Posts in: dmv

We recently bought a condo in DC and made a conscious effort to avoid houses like this one, which always looked like they were made out of sawdust and glue. Well:

… inspection report found about 70 code violations. The most severe: The building lacked lateral bracing for its exterior walls, causing it to sway. Without this bracing, relatively weak door frames and interior partition walls were load-bearing, holding up the weight of the structure without adequate support. “I was very scared for those people,” Englebert says. “You need those braced wall lines to stop the building from moving. If that building were to rock in the right direction, it could fall over on itself.”

Criminal negligence from builders to the initial city inspection. I feel for the home owners who have to live through this horror show. Most alarming of all: the contractor is still at it, shielded from lawsuits thanks to an LLC. Caveat emptor! (ᔥr/washingtondc)

It’s been a cold, rainy spring day in DC today, but just a few weeks ago we had this. Isn’t spring great?

The Washington monument reflect in water on a clear sunny day.

A very DC story about a DC cat in today’s Washington Post:

She dozed on sunlit stoops, scaled fences and slept in a boxy shelter on a neighbor’s lawn. She was named Kitty Snows, after her new home on Snows Court in the Foggy Bottom neighborhood of D.C., where she belonged to everyone and no one.

And then, she vanished.

What has unfolded this year around Snows Court in is an old-fashioned neighborhood melodrama — “Kittygate,” if you must — complete with wounded feelings, rampant gossip, sidewalk spies and lawsuit threats.

For what it’s worth, I side with the new owners.

(ᔥReddit)

Our bubble baby at the NIH Clinical Center playground, back when I was working there. NIH was a bubble in its on way too, of course.

A toddler looking through a large opaque plastic bubble that’s part of a playground play set.

You can recognize avarice in any community, and the carps at the US National Arboretum are no different. It is no accident that the one fish with its mouth wide open and ready to eat is also the largest one in the pond.

Close-up photo of a koi pond with numerous carps of all sizes looking up. The largest fish has its mouth open and sticking out of the water.

I don’t often leave online reviews and when I do it’s usually to commend. Not this time.

I might have cooled off by the time I got back home, but then I noticed that the worst auto repair shop in DC has left me a surprise.

Close-up of a driver's side car carpet with two large dirty footprints.

Exhibited at the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History, on loan from Angola: a Mosasaurus skull, leg and spine.

I don’t think we knew about these when I was a kid, but my own children knew all about it. From YouTube, where else.

A reptilian skull, front limb and vertebrae in a glass case with a description of mosasaurus on a plaque underneath.

The same pond as yesterday, with more light but alas without the heron.

A still pond mirrors an early fall landscape under a clear blue sky.

Zoom in to the center of this dreamy Brookside Gardens landscape and you will see… another blue heron, holding on to an indecently large goldfish.

A rippled pond mirrors a fall landscape on a gloomy, overcast day. A hunched figure at the center holds something bright orange in its beak.

Behold, the Maryland state flag — one of the best in the Union — and state flower on top of the Maryland state desert, the Smith Island (birthday) cake. Best of all, this was a birthday we celebrated while on Smith Island.

A birthday cake with chocolate glazing, two (plastic) black-eyed Susans and a (paper) Maryland state flag placed on top.