WFY’s discussion about his gin & tonic preferences reminded me of an excellent article on sangria in Saturday’s Wall Street Journal[non-free subscription may be required]. The most interesting thing about it is the discussion of the canyon-wide gap between the two styles they discuss. Check out the sample recipes:

Personally I feel like it’s not sangria without chunks of fruit to scoop out and chew on, but there’s something to be said for simplicity. I don’t feel like I’ve had really good sangria since I visited Puerto Rico about a year and a half ago. Jaleo’s, which is made with cava (Spanish sparkling wine), is not bad, but it doesn’t thrill me. I think when I try making the above recipe I’ll sub cava for the 7-up, though. I recall Tapeo‘s being pleasant, but not exceptional.

Have you had any stellar sangria experiences in DC?

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Photo by DC Metroblogger

Have you tried to buy razor blades at CVS recently?

Needing to shave, I went into a CVS in my new hood to buy my Mach 3 razor blades and faced this plastic menace.

Designed by people who forgot that to buy a product, I have to be able to get it first, it took me a full five minutes of wrestling with the plastic bin, including bloodying my knuckles to get the damn package out.

Oddly enough this is just this CVS store’s razor blade menace. My old CVS at 15th and K had a pull & lever system I would watch others fight with and the one at 14th and Irving has a third system I care not to re-visit.

Might there be a more humane and efficient way for CVS to stock razor blades?

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vapiano

Originally uploaded by tbridge.

When my friend Jonathan told me about Vapiano, I wasn’t sold til I heard about the gimmick. I mean, I like Italian food, who doesn’t, but it’s got to have a hook to make it worth my while as part of the repertoire of places that I go for delicious foodstuffs. See, Vapiano’s really just a glorified cafeteria. You walk in, you order your food from a small menu at pasta and pizza stations, and they made it while you wait and watch, then you grab a table with your friends and sit down.

The gimmick is this: when you walk in, you get a Chipcard. That chipcard is your bill, that you take with you everywhere in the place. Bring in two people, or two dozen and everyone gets Chipcards, so settling up the tab is as simple as checking out at the counter, no need to worry about who sucks at math, who always undertips, etc. That much is certainly worth it.

The food itself? It’s good but not great. The fusilli carbonara was rich and cheesy, but missing something that I couldn’t put my finger on, and the ravioli was fresh, but just off its game. They do make the pasta fresh in the restaurant, which I appreciated, but the various preps for the types of pasta seems…too prepared in advance. Either give me the illusion you’re making it from scratch, or don’t present me with the ugly truth.

The other matter is drinks. $2 for an 8oz. bottle of Coke? You’re kidding, right? In this town of free refills? Charlatans. The Peroni on tap? Nice touch. But seriously, no fountain sodas?

Vapiano’s got two locations in the DC area, one in Ballston on Wilson at Glebe Road, and just open, at 1800 M St. NW in DC, and a third location in Chinatown, come August. It’s worth a trip, just to see how they operate.

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs

Last night when I came home, there was a discarded sign thrown into my yard. It was a posterboard emphatically proclaiming, “THIS TREE IS NOT A TRASH CAN.”

Further investigation proved that the sign had been screwed into the tree that straddles the sidewalk in front of both my neighbor’s and my houses. It’s a rather wild tree, always needing pruning, its roots coming up through the sidewalk and into our yards in angry defiance of urbanity. Whatever treebox it may have once had is all hard root and broken brick now. There’s always trash discarded around it – usually the droppings of kids on their way home from school, candy wrappers and crumpled chip bags. Sometimes an empty 40 or two. When I get home I pick up the trash, all part of the routine.

Someone on my block is sick of it, so angry about the waste that they’ve taken the time to construct a sign and screw it into the tree trunk. But will it change the pschology of the people who litter?

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Oh what a surprise that the Congressman with $90,000 in his freezer might actually get indicted for Bribery and Racketeering! Of course, when the FBI searched his home and offices, all of Congress was in an uproar that those places were searched, Jefferson being a sitting Congressman and subject to all manner of extra protection from being investigated. There are 16 counts on the indictment, and I figure his trial will be one for the books.

The real question is, if he’s found guilty, will Congress actually kick him out of the House?

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs

Photo by DC Metroblogger

Tonight Mom is enjoying Lalibela Restaurant at 14th and P Streets NW. This is my favorite Ethiopian restaurant in Washington DC, but is it yours?

Which of our many tasty East African chiefs tempts your tummy with the taste of injera and wat?

Points given for spice and honey wine. Best if they do not run out of Harar beer mid-meal and are actually in the District.

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Larry Flynt, no matter what you think of him, is in some regards brilliant. In yesterday’s Washington Post, he ran a fairly large ad which offered $1 million in exchange for your exclusive tale about matters prurient with a congressperson, a senator, or other prominent officeholder. No word yet if Flynt’s on a fishing expedition like he was when he made the offer ten years ago, or if he has a person already in mind.

But, now’s your chance to cash in if you can prove you’ve nailed someone in power. Better yet, interns, want to make a mil and retire before you enter the workforce? Here’s your chance. Seduce your boss, make a Mil, leave Washington happy.

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photo courtesy of Wolf Trap

My roommie just noticed last night that there’s still lawn seats for Tony Bennett tonight at Wolf Trap. Radar looks good at the moment and the weather is nice – why not go sit under the stars for $25 and enjoy the show?

If you’re paranoid about thunderstorms there’s single tickets available in the boxes but no two together.

I am still waffling on going, but maybe I’ll see you there.

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Today’s WaPo has an article on local news blogging. The following sites were spotlighted.

The Buckingham Herald Tribblog.
Laurel Connections
Just Up The Pike
Stop, Blog & Roll

Congrats on the attention, folks!

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The woman charged with driving her car through Unifest in Southeast on Saturday afternoon was high on crack when it happened, and had been smoking crack all day prior to the crash. Furthering her Mother of the Year campaign, she brought her daughter along for the ride. Weirder still, she may have been a temporary employee of Councilmember Marion Barry:

D.C. Council member Marion Barry said his chief of staff is trying to determine whether Bell works as a temporary employee for Barry’s council office. Barry (D-Ward 8) said someone named Tonya Bell has worked in the office for several weeks. “Whether it is the same person or not, I am trying to check it out,” Barry said last night. “I’ve asked my chief of staff to try and find out if this Miss Bell is one of several administrative aides we use from temporary agencies.”

This whole thing gets weirder and weirder.

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Most people don’t think of the needs of their helper gadgets. Not so this Wegman’s shopper – s/he clearly felt bad for that poor, poor rear windshield wiper having to be out in the rain, so they covered it up with this little wiper raincoat.

I didn’t walk around to check to see if the front wipers got the same treatment, though I can say for sure there were no little rain booties on the tires.

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An Oxon Hill woman driving a grey Volvo station wagon careened into Unifest in Southeast DC this evening injuring more than 30 people, at least 7 critically. Unifest, held in Anacostia along Martin Luther King Jr. Drive, is a huge street faire, with many streets That didn’t stop the Volvo from wreaking havoc as it slammed into people, causing significant tumult and injury.

Apparently, the woman driving the car was being pursued through Southeast DC at the time, and she was apprehended shortly thereafter. This marks the second major police-chase-turned-to-injury in the DC area in a week, after a multiple fatality crash on the Beltway earlier this week. No word yet what touched off this particular chase, but there are some questions that come to mind:

What are the policies governing in-city high-speed chases? Why weren’t there more barriers placed on MLK Drive? I know that many places when they close off roads, even just temporarily, set up large blocks that would significantly slow a vehicle attempting to traverse them. We’ll see more about this in the coming day or two, I’m sure.

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs

I found this on a construction site on 23rd Street next to the Department of State…and you wonder why you get incorrect prescriptions?!

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As if this blog is becoming the CNN of Homeowners Associations (aka HOAs), I felt a little more compelled to add my two cents since it arrives from a different perspective, and, unfortunately, a different outcome. This one involved boisterous altercations, parking stickers, and the police, as well as one restraining order to be issued sometime within the next 24-48 hours.

I’m the HOA president of our community in Silver Spring (yes, boo hiss, I’m a suburbanite), and arrived at that designation by attrition, and, somewhat, by lack of interest by other board members. I ran for the board at the edging of my wife, but also a heartfelt desire to help improve the community, and give the perspective of a new resident on the board (at the time, I had been a resident for less than 6 months). I ran, which included a personal statement, as well as going door to door to try and talk to the residents in our mixed housing community of single-family homes and townhomes.

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photo courtesy of the Rocketeer

Before the show on Friday night, my darling girlfriend and I had sat down and were having a little in-the-chair picnic. With about fifteen minutes to go before curtain there were a fair number of people walking around looking for groups of seats big enough for their party. One such pair was a gentleman fellow and his lady, Carol. I know her name was Carol because when she didn’t agree to stop where he wanted her to in order to hold a group of seats he bellowed, angrily and at the top of his voice, “TAKE THE SEATS, CAROL.” I can only imagine what a delight he must be over more weighty disagreements.

While the universe apparently gave Carol the short end of the stick, it does sometimes get delicious payback on other jerks. A woman today at the Occaquan Arts Festival who yelled in the face of her companions “well I’m certainly not going like THIS” probably wasn’t referring to the two feet of napkin she was dragging around on her heel for about twenty feet before she noticed, but it fits. If you’re reading this, ma’am, yes, that guy behind you laughing out loud was laughing at you.

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs

Photo by DC Metroblogger

Tonight the doorman at Temperance Hall went the extra mile in checking ID’s. He carded my Mom.

This was after he carded me, and I am well past 21, and right before he carded my Mom’s retired boyfriend.

Neither of them are Georgetown freshmen by any stretch of the imagination. Both were as much flattered as flustered with the request.

I can understand popular Adams-Morgan bars having a “card everyone” policy, but in Petworth and the Social Security set?

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You’ve seen the Segway Tours of DC, but now the next time you see a person on a Segway, they might be a DC Police Officer. The city has purchased 25 segways, with an option for 10 more, for various patrols in the DC area. At first, I’ll admit, this brought humorous images to mind, but the more I think of it, I think this could extend the distance that a pair of beat cops could cover in a patrol, not to mention makes them much higher visibility during the patrol.

So, make your jokes, this could make for a better police force.

Of course, the second a criminal ganks a segway…then it’s fair game for all the comedians.

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With credit card debt, student loans, and ever mounting legal fees, Jessica Cutler recently declared bankruptcy, hopefully ending her brief period of notoriety. Of course, in the wake of a $20-million lawsuit, I’d probably be trying to declare bankruptcy, too…

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Photo by DC Metroblogger

Hopping of my United Airlines Swiss express from Zurich, I had hopes for a quick Dulles exit. Looking at this line, I will have no such luck.

Easily 20 people long, I will be in line for 20 minutes easy, which makes me wonder: how much do Washington Flyer taxi drivers make in a day?

How many round trips are possible? What is the car rental cost. And what would the per hour take be?

A short conversation with my driver later and now we know. He averages 4-5 trips per 12-16 hour shift and after his $100 car rental plus gas costs, expects $100 a shift in take home pay.

Or around $7 an hour to fight suburban traffic and Dulles Toll Road boredom.

This post appeared in its original form at DC Metblogs