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Petworth Parking Sign Madness

Check out this parking sign madness on Upshur Street in Petworth – 2 hour parking allowed in a Metro bus zone.

I wonder which one the parking attendant will notice as they write you a ticket? Or which one the judge will agree with if you contest it?

That reminds me – have you contested a parking ticket recently? The last time I did, using a clear photo of parking sign madness like this one, I never heard back from the DMV. The ticket just disappeared.

Anyway, as this sign is right before an actual bus stop, with a bus shelter and everything, do the neighbourhood a favor if you’re parking outside Domku: Find a clearly legal spot.

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs

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"I guess I would have bathed more often if there were females at Episcopal," – John McCain

Imagine my surprise at browsing the National Post last week while in Toronto and finding an article about a school in Alexandria. Episcopal High School is more fleshed out as an institution in this article, and John McCain’s youth at the school. It turns out, for example, that the school is much more than just the birthplace of McCain’s “Smokes for Kids” program.

From the article:

It was to this same campus, nearly 60 years ago, that a reckless, rootless Navy brat was consigned by his admiral father. You still can see the 14-year-old’s photo on the wall of the gymnasium, wiry and dark-haired and forced to sit still for the camera with the rest of the wrestlers: John S. McCain III, Episcopal High School Class of 1954, known to his friends, faculty, and enemies here as “the Punk.”

Check out the whole thing here.

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Post-modern Deconstruction


Post-modern Deconstruction

Originally uploaded by tbridge.

The old building at the corner of Wilson and Highland is all but gone, torn down by a monster claw on a hydraulic arm that looks straight out of a horror movie. It was creepy to watch this evil-looking beastie rip away brick and concrete like so much cottony covering. As I stood waiting for the light to change, it took out two more window frames and about 30 square feet of brick facade like it was nothing.

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs

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Only in DC: Fire Mary Peters

Fire Mary Peters

I walked off the metro at Navy Yard this weekend and saw these ads throughout the station. They didn’t make any sense to me. Fire Mary Peters? Who’s Mary Peters? Why do these make any sense here at all?

Then I went up the escalators and saw the Department of Transportation. Mary Peters is Secretary of Transportation Mary Peters. Then I realized just how much it would suck to come to work every day on the Metro to see ads that you should be fired. Only in DC does stuff like that happen. I suppose it could be worse, it could’ve been a whole big billboard thing. That really would’ve sucked.

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs

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Taking the Plunge

<img src=”http://farm1.static.flickr.com/222/444895419_12ea4679a2_m.jpg”
alt=”Ruff & Deadly?”>

photo courtesy of IntangibleArts

In the next few months, my wife and I will be wandering (deliberately) into the Virginia housing morass of a market.

We’re no strangers to home ownership. We had a very nice place in Pennsylvania for many years before we relocated down here. However, the cost differential between Western PA and the MD/VA/DC area was quite a staggering shock to my own financial sensibilities. The home we moved from could be found down here – for nearly five times the price.

Needless to say, we went back to renting. That was three years ago.

We’re now desperate for our own piece of land again.

There’s something to be said about owning your own piece of America – much less, the planet – and once you start, it’s hell to take four steps back and rent. I look forward to having our own space again, unrestricted in how we use it, what we paint it, how it’s decorated.

“Buy a house? Now? Are you crazy?”

That’s the common refrain we’ve heard from a lot of friends and relatives – most of whom don’t live in the area, by the way. But to us, it’s a good move.

Our debt is minimal – we don’t owe the evil credit card companies a cent over our Netflix and gym memberships that come monthly – our bills are always paid on time and in full, and the only loan currently out is on my ‘new’ car, bought last summer.

There is a lot of financial info to cover, however. Fixed rates are creeping up again, Freddie Mac had a recent policy change, and Congress has some plans in the works that might shake things up further. Still, for a couple like us, testing the housing waters right now makes the most sense. After all, what do we really have to lose? The worst outcome is re-signing our lease for another year, which isn’t a bad fallback plan anyway.

So after meeting our Realtor last week and doing some preliminary talks – meaning, “what we want, what we’ll settle for, and what we think is absolutely crazy” – we’ll be taking our first real steps in house hunting this coming weekend. We’ve got seven months until our lease is up; I’m sure we can find something.

Stay tuned.

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs

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The Morning News: Sunshine Edition

Sure it’s grey right now, but the sun’s coming, I can promise you that. This afternoon is expected to be sunny and 50ish, bringing some spring cheer to February’s drear.

Two Planes Clip Wings at IAD

A 737 and an Embraer jet clipped wings last night on the tarmac at Dulles. While no one was injured, it did wreak general chaos on the traffic at the airport while they pried the planes apart, after offloading all the passengers. No word on who had the right of way, or whether ground traffic control was negligent in the event.

When You Blow It, Call Disney

Walter Reed Hospital has brought in the service experts from Disney to talk to their management and staff and help reform the Hospital after a poor service record was brought to light last year. The Mouse House has a strong reputation for service…at amusement parks. I suspect that hospitals aren’t quite like rollercoasters and Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride, but maybe I’m wrong.

Short news break this morning due to bandwidth and connectivity issues!

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs

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Flusher’s Delight


Flusher’s Creed

Originally uploaded by tbridge.

The Nationals new stadium cleared an important hurdle today, successfully flushing all of the toilets in the new stadium from top to bottom. Each commode was given a number of flushes on 10-15 second intervals to simulate the 7th inning stretch. More pictures to come and a report on the ballpark tour!

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs

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XO-ing in Style at Nortel DC

This is the scene at the OLPC Learning Club DC meet up at the Nortel HQ.

Swank dual video screens are connecting us with Montreal as we geek out across the street from the Capitol.

With a school server going live in a moment, we are on the green edge of XO laptop exploration and learning.

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs

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Corner Slice Out of Mediocre Pizza

No pizza

Local Bethesda pizza joint Corner Slice today shocked customers by reporting to be out of pizza. Actually, they had three slices of pepperoni-sausage pizza left but due to dietary restrictions, I opted to pass on that. 15-20 minutes until the next pizza would be ready, and people were standing in line like it was the methodone clinic or something.

In the choice between fighting the crowds for mediocre pizza and going somewhere else, I decided to venture down to California Tortilla, where they never run out of burritos.

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs

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Colonials to Christen Nationals Park?

gw.png The latest Nationals Park Preview Video suggests that Nationals Park will open with GW’s Baseball Team playing a game there on March 22nd. While the Colonials schedule only reflects a game in Arlington that day, it’s expected that the announcement concerning the opening of the Park will come soon. If you get a chance, this may be way better than opening day in terms of availability of seats! I know I’m going to try to make it…

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs

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Pants-Optional Friday Rescheduled

From the Arlington Alert System:

Arlington County Government is OPEN on time, with unscheduled leave. All PANTS-OPTIONAL FRIDAY activities will be rescheduled and may be conducted from home for those who take part in the unscheduled leave.
Arlington County Schools are CLOSED.

You heard it here, folks. It’s more fun in groups, but feel free to stay home and walk around in your skivvies. It’s officially allowed today because of this crappy weather.

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs

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The Morning News: Icy, Yet Not Snowy

Am I the only one wondering today how we’re predicting massive disaster associated with global warming, but we can’t nail down something like a simple weather pattern? The snow predicted for today was mostly deflected north of the city, leaving us with a slushy mess to deal with instead. There was a 1/10th of an inch (I got out some calipers.) of ice on my car this morning, but it’s fairly reasonable. Rain all day, possibly turning into snow late. Unless it’s all messed up again.

Messy Weather Closes Everyone (Except DC Schools)

It was fun to listen to the school closings this morning on the radio. Living in California during my formative years, I never got to know the glee of hearing that you’re getting a snow day. So, today, as WAMU stepped through all of the school closings, it was hysterical to hear that DC Schools are wide open today, while all the surrounding communities have packed it in.

I’m sure many parents got to say, “It’s a character-building exercise. Now get moving!” to disappointed kids all throughout the District.

Dude, Casual Encounters are Supposed to be Consenting

Maryland Police are looking for a serial rapist who is selecting his victims from Craigslist. The pattern seems to be that he finds someone on Craigslist, agrees to meet, then rapes them at knifepoint. Maybe it’s time for us all to go back to meeting people at work, or through friends and social outlets? Just to be safe?

My Neighbor, the Epix Tax Cheat

The Examiner has an awesome piece from one of the neighbor of Tax Scam Ringleader Hariette Walters in today’s paper. Of course, it’s not an ACTUAL neighbor, it’s someone who lives kinda sorta nearby. Maybe. I suppose then, can I claim to be her neighbor too, because we live in the same basic geographic region?

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs

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Exciting!


You’d think that this would be front-page news rather than buried inside, but the Washington Post has broken the story that there’s a previously unknown 10th justice on the Supreme Court!

And in Preston v. Ferrer, justices ruled 9 to 1 against Alex Ferrer, a former Florida trial court judge who appears as “Judge Alex” on a Fox television program.

You weren’t kidding, Tom – they were SO prejudiced against Judge Alex that they brought some random dude in off the street to vote against him!

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Maybe not so "private" after all


Berlin Mayo 2007

Originally uploaded by Alícia.

DC mom Meredith Massey got rather a shock when she noticed that the photos she had marked “Private” in Flickr had actually been viewed thousands of times. The photos in question were of her children skinny-dipping, and had been marked as Private so as to restrict them to family members.

….Okay, now that we’ve all had time to get past the thought of some skeevy person randomly typing in letters and numbers in hopes of seeing god-knows-what in people’s private photo collections, now seems like a good time to remind everyone of what I once learned the hard way- you might mark it Private, but it’s STILL the Internet, and if you don’t want people to see it, maybe you shouldn’t upload it.

Please use good data security practices when dealing with your nekkid photos, okay?

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs

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The Morning News: Eclipsed Panopticon Edition

Another chilly February morning in DC! What little snow we got was rather resistant this morning to attempts to dislodge it from my car, and it sounds like we’re about to get a few more inches. 1-3″ tonight, before sleet and freezing rain become the dominant form of precip for this particular storm that will last well into Friday. Bummer, yeah?

MPD Claims Cameras Decrease Crime

Violent crime went down 19% within 250 feet of the Districts new Crime Cameras. Of course, since crime was up 1% citywide last year, it’s likely that criminals figured out where the cameras were and plied their trade elsewhere in the city. Marc Fisher brings the math to bear, pointing out that only 130 times were the cameras used in court, meaning each event ran to $30k apiece.

Cause of Death Can’t Be Determined in Jacks Case

The DC Medical Examiner’s office has said that no cause of death can be determined in the case of the four young girls found badly decomposed in a rowhouse in southeast. One was identified by dental records, the other three by DNA. Sorry if I turned your stomach so early this morning, I know I’m fighting the gag reflex right about now, too.

Sure Hope You Got To See The Show

I know I peeked out my window despite the cold to see the lunar eclipse last night (our last til 2010!) and enjoyed the scene. Flickr user (usr?) aak got some really awesome shots from the eclipse, so be sure to check those out. So, did you take our advice? Where’d you watch?

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Lunatic

My cheeks are chilled, I’m half-blinded, and more than a little moon-mad (no more than usual, anyway!), but I managed to stay outside and watch some of the lunar eclipse tonight.

Bundled up on my back porch, the light dusting of snow from our earlier non-weather event making everything, well, twinkle – it was almost ridiculously pretty in the pulsating moonlight. Even in the middle of the city, off the alley, all was quiet and still for the cosmic dance.

Even the rats seemed to stop their rustling around and watch. I hope you did too.

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs