Baby animal love

I have just been introduced to one of the cutest things ever. According to the BBC, these baby orangutans and tiger cubs were abandoned at birth. When they showed up at a zoo in Indonesia, they were put in a room together. And now they're inseparable!

Sanjaya, what were you thinking?

Every other guy listened to the judges' critiques last week and made adjustments to their performances accordingly. Every other one. Why didn't you, Sanjaya? I thought you were so great during the auditions and during Hollywood week. And now two weeks in a row, you've blown it. STOP LETTING YOUR SISTER CHOOSE YOUR SONGS. She is obviously trying to sabotage you. And this thing about picking an old song in honour of your grandfather? You are letting your family bring you down.

Vague nostalgia

Senegal, where I lived for five months in the beginning of 2005, is now in the middle of their presidential elections. It looks like the incumbent, Abdoulaye Wade, has an early lead in the polls, but the question is whether he will get over 50% of the vote out of a field of 15 candidates. If he doesn't, there will be a runoff election, and I am very curious to see the results. I am not a huge fan of Mr. Wade, who at 80 years old is 23 years older than the average life expectancy for a Senegalese male. He's not awful, and the media likes to talk about how Senegal is one of the stablest and most peaceful democracies in West Africa. But he's not great, either. And his wife is white, which has always sort of bothered me. I realize that this is hypocritical of me, since I believe that people should marry whomever they please and since I am white and dated a Senegalese man while I lived there myself. But in a country where most people who want to be successful end up moving to Europe and where white people are seen as the best ticket to a good life (such that strangers constantly hit on them in the streets of Dakar), I think it would be nice for the president to be married to someone actually from that country. It would be nice to send the message to Senegalese women that they are valuable, worthy wives, not just for Senegalese men who are struggling to make a living for themselves but also for the country's leaders and some of its most successful citizens. Not that I'm suggesting that a woman should define her self-worth through her ability to marry a successful man, but it's not nice to see the president of the country propagating the idea that to really get ahead, one has to go to Europe.

Then again, there's always the possibility that he and Viviane Wade are just madly in love and it was a match made in heaven. Who knows?

The other thing about Senegal that has been popping up a lot for me recently is Kangol hats. Maybe I'm just out of the loop, but I had never heard of Kangol before or since living in Senegal. But while I was there, I had a very good friend, Babacar, who had a couple of Kangol hats that he wore pretty much every day. Babacar was in general quite fashionable, and he had the best job ever: he worked as a "security guard" on a property that had absolutely nothing worth guarding. I visited him at work a couple times, and all did all day was lie on a mattress in a little hut and sleep. I have to say, I would love a job like that. He had dropped out of school quite young and refused to return despite his mother's desperate attempts to get him educated (including somehow getting him new papers that listed him as four years younger than he actually was so that he could be re-enrolled in first grade). So he could barely read, but he was über stylish. And he wore Kangol hats, which I have associated very strongly with him since.

This weekend I saw at least three different people in three different places in DC wearing Kangol hats. And it reminded me of Babacar. It's been a Senegal-heavy last couple of days.

This is not just because I happen to love purple.

At the risk of turning this into a pop culture blog (what with so many posts about American Idol already), I just wanted to say that Reese Witherspoon's Oscar dress last night was gorgeous, and she did a great job with her hair and makeup too. I won't go into details about the fashion horrors of the evening (excuse me, Beyonce? And Anne Hathaway?), but Reese was one of the only people who really looked good.


Also, as an honourable mention, Abigail Breslin was completely adorable in a rather unfashionable dress that reeked of ten year old girls choosing their own dress for the biggest formal event of their lives (though apparently she was in Jimmy Choo shoes and Harry Winston jewels, so she is obviously actually more fashionable than I am).


She looked really, really happy all night long, and was totally classy and composed during two difficult moments: 1) When her co-presenter, Jaden Christopher Syre Smith (Will and Jada Pinkett Smith's son, whose name is unfortunately long) tried to skip straight from the announcement of the nominees for the first award to the second award without announcing the winner of the first award, and 2) When Jennifer Hudson (deservedly) beat her out for Best Supporting Actress. She's only ten, but when the winner was announced, she smiled calmly and applauded, and looked like she really meant it.

American Idol contestants I like, updated

I just discovered that those little pictures from the American Idol website of the top 24 contestants (the ones I used in my last entry) are actually links to little surveys that they all filled out. So I read them all. By the end (actually, very soon after the beginning), they all started to sound alike. To be fair, the questionnaire was not exactly creativity-inducing. But I just have to say that Sanjaya Malakar came near the end, which did not help him as my eyes were starting to cross by then. But then I read his survey. He was the only person to say that if he couldn't sing, the talent he would most like to have would be singing (the obvious answer). When everyone else said that something people would be surprised to learn about them was something deep and meaningful, he said that he can independently raise both corners of his upper lip. When other people talked about what a life-changing experience this was, he said that he's scared he'll never be able to go to the grocery store again without people recognizing him. And he didn't mention God once.

His performance last Tuesday sucked, but his survey has put him back on my list of American Idol Contestants I Like. At least until next Tuesday, when we'll see what happens.

American Idol contestants I like

Having never watched American Idol before, and therefore knowing nothing about the voting habits of the American public, I won't risk actual predictions here. But after watching last night and tonight, I have actual opinions about these people, and I do want to say which contestants I like and why.

Phil Stacey is the guy who missed the birth of his own child to audition for American Idol. That's a cute, if slightly upsetting and/or nauseating story. But he didn't mean to do it, and I really liked his song last night, and the clincher was that his wife was in the audience and completely and totally adorable.

Stephanie Edwards opened for the girls tonight, and I thought she was amazing. She was energetic, and you could tell even from the TV that she had completely captured the audience. And her hair is super intense.

During Hollywood week I would never, ever in a million years have thought that I would actually want Sundance Head to do well. But yesterday I watched him sing, and I enjoyed his song (perhaps this is a testament to my complete lack of musical ability). And then I was really, really sad when the judges ripped him apart. And he looked truly devastated as well. And then, despite myself, I started to like him. And now I want him to do well. Although I still don't really want him to win it all.

Blake Lewis did a good job with that Keane song last night. When I first saw him audition, I was unimpressed with the whole beatboxing thing, but it grew on me during the group song, and I actually kind of missed it last night. He definitely missed a few notes, but the Keane version isn't exactly perfect either, and that's part of the charm. I think it worked last night too.

Okay, Gina Glocksen is really cute (and is that her brother or her boyfriend or what in the audience with the same red streaks in his hair?), and her mother's reaction to her performance was completely adorable as well. Her performance wasn't perfect (and my opinion of it was probably helped by the fact that I really like that song), but she has a great voice and I don't get tired of watching her and learning more about her.

I think at this point it's basically impossible not to like Jordin Sparks. She's a junior in high school, she's totally bouncy, she's really cute, she has a lot of confidence without seeming arrogant, she is full of the youthful conviction (listen to me, like I'm so old at 22) that she can have it all and she can have it all now, and she's actually a fantastic singer. Plus, I love the curls.

I realize that there isn't one single person who can resist LaKisha Jones right now, since she blew all three judges away with her performance at the end of the night and she has an adorable daughter. And I like how she tells her story but doesn't try to cutesy it up to get sympathy. Like when she said today was her daughter's birthday and said they had talked on the phone and Ryan Seacrest asked if her daughter had offered any advice, she was just like, "No." And that was it. The kid is four. Of course she didn't give advice. But let me just say that I hope that LaKisha wins, and I hope that in two years there are famous literary agents fighting to sign her for a bestselling book deal. Because she really has the story to match her amazing voice.

Melinda Doolittle is completely cute, and much more relatable as a backup singer still learning to sing in front than Brandon Rogers, who told us the same story yesterday. Her voice is amazing and she has this really sweet smile and she looks shocked whenever anyone gives her a compliment. Maybe I'll be sick of that by the end of the season. But for now, I think it's great.

Tragic omission: I watched Sanjaya Malakar on his audition and through Hollywood week, and I agreed with Simon that he was much better than his sister, and I think he's really cute and has a great voice, but his song last night completely sucked. And I knew a third of the way through the song that Simon was going to make a rude joke about the irony of the lyrics saying "I don't want to bore you" when the performance was totally boring. And anyone who has watched even one episode of American Idol could have told you very easily that nobody should ever pick a song like that, much less compound the damage by setting Simon up for a really easy joke. I couldn't help but wonder if Sanjaya's sister, who apparently basically picked the song for him, was trying to get him knocked out early. I know he says family is the most important thing, but maybe she disagrees. Anyway, maybe he'll survive a terrible performance and get to come back and try again next week, but his performance last night was bad enough that he has been knocked off my list. And let's hope that if he is still around next week, he doesn't let his sister pick his song again.

Velvet vs. Velvet

The news over the past couple days has been full of the story of the three people and their dog who fell off a ledge on Mt. Hood and were just rescued. This is lovely and I'm glad that they didn't die. But what really gets me about this story is the dog. Not because everyone loves hearing about animals that help save humans' lives, but because this dog not only has the same name, Velvet, as my childhood dog, but is actually the same breed and looks very similar.

Velvet the Mt. Hood rescue dog:

Velvet my childhood pet (the black one):


Granted, they are in different positions in these photos, which makes it hard to compare, but you can see that they had the same colouring and the same face shape. CNN says that Velvet the rescue dog is a black lab, but I am fairly certain that, like Velvet my childhood dog, Velvet the rescue dog is a black lab mix, as purebreds have squarer heads.

Velvet my childhood dog died when I was seventeen, a month after I left home to spend my senior year of high school in France. That was more than five years ago, but I miss him.

I long for metered cabs.

Okay, here's one thing that I really hate about DC. It was never an issue before because I didn't really take cabs. But sometimes now I do, and I hate, but seriously completely hate, the system they have for fares. They don't do meters like normal people. Instead they have zones. Which means that if you know the zones and don't mind walking a few blocks, you can save a few dollars by telling the cab to stop just before the border of a zone. But it also means that if you don't know where the zones are, you could go five feet too far and end up paying more.

But my real problem with the zones is that they aren't clear. The standard zone map posted in all taxis doesn't show where the zone borders are relative to all other streets, so unless you have an intricate knowledge of DC's street grid and/or only travel to places you know very well, it's impossible to know how many zones you'll be traveling in or how much the ride will cost. And it's therefore really easy for a cab driver to cheat you. I had a taxi driver once try to charge me $17.95 for a two-zone ride that should have cost $8.80. Proponents of the system claim that it's better than a meter system because it's very exact, but that only applies if you know exactly how many zones you're traveling in and are prepared to argue with your driver about it.

I like metered cabs. I want a system of metered cabs. The only non-metered cab system I've ever liked was the one in Dakar, and that's because it was in Dakar and therefore foreign and fun. And I liked bargaining with cab drivers and pretending to walk away when they wouldn't give me my price until they caved in and allowed it. And I especially liked that the most one ever paid for a cab, even if going all the way across town (which usually involved driving down several alleys that were really just glorified sand pits) was 1000 CFA, the equivalent of $2. So unless DC is going to start giving me the option of arguing cab drivers down to $2 for a ride across town, they need to switch to a metered system double-quick.

Not to turn this into some sort of celebrity-watch blog, but...

Britney Spears shaved her own head completely bald? Really? I mean, really?

There will be a sit-in tomorrow in Conference Room A.

It's been precipitating basically all day today, your standard wintry mix that is to be expected when the sky is overcast and the temperature is in the mid-thirties. But they are calling for at least a quarter of an inch of ice tonight, and so the federal government closed at two.

This is fine, in fact more than fine, because we follow the federal government for our schedule of openings and closings. So when the government announced its early closing, our office manager sent out an email saying that we could all leave at two o'clock as well. However, if we didn't go home and do work, we had to charge those last three hours to our vacation time. Even though the federal government is closed, and their employees get paid for this afternoon without having to waste vacation time.

Then, after I'd been at Torsten's for over an hour, working, our office manager sent out an email from our headquarters in Boston. Apparently, if the government is closed, we are closed as well, and this is considered a paid workday whether or not we actually work while we stay home. We are just supposed to divide the time for the day among the projects we usually charge our time to on our timesheets.

But apparently this clarification from Boston only applies starting the next time the federal government closes due to inclement weather. Today's afternoon "off" still requires us to use vacation time.

I feel cheated.

Really cool architecture

The American Institute of Architects recently posted the results of their America's Favorite Architecture poll—150 American structures that are, for the most part, very cool. Surprisingly, both my favourite and my least favourite (based solely on the pictures) are both Disney structures. My favourite is number 99 on the list, the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles:


I know very little about acoustics, but I bet the acoustics in there are amazing, or at the very least different.

My least favourite is number 70, the Dolphin and Swan Hotels at Disney World in Orlando:


This is just a hideous pink and green building (although I guess that's appropriate for Florida, where that colour combination seems to be very popular).

And my other favourite (or second favourite, honourable mention, whatever you want to call it) is number 41, the Hearst Residence of Hearst Castle in San Simeon, California:


Notably, the Hearst Residence was designed by Julia Morgan, the first woman accepted to the Ecole des Beaux-Arts.

They should just put Dannielynn in therapy now.

Anna Nicole Smith just died. Looks like it might have been suicide (maybe due to accumulated stress of the paternity dispute over her new baby, the lawsuit against her and TrimSpa, the recent death of her 20-year-old son, and the dispute over her house in the Bahamas). Although it seems that a lot of people are suspicious of her husband, too (Sidenote: Is he her husband? CNN says yes; Wikipedia says no and Entertainment Tonight refers to him as her "partner"). And Wikinews says that she had been feeling ill for at least a day. So who knows? I guess now we won't be hearing quite as much about the astronaut love triangle. Or about other, less important news, like the war.

Wow. That's crazy. And her baby is only a few months old. I guess now that paternity test matters more than ever, since the father will probably have custody of the child. Unless, of course, it turns out that she was killed by the baby's father.

Giant bunnies change lives.

My boss came over to my desk today to ask me something. Mid-sentence, she looked up, caught sight of the picture of the giant bunny that Matt hung on my wall last week, and shrieked, "Is that thing real?" I thought that she was horrified and/or disgusted by it, but in fact she thought it would be perfect for her teenage son, who apparently has always wished that the family pet bunny were bigger.

Meanwhile, my high school ex-boyfriend claims that this bunny has changed his life.

See, this is what I was striving for when I started this blog. Life-changing, family-dispute-resolving posts.

I'm glad to be of service.

Giant bunny!

Matt (my coworker) cut a photograph out of the Washington Post this morning and hung it on my wall. Apparently he did it because he thought it would scare me, but in fact I found it incredibly adorable. Unfortunately, the online version of the article doesn't seem to have this picture, so I had to scan it in as a PDF. It's not the highest-quality image ever, but it's still worth sharing.


How could such a cute (and still alive, don't worry) bunny possibly be scary?