The attempt to chronicle the life of an editor who needs to write more for himself and hopefully thereby find new directions in life.
Monday, December 16, 2024
Just a Story about a Car Redux
Wednesday, May 01, 2024
Just a Story about a Car
Back in 2015, I bought a used Fiat 500 Pop.
The Hyundai had been totaled in 2012 and the old CR-V was being ... problematic. I'll admit I was acting on impulse a bit and really frustrated, so I didn't do the full due diligence that I should have, but the price wasn't bad despite it being a fairly basic model. I'd had a rental Fiat 500 Sport a few months before and really enjoyed driving it. This one didn't have some of the bells and whistles, but it was still fun to drive. It was not fun to maintain. Over the next five years, it increasingly gave me trouble including a transmission issue that (after I'd paid to have it fixed) popped up as a recall.
During COVID, with no-one driving it and the car sitting on the street with a long list of problems for the mechanic to eventually look at, I decided to cut my losses and sell it. The 2021 value of a 2012 Fiat 500 Pop wasn't much, but I took Peddle.com's offer and a few days later a guy from Baltimore came and picked it up. I returned the plates to the Motor Vehicle Administration — due to COVID protocols, I needed an appointment and they had a guy sitting at card table out front of the MVA building waiting to collect them.
At that point, all we had were the memories, including a few of Celeste learning to drive.
Back in 2017, we'd gone down to Louisiana for Thanksgiving, including a trip over to Pass Christian where I remember my dad letting my brother and I practice driving on fairly empty back roads well before we had licenses. I came back thinking it was a good idea to let Celeste get some supervised time behind the wheel before she got her permit, so when she was (I think) 14, we headed down to an empty parking lot in the park and traded seats. We went over how to turn the car on and shift (automatic transmission), as well as how to use the pedals. Everything was going well until Celeste was ready to start and realized she could barely see over the steering wheel. We decided to wait a little bit longer...
About two years later with permit in hand, Celeste got a fair amount of her 60 hours of practice in the Fiat … at least until the day that she stopped in traffic and the wind shifted or something and a bit of smoke blew from the engine back across the car. (Burning oil was one of its issues at that point, along with some other engine issues.) She refused to drive it after that.
One other fun memory: While parallel parking the Fiat in front of the house, she somehow managed to hit the gas, jump the curb, and run into a pin oak that the city had recently planted in the side yard's strip between the sidewalk and street. The tree was a little crooked, but we were able to right it with no lasting damage (no damage to the car either).
In the middle of April, however, that same Fiat came back into our lives, sort of.
I received a weird letter from USAA informing me that they had confirmed with the MVA that the loan on the Fiat was paid off and the lien released. I thought that was pretty strange giving that I'd paid it off in 2018 and had at that time received the lien-release letter and half of the title. Of course, I'd also sold the car in 2021. A week or so after that, I get an official MVA envelope with a duplicate title. Weird.
So I call up USAA to see what's going on and they said there was some issue between computerized systems and the MVA was putting USAA back on titles as a lienholder. In those cases, they were informing the MVA that the loan was paid off and the lien released. MVA would then send out a clear title. As far as USAA was concerned, everything was clear on their system, so they suggested contacting the people who bought the Fiat.
I sold it online to Peddle.com, who basically acted as a broker for Copart, which is who actually picked up the car. Once I got contact information for Copart, I learned that my old Fiat had been sold overseas … and was last seen in Ukraine. No idea where or in whose hands, but I hope it's doing okay. (And if it's been conscripted into the Russian army, hopefully it's up to its old tricks and frustrating them.)
After reaching out to the MVA with all this information, they said to just send the title back. Hopefully the car will then disappear from my online account before I get dunned for not having it registered.
Wednesday, November 08, 2023
一路平安
They arrived in D.C. on December 6, 2000, and spent their first month getting used to their new digs before making their public debut on January 10, 2001. Today, Tian Tian and Mei Xiang, along with their three-year-old cub, Xiao Qi Ji, are headed back to China.
For the most part, this blog is dormant (though my kids love to look back at some of their very early adventures that I shared here), but the departure of Tian and Mei seems like it should be acknowledged. I started this blog in June 2003 in part to help myself do more writing and as part of processing the fertility issues we were going through.
At that point, I was already a few years into being a Panda Behavior Watch volunteer with Friends of the National Zoo. They'd put out a call for volunteers as part of preparing for the arrival of Tian and Mei and I thought it sounded fun so I signed up. About twice a month, I'd sit with another volunteer or two in the camera room in the panada house, moving the cameras to keep the pandas in frame for panda cam watchers and making notes for the various scientists who were studying the bears. On the rare occasion there would be some talking to the public, but mostly it was just watching the bears and spending some time wandering around the zoo before my shift would start. The coolest shifts were like the one in my third entry here: overnight shifts. Just walking through the zoo at night, when more than a few animals are active, was always a treat. (Below is a screencap from one of those nights; I'm watching the monitors while Tian Tian sleeps in the enclosure next door.)

Last Friday, Evelin and I carved out some time to visit the zoo. It was our first trip there in a very long while, but we timed it well, getting there around 9 a.m. Some of the animals were having a lie-in, but the bears were all out and about (along with a few Rock Creek Park deer who'd wandered into the zoo and not made it out by opening time).
We watched one of the sloth bears (Melursus ursinus) exploring for food. As an enrichment, the keepers had wrapped bananas and other fruits in T-shirts and buried them under leaves around the enclosure. I did not realize that sloth bears peel their bananas, only eating the fruit inside the peel. It was more using a claw to break open the peel and scooping out the inside, but still interesting to see. We also saw the Andean (spectacled) bears (Tremarctos ornatus) out in their yard. The two cubs were resting high up in a tree.
But the highlight, as always, were the giant pandas (Ailuropoda melanoleuca), Mei, Tian, and Xiao Qi Ji were all out in their respective yards, enjoying some breakfast. There were crowds, but it wasn't so crowded that you couldn't get a good look at them sitting, eating, and ambling around. Watching them (only from the outside, we didn't make it in to my old post inside the panda house), I could feel myself getting a little choked up. It's been more than 19 years since I was a regular panda watcher (I only did maybe two shifts in the year after Celeste was born before officially withdrawing from the program), but the loss of the pandas is still emotional.
Celeste is in her second year of college. Quin is off to college herself next year. Evelin pointed out that maybe it's a good time for me to start volunteering at the zoo again (though I'd need to scale back my other volunteer/unpaid work efforts to make the time) …
Safe journeys, 添添, 美香, and 小奇迹. You'll be missed here in the DMV.
Monday, April 28, 2014
So ... Remodeling
The hedline pretty much says it all. About a quarter of the main living space in the house is off limits. We're washing dishes outside. The kelvinator is in the living room (it's really an Amana, but it's more fun to say "kelvinator" than "fridge"). And, in general, nerves are frayed. Details are being recorded at Survivor: Kitchen Remodel.
Sunday, March 17, 2013
The Sounds of Dogs ...
... or at least their names.
Back in first grade, it was suggested to Celeste that she not not talk about a certain dog breed at school too much because the name — shih tzu — sounded a little too close to something rude when she said it. Flash forward to breakfast a few days ago when Celeste and Quinlan were both talking about shih tzus; C turned to me with a quizzative look and said: "I know what a shih tzu is and that it sounds like something bad, but I can't figure out what it is. 'zu' doesn't sound bad and I don't know what 'shit' means."
Sunday, February 24, 2013
Games People Play
In general, Q doesn't like playing games; the one exception over the years has been Go Fish, although we not too long ago picked up Apples to Apples, and she's loved it. Despite that, she's had a long-standing aversion to "winning games." Instead she usually likes to play Calvinballesque card games where the rules constantly change to ensure that everyone playing is doing well.
Now, Quinlan has branched out into game design with her own version of Go Fish. Using some of my old business cards and the calling cards we had printed up for her a while back, she designed a mermaid-themed deck with numbers 1 through 13, as well as Jack, Queen, and King. There's only one pair of each, which can make the game move quickly. The rules follow the traditional ask for card and draw if you don't get it, but the best bit is the marketing. It didn't quite click with me when I noticed the image at the left that it was an ad for the game, but this morning I found the three other posters placed strategically around the house.
Beyond the posters, there's also the titling of the game — "Go Fish: An Underwater Game" — and the little touches in the card images, from the swirly numbers and the fish as pips on the cards to the little fish the mermaid keeps on a leash and the bubbles coming from the octopus.
Friday, November 02, 2012
Supplement or Country?
Monday, September 24, 2012
Morning Soliloquy
Quinlan woke up overly early this morning. Despite being a little on the fragile side, she was doing fairly well, but while flipping through a book of older pictures of herself she ran across one of her and Big Elephant. Big Elephant is a very large stuffie that came into the house as a baby gift for Celeste; of course, since Big Elephant (as the name implies) is not a dog, it eventually became Quinn's. For a long time BE served as bed and/or covers for Quinlan, sleeping either on top of or under it, but for the past 9 months or so, BE's been more or less an afterthought, stuffed in a basket with other less-favored stuffies.
When she saw the picture, Q started to get choked up and said, "I wish I could cry" [blogger's note: she can, just for some reason the drama meant she couldn't] "because I haven't seen Big Elephant in so long …" After a short discussion, in which she insisted that BE was lost/had been taken away/had been given to the thrift store, Q went upstairs to check the basket of stuffies in her room and then, shortly thereafter, came bounding down the stairs dragging along Big Elephant.
There was playing and laughter and then, eventually, came the morning insight into a child's mind:
Q: You know? As I get older, my stuffies seem a little less real. I mean, Big Elephant used to be real, but not … I mean, when I was little I used to pretend that if I wanted something, it could come out of Big Elephant's nose … and it really would!
Tuesday, August 28, 2012
Hey, Crickets ... Chirp Up!
It's a bit dark ... which is quite normal for 6:00 a.m., but you can still make out most of the dance moves, hand motions, and, of course, the lesson in song.
Sunday, April 08, 2012
Painting the Planets
Thursday, January 05, 2012
Less Loved Than a Lima Bean
After telling me that she didn't love me and musing as to why Mumma couldn't have have married someone else*, Quinlan started listing out the only people she loves:
- Her Kindergarten Teacher
- Her Best, Best Friend in Kindergarten
- Old Blankie (the blanket she's had since she was an infant
- Her Other Best Friend in Kindergarten
She then made a point of telling me that she didn't love me at all. Testing her resolve, I asked which she loved more, me or lima beans; she replied, without a pause, "Lima beans."
I then asked if she loved Mumma more than lima beans; she said no. I asked again, and she realized she was confused, because she does love her mother more than lima beans. She slotted Evelin in around No. 100 on the list of people she loves best.
After a few minutes of calmness, Quinlan burst into a sob: "I can't love Old Blankie third!" (Sorry Best, Best Kindergarten Friend; you're number three now.) As she reorder the top of her list, she threw out Evelin's name as being No. 20; then she quickly changed it to No. 10.
I, however, remained less loved than lima beans.
A bit later, after Quinlan had fallen asleep, I went to check on Celeste, who could hear most of the conversation through her wall. I asked if she loved me more than lima beans and did a bit of a snort laugh before saying "You, of course." (To be fair, I knew how she'd respond: the girl dosen't at all look forward to fall, when the farmer's market has fresh baby lima beans that I love to cook up by the quart with shallots and tons of olive oil ...)
After a short pause, Celeste asked: "Daddy? Do you love me more than lima beans?"
"Well, lima beans are really good ... but I love you more."
* I told her that Mumma and I had fallen in love, and she starts in with a sing-song taunt: "Mumma fell in love."
Friday, December 16, 2011
An Authenticity Crisis
I stopped in to D.C. Sandwich to pick up two banh mí for lunch (one đậu hủ chay and one bì chay) and had a brief moment of concern when the order ticket was written with a note that looked (to my inexpert eye) like hangul at the bottom. Should I be concerned about the authenticity of the sandwiches? (And really, what does "authenticity" mean or matter when you're talking about a really tasty sandwich?)
I'd asked for no hot peppers on the banh mí, and from the context that would seem to explain the writing. However, I couldn't figure out what the characters were; 으아 was as close as I could get, but that makes no sense and there appeared to be another stroke or two in 아, like a poorly formed/out of proportion 감 or something. (Google Translate renders 으아 as "whoa" ... which I guess could mean "no jalapeños," but that would be some really odd diner slang. 오감 is "five senses," which would seem to be a request for more heat, not less.)
Flipping through a dictionary and Google Translate, I couldn't find any rendering of capsicum (고추류) or jalapeño (할라페뇨) or something similar in Korean that it might be the equivalent of hot pepper. Then I looked at Vietnamese words for hot peppers, wondering if it were a hangul rendering of a Vietnamese word, and came across ớt ... and then pretty quickly realized my mistake ... the first character wasn't 으 or 오 or 우 or anything similar, it was an underlined zero — 0 ớt.

Monday, December 12, 2011
The Scottish Tian Tian
Despite not being there twice a month, I do pay attention when I see mentions of 美香 (Měi Xāng) and 添添 (Tiān Tiān). So imagine my surprise to get an email from Moray Firth Radio offering the chance to win a panda mask:
Celebrations are underway to welcome two very special giant pandas to Scotland... Tian Tian and Yang Guang or 'Sweetie' and 'Sunshine' are the first two giant pandas to live in the UK in 17 years. As part of the celebrations, we're looking for your ideas on what would make the ultimate Scottish welcome for Tian Tian and Yang Guang.What‽ 添添 is going to leave D.C. to shack up with some other Ailuropoda melanoleuca?
Thankfully that turns out not to be the case. The Tian Tian who now calls Edinburgh her home (at least until 2021) is eight-year-old 甜甜 (Tián Tián) with a rising tone (2) instead of the level (1) tone in添添. Her partner is eight-year-old male 阳光 (Yáng Guāng). It does mean, however, that
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tian_Tian_(giant_panda) is going to need a disambiguation page soon.
Monday, August 29, 2011
Power's Out and Back
The girls were a little apprehensive trying to fall asleep without power on Sunday night (the power failure happened around 1:30 a.m. Saturday, while the girls were asleep — although Evelin and I were awake, watching the downed line melt the sidewalk —), but they were doing well ... until about 8:05 p.m. when the power flickered back on for about five minutes. Quinlan jumped up and started her "Disney Princess: Ultimate Song Collection", then hit pause to move her blanket and pillow to her preferred sleeping spot on the floor, head next to the air conditioning vent. Sadly, the power cut back off before she could hit play on the CD player, and Q — had to fall asleep without the dulcet tone of Belle and Cinderella.
Flash forward to about 11:30 p.m., and I sit straight up in bed; certain it is 8:something in the morning and we've all overslept. Turns out, no, we hadn't overslept the power had just come back on ... and we'd fallen asleep with most of the lights in our bedroom on. I got up, reset the clock and alarm, turned off the lights that had been inadvertently turned on downstairs, and then went back to sleep.
Flash forward to about 4:45 a.m. I had woken up about 20 minutes earlier and was downstairs making lunches, filling the dishwasher, and a few other chores that required electricity, when I heard Quinlan's princess CD start up. She wakes up early sometimes (and this was quite early, especially since school was cancelled for the day due to wide-spread power failures), but I wasn't going to try arguing with her about it ... and I was hoping she'd fall back asleep.
Flash forward an hour to about 5:45 a.m., Quinlan comes downstairs weeping: "Daddy! I can't fall asleep ..." I told her that it was really early, but it was morning and she could be awake if she wanted. A very excited little girl then spent a good bit of time jumping around and bouncing off the walls — she still thought it was the beginning of the night ...
Saturday, August 13, 2011
Conversations From the Backseat
Celeste: Lightbulb!
Quinlan: Celeste. Why did you say "lightbulb"?
Celeste: I just say "lightbulb." You know, like when some people say "holy crap"? I say "lightbulb."
Thursday, July 28, 2011
When Theories Hit a Wall
I went to tell Celeste good night tonight and ended up knocking over a bit of her furniture. Rewind (that's probably the best idea). After running tonight (and spending some time sitting around in the backyard cooling down), I went upstairs to tell the girls good night. While talking with Celeste, she mentioned that earlier in the week, she'd been spinning around in her room and it made the ceiling fan slow down.
Never being one to pass up the opportunity to explain a physics concept that I'm probably not 100% on top of, I decided it was a good opportunity to explain Einstein's theory of special relativity and how, if one rotates under a ceiling fan in the same direction as the fan then the blades will appear to slow down or, if the speed of rotation at the point of observation matches the speed or rotation, stand still.
To be completely fair, I didn't use the phrase "special relativity" or even "relativity" in the conversation and I may be misremembering or misunderstanding the concept. However, that's all moot because of what happened.
As I tried to explain to Celeste how movement of the observer could influence the perceived motion of the fan, spinning around in a circle, I got progressively dizzier and dozier until I found myself falling over and crashing into her dresser and toy chest.
Friday, July 15, 2011
Aging is a Mental Construct
Until that point, she was paying attention, but not really immersed in the story. This isn't atypical for her. She listens to a story, but is trying to put it into context within her mind and interrupting with lots of tangential observations.
Tonight, Quinn interrupted me when Mr. Tumnus was trying to determine where Lucy appeared from and wondering where the land of Spare Oom and the bright city of War Drobe are and he makes the comment "if only I had worked harder at geography when I was a little Faun, I should no doubt know all about those strange countries."
Quinlan wanted to know what he meant by "if only ..." and I told her that he was saying that you could only learn things when you were little. But I quickly noted that that was a silly idea that people can and do learn things when they’re 6 or when they're 100.
Which, of course, is when Quinlan's brain started churning.
Q: "Daddy? How old is Grandma Lu?"
C: "Grandma Lu is going to be 97 this year."*
Q: "That's crazy. Because Grandma Lu uses a wheelchair, and Ms. Susan doesn't need anything like that."
C: "Well, Ms. Susan isn’t anywhere near 100."
Q: "No! Not Ms. Susan [the neighbor who is helping watch her this summer], Ms. Susan the teacher [from nursery school/pre-K]! "
C: "Oh, that's right, she’s 103."
Q: "No, Daddy, 102."
Last fall, Ms. Susan had a bit of fun with her students (or at least with Quinlan) and confided that she was 102. She’s not. But you cannot convince Quinlan of that fact.
Eventually, we decided that Ms. Susan wasn't a spry 102-year-old because of the rabbit at school or because she worked with kids ... turns out she's just luckier than Grandma Lu.
*I simplify for the purposes of blogging; in fact, it took a moment to figure out which great-grandmother she meant — I should have known it was the only one who is still alive; and once that was settled I said 94, getting her age wrong by a few years.
Thursday, May 19, 2011
Up Too Late
Celeste said that wasn't good because people need "seven or eight or nine or ten or eleven hours" of sleep. I agreed, but noted that as people age they generally need less sleep, although five hours still wasn't enough.
I also said that some people need more sleep than others, some people do fine with less sleep, and some people think they do fine with less sleep, but really need more sleep.
At which point, Quinlan pipes up: "That's me!"
Thursday, May 12, 2011
Nightmares
Fortunately, it was a fairly easy matter to let her look out our bedroom window and to see that the tree was fine — excepting a few places where someone's pulled off too many leaves.
Yesterday morning, Quinlan woke up screaming. When I went to comfort her, she kept pushing me away, saying she wanted Mumma instead. When I pointed out that Evelin had already gone to work, she cried harder for a little while and complained that I didn't feel as good as Mumma does.
Eventually she calmed down enough to tell me about the dream; I think, she wasn't entirely awake because her explanation seemed still "in the moment."
Apparently, there was a wolf-dog "over there" (pointing at the wall) that was going to bite her neck. My first attempt was to remind her of the very wolf-looking German shepherd dog we met at the farmers market a few weeks ago, but she wasn't looking to like this wolf-dog and she started crying some more.
I then told her that I wouldn't let the wolf-dog hurt her and that I would scare it away ... which, apparently, is why I am not as comforting for her as Evelin is. Quinlan shouted: "Mumma would cut it's head off with a knife!"
Sunday, May 01, 2011
Princesses in the Morning
Long ago, I lost the battle against Disney princesses a long time ago, unfortunately. It started when Celeste went to kindergarten, and in a way we thought her interest in Cinderella, et al., was good in that it was a socialization and acclimation to her peers sort of a thing. But Quinlan, oh Quinlan, really feel hard for the princesses at nursery school. I'd prefer they had stuck exclusively to Miyazaki's œuvre, much of which they do like, but since they haven't, we've tried to steer them towards the stronger characters — more Mulan and Pocahontas (despite the problems it has) than Snow White and Cinderella — with varying degrees of success/failure.
Despite my misgivings, I have tried to use real-life royals as examples of how princesses can differ from the Disney ideal. For example, when Celeste was in the nascent phase of refusing to wear pants, I tried showing her some pictures of Princesses Catharina-Amalia and Princess Alexia of the Netherlands and Princess Madeleine of Sweden to show her that real princesses can wear pants, even jeans. It didn't really work; she still likes to wear only dresses or skirts.
Despite not knowing a Mountbatten-Windsor from a Montblanc pen, Quinlan was fascinated with the pomp and the ceremony.
There were a lot of questions — I had a lot of trouble explaining primogeniture and why the Duke of Edinburgh isn't the King — but she was entranced by it. When I went to wake Celeste around 6:15 a.m. to see if she wanted to watch any of a royal wedding, she said "That's okay, but Quinlan probably will want to see it" ... and she was right.