Employee Profile:
Edward Bohls
Database Administration Manager

How long have you worked at ASH?
Four years in June. Tempus fugit.

What do you love about your job?
Data. Plenty of it. Lots of big data sets. I love getting to query, filter, parse, manipulate, and in any way deal with huge amounts of data. And our TIMSS database has something like 600 tables and hundreds of thousands of records.

What are your main responsibilities?
All things TIMSS. In addition to the aforementioned fun with data, I train every new employee on the basics of TIMSS during their first week at ASH. I then help anyone else with more complicated things, such as financial batches and accounts, inventory products and warehouses, the ASH store on the Web, membership orders and renewals, and mailing lists and directories. I also to fulfill the Blood subscription for members every two weeks. And on the rare occasion that something goes wrong with TIMSS, I help investigate and fix that, too.

Okay, so maybe not so rare.

Tell us your best annual meeting story or work-related ASH story.
I went to my first annual meeting this past year. It turned out to be surprisingly grueling. My favorite moment came when I was packing up the booth that sold the tickets for the ASH Bash about an hour before the actual event was to begin. There were apparently hundreds of attendees already at the aquarium, lining up to get in, but I was still at the convention center with the tickets and the lists. Ayuko called me on the walkie-talkie. She said, “Edward, we need you here. Run.”

I started running. Sprinting. It was only about half a mile or so, but I am, after all, in my mid-40s now. I didn’t do especially well. I ran as fast as I could for as long as I could. Then I jogged for as long as I could. Then I trotted. Then race-walked. Finally, I staggered. I was one sorry, panting, sweaty spectacle by the time I arrived at the aquarium, all of like four minutes later. And my legs were sore for days after that.

Tell us something you’re passionate about.
Ballet, of all things. Both watching and participating. My wife and I are subscribers to the Washington Ballet and the ballet at the Kennedy Center. We take ballet classes at St. Mark’s Dance Studio in Capitol Hill. There aren’t too many guys in the ballet classes – for years I was the only one – so Ms. Brooks, the director, choreographs a special pas-de-deux for my wife and me to perform in the recital every year. This year, we danced to a song from the Amelie soundtrack.

What’s your favorite lunch spot?
Clearly, Au bon Pain. I’ve eaten there pretty much every day for the past six years. For the first couple of years I would get the garden salad, then I switched to the fields & feta wrap for about a year, and then switched to the Mediterranean wrap for about a year. Now I’m back to the garden salad.

Do you have any fun summer plans?
My wife and I have booked a bicycle tour through western Ireland this summer. We’ll be riding between 20 and 30 miles a day, from one hotel or B&B to the next, around Connemara, which is mostly in County Galway.

What is your ideal weekend?
The ideal weekend would entail lots of sleeping, a little snoozing, and then some napping. In real life, my wife and I are in constant motion all weekend, getting up before 8:00 a.m. and going to the gym first thing Saturday morning. Then we go grocery shopping, have lunch, and do some sort of restoration project on the house for the rest of the day. Sunday is pretty much the same, but we go to church in the morning, and then more house stuff. The house is 85 years old, after all.

What question do you wish I would ask you?
How did you meet Al Gore, and did you really help deliver a baby?

Would you like to answer that question now? (in reference to question above)
I was working at a video store, around 1989, back before Al Gore was Vice President, back when he was a senator. He and Tipper and the kids lived nearby and rented videos from our store. We had a cardboard cutout of Chuckie, the little demon doll wielding a knife, standing up by the horror section. The Gores came in on a Saturday afternoon and rented some movies and left. But then, poor Senator Gore came back in to talk to a manager, which was me that day. Mrs. Gore thought that the cardboard Chuckie was too close to the children’s section, and she sent the Senator back in to ask us to move it. He was clearly pained at being ordered to do this. He went out of his way to make sure that I understood that it was his wife’s idea, not his. For some reason I found this terribly endearing. So, of course, I moved Chuckie for him.

At that same video store, one of our clerks got pregnant, and her boyfriend skipped town on her. She asked me to be her Lamaze partner. How could I refuse? So, we went to classes and practiced breathing and the whole deal. When she went into labor, they had to do a C-section. That was very disappointing after all those weeks of practice. I stood with her, though, holding her hand during the whole surgery. It’s a pretty serious procedure for the non-physician, let me tell you. And then I got to cut the umbilical cord. I sat with mom and baby in the hospital for the rest of the day, then never saw either of them again.

What is most helpful to you when working with employees in other departments?
Really, until Karina arrived just recently, being the sole TIMSS guy, everyone was from a different department. (Or else no one was.) It took me a while to figure out what everybody else did, but once I got a pretty good sense of that, it was easy to work with everyone.

In general, though, I just think of us all as ASH employees. I go with what Bruce Springsteen once said about recording his first record at CBS in the early seventies. Something along the lines of “If they had asked me to mop the floors, I’d have mopped the floors.”

Deleted paragraph from Favorite Lunch Spot question:
To be honest, though, this year I’ve been trying to be tad adventurous, going to lunch with Helena and Joe once a week. We’ve only been to Au Bon Pain once, and that was to get sandwiches to go, to eat sitting on the grass in Dupont Circle.

Where’s the farthest you’ve traveled?
I grew up in a military family, so we moved around a lot when I was a kid. Exotic places like Fort Sill in Lawton OK, Fort Bliss in El Paso TX, Fort Ord in Monterey CA, Rock Island Arsenal in Rock Island IL. Pretty exciting, huh? I haven’t gone very far in my adult life. I drove once non-stop from St. Louis to Minneapolis by myself; it took about 18 hours. I spent a week at a resort in St. Lucia in 2000. By far the farthest I’ve ever gone was to Italy for my honeymoon in 2003. We spent eleven glorious days walking around Florence and Rome. I’d love to go back or even live in Florence some day.

What’s one of your favorite quotes (from a movie, song, poem, anything)?
I’ve always loved Harper’s last monologue from Angel’s in America, when she’s on the plane heading west. She ends with: “Nothing’s lost forever. In this world, there’s a kind of painful progress, longing for what we’ve left behind, and dreaming ahead. At least I think that’s so.” I use that quote at the top of my website and on my personal email signature. I saw the Alliance Theatre production of Angels in America in Atlanta in 1995. It was completely mind-blowing life-changing. Rhoda Griffis played Harper. Rhoda’s an amazing actor.

Full sentence regarding Chuckie:
Child’s Play had just come out on video, and we had a cardboard cutout of Chuckie, the little demon doll wielding a knife, standing up by the horror section.

I’m not sure, [name], that what Senator Obama’s doing is all that drastic. I know it’s not what I want, but, as the man says, he’s not running to be president of Red America or Blue America (or Ed’s America or [name]’s America); rather, he’s running to be president of the United States of America. Part of moving beyond Rovian politics is being in the center, which is somewhere to the right of you and me. That’s maybe where Obama should be, or needs to be for November. In general, that’s where most Americans are as well, no? See this here column by Gail Collins in the NYT for more on this point.

As far as some of the specifics:

Like you say, the gun-ban thing is a really honestly debate-able parsing of the 2nd Amendment. (And especially given that I’m in DC and have no votes in Congress and here’s Justice Scalia legislating from the fucking bench on me, you’d think I’d be upset about this one.) And so says Obama, basically that we all, even Scalia, agree that guns should be controlled — licensing, background checks, certain weapons more controlled than others — we just disagree as to the extent of that control. That’s a very reasonable position, yeah?

And I’m not so sure the whole recent FISA thing is what it’s cracked up to be either. Look here for a Libertarian-ish law professor’s take on the new legislation. I personally don’t give much of a damn about telecom immunity one way or the other, I suppose. It’s the president who’s the criminal here. It’s the president who’s been spying on us. If he twisted Verizon’s or ATT’s arms, I want him to face the charges, not them.

I should have added here that I’m not that thrilled with most wiretap warrants to begin with, much less warrantless wiretaps. Plus the FISA court has always been notoriously lenient towards government requests anyway, which is why the current administration’s readiness to bypass same is somewhat baffling.

And the faith-based initiative stuff? I haven’t read either of Obama’s books, but seems to me that as a community organizer in south Chicago, much of his organizing probably took place in church basements and halls, in addition to the union halls and government & neighborhood community centers. I think Bush’s faith-based policy was some sort of triangularization between him and Rove and Mike Gerson. Gerson really believed in it, Rove saw the politics in it, and Bush just did as he was told (as usual). I see Obama as more like Gerson, really believing in what it can accomplish, even if he’s no dummy, understanding the Rove side as well. See Andrew Sullivan’s post here for what I think are the two important points with respect to the Constitution and bottom-up organizing.

I’ve since been reading the Ryan Lizza New Yorker article. You know, the issue with that cover. Article itself is just great, great background on Obama. Makes me realize that not just his early community organizing career but his entire Chicago machine politics experience has been key to his organizing skills, and key especially to the way he out-organized Senator Clinton this spring.

I was in Ireland, completely & blissfully cut off from politics for over a week, when this lurch to the middle happened, so maybe that took away from the sting for me. But I’ve also been consciously bracing myself for the inevitable let-down from Obama, knowing that he was going to disappoint me. And so here it is, and I find that I’m taking it quite well. Part of it also is that I don’t think it’s all that much of a let-down, when I really look at it.

But I also know that I’m rationalizing some of it as well. Because I know we just need to calm down and still try to focus on the big picture here. Do you want Senator McCain for Bush’s third term? Me neither. Send in that Obama contribution after all.

I wrote this to my friend on Monday morning. Hadn’t gotten a response, so I was thinking that maybe I had upset this friend. So I called and spoke with both friend and friend’s spouse. All is well. No offense. Was just busy. Didn’t necessarily agree with me, but neither was offended.

I’m still trying to figure this one out. Check out the first two paragraphs from this Washington Times editorial.

After seven years of unprecedented strength, the U.S. economy is floundering as the mortgage crisis and gas prices force businesses, small and large, to slash jobs.

It is a given that President Bush presided over one of the strongest economic periods in history, with staggering job creation of 2.6 million jobs, record minority home ownership and a market flush with investment. But in just six months, the stock market has dipped below 11,000 for the first time in two years, nearly a half million jobs have been lost in the construction industry since last year – equal to the losses in all other sectors since December – and mortgage foreclosures are now at record highs.

Seven years of unprecedented strength. Really? We’ve never had such good times. Not the nineties? The fifties? The twenties? Really? Unprecedented.

Staggering job creation of 2.6 million jobs? Really? If 2.6 million is staggering, then what do you call President Clinton’s 23 million jobs?* Almost ten times as many, clearly. Hyper-staggering? And, um, about those losses of a half million in construction and another half million in other sectors. Isn’t that a million, just about half of a staggering 2.6 million?

Oh, and by the way, dear reader(s), the editorial, written specifically to address Senator Gramm’s “mental recession” comment, is entitled “Economic reality, not fantasy.”

Nope. Not kidding. You can’t make this shit up. Well, I mean, I can’t. The Washington Times clearly can.

What this brought to mind was the Dave Eggers book A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, (oddly subtitled A Memoir Based on a True Story, as if a memoir itself isn’t true, or supposed to be anyway.) I was, like a lot of people I imagine, intrigued by the sheer balls of titling one’s book that way. So I gave it a read. Eh, didn’t do much for me. Didn’t break my heart. Didn’t impress me as to Mr. Eggers being endowed with a staggering genius. But then neither did it amuse me enough to be willing take the title with its clearly intended irony. Was just, like I said, eh.

Oh, but also, please don’t think I’m constantly reading Washington Times editorials. More of a recent thing, clicking through interesting-looking links over at Real Clear Politics. I used to read Washington Post and New York Times editorials pretty religiously, years ago. Stopped after the devastating 2004 election. This year, this time around, I’m trying very deliberately to get more news from more diverse outlets, trying to avoid maybe the echo chamber I was in c. 2004. Won’t get fooled again.

* Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics. See ftp://ftp.bls.gov/pub/suppl/empsit.ceseeb1.txt accessed 7/15/2008.

Yahoo has some sort of relationship with CNN/Money, which itself seems to be a relationship between CNN and Money Magazine, if there is such a thing anymore as Money Magazine. Anyway. On the front portal page this morning, I notice that Yahoo’s got a news item about best places to live or somesuch. I generally shy away from such lists, but for some reason I thought I’d find out. Where’s the best place to live?

How funny. I’ve actually lived there. Plymouth, Minnesota.

Lived there in my dad’s house, from July 1982 to January 1983, when I moved into the dorm, Frontier Hall, on campus at the University of Minnesota. And although he must have moved to San Jose CA sometime in the late eighties, Zabasearch still reaches way back and lists the address. Amazing. Was 11245 36th Place North. And here’s Live.com’s bird’s eye view. We live in amazing times, people.

It’s one of the ones in the middle of the picture. I can’t remember exactly which one. I could probably go to the taxing jurisdiction’s website and get a plat map or something, find out exactly which one it is. But this is good enough for our purposes today, yeah?

Was a huge house, even though it’s duplex. I had to get to Minnesota about a month early for freshman orientation, then didn’t have much else to do until classes started. I didn’t know anybody except my dad. Must have sat around the house a lot. Probably listened to my records. I remember listening to the Clash’s Sandinista in my bedroom there. And Altered Images, Happy Birthday. Springsteen’s Nebraska.

Smoking was still allowed indoors back then. Dad let me smoke in the (finished) basement, down where the TV was. I remember watching Hill Street Blues down there. Dad loved Hill Street Blues. That would have been on Thursday nights. I remember watching the Clash on Saturday Night Live. They sang either Rock the Casbah or Should I Stay or Should I Go. I can’t remember which. Probably the latter, since Mick sings that, and Joe definitely sang Straight to Hell. Joe had his mohawk at this point, but not yet dyed orange. And I remember watching the news about guy who drove the truck up to the Washington Monument, threatened to blow it up. (He never did have any explosives, turned out. They found this out after they shot the poor man dead, of course.)

About 7:15 this morning, just as we’re finishing breakfast, as I’m about to start washing the dishes, we hear a shout from outside. Male voice, adult, an inarticulate shout of … not quite pain, not quite anger.

I look out the front door. There’s a man walking down the street. No, not the sidewalk next to the street, but the very street itself. Right down the middle. Seventeenth Street is one-way south, and he’s walking in the same direction at least.

“Wake up! Wake up,” he yells. Takes a few more steps. “This is serious!” Keeps walking.

By now the light back at Independence has turned green, and some cars are coming. Somebody honks, but guy just keeps walking in the middle as cars go around him on either side.

He doesn’t say anything else, just keeps walking.

I’m eating lunch and reading the New Yorker article about G.K. Chesterton. He had some pithy thing to say about American men removing their hats in elevators.

I ask Dawn across the table, “Do you think of elevators as rooms or vehicles?”

She looks up at me, gives me a completely blank WTF stare.

I laugh. “Is that a guy question?”

“It’s not a Dawn question,” she tells me, rolling her eyes.

The classic Guy Question comes from the movie Stand By Me, where certain of the boys argue whether Superman could take on Mighty Mouse. There’s some dispute about this, since Mighty Mouse is a cartoon, whereas Superman is a live-action TV show.

This also reminds me of how, when we landed at Dulles from Dublin, we had to ride one of those mobile lounge things from the B gates to the main terminal. Some young girls, let’s say 8 or 9 years old, were standing right in front of us. Their dad told them to hang on. They asked why and were surprised when he told them that we’d be moving. They thought we were just in some sort of waiting room.

Two small things.

First, I was in Ireland on July 4, Independence Day. (American Independence Day, obviously, as opposed to the Poblacht na hÉireann declared on April 24, 1916, although that one didn’t work out quite as well as our own experience in 1776.) I had two separate kind folks in Ireland wish me a happy day. Otherwise, it was nice to be away from the craziness that is our neighborhood back home, when the local fireworks start just before dark and go on for hours & hours. Terrifying.

In contrast, I was walking home from ballet last night, along East Capitol Street, Lincoln Park. Right there at the corner of East Cap and 12th (or was it Kentucky?) was a small flag hanging on an iron fence. Or, maybe more accurate to say that it was leaning against the fence. It maybe had been planted in the ground there, on the corner, just inside someone’s yard. But now it had tilted over, no longer planted, and the flag itself was touching the ground. And that bothered me.

Funny. I’m a big believer in free speech and your right to burn the flag if you want. But a flag, even a little one, touching the ground, just bugs me. Bugs me too when the US flag is hung vertically and the canton is to the upper right rather than the (perhaps counter-intuitive) upper left. But bugs me way more having the flag touching the ground.

So of course I stepped right on over and propped it back up. Had to do it.

Hmm.

Not intended or anything, but I notice these last three posts, where I, in chronological order, (1) admit to a sense of existential doom; (2) am sad; and (3) am happy.

For the record: I’m a happy guy. Really.

Where the Hell is Matt? (2008) from Matthew Harding on Vimeo.

A story about air hockey, of all things. I imagine that CPC will be hurt to hear this as well.

(h/t Andrew Sullivan)

We had this training at work today for the safety wardens. Red Cross came in and trained us in CPR and first aid. Some lecture, some book reading, test taking, practicing on the CPR dummies. And a number of videos on a DVD. And in one of the videos, in a part about first aid and sudden illness, this poor girl gets stung by a bee. Her mom goes off to get the epi pen and call 911. Meanwhile, girl goes to sit down, and an on-screen graphic lists the symptoms of anaphylactic shock. One of the symptoms is:

• A Sense of Doom

And I thought, wait, that’s not normal? Doesn’t everyone just generally have a sense of doom all the time?

What? No?

Oh, apparently that’s only me?

I was grabbing a beer or a soda or whatever and saw a black flash out of the corner of my eye. It was a fly. He landed on the light bulb at the top. I waved my hand at him, to get him to fly out, but he just flew around inside the fridge, not coming out.

“Come on out there, buddy,” I said, waving my hand around some more. Dawn, from the living room, asked me what I was doing, so I explained.

“You’re talking to the fly?” she asked.

Well, of course I was talking to him, I told her. It’s a fly. He can’t read my mind.

Duh.

0707081503a.jpg

Originally uploaded by ebohls

Arrived US

Hello from Clifden, County Galway! I’m able to use my phone to update my Blogger blog. Go to http://ebohls.blogspot.com/ for any future updates.

Wind and rain today. 35 km ride. Felt gloriously alive! Love and miss you all!

We made it to Dublin. Dawn was able to sleep a bit on the plane; I couldn’t, no, not at all. Got through passport control and customs at Dublin airport without incident. Took the 748 bus from the airport to Heuston train station, where now we sit waiting for a train in a couple of hours to Westport.

I’m a tad cranky about my useless cell phone here. Seems like it’ll work just fine as a phone. But all of the work I did setting up Facebook status updates and blog posts by phone was all for naught. The Facebook status is an SMS to like 34567 or somesuch. Doesn’t work in Ireland. And the blog posts are picture message sent to Flickr, and, wouldn’t you know it, I can’t send picture messages in Ireland either.

So I’m standing at an Internet kiosk in the train station. Costs €1 for ten minutes. Some kid just bumped into me. I’ll try to find similar Internet chances for updates. But, just so you know, we’re here and alive and happy.

Packing for Ireland

Originally uploaded by ebohls

Two to check & one carry-on

I’m awfully late to arrive, so they’re already done with the pliés and tendus. I’m just in time for dégagés, however, not a bad way to start, except that Ms. Jessica is feeling ambitious and throws some sort of novel combination of dégagés at us. No mere en croix this time. Something decidedly more complex involving changing to the inside leg on the third beat front and back but not sides. I offer that it’s based on some sort of factors of the square root of two, which joke the old hands have heard too many times by now, I’m maybe starting to realize. But, when confused, just throw out whatever you’re doing, in this case dégagés, pretty much randomly and hope for the best. Then for some weird reason on side two I suddenly grok the pattern and am wickedly pleased when Ms. J out in the center screws it up and still I confidently continue doing it right.

What with my late arrival I’m not in my usual spot by the window, but rather with Renee over at the tall girl bar. You know, the one where Karen and Ayanna would be if they were here. For the stretch I’m sorely out of luck, since there’s only the high bar and no low whatsoever. Is why it’s the tall girl bar. I scurry over to the other side of the studio, where there’s sensibly both the high and low bars. I squeeze in front of Jessica R., and for the first time I notice that she has some sort of wild reverse jujitsu move on the switch from second to arabesque. Apparently twisting her foot around in contact with the bar gives her the willies, so she prefers to twist the rest of her whole being around instead. It’s a nifty trick.

Out center it feels very strange not to be rehearsing the recital piece after so many months. Instead Ms. J’s got even more tricks up her sleeve. For the waltz pattern, we begin with a pas de cheval into a pas de bourrée. Okay, cool. But then after a balancé one way, we definitely do not balance the balancé with a balancé to the other side; rather, it’s a chassé. It feels positively alien. We’re supposed to follow the chassé with another pas de bourrée into fourth for the pirouette. I’ve been getting pretty good pirouette action lately, holding up in relevé coupé much better lately for some reason, even if my turnout is still for shit. But that’s hitching up from a static fourth in my own good damn time. Coming at it from a crazy unbalanced chassé throws me right the hell off and I’m useless.

Similar too is the entrechat quatre that she wants us to start doing on a more regular basis. I’ve had two (later made into three) in my pas de deux with Dawn that I’d been working on for some months now, so I’m initially pleased that I’m going to be ahead of the curve for once. But again, I don’t get to just go right into it, or even start from a nice solid assemblé like from the piece. It’s instead mixed in between two changements and an échappé. I can’t get my brain and feet to work together to save my life. Help!

Finally, going into the corners, we go across the floor in piqué turns. Puke-y turns I declare them. Ms. Jessica tells me to not shoot my tendu out as far, as I’m then never getting straight up over the leg in relevé in the turn. I try going smaller and it works fairly well, as I faintly hear Dawn calling out to me to spot with each turn. It’s something of a wife’s prerogative, I suppose. I still complain about it though.

Becky comes over for dinner – penne putanesca – and then we head out to the Warner Theatre to see the Washington Ballet’s Cinderella. Or, the ticket says, Septime Webre’s Cinderella.

We go to the Warner every year to see the Washington Ballet perform Septime Webre’s Nutcracker. And we’re up in the balcony every year. So it’s really weird to be down in orchestra seating. It hardly seems like the same theater to me.

The step-sisters are played by men and are thoroughly overdone and campy and annoying and way way way too much. I hate them. Other than them though I quite enjoy the production. Brianne Bland dances Cindy herself. Erin Mahoney-Du is her fairy godmother. And there are apparently seasonal fairies, of which Jade Payette is spring and Elizabeth Gaither is summer. You know, all my favorites.

Jared Nelson is the prince, and Dawn complains because they’ve dressed him in pink.

Edward: Last night I dreamed I was taking a shower with David Schwimmer’s guitar.

Dawn: David Schwimmer? You mean the guy from Friends?

Edward: Yeah.

Dawn: You have some strange dreams, dude.

Edward: It was an acoustic guitar. He owed somebody $200.

Dawn: [no response]

Edward: Maybe he was trying to hide the guitar.

Either Joe or Helena had suggested going farther afield, exploring someplace new for lunch, up north maybe, closer to the circle. So I thought, why not the Tabard? So there we go.

We arrive twelve-fifteenish, twelve-twentyish, sans reservations. Bad move. We hear the hostess explaining probabilities of seating and wait times to a couple ahead of us, and we start planning to go across the street to the Iron Gate or whatever that restaurant is. But I ask anyway if there’s any room for a party of three. And actually there’s a likely no-show of a party of three, and she asks us to take a seat, wait maybe ten minutes. So we do.

And of course it’s the Tabard, that sitting room between the lobby and the restaurant, perfect for hanging out, except that there’s no fire roaring in the fireplace today. But it’s only about five minutes later that we get seated. Perfect.

Joe and I order glasses of pinot grigio; Helena opts for a tempranillo. Says its like a rioja. Tiffanie L. turned her on to it in Seattle.

For entrees Helena and I both get the Niçoise salad. Joe has some sort of pasta, I don’t hear exactly what he orders. For extra decadence, Joe and Helena both order dessert, and Joe and I both partake in second glasses of wine.

Joe is the sleepiest back at work.

… I saw a cat in a tree.

A few pics therefrom. No, we didn’t eat the cats.

We’re playing hooky from work Thursday and Friday for Holy Week. We’ll be going to St. Peter’s tonight, but we take most of the day to ride our bikes to Mount Vernon.

It’s really, really windy all day, making the trek something of a death march at times. Actually, with the wind pretty steadily from the northwest all day, the ride down to Mount Vernon, the ride south, is easier. And it’s not really until we’re just getting up to the bridge to cross into the city on the way back that we’re heading straight into the wind.

But at that point we’re about at the end of the forty-mile round trip. We’re tired. It’s hard.

I swear it’s even harder on me than it is on Dawn. She’s such a lithe, little thing. I feel like a big lardass. I feel like I’m almost a damn mainsail in this wind. Plus she’s on her light, new Specialized bike. Even she can pick it up, with one hand. I’m on the sturdy Bianchi commuter bike, which probably weighs twice what hers does. Then I outweigh her by sixty pounds.

A mainsail, I tell you.

Mount Vernon itself is great fun. I take the new camera, but sadly don’t have that many opportunities for pictures. I’m on the bike, pedaling and steering for so much of the trip. Then there’s no photography allowed in the house itself, the tour of which takes about forty-five minutes. But I snap a few pix.

Clearly the lawn has been visited recently by many geese. Goose shit is green, somehow disturbingly green. I of course manage to traipse in some.

Threepennyjane writes about riding Cappi, what with Doc having been semi-retired. The big surprise for me is learning that Cappi isn’t his actual entire name, but that it’s short for Cappuccino (or Cappucino as it’s spelled in the photo from the barn or the tack room or wherever one hangs saddles).

So then I wonder what the heck a cappuccino is, besides being the familiar coffee drink. Does it have anything to do with horses? First off, it sounds like it’s the diminutive form of something, which something I guess is capucin. Although beats me what a capucin is. I think maybe it’s like a chevalier or some other European martial character.

But then again, the cheval- part of chevalier refers to the horse itself. So then maybe the capucin- part is a horse reference in and of itself? It could be simply that the horse himself is the color of cappuccino, and maybe this is another instance where I’ve just gone off the deep end, similar to the Jane Connell/Threepenny Opera fiasco.

It turns out that I’m confused, as usual, in all sorts of ways. A Capuchin is a member of a particular Franciscan order. Monastic, not martial. And the name come from their hooded robes, cappuccio in Italian. I’m still not sure where the coffee comes into play, unless that refers to the color of the robes.

I took the plunge a little earlier this afternoon and bought a digital SLR. Went with the Nikon D40. I thought long and hard about the Canon Digital Rebel, since it’s the bestselling DSLR at Amazon, or the Pentax K100D, since I love my old manual K1000 and have two lenses that theoretically should fit the digital. But in the end I figured that if I’m committing myself to one flavor lens for the next couple decades, if I’m spending this much money, I really should go with the Nikon lenses.

But I didn’t just go for the standard 50mm lens, choosing instead the 18-135mm zoom. I could have gotten an 18-55mm and a 55-200mm set for less money, but I didn’t want to have to swap out lenses. The SLR is going to be bulky enough, especially taking it to Ireland for our bike tour. One lens is enough trouble. Plus it’s a better lens than either of the two. Better optics.

We leave a little before 5:30. Seventeenth to Potomac to Eye to the Southeast-Southwest Freeway to Maine Ave – around the Tidal Basin – onto Independence, turns into Ohio Dr – around the Lincoln Memorial – becomes Rock Creek Parkway, up to the Mass Ave exit, on Mass – past the British Embassy, the Vatican Embassy (the guy holding up the Catholic Priests Molest Boys sign there as per usual), and the Naval Observatory – up to the Cathedral, right on Wisconsin, park on the east side between Macomb and Newark.

We walk up half a block to cross at the light at Newark, and walking down Wisconsin towards us, to cross same time as we are, is Washington Ballet dancer Brianne Bland. I ask her if she’s grabbing something to eat before the show. Between shows, she tells me. They’ve already had a matinée today. I tell her we’re big fans. Dawn relates how she’s had a subscription going back to the Mary Day era. The year Brianne Bland arrived, matter of fact.

Brianne heads into the Giant while we mosey further down to the other end of the block to Cactus Cantina. Despite being so early in the evening, it’s totally jam packed. Or maybe it’s packed because it’s so early. Lots and lots of kids. Little kids. Then there’s a party of sixteen checking in ahead of us. They’re told to wait. We get seated right away, nimble party of two that we are.

The place thins out a bit as the families with little ones finish up and leave. Still pretty crowded though. Dawn nurses her one frozen margarita throughout dinner; I polish off two on the rocks. We make our way out and up Wisconsin to Porter to the Washington Ballet Studios, for 7×7: Love Duets.

I love seeing the one show annually here at the studios. The performance space is so very small, so intimate. There’s all of like six rows of seating. We find seats in row two, down on the floor before the risers, to the extreme right. We try saving a seat for Becky, but eventually give up. She never does make it.

First up is Desire, music Spiegel Im Spiegel by Arvo Part, choreography by Steven Mills, the artistic director for Ballet Austin. Dancing is Elizabeth Gaither and Chip Coleman. You know I loves me my Elizabeth Gaither. And the music is haunting and lovely, piano and violin. One of my favorites of the night.

Second is Say Hello, Wave Goodbye, music the song of the same name by Soft Cell, choreography by Adam Hougland. Dancing are Jade Payette, Morgan Rose, Jason Hartley, and Tamas Krizsa. It’s an up-tempo leaping around work, with a bit of annoying little waving hello and goodbye literalism in it. The joke is that the guys run off together at the end, leaving the women stunned. It’s mostly forgettable, except that Jade Payette is one of my new favorites, so it’s good to see her. And Morgan Rose works really well in it too. She’s never been much on my radar, but something about her normal Anglo prettiness works really well with the early 80s costume. She just looks so right in the part.

Next is Out of Time, music Piano Concerto in G Major by Ravel, choreography by Edward Liang. Dancing is our new friend Brianne Bland, with Runqiao Du. Again no surprise that it’s one of my favorites. Classical ballet danced to classical music. Duh.

Fourth is a generally awful modern piece to beautiful Handel, from his opera Tolomeo, re d’Egitto (Ptolemy, King of Egypt). Called Aria: 1&2, appropriately enough since the music is two songs, Stille amare and Ch’io parta? It’s a weird abstract piece, with three men and one woman. Isn’t this supposed to be seven love duets?

Back after intermission with 2 Long 2 Love, music by Phillip Glass (in a good mood), choreography by Nejla Y. Yatkin, danced by Laura Urgellés, Luis Torres, and Elizabeth Gaither. The theme works well here, with Luis and Elizabeth dancing together while Laura is clearly the jilted lover, dancing alone. I’m glad the choreography isn’t too animated, given that the floor is carpeted with (fake, paper) rose petals.

Sixth is Falling Away with You, music Ruled by Secrecy and Falling Away with You by Muse, choreography by Washington Ballet’s own Jared Nelson. Dancing are Runqiao Du, Aurora Dickie, Tyler Savoie, and Liza Balough. Best I can say is that the women have nice bright red costumes.

Last is easily my least favorite, Last Night on Earth, insufferable music MB by Apocalyptica, choreography by Mark Dendy. The music is like a string quartet plugged in and with distortion like through a fuzzbox or something. Not especially pleasant. And practically the whole company is dancing. All too much.

We’re out the door pretty quickly. In the car and turned around heading home, we see Jared Nelson walking down Wisconsin Avenue. Then a minute later we notice that we’re waiting at a light next to Luis Torres in his Nissan. Ballet celebrity spotting is so much easier up at the studios. We never see the dancers offstage at the Kennedy Center.