Beau, whom I met almost two years ago during a JMG-sponsored blarg crawl, is in DC tonight. We hit it off that night 17 months ago, palling around together because neither of us knew any of the other bloggers who were participating. Since then, we’ve stayed in touch with a few emails but mainly through each others’s Twitter tweets. This is not a date, but friends getting together. Beau is happily spoken for.

I’ve take the familiar D6 over to Dupont to meet up, but I’m waiting for him to finish with his client dinner. After exiting the bus I went to the ATM to have some mad money in my pocket. First time at an ATM in months! Then to the CVS for camera batteries. Then I’m trying to think of a place to meet up and I stumble upon Urbana, which used to be called something else, and Mimi’s is now some other establishment so I’ll belly up here.

three hours later

This evening didn’t turn out the way I thought it would. I was thinking Beau and I were going to do a barhop up 17th or down P St or something but it turned out that we simply ended up staying where we were, ordering drynx at the bar, for the entire evening. I think this actually turned out to be the right thing to do, as we were able to have a fantastic conversation through the evening. We discussed the blarg crawl and how we became fast friends there, we discussed Twitter and its social associations and how we think it should never make money, the merits of blogging, Facebooking, my future and of course, New York City.

The best part about this evening was how seamless our reunion was, after all this time becoming more and more familiar by twittering. We were able to pick up, without a hitch, our conversation that we left off two years ago with minimal fill-ins. It was truly a beautiful moment that would could not have happened ten years ago.

I’m thankful for friends like Beau, near and far, with whom I have such a great connection that camaraderie is effortless. Beau, being the proper gentleman that he is, pays for all the cocktails and even though I insist on taking the D6 return he pays for my cab ride home. Thank you, sir.

After arriving home, I realize that we totally forgot to take any pictures together. Damn! While our conversation is what I will really remember from this evening I grabbed a photo of our original meeting in NYC. Here are me, some dude, Joe, Beau:

Tonight, live twitterpubcrawling with @rhagern; click me.

WASHINGTON (AP)—The number of people receiving unemployment benefits has reached an all-time record, the government said Thursday, and more layoffs are spreading throughout the economy.

The Labor Department reported that the number of Americans continuing to claim unemployment insurance for the week ending Jan. 17 was a seasonally adjusted 4.78 million, the highest on records dating back to 1967. That’s an increase of 159,000 from the previous week and worse than economists’ expectations of 4.65 million. As a proportion of the work force, the tally of unemployment benefit recipients is the highest since August 1983, a department analyst said.

The total released by the department doesn’t include about 1.7 million people receiving benefits under an extended unemployment compensation program authorized by Congress last summer. That means the total number of recipients is actually closer to 6.5 million people.

Businesses continued to hemorrhage jobs Thursday. Ford Motor Co. reported a fourth-quarter loss of $5.9 billion and said its credit arm would cut 20 percent of its work force, or 1,200 jobs. Eastman Kodak Co. said it’s cutting 3,500 to 4,500 jobs, or 14 to 18 percent of its work force, as it posted a $137 million quarterly loss on plunging sales of photography products. Black & Decker Corp. said its fourth-quarter profit tumbled 77 percent and the power tools manufacturer announced about 1,200 job cuts.

More signs of the deepening recession came in separate government reports on home sales and durable goods. The Commerce Department said Thursday that new home sales fell 14.

7 percent in December to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 331,000, the lowest pace on records dating back to 1963. For 2008, builders sold 482,000 homes, the weakest results since 1982. The median price of a new home sold last month was $206,500, a drop of 9.3 percent from a year ago. 

Meanwhile, new orders for durable goods dropped by 2.6 percent last month, even worse than the 2 percent decline economists expected. Orders fell 5.7 percent for the year, the second biggest drop on government records, exceeded only by a 10.7 percent plunge in 2001, according to the Commerce Department.

The tally of Americans filing new jobless benefit claims rose slightly to a seasonally adjusted 588,000 last week, from a downwardly revised figure of 585,000 the previous week. That also was worse than analysts’ forecast of 575,000 new claims. The number of initial claims is close to the 26-year high of 589,000 reached in late December, though the work force has grown by about half since then. The record number of ongoing benefit claims is an indication that laid-off workers are having a difficult time finding new jobs, economists said.

A year ago, continuing claims stood at about 2.7 million, less than half their current level when the extended unemployment program is included. The rate jumped to 7.2 percent in December, a 16-year high. Employers cut an average of 510,000 jobs in the last three months of 2008, and may cut a similar amount in January, Reinhart said.

The crush of new and continuing claims has overwhelmed many states’ ability to process them all. Electronic filing systems crashed in three states earlier this month, and last week Michigan said it would hire 276 workers and open a fourth call center to handle increased phone traffic.

President Barack Obama’s $819 billion economic stimulus package, approved by the House Wednesday and now on its way to the Senate, would provide $500 million to the states to upgrade their unemployment insurance systems. The measure also continues the extended unemployment compensation program, which adds up to 33 weeks of benefits, until the end of the year.

Companies have announced a huge number of layoffs this week as they prepare for an extended period of economic weakness. Economists expect the current recession, which began in December 2007, to be the longest since World War II.

I’m not going to mention the name of the company I used to work for. It’s not a secret, and I’m not hiding anything, and I think I’ve mentioned it before (and only that one time) recently, but it’s just not something that needs to be put out there for search engines to find. And it’s not like I’m trying to hide anything either, because I know that several people who still work there pop into the fuju every once in a while, and that’s okay. But again, the people researching me, or the company, don’t need to be privy to my ramblings. Let’s call the company “Gee”.

There are employees at Gee that blog, many of them Facebook, some even Twitter. I follow some of their blogs, some of their Facebooks and some of their tweets on Twitter. And some of them follow mine. All cool.

I had a “sabbatical” from Gee from 2001–2003 and while I was away I still had many friends who worked there and that I stayed in constant contact with. When I returned in 2003, and now for the last five years, many of the old crew have since moved or drifted away. I become, de facto, the source for many for social updates, client updates, managerial updates, all that stuff that departed employees want to be up-to-date on. Now I’m no longer in that position. And that became clear this evening.

An ex-coworker and friend posted a tweet about how beautiful tonight’s sunset was when the sun finally cut through the wet winter clouds. I know this sunset, or at least the view of it, from the 7th floor and still during working hours as the winter brings. I also know some of the summer sunsets that happen later in the day. 

The thing that distanced me from the visceral viewpoint was the lack of the photo. And this status update was by someone who is a great photographer and frequently posting to flickr and other accounts, who even started a great idea of a Gee graffiti wall where employees could put up their own artwork. So I thought it a little odd that there was no link, no twitpic, no upload to Facebook. I almost commented on the status of the lack of a picture but then I hesitated. Not out of awkwardness of communicating with this person, but maybe I didn’t think it simply wasn’t my place anymore.

Now, hours later, I check out the Gee work blog and the picture is posted there. Bam. Now it sinks in that the distancing from Gee, where I worked for eight years, is a crack that will slowly get bigger over time. I hope to not lose the friendships, but there is a another step of removal now. I’ll have to rely on those still there to relay information onto others, and maybe that relaying road to the others will slowly come to its end. 

This transition of communication between layers has happened. Now I’ll be the one relying on my friends still there to answer my questions of hey what’s up, how is business and who are the new clients. I’m at peace with this.

I’m hoping that the phoblographer won’t be upset for me sliding that pic over to my desktop and then dropping it into my fuju style. I don’t think she will be.

I think I’ve discovered the soundtrack to the present (un)employment events in my life, something that I will realize years from now, when the song plays and it instantly brings me back to this time. It’s not the type of music that I would normally listen to, but I’ve been streaming the debut album, Hide Nothing, from the artist’s website since first seeing his video that fellow blogger and pubcrawl buddy JoeMyGod posted a couple of days ago and I can’t get enough of it.

The artist’s name is Matt Alber and his website is here.  

End of the World is about lovers’ relationship falling apart, Matt saying he penned the autobiographical song five years ago while riding the San Francisco MUNI. The utterly romantic video reveals another side, with an ending of hope and promise.

From Matt’s blog:

“I wrote this song almost 5 years ago in San Francisco—most of it on the #30 Stockton MUNI bus en route to my performing job in a musical revue… The biggest love of my life had fallen out of love with me because he thought I had fallen out of love with him. This was the saddest thing that had happened in my life romantically to date. The song was a real attempt to reconcile with someone who meant very much to me.”

UPDATE: Matt’s Mad Men co-star is Zak Barnett.
photo credit Paul Noblin

While Virginia has temporarily redeemed itself from it’s number one H8ST8 status with its election of Democratic governor Tim Kaine and even more shockingly by going blue for the first time since Johnson in the 2008 election.

But if you’re trying to secure unemployment compensation from them, they’re still patronizing assholes.

Since this is the first week that I’m actually receiving benefits, I received a letter in today’s mail, fully set in 16-point Times Bold all capitals. Some excerpts:

THE VIRGINIA EMPLOYMENT COMMISSION STAFF RANDOMLY VERIFY WORK SEARCH CONTACTS EVERY DAY.

EACH WEEK THE VEC MATCHES REPORTS WITH CLAIMS BEING PAID TO DETECT UNREPORTED EARNINGS.

FAILURE TO COMPLY WITH THESE REQUIREMENTS IS CONSIDERED FRAUD.

Insert sarcasm: It’s nice that the H8ST8 doesn’t treat me like a criminal, and that it believes I’m honestly filing these claims.

Mr Hope invited me over for dinner last night. He big poochie, Elsa, was also there (he has shared custody) and she was excited to see me. I was glad she was there too.

Mr H served tasty pork chops, even tastier couscous, green beans, bread and wine. We mainly talked about new jobs, old jobs and what color our parachutes are. It was a wonderful way to spend an evening.

Last night was the potluck/board game/sleepover party. Or at least that was the intention. The potluck happened. The board games didn’t. The sleepover was intermittent.

Bernice’s curry chicken was off the hook! After smelling it cook for an hour or so, with its scent occupying the whole house I forgot to take a picture of it. I dived right into my plate. That’s definitely a recipe to get. But before that, we had some appetizers that Anya brought that included some eggplant garlic dip that I’m also going to have to procure (Trader Joe’s). Ateya made some delish rice to accompany the chicken and Buck made a fruit salad for dessert that started getting mixed into our cranberry martinis eventually.

Since no one brought any board games we played cards and watched videos of Buck from 15 years ago when he was with his dance troupe. Hot dancing, and such baby faces!

A few weeks ago some of us from the gym decided to have a potluck dinner. I can’t recall if this decision was made before or after I lost my job. Buck said he would host it and from there it turned morphed into more than dinner: a game party and a sleepover. Sounds fine by me, that way no one would have to drive after having a few cocktails and we could get comfortable and cozy for a Saturday night.

Bernice said she would make curry chicken as our main course so I decided on a quick-n-easy yogurt & cucumber dish to calm our taste buds down from the curry. Recipes seemed pretty simple: cucumbers, yogurt, dill. I went online and found one with the addition of feta cheese and I thought that would be tasty. Some recipes called for cilantro instead of dill and I wanted to test that out as well. Time to go to the grocery store!

Here’s the recipe I started with:

• 4 cucumbers
• ¾ cup finely chopped fresh dill leaves (measure after chopping, can use more or less to taste) 
• ½ cup fat-free Greek yogurt
• ½ cup crumbled feta cheese
• salt to taste
• fresh ground black pepper to taste

I made two small batches, one with dill and one with cilantro. I found I like the cilantro batch better, but once the feta cheese was added it overpowered the green seasoning and so I used a combo of the dill and cilantro.

I used some cilantro to fill up the ¾ cup of dill, and I probably could have used less dill in the recipe, allowing more cilantro. Plus I added a package of grape tomatoes slided lengthwise to add some color. I also crushed a few cloves of garlic and threw in.

Purchase: $29.87
Balance: $36.70
Club Card Savings: $1.48 (6% of purchase)

Yawn.

Since it’s daytime, I’m walking east. Towards DC’s other river. I start down the Anacostia River Trail (pdf). It’s an actual pleasant sunny day, with only a little wind. It’s bright out and sunglasses are mandatory.

I’m a little startled as I get down to the first sitting/resting area just past RFK Stadium. There I find, strewn about, a wet shirt, wet boxer shorts, wet socks and a pair of wet sneakers. It’s as if someone has swam across the half-frozen river, stripped naked and split the scene. There’s also an odd-colored pool of liquid dripping from the sitting bench onto the concrete pathway that could be blood but could also be a spilt Gatorade. Then this really happened: Phil Collins’ “In The Air Tonight” queues up in the Pandora station I’m listening to, and not wanting to find a half-submerged corpse I get the fuck out of there. I don’t take any pictures to record my findings for fear that they will become Case Exhibit A and I’ll be drawn into some legal case that I’d rather not know about.

Further down the path I find huge concrete thingamajigs that are built in the river. They are very monolithic, very socialist, very cold and alone. They have stairs and handrails and balconies but yet there is no way to reach them. They’re probably some effort of the  Army Corp of Engineers circa 1952 that had its funding cut.

I only pass one person on this trail, a man who appears out of the bushes opposite Congressional Cemetery. We eye each other as we pass on opposite sides of the road that runs alongside the path. We both continue to turn around and check each other, making sure the other is continuing on their way and not following.

Coming upon Barney Circle the new trail disappears, and even though it’s daylight I’m a little nervous about walking through the streets and alleys that now continue along the freeway (which dead-ends at BC) and decide to turn around.

From there it’s a quick walk up Pennsylvania Ave and then cut back through the neighborhood home. But since I’m passing the Safeway I figure I might as well stop in and see what’s on sale. This is obvy a munchie-run: bananas, turkey bacon, baby carrots, hummus, sliced peaches, etc.

Purchase: $21.37
Balance: $66.57
Club Card Savings: $5.22 (20% of purchase)