You can keep your hat on

Non, non, non—qu’est-ce que on me dit? French publishers are moving away from the use of the accent circonflexe—you know, that little hat that sits on top of some vowels to give you a clue as to how to pronounce the word.

When I was studying French, back in the last century, l’accent circonflexe was a clue that another letter had once been part of the word (usually an S), but had disappeared. Château and fenêtre (castle and window) are the examples I recall; at some point in the mists of time, the words had once been chastel and fenestra.

In addition it lengthens the letter O in configurations where otherwise the sound would be shorter. My favorite example: Côtes du Rhône; without the circonflexe that gorgeous red wine would be more like “cot du run”. It probably would still taste wonderful, however…

But the diacritical mark also serves to distinguish a word from something with the same spelling but entirely different meaning. Examples would be jeûne (from jeûner, to fast, to refrain from food and drink) vs. jeune (young, or a young person).

The Académie française apparently proposed changes in the French language that included letting go of l’accent circonflexe (and hyphens in a bunch of words; but I don’t care so much about that) back in 1990, but only now have publishers of school books announced they’re implementing it.

And let me just say, this has unleashed such a social media tempête de merde that much of the world is under a brown-out. I mean—the tweets, the tweets!

Many of them are beyond my ability to convey in English, but here’s one I particularly liked:

Basically, “A joke 50 years from now: ‘Yo mama’s so old, she knew the accent circonflexe.’”

And this:

“It starts by suppressing the accents and finishes by writing ‘sa va’ [instead of ça va] in the dictionary…Welcome to illiteracy.”

The rallying hashtag is #JeSuisCirconflexe.

Here’s what I say: They can have my accent circonflexe when they take it from my cold, dead hands.

Point.

Meme like...

Okay, I think this “be like XX” meme that’s been making the rounds of social media has jumped the shark when it shows up on the sidewalk outside the local taco joint:

The cost of living

The Web is a wonderful resource for house hunting. And there seem to be many more sites that aggregate rental listings than the last time I was looking, which was in 2010.

They all have different ways of slicing and dicing the data, of course, so it’s still a slog, especially when you’re covering three state jurisdictions.

The District They Call Columbia is actually a whole thing. As you can imagine in any urban locale, space is at a premium. This means that buildings dating back from the Age of Decent Construction do not come with parking spaces, and those dating from the Age of Internal Combustion charge you extra if you want to park your car on their premises. So you have to figure on an extra $125-$200 per car if you don’t want to play parking roulette on city streets.

This I do not care to do.

At any rate, I realized this was serious business when on one of these rentals sites I came across a listing for an off-street parking slot, all on its own in Dupont Circle:

And then another in the hip-and-trendy U Street corridor:

Having back in the last century seen a healthcare provider in Dupont whose clearly marked patient parking spot was often usurped by people who felt that the restriction didn’t apply to them, I would not have a lot of hope that either of these “properties” would be secure from interlopers. So it’s not clear to me that you’d get your $175 worth.

But that’s not what I’m writing about. What stopped me in my tracks was the fact that if you are so inclined to fork over your money in hopes that you’ll get a decent ROI, you have to also cough up $175 in “security deposit” and pay a $75 application fee for the privilege.

That, in my opinion, is just taking the piss.

Tepid time in the Old Town

Sunday I resumed neighborhood-hunting and hauled myself off to Alexandria, Virginia. Well, Metro hauled myself, after a manner of speaking, which is to say: it did so at half speed, but that’s life in the city.

As I was walking down King Street, I realized that I haven’t been to what the good citizens of Alexandria are pleased to call Old Town for a long time. Possibly in this century. But it really hasn’t changed all that much.

By which I mean it still retains its mixture of snobbery and tackiness, as it balances cheesy tourist businesses and way too many high-end children’s toy shops, clothing shops and whatever else is deemed critical to raising the next generation of high-end conspicuous consumers.

Seriously: the two words that kept cropping up in my mind were "chi" and "chi".

It was a bit of a blast to see a couple of restaurants that I ate in back in the 80s. And I had a good old time in the Torpedo Factory—which started out life as an actual manufacturer of arms in the 19^th Century, but has for several decades been an enclave of artists, with studios, galleries, the Art League School and (now) the ubiquitous coffee bar.

(Speaking of coffee, I had quite a nice latte at Misha’s, but I’ve seen less frightening toilets in Turkey. Does Alexandria have no health inspectors?)

The Torpedo Factory had a couple of these out, soliciting donations:

It occurred to me that if they were serious about separating people from their money they should install a water feature, but maybe this works for them.

If you’re wondering, yes, I did look around at residential areas, but was not encouraged. For one thing, there’s the infestations of tourons, which is year-round but gets worse in good weather. For another, there’s a serious lack of parking, and I’m a fourth-generation Californian. They can pry my car from my cold, dead hands.

And then there are all the lovely historic houses, with their historic plumbing. I saw several that had not weathered Snowzilla well. Viz.:

Which was separated from:

And a neighboring house:

This is the sort of thing that gives me the serious willies.

Gratitude Monday: Vehicular mobility

One week after Snowzilla, permit me to be mildly petty in my gratitude:

Friday evening I was able to dig away enough of the snow crust next to my car to be able to get it out on the road Saturday morning so I could drive to Virginia to have breakfast with a friend. We hadn’t been able to get together for two weeks, and we really needed a catch-up.

I was also able to make a grocery run; perhaps not as vital as the breakfast, but still needed.

Not only that, but my electronic lock on the driver’s side door, which had packed it in the last time I used the car, cranked up again. This is mega-petty, but once you’ve become accustomed to keyless entry, it’s a pain in the butt to have to use your key. I expect I’m still going to have to have it replaced—the car is, after all, 15 years old. But it’s nice to have the capability back.

We all scream

Apparently you can make a living selling boutique cookies, ice cream and milk via a food truck. Well, why not—this is America.

What struck me about this was the juxtaposition of the cookie-and-ice-cream truck parked illegally in a snow bank on the Hill They Call Capitol at 0730. So many stories could come from that construct.

Trafficking

Yesterday I looked out the window of my office and watched as a largish truck that had got stuck in the snow along the sidewalk on New York Avenue tried to get out.

If you’ve ever had that experience—thinking there’s enough pavement for you to safely negotiate the snow and then discovering that you were wrong—you’ll know what it was like. The driver did that reverse (spinning the wheels) and then forward maneuver; just a little bit more impetus than rocking, but never quite getting out.

I watched as another guy in a smaller truck parked his vehicle in the right-hand lane about ten yards behind, putting on his emergency lights, to give the truck enough room to back out. And I watched as car after car pulled around the van on the left and gunned it forward, even when “forward” consisted of the stoplight about 30 yards ahead. And each of them taking up that lane meant that the truck couldn’t back up safely, even if it could get traction.

I mean—it’s not as though they were making any difference in their journey by jerking out and blocking the lane.

Finally, the van driver got out and stood in the street to give the truck driver some guidance and basically force traffic to stop and wait. That went on for about 60 or 90 seconds, when finally the truck got past the snow bank and drove off. The van driver got back into his vehicle and eventually drove away, too.

I realize that I’ve been those car drivers—too impatient to wait for hold-ups, especially in bad weather when I just know that all the other people on the road are idiots. But as I sat and watched the one guy help out another (even though I though he was standing uncomfortably close to a very large vehicle that clearly was not under full human control and that could slew off in any direction), while everyone else acted like jerks, I thought to myself, “Self—get yourself in hand and be more like that van guy.”

How things run

My office was officially closed again yesterday—Metro still not fully functioning and lots and lots of people barricaded behind snow drifts several feet high with no sign of snow ploughs.

But my way was clear, and besides—the physical therapy place had an appointment open up, so I went in.

And here’s what I noticed:

The “office workers” might have been off (or even working from home), but the people who make the office work were on the job.

Trash had been emptied and the toilets were cleaned in the loo. The carpets were vacuumed and everything clean.

There had also been window washing scheduled for yesterday, and blow me if the inside washers didn’t swing round about 0930 and clean the windows. Just like they were supposed to do.

Moreover, people like to slag off Metro, but as far as I’m concerned, those men and women are tops. Under trying circumstances they had things running for the past two days—not at full strength, but still. Getting people to work, to medical appointments, to grocery stores, to wherever they needed to go…mostly.

And I know that ploughs haven’t made it to a number of areas in the DMV, but think about all those road crews who’ve been working full bore to clear hundreds of miles of streets, highways, parking lots and other surfaces since Friday night.

So, on Hump Day after Snowzilla—here’s to the people who make our lives work, even when we don’t notice them. Perhaps even especially when we don’t notice them.

Not quite the day after

Evidently large swathes of the DMV area remained under 30 inches of snow yesterday, so the Federal government remained closed. Metro only ran limited service of three lines on the underground portions, so instead of, for instance the Orange Line running from Vienna, Va., to New Carrolton, Md., it went from Ballston, Va., to Eastern Market in the District.

Since my commute was within those parameters, I went in to work, but I was apparently the only one, aside from the building guard. My employer follows the Feds, so the office was officially closed.

Frankly, I went in because I had an appointment in the afternoon with a physical therapy practice, which I very much need. (On a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being “shoot me”, I’ve been looking at 9.0 in the receding distance of my rear-view mirror for more than a month.) This appointment was the earliest I could get as of two weeks ago, so I needed it.

But of course they closed their office, too. I hope to God I don’t have to wait another two weeks, because I’ll just commit ritual seppuku in their entry way if so.

Anyhow, if Friday was a bit of a ghost town at work, yesterday I may have had the building to myself. I certainly was the only one on my floor. That’s kind of spooky, especially if you know it’s “regular” work hours, and not—say—2200 on a Saturday.

Well, a couple of things about yesterday:

This was my view on the way to the station; nice, no?

Metro’s limited service was free, so it was worth riding just for that alone. I made a point of entering through the exit styles—that was me raging against the Man.

It was a bit of a crapshoot, because at least in the morning they were running on a single track between stations. Here’s a very, very, very long train “sheltering in place” at the Capitol South station at 0730:

It was a bit of an adventure crossing streets in downtown D.C. They’d only cut pathways through the banked snow along the east-west crosswalks, not the north-south ones, so you had to walk into the street to cross going north.

I’m really glad that the Dunkin’ Donuts staff didn’t follow the Feds, as that’s one of two morning possibilities for coffee. I splurged on a large coffee instead of my usual medium. (My employer does not provide coffee, which strikes me as slightly un-American, but I’m coping.)

It was hard not to fixate on traffic on New York Avenue—so fascinating watching vehicles navigate what’s normally quite the wide boulevard.

On my way out of the Capitol South station in the afternoon, I did my good deed as I saw a couple trying to figure out the fare card machine. They had rolling suitcases with them, so I’m thinking they were not locals. I interrupted the process, calling out, “Hello? Metro’s free today.” The looks on their faces as the man jerked his $20 bill from the machine was just priceless. I totally made their day.

And here’s my final street sight for the day next to the eatery on the corner:

Gratitude Monday: Weathering the storm

You may be aware that there’s been a snow event in the eastern part of the country. The weather guessers in the DC-Maryland-Virginia (DMV) area gave it the name Snowzilla, with expectations in excess of two feet of snow, starting on Friday, and winds upwards of 50 MPH. Not a trivial forecast.

Given that a much lighter snowfall on Wednesday night caused a complete breakdown in civilization (because the DMV authorities did nothing to treat highways beforehand, and were limited as to what they could do afterwards on account of all the stalled and abandoned cars), they screwed their courage to the sticking place and pretty much told everyone to go home before the snow started and then stay there, because all public transportation shut down.

Well, my employer follows the Federal government, which announced a half-day for Friday, although you could take admin leave or work from home. Let me just say that you could have held World War III there on Friday, and no one would have been hurt. There were five people on my floor, total.

One of my four hardy colleagues was worried about power staying on at his Chevy Chase house—a very well-to-do suburb. Blizzards are great levelers; during Snowmageddon a couple of years ago, he and his family ended up going to a hotel because of power loss. He can’t do it this time because they now have a dog.

I was a little concerned about power myself, because DC is famous for sending hundreds of thousands into darkness at the first hint of any kind of weather event. But as it happens, I spent the weekend in warmth and light, one of the things for which I am grateful today.

Here are some more:

My commute both to and from work was uneventful. Metro workers were on the job.

It was a little hairy walking to and from the Metro stations in the afternoon, because it had been snowing for about 90 minutes and the wind was pretty fierce. 

But once I was home, it was lovely to look at the snow knowing I didn’t have to deal with it (i.e., shovel it).

By Saturday, some of the drifts were up past my knees when I went out for a walk. One of my neighbors had initially begun clearing snow with a tennis racquet—he said that he’d been working every night last week until 0100, so hadn’t been able to get out to buy a shovel.

According to him, the racquet did an okay job, but then he noticed someone else seemed to have an extra shovel, so he borrowed it. Good thing, because he has a corner house.

Another thing I’m grateful for: not having to shovel twice the sidewalks of a corner house.

There was some road clearing going on up around the Congressional buildings—I got rather a kick out of this tiny Bobcat whizzing about. It was small, but it was doing the job.

On Pennsylvania Avenue there were people on snowshoes and a man pulling a plastic sled with three small children on it.

(About 50 yards up the road he stopped, took a phone call, and then had the kids get out and walk. I guess enough is enough.)

It was interesting to me that the Chinese restaurant was open and had cleared the sidewalk in front.

Ditto the Firehook Bakery. (On Sunday one of the FB baristas told me that they'd spent the weekend at the Capitol Hill Hotel around the corner; I guess that's a good blizzard strategy.) Starbucks was also open, but they only cleared their doorstep, not the sidewalk. 

One of the things that made me happiest on my walk was seeing the complete joy of a flock of birds chowing down at a feeder in someone’s front yard.

Despite the forecast of snow throughout the weekend, by Sunday morning it had stopped. Clear sky and sunshine.

Saturday:

Sunday:

I’m hoping that by next weekend I’ll be able to get my car out from under the snow to continue house hunting. But in the meantime, Metro resumed service this morning, so I can get to and from work.

And I’m grateful that I made it through the storm with nothing but a sense of inconvenience.