Zombie night in Silver Spring!
5 minute read
October 28, 2012, 11:00 PM
So October 27 was the night of the annual Silver Spring Zombie Walk. Except this year, for various reasons, there was no actual zombie walk through the downtown area of Silver Spring. It was just zombie night, where there were a bunch of events for kids and adults, but no single, unifying event like in years past. I knew this going in, and knowing there was no specific zombie walk but rather just a night of zombie-related fun and festivities, I decided to just see what I could see.
Not surprisingly, it was a little bit underwhelming. I wasn’t about to hit the bars and take pictures of adults drinking in zombie costumes. The best players in last year’s zombie walk were the kids, and so I tried to stick to the areas where most of the family entertainment would be held, around Ellsworth Drive, while still getting around the full downtown area a bit.
On Ellsworth Drive, in the “Downtown Silver Spring” development, the younger set was out and about. Some of them were remarkably scary/creepy specifically because they were kids and looked a little too wholesome to be spattered with blood and looking all undead. Like these two:
Add the blank expressions to the mix, and you have nightmare fuel right there. Great costumes, great playing of the part, but still creepy. Good work.
Continue reading…Categories: Halloween, Silver Spring
A whole bunch of bowling videos…
4 minute read
October 22, 2012, 10:09 PM
I realized tonight that I had never shown you some funny bowling videos that my friend Matthew and I had made a while back. Matthew and I will, as I’ve demonstrated before, go bowling from time to time. We always have a lot of fun, but considering that Matthew is a far better bowler than I am, the object of the game for me is to see how close I can come to matching his score. I’ve discussed our first time doing ten-pin together and our first time doing duckpins together before, but I never showed you our second run of each style.
Now on the first time for each, I wasn’t sure how the various bowling alley operators viewed photography, plus I was concentrating a bit more on what I was doing. After all, I had not done ten-pin in seven years before our first time bowling together in 2009, and then neither one of us had ever done duckpins before when we did that in August 2009. Now, I have come to realize that the operators of these bowling alleys really don’t care if you’re taking videos and stills of yourself (plus I’m just using my phone here rather than my real camera), plus I’ve gotten a bit more comfortable with the whole bowling thing overall. Additionally, there’s a certain fun part of acting in front of the camera in these sorts of situations. After all, there’s a certain bit of structure to these things, because you know the general idea of the afternoon, i.e. throw the ball and knock down some pins. But how one gets from A to B is where the fun comes in.
This first bunch of videos was from December 3, 2011, when Matthew and I were doing ten-pin at Bowl America in Reston.
Categories: Matthew, Recreation/Exercise, Silver Spring
Montgomery County is definitely not itself right now…
5 minute read
June 30, 2012, 5:06 PM
And that’s putting it lightly. A very big storm blew through the DC area on Friday night, and the results were not pretty. As I understand it, the weather event was called a derecho, and the effects of such a phenomenon were painfully obvious for those of us in Montgomery County. Remember back in 2010, when that big storm came up out of nowhere and left much of Montgomery County without power? It seems that history has repeated itself. This storm blew through, and took out trees all over the place, and with that came power lines, and that left Montgomery County in the dark. According to WUSA, out of 305,000 Pepco customers in Montgomery County, 210,000 of them currently don’t have electricity, and out of 800 traffic lights in the county, 500 of them don’t work on account of power outages. And unfortunately, I am part of the two-thirds of Montgomery County that doesn’t have power. I lost power on Friday night. The lights went on and off a few times, and then went out for good. And they’re still out.
And with so much of the county in the dark, people’s patterns changed. First of all, getting around is a real pain. With five out of eight traffic lights down (and no rhyme or reason about which lights are dead), we have been told all over to treat dark traffic signals like four-way stops, which slows things down. From what I can tell, there are four ways that intersections with traffic lights are treated in these sorts of situations. First are the lights that work. Those function as they always do. Then there are the really big intersections, which have police officers directing traffic through them. Then the bigger intersections but that aren’t as big as the others get these little portable stop signs between the lanes to remind drivers that they are supposed to treat the intersection as a four-way stop. And then finally, most intersections with dark lights are just left dark without any signage or personnel on scene, and drivers are expected to be courteous to each other and stop before proceeding.
Categories: Silver Spring, Washington DC, Weather, Wheaton
So the Baltimore Inner Harbor was fun…
4 minute read
May 27, 2012, 10:44 PM
I went up to Baltimore with a friend on Friday evening, where we explored the Inner Harbor for a while. That was kind of fun. The Inner Harbor is a very fun area, though it seems a bit overcommercialized. But such is what happens, I suppose. I loved the smell of the sea air, everyone was having so much fun out and about, and there were all kinds of fun ships sailing around.
The first ship we saw was The Black-Eyed Susan, a paddlewheeler:
Categories: Baltimore, Friends, Power Rangers
Safeway photo set update for you…
6 minute read
November 7, 2011, 11:17 PM
Remember my “Abandoned Grocery Store” photo set, where I took photos of the board-up on the Safeway store in Wheaton, Maryland? They’re finally tearing the building down. Let the record show that I did the photo set on December 27, 2009. The store had closed eight days prior to this. They’re just now getting around to demolishing the building – nearly two years later. Admittedly, it didn’t look quite as rough as it looked in my photo set the whole time. The board-up was painted gray by spring 2010, and then a “Coming soon your new SAFEWAY” banner was hung from the front of it for a year and a half. It looked like this:
Of course, that banner was none too reassuring, because the closed store was still there, and the new building replacing it couldn’t go up until this one was gone.
Braaaaaaaaaaains…
5 minute read
October 26, 2011, 12:24 AM
First of all, I can’t believe that Halloween is almost upon us again! Feels like just yesterday that it was Labor Day, no?
In the spirit of Halloween, I got together with some friends last Saturday night, and attended the fourth annual Silver Spring Zombie Walk in downtown Silver Spring. For those who don’t know, a zombie walk is an event where people dress up like the undead as commonly portrayed in works of fiction, and then walk through an area as a group, in character. In addition to people dressed as zombies, you also have people dressed as “zombie hunters”, who dress up like commandos and carry Nerf weapons and other similar faux-artillery.
In Silver Spring, my friends went dressed as zombies. I went straight and had my camera out. My goal was to get some photos and have a good time. I’d dare say that both goals were accomplished. The zombie walk gathered at approximately the intersection of Georgia Avenue and Sligo Avenue outside Jackie’s, just north of the point where the Red Line crosses Georgia Avenue (you know, that bright pink bridge). Once we got going, we walked north on Georgia Avenue as far as Ellsworth Drive. Then we made a right turn, walked east on Ellsworth Drive through the “Downtown” development, made a left turn, walked north on Fenton Street for two blocks, and then turned left and walked west on Colesville Road to the AFI Silver theater. There, the theater was showing two horror movies, and was the formal end of the zombie walk. We didn’t go to the movies, and instead continued on to Georgia Avenue, and then went back to the “Downtown” development on Ellsworth Drive, where we got to hang out for a while. Not bad!
Categories: Events, Friends, Halloween, Silver Spring
So let’s file deep water running at Sandy Point under “ideas that sounded good on paper”…
2 minute read
July 24, 2011, 9:45 PM
You may recall that about a month ago, I discussed having taken a deep water running (aka aqua jogging) class, and how fun it would be to go deep water running over at Sandy Point State Park.
Well, I did it.
I went out to Aardvark Swim yesterday and bought a deep water running belt, and then went out to Sandy Point today to give it all a spin. Unfortunately, the verdict ended up being that while this sounded like a great idea on paper, it didn’t work out quite as well in real life. That’s not to say that I didn’t get a good (enough) workout, though. I did get to work my arms quite a bit. The problem is that the water wasn’t quite as deep as I thought. Last year, I went there some time in August, and I remember not being able to touch bottom when I was out as far as the white buoys. This time, either I had a growth spurt (unlikely), or my recent weight loss allowed me to sink further (plausible but also unlikely), but I could touch bottom almost the entire time today. And for deep water running, you want to be in a place where you can’t touch bottom so that you have room to make the full leg movements. If you can firmly stand on the bottom, you’re not in deep enough water. This isn’t to say I didn’t try, though. I tried pulling my legs up and doing the movements short-legged, but I inevitably would end up rolling forward onto my front, and the idea with deep water running is to stay vertical.
So I took the “deep water running” class this evening…
3 minute read
June 23, 2011, 10:16 PM
So I took the “deep water running” class at Olney Swim Center this evening. That was a new experience. This is also called “aqua jogging“, and involves strapping on a flotation belt and jogging in the deep end of the pool. The idea is that you’re doing all of this while staying vertical. If you’re on your back, your front, or otherwise not vertical, you’re not doing it right.
The class lasted an hour, which is the same amount of time that I normally would spend doing lap swimming. In the class, we first did a few laps around the pool just running. Then we did it like cross-country skiing, with arms and legs straight and going back and forth. We also did cross-country legs with breaststroke arms. We really mixed it up, working things one direction, the other direction, and side to side. We even did jumping jacks in the water on a few occasions. Then in the second half of the class, we worked with foam dumbbells to give extra resistance. I was actually disappointed when the class was over, because I thoroughly enjoyed myself.
The idea of deep water running definitely has potential for me. However, I didn’t get that great post-workout buzz that I normally get after doing laps. That’s not to say I didn’t get a workout. I certainly worked certain muscle groups, and I can feel some after effects of the workout, but it’s not quite enough to satisfy me.
More swimming, Jimbo Wales, and a new exercise guide!
8 minute read
June 13, 2011, 11:10 PM
Oh, do I have a lot to discuss today. First of all, I went swimming on Sunday, which was an interesting experience all its own. What made it so interesting was how busy the pool was. First, though, I got there early, while maintenance work was still going on. So I got to do something I’d told Mom I’d do for a while now: take pictures of the pool. And here they are:
The “leisure pool” (read: kiddie pool) area. This pool is three feet deep at its deepest, and water is normally flowing out of the top of the mushroom structure towards the back, and water fills the buckets in the right of the photo. The buckets tip over and dump their contents when they become full. There’s also a small water slide that’s mostly out of frame, but you can see part of it behind the buckets. One of the two “hydrotherapy pools” (read: hot tub) is visible in the background.
Categories: Olney, Recreation/Exercise, Washington DC, Wikipedia
So let’s go swimming!
5 minute read
May 16, 2011, 6:09 PM
So… I went swimming today at the Graham S. Little Natatorium, aka Olney Swim Center. I had never been before, so while I had an idea about what to expect from going online, it was still a new experience. For those wondering, the Olney Swim Center is an indoor swimming pool in Olney, Maryland, owned and operated by Montgomery County.
I got there just before 2:30, and, after changing in the locker room, I got in the water right at 2:30, and swam mostly continuously for an hour. I believe that this marks the first time that I’ve done any serious swimming since I quit Rhonda Dossey’s class, and that was twenty years ago! And I certainly got a workout from this, that’s for sure. I started doing the front crawl for a few laps, and then switched to backstroke. I did that for a while, then did the breaststroke for a bit. Then I spent the rest of the time doing the backstroke. I did the backstroke most because when you consider that I’m just getting back into things, I couldn’t quite manage to get the multitasking together to stroke, kick, and breathe doing the front crawl and the breaststroke. So I decided to work on just stroke and kick, and we’ll deal with the breathing in another session. Something tells me I should work on the breathing with a kickboard for a while and then try to put it all together later. It’s okay – don’t want to overdo it, and I don’t have any swim instructor standing on the pool deck yelling at me about my stroke.
There is one other thing that I need to work on, and that’s direction. When I was a kid, I had no problems swimming in a straight line. Tell me where to swim, and I could get there in a straight line. Kind of like this:
Categories: Fire drills, Olney, Swimming
People don’t step back and observe enough anymore…
2 minute read
May 14, 2011, 9:42 PM
No one ever seems to step back and just watch things happen, and I noticed myself doing exactly that today. I was at the Barnes & Noble store in Montrose Crossing shopping center in Rockville today, and in walking past the windows on the second floor, I caught myself just watching the traffic through the parking lot of this rather busy shopping center on a busy Saturday afternoon. Then I filmed some of it, because we all need to kind of step back and observe. Enjoy:
Categories: Photography, Rockville
Word to the wise: Don’t drop your Droid on its head.
4 minute read
December 11, 2010, 8:54 PM
Those of you who follow me on the Twitter know when I’m riding Metro. After all, during those times, many of my tweets have the #wmata hashtag on them. And usually, one Metro ride in a day is followed later in the day by another (after all, after going somewhere, I usually have to go back). But on Friday evening, I was notably silent. See, I had broken my Droid.
What happened is that I had just gotten off the phone with Mom. I usually call my mother during the walk from the office to Dupont Circle station, and we stay on the phone while I go down into the station and wait on the platform, only saying goodbye once I’m safely on the train (there’s a dead spot in the tunnel between Dupont Circle and Farragut North, so we have to end it by then). This particular evening, Mom had to get off the phone early, because Dad had dinner ready and she had to go. So we said goodbye while I was still waiting on the platform, and got off the phone.
Once I get off the phone, I usually switch to my iPod and resume my Randi Rhodes podcast. So I tucked the phone under my chin and held it against my chest with my chin. However, my winter coat, zipped all the way up, got in the way, though I didn’t realize it at the time. So while I was pulling out my iPod and my headphones, the phone dropped from where I was holding it, and landed headfirst on the platform. If you’re holding it upright, the top of it is what struck the platform, and it hit with enough force to knock the snap-on case off of it. I picked the phone up, and to my surprise, the screen was black.
Categories: Cell phone, Rockville
A number of things to discuss today…
6 minute read
October 14, 2010, 9:48 PM
So I have a few things that I’d like to discuss with you today. First of all, I got a new netbook! I got the HP Mini 210, in black. Looks like it ought to be a pretty solid netbook computer, and for how I do computing on the go, it ought to work pretty well. My biggest complaint about the Lappy is that typing would give me fits, because the keyboard didn’t hold up too well. The left control key broke off, and typing would cause nearby keys to fire as well. This new computer has a “chiclet” style keyboard, which actually kind of reminds me of a Mac keyboard. And this thing weighs about three pounds. And this is what the Mini 210 looks like:
Categories: Computer, Glasses, Mercury Sable, Silver Spring
Let me tell you, I had a really good time on Saturday…
5 minute read
January 31, 2010, 9:35 PM
I had a really good time on Saturday. I went to the Maryland State Police Polar Bear Plunge, aka “Plungapalooza”, and while it was really, really, really cold and snowing, I had a blast.
The event was held at Sandy Point State Park, near Annapolis. The idea is simple: put on a swimsuit, and run into a body of ice-cold water in the middle of winter. The proceeds from the event went to support Special Olympics, and of course, all involved had a great time.
As I mentioned before, I didn’t jump in. Nuh-uh. Too cold. And when you consider all the cold-weather gear I was wearing, I was determined to stay toasty warm, too. And for the most part, I did.
Getting there involved taking the Beltway to Route 50, and then a short distance on local roads to the parking area. Parking involved leaving the car at a satellite location and then taking a shuttle bus to the site. I parked at the Naval Academy Stadium, and took a bus from there. That was like jumping into a time-warp. The bus appeared to be of more recent mint than I would have ridden, but the interior was light green, and the seats were dark green. I thought they got rid of that when they started using the brown interiors in the late 80s. I guess I was wrong. Ugly green on uglier green is obviously alive and well in the 2010s.
Categories: Annapolis, Driving, Events, Winter weather
Something tells me that they’re closed.
4 minute read
December 27, 2009, 11:50 PM
First of all, hello from Stuarts Draft, Virginia, where I’m writing to you from the Lappy at my parents’ kitchen table instead of my real computer.
On the way down to Stuarts Draft, I stopped to photograph the Safeway in Wheaton. The Safeway in Wheaton recently closed due to a pending redevelopment. They’re supposed to be tearing down the existing store and replacing it with a mixed-use development, including a new modern Safeway store at street level. The store closed on the 19th (the day of the snowstorm), and, to my surprise, was completely boarded up following the closure. I saw it boarded up on Christmas Eve, and was like, whoa! when I saw it.
First of all, here’s the store as it appeared when open, courtesy of Google Earth:
Image: Google Earth