Blog on hiatus

Sorry for the long vacation. I've been a bit busy with other writing projects. I hope to come back to Red Panda Zone soon, but in the meantime, check out my blogging in other outlets:

City Desk
Black Plastic Bag

Yet another problem created by children

Michael Moore recently convinced me that, for the good of the nation, it's time for the government to regulate health care. However, I would like to go one step farther, and ask that our representatives in Congress stand up to "big citrus" and start regulating the marketing of summer's signature beverage. Yes, I am talking about lemonade.

Lemonade is a drink made from lemon juice that has been diluted with water and sweetened with sugar. No, carnival workers, it is not powder-drink-mix "lemonade" that has been garnished with half a smashed lemon. No, el Tamarindo, it does not come out of a soda machine. Every other restaurant I come across claims to serve "fresh squeezed," but then gives me some bitter, urine-yellow concoction.

I know where their confusion comes from. I saw the root of the problem just the other day, in Columbia Heights. Some kids had overturned a cardboard box and scrawled "fresh squeezed lemonade, 50 cents" across the front. But were they up all night, squeezing lemons? I think not.

I'd write more, but I think I'm going to try to convince an actual paying publication to let me pen this philippic. So far, I have found only one restaurant in D.C. that has actual lemonade: Regent Thai. If anyone comes across any others, let me know.

The heat is causing people to see double

I am dying to meet my twin. She lives somewhere in D.C., I think, because when I went to Union Station the other day to buy postage stamps, the lady at the counter said, "weren't you just in here?" I assured her that I was not. She said that someone who looked just like me, down to my hair color and glasses, had come in just hours before and bought postcard stamps.

I'd chalk this up as a random coincidence, except that the same thing happened last week. I went to pick up my new contact lenses, and the optician thought that I had been by earlier that afternoon.

Perhaps I have a generic look, but that doesn't explain why people confuse me with my friend Sybil, who looks nothing like me. Some of my best friends call me Sybil on occasion. And when the two of us worked at the same office, my own boss routinely called me by her name, and visa-versa.

This alarmed Sybil because I was a bit of a slacker--tending to come in late, or not at all--whereas she was a superstar, often working well into the night. Sybil feared that I was sullying her good name.

One time, when I was in college, I had to take steps to keep another Sadie from sullying my good name. I had never met another Sadie before (besides cats and grandmas) so I was excited when I learned that Sadie Smith* had matriculated. I entertained fantasies of our becoming best friends. People would refer to us as "the Sadies" and we'd arrive at keg parties together, perhaps in matching outfits.

Sadie Smith had no such aspirations, I discovered. When I ran into her at a party, and introduced myself, she said hi, and sounded a bit bored. "We're both Sadies!" I explained. "Mmmm hmmm," she noted.

Clearly, Smith was not Sadie material. And a little bit of research showed my hunch to be correct: Her born name, it turned out, was Rainbow Sky.** Her parents had been hippies.

I helpfully spread this information around my small campus, and soon enough I was back to being the only Sadie in town.

* Name changed to protect the innocent. Also, I can't remember her last name.
** I actually do remember this detail, and it’s even more dippy than the pseudonym I made up, trust me.

What Adams Morgan and Alabama have in common

The first time my mom went refrigerator shopping, she strode into the Sears and asked to be directed to the "icebox" section. Baffled, the salesman led my mom to a shelf of coolers. My mom explained that she was looking for a much bigger cooler, one with a plug. According to my mom, she had to demonstrate the appliance's characteristic hum to a crowd of amused Sears employees, before they figured out how to translate her rural vocabulary.

I now realize that "icebox" is a perfectly apt name for a refrigerator--particularly mine. While your modern fridge is self-defrosting, mine coats over with layer upon layer of ice. This process gradually decreases the size of the freezer, which used to have the luxurious dimensions of a shoebox. It now can hold only one bag of French fries.

Quarts of ice cream, therefore, are completely out of the question, so I stash my Ben and Jerry's in the roomy freezers of my friends. Currently I have mango sorbet at Annette's apartment and cookies and cream in Sybil's freezer. I used to have chocolate-fudge-ripple at my friend Tori's condo, but her husband ate it. That's the risk you take when annexing appliances.

One time, my friends Zak and Missy, gave me a huge bucket of homemade almond ice cream for my birthday. I hated to see it go to waste, but there was no way it could fit into my freezer. I was left with only one choice: I ate the entire thing in one sitting.

Luckily, the French aren't a critical people

Tomorrow, I'll be playing at the French Embassy, with my friend Mark. We have yet to practice for this performance and it's increasingly looking like we are going to wing it--a plan that doesn't seem to bother Mark. I'm a little concerned, myself.

That's because Mark is steeped in the debauched worlds of rock and jazz, whereas I spent 13 years playing in orchestras and other classical ensembles--groups that tend to have a hardcore attitude about rehearsing. In college orchestra, for instance, we'd practice for an entire semester to prepare for a single performance. As a result, I felt pretty relaxed on the night of that concert. Even if I completely blanked, it wouldn't be a disaster--I was be just one violinist in a sea of thirty, and right in front of me was sheet music that detailed every single note I was supposed to play.

Compare that to the plan for Friday: There I'll be one of precisely two people on stage, and I'll be relying on some dark corner of my brain to come up with the notes. (No wonder rock stars are drunks.)

Unfortunately, my neurons have a checkered past when it comes to clutch-situation performances. Yes, brain, I am still mad about that 6th grade class debate. I'd prepared for weeks, writing animals-rights organizations, digesting their rhetoric and practicing in front of my two golden retreivers. On debate day, I came armed with index cards of arguments and piles of harrowing, factory-farm images. As Ghant--my arch-nemesis--gave his opening salvo, I sat on the edge of my seat, ready to convert everyone to vegetarianism. But when it came time for me to talk, my brain decided that the best course of action would be to cry. On closed-circut TV. In front of the entire middle school.

Don't worry, I probably won't break down in front of the French tomorrow. I am 15 years older, much more confident, and my skin problems have cleared up. The free Champaign will help too.

Weather: Great for small talk and blog posts

I almost always know when it’s going to rain, and I don’t even have trick knee. What I do have is weather.com, which I check the moment I wake up in the morning and before I go to bed at night.

My obsession with weather comes from the fact that I am from central Florida, which has a pretty predictable climate: Hot and humid, with a chance of hurricane. In the summer, it rains buckets every day from 3:00-3:30.

In comparison, the weather here in DC is capricious. If I don’t consult with weather.com, I might find myself wearing flip-flops in a snowstorm. But, thanks to my obsessive forecast tracking, I almost always have appropriate attire, and an umbrella on-hand in case of rain.

Unfortunately, my friends rarely do, which means that I can:

A. Use the umbrella while my friend gets soaked, which makes me look like a selfish asshole to passersby.
B. Attempt to share the umbrella with my friend, and we both get soaked.

The other day, when I was out in the rain with my friend Sybil, we first tried option B, leaving us both wet and my arm hurting. Then we moved to option A, and I felt guilty as she got increasingly cold and wet. I mentioned this to Sybil, who tried to rectify the situation by talking loudly about how she enjoys walking in the rain, every time a fellow pedestrian walked within an earshot of us.

So here’s a PSA for my DC friends: Pack an umbrella on Monday, Thursday and Friday this week. And to all my readers who are looking into buying an illegal red panda: They cost $11.95, plus shipping and handling.

Will flirt for carbs

Men in bars are rarely inspired to buy me drinks. A mysterious stranger has yet to pick up my dinner tab. But, this morning, my charm and good looks did garner me some extra cream cheese.

I went to the Dupont Circle Cosi for breakfast, and I chatted with the man behind the counter about the weather. Getting down to business, he asked, “How would you like your Squagel™, sexy?” The Cosi employee then proceeded to slather on the cream cheese, look deep into my eyes, and ask if he had put on enough.

Enough for breakfast? Sure! Enough to get my phone number? Hardly. The guy at the High Noon used to do much better. When I worked near Farragut Square, I’d stop in before work every day and order a bagel with tomato and goat cheese. After a just a few mornings of pleasantries, the cashier started undercharging me. After a few weeks, he stopped charging me entirely.

As he shooed me past the register, I felt like a low-rate call girl. I never intended to flirt for breakfast. I just have a tendency to chat with strangers, and they often seem to think that means I’d also like to sleep with them.

Things got awkward at that High Noon when the cashier started asking me about my weekend plans. Luckily, around then I got a new job and a new breakfast place.

I don’t know what I am going to do about this Cosi situation, though. I may need to develop a surly morning persona or start wearing disguises. If that doesn’t work, drastic measures may be in order: I might have to switch to the Cosi that is one block farther away.