and 2) get out of the cold for a few minutes. I passed through the shoe department. Mr. A., you seem to make only one shoe--the four inch-high pair of peep toe heels. But you make them in so many different colors, and even though I already have two pair, you leave me wanting more. You are brilliant. A true artist. Only a brilliant designer could make one shoe, splash 20 different colors on it and convince girls that they need one of every color. Fortunately I have some self-restraint, but I am tempted each time I see one of your shoes. Very tempted.

Regards,
M

Snow Days Part 2: A Literal Pain in the Butt

Excuse my crude language. Yesterday WMATA (Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority) finally opened the above ground metro, and some friends and I thought it would be brilliant to go take some pictures of the monuments in the snow. About 10 minutes after arriving on the Mall, my roommate and I were standing on an icy patch (i.e. THE MALL--it was almost entirely iced over) and my feet decided to go one way and everything else went down. I hit my tail bone hard on the ice and pavement. After about five minutes of blurred vision, hearing loss, and the worst pain I've ever felt in my life (maybe one day I'll get the chance to see how it compares to child birth), temporary blindness and hearing loss subsided into intense nausea and the pain went from unbearable to merely excruciating. Yeah, leaving the house was brilliant idea.

This isn't the first time I have bruised my tail bone. Believe it or not, there is an even better story than falling on the National Mall during the worst snow storm in the past 100 years. Oh yes. My freshman year of college. I had already asked one guy to the "Preference" dance and been rejected. David had been my homecoming date and lived on my cousin's floor in the dorms. None of the girls on my floor would ask boys until I did, so I filled David's room with balloons that had some form of the following message inside: "Will you go to Preference with me?" Supposedly my cousin had done his research. David had not been asked to preference and would assuredly say yes. Or so I thought...

Instead, David had been asked by three girls and took several days to turn me down. And when he did turn me down he sent my cousin over to my dorm with a bag of popped balloons and a note that read: "Sorry to burst your bubble, but I am someone else's preference for preference." Apparently I had literally wasted my breath (blowing up all those balloons) in asking him.

I was done. Finished. I felt no need to ask another boy to Preference. Let's be honest, freshmen dances are kind of lame. But then my next door neighbor, LaurieAnn, decided that I needed to go to the dance. She had someone all picked out for me to ask--Travis, her date's roommate. After several days of telling LaurieAnn that I did not want to ask Travis to the dance, I caved. LaurieAnn not only planned that I would ask Travis. She also planned HOW I would ask him and how he would respond. I don't remember exactly how I asked him, but it was Star Wars related. He said yes by coming over to my dorm in a Jedi costume with a light saber and said: "I would be de-lighted to go with you." Cute.

So no freshman dance is complete without a pre-activity. For this particular pre-activity, we took the bus to the ice skating rink for the Engineering-Nursing Colleges ice skating activity. LaurieAnn's date was singing in a concert and would meet up with us later. So she decided to ask Travis to teach her how to ice skate backwards, leaving me, a horrible ice skater, to fend for myself. Even though I was merely inching along the edge of the rink, I wiped out. Skates went forward and tail bone went down on the ice. LaurieAnn and Travis didn't even come help me up. My butt hurt for the rest of the semester every time I sat down. Even better, LaurieAnn flirted with Travis the whole night, even after her date showed up, stalked him in the ensuing weeks, and they started dating. Obviously the injuries I sustained have not impacted my memory.

A Woodhouse Weather Weekend

This weekend, as I hunkered down in our living room fort to escape a historic D.C. blizzard, my family joined with members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to clear mud, water, and debris from our house, driveway, and street in the Southern California mudslides. Here are some pictures.



We built a fort.



The snow was so high that we couldn't tell where the street was.



I built a snowman, but only a small snowman because it was cold.



Fortunately, my parents' house is still standing and members of the La Crescenta Stake of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints spent an at least 14 hour day digging out my family's house and our neighbors houses. Thanks to them we will be able to leave if the storms continue and there are more mudslide risks.



"But ye will teach them to walk in the ways of truth and soberness; ye will teach them to love one another, and to serve one another." Mosiah 4:15 (in the Book of Mormon)

Alternatives to Government Intervention

Okay, so I am somewhat interested in government forcing people to do things, and so when I saw this headline on Yahoo! I was intrigued: "Los Angeles County declines to force..." Then when I clicked on the link (thinking it would be something about forcing people to take shorter showers because we're in a drought or something... oh wait, they wouldn't decline that opportunity), the full headline was: "Los Angeles County declines to force condom use in porn films." (Apologies if this shocks anyone, my stomach did a quick flip and this post is not about pornography.)

Apparently an AIDS prevention organization wants the government to require condom use to protect these "workers." Don't they get it? There's a much much easier solution for these people. Can you guess? No porn! Wow, revolutionary.

I don't know why it still surprises me that people get so frustrated that they can't eliminate all of the consequences of their actions. Society has definitely moved away from imposing consequences for inappropriate behavior. For example, in the United States we no longer criminalize sodomy, abortion, divorce, adultery, and in some places, prostitution. So, we've eliminated SOME of the consequences of those actions. But why are people so shocked that there are still consequences--STD's, particularly AIDS/HIV, the disintegration of the family, increases in abuse, children with psychological and developmental problems because they don't have two loving parents in the home, etc., etc., etc. If we really want to avoid the negative consequences of negative actions, maybe we should outlaw the negative actions! (Revolutionary idea, I know.)

But let's get real, do we even need the government telling us that something is bad? The reality is that in our type of society (a democracy/republic) the laws and government often reflect the will of the majority of the people (except when a few judges in the judiciary somewhere decide that they are going to impose their will on the people, which often happens). So, if the majority of the people are engaged in negative actions that produce bad consequences, laws banning such negative actions aren't likely to last very long, and even if the laws are on the books, they are likely to be ignored or make people mad. And on the other hand, if the majority of people really think that they shouldn't take negative actions, then do you really need a law to keep them from doing it, or won't their personal convictions be enough?

All that said, I'm probably likely on a personal level to still support good laws and vote against bad laws. But at the end of the day, the alternative to government intervention is to just do the right thing. If you feel that the government needs to step up regulation, the problem probably isn't with the government, it's probably with the people and what they are doing. If you don't want AIDS, a really really really good starting point is to stick with a monogamous and chaste relationship. I've read "Ryan White: My Own Story" and I've known entirely innocent people who have contracted AIDS from a cheating spouse, but it's not hard to see how the personal choice of being chaste will protect you from a lot of the negative consequences that some groups want the government to mandate away. Before running to the government we should look at our own lives, see what we can change personally, then look at the world around us and see what impact we can have there, and then go to the government if other options fail.