After Lyssa and I got her eyeglasses repaired this afternoon we wandered for a bit around Fairfax in Northern Virginia. It's been way too long since we'd gone wandering on a fall afternoon (and a surprisingly early one, at that) so after picking up some staple spices at Penzey's we decided to stop in for dinner at a restaurant that we'd last seen while under construction called the Mad Fox Brewing Company (444 West Broad Street; Falls Church, VA; 22046; phone 703-942-6840; fax 703-942-6916). Our first impression was that it seemed like a right nice place to kick back for …
Driving home yesterday evening I nearly jumped out of my skin when a bright flash of light reflected in my rearview mirror nearly blinded me, closely followed by what I can best describe as a cartoon-character-gets-zapped sound effect that I heard even through closed windows and the air conditioning going at full blast. In a move that probably says more about my sense of self-preservation than anything else, I threw the TARDIS into park, jumped out, and ran toward the source of the sound - a rapidly descending power company cherrypicker below what used to be a small transformer on the …
It's been a while since I've had a surreally nervewracking experience to make things interesting, so when the opportunity came to go target shooting at the NRA range in northern Virginia I decided to give it a go.
I found out only recently that The Wrong Hands has been handgun training for a while now (six months, I think), and she extended an invitation to Lyssa a couple of weeks back to go to the range. By all accounts, at the end of the evening Lyssa had had an excellent time, and I was extended an invitation to join them …
Somehow, I doubt that they have been placed there solely to monitor the speed of people driving down route 7. It would be interesting to determine if they are hardwired into a network of some kind, or if they transmit their footage over radio.
The weather predictions are growing like the tales of Paul Bunyon in the DC metroplex as the second winter storm of the year comes rolling in. They're calling it Snowpocalypse II around here, and people have been getting ready for it for three days now. On Wednesday evening the stores were packed full of people buying groceries and snow shovels in preparation for today, and the moment a few flakes began sifting down from the ominous grey clouds most every agency in the area called a code red: if you're not security don't come in, stay warm, and stay safe …
When I first started driving I taught myself how to navigate Pittsburgh by filling up my car with gas, picking a direction to drive in for fifteen or twenty miles, and getting thoroughly lost. I’d then spend the evening trying to get back home, or failing that, someplace that I recognized and could navigate from. I was thinking about that this morning as I attached a GPS puck to the roof of my car and ran the interface cable through the window. It’s been a long and busy couple of weeks, so while Lyssa was out and about …
