So last Friday over lunch I dropped by the Watergate Hotel Liquidation to see for myself what it would be like, and maybe snag some nice table lamps for the apartment. I walked over to the hotel, and with some directions from security, found the way up to the entrance, which was graced by an hour-long line of eager bargain hunters and Watergate gawkers. They were letting in buyers in groups of fifty, at irregular intervals depending on how many people were in the hotel at the time.

At the entrance I had to pay a $10 fee, but word is that the entrance fee was just crowd control for the first few days of the sale; from today onwards entrance is [supposedly] free. From there the group was directed to the lobby, where sample items like chairs, desks, armoires, beds, and other standard hotel room furnishings were on display, each with a tag showing a code number and price. Buyers were given order sheets, then were told to take note of what standard items they wished to purchase and in what quantities, that only a certain range of floors was open to the public, one-of-a-kind items would be individually marked, and payment could be made by cash or card at the concierge. Fixtures attached to the walls like bathroom vanities, toilets, chandeliers, and such were not to be removed, and could be ordered by code number and delivered later.

Floors 8-14 were open that day, but there were only two tiny elevators (and a service elevator which doesn’t go to the lobby) to serve the group of fifty, so I ducked into a back hallway, looked for an EXIT sign, and found the stairs. Broken light bulbs littered several steps, probably from past unfortunate buyers with hard-to-carry lamps. On the eighth floor I emerged into a dimly lit hallway, mostly empty but for the occasional buyer drifting from suite to suite, and a couple of delivery men bringing a large table to the service elevator.

About half of the rooms had been cleaned out of lamps and other small, easily-carried items. Most of the lamps lacked finials, but did all still have light bulbs. Very few armchairs were left. In one room a woman sat in an armchair and spoke quite loudly into her cellphone, “Honey, guess where I am? No. No. I’m AT THE WATERGATE HOTEL!! Yes! It’s great!”

After admiring the view from a few of the rooms, I finally found two working blue porcelain ginger jar lamps with shades — one with a finial and one without — and hauled them back down the stairs. They were not too heavy at first, but were rather bulky and difficult to carry, seeming to grow heavier and heavier as I descended. Back in the lobby, there was a bit of a queue for the concierge, but nowhere near as long as the entry line. The cashier was even nice enough to give me a spare finial. Price: $25 each lamp. These go for anywhere from $60 to $300+ each brand new.

After a long walk and a stopover at the office, the lamps are finally in our bedroom, making it much more home-like as compared to the old BB&B plastic desk lamps we used to have — as evidenced by this photo from my wife:

Thanks, Watergate Hotel Liquidation Sale!

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs

Wayan’s DC Photos

Are you a nervous flier, one with white-knuckle grips on the seat rest during takeoff? Are you also religious?

Then the Dulles Airport Chapel is for you.

Honoring all faith traditions and open 24 hours a day for meditation, its the perfect place to reconnect with your gods before a long flight. It also has prayer sessions on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday for those in need of leader in religious rites.

Being an atheist, I don’t frequent the chapel’s multiple services, but if I were a believer, I would be in there praying to make 26 hours of flights without delay or disaster.

What would you pray for?

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs

This photo doesn’t have much to do with Washington, but the second I saw it I was impressed. Flickr user krisetya captured a unique view of something that we see in our every day lives, turning the mundane into magic. The composition of this photo is great with the majority of the frame filled with a sea of Ikea shopping carts. The nondescript man in the middle is just what the shot needed to be complete. I find the lettering on the wall distracting and would have cloned it out, but to each photographer their own. I can’t tell if the color in this photo was changed in post processing, if the camera’s white balance was thrown off, or if that’s actually what the lighting looks like in the store. My other question is, who takes their DSLR to Ikea?! Regardless, it’s a job well done.

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs

Wayan’s DC Photos

This is the top of the only open Petworth Metro entrance this morning. The usual two escalators now just one with the left one under repair.

Up and down traffic has to squeeze past on one set of stairs to make morning destinations and the escalator repairmen have no timeline for fixing the situation.

And just what would be the situation if something happened in the Metrorail station at rush hour with only one escalator in one exit open for use?

I only hope we never need to find out.

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs

One of the things I love about living in DC is that I can go over to the Watergate just about any day of the week — yeah, that Watergate — and do my groceries at “Senior Safeway” (also known around this time of year as the “Student Safeway”), a relatively mundane grocery experience in the shadow of historic intrigue and infamy.

Now, however, a new Watergate shopping experience is open to Washington:

It’s a massive liquidation sale! While the hotel closes up for renovation till 2009, they’re getting rid of surplus desks, chairs, chests, armoires, sinks, tubs, toilets, cutlery, glasses, plates, pillows, four-poster beds and more, all worth anywhere from singles to thousands of dollars, heavily used by hundreds of guests, going for bargain prices. The sale runs every day of the week, Mon-Sat 10-7 and Sun 12-5, and there’s a $10 entrance fee to deter non-buying gawkers, but hey, isn’t it worth a Hamilton for the chance to get a piece of history? Or maybe a used desk for cheap? I saw a bunch of people carting off armchairs from there just this afternoon. Word is the bargains aren’t so great, but hey, Watergate!

Go for it! I know I will. Anyone been there yet? Score anything good?

More on this from WaPo, DCist, and DCBlogs.

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs

It’s that time of year again, or maybe it’s been that time of year for a while now and I’m just now noticing how many f*#!ing mosquitoes have been out lately. I’ll step outside for a 10 minute dog walk and come back bitten by about 5 of those little bastards. It’s too warm to wear jeans, and I’m not a big fan of bug spray, so what am I to do? Set my leg hair on fire? That trick only works once a year. I just hope I don’t die of the West Nile Virus.

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs

Next Sunday is the last Sunday I’ll ever get to wake up to Stained-glass Bluegrass on WAMU. It’s been my morning routine for at least a year, and my morning tradition for far longer than that (I eschewed an alarm clock on sunday for a while), but no more. WAMU is changing their lineup to take advantage of the HD subchannels available to them. 88.5-1 will now be much as it is, talk radio with local shows by Kojo Nnamdi and Diane Rehm, as well as PRI and NPR programming. 88.5-2 will now be all-bluegrass, all-the-time, and 88.5-3 will be a BBC-based news station.

So, for those of us who haven’t yet found the $250 for the HD Clock Radio, Stained-glass Bluegrass is unreachable except via Internet Radio.

I applaud WAMU for taking the initiative to go HD, but it’s frustrating to be unable to receive the full depth of the programming that we once could receive.

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs

Instead of complying with a judge’s order to make their controversial day-laborer center open to all who might need employ, the town is shuttering the center on the 14th. That’s right, soon, all those workers who were no longer hanging out in the parking lot of the 7-11, making a general wreck of the place, will be back at that same parking lot.

Closing the center does nothing to stop the underlying issue in all of this, it won’t lead to more arrests and deportations for illegal immigration, it won’t stop businesses from needing construction labor on a day-to-day basis, and it certainly does nothing for the town of Herndon itself.

The whole thing just pisses me off, honestly. Instead of coming to an amicable compromise, the city is doing the equivalent of gathering up its marbles, and shouting at the top of their lungs on the playground that you’re a cheater, cheater, pumpkin eater, and they’re taking their marbles and going HOME, dammit.

Who wins? No one. Who loses? Everyone. I fear that this is symbolic of the coming political campaigns from all the various camps running candidates for various offices, and that in search of total victory for one side, we will all end up losing in the long run.

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs

Wayan’s DC Photos

If you’re in downtown Washington DC, say at the corner of 18th and K Streets NW, take a moment and look up.

There you will see this banner on a building corner that tastefully and apolitically honors and mourns the American military personnel wounded or killed in the Iraq War.

More than any Code Pink fast, this very simple and somber symbol brings the war’s terrible cost to my conscious thought. Today’s count: 27,405 wounded and 3,706 killed.

Thank you, building owners of 1799 K Street NW, for your respect of those who are giving their blood, their lives, for their country. May you be lucky enough not to have family in either count.

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs

Wayan’s DC Photos

Now I am not usually one to call anyone else out on spelling mistakes. Without spellcheck, my typing can be close to illegible. But I do have enough class to fix my mistakes when educated on things like “loose” vs. “lose”.

Not so with Malaysia Kopitiam at 1827 M Street NW. There a handwritten in ink sign says:

We need experience server (with knowledge of Asian or Malaysian Food). Apply within. Thank you

A sign corrected in pencil to read “experienced” by a passerby at least one rainy day ago, yet still left unchanged by the restaurant management.

I don’t know about you, but any restaurant too lazy to fix a simple sign doesn’t inspire my confidence in its attention to details like service. Or sanitation.

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs

Here’s something you don’t see everyday on the C&O Canal in Georgetown: Lock 3 empty and the Canal Boat Georgetown on dry dock in Lock 2:

There’s a sign on the board by the visitor center citing towpath repairs as the reason for not having any canal boat tours for a bit. This, by the way, confirms McMullan’s canal tour conjecture as to what that ribbed structure is. I imagine the Blue Heron of Lock 2 isn’t too happy about this development; I haven’t seen him (her?) around there since the boat took over.

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs

Wayan’s DC Photos

Its the first day back for many people today after summer vacations. The first day of school for kids, the first day of work for adults.

To celebrate, the WashPost went all hyperbole with its Commuters’ Vacations to End With a Screeching of Brakes story in the Metro section, scaring us with:

Add that to the 1.73 million people who drive to work alone, population growth that has outpaced spending on roads and transit, and general post-vacation doldrums, and the region’s traffic snarls will resume where they left off before the start of summer.

According to census figures for last year, the Washington region’s average commute was the second-longest in the United States, at more than 33 minutes each way.

But is that what you experienced today? I sure didn’t. My commute to work was a breeze and heading home shouldn’t be a problem either.

How did your trip go? Did you get Brownpau luck too?

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs

hammer time

Originally uploaded by Chaymation.

No, really. Hammertime is Thursday at 7pm at the Reagan Building Stage. Cost? Free.

Am I really going to get to see “Can’t Touch This” Live?!?!?! This could be the best free concert ever.

Of course, the killer line so far is on the Post’s event listing: “Still too legit to quit.”

Now, my friend wants to go to get him to sign a 1099 form, or maybe to throw them as paper airplanes, but I think I just want to hear the man who made so many of my friends look like fools on the junior high dance floor.

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs

Sure, Ethanol is a renewable resource, unlike fossil-based fuels like gasoline and diesel, but could it be costing us the Chesapeake Bay? Apparently, as corn production in the greater Chesapeake Bay Watershed rises, the amount of fertilizer runoff increases, too. This runoff has the nasty tendency to cause algae blooms which then gum up the bay, causing further damage to the habitat.

This then begs the question: is the desire to move to more renewable resources worth the cost of the Chesapeake Bay? I’m not so sure. Of course, with market pressures driving up the price of corn to a point where it becomes the cash crop for the region, it’s hard to tell farmers not to grow it. Where’s the compromise?

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs

When was the last time you heard someone say, “I went to the DMV today. It was awesome! Boy they really know what they’re doing there. What a top notch, professional operation.”

It amazes me that DMV’s across the country can be so consistently bad and the butt of so many jokes. To compound things, DC has only two main offices to choose from, the inspection center in SE or the office in Georgetown. Either way, you can bank on long lines, Soup Nazi style employees (“No registration for you!”), and something going wrong.

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs Continue reading →

Well, a battle over guns anyway. At 10am this morning Mayor Fenty had a press conference to talk about moving forward with challenging the overturn on the gun ban. The WaPo article on it is light, but the ever-excellent SCOTUSBlog has more details and links. Of note there is a link to the actual filing [pdf] as well as some interesting observations about today’s filing, particularly this:

The petition raises a single question: “Whether the Second Amendment forbids the District of Columbia from banning private possession of handguns while allowing possession of rifles and shotguns.”

Worded that way, the question appears to offer the Justices an option of deciding the case on narrow grounds, limited to the urban setting of a single city with a history of handgun-related violence, with citizens still able to have some other kinds of guns for self-defense in case of need.

Fenty et all waited right down to the wire on this; the (extended) deadline to file expired tomorrow. Seems like they’re covering their bases, making sure that if they do fail to get the ruling overturned then they’ll at least make use of the stay for as much time as possible.

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs

I was riding Metro one recent hot day and saw something I really did not need to see. You know the type of situation – a hot day in a car with no air conditioning and you seem to sick to everything you touch. It had been miserable from early morning and by the end of the day, the heat seemed to have built up to riot-inducing levels on the train.

One fellow was wearing those thin, short running shorts and had his feet up on the seat next to him. I was not looking for this, mind you, but it was pretty obvious that his “boys” were hanging out right there on the train, in front of God and everyone. Assuming that God uses public transportation.

The woman sitting across from him smiled at me, as if mocking this guy who was probably just trying to cool his loins after a hard day of whatever he does that requires wearing shorts like that. It was not clear if he knew he was letting it all hang out or not, but I am sure it felt better than letting the heat build up even more.

Fellow Metro riders – we have a couple more hot days ahead of us. Please dress appropriately for the comfort of the other riders. We all want to cool off, but that is what “pants optional Friday” is for. And that’s just for the office.

As a side note, my lovely wife dared me to write this without using the term “nut sack.” I am proud to have almost succeeded.

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs

Maybe it was the not-so-subliminal suggestion of Coulton’s performance of his song Ikea on Friday night, or perhaps just a straight-forward effort to placate my darling girlfriend after dragging her to a friend’s debut wrestling performance, but today we ended up in the Ikea in Woodbridge.

At some point since the last time we were there, Ikea has decided to start encouraging use of re-usable bags by charging $0.05 per plastic bag. Alternately they sell blue versions of the yellow ones they provide for use inside the store for $0.55. As someone who re-uses plastic store bags – if you buy something from Nice Mirror when we’re at a street fair you’ll get Ikea, Wegmans or Target bags for your merchandise – I find this somewhat irksome but hey, their heart is in the right place.

Or so I felt till we sat down for a cup of coffee after checking out… and discovered that the creamer was in individual plastic containers and – my favorite part – each wooden stirring stick was individually wrapped in paper, like a fast food straw. Guess the environmental left hand cashiers don’t know what the right hand cafe is up to….

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs

I’d been looking forward to the Giants/Nats game last night for a while. I mean, how many opportunities do you get to go boo the biggest cheat in organized sports? But the more I thought about it, the less I wanted to go. I’d paid for my tickets, sure, but did I really want to give that douchebag the time of day?

Turns out, I didn’t. I wrestled with it most of the day, I might be seeing history, if he hit a homer, I could tell my kids some day that I was there and saw him play. But, he’s a cheater, I thought, do I want to reward that, even with my boos?

No, no Bonds for me, even if it was Teddy Roosevelt Bobblehead night.

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs