I found out today that Parents.com is having a contest to get your cute kid on the cover of their magazine. No offense to little Trevor, Cover Model 2008, but my little clownfish is a bazillion times cuter. We have no plans this weekend beyond her first baseball game (Orioles at Nationals on Sunday). So I’m planning to take some really cute pictures. What I need from you, readers (All of you who are still paying attention after the lack of updates these recent months), is suggestions on cutening up my daughter. She’s already off-the-charts cute, but I need more. I need photos of her that will literally make your eyeballs melt with cuteness. Like a puppy raised to the kitten power. I want to make Anne Geddes’ babies look like little gargoyles. How do I do that? Any suggestions are welcome. She’s a very smiley baby, so that isn’t an issue. What makes a cute baby photo?
Author: Jon
Has Columbia Heights turned a corner?
The wife and kid and I went to D’Vines yesterday to get beer for the Celtics game (Probably should have gotten more considering the end result). Out in front of the Columbia Heights Metro were beggars from Greenpeace! While avoiding eye contact as much as possible, the wife and I were secretly thrilled that these organized panhandlers had branched out from the fancy spots like the P St Whole Foods to come to our neighborhood. Of course, now I’d like them to go away. I don’t like being accosted for my wallet every time I go near DCUSA.
Do you need a free custom honeymoon registry?
When I got married, we had a honeymoon registry. We had both been living on our own for a while, and then together for a bit, and so we had a lot of the things that people typically put on a wedding registry. It was fantastic for us – because so much of the honeymoon was paid for, we felt free to splurge a bit on things like a helicopter tour of the Twelve Apostles and mass quantities of wine in downtown Melbourne. A friend and his wife did the same thing for their wedding. It was easy for us because both of us are software guys, and know how to build a website. It may not be easy for you. That’s why he and I created After the I Dos. It’s a totally free (except for Paypal fees) honeymoon registry site. You can set up a registry and let your guests help finance your honeymoon. I mean, do you really need another set of towels? Wouldn’t you rather let your guests help pay for your skydiving adventure, wine tour, resort, or whatever you plan on doing for your honeymoon? All you need is a few minutes to set it up and a (free) Paypal account. You’ll get a website you can send out to your guests, and you can even show links to your other registry sites, or maybe your wedding site at The Knot or whatever. An added benefit is ease of thank-you notes. All you need to do is take a picture of you and your spouse doing whatever it is the person helped pay for, print a copy for 12 cents at Target, and write a quick note about how much fun you had. No more making excuses for why you haven’t used that expensive food processor that Aunt Greta bought you.
Guest post – Baltimore sucks, too
I do a lot of complaining here about the DC government. Turns out Baltimore has its share of problems, too. Here for your reading pleasure is a guest post from Gary at Vinotrip. Baltimore has a lot of problems. What big city doesn’t? I’ve lived in or around the city for most of my life and, as most Baltimoreans do, I give the city a pass on the problems that it faces. Sure, some things are nuts and don’t make sense, but it’s a good town. Two weeks ago, City Councilman Edward L. Reisinger (who represents me and my district) sponsored a bill to raise off-leash fines for dog owners from $100 to $1000. To little fanfare, the bill passed. Along with the good men and women of the Baltimore Police Department, Animal Control swept down on Riverside Park and started handing out $1000 fines. Needless to say, everyone is bitter. Smart move, Ed. Pass a ten-fold increase in fines targeted at dog owners in your district, then hold a neighborhood meeting about it. I get that dogs have pretty much taken over Riverside Park and if you are afraid of dogs, God help you because you’re going to fear for your life in this neighborhood. There is a leash law in the park, and that leash law should be enforced along with the law about picking up after your dog. Got all that. But the problem is sending several police officers and Animal Control officials to the park for days at a time. In Baltimore City where we probably have more important things to do besides extort taxpayers in a park. Well, city officials, your free pass is over. My self imposed gag-order on bitching about Baltimore has been lifted. Early last week, on Tuesday April 28th, a water main ruptured underneath a major downtown street. Water poured out, shut down streets during morning rush hour, closed businesses, and pretty much ruined the day for lots of people. They still haven’t gotten it fixed. Finally today, an entire week after the main broke, the city got up a sign on the major freeway heading into downtown regarding the major crosstown street shut down. For a full week, people rolling into the city found out the hard way that Lombard Street was still closed. The city can’t fix it. The city can’t put up a sign about it. The city can only bitch and moan and pander for Federal stimulus dollars. The best part is the quote from Baltimore Mayor Sheila Dixon at a press conference
“This is an example of what happens when you having a very aging infrastructure system,” Dixon told reporters.
You. Are. The. MAYOR. Don’t tell me we have a problem. I know we have a problem. GO FIX THE PROBLEM. Were I Dixon’s speechwriter, her news bite would have sounded something more like
“This is an example of what happens when you having a very aging infrastructure system,” Dixon told reporters. “But things aren’t all bad. We have a per capita murder rate so bad that if we had New York City’s population, there would be over 4,000 murders per year. Property taxes are 2.2% but we still can’t get water mains to stop exploding underneath downtown. We couldn’t even describe what a fully funded school looks like. Half the homes in low-income neighborhoods are boarded up and vacant. We send out Traffic Officials to stand under the traffic lights and direct traffic like we’re in North Korea. As your mayor, I’m riding around in a hybrid taxi trying to smile while being indicted for fraud But don’t worry everyone, we have that Riverside Park dog problem handled. I am on top of the dog issue. I’m sending more units down there as we speak.
It’s enough to make you cry. For all the problems going on, we get $1000 tickets dished out for having a dog off-leash. Maybe they can put that money toward fencing off a dog park, or the schools, or more police, or the water mains, or the traffic light timing…
Pedestrians should know their place
Have you ever been driving down 17th Street NW, getting ready to turn right on E to head out to Virginia, when some guy in an ill-fitting suit talking on his cell phone jogs across the street against the light? Have you ever given him a look and thrown up your hands in frustration? Has he ever had the audacity to flip you off in return? This didn’t happen to me this afternoon just after five, in case you’re wondering. I pride myself on paying attention to pedestrians and right-of-way. I know, what do I want, a cookie? But really, many, many people in this city, especially Maryland drivers (You know who you are) pretend that pedestrians don’t exist, and crosswalks are merely warnings before stop signs or red lights to run. So when I’m treated like this by pedestrians who think they are much, much more important than they really are, it bothers me. When you have the right of way, I’ll gladly wait. But when I have the right of way, I expect you to be on the sidewalk where you belong.
The Opposite of Community
Internet forums are often wonderful. They can take a group of people who are spread across the globe, joined only by a common interest, and bring them together to talk and make friends. Or they can be terrible. You can have something like the Columbia Heights Community Forum, which takes people with common interests who are already co-located in one DC neighborhood, and drives them apart. At least someone notices my struggles with the forum. It’s really an unbelievable amount of hate and rage and incoherent ranting. Some go around pushing buttons, and others simply wait to have their buttons pushed so they can scream about it. It’s really too bad that something that could be a positive force in the community is actually driving people apart. Although, like a train wreck, I just can’t look away. I can’t even stop posting there.
eBay is Dangerous
The wife has been going a little crazy on eBay lately. If she was spending more than $5 at a time, I’d probably intervene, but she’s just buying clothes for our daughter, and she’s barely spending anything, so I figure it’s not a problem. I’ll be keeping an eye on her, though. Whenever someone mentions eBay, I invariably get an urge to buy something, because you can buy pretty much anything there. And every time I look at eBay, I end up searching for a nice Triumph TR6 in good condition for a reasonable price. I’m going to own one someday. I’m going to get some money together, buy one, get a one-way plane ticket to wherever it is, and drive it home. It will be glorious. I’ll do it when the weather’s nice so I don’t have to put the top up.
How I love the English language
I was reading this movie review, and had no idea who Harold Faltermeyer was. So, I did what any normal person would do, and Googled him. His wikipedia page offers up a serving of the English language that just made my day.
[The theme from Top Gun and the theme from Beverly Hills Cop are] both often imitated, highly influential instrumental hits that to some extent practically redefined action film scoring in the ’80s
Read that fragment a few times and just bask in its glory.
Compare and Contrast
Original
Had I known her husband was a giant among those of us who joust at the windmills of parking enforcement, I would have bought her a beer. (Source)
“Quoted”
Had I known her husband was a giant among us who jousts at the windmills of parking enforcement, I would have bought her a beer. (Source)
Correct me if I’m wrong, but when one quotes another source, one generally doesn’t edit the quote to change the meaning, right? I mean, I didn’t study journalism in school, so I might be crazy here, but I always thought you were supposed to write exactly what the other person wrote or said, unless you make it clear that you’ve changed the wording. And even then, you change the wording either to clarify the context or to fit in the allowed space. You don’t change the meaning of the quote. Also, the wife maintains that “tilt” is generally used instead of “joust” when making that particular reference. She also feels that the analogy is slightly flawed – parking enforcement is an actual enemy, so to speak, unlike the windmills. We had a nice discussion about it, and we decided that she should just let me handle the references to classical literature. At least, that’s what I came away with. And she doesn’t have a blog, so that makes me right.
This man is my hero
Here is a story of a man who beat the DC parking enforcement machine.
“Even when there were shootings on my block last year, I wasn’t this disappointed in my city,” he wrote in one protest email. “D.C. effectively stole my automobile.”
After the city gave him a “courtesy tow” to an illegal parking spot, lost his ticket contestation documents, and booted and towed his car, he actually got them to return the car to a spot near his house. Then he had them do it again, because the first time they brought him the wrong car. I talk a lot about my small victories over DC parking enforcement, but this puts me to shame. I had lunch with his wife on Friday – she works with my wife, and a group was going out to watch some basketball, so I joined them. Had I known her husband was a giant among those of us who joust at the windmills of parking enforcement, I would have bought her a beer.