DC Snowstorm 4.0, Much Ado about Nothing

The worst is over, but we're still "suffering" the ramifications of about 18 inches of snow. For example, the federal government is closed, the Metro is running underground trains only (which means we can go to Pentagon City or Pentagon, and that is it), and my office is open if you can get there. I can get there, but it is not worth losing my parking spot over, which took me two hours, three pairs of a gloves, a long scraper and a bucket.

I kept a timeline for your entertainment, especially for those of you poor saps who have to work today.

FRIDAY
7:02 a.m. – Leave our apartment to go to work.
9:58 a.m. – First time I noticed snowfall.
10:03 a.m. – The office closes. By about 4:30 p.m. the day before, there was already rumor spreading that as soon as the first flake hit the ground, which was suppose to be at 10 a.m. today, the office would close. So knowing they would close the office right away, they made us come in for two hours anyway.
10:42 a.m. – I finally get a parking space at the near-Potomac-Mills Harris Teeter. Not because there were not enough spaces, but because everyone was concerned about getting the closest spot to the door as possible. Mind you, this was an indoor parking garage.
I also want to add that I was shopping for groceries not to sustain us for the snow-pocalypse; rather this was a trip I was going to make regardless as part of my regular routine. In all, about 75% of my groceries were things I was going to buy, and 25% were emergency groceries. And by emergency, I mean we have one bag of chips here. Given we’ll be inside for most of two days, we might eat that bag and want to open another. Hence, an emergency.
11:22 a.m. – Begin leaving Harris Teeter. I have to acknowledge the wonderful job the HT employees did in keeping the check-out lines moving. When I saw the lines, I was preparing myself mentally for a 30-minute wait or so, but they had me done in about 10 to 15 minutes.
11:33 a.m. – Got home and found that Tiffy had left me a surprise. I knew as soon as I opened the door because she does her I’m-so-happy-your-home routine combined with her please-don’t-be-angry routine. That, and I could smell it. After cleaning that, I then have to console Tiffy because she knows she did wrong. I do a short show of anger, clean the mess, and then cuddle with her to let her know I’m no longer angry with her. Fortunately, this is a very rare event.
12:25 p.m. – Natalie calls to let me know she is on her way home. We had already known she’d only have a half-day today. I should also point out at this point that while it has been snowing for about 2.5 hours, it hasn’t begun sticking to the roads, yet.
2:05 p.m. – Went running on our rooftop treadmill. Hey, if I’m going to be a stay-at-home husband, I’d better start looking the part. Right before going for the run, NBC’s Pat Collins brazenly declared that in Gaithersburg, according to his calibrated yard stick, there has been no accumulation. A calibrated yard stick? What is a non-calibrated yard stick? A branch?
5:20 p.m. – I took Tiffy out for our 30 minute walk. My non-calibrated eye estimated about a quarter inch on the roads when we started, and about a half when we came back.
7:11 p.m. – Went across the street to the Crystal City Oakwood to hang out with some A-100ers, drink wine and play games…yes, Never Have I Ever was a staple.
11:56 p.m. – Walked Tiffy after the party. We stopped in a park where I let her off her leash, and we chased each other around. I know the snow was getting ridiculous because I was able to outrun her as she had to jump through the snow where I was still able to lift my legs. Upon coming home, she had clumps of snowballs tangled in her legs, so we put her in the tub to melt the snow off her then chased her around the apartment to dry her before going to bed.

SATURDAY
All Morning - Pat Collins makes TV watchable. This by far was the greatest revelation of the entire weekend. Normally, Collins does over-dramatic crime reports in which he speaks in sentence fragments straight out of a bad 1970s newscast a la Ron Burgandy. But doing the man-on-the-street during the snowstorm, he was intentionally hilarious. Bag the crime reports and relegate Collins to man-on-the-street.
1:23 p.m. - I opened emergency bag of chips No. 1.
4:45 p.m. - I'm walking Tiffy again, and the snow is petering out. There are a couple of down trees and large limbs; the roads are rough; the sidewalks are gone; but the 24"+ of snow is not going to happen. Not even close.

SUNDAY
9:45 a.m. - I begin the task of digging out our car. We don't have a shovel, so I take a bucket with me. And being the considerate neighbor I am, I scoop a bucket of snow, walk 10 yards or so to a snow mountain, and add my snow to it instead of dumping my snow on the car parked next to me.
11:40 a.m. - I finish my task. The car can get out of the parking lot. EF'M 1, Mother Nature 0.
While I have the ability to move the car, this was an in-case-of-an-emergency task because no way I'm giving up my shoveled..ur..bucketed parking spot to go to work.
1ish p.m. - We're doing some chores around the house to host a Super Bowl party. The original destination lost cable.
3:32 p.m. - We haven't eaten real foods since the first snowflake. I look over at Tiffy, and I start imagining short ribs or rack of Tiffy or some such delicacy. Nah, too messy; too much work. I think I just open another bag of emergency chips. (This is all a lie. This timeline was too boring, so I felt the need to spice it up a bit).
5:10 p.m. - I receive an e-mail that the office is opening at 10 a.m., but only for those who can make it. I won't be docked time off for not showing up. Yeah, I think I'll stay home on Monday and blog.

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.

The Official Unofficial Chart of Acronyms

The U.S. Government loves acronyms; there is no getting around it. As a D.C. area resident and a once-upon-a-time journalist, I'm a bit accustomed to these unsightly blocks of capital letters, but I understand they can be intimidating to others. (I think that is their intention so you will just gloss over what you're reading.) Therefore, I took it upon myself to translate a few acronyms that other FSO spouses might find useful.

A couple of user notes first. While the majority are listed in alphabetical order, a few are "coupled" because they are related. Also, the list of acronyms is too exhaustive for my list to be considered the end-all-be-all chart of what you need to know. For example, I'll probably need to put together a sequel to cover the acronyms you might find useful for moving alone.

It should also be noted that this is a reflection of how much fulfillment I get from my current job that I took the time to do this. So here is the Official, Unofficial Chart of Foreign Service Acronyms: (and please feel free to add any suggestions for lengthening, shortening or improving the chart. I'm not too proud to make changes and admit my own shortcomings.)

EFM: Ethnic Food, Mexican

When we first received our bid list, I took a mental black marker and crossed out everything in the Eastern hemisphere. The main reason for this is that I was scared to death of subsisting on Asian cuisine for two years.

I enjoy trying different foods and have come a long way since my childhood diet of pizza, hamburgers, bagels and peanut butter-and-fluff sandwiches (don’t know what fluff is? Good, it’s better that way). But I’m a bit of wimp when it comes to food textures.

And while I enjoy the American take on General Tso’s chicken, Szechuan chicken and sushi, I’ve never really been exposed to authentic Asian cuisine, and I wanted a beginner’s course in eating the unrecognizable.

Then came our Hermosillo assignment. So far, my understanding of Sonoran cuisine based on my Internet-based research is that it is described as “border food.” In other words, I can expect a healthy dosing of Tex-Mex restaurant staples such as chimichangas, enchiladas, tacos, carne asada and the like. Certainly tasty, edible foods, but I wanted to push my comfort zone a little.

(Interesting side bar: I’ve also read that the food itself does not tend to be very spicy at all, despite its reputation; rather, the spiciness of the food comes from the salsa added to the dish. If that turns out to be the truth, it would be a good way to monitor the amount of spice my weak American stomach can handle.)

That is not to say there won’t be some opportunities to dabble in the unfamiliar. Apparently tripe is a somewhat common ingredient found in Mexican dishes such menudo, pancitas and tacos de tripa.

What? Not familiar with tripe? Tripe is one of several offal (pronounced, ironically, like awful), which is to say animal entrails or organs. In particular, tripe refers to (usually) pig or cow stomachs.

While I might give tripe a try while in Hermosillo, I definitely won’t be cooking any myself. But I do hope to learn some of the local techniques and cooking styles, as I do enjoy cooking. To help get a leg up, a few weeks ago I bought a copy of The Complete Mexican, South American & Caribbean Cookbook off the discount rack, and I’ve already tried my hand at a couple of recipes with edible success.

If anyone else has any advice on Sonoran cuisine or some must-try, authentic recipes, I’d love to hear about them.