I sort of get the feeling we must be mildly righteous. If I were a bit more religious, I might actually think that we dodged the flood-bullet for a reason. Mostly I think it is because we are four floors away from ground zero. Well, maybe Karma helped us out a little too. Thanks Karma. My ancient Gateway thanks you too. --Next time, could you maybe drip a little bit of water on it?

Right. I asked a friend what I should write about this week and her first reply was "What has made you angry this week?" I get the feeling that I am getting slightly predictable. To keep you all on your toes and to show that I have more than one trick up my sleeve, I am going to talk about a plain old event we are having.

The only question is what one. . .?

I could tell you about the Event at Dupont on the 31st. It is a double header with two, fine authors. Elizabeth Crane and Paul Fattaruso will be in town to talk about their respective books. Elizabeth's is called "You Must be This Happy to Enter" and Paul's is called "Bicycle". I have read Elizabeth's book and enjoyed it very much, and I looked at the pictures in Paul's book, they were very nice. I sent my copies of the books to Ama Wertz in the Dupont Store so she could read up on them. She looks like a responsible young lady, but she left the books in her bag on the metro and they are no more. ~Poof~ Good thing the publisher printed more than the ones I had. If you are a fan of the Bike, and you are looking to pedal on down to the Dupont on Monday night, stop in and hear the words of two tres cool, Punk Planet authors.

If Bikes and Surreal Fiction are not exactly your cuppa. . .

Maybe you are interested in Arlen Specter. Or should I say, Senator Specter? That's right. I said it. We are happy to host Senator Specter for his book, "Never Give in" about his battle with Cancer.

See? We aren't all about the dense, high-brow literature here, we love a good human interest story. In fact, we like it so much that we have Sen. Specter in our Lansburgh store on Thursday, April 3rd. If you are a fan, you should come out and show your support. I know he would like to see you and I know the store staff would like to see you too. When you don't come to the events they host, they get a little sad. Pay up your Karma-tab and get out to a bookstore event in your area. I you don't like the two I have mentioned, look back at the event listing and find one you do like. You might even dodge a flood.

You ever have one of those weeks where you know you should have just stayed in bed? Please allow me tell you about mine.

Last week, I had an appointment on Friday to meet with a lovely young lady named Rebecca. She was putting together a conference at a tiny hotel here in DC and wanted to sell books for a couple of the authors she had booked. The tiny hotel is the Hilton where president Reagan was shot and is about the size of a small town. the authors she wanted to sell books for were Madeline Albright -- that would be former Secretary of State, Madeline Albright for those of you with deficient recall -- and a young lady named Jenna.

For those of you that didn't know, this is Sec. Albright's third book. Along with being one of the most powerful women in the world, she is an accomplished author who is very generous with her time.

This is Jenna's first book. Before writing it, she worked as an elementary teacher in DC and before that, She was just Barbara's twin sister. You may also remember her for being George and Laura's daughter. Yes, she is THAT Jenna.

It was a fairly big deal and after meeting with Rebecca and dropping off some of the books at the Hotel, I came back to the office to collect more and make another trip. Three trips in total to get all the books to the Monday morning event. I think my little car was as tired as I was after moving them all.

So that is all the back story.

Monday morning I rolled into work to pick up the last few books and my offsite kit. I thought I would park close to the office door because I had books to bring out and crossing our street is a challenge when you have the ability to sprint, pulling a trailer of books makes you a prime target for speeding-crosswalk-ignorers -- Small Aside. If there are any cops who would love to pad their numbers and make a tidy fortune for Silver Spring, come ticket people that burn through the signed crosswalk on Fairview and Spring. Millions to be made and pedestrians lives to be saved -- but there was no place to park. In fact, there were 5 times the normal amount of cars packed around the building.

So I parked like normal and walked in the front door to find puddles. A flood. Wee! Good thing is was just on this floor and not down in the basement where I work. Down the damp stairs, through the puddles to my very wet office. Stupid gravity! Why do you have to make water run downhill? So my office took a bit of a shower and the elevator is out of commission until all it's parts can be replaced/repaired. No big deal, how often do I need the elevator? Except for TODAY! when I have to lug forty pound boxes of books up three flights of stairs.

The event went very well, a two day sell-a-thon with lots of nice people saying loads of nice things about the two lovely and talented booksellers that were there. Okay, I made that last part up. After it was all over, I loaded all the unsold copies into my tiny car and we limped back to Silver Spring. I was not looking forward to the reloading of the books into the office sans elevator, but our genius staff here came up with the great idea of loading them in through the window! Done in no time at all with a minimum of smashed fingers and accidental deaths from falling down cement stairs while carrying forty pounds of books. Whew!

I would like to say that Tuesday ended on that bright note, but it didn't. I then had to run back to Dupont to collect books and make my way a the National Geographic event at 7:30. That one was going fine until someone watching the film passed out and was not responding. Ambulances were called, panic gripped the audience, it looked like all hell was about to break loose... when the staff at Nat Geo stepped in and sorted out the problem ~snap~ like that. You know, there is something to be said for having great people around.

Speaking of great people, Michael Farquhar has written another of his wonderful treasuries. This one is all about American heroes that might have escaped the notice of historians. You may have never heard of them, but they are paramount to American History and the shaping of our country. Most of the events he talks about happened right here in DC and I bet you have no idea about them. For example; Most of you could tell me who shot President Lincoln, right? Can you tell me the name of the woman who was tried and hanged for the crime along with the men who planned the execution? She lived right here in Maryland. She was the first woman ever executed by the United States Government.

I wont tell you who she was, I will let you pick up the book and find out about her and all the other "Foolishly Forgotten Americans" the Michael is talking about. If you are a fan of American history or if you just want to be the smartest guy at the bar for Monday night trivia, you should stop by Lansburgh on the 26th and listen. You might find out about some of the more interesting people that helped make your country what it is today.

If you were wondering what I will be doing, I will be sitting in my office with my three industrial fans blowing and the two dehumidifiers going deaf and trying to find all the things that got soaked in the flood. I will check in with you all in forty days. the water should be gone by then.

I am still fired up about this Boeing thing. This morning (Tuesday again) it was announced that Boeing was filing a formal complaint over the loss of the $40 billion contract. Really? Come on, Boeing. You lost. Northrop won. Go build something else. Boeing is complaining that if it loses this contract, it will have to discontinue production on the commercial version of the 767. That is fine with me, because I have flown on many 767's and they are not that great.

Okay, I could go on and on again about this, but I am going to give it a pass and talk about some cool events coming up. I might also talk about more nonsensical things that occur to me as we go along.

The Event! Thursday! Lansburgh! Come down to hear Alison Larkin. Alison is going to be talking about her new book "The English American". How would she know anything about being an American? Alison is English, she was adopted by a lovely English family and grew up in England with tea and biscuits, beans on toast, cricket matches and pints of lager. Imagine her surprise when she found out 'Merican. She doesn't sound very American. Here is her Bio from Simon Says:

Alison Larkin was adopted at birth in Washington, D.C., by British parents and raised in England and Africa. After graduation from the University of London and the Webber-Douglas Academy of Dramatic Art, she became a regular on the British stage with appearances on Broadway, a ubiquitous voice-over artist, and a successful stand-up comic. Her internationally acclaimed one-woman show, The English American, was a highlight of the London Comedy Festival.

Alison is a very funny lady and I know you will all want to be there to hear what she has to say. Her story is oddly enough based around an English woman that finds out, late in life, that she was adopted from a family in America. Not just any old America, the Deep South. This is the true heart of America. In my head --Having not read the book yet-- there would be no greater punishment. To go from the capital of the world to the capital of deep-fried-peanut-butter-and-banana sandwiches. A bit like hell, if you asked me, but no one did.

I, for one, am looking forward to hearing Alison's talk. I am planning on being there for it so I can present her with a treat. Something I have discovered that makes the mornings a little more palatable here in the US of A. With any luck, Alison will enjoy it as much as I do and we can have a tiny bonding moment after I hear her hilarious tale of finding out in her 20's that she is in fact 'southern'. I hope to see you all there. 7pm, Lansburgh, March 20th.

(Happy Birthday to my brother on the 14th and to my Mom on the 20th)

Bright and early this (Tuesday) morning, I hit the 'snooze' on my alarm for the last time and decided it was time to get out of bed. I stumbled to front door and picked up the paper, then made some breakfast--Kashi, Go Lean! cereal. Chubby little Event Coordinators need all the help they can get. Spoon in fist, I started flipping through the Washington Post. I get three different papers at home, but the Post has the best comics.

After I finished the comics and slurped the last of the milk out of my bowl, I turned to the business section. The front page shows a huge airliner with fighters behind it. Zing! Now I must read this article.

The article I am talking about was written by Dana Hedgpeth and talked about how up-in-arms Congress and Union Leaders are about Boeing losing the contract to build air tankers. This is real news. This is a $100 Billion contract that Boeing lost out on. There are ramifications to dropping the ball that badly. I have no trouble with anything in the article at all. I see it is reporting the news. But I do have a problem.

Boeing Lost. They lost. You know what happens when you lose? You go home. You don't cry to your Congressman and get them to bully the Airforce into reversing the decision. You don't stand out in the streets and protest, holding signs that say "American Workers = Best Tankers". If that were, in fact, the case then you would have won the bid. This is direct from the article: 'Past Performance: Northrop had higher ratings than Boeing on programs relevant to the tanker competition, and its subcontractors were more highly rated. Cost: Boeing failed to adequately explain its cost projections.'

These signs also insinuate that the people working in Mobile, Alabama are not Americans. Now I have never been to Alabama, I have only heard stories about the folk down there, but that does not make them un-American. In fact it probably makes them more so than the Washingtonians.

One of the other complaints cited in the article says "By Assembling the plane at a plant in in Mobile, Ala., they said, EADS will gain a foothold in the United States much as foreign automakers Honda and Toyota did."

Foreign automakers gained a foothold because they did a better job. That is why when I sold my Honda Civic that I had bought used, I got more money than when I sold my Pontiac Sunfire that I bought new. They are better cars. They hold their resale value and preform better with lower carbon output. If we had all stuck with our 1972 Plymouth Fury, the country would have run out of gas in 1988. All the workers in Indiana are probably very happy that Honda gained a foothold in America. I think the workers in Mobile, Alabama are going to be VERY happy with Northrop.

One of my other problems with the protesters/Boeing is the sense of sovereignty they are fighting for. America First, Above All Others. Why shouldn't an international company get the bid? Is there a problem with raising the rest of the world up to our minimum standards? I thought that was the goal. To make the world a better place? I think we are living in a time where it is past the point of separation from the rest of the world. The world is a little smaller than it used to be and as the last super power on earth, I think it is our job to help bring the rest of the world up. Do we really want to fly in inferior planes just because they are American made? Personally, I would like to fly in a plane that doesn't fall out of the sky. I don't care if it is made in Canada.

I don't know. I am not an expert on these things, I am just a blogger who reads. It was a good article and if anyone would like to talk more about it, feel free to comment.

Oh Right. Book events. Thursday the 13th at Dupont Circle, come down and learn how to Tango! Long After Midnight at the Nino Bien. Brian Winter packed his bags as a young man and moved to Argentina. Once there, he discovered how deeply ingrained into the society the Tango truly is. A lovely portrait of a beautiful country through a very troubled time. Brain has agreed to come down to Dupont and tell us his tales of living through the hardest times in Argentina. If we get lucky, he might show us a couple of steps.

If you have any love of history, Argentina, Peron, dance or just hate television and prefer interacting with real people, or if you just want to punch me in the nose for bashing Boeing, come out to Dupont on Thursday night and see what real people look like. It is WAY better than HD.

Oh, and Rest in Peace Jeff Healey.