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The Congressman and the Consultant
It took me a minute to realize that, hey, I don't work on the Hill anymore. I'm no longer a staffer on the committee of which this guy is chairman! I'm free to say that Rep. Tom Davis's close relationship with the Northern Virginia tech industry is in my experience just how Capitol Hill works -- not quid pro quo necessarily, but somewhat icky in its coziness. Is it wrong to have members of Congress that invested in the personal relationships of the industries he or she oversees? I dunno. I do know that I didn't like it one bit.
The Nightmare Continues...
 So, after slamming my combination Blackberry-cell phone in the car door, losing my digital camera (as described here), paying the hotel shuttle driver $20 to take me to the Thrifty office only to realize that I still had the camera after returning the rental Taurus, and getting slapped with a bill for $40 on two personal calls from my hotel room phone, I landed at National Airport yesterday afternoon determined to make a new start of it.
Nothing peps me up like cold coffee treats. So I saddled up to the Starbucks counter outside baggage claim and ordered a tall light coffee frappuccino. And at this point, the powers above decided that she just wasn't done having fun with me yet.
The "barista," and I use that term loosely, rang up my drink at $3.09, $3.37 with tax. I'm sorry, I said, but I ordered a coffee frappuccino. And the price for one of those is $2.69 plus tax.
"No, you ordered a mocha frappuccino! That is the price of a mocha frappuccino!"
I replied, calmy, "of course I didn't." I tried reason, "I don't even like chocolate." I continued, "And even if I had, a tall mocha frappuccino is $3.69. You've charged me $3.09 -- that's not the price for either drink."
"Okay, I charged you too much. Here," she said, digging into the tip jar, "here is the difference. Seven cents. A tall coffee frappuccino is $2.69, but it's $3.30 with tax."
At this point, fire began creeping up the back of my neck. "You mean to tell me that
the tax on a $2.69 mocha frappuccino is somehow 60 cents, while the tax on this mythical, far more expensive $3.09 drink is only 28 cents?!"
She dug into her pocket, extracted a dollar, and threw it upon the counter. "I have a line!" A turned around, and several folks had lined up behind me. "Take the dollar!"
I threw my hands up in the air. "I don't want your money -- I want to pay for the drink that I ordered!"
"Well, you shouldn't have ordered the mocha and then changed your mind!"
A man standing behind me in line leaned over my shoulder and thought he might be helpful. "Maybe she doesn't know how to process a refund." Thanks, buddy.
"I don't want a refund," I muttered, "I just want her to stop lying," and walked off.
With that, I retrieved the car from the parking garage and began driving to pick Jane up from BWI, the airport in Baltimore. As I drove, I sipped my frappucino, listened to my Lauryn Hill remix CD, and tried to compose myself a bit.
I was starting to feel a bit better. But the fun wasn't over yet. Suddenly, "thump, thump, thump." The car started listing to the right. I pulled to the side of the highway to find that the back left tire of my car had a golf ball-sized hole in it.
All I could do was laugh. I laughed and laughed and laughed. It was all I could do. Finally, I resolved to take the easy road and call someone to change the tire for me. And then I remembered that I have no cell phone. And thus, no way to tell Jane that I'd be late picking her up. I ended up jacking up the car and putting on the spare tire in the shoulder of Route 95 in 90+ degree heat, as traffic sped by just feet from my head.
So, if you're keeping track, in one 72 hour period that's a phone smashed, camera lost, tire blown, and many hundreds of dollars in associated costs down the drain.
Ha. I musta really ticked somebody off up there.
German for BlogHer
I was standing outside the Hyatt hotel just now and a German guy and an American gal were standing beside me, smoking cigarettes. The woman turned to me, pointed to my conference badge, and asked, "what's BlogHer?" "Well," I said, "do you know what 'blogging' is?" Nope, she said. So I said, "it's people who write online, on websites, for other people to read. And so this is an event for women who do that."
"Can men read what they write?," she asked. "Absolutely!," I said. "But this conference is mostly for women. Women who write blogs and the women who read blogs."
At that point, she turned to her German friend and explained to him in very slow English what I had said. He nodded his head and then turned and took a pull on his cigarette. Another pull. And I then heard him say under his breath, "ooh, I get it. Vebsites frau-to-frau, frau-to-frau."
Ha. Yep, vebsites frau-to-frau. That's German for BlogHer.
Welcome to My Nightmare
I interrupt an otherwise lovely trip to San Jose for the BlogHer 2006 conference to inform you that not only did I somehow completely smash my brand new Blackberry 8700 in the car door on the way to the airport yesterday, I also managed to leave my much beloved Canon Powershot S230 camera in the rental car that I returned to Thrifty this morning.
Weep for me.
Hotline
I've been debating whether to mention that a post of mine got picked up by Hotline but, eh, what the hell.
Cuban Male of a Certain Age
Fidel Castro is getting up there in years, having turned 80 this past August. In 2003, President Bush created the Commission for Assisistance to a Free Cuba. The group's stated mission is to rid Cuba of Castro if at all possible, but also to prepare for the eventual post-Castro world. (Though it might not be that post-Castro -- Fidel's brother Raul is considered the leading contender to take power.) The head of the commission is Caleb McCarry, a former chief of staff to the House International Relations Committee under Henry Hyde.
In presenting the commission's second annual plan for Cuba, McCarry was asked by a reporter if it made sense to partner with Cubans moving forward, given their scant experience in having dominion over their own lives. Yup, it is, he said, adding:
Cubans are demanding their rights. Cubans are asking their government to give them freedoms that Americans take for granted in our own nation.
I'll give you a specific example. Guillermo Fariñas is an independent journalist. It also happens his background is that he's a wounded Angola war veteran. And he's been on a protracted hunger strike. What for? He's asking for uncensored internet access for ordinary Cubans. Cubans are making their demands known to the government and it is they who will define a democratic future for their country. And the Compact and the report are a very concrete expression of the support of the United States for their efforts. (emphasis mine)
I've been following what's been happening with Fariñas via Google News alerts since I wrote a story on it a while back, so it was great to see this mention of him. Good to hear, too, a somewhat-senior U.S. official raise the issue of an uncensored, unfragmented, Internet.
Reporters without Borders -- Reporters sans Frontières for the more French among us -- reported on July 4th that Fariñas is still being treated at the Villa Clara hospital in Cuba. He's back on an intravenous food drip, after having disconnected it several days earlier.
Marriage Equality Roundup
I haven't had a chance to digest the New York decision on marriage equality or to solicit the thinking of smart legal minds. But it's clear that I can put off that decision on whether engagement rings from Tiffany's are a bit much for a while longer.
Here's a quick roundup of interesting stuff on the decision I've read from around the Web:
- Republic of T's Terrance Heath talks about the recent American American Academy of Pediatrics study that cited "ample evidence ... that children raised by same-gender parents fare as well as those raised by heterosexual parents" and found that marriage would benefit the children of same-sex couples. Terrance also talks about his own happy, healthy 3 year-old son being raised by him and his husband.
- Raw Story has the goods on Howard Deans response to the justification used in the court's ruling. Dean called it "bigoted and outdated."
- SCOTUSblog considers whether the New York decision and a marriage-equality ruling in Georgia raise federal questions. (Short answer: no, they don't.)
- Glenn Reynolds favors marriage equality but wants it to happen through the political process -- an idea I want to hear more about.
- And finally, this old piece from Washington U. anthropologist Lisa Stone gives one take on the historical and cross-cultural fluidity of marriage.
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