The Internets can be fickle. Social media is so in that it’s now a big yawn. The shark has been jumped, Twitter has been twa… er… tweeted, and nothing against all of you foursquare fans, but I know nothing about foursquare and still cannot stand it. I’m not even interested in where I am most of the time.

My pocketbook is smarter than me

But as we all stare ever more raptly into the tiny screens we carry around, I’ve been thinking about how isolating it all really is. We don’t talk to people on the metro (though honestly, that’s kind of a blessing), we don’t ask for directions, we can get book recommendations at the tap of a finger, find out how much that house cost, compare prices around the world with the flick of a thumb, and tighten our tether to e-mail and work all in the name of convenience. What I haven’t seen, though, is a really good implementation that combines social media, the Internets and the big, bad, real world.

The other week I was invited to try out the goSmithsonian Trek scavenger hunt across the Smithsonian Institution museums and – to be honest – I thought “Ugh. Trying to navigate the real world with new technology. How annoying is this going to be?” I was wrong. It was actually pretty fun, even going it alone.

• Read more about the Trek on the Around the Mall blog

Basically, you download the SCVNGR app to your iPhone or Droid (because you are a nerd) and it takes you on kind of a guided tour of several of the museums. You are invited to answer a series of questions or “challenges,” featuring trivia from the exhibits, and earn points for correct answers. It’s kind of addictive, and I found myself plowing through school groups and dashing up stairways to find the answers.

Dodging tourists and photographing elephant butts

One of the things you’re encouraged to do in each museum is snap a photo to share. Here’s mine from Natural History. I’m also not entirely proud of the way I behaved in the Wright Brothers exhibit at the National Air and Space Museum, where I tried to move quickly through lolly gagging families to efficiently complete one challenge before moving on to the next.

I think the Trek has great applications. As a DC native, I’ve long seen school groups going on pen-and-paper scavenger hunts in the museums. This takes it digital and really makes it work with the technology that’s already in your pocket. I could totally picture going on this Trek with a bunch of kids (assuming a bunch of kids each have iPhones or Droids or whatever) and setting them loose to conduct the challenge. Or maybe as a group activity. DC is riddled with bright-eyed young things who love organized fun. And curmudgeons (such as myself) can also learn a thing or two. Even those (also such as myself) who used to work at Smithsonian Enterprises.

To fulfill the challenges, I actually looked around the Smithsonian Castle for the first time in years, saw the crypt where are kept the remains of James Smithson, the man who donated the bags of gold (literally) to found an “Establishment for the increase & diffusion of knowledge” in a country he never visited during his life. This is just one of the amazing things to know about this amazing place.

Focus on experience, not interface.

As I said, I was pretty reluctant to try this thing out. I’m no luddite, but am congenitally cranky. It would be the easiest thing in the world to make the interface either too complicated or the activity dangerously dull. They’ve managed to make a really simple-to-use tool to guide users through what is at heart a much more complex activity. And keep the focus on the content, and the experience rather than on navigating the freaking phone. Strong work, guys.

But don’t take my word for it – feel free to download the free SCVNGR app yourself and head to the national mall. And don’t forget to drink plenty of water, it’s appalling out.

Plans for the future

I just spoke to the charming Beth Py-Lieberman, the editor of goSmithsonian who managed this whole shebang. She said that they’d love to take it further after this one-month trial is up. Maybe monthly treks, since the exhibits (particularly in the art museums) change so frequently.

“One of the takeaway lessons for me,” said Beth, “is that some of the visitors are going to have to be challenged more. We’re going to have to make them work hard for the answers, and get them into the back corners of the Smithsonian where the great stuff is.” I somehow failed to mention that I just couldn’t get one of the answers from the Hall of Oceans, so I may be in big trouble if they smart it up too much.

But it takes a lot of work to put one of these together. The one that’s live now? Beth says they started development during the DeathSnow and launched it during the heat wave, and that is something of a time commitment. It went through a lot of rounds of edits, a couple because the exhibits changed and threw the trek out of whack with reality, and one round Beth called “riddle-fying,” which is where they made lots of the questions rhyming and/or funny, which is pretty cute. No one asked me, but this all seems rather perfectly in line with the Institution’s stated goal of taking the whole of the Smithsonian digital, a project that is so exciting and of such appalling scope I can’t even get my brain around it. Maybe my pocketbook can.

• Check out the Smithsonian Commons prototype

Disclosure: I used to be an employee of  Smithsonian Enterprises. I have not been paid, compensated, bribed, cajoled or threatened to try this trek or write this post.

Read more about the goSmithsonian Trek from these fine bloggers:

Going places and completing challenges with the goSmithsonian Trek mobile app

Winning an iPad from the Smithsonian!

You know you’ve been in DC too long when you know for a fact that this has happened before:

Northwest Washington residents capture runaway horse

“A runaway horse, without saddle, bridle or rider, galloped through the streets of upper Northwest Washington on Sunday evening, provoking concern and astonishment, and many calls to the police.”

My parents love to tell the following story from when I was a tiny kid, and we lived on Yuma Street in Northwest D.C.:

A Park Police horse got loose and went galloping up the street past our house. It was followed closely by a cop on a motorcycle. Apparently I was so taken by this that I pulled a little chair up to the window so I could watch for it to happen again.

Let it be known that I was not wrong! I just didn’t wait long enough.

During the 3094809803 months I was pregnant, I ate a lot of Dum Dum lollipops. Like, more than you’d think possible because I am congenitally incapable of leisurely sucking on one, and instead crunch them into oblivion instantly. This creates a lot of candy wrappers. You used to be able to cash them in for cool things like t-shirts and frisbees and other branded merchandise, back when online stores weren’t yet ubiquitous and people listened to cassettes. You can still trade ‘em for schwag (the wrappers not the cassettes), but it’s less of a challenge since you can also just send in $6 or whatever without having to suffer through the candy. But suffer I did. My friend Manda likes to say that I built a human heart out of Skittles, and she’s probably not far off. And now I have to wear large slacks. But that’s a story for another time. Back to the lollipop wrappers.

I had a bunch of small, colorful squares and wanted to do some kind of fun art project with them. After discounting some paper weaving projects as “too much effort,” I decided to try to make a small, delicate mobile that can be gently buffeted in the natural air currents of the baby’s room, to the delight of all. Origami is a natural application for small squares of paper, and I was sure that the Internets could hook me up with some simple instructions that even I could follow successfully. And so it came to pass…

How To Make An Origami Mobile

1) Eat a lot of lollipops and conserve the wrappers. Tip: Sharing the candy with your coworkers will mitigate their concern when they see a ziploc bag full of candy wrappers on the desk of the enormous pregnant lady.

2) Pick through the wrappers and discard any torn or mangled ones.

3) Flatten them clumsily by hand, and then – because you are a maniac – iron them individually. Place them between two layers of kitchen towel and smooth them gently on a medium setting without steam. Use a light hand and be careful not to melt them to the towel. Like I did.

4) Conduct many individual acts of origami! Instructions for many fanciful animals can easily be located on the Internets. Search terms I used included: origami, easy, for dummies.

5) Tie together to pieces of (in this case) floral arrangement wire with nylon thread for the armature.

6) Make several strings of several paper birds (or whatever) each and tie them in an artistic manner to the armature. If your piece does not balance well when held from a loop tied to the center of the armature, you can scootch (technical term) the strings to different places on the bars, or add and subtract birds as needed.

7)  Once you’re satisfied that it is structurally sound and well-balanced, declare your work of art complete and try to suppress any flashbacks to things you’ve seen on Regretsy.com: “Where DIY meets WTF.”

My family is full of enthusiastic walkers. We walk long, we walk often, we walk kind of fast. I love it – I get to look around the neighborhood, see what’s new, catch some vitamin D, run errands without having to figure out parking. It’s good exercise and a great tool in the stress management arsenal. And it gives you a pedestrian’s-eye view of your environment – which allows you to see more detail than you can from a car.

Details like this, found on a bike/running/walking kind of trail near my house:

Thanks for this, Sport. Very motivational. I was thinking of writing below it “Surrender Dorothy,” and then I lost interest.

And this little number in the window of one of those shady rug stores that are perpetually going out of business:

A nice twist don’t you think? To Prevent Bankruptcy. I think the subtlety may have been lost on some folks, since they have since reverted to the standard issue Going Out Of Business signage. It was cute while it lasted, though. And I would have totally missed if it I had been in a car. Not because I’d have been whizzing by, mind you, but because I would have been blinded by apoplectic rage. Traffic in my neighborhood sucks.

Interestingly (to me), I think the rug store owner is either acquainted with or is the same person as the owner and landlord of two group houses on my street. Folks who have known me since we bought our place knows that an adventure those houses have been. It looks like I’ve deleted my old posts about the neighbors. But they were a real treat. Once in a while, in a surplus of high spirits, they’d celebrate “Call Each Other a Motherfucker” hour at four in the morning, while slashing one another’s tires. I invested in earplugs and learned how to grind my teeth in my sleep.

Ah. Memories.

But the landlord remodeled the house a couple of years ago and implemented a total tenant turnover (after an attempt to sell for an outrageous sum failed – which I figure is probably helping him skirt some other regulation about owner occupancy, or rental permitting). The group there now is great and I have no complaints. But the owner is apparently a long-time scammer, and is up to some old tricks. I refer you to this old CityPaper article about The Going-Out-Of-Business Business – it’s a good explanation of the never-ending bankruptcy sale, and references my rug-mogul-turned-real-estate-tycoon right at the tippy top.

See? You can learn some stuff by getting out of the car and walking around.

There's work to be done.

The weather outside is deeply disturbing. And something about the air pressure make me keep tipping over on the sofa like a buffalo with a dart in its flank, napping randomly. But I am delighted to report that I have successfully worked my way through this pile of New Yorkers, and resolve to stay more on top of things moving forward.

• Winter wonderland photos and Deathsnow Challenge Part I
• Bare shelves at Safeway, and Deathsnow Challenge Part II

February 8, 2010, continued

Okay, so after the Keyser Söze piece, I did enjoy the profile of gospel singer Tonex, and his complicated past and present. Best of luck to him in all of his future endeavors. ‘William Burns’ by Roberto Bolano was a dark and disturbing piece of fiction that I was happy to end. Castle in the Air – about a ginormotron skyscraper in Dubai – Vegas of the Middle East, but without the class – was honestly pretty cool. No matter how repulsive  a city it is, they do build some cool stuff. None of the other reviews/critiques really moved me.

And on to the big, fat 85th Anniversary Issue, the last in my series.

Feb 15 & 22, 2010

In Talk of the Town, comparing the week’s takings for Avatar to the federal budget deficit is an unspeakably depressing thing to do. Thanks.

And so we move on to “The Trial,” and Eric Holder’s battle about trying Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. Lots of bloodthirsty people on all sides of this equation who don’t want this to go to trial. Easy for them to say, seems to me. And while we’re at it – if none of the places where people died on 9-11 want to host an expensive and divisive trial, they should just have it here in DC. We never make our budgets anyway and public transportation is already a disaster. Also, c’mon people, due process and human rights are what America’s all about. Love it or leave it, man.

Mules? By the way? Are awesome. And this piece about alcohol and alcoholism across different cultures is really interesting. As is the incredible civil rights photographic portfolio by Platon and introduced by David Remnick – a class act.

And with that, I’ll get back to obsessing about the weather and the poor performance of WMATA. I thank you for your kind indulgence.

It just won’t stop frakking snowing, so I’m still trying to burn through these New Yorkers. Just when I thought that I was nearing the end, the mailman managed to access our house despite the Deathsnow and deliver another one.

• Read Part I of the Deathsnow Challenge

Meanwhile, Spouse had to walk me around today, in advance of this latest storm, so we went to our neighborhood Safeway. A couple of snapshots, to give you an idea of the carnage. I think Spouse was having flashbacks to his youth in Moscow. He kept muttering “if you are for the first time in Moscow, welcome.” and something about 12 kilos of potatoes. Poor Spouse.

February 1, 2010

Bed bugs, Lady Gaga, and the ongoing tragedy in Haiti open up this week’s issue. I kind of lucked out this time, since my copy is missing a bunch of pages from the middle – the result being that the article about Dresden merging awkwardly with one  about the Department of Investigation, also known as “the city’s secret police.” I think.

Meghan O’Rourke’s piece about grief hit kind of close to home, what with my rockstar Grandma dying just a couple of weeks ago. Which reminds me to point out that Cancer is Still an Asshole, and that I’ve had some great success with the Amazon affiliation since launch. There will be a donation to the ACS, as promised, just as soon as Amazon submits their tally. Not bad! Remember, all you have to do is go through this link or any on the Cancer is an Asshole Web site, buy whatever you’re going to buy on Amazon anyway, and they’ll kick me 4% or so of your purchase price, every cent of which I will send to the ACS.

The analysis of the Leno/O’Brien squabble is best summed up as “an abject failure of leadership” and left to die. Never cared for any of those programs myself, so it’s hard for me to take this story or the analysis thereof at all seriously.

Meanwhile, this is taking me so long that I just got another issue. And damn! As the special 85th Anniversay Issue, it’s a fat one.

February 8, 2010

Naturally, this issue opens with a couple of remembrances of J.D. Salinger. More power to ‘em. Moving on to the tragedy in Haiti, the story about Nadia provides a vivid picture of the harsh realities on the ground – both now and before the earthquake.

I don’t know why, but the Shouts & Murmurs pieces have been pretty weak for the last few issues. I could also be humor impaired after sitting in the house all this time. Now, I’m working my way through a really great article about a guy they’re comparing to Keyser Söze, but keep getting interrupted by things like dinner, extremely welcome phone calls, and Spouse wanting to read that article even more than me.

But since it’s Still Frakking Snowing, I’ll have some time tomorrow to finish up.

I’m about to expel a baby from myself, so I have decided to cut me some slack when I get totally obsessed with a notion for no reason. And so, with that in mind, I proudly present my latest fit:

Cute or HR?

We’ve all been there – in the office. And then someone says something that makes everyone kind of pause and think for a moment. You do the rapid calculation – weighing your relationship against both immediate context and overall environment. Then rub that up against your future prospects, workload, aversion to paperwork.

Maybe “rub up against” isn’t the phrase I want to use here.

But either way, this new site is an enormous amount of fun, and I’m just tickled by the response so far.

Please share your own Cute or HR moments, and/or vote on others already published. I strongly suggest that no identifying details be used.

I had the great good fortune to work for Smithsonian Enterprises for a few years – working for the magazine, catalogue and travel Web sites. My tenure overlapped with the grand reopening of the American Art Museum and Portrait Gallery, an incredible, beautiful building full of history and with a lot going on (tip for visitors: traverse it from the top-down). My Number One Favorite Most Awesomest Thing in the Smithsonian Institution’s Vast Collections is this.

The Throne of the Third Heaven of the Nations’ Millennium General Assembly

It was fantastic to feel a part of this great institution, and one of the perks was getting familiar with the collections. I’d seen this gem before, as a kid growing up in DC you visit the Smithsonian museums rather a lot, but for some reason it didn’t really stay with me until I saw it as an adult.

Nothing rocks in the museum more than this. It’s an incredible installation, given a lot of real estate in a back corner of the American Art Museum dedicated to folk art. Built over the course of 14 years in a DC garage by a guy named James Hampton, this piece of magnificence was only discovered after his death in 1964.

A couple of adjectives that come to mind every time I round the corner and see this thing:

• Magnificent
• Obsessive
• Hopeful
• Loving

It’s probably (okay, more than probably) the product of an at least somewhat deranged mind, but it looks to me like an enormous, elaborate, long-term act of love and devotion. It’s joyful and inspiring. It makes me happy not only that it exists, but that it’s been given such a place of honor in our nation’s collection. And the great thing about the Smithsonian – it belongs to all of us. My tax dollars go towards the painstaking maintenance of this gem. This I can get into.

And the words it’s crowned with – Fear Not – are almost universally applicable.

I’m thankful for a lot more, of course (Spouse, health, kitty cats like Ms. Lucia who has her claws lovingly embedded in my leg right now, and so on), and that’s all great, but pretty dull. So, have a great one everybody. Eat well and don’t let the crazy people bug you. And if you look around the room and don’t see someone who is the most crazy, it could be you.

I grew up with The Young and the Restless. The program apparently started when mom was expecting me, and has been a peripheral if constant presence ever since. Sick days, summers, the odd holiday… we watched it. Often with sandwiches, since it’s been in the same time slot since dinosaurs roamed the earth. Well, mom finally got up close and personal with the show. But why don’t I let her tell it.

Mom on the scene

Okay, I admit it. I have watched The Young and the Restless for 35 years. Not consistently, mind you, but often enough to know the difference between Adam and Billy, or say, Ashley and Mac. Long enough to have seen Victor age as a pater familias, and lose some of his boxing form. I’ve seen Ashley played by a variety of folks, with the best one (Eileen Davidson) comfortably settled in the role again. I’ve seen the town prosecutor die, only to be reborn as his own evil twin (people wrote in – they missed the actor). Mrs. Chancellor, of course, is the same as she has been for 35 years—let’s send up a hurrah for actor Jeanne Cooper, who once allowed her facelift to be written into the scripts, and who is in real life the mother of actor Corbin Bernsen.

I guess not everyone is up on these folks. Or cares. My life has changed over the years, too. I’m no longer stuck at home with a sick child, or hanging out with the TV during a long, lonely winter. I still consider the inhabitants of Genoa City to be part of my family. I mean, they are always there for me. Whenever I had to sit around a courthouse, waiting to see if I’d be placed on a jury I found a TV turned to Y&R surrounded by a cadre of women who argued and clucked their tongues about the fate of these characters just as I did. We leaped all class barriers and bonded instantly.

Me again, the one mom doesn’t mention because she wasn’t really there, is that when she was having an operation a few years ago, her husband and I sat in the waiting room with the anxious family members of other patients. At 12:30, my stepdad asked them to turn to CBS and we all watched together – taking turns complaining about Victor Newman. Will that man never learn? But back to the story:

So when I had the chance to be an extra on the show (thank you, Y&R, for making that donation to my cousin’s school auction so that my kids would force me to bid on it), I didn’t hesitate to hop on a plane to L.A., check into a room at a funky little hotel called The Farmer’s Daughter, don one of my favorite shirts and dash across the street to CBS, where I was greeted by a lovely young woman named Erin Yeomans, who looked like a star herself, and who showed me one of the best times of my life.

It wasn’t being in the scene in the coffee shop where you can see me for about 3 seconds. Much better was being on the set most of a day and watching them film the show. I watched actors spend two minutes doing a read through of a scene, and then getting it shot in one take. The takes are short, but even so…. these guys are good. And they laugh a lot when they blow it, as when Cane said to Lily, “The doctor says a fever of 105 is not good, but just to watch it and call if it gets any higher,” necessitating one of the few do-overs of a scene. I got to sit on Victor’s couch! I’d seen that living room on my screen at home hundreds of times. I got hugged by Neal and kissed by Cane! I laughed with Lily. And best of all, I met Jack – sweet, unlucky Jack. After a heartbreaking scene in which, Jack loses out in love and potential parenthood yet again, actor Peter Bergman came up behind me and said, “Could you hear that? We speak pretty softly because the mikes can pick up everything.” I told him I’d heard enough of it to know that Jack got screwed again, and we agreed that he gets a bad deal much too often.

Erin answered all my questions about people on the show, and took my picture with everyone I met. But she swore me to secrecy about some of the plot elements. The show is shot a month or so in advance, so I’ve known for weeks that Mary Jane is actually Patty. I can say that now.

I sat in the director’s booth and watched them orchestrate a pretty complicated set of events, quietly and seamlessly. These people shoot five one hour shows in four days, week after week, and everyone was good-humored. As one of the crew said to me, “I’m only staying as long as it’s still fun. That’s been 19 years so far.”

I’d stay, too, if I could. They even paid me for being an extra. Thank you, Y&R. Even as soap operas struggle to hang on in the great media shakedown, I pledge myself as a lifelong fan.

You can see for yourself at 26.42 of the September 2, 2009 episode, if you’re so inclined. Fine work mom!

WMATA photograph by Larry Levine

Now, I’ve done my share of bitching about Metro this Summer. Not without cause. Since the terrible accident in June and a series of other mini disasters, the Red line (the line I know well) has been a total disaster. Long waits, nauseatingly jerky rides, inexplicable off-loadings and sloooow service, has made it a really unappealing way to get around.

I’ve seen it good and I’ve seen it bad and this summer it’s been bad, which is why my fuse was short when the weather warmed up and the platform at Bethesda became uninhabitable. Combine that with the longer waits for packed trains full of angry, aggressive commuters, and I got all in a snit. I dashed off a quick note to WMATA customer service expecting little. Imagine my surprise when I got a great, timely, attentive, detailed, personable and professional response. Yes! This from the same people who are shutting the airport stop for the duration of a holiday weekend! Which, I’ve got to say, is a bold “Eff You” to the city.

I’d like to give a little credit where it’s due, particularly since they’re having such a hard time this year. Having received permission from WMATA, here are some excerpts from that correspondence. I’m not publishing the name of the excellent rep who wrote to me, but if Metro wants to give some credit for a job well done, the case # is 503500.

My original email:

It is insanely hot on the Bethesda station platform, and has been all summer. Now that the weather is reaching DC’s usual summer highs, this situation is getting more dire. Please, please, please make whatever repairs or adjustments are necessary.

And the relevant part of their lovely reply:

Thank you for your recent email.  The air conditioning units that blow the cold air are operating and the temperatures inside Bethesda station remain in the 70s.  However, the Bethesda units are some of the oldest units in the system and need to be replaced.  We are working to get them scheduled for replacement, which may be a few years out as funding is always an issue.

Okay, I’ll give it another couple of days, I thought. And I did. And I noticed that I could feel the hot air actually blowing up the long escalator, wilting my suit as I descended into hell. So I wrote back.

Thank you very much for your reply. I must, however, respectfully disagree with you about the temperature on the Bethesda platform and encourage WMATA to have another look…  Perhaps when Metro Center is done with the fans (which have been a great help this summer), a couple of them could be deployed to Bethesda.

Then! Get this! She sent it to the air conditioning department! Who also wrote back!

I had the temperature checked today at 10:30, and the temperature in the middle of the platform was 78 degrees – not bad! Not sure why the customer feels different. If at all possible, I can have a supervisor meet the customer and look at temperature readings so we can know exactly what time they are there and experience what they are feeling.

We will continue to try to find ways to improve air circulation until the units finally get replaced.

We are apprehensive about installing fans for safety reasons, and with temperature readings below 80 degrees, doesn’t justify putting fans down there.

I declined, with thanks, the offer of a meeting nd thanked them both for looking into my complaint.

Really, I’ve had some customer service nightmares (Comcast, anyone?), and I’m very impressed with this response. Kudos Metro. I hope that this experience is one you can emulate throughout the network. And I hope you get the funding to do it.