Hurricane Sandy

We're battening down the hatches here in the DCMV today. Hurricane Sandy is already whipping through the neighborhood with winds up to 30 mph. By mid-afternoon, we're expecting hurricane forces to strike. The Federal Government offices have closed, as have all the schools in the area. The chances of trees falling and power outages is large.

I was just on twitter, reading the trending #Sandy, and people in Brooklyn, Atlantic City, and others are already trapped in their high rises from flooding. Sandy's not supposed to land until 4PM.

Since, we'll probably lose power soon, I'm enjoying my electric coffeemaker and laptop while still possible. To all my friends and family, in DC, New York, and beyond: stay inside, stay safe, and I'll see you on the other side.

Running for Charity

As you know October is Breast Cancer Awareness month, and as a tribute most magazine have had huge sections dedicated to cancer education, support, and ideas. I read a motivational suggestion in one magazine (I can't remember exactly which one, but it was either Self or Women's Health). The suggestion was that for every mile you manage in your weekly workout, pledge a dollar to your favorite charity. I've donated to my favorite charities a couple of times a year, but this idea was brilliant. It means that  my donations are smaller, but more frequent. And the more I manage to make it out of this stupid chair, the more I'm giving.

With this in mind, I've decided that Wednesday is "Donation Day". Whatever my mileage for the week is on Wednesday evenings is how much I'm donating. So by yesterday, I had raised $8.50 for my favorite charity. Let's see if I can beat that this week....

What about you? Do you have a giving program for yourself? Or a exercise motivation strategy? Would love to hear them!

Wednesdays and telephone

For some reason on Wednesdays, the NoVa traffic is bad. Now, we're not talking about just typical bad here. It seems that for some reason on Wednesdays, every person and his brother around here hops in his car around 8.30AM and decides to add to his own misery. A drive that ought to take twenty minutes instead takes forty-five, and obviously it's truly a joyful thing.

I heard a rumor once about why Wednesday traffic in the suburbs is particularly atrocious. A friend's husband works contracted to the government and heard that federal employees cannot telecommute on Wednesdays. In fact, he had heard that it was the only day that all employees must physically go into the office. Hence, their explanation for the terrible Wednesday traffic. I asked someone else a few weeks later, and heard a completely different story about federal employees and Wednesdays. I can't remember what that second story was, but it sounded like another game of telephone to me.

You remember that game telephone? One kid whispers a silly sentence in another's ear, then that person passes it along. Each kid passes the whisper around the circle until the final person who's heard it blurts it out; and if the final result even mildly resembles what the first kid whispered oh-so-long ago, then the game has failed miserably. I'm beginning to think that rumors in the suburbs work like this game. People live so far apart, meet only occasionally and by chance in far apart places. There's too much time between whisperings, there's no way the rumors we're getting are quality by the time they reach our ears. Or maybe their higher quality because there's more time for them to be warped....? The point, though, is that we may never know why the traffic is so bad on Wednesday mornings. But if you can suffer through it, you're one step closer to the weekend.