Tag: dc

I should have taken a picture

As you know if you were in the DC Metro area last night, it was really, really windy.  So windy, in fact, that the plywood sidewalk cover across the street from the house, erected by the construction company to protect pedestrians, blew over into the street.  Luckily, there’s a fire hydrant there, and it’s the side of the street where you can’t park during rush hour, so only one car was hit with debris.  Well, lucky if that wasn’t your car, I guess.  I mean it was lucky that there weren’t more cars parked there.

The police came, and spent an hour or so driving past, and then backing up (the wrong way down our one-way street), and generally making a nuisance of themselves.  Then they put up some crime scene tape and tore off down the street.

As of 7AM this morning, the car with a huge pile of plywood on top of it is due a parking ticket.  It may be hard to place the ticket on the car, as the front end is entirely covered.  But I fully expect DC’s parking enforcement to try anyway.

Almost forgot the good news

DC has decided to allow me to vote in the primary! I got my voter registration card last week. So while we don’t get to vote today on Super Happy Fun Awesome Tuesday, we do plan to watch the results come in over tacos at Tonic.

If you live in a state that votes today, you should be voting. I know you may not like any of the candidates. That’s okay. Vote anyway. People died so you could vote. If you don’t vote, you CAN NOT complain about the government. And if you can’t complain, you’re not really living, are you?

As I’ve mentioned, I’m supporting Obama. The more I hear about him, the more I like him. I don’t necessarily agree with everything he wants to do – some of his fiscal policies are a little too liberal for me, and I don’t totally agree with some of the things he’s said about Iraq (I don’t care what you think about whether we should have gone in there, the fact is that we did, we’ve left a huge mess, and I don’t think we can get out now, before we help them get their country back together).

But in a broader sense, I love what he stands for. He wants change, to get away from the Clinton-Bush dynasty and reintroduce some bipartisan cooperation to do what’s right for the country, not the party.

People knock him for his lack of experience. I’ve thought a lot about why that doesn’t bother me, and I think it’s because we all know he won’t be alone. It’s not like he’d take office, and the entire rest of the executive branch will step back and watch him flounder with foreign policy. They aren’t going to just stick him on a plane to Iran and say, “Hey, good luck, come back when you’ve brokered peace!”. The guy will have advisers.  Some of them will have extensive experience in the areas in which Obama has little.  This is not unusual.  It just doesn’t make a good sound bite.

Perhaps my biggest problem with Bush has been that he is amazingly stubborn. It is always his way or nothing, and he has always maintained that he is always right, and we should always do what he says.  This sense of personal infallibility, more than any one choice or action, is why he’s made such a mess of things.  He has always stubbornly refused to admit he is wrong, or that anyone else could be right.  This is not a politician.  This is a dictator.

So, go out and vote.  Totally ignore everything else I’ve said if you want, but please vote.

Dear Gentleman crossing H St NW

Dear Sir,

I was in the maroon hatchback, waiting to turn right on H from 18th this evening as you walked through the crosswalk, with the light, as pedestrians are permitted to do.  Some jackass behind me honked, and you thought it was me.  It was not.  I know you waved at me as if to say, “Hey, jerk, I have the right of way.”  And it’s true that you did, and I was respecting it.  Had I honked at you, you would have had every right to give me a rude gesture or a nasty look, as I would have deserved it.

But it wasn’t me who honked.  I think it was the RAV4 behind me, although I’m not sure what he was complaining about.

In any event, I apologize.  The guy behind me was a jerk.

Sincerely, Complaint Hub

I seriously feel a little bad.  I guess I shouldn’t.  I didn’t do anything wrong.  The guy I don’t know and will never see again, who’s probably already forgotten this happened, just thought I did.  But I do try to be courteous to pedestrians, beyond simply yielding when they have the right of way.  Except jaywalkers.  Jaywalkers are on their own.  I’m not saying don’t do it, because I certainly do.  I’m just saying that you’re on your own.

The DMV has betrayed me

Or am I misremembering?  I could have sworn that they asked me if I wanted to register to vote in DC when I got my DC license.  Now, I know me, and I would have said, “Yes, I would like to register to vote while I get my DC license”.  I’ve known me a long time, and I feel qualified to speculate on what I might have said in that situation.

It turns out that either they didn’t ask, or they didn’t act on my request, because I’m not registered to vote in DC.  With primaries coming up, and a whole gaggle of clowns on both sides of the ballot, this is just not acceptable.  Now, I still have to figure out who to vote for – there’s no one I really like, and every time I try to eliminate the people I absolutely can’t bring myself to vote for, I’m left with a write-in for either Abraham Lincoln or Donald Duck.

In any event, downloaded and printed the PDF, filled it out, and I’ll mail it on my way to work tomorrow.  It’s actually quite easy for DC residents to determine if they’re registered to vote.  If you aren’t, you should be, and you should vote.  If you don’t vote, you can’t complain, and if you can’t complain, I’m not really sure what else you’re doing, but it’s probably un-American.

Take that, DC Parking Enforcement!

Complaint Hub » Blog Archive » I win! I’m a big winner!

We’re still waiting on a response for the big ticket, the $100 ticket. The wife wrote that letter. She’s a lawyer, so she should be better at convincing them, but we had a much stronger case on the one that I contested. So we’ll see.

Yes, I just quoted myself. Shut up. A couple of days ago, we finally got the letter saying that they forgave the big ticket, too. We weren’t sure what was going to happen – the car still had the old Virginia tags then. I’m sure if they tried they could get my SSN or VIN or something from Virginia and track down my DC registration that way, but that involves WORK, and I just wasn’t sure they were actually going to do that. But I didn’t want to contact the DMV after it was taking them forever to get back to us on this ticket, because that would absolve them of doing any work to connect me to the old ticket. Anyway, it’s moot now, because they finally succumbed to my wife’s crushing grip of reason and tore up the ticket. That brings our record on contesting tickets to 4-0, I think.

Im one of those DC snow car people now

When I first moved to the DC Metro area back in 2001, I was living in Fairfax, VA, and working on Wisconsin Ave NW.  I used to park on a little un-zoned residential street.  One winter, either 2001 or 2002, I forget, we had a big snow that was on the ground for a couple of weeks.  We got 4-6 inches, and then it just stayed cold.  Most of the cars in the neighborhood just didn’t move.  For weeks, they just sat, covered in snow.

Now, today we got our first snow since we moved to the city, and my car is still covered.  I expect it will be covered tomorrow.  I mean, it’s supposed to get up close to 40 degrees tomorrow, so there’s not much point in clearing the car.  In fact, since street cleaning has been suspended for the winter, I don’t expect to touch the car during the week until March or so.

Well, tomorrow we have errands to run in Virginia.  But other than that.

It’s funny how quickly my attitude about driving has changed now that, for the most part, I don’t have to do it.  Going a day without driving used to be really strange, and now it’s the norm.

Anyway, the snow’s kind of nice.  My commute is only outdoors for three blocks to Metro, and then a minute where the Yellow Line train goes over the Potomac into Virginia.  So the snow isn’t really a concern.  I do have to take some trash out tonight, though.

Letters are easier, anyway

Due process too much hassle for DC dept. of motor vehicles – Boing Boing

Washington DC’s Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) will no longer allow citizens to protest parking tickets in person, reports Thenewspaper.com. Instead, they’ll offer mail-in and e-mail adjudication.

What kind of crazy person would go to the DMV to protest a ticket in person, anyway?  As many of you have found via Google, I have a bit of experience protesting tickets via the mail.  It actually works.  They really do look at your letter, and they really do respond.  It sometimes takes a letter to your councilmember to get it all worked out, but the statement in the article to which Boing Boing has linked:

Under the DMV’s plan, motorists will only be able to object to a ticket by email or letter where city employees can ignore or reject letters in bulk without affected motorists having any realistic recourse.

Just isn’t true.  Does DC give out too many ridiculous parking tickets?  Probably.  Is the city too financially dependent on this revenue source?  I don’t know, but it wouldn’t surprise me.  Should it be easier to contest an erroneous ticket?  Sure, but we have to weigh the cost/benefit analysis here.  The reason you can’t contest a ticket in person anymore is probably NOT so the DMV can deny you due process (Does the DMV even owe you due process?  I’m not sure.  Maybe some lawyer can answer.).  It is probably to save the DMV some money.  If they don’t have to employ someone to sit and listen to how you know it said no parking, but you only had to run in for a minute, and it’s not your fault that your manicurist had a line and you had to wait and the kids were running around and it’s really not fair and you normally park in a regular spot and take the other car that you can usually park but this time you had the big car and gosh don’t you have kids then you understand, right?  Then maybe they could put some of that saved money to use for education or increased police patrols or any of the million other things the city could be spending its money on.

Anyway, I know I only link to BoingBoing when they piss me off, so I want to state here that I read and enjoy the site every day.  And I really don’t just read it waiting for them to say something that bugs me.  I really recommend the site.  They usually have smart, interesting things to say.  Sometimes they say ridiculous things, but don’t we all?

Joo-dish-oo-what?

Is this a DC thing?  Every time I hear someone on a Metro loudspeaker mention the Judiciary Square Metro stop, they pronounce it “joo-DISH-oo-wary”.

I don’t often take the Red Line out that way, so I don’t hear it very often.  But today something was going on there, and they made an announcement at Pentagon City while I was waiting for my train.

I’m home early, by the way, because Satan’s Cable Company, Comcast, is supposed to come out again to fix our tv and internet.  I was told the other day that they had to do some work outside, and no one needed to be home.  Apparently that was a lie.

I really hate Comcast.  The service is bad.  I hear they’re much better in Maryland, but in DC the service is not good.  The guy who came to look at our connections the other day was very pleasant, but he couldn’t fix the problem.

Anyway, if there was any real competition in the cable and internet market here, I would switch.  But there currently isn’t.  A neighbor is trying out the DirecTV and Verizon DSL route.  I’m going to have to see how he likes it.  I’ve had bad experiences with satellite tv, and I’m sure Verizon is going to complain if I ask for DSL without a Verizon phone line (Although I think they have to provide it).

So, I’m at home, using my wireless internet card from work.  It’s AT&T, and it works occasionally.  Actually, the card says Cingular on it, but Cingular doesn’t exist anymore.

And now I’m just rambling, which usually means I should just stop and hit “Publish”.  So I think I’ll do that.

Date Night – Half-Birthday Edition

On Monday, the wife took me to Perrys in Adams Morgan to celebrate my half-birthday.  Yes, neither Perrys nor Adams Morgan has an apostrophe, according to the web site.

Half-birthdays are a wonderful tradition that my mom did for us.  We got a little present and maybe a cupcake.  We being my brother and sister and I.  Anyway, because the wife is so great, she has continued this tradition for me.  In addition to dinner, she got me a t-shirt from Design by Humans and some bamboo boxer shorts from Shirts of Bamboo.

Anyway, Perrys.  We ate on the open-air roof overlooking the top of 18th Street.  It was great.  The weather was perfect for it.  And the food was great.  We started with some edamame, which had too much salt on it, but was otherwise good, and a bottle of French grenache-syrah, which was also good.  It was a screw cap bottle, which I’ve almost never seen outside of New Zealand wine.  But the screw caps are getting more popular, and I’ve heard from at least two people who should know that even a lot of wine snobs are okay with the screw caps.

Then we had assorted sushi, which was quite good.  The spicy tuna roll was great, and the fatty tuna nigiri just falls apart in your mouth.

Overall, it was a great restaurant experience, and I would definitely recommend it.

Date night

Last night, we did the second of our new monthly date nights. We went to a restaurant that I run past fairly regularly, and for some reason it’s always seemed intriguing.

We went to Napoleon Bistro on Columbia Road (Warning: Their website is a horrific flash piece of crap). We were thinking about eating outside, but it was a little muggy. And, it turns out we made the right choice, as a group who went outside to eat just after we arrived came back in shortly after, complaining of bugs.

Anyway, inside the restaurant is nice. They have a rather large bar area, which suggests they get a bar crowd that wasn’t there on a Sunday evening.

The food was good. I had flank steak with a shallot demi glace, whatever that means, and french fries. The wife had a crepe filled with something green and a salad. Crepes, apparently, are their specialty. We split a nice cabernet that I’d never heard of.

Dessert was great, too.  We had the “Femme Fatale”, which was a crepe filled with caramelized bananas and topped with ice cream.  It tasted a little pumpkiny and delicious.

We would definitely go back. In fact, we might even go back later this week when we have a friend in town who would love the food there.

Back to the website, though. I find that, more often than not, a restaurant website is awful. They usually use a lot of Flash, which is rarely a good idea. When I go to a restaurant website, I’d just like to see a menu, maybe a phone number. I don’t need to experience the ambiance of the place through some crappy Flash interface. I’m also surprised at how often I Google a restaurant and they don’t seem to have a website at all. I know I spend more time online than most people do, but it seems that the benefits of even just an HTML version of the menu and phone number being online would outweigh all the maintenance and hosting costs.

Anyway, I would recommend Napoleon Bistro. Just not their website.