About town

My Saturday morning included:

Cherry blossoms at the Tidal Basin


The cool (relatively new) Kogod Courtyard at the National Portrait Gallery


And the reason for a massive spike in attendance at the gallery:

A bumper crop of tourists

Spring has officially arrived in D.C. with the Cherry Blossom Festival, though I'm still undecided if I'm going to fight the crowds to go gawk today.

It's tough for me to get my head around celebrating spring in March, having spent most of my life in Central New York and then seven years in Oregon. At this time of year in Central New York, you're still very much in winter -- I think they got five or six inches of snow yesterday. In Oregon, you're still a good two months (or more) away from the end of the gray and the rain.

Here, it's been warming for weeks and everything is starting to bloom. Weird.

Going down the drain

Another in the occasional series of toilet-related posts:

It seems even millionaire athletes are impressed by high-tech toilets. (Yahoo! Sports)

But Olympic athletes are not athletic enough to handle squat toilets. (The Guardian via Deadspin)

I feel vindicated.

Earlier toilet coverage here and here.

Nice way to earn a living, I suppose

I am really tired (no pun intended) of someone at work who spends the second half of every workday falling asleep.

Maybe there are issues I don't know about that prevent this person from getting a full night's sleep every night. Perhaps it's mild narcolepsy. Regardless, why am I working so hard when someone else is taking a snooze?

Why bother?

Crust, too

Overheard at a pizza shop at Penn Station:

Mother: What would you like on your pizza?
Daughter #1: Cheese!
Daughter #2: Plain!
Mother: Just cheese?
Daughter #2: And sauce!

Take that, New York Times Metropolitan Diary!

Politics rocks!

Before I head off to Philly (mmm ... cheesesteaks) and New York (mmm ... everything) for the next couple of days, here's a gem from PRI's More Fair Game:

Andrew W.K. puts John McLaughlin to music. (Seriously!)

* McLaughlin Groove (.mp3)
* Complete show

Area blogger enjoys humorous publication

If you love The Onion, as I do, check out this episode of This American Life from a few weeks back. (I meant to post this last month, then forgot about it until now.) It's a fascinating look at what goes on in the writers' room at the newspaper.

The other segments are all really good, too. Especially the last one by The New Yorker's Malcom Gladwell, which will give those of you who haven't spent time in a newsroom an interesting look at what happens to your daily paper when professional journalists get bored.

(Aside: Why is it that The New Yorker is always on newsstands before I get it in the mail? Isn't that why you subscribe to a magazine? To get it first?)

Finally, I'm obviously in a weird mood today because this Onion story made me laugh hysterically:

Whale Expert Measures Everything in Elephants

Nerd alert!

OK, I found Stephen Colbert's discussion of the proper use of the hyphen (starts at the 1:11 mark) way too funny.