ChrisMoreau.com

My 8-year-old daughter Helen plays softball. This is her third season (seasons run both spring and fall, so she’s been at it for a little over a year now). She has an arm and can hit the ball pretty well. If she’s not the best player on her team, then she’s certainly the most consistent and among the top players. It’s nice to see her really enjoying the sport. She played three of four seasons of soccer, but in the end it just wasn’t her sport. She played for the social aspect of it.

The usual MO for this league is that a series of games are played on a few fields over the course of a Saturday morning and afternoon, the first one at 9, the second one at 10:30, and so on. This past weekend, Helen’s team was the first on the field for a 9 am game. They played another team coached by a friend. The game was particularly well matched.

At this level an inning consists of everyone on the team batting once. We don’t officially keep score but the girls usually have a pretty good idea of how they’re doing. This game was fun to watch; both teams batted and fielded well. Not everyone scored – every now and again the team on the field would get the ball to first before the runner got there. There was even a double play where a girl caught an infield pop fly and tossed it to first. Great fun.

The game progressed and it’s obvious that no one was watching the clock. Helen’s team was supposed to be done by 10 am and have vacated the field 15 minutes after that. At 10:15 we had just finished the top of the third (most games only last three innings). As the girls ran in from the field, the coach from one of the teams that were up after our game tromped onto the field and declared the game over in a defiant and nasty tone of voice.

I’d like to say again, clearly the coaches of both teams on the field for the first game were guilty of poor time management. But this guy had the nerve to stomp out like a petulant child. He had not at any time pointed out to either of the coaches that they were running late. He didn’t ask what they intended to do. He simply decided that he was right, that our coaches were wrong and that was that. He was aggressive, he was nasty and he was a jerk.

Then he had the nerve to complain via email to the commissioner of the league about our coach’s behavior.

Softball is a game, it’s only a game. In this case it’s a game played by a gaggle of under 10 year old girls. Our children learn by our example. My first thought when he got out on the field was to get up in his grill and see if he was really what he appeared, but I thought better of it and let the coaches handle it. They did, and we vacated the field, but not without some parting shots from the jerk. To say that I hold him in low esteem is an understatement.

All in all he handled it very poorly. If he has anger management issues, he should go home and kick his dog. There is no place on a little girl’s softball field for that kind of behavior. Grow up.

I live in a neighborhood outside the beltway in the northwest corner of Springfield, VA. If I throw a rock west I hit Burke; if I throw a rock north I hit Fairfax. It’s a nice place called King’s Park. The streets names all have some relevance to London, England. There’s Piccadilly, Southampton, Thames, Trafalgar.

My wife and I moved here ten years ago when the neighborhood was transforming and we had no kids. The empty-nesters were leaving and it was unclear whether the homes would be taken up by younger people with children or perhaps turn into a rental community. We really anguished over this when we bought, but finally bit the bullet. Our house was among the more expensive for sale in the neighborhood at the time because it was well maintained plus it had several renovations and updates that were not yet common on the streets of King’s Park. It worked out well for us because right after we bought, the housing market took off like a Fourth of July rocket. Lucky timing.

It has been interesting to watch the neighborhood change. In the past five years or so, as the housing market heated up and made affordable housing more and more scarce, some entrepreneurial souls figured out that they could run hotels for recent immigrants out of the available houses.

It didn’t happen all by itself; it took a number of planets lining up just right to make it possible. Affordable housing was (and is) in short supply in Northern Virginia. Interest rates were low, especially the teaser rates. Housing values appreciated to a point where people who might not otherwise have sold were happy to take their money and run.

We had one of these on my cul-de-sac. A Hispanic gentleman purchased a split foyer house and renovated it so that he and his family could live on the top floor and he could sublet the rooms on the bottom floor. He chopped up the bottom floor into four or five bedrooms each fitted with a cable connection. There is also a single bathroom and a kitchenette down there.

As neighbors, they pretty much kept to themselves. On the up side the lawn was always neatly mowed (something I can’t say for some other owners, like the guy who only mows his back yard twice a year whether it needs it or not), the people were friendly if a little standoffish, and each morning as I drove to work, I watched the men roll out the basement door to go to work, either into a waiting work van or on a bicycle. It wasn’t the nightmare you hear about in other neighborhoods where a dozen drunken belligerent illegals are hanging out on the front porch drinking 40s and whizzing on the lawn.

Then the housing bubble burst and the house was foreclosed on. It emptied over night. Another neighbor and I went down to check the house out, to make sure there wasn’t a dead body in there or anything. He even brought a couple bug bombs that we left on our way out to keep the vermin count down to a reasonable level. The house sold at auction this weekend and I hope a family moves in. We’ll see.

When King’s Park was built, the developer put in two swimming pools. One was down at the end of my street. That made our life easy because we could walk to the pool and during the warm months, that’s what we did. Four nights out of seven we could be found swimming at Royal Pool, dining on sandwiches or pizza or leftovers. Royal Pool was a funky little neighborhood pool that was run on a shoestring budget, a budget that was largely generated by us selling hot dogs to ourselves.

The other pool in the neighborhood, Parliament Pool, was much better funded and we at Royal felt that the Parliament Pool people were a bit elitist, looking down their noses at us. Ultimately, there simply were not enough families to support two pools in Kings Park and Royal Pool, being the weak sister, finally bit the dust. Now everyone goes to Parliament and although it’s a nicer pool than Royal was, it’s nearly always crowded. We still go to the pool almost nightly during the summer, but we have to drive now since it’s so far away.

It’s interesting to watch renovations in the neighborhood. We’re now to the point where just about every house has replaced the old single pane, sliding windows. Many of the screened in porches have either been updated or closed in to create a sunroom. People have added on to varying degrees and the additions really change the way the houses look. On the one extreme, there’s the two-story split foyer that popped the roof off and added an entire third story. It’s a nice addition, but probably a little big for the neighborhood. Across the middle of the continuum are the bump-outs, the extra room additions, the new garages with a room above, the broad wrap-around porch that increases the usable living space. These are all in line with the neighborhood and each of them adds a personal touch to the house. They become more like homes and less like houses. The other end of the spectrum are the rentals that have no updates. Fortunately, there are few of these.

In all, it’s a nice neighborhood. I like living here. We’re considering adding on. People come and people go; the market ebbs and flows. But we like it and it looks like were going to stay. Drop by for a visit.

Brian, the drummer in my band is leaving the mighty Myopic Ramjet. Our Monster Skins Basher, the one who has continually dated ridiculously young women, is leaving Washington DC and following his girlfriend to Rhode Island. This surprised me not a little mostly due to the fact that he’s always been a relatively short-term-relationship kind of guy.

Most of the guys I know have that one hold-out friend, the one who is still on the dating scene, the one who brings home a different girl with some regularity, the one who still harbors the bachelor outlook on life. I’ll be losing mine.

In addition to the loss of a friend, I’m losing a band mate of over a decade. When Bob the Bass Player and I started the band years ago, we had a very Spinal Tap-like experience with drummers. We managed to gain and lose drummers with some regularity. Drummer number three managed to stay on the scene for a few years in the mid ‘90s, but then it was hit-and-miss for a while until number seven stuck. And boy did he stick. It has been over ten years. Now the process starts all over again.

He’s not leaving until July, but we don’t have any gigs lined up until then (when we’ll have three in a row) so for all intents and purposes, he’s gone. Besides, in his head he’s already gone – at least from the band. That’s cool. Commitment and moving are big changes for him and we’re an easy issue to not worry about.

One of the strategic problems this poses is that the band is also losing our rehearsal space. Brian’s basement is where my gear lived. I’ve managed to accumulate a fair amount of gear over the years, not just guitar gear but PA gear as well. So we’ll be looking for a rehearsal space in addition to a drummer. Not sure yet how I’m going to handle that. I’m the unofficial den mother for our band and ultimately it’ll fall on me to try to find a solution to the rehearsal space problem. The other guys will help, but I suspect I’ll be on point. Sure, we could rent a space but I absolutely believe there is free space out there to be had. Somewhere.

Years ago we rehearsed at night in a big meeting room in a local architect’s office. There was no one in the building at night so we didn’t have to worry about being noisy. We were allotted a closet to store our stuff in so the gear could live there. All in all, it was a perfect situation. I’ll bet there’s another small office out there waiting for us to come along, or maybe a basement, something. I’ll have to be creative and start poking around.

In the mean time we’re searching for a new drummer. If you can swing a beat or know someone who can, point them in my direction. Check out the band site or have them send me an email at moreau [at] chrismoreau [dot] com. If you have any ideas for space, drop me a line.

The search begins…

Some of my favorite lyrics, old and new (mostly old):

• I got a bad mustache, a reoccurring rash, and not a lot of cash, I spend it on my stash
  Man it’s good to be a geek
  Hail to the Geek, Deaf Pedestrians
• You call me sweet like I’m some kind of cheese
  Sweet Lady, Queen
• They look like cows but they’re water buffalos, Everybody’s heading for the Watusi Rodeo
  Watusi Rodeo, Guadalcanal Diary
• It is you, oh yeah; it is you, oh yeah…
  Pressure drop, oh pressure drop, oh pressure’s gonna drop on you you you
  Pressure Drop, Toots & the Maytalls (note: best reggae song ever!)
• Wouldn’t it be exciting to be writing while we’re fighting so the point isn’t lost here?
  Big Chair, Reacharound
• Is there gas in the car? Yes there’s gas in the car.
  Kid Charlemagne, Steely Dan
• Love and hate was in the air like pollen from a flower, somewhere in April-time they add another hour
  Celebrated Summer, Husker Du
• Pablo Picasso was never called an asshole, not like you
  Pablo Picasso, the Modern Lovers
• End of the Spring I hear she comes back
  Hi, hi hi hi there… Them summer days, Those Summer days
  Hot Fun in the Summer Time, Sly and the Family Stone
• Jai guru deva ohm.
  Across the Universe, the Beatles

Fear sells. Don’t believe me? Check the headlines. That Nalgene water bottle you use is impregnated with toxins that’ll kill you. The very water you get from the tap is laden with chemicals and pharmaceuticals. Your kitchen and bathroom are teeming with critters that want nothing more than to cause you an infection that will kill you slowly, in as painful a way as possible so that you linger for a while and run up some medical bills before you finally kick.

Your neighbors, the quiet ones, are terrorists. The earth is in an inexorable descent, going to hell in the hand basket and you – YOU – should be afraid, very afraid. The sea is rising, the stock market is unpredictable and will consume your entire retirement and, speaking of retirement, clearly you’ll be eating cat food during yours because you haven’t saved enough. The youth of America is running wild and the baby-boom generation is about to absorb every tax dollar levied as they retire.

Pfew. That’s a lot to be worried about. Let’s take a step back and halt the panic for a minute. Does any of this stuff scare you? Maybe some of it should, but surely not as much as the breathless talking head on the evening news would have you believe. In the interest of selling news, be it via a website, a paper, the evening news program, CNN, MSNBC, items of interest and maybe even of concern are blown out of proportion. Every germ could be a killer, every fire could mean dozens displaced from their homes or a horrible fiery death, the cows could be mad, the water could deadly, your children could be at risk and you are a terrible parent if they aren’t kept safe from all things at all times.

What to do, what to do? Me? First, I’m gonna take a sip from the Nalgene water bottle that I picked up from my germ-laden kitchen and filled from the tap, my quiet middle eastern neighbor’s tap. Then I’m going to look around and assess what I see around me.

I see a country that is so safe that it needs to make things up to worry about. I see a 24-hour news cycle that is prone to hyperbole, reduced to sensationalism, used-car-sales tactics and yelling in order to get you to pay attention. I see a culture of fear where we look for it around every corner. It lurks in dark corners and in broad daylight.

I believe that the world is no more dangerous now than it has ever been; we are simply more aware of the strife that goes on in places far, far away in a real and seemingly personal way. The news of a bomb on a random city block in the Gaza Strip is relayed across the globe in a nanosecond, brought to your living room or computer with lightning speed.

You worry, but the reality is that the Middle East has been an unstable place for as long as history has been recorded. You sit there in an air conditioned (or heated, depending on the season) room hearing about a single stick of dynamite ten thousand miles away and you worry.

Well, cut it out. Stop it. Turn the TV off, put the paper down, turn of the computer. Take control. Look for the things you can do to make your home and family safe on a tangible, real level. Remain informed but don’t panic. Fear nothing. For the only thing we have fear is…

One of the blogs I stalk regularly is Life as List, posted by a young woman in Fairfax, VA. It’s entertaining for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that it provides a glimpse of how life is filtered through a 25-year-old’s perspective. Plus she posts nearly all of her stuff as a list. Nice, neat, concise, no added filler.

A post from last week is a list of things she intends to accomplish this year. I think you’ll find that it’s an impressive list, one that I would hesitate to undertake. Take a look and let me know what you think. Or let her know what you think.

And in the spirit of her list, here is one of my own. It’s a list of minor stuff that bugs me:

• People who are late with no reason and no apology. I carry a cell phone. Call to let me know.
• As a separate issue, I hate to be stood up. If we have an appointment, you better damn well show up. Don’t leave me standing somewhere looking stupid.
• People who have no regard for my time. Your time is not more important than mine.
• False familiarity. If you don’t know me, don’t pretend you do. This means you, telemarketers.
• The presumption that you can walk into a situation and immediately know what’s best for everyone involved. Take the time to assess before you issue orders.
• Speaking of which, don’t dictate to me. I have authority issues and it will probably backfire on you.
• “Pleaseâ€? and “Thank you,â€? people! Common courtesy, please.

As you can see, most of it is time related. And this is just an everyday list. You should see the work list. What bugs you?

Someone please tell me: What’s the deal with women and shoes? Shoe sales, shoe styles, shoes for all occasions. Anyone? Please? I await your enlightenment. Seriously.

In an effort to address the ongoing housing and credit crisis, presidential candidate John McCain called for meetings with mortgage lenders today (Tuesday, 3/25/2008). Way to go, Senator - right on time. Hillary Clinton offered her own proposal just yesterday. It seems to me that the front running presidential candidates collectively have the same grasp of economics and credit as they do of interstellar space travel.

Standard & Poore’s estimates that by the time this crisis is over the banking sector will have written off some $285b. That’s a lot of money. So far, the banking sector has written off over $150b. Do the math. That means we’re well over half way through the crisis, such as it is. Last week three Wall Street firms reported writedowns significantly lower than expected.

Further, according to Reuters, “S&P also emphasized that some subprime mortgage writedowns are larger than any reasonable estimate of actual losses. This raises the prospect that when the mortgage market normalizes, banks may be able to add ‘writebacks’ onto quarterly results.�

Taking all of this into account, Senator McCain leapt into action stating, “I will consider any and all proposals based on their cost and benefits. In this crisis, as in all I may face in the future, I will not allow dogma to override common sense.”

I’m hoping he says something like,� Maybe you shouldn’t have purchased a home you couldn’t afford.� Or maybe, “Guess you didn’t do enough due diligence on those mortgage backed securities before you bought them.�

Although the markets are in some turmoil, the sky is not falling. The Fed and the markets themselves are pushing this pig through the python. Despite some pain (and there is always pain during a market correction), things appear to be proceeding in a pretty orderly fashion.

Where was McCain late last year as this was unfolding, when the uncertainty was far greater than it is today? To be sure, there is still a fair amount of equity to be written off as the effects of poorly underwritten loans ripple through the banking and investing system, but this kind of grandstanding amounts to closing the barn door after the horse has escaped. Gimme a break.

This election can’t end soon enough.

My mom went in for a PET Scan last week and the results show that for the moment, she’s clear of cancer. Woo Hoo! Miracles happen…

Last week I posted an essay about people being nicer once they get away beyond the gravity of DC. It’s really a commentary on the hustle and bustle of all cities, not just DC. It was picked up by DC Blogs, a clearinghouse of blogs that are by, for, about, or thinking of DC. I read it all the time. As a result, I got a bunch of comments and that was really cool. They ranged from, “You nailed it,â€? to “Now hold your horses…â€? Everyone’s points are well taken.

In particular, kwest noted that most of the issues are caused by suburbanites who commute into the city. I think there’s more than a grain of truth to that but I’m sticking to my guns about the correlation between population density and general courtesy. It’s a gross overstatement to say that everyone in DC is a time constrained jerk. I wrote an essay last year about a Columbia Heights neighborhood in Northwest proclaiming it to be a pleasant little slice of DC. I stick by that, too.

I’m clearly part of the problem since I live in the suburbs and go into the city only about once a week, and even then I go in after rush hour. The traffic makes me crazy.

So with all of that said, I was in traffic this morning pulling onto the beltway – getting onto 495 N from 236 E, headed for Tyson’s Corner where my office is. There I was in the merge lane trying to get into traffic. The cars ahead of me are all merging smoothly; left car, right car, left car, right car… Kinda like a big zipper. I put my blinker on to merge and the guy in the lane next to me gunned it to close the gap and keep me out. It was a little white Kia crossover SUV with Virginia tags and a USMC sticker in the rear window. I think it’s called the Sportage. I looked over at the driver, a middle aged man in need of a haircut sucking on a cigarette with a young woman in the passenger seat.

He wouldn’t make eye contact. He pulls his car up into the space where I was headed but wouldn’t acknowledge my existence even after he cut me off and forced me into traffic behind him. It was a classic passive aggressive move. Coward.

Then, get this, he got on the exit ramp just a few hundred yards up at the very next exit, Gallows Road. He gained exactly zero from being a jerk. No one got onto the exit before him, no one kept him from his destination. He was a jerk for the sake of being a jerk.

One evening several weeks ago, I was merging onto 495 S from Chain Bridge Road headed for home after work. It’s a two-lane exit that merges down to one before merging again onto the beltway. Ahead of me the cars are smoothly coming together, left car, right car, left car, right car… Then a mid-sized pickup truck with a bumper sticker that said “Jet Noise: The Sound of Freedom� guns it and cuts me off on the exit. I yelled at the guy and called him a jerk. Or maybe it was asshole, I don’t remember. But it was a balmy evening and my window was down halfway so maybe he heard me. Frankly, I don’t care. I hope he heard me loud and clear. I went on my way, headed for home but this guy decided that I was trying to race him through rush hour DC traffic, so he was changing lanes and gunning his engine every time he came up on me. Clearly his mid-sized pickup was far studlier than mine.

What was the point? This is exactly what I’m talking about when I point out a lack of common courtesy. This is one of the symptoms. I make it a point to give a little wave when someone lets me into traffic, to acknowledge their courtesy. I try to let people in. DC has some of the worst traffic in the nation and it’s made far worse by jerks who decide that they need, NEED, to be fifteen feet ahead. As though that’s symbolic of getting ahead in life.

And these are just two examples. These happen every day on every street in the metropolitan DC area.

I will eventually leave DC, no doubt about it, and one of the primary reasons is the traffic. I’ve become more Zen about traffic since I’m stuck here for the moment, mostly as a coping mechanism, but it’s still a killer. I hate it but there’s nothing I can do about it except try to maintain a cooler head than the next guy.

You jerks are chasing me away. I like my neighborhood, I like my friends, I work with some tremendously talented people. But in the end, I can’t stand the lack of civility brought on by a populace that holds one another in open contempt, that won’t even try to be polite. It’s sad, don’t you think? Here I am in the nation’s capital, the seat of power for the entire western world – a city full of wonderful museums and restaurants, a city with a vibrant nightlife and some of the most beautiful architecture in the world and I will be leaving because of a bunch of self-absorbed traffic jerks. Shame on you.