Month: October 2006

This week I’ve been having Blogger problems, so if a comment doesn’t come up immediately or a posting is late, blame Blogger. This is a little announcement so I won’t get stressed about it.

The Post covers the teenage trick or treaters. I don’t care how old you are, just make an effort to wear a friggin’ costume.
You could wear your work uniform. Saturday I went to the Glen Echo ballroom and the number of people dress up was woefully low. I went as a nun. As I was dancing with one fellow he remarked that he should have worn his work clothes. He’s a retired priest. It would have worked. So wear your McDonald’s, Best Buy shirts, with name tag and that will be somewhat barely acceptable. If you’re a DC Cop and you come to my house, you can have all the Reese’s cups you want.
For the surly teen or anyone else who doesn’t keep up their end of the holiday, I got cheap waxy foil wrapped candy with your name written all over it.
Update: Budget Fashionista has some cheap costume ideas.

Next Tuesday, please, please, please drag yourself to the polls. In a city that is overwhelmingly one party, one could get into the mindset that after the hoopla of the Democratic primaries, that’s it. No. Fenty has to be elected mayor. A few other folks need to be reconfirmed as well, and there are school board elections (I support Robert Bobb) and the ANCs.
A list of who is running in the ANCs can be found here (PDF).In my ANC of 5C01, Anita Bonds is the only one running. Which is okay. Anita, if she is who I think I remember her to be (I’m so bad with names and faces) then she’s good people, thoughtful, sane, and a decent replacement for Jim Berry (of course no one can really replace Jim). Over in Eckington, in 5C02, it is Kris Hammond vs incumbent Cleopatra Jones. I favor Hammond, for my own reasons, but since I don’t live there, it doesn’t matter. 5C03 has Big-Bear’s Stu Davenport vs Andrew Pollard. I just want the Bear to open.
The more interesting ANC battles are over in the 2C region. Do I really need to go over the Chapple vs Thorpe 2C02 race? Really, I have covered it, Fifth & O has covered it, and the Washington City paper has covered it. Without question I support Chapple in that race. I also support Alex Padro in his re-election bid, as he has done a lot to bring businesses to 9th Street. And I hear there is a sort of slate of 2C candidates? Can anyone confirm that for me?
How will it all end? Well we’ll find out Nov 8th, but it’s the voters on the 7th who will decide if incumbents stay or go and what kind of new blood take up the various government positions, paid and unpaid. You have about a week, get informed and vote.

Now a reminder of the comment rules: No anonymous postings, no fowl language or nasty names, and if it offends/annoys me, well, it’s my blog and I have the right to delete it. And on the other side of that, you are free to respectfully disagree with me or anyone else. You are welcomed to make verifiable points to support your argument.

I’m experiencing problems.

Here’s a link to a lovely piece on the ANC race over in 2C.

I noticed on JD Land’s website she had a really cool table tracking permits and crime and all sorts of goodies on her blog about SE DC taken from DC Stat. Unfortunately, I do not possess her G’d given talent for machine readable data manipulation, so you won’t be getting any of that here.
But nicely enough the DC government has gone a step in the right direction, they have created an easy crime map. But I didn’t get the same cool features popping up in the Washington Post article. If I wanted to look at 1 type of crime, then I got the cool icons. All crimes together, same icon. That’s a bug I’m sure that can be worked out. Also you can download the data from the map to an Excel file. Sadly, the whole thing is anti-Mac. I’ll have to deal with my semi-retired PC to play around with the tables and whatnot because, the site is up front saying that you NEED Internet Explorer (which I don’t have on my Mac).

There is somethings that have been bugging me. It is a common misperception, and I understand the logic of how one can think in those terms.
One. Homeowner does not equal occupant. I don’t have the figures in front of me but home ownership supposedly now is at a record high or something like that, so it would be logical to assume that most people were homeowners 100 years ago. Nope. Well at least not in my subject group. On the form I use tracking 1900 households, I’m circling ‘R’ for renter than I am ‘O’ for owner. So that’s why the census is so important. The deeds and the ownership history won’t tell me jack about who lived in it. I have a mild curiosity about TC or Shaw landlords, but not strong enough to do any heavy research on it right now.
Second is women working outside the home. Married or single, poor women worked. Old maid middle class daughters worked. There are tons of ‘Laundressess’ in the TC not all of them heads of households. I also noticed in houses that may have 2-3 adult (anyone over 16 yo) generations, even the middle class white daughters had clerk, sales, and dressmaker jobs. Only so many are needed to keep house, everyone else either went to school or worked.

Here’s the deal: You dress up, I give you candy. Here’s another part of the deal: If you don’t want to bother with either the candy giving or the dressing up, don’t. Turn out the lights, stay home, go somewhere else where no one expects anything out of you. But don’t expect me to fulfill one part of the deal when you don’t pony up to the other. Meaning, no costume, no candy.
I like Halloween well enough that I do buy candy and look forward to giving it to the kids who come by. However, there are a number of kids who don’t bother and just ruin the spirit of it. When enough uncostumed kids show up at my door halfway through I just don’t want to be bothered because I feel that someone (several someones) aren’t keeping up their end of the deal.
Rapper, is not a costume. As I have noticed it does not require you to look any different than you normally do.
Being poor is not a valid excuse either. Go to Giant. Get a paper bag. Make two eye & 1 mouth hole. Viola! Mask! For those of us of a certain age, you are the “Unknown Comic”. Get a large sized plastic bag, wear it like a dress and stick a few twigs in it, you are a grocery bag stuck in a tree. With talcum powder and $2 of cheap makeup from the dollar store you can make a gang of zombies. Material poverty does not have to equal mental and creative poverty.
So next week, here’s the deal: You dress up, I give you candy.
Note: Jimbo you deserve a whole bag of candy.

Okay I hacked up most of my tomato plants and got two big plastic bags of green tomatoes ranging from the size of small grapefruits to ping pong balls. I have 96 green tomatoes in three windows to turn green or yellow. I gave away a couple of dozen small and mid-sized tomatoes to neighbors who I thought would have some idea of what to do with green tomatoes. Yes, I know you can fry them, but I’ve never ate a fried green tomato, so I wouldn’t know how to properly cook them. Besides I like them red, or yellow. I still have about 40 small ping pong sized tomatoes to give away to neighbors.

So I’m walking back home, scanning the street and the yards as I walk, because ladies (and guys) this is an urban area and you have to be aware of your surroundings. Anyway, scanning, walking and I spot something in some one’s yard. I see big ugly bird feet and a white body and I think to myself, “That is one ugly duck lawn ornament.” Then the lawn ornament moves. It’s a chicken! A live and very ugly hen.