According to Google’s new toy, Google Flu Trends, which claims to know about flu activity across the US according to how many times people are searching for flu-related terms, Virginia and Maryland have higher flu activity than the rest of the nation.

I’m not sure this is something to really get alarmed about, as VA and MD are still only at “moderate” and DC is safely at “low,” but this is definitely still prime time for sicknesses. Wash your hands, please don’t cough on me, and stay healthy, DC.

photo by Flickr user dsearls

I am lucky enough to be an RCN customer in DC who just involuntarily participated in RCN’s Analog Crush – its switch from analog to digital cable.

And what a great experience! First, all the cable channels changed, scrambling our usual TV customs. Next the Internet connection sloooowed way down to 400Kbs on average. Then to my wife’s great joy, her Windows Media Center PC lost all channels just as late night feeding sessions started.

So now that she watches snow and my downloads are slowed, its time to return the favor to RCN. Crushing them with a switch to Comcast.

IMG_0416
Originally uploaded by sandybandy

This is by no means an exhaustive list, or a complete list, but here is a selection of local beer-centric places with winter and holiday beer selections for your drinking pleasure.
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Going in a new direction
Originally uploaded by Rod the Rabid Rodent

I’ve complained about the lack of Offense for the Nationals for what feels like time immemorial, and it seems that the front office has finally listened. They’ve reportedly offered $160 Million over 8 years to Mark Teixeira. That’s a whole lot of money. What happens when he says, “Wait, they only won how many games last year?” and Scott Boras turns JimmyBo down? Well, there’s always Adam Dunn, except that he’s everyone’s Plan B. So, we’ll overpay if we get him, but I suspect that we’ll be too far behind after Teixeira tells the Nats to take a hike.

I’d love the addition of a real first baseman to replace our injury-prone brothers-from-another-mother, but I think that’s over-paying, and we probably won’t get him anyway. But that could just be the pessimist in me.

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Originally uploaded by asmythie

“You’re never too old for a pub crawl,” she said, as she handed over the materials to the bartender. $5 gets you a bracelet at Mister Days in Clarendon on Saturday starting at 2pm. The pub crawl itself lasts til 9pm, covers Liberty Tavern, O’Sullivan’s, Eleventh Street Lounge and Clarendon Grill, and your wrist-band gets you special prices on their specials. The theme, of course, is “I’m dreaming of a White (Russian) Christmas,” as Kahlùa is footing much of the bill for the specially priced liquor. But, hey, cheap booze is good in this down economy, right?

Lacking specificity, courtesy of Me

I was waiting for a breakfast sandwich at a fine local eatery and killing time looking at the corkboard that so many cafes put up. It was covered with ads for local businesses and fliers for various community activities, as well as Heather’s contact information. The question is, contact her for what? I was half tempted to call just to ask “what the hell?” but the negative possibilities I could think of far outnumbered any positive ones. The most benign one that came to mind was a sociology experiment, but perhaps I’m just having a failure of imagination.

Anyone got any good idea what the point of a name and number on a community corkboard might be?

snowflakes
Originally uploaded by lorigoldberg

Ha. I just made myself laugh with my headline. Okay, anyways. I was hoping for a snow day off of work tomorrow (weren’t we all, I mean, hello, long weekend…!) But while the temperature is definitely dropping, it looks like we’ll be faced with… well… the dreaded gross wintry mix, at the most.

With weather.com predicting a low of 40 degrees for tonight, and sun tomorrow morning, it looks like the highly anticipated snowpocolypse is just not going to happen.

Hunker down, folks, it’ll be another yicky weekend… check out my rainy weekend suggestions for things to do in the DC area.

Participation Lager…, courtesy of dharmabumx

Reader Adam asked us for a shout-out to an online petition, Save the Parties. Here you go, Adam.

I’m not sure he’s barking up the correct tree, here. The petition asks Mayor Fenty to “stand strong” but Fenty liked the original measure which exempted nightclubs from the measure.  The people who need to be told to sit down, shut up, and mind the business of their own areas are Senator Feinstein – who never met a nanny-state measure she didn’t like – and Senator Bennett, both on the Inaugural committee.

Or, for that matter, any other congresscritter who think that it’s their place to meddle in DC’s business. There’s certainly a case to be made for their being interested in the things that impact doing the nation’s business, but how late someone can get a beer? Leave the rules of actually making a home here to the locals.

Debatable

I have the sense we’ve talked about this before, but I was confronted with it anew when my darling fiancée and I went to see Twelfth Night on Sunday. Whatever building is at 5th and E (all I could positively identify was a McDonald’s) has sprouted jersey walls all around it and that’s removed a lot of available parking, forcing me to park all the way out on 3rd and E.

Where it was mostly clear, excepting a few cars. The cause, no doubt, was these signs. I’ve always viewed them as meaning from 7am at the start to 7pm at the end. After all, if a store was going to be open from Noon to 5pm, Monday through Thursday, you wouldn’t write “from Noon Monday through 5pm Thursday,” would you?

Since I escaped without a ticket I can only assume I was either the last one slated to be towed or that interpretation was correct. What would be a better way to communicate this information, do you think?

The Spirit of Justice
courtesy of kimberlyfaye

Author Amanda Brooks noticed that one of the people petitioning GWB for a pardon is John Walker Lindh, the messed-up suburban white kid who went to Afghanistan to train with the Taliban, rather than Hot Topic like his other disaffected peers. He’s serving out his 20 year sentence with no chance of parole.

Brooks, as someone who writes about sex work, doesn’t really care about Lindh. She’s simply observing that the 20 years he’s serving are a lot shorter than the possible 55 year maximum sentance that Deborah Jean Palfrey was facing for running a business that connected willing participants and for which she paid all her taxes. Brooks says that credible sources indicated that Palfrey likely would have done 12-14 years before being paroled.

I hadn’t know before doing some research for this bit that Lindh was born in DC and spent his first ten years in Silver Spring. Personally I prefer sharing the city with folks like Palfrey over people like Lindh.

From an email that showed up at 7:45 this evening.

Pathetic
courtesy of Me

I’d ask DCHotSpot for a refund if I were you, Union Jack.

Confrontational Marketing — Building Brand Awareness in a Saturated Market
Originally uploaded by Thomas Hawk

So, yesterday I was walking through Penn Quarter at Lunch with my business partner, and right there on E street, we passed a Prius Zipcar. It wasn’t out of the ordinary in any way, other than the fact that the roof was adorned with a red starbucks coffee cup. Much the way I would accidentally leave my coffee on the roof of my car, were I in a big hurry.

We watched it pass and head down E Street, and marvelled at how well balanced it was. Sure, they were only going 25mph, but it stayed for two blocks as they moved with traffic.

We should’ve stopped them, as it turns out, because it’s a promotion between Zipcar and Starbucks. Be a good Samaritan, stop the guy, and he’ll give you a Starbucks gift card. Pretty smart. I only wish we had run down the guy and stopped him in the middle of the street now…