They look so cute, you’d have no idea they’re ferocious bug-hunters with deadly claws. Oh, and totally antisocial to boot.

So, I sold my car Friday. And I really missed it on … well, no. Wait, I really needed it on … oh, no, I didn’t. Hmm. Actually, so far, I can’t really think of a point where I’ve been like, “Man, I really want a car right now!” Everything I need — so far — is either in walking distance, or Metro distance. I took the Metro up to Van Ness on Sunday and came back with a few bags of groceries from the Giant there. Probably the smallest Giant Food I’ve ever seen (although the one on Wisconsin is in two buildings: the food in one, the pharmacy across the street), and it had a beer/wine aisle. Yuengling was on sale this week: $7.99 for a twelve pack. I don’t think I’m allowed to bring glass onto the Metro, so I’ll probably just stick to the liquor store across from the Zoo’s Conn Ave entrance.

I take the Ride-On from Grosvenor to work, and back again. Coming home, I get off at Cleveland Park and walk south. Going in, I head down to Woodley Park. Leaving or coming, I’m always going downhill, although, admittedly, I do use Woodley Park coming home from the bookstore at night: it’s a shorter walk.

I wear my Smartrip card in a lanyard. Also in the pouch is a single dollar bill, two quarters and two dimes (two-way fare on the shuttle if I forget to bring coinage). There are no car keys on my key ring, which seems ridiculously lightweight.

It’s weird: I remember, when I got back in touch with my friend Russell, how I felt when he said he lived car-free, taking the Metro to and from work, and walking everywhere else he needed to be. That was about a year ago. Now he’s down in Atlanta, and I’m living in DC, without a car, taking the Metro, the bus, or my feet, everywhere I need to go.

I love it. I love DC. I grew up down in this area, so it’s sort of like a belated homecoming. Don’t get me wrong, Baltimore’s a great city, but it’s a bit harder to live without a car down there, and I don’t know how safe I’d feel walking some of those streets after dark. Oh, and there’s the whole thing about how I got a job down in the DC area (not the Baltimore one), too.

So, what’re my commuting costs?

.35 for the shuttle, one way. .70 cents per day.
$2.35 one way for the Metro, depending on what time I go. What’s that make it, $5.40 per day or something? How much does it cost you to get to work?

I hate writing a really long post and then just not having a clue what happened to it. That’s what happened last night. A really long post. Then I thought I hit “post”, but it never showed up. It wasn’t saved, it just … wasn’t.

I have some book reviews: Soon I WIll Be Invincible, a send-up of the comic book genre I read this last weekend. It was hilarious, even for someone like me, who is mostly familiar with comics through the movies based on them.

Little Green Men by Chris Buckley: very funny, although not his best, I think.

Working on Sara Gruen’s Water for Elephants. I’m actually only about 20 pages into it so far, but right now, I’m really enjoying it.

I can’t find two books. I think this means they were packed into long term storage (or loaned away), sadly, because I’ve been thinking about re-reading them: Simon Ings’ Weight of Numbers and Stephen Amidon’s The New City.

On my TV right now is a BBC production called “State of Play”, a six-part miniseries. Here’s what Netflix’s envelope says about it: “Powerful politico Stephen Collins (Chris Morrissey) is embroiled in a scandal when his research assistant dies in a freak accident and his former campaign manager Cal McAffrey (John Simm), now a reporter, realizes the incident may be linked to the death of a drug dealer. As McAffrey digs deeper, he uncovers a dangerous connection between government and big business in this exciting conspiracy thriller from the BBC.” It’s pretty good, and is, of course, being Americanized into a film set for release in 2009. But the movie won’t have Bill Nighy.