theparkerfamily.org

Month: February 2011

  • photo of the month: february

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    See Slideshow of the Photos on Flickr:
    camera dump: february

  • grandparents

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    See Slideshow of the Photos on Flickr:
    grandparents

  • video: hammer time

    httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LadoRUTc3xc

  • dangerous game

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    in case anybody was wondering, you can drive about 2.18 miles with a really expensive camera on the roof of a 2008 prius without it falling off.

    i don’t think i would recommend it — just sayin’ it’s possible.

  • out: kidsburg

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    See Slideshow of the Photos on Flickr:
    out: kidsburg

  • “what? so i’m in a dog bed — you wanna fight about it?”

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  • coming unglued

    well, i think i’m about done with the real estate thing.

    this afternoon we took a long second look at a house on the 1800 block of monroe street nw, and the details didn’t look so good upon closer examination.

    it had been recently renovated, but the finishing just wasn’t where we’d have liked it to be — and if what we could see gave us pause, we were pretty nervous about what was hidden behind the drywall.

    this is the third place that looked at where all the original character was gutted during a recent renovation and replaced (seemingly) by whatever home depot had on special that week.

    our real estate agent calls it a “gaithersburg remodel” — gutting a District home and treating it as if it was just another townhouse in the suburbs — which would be funny if we weren’t absolutely weeping inside at the loss.

    so, after this round of bad real estate karma we’ve started coming a bit unglued — enough that we actually ventured over to capitol hill to check out a place (400 block of 6th Street NE) that just came on the market there.

    it was stunning and had everything that the last couple of places in mount pleasant have lacked — original woodwork, original layouts, period decor.

    to make matters worse, it was in our price range, had big beautiful bedrooms, was in the absolute best part of capitol hill, and was surrounded by excellent elementary and middle schools.

    we thought long and hard about putting an offer on it — even though we haven’t seriously been considering moving to capitol hill.

    but during the drive home to mount pleasant — along the tree lined streets, around the zoo, past our favorite restaurants and playgrounds — we realized we just couldn’t do it.

    our neighborhood is just too awesome to be replaced by even a spectacular home somewhere else.

    we’re not ready to give up on mount pleasant — not yet.

  • lynnbrook

    [The Lynnbrook, 1661 Park Road NW, Washington, DC.]
    slightly better pictures i took for our listing.

    the real estate photographer took his just minutes before we spent the whole day cleaning up the garden — our real estate karma continues unabated.

    See the Slideshow on Flickr:
    slideshow: the lynnbrook

  • for sale

    anybody looking for a two-bedroom condo in dc? if so, boy, have i got a deal for you …
    See the Listing on Redfin:
    park road nw, washington, dc

  • staged

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    this is what our February looks like.all our spare time has been filled up by the 74 item punchlist standing between us and putting our place on the market — or, more exactly, it’s been filled up with my beloved wife babysitting sparklet 24/7 so i could work through said 74 item punchlist.

    but, it looks like we’re there — finally.

    a professional real estate photographer showed up today to take professional real estate photos (these aren’t them), i think our place actually goes on the market tomorrow or Wednesday, and the first open houses are this weekend. (UPDATE: it’s been listed!)

    we will be somewhere else while people march through our place, however — namely gram and grampa’s house for a little bit of “abandon our child to her grandparents while mommy and daddy make up for four weeks of no sleep” therapy.

    for what it’s worth, i absolutely don’t recognize the place now that all the work is done. if my key didn’t work on the door, i’d have no clue.

    See Slideshow of the Photos on Flickr:
    photos: park road apartment, staged for sale

  • out: brunch with babs

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  • found: somebody else’s bed

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  • firsts: bounce

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    sparklet’s discovered one nice thing about moving — bouncing on the couch when mommy has the slip cover at the laundromat. awesome.

  • something’s got to give

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    we’re about ready to call “up” as sparklet’s first real word.she went through a three week period last August where she said “hi” to everything that moved — but not sure it counts considering she hasn’t used the word since.

    however, with “up” it seems to be a sustained usage, and in all the right contexts — daddy, pick me up; daddy, stand up and come here; daddy, help me get in the cabinet full of empty carbohydrates.

    what i don’t understand is how far we’ve come with everything else, and yet we’ve still got a vocabulary of one.

    for comparison (and, in no particular order):

    • she understands the concept of “cheers!” and will seek out people’s glasses to clink unprompted;
    • she can gracefully dismount from our gigantic 28″ tall sleigh bed, and invariably land on her feet;
    • she can climb a small step ladder, stand at the top with no hands, eat a sandwich, and descend the latter — all without falling;
    • she can both climb and descend stairs, unassisted;
    • she can open certain doors, and close them in our faces when she doesn’t want us to follow;
    • she can grab our hands, lead us over to the refrigerator, decide what she wants to eat, and hand them to us to prepare;
    • she can pause and un-pause the television, and has a clear understanding of when and why she’d want to;
    • she gets upset if the cat’s food bowl is empty, pick up the bowl, march into the kitchen, and wait at the food drawer for us to refill, returning it to the proper place once it’s full;
    • she will help load the washing machine, and start the cleaning cycle;
    • she’ll ask to do a somersault, put her hands and head on the floor, and wait for us to roll her over to her back;

    i guess she’s just been focused on other things.

  • out: bancroft’s new playground

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    See Slideshow of the Photos on Flickr:
    out: bancroft playground

  • mtp

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  • out: lamont park

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    See Slideshow of the Photos on Flickr:
    out: lamont park

  • “i’ll be over here … by the crust.”

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  • wall photos: mount pleasant

    [Snow, Mount Pleasant, Washington, DC.]
    [Mount Pleasant, Washington, DC.]
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    Photo by Chambo25 (used detail of Heller’s and Pfieffer’s signs).
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    Photo by jajajav.
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    Photo by katmere (used detail of National Baptist Church on left).
    [View of Mount Pleasant street with the three churches of 16th street.]
    Photo by mindgutter.
    we’re adding some local flavor to our place, celebrating how awesome mount pleasant is.considering i’ve take over 9,000 photos since i’ve moved here, i figured it would be super easy — but it turns out exactly three photos of them depicted mount pleasant (well, and didn’t include either baby sparklet or snow).

    i need to get out into the neighborhood more.

    the photos we used are above — with special thanks to the photographers.

  • found: big cheese

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  • found: static electricity

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  • out: walter pierce park

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    ohthankgod.

    it’s a balmy 49º out today, so sparklet and i got the heck outside. neither of us do particularly well (with each other) when we’re stuck inside each and every afternoon for three months, so its a #$&*#%ing relief to get even a little bit of running and sliding in.

    sparklet must have cycled through walter pierce park’s slides two dozen times in the half hour we were there. by the end, her hair was standing on end from the accumulated static electricity from the slides.

    wow, i can’t wait for spring.

  • the talimos

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    we’ve been stinked out of our place for the next two days while the painters come through and undo the chromatic damage we did to our walls in the last four years.

    fortunately, the talimos are the most awesome people on the planet and took us in — providing us a steady stream of friends, food and wine to help assuage the pain of every bit of character being stripped from our walls.

    i’ll spare the details to protect the innocent and prevent retaliation from PETFG (people for the ethical treatment of fermented grapes) but i will say there was a bolognese sauce involved at one point that i would consider jail time in exchange for the recipe.

  • packing crate

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    it’s snowing — which isn’t particularly conducive to packing a moving crate, nor preserving the finish of the lady sparkler’s favorite chair, nor the structural integrity of cardboard boxes.

    i’ve lost track of exactly how many boxes i’ve packed, through i’m guessing it’s in the 75-80 range. that, when coupled with seven chairs, three tables, two book cases and a dresser, it’s enough to both fill up a crate and remind me why i vowed not six years ago to never move myself ever again.

    a handyman came today to fix the sink damaged three years ago when our medicine cabinet fell off the wall, the painters come tomorrow to utterly crush my self-esteem/will-to-live, and the few pieces of “staging” furniture arrived this weekend.

    and then we list on Tuesday.

  • “This is Major Tom to Ground Control …”

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    photo of the week // sixteen months

  • lynnbrook.org

    as part of the sale, i’ve created a brochure-ware site for our building — i doubt i can get it onto the first page of google results for us, but it’s worth a shot.
    The Lynnbrook
    http://www.lynnbrook.org/

  • more real estate

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    another batch of prospective houses, and another batch of prospective houses that are just waaay over priced for the market.

    back in mid-January we looked at a couple of places (3300 block of 17th Street NW, 2000 block of Klingle Road NW) and they were both just ridiculously overpriced. we like one well enough to reach out to the opposing real estate agent, but the current owners were in a financial position that they couldn’t bring the price down closer to market value.

    this past weekend we looked at two more places (both 3200 block of Walbridge Place NW) and again, both were asking for more than the value we saw in the place. again, we liked one of the places enough to enquirer about it — but we just weren’t within each others ballpark on price.

    it seems like a lot of people who bought at the peak of the market are still trying to get all their money out, even though the current market just won’t give it to them.

    and so we sit.

  • found: awesomeness

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  • twitter saves the day, again

    I’m starting to think the office tweeter is the most powerful person in any bureaucracy.

    The internet is littered with stories about regular people getting their offline problems solved after complaining to corporations online.

    Heck, we did the same thing in the aftermath of a certain automobile recall last year.

    Turns out that corporate tweeters aren’t he only ones saving the day — the District government social media teams are jumping in, too.

    Our permit application to park a mobile storage container on city street this weekend mysteriously stalled earlier this week, and all of the lady sparklers efforts ended up in voicemail-laden dead ends.

    So, late last night I tweeted to the Districts official Department of Transportation account.

    hey, @DDOTDC – we have a POD permit app that’s been stalled/ignored for a week. who can help fix tmrw before it’s delivered this weekend?

    By 11:00 pm, I had an email address for the guy behind the twitter account, asking for details on our problem.

    By 7:30 am, I was CC’ed on an email from him, forwarding our problem on to a team of people to solve.

    By 8:30 am, the lady sparkler got a call on her cell phone from someone from DDOT saying they would clear everything up for us within the hour.

    At 9:04, my wife had the permit in her hot little hands.

    I don’t know how much of this little bit of awesomeness was caused by the social media phenomenon in general, or the epic person behind @DDOTDC in particular, or about just tunneling through the bureaucracy to find the actual human beings inside.

    Either way, whatever is responsible — thank you.

  • transit is like soo 2008

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    I’m commuting by public transit today — for the first time since the Bush II administration.

    Public transit isn’t especially kind to me these days.

    I’ve got 3 bus lines and a metro stop within 10 minutes of my door, but it takes a little under 70 minutes to actually use them to get to work.

    … which does not compare favorably to the 22 minutes it takes me to get to the office by car.

    … even if that office is a major conservation organization (we’re Eco-friendly, not Eco-crazy).

    I digress.

    We’re getting a POD (portable storage container) delivered to the house on Saturday, just in time to have our M.O.H. spend the weekend helping is pack.

    Unfortunately, the District hasn’t seemed particularly interested in giving us a permit (in a timely manner, at least) to park the POD on city streets.

    … which means we can’t put up emergency no parking signs asking people not to park where we need to put the POD.

    … which means we’re using the car to block off that space.

    … which means I’m commuting by public transit, regardless of fact that it increases my daily commute time by 416%.

    If there is a silver lining, it’s that I’m actually listening to music that I bought three months ago (Sara Barellies, The Killers, Arcade Fire) that I haven’t been alone with my MP3 player long enough to listen to.

    That, and I have plenty of time to blog about things that I would have otherwise completely ignored.

  • bolognese

    we had a bolognese at the talimo’s a couple weeks back. it was excellent enough to try and reproduce exactly, but i have taken a bizarre (yet principled) stand against ground turkey in italian cooking, so i cobbled my own together — creating a kind og bastard child of Emeril Lagasse and Mario Batali.

    (i’m not going to be able to get that vision out of my head, like, ever.)

    mine ended up a little dry, so keep the wine on hand — next time i’m probably going to add another 1/2 cup of white and red to the recipe so it doesn’t go bone dry after 2 hours of simmering.

    (more…)

  • found: car keys are useless with candy machines

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  • no country for old groceries

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    this is sparklet “helping” me unpack the groceries from Peapod — only the part you’d see in a movie trailer, directed by Quentin Tarantino.

  • toddler party

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    i seriously have no clue who any of these people are — except the redhead. him i recognize. i wonder if they all go clubbing together, too?