Addressing Several Items in One Post

Time to do a little housekeeping.

First, I apologize about the links in yesterday’s panda post. They've been corrected to actually take you somewhere now; apparently HTML code is a little sensitive when it comes to its font, and it rejected my use of quotation marks within the hyperlink tags. If you know HTML code, that made sense; otherwise, all you need to know is that the links work now.

Secondly, as I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, Natalie is walking in the Avon Walk for Breast Cancer in Washington, D.C., on May 1 and 2, and she has a Web page set up to accept donations. I’ll be leaving a link to that page in the left hand column until the end of April, so if you feel so moved, please feel free to donate.

This is Natalie, Mom and Mindy at the 2008 walk.

Finally, I don’t like to write about weather, but what is happening in D.C. right now is nothing short of epic. The region is teetering on the brink of collapse. Western civilization, as we know it, could be a crossroads as this winter’s SnowStorm 4.0, “The Bigger One” has this city gripped in fear.

(Quick aside: In D.C., the mere threat of snowfall constitutes a snowstorm. So far this winter, we’ve had one real snowstorm, two snowfalls, and what appears to be another snowstorm, possibly larger than the previous.)

Want to see humanity at its worst? Check out the parking lot of the Crystal City Costco at 5:30 p.m. on the eve of the largest storm human eyes have ever witnessed.

As of this morning, they are predicting 5 inches to fall during the day, followed by about 10 to 18 inches over night and then maybe another 10 inches on Saturday. Estimates range from 20 to 30 inches all told.

If I don’t post another entry by Tuesday, send a search and rescue team.

Wait, a flake just fell. Our office announced it is closing, and there is a mad rush for the staircase. My boss is on the verge of being trampled to death. Should I stop to help him? No, no time to be a hero now. Run down the stairs! Get out of my way!

On second thought, our earliest ancestors survived an entire era known as the Ice Age in loin clothes with large cats with large teeth trying to eat them, so I think we’ll be alright.

EFM: Emotional Farewell to Mi amigo

This morning, Feb. 4, one of Washington’s favorite Chinese diplomats is flying to Chengdu.

Natalie and I are quite familiar with this diplomat, so on Saturday, we went to the National Zoo to say our goodbyes to Tai Shan, the 4.5-year-old giant panda. (And let me just say, I’m slightly perturbed a panda has its own Wikipedia entry, and I don’t.)

I first moved to D.C. in July 2005 about one mile from the zoo. Because it is free to visit (thank you, taxpayers!), and I love zoos, I used to go there at least once per month. The most popular exhibit at the time (and probably remained so all the way up to today), was the newborn Tai Shan.

We’ve kind have had paralleled existences in D.C. Within days of my moving here, he was born. In accordance with Chinese panda diplomacy, Tai Shan was supposed to leave when he turned two years of age in 2007. At about that same time, Natalie and I moved from D.C. to Crystal City.

And now in 2010, Tai Shan is leaving the US of A a few months before I do the same.

I’ve watched the bear cub mature and was glad to have the opportunity to see him one last time over the weekend. And now he is off to the panda equivalent of a stud farm on a panda preserve in China. Too bad that is where our paralleled universes come to an end.

(By the way, for some yucks, check out Stephen Colbert’s wikialtiy page on pandas. And how is it that I’ve never heard of this site until I was doing some research on pandas? I don’t watch the Colbert Report on a daily basis, but I’ve seen it enough that I think I should have been aware of this site.)

So I leave you with two of our photos of Tai Shan. The first one is from his earliest days; unfortunately, we didn’t date that photo so I can’t say for sure when it was from. Based on the clues in the photo, I'd say early October 2005. In the second one, he is munching on some bamboo during his farewell party – cut short by the “snowstorm” on Saturday.