Searching Through Trash

So, it's 10:30 on a Thursday, and my book club just left my home after dinner (we read Santa Evita -- go read it -- it's awesome) and I quickly logged on to my e-mail to find a note that someone had seen a "blurb" about me in today's Washington Post Express -- the free paper the Post hands out to metro riders.

I don't know what "blurb" this could be -- whether it's a review of Einstein A to Z specifically, or a mention of our reading at Politics and Prose this weekend or what -- but I figured what the hell, the Woodley Park metro is only a block away, why don't I walk down and see if there are any papers left.

There are no papers left.

So I decide, well, it can't hurt to just maybe take a glance in the trash cans to see if someone tossed one aside. As it happens the trash cans have been fairly recently replaced with new garbage bags which is good news in that the cans are reasonably clean and I am not so grossed out by this "vague glancing" I'm doing, but bad news in that there's not much in them.

Since I'm having no luck outside the station, I decide to take the 5-minute escalator down into the station to see if there are any tossed newspapers there. Once down-- hallelujah! -- I see the paper I'm looking for sandwiched underneath the clear plastic garbage bag and the can itself. I glance around, make sure no one is looking, rip a hole in the garbage bag, hold my breath while reaching in, and snag a perfectly clean lovely copy of the paper.

I couldn't believe that I had just a) gone searching through trash bins or b) actually found a clean version of what I was looking for.

I was half way up the escalator before I realized I had snagged last thursday's paper.

(Conveniently -- they listed their website, and I found the mention. . . Scroll down to page 18!)