An Even Smaller World Than I Like to Believe

It's disorienting to get on a plane and be in D.C. barely an hour later. It should take much longer in my Utah-bred mind. I keep forgetting that I practically live on the East Coast (except for the times my MountainWest friends and family forget the time difference and call me after bedtime.)

From the plane, I raced straight to the metro and into the heart of D.C. where I stumbled (darn laptop's too heavy!) into the first Indian restaurant I saw. I've missed the easy access to great ethnic food and the rumble of city life I used to love in S.F. SLC had great international cuisine, too. Charlotte has a few good Indian/Thai/Sushi/Vietnamese/Lebanese restaurants, but they take some digging - and harder yet - convincing friends to come along. Down South if it ain't bbq, people just aren't that interested.

So my luggage and I are sitting across from each other at a table for two in this cute little Indian place and I'm inhaling basmatic rice and chicken curry when I hear the unmistakable chatter of Mormonism.

"On my mission we were allowed to listen to P.G. soundtracks."
"We could only listen to MoTab!"
"I can't believe I've been home for 8 years."

Less than an hour in D.C. and I'm sitting two tables away from a foursome of Mormon singles. Unbelievable.

More Proof I May Be Heartless

I’m waiting in the Charlotte airport for my flight to D.C. and it occurs to me this is an inauspicious day to fly. I was actually on a runway in Salt Lake when the 9-11 attacks happened seven years ago. My plane never made it off the ground and launched me on a never-to-be-repeated adventure to California by Greyhound bus.

I need to confess: I’ve been dodging heart and mind-wrenching 9-11 anniversary stories all day, switching channels to the classical music station mid-way through seemingly non-stop commemorating and memorializing. I understand why the media’s doing it. Poignant anniversaries are the easiest news angle in the world. I just don’t agree with it.

I go out of my way to not make a big deal of the yearly arrival of painful moments like a major breakup or a the day a loved-one fell sick. Or worse.

I think we should celebrate birth dates, not death dates. Beginnings, not endings.

Ta Da!

Nearly settled-in and ready for prime time! Hope my questionable camera skills don't make you dizzy.

Melrose Place Redux

At this moment there are several dozen attractive young single people partying just outside my patio. Some live in the building. Many don't. There is pizza and lots of beer and some kind of drinking game that entails aiming a ping pong ball at a row of cups full of beer on the other end of the table. If the ball lands in the cup, your opponent has to drink it. I'm not sure how you win, because for at least an hour the same guy has been playing against a rotating cast of attractive blondes. He looks like Ryan Gosling.

Two of my neighbors are throwing this party - they invited me multiple times this afternoon, so I made a valiant efforts. Met a few very nice people, but couldn't really muster the energy to wander around for long, introducing myself to attractive stranger after stranger and trying desperately to remember their names.

The girl upstairs who's co-hosting the shindig has been renting here for 3 years. Remember how I said this is a big complex full of single people and their dogs? My assessment was accurate. Her exact words:

"This is Melrose Place."

What did I tell you?

Lotto Losers

At 5 p.m. today someone in North Carolina let the clock run out on a winning lottery ticket worth $200,000. I'm nauseous at the thought. And even if tomorrow this person finds the ticket wadded up in an old purse or washed into the pocket of the pair of jeans he/she wore back in March when the ticket was purchased, it'll be too late. It's worthless now. All that unclaimed money went back into other people's prizes and the state's education fund.

It could be me. I don't buy lottery tickets because I'd rather spend my small bills on candy and thrift store clothes. But I always miss the expiration date on those coupons I get with my grocery receipt. I have thousands of miles devaluing in my frequent flier account because I can't be bothered to claim them. Sometimes I wake up in a sweat thinking about the money languishing in a couple of 401Ks investments that made sense when I had those jobs eight years ago but don't in today's market.

I hate to think what other treasures I'm missing out on because I can't be bothered to check forgotten pockets in my life.

Melrose Place

Part of me wants to believe that at 34, I'm too old to be living in a very large apartment complex populated entirely by single people and their dogs.

Just to be clear, I have nothing against single people. And their dogs are fine, as long as they don't lick me, poop on my patio or swim in the pool. It's just that I'm not much of a neighborly person and having all of these people living so close to me - and in identical living quarters - feels a tad claustrophobic.

Every morning my neighbors come out of their same-as-mine apartments in various states of ready-for-work, dogs on leashes, coffee cups in hand and amble up and down the sidewalk giving Fido/Spot/Bruiser a last chance to pee before he's locked inside for the day. I spy on them from my window, making up stories about what they do for work (based on what they're wearing and how they walk), how long they've lived here and which neighbor they 're in love with.

The first thing my neighbor told me when I bumped into her with my arms full of boxes on moving day was that it was a pity I'd missed the neighborhood summer party two weeks back.

It was a toga party.

I'm 10 years out of college, 10 years into a career, owning my second home/condo and I've landed in Melrose Place. Heaven help me.

Finding a Stud

I would have preferred to find it on my own, but there were dozens of logical places it could have been at Home Depot. I finally gave in and asked for help, but that's where the tricky part came in. . . I couldn't bring myself to tell the guy in the orange apron that I needed a STUDFINDER. It wasn't so much the asking, as it was the anticipation that he might come back with some wisecrack that would make me blush and feel like an idiot.

"Look no further baby, I'm standing right here."
"A studfinder? Oh, I can get you a studfinder."
"You having trouble finding a stud? Can't imagine that."

By the time I mumbled my request to the guy, I'd come up with so many possible cracks he might make, I couldn't even say the word STUDFINDER.

"Yeah, uh, I need to find one of those machines that help you find a 2x4 in a wall so you can hang stuff."

I'm such a chicken. If it even occurred to him to make a wisecrack, he didn't show it. Just led me right to the aisle with multiple STUDFINDERS from which to choose. Notice the slightly more sophisticated name of the one I got. Had I known I could ask for a STUDSENSOR I probably wouldn't have been so embarrassed!

This is why I needed it.


My bicycle is now conveniently - and space-savingly - hung from the ceiling of my storage room. And I only made two holes into studless drywall before finally hitting 2x4 jackpot. Turns out the StudSensor doesn't just find a stud and point to it. There are some skills required - skills I didn't quite master right off the bat.

Success in the end. Can't wait for the next project that requires locating a stud! (Go ahead, make that joke. I know it's killing you. . . the one about the single girl and her studfinder practically writes itself.)