WashingTina

I was watching this week's episode of Glee (a brief--and snarky--Glee-cap here ), when the roller rink they featured took me back to my college days. I went to a liberal arts school in Ohio, which offered all sorts of interesting classes. For instance, for my PE credits I took horseback riding and rollerskating. It's the latter that I flashed back to this week. The class wasn't taught by one of the school's professors. Instead it was taught by local competitive skating star Betty Lou, backed up by her loyal partner Don. Betty Lou was 150-years-old. Don was 155. And they were both still skating. Competitively. This meant that not only did Betty Lou take her skating very seriously, but she also dressed for the occasion. She outfitted herself in a short little skating skirt that bared her wrinkly knees. Don also wore skate-appropriate (though interestingly, not age-appropriate) clothes. He usually had shiny black pants and some sort of flowy shirt on. During ou...

Riding the bus during rush hour is generally a run-of-the-mill occasion, but catching the bus during off-peak hours is a special kind of joy. As I've mentioned before , rush hour commuters are the "average Joe" of bus riders, and are, by and large , normal. But take a ride during some other part of the day, and you never know what you might see. I left work early today because I was sick, which never makes for a fun bus ride, but today was especially delightful. When I boarded the bus, it was pretty empty, so I took a seat near the front and started reading my magazine. It wasn't long before we picked up Character #1. She was an older lady wearing what looked like either a threadbare muumuu or a hospital gown (she didn't have the tell-tale plastic bracelet, though, so I'm going to go with muumuu). She also had a rag on her head (and I don't mean this in any sort of derrogatory way, it literally was a frayed rag, tied loosely around her head). Of course, sh...

Living in D.C. has it's advantages. One of these is the fact that when the rest of the country's real estate markets tanked, ours merely dipped (thanks to the proximity of the Federal Government). And now it appears to be turning around a bit. With that knowledge in hand, WH and I are getting ready to put our apartment on the market. Anyone who's ever sold a home knows that it's not a simple, easy, or particularly enjoyable process. In fact, it's a little like going for plastic surgery (or at least I imagine it is). The sales process starts with selecting your realtor . . . fortunately, we had friends who could walk us through this and that part was easy. Same as with a doctor, you want to work off of referrals from people in the know. Once you've selected your realtor, you need to have a consult. This is perhaps the most painful part of the process. It's the equivalent of the plastic surgeon circling your thigh cellulite with a Sharpie or outlining ...

On today's bus ride I encountered something I've seen before: a woman with curlers in her hair. In public. On the bus. This got me thinking about two things. The first being, what motivates someone to leave their house with curlers in her hair? Did she forget? Is there a lack of mirrors in her house? Would those extra ten minutes during the bus ride make all the difference for the curls? I have a friend, who shall remain nameless, who was once discovered to have a curler in her purse. When questioned about it by us, her friends, she admitted that she often drives with this curler in the front of her hair, because, yes, those few extra minutes really do make a difference to the curl. Mystery solved. The second thing I thought about has many more layers than simple curls. This is the phenomenon of people who think that public transportation is their own personal grooming lounge. Sure, most of us are guilty (at least the women among us) of touching up our lipstick on our way into ...

There is hardly anything so nuanced as office politics. It's a minefield we all tread carefully upon day after day. Volumes have been published on how to deal with coworkers, how to manage up, how to manage down, what to do when you're on the bottom, how to stay on top, how to get on top, etc. It's a topic everyone can relate to and everyone has a story to tell. Why do you think The Office is so popular? I've been working in offices since I was 17 years old, and like everyone else, I have a million stories that would make you laugh, cry, and shriek in horror better than anything Hollywood could produce. I could easily add to the volumes that have been written (and perhaps I will, via this space, over time). Recent workplace drama got me reflecting on some of the crazier things that have happened to me over my office years. My first job was working for a woman who was friends with my mother (What can I say? Nepotism works!). Additionally, my mother sat as president of t...

If you're anything like me, you are continuously amazed by the cluelessness of the general population. You know, the people who stand at the bottom of the escalator looking up with their mouths open. Or the people who drive down the highway with their left blinker on, mile after mile. Or those poor souls who walk five-abreast down the rush-hour sidewalk, unawares that the entire population of Dupont Circle is trying to get around them to walk home. But sometimes what first seems like cluelessness is actually deliberate stupidity. Cluelessness I can forgive; I can even laugh at it good-naturedly. Heck, I've even been clueless a time or two. Stupidity, however, is not so easy to forgive. Take this morning's bus ride for instance. I was riding my usual route at the usual time to the usual location. About halfway there, the Electronic Lady that we all know and love started mechanically repeating, "Please do not stand in the rear door well," like a three-year-old tryi...

I couldn't believe what happened to me yesterday. For once, I was not the butt of a cosmic joke. In fact, I was able to press the reset button and send a little good karma out into the world. I was walking home enjoying the delightful weather and off to the side by a parking meter was a woman squatting to undo her bike lock. And that's when I saw it . . . this poor woman had done something that I had once done. I immediately felt the pain that she didn't know she was in. She was wearing a skirt that fastened up the back. She had buttoned the button, but neglected to zip the zipper. In short, her butt was out . I laughed to myself (wouldn't you?), and then I tapped her on the shoulder and told her that her zipper was down. (For the record, I did not tell her that her "butt was out." She was wearing red and white striped underwear.) But the real kicker is that when she thanked me (after first looking ashamed and confused) her accent revealed that she was Russian...

It happens at least once a week . . . as I've discussed before in this space . . . I end up sharing the bus with a loudmouth. Usually it's someone on their cell phone, but this week it was a guy who was talking extremely loudly to his friend. You know this guy. You've seen him at a bar, or in a restaurant, on a plane, at the pool . . . and on the bus. He's the loudmouth guy who talks loud so that everyone hears him. He talks loudly about his car, his woman, his salary, the '82 Chateau Lafite Rothschild in his wine cellar. And he does this because he's compensating for his shortcoming somewhere else. This week's Bus Loudmouth was a middle aged guy with a beer gut, wearing a T-shirt under a blazer and a pair of jeans with loafers and no socks (of course). He boarded the bus the stop after mine on Tuesday morning during rush hour. He was with a friend, and they were talking from the moment they boarded the bus. That is to say, he was talking. His friend was gl...