‘NOT SAFE FOR PUBLIC USE’
courtesy of ‘Metro Centric’

Montgomery County decided today to shutdown a lemonade stand near the Congressional Golf Course run by the children of two local families because they did not pay $300 for a vendor permit.  While the $500 fine has been waived by the County, and the kids can setup somewhere “more private” this still seems to be the kind of thing that just brings me down.

Sorry kids, lemonade stands cost $300 in baksheesh to the county. Next time plan ahead.

‘Washington Nationals second baseman Danny Espinosa (18)’
courtesy of ‘Keith Allison’

The Nationals came into Thursday night’s game with their longest winning streak since 2009, having strung three wins together in San Diego to close out their road trip, and in position to complete the sweep against the Cardinals.  Standing in between them and their goal was the best-hitting team in the National League, and Kyle Lohse.

John Lannan’s last four starts put him in a strong position to command the respect of hitters, with an ERA of just 0.68 representing just 2 runs. Lannan thankfully got his groundball outs tonight, and faced just six more than the minimum through 7 innings tonight, getting 16 groundball outs. His sinker was sinking tonight, and the defense behind him mitigated the six hits hie gave up.

This was a game of home-runs.  The ball was just flying out of the park tonight, and of the seven homers, not a single one was even close to the wall. The Nats launched four bombs, while the Cardinals hit three, none shorter than 375 feet.  The biggest came in the bottom of the tenth, as the rain bore down on our fair city, Danny Espinosa evacuated the ballpark with a shot into the Nats bullpen to end it.

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‘At the newspaper stand’
courtesy of ‘faungg’

I can’t even try to explain this one.

Last year, Parenting magazine put Arlington atop its annual “Best Place to Live & Raise a Family” rankings, while the District, whose features were touted by the magazine as its strength through proximity, was ranked #71.

This year’s rankings are out, and it seems there’s a bit of a flip-flop.  This year, DC is ranked #1, and Arlington is #70.

Has so much changed in the last 365 days since the last rankings were out? Nope, not really, but it seems that the algorithm at Parenting Magazine sure has.  What I said last year, applies now in reverse:

“I don’t mean to bag on the District here, it’s definitely a great place to live, but it’s a great place to live in part because of its proximity to Arlington.  I’d say having now lived in both DC and Arlington, there’s no way at all that Arlington is #70 while DC is #1.  Something’s deeply broken here, and I’d love to know what.  I won’t come out and accuse Parenting of anything short of faulty math and bad writing.”

‘Jaguar E-Type 4.2 at Samuel’s in Allston: View from the driver’s seat’
courtesy of ‘Chris Devers’

“Stickshifts and Safetybelts, bucket seats have all got to go, because when I’m driving, in the car, it makes my baby seem so far.” – Cake, “Stickshifts and Safetybelts”

Tom Jackman of the Post has the highlights for this one, but here’s the summary: A cabbie is suing a Woodbridge man for an accident that wrecked his cab.

The defendant is claimed to have been driving at 85mph on the Beltway in Fairfax, intoxicated, whilst having relations with another occupant of the vehicle, which caused the car accidents.

There are a couple problems here that make me doubt the veracity of the cabbie’s claim:

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‘Ollie Kolzig’
courtesy of ‘rjv541’

Per the team and On Frozen Blog, the Capitals have signed a deal to return Olie Kolzig to the Capitals, this time as Associate Coach for Goaltenders. Kolzig spent much of his NHL career in Washington, spending over 700 games in net for the Caps.  Olie is the holder of just about every goaltending record that the franchise has, “including games played, wins (301), shutouts (35) and minutes (41,259) and ranks fourth (minimum 3,000 minutes played) in goals-against average (2.70) and third in save percentage (.906)”.

‘Livan Hernandez’
courtesy of ‘Keith Allison’

The St. Louis Cardinals seemed to have left their ability to play defense somewhere in the Midwest because the Washington Nationals put them to shame Wednesday night. Pitcher Livan Hernandez threw complete game shutout to lead his team to a 10-0 victory. The game was Hernandez’s 50^th complete game and ninth shutout of his career.

Washington played errorless baseball. Nine-time St. Louis All-Star Albert Pujols committed two errors at third base. Each National who went to bat, with the exception of starter Hernandez and eighth inning left field substitution Brian Bixler, got at least one hit. Continue reading →

Via NBC Washington, and presented entirely without comment.

This morning, a lot of fans and writers were bristling at Nationals’ COO Andy Feffer’s comments about the opening of the new Miller Lite Scoreboard Walk in center field at Nationals Park, wherein Feffer said that the fans would remember the new concessions and social area out there more than anything else.  A lot of people were upset by the idea that the fans wouldn’t take home their memories of a Nats win, or of the game as the prime attraction.  Feffer is the head of the Nationals’ non-baseball operations, so it’s natural that his focus is going to be on the stadium product, not necessarily the on-the-field product.

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