Month: May 2011

  • digital photography contest

    I launched the Conservancy’s annual “Digital Photography Contest” in 2006 to engage constituents and foster an organizational presence on Flickr.

    Over the past five years, the contest has collected over 100,000 photos from nearly 50,000 supporters. The corresponding Flickr presence has grown to more than 300,000 photos and over 24,000 participants.

    This year we’re doing it all over again — only adding the ability to submit photo using Facebook credentials. Here’s hoping…

  • home

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    photo of the week // nineteen months
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  • cooking: taco seasoning

    ran out of taco seasoning, and the lady sparkler is chanting “more tacos!”*

    alton brown, with a few revisions, saves the day once more. (* = denotes event may not have actually happened.)

    Ingredients

    • 2 tablespoons chili powder (1 chili, 1 chipotle)
    • 1 tablespoon ground cumin
    • 2 teaspoons cornstarch
    • 1 teaspoon kosher salt
    • 1 1/2 teaspoons hot smoked paprika
    • 1 teaspoon garlic

    Instructions

    1. add to 1 lb or meat. brown and serve.
  • one final day

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    our last meal on park road ended how it began — with takeout. because all our pots and pans are packed. and we haven’t bought groceries in three weeks.

    and shortly after our “picnic” in the old courtyard, we walked the 550 yds to Monroe Street for our pre-closing inspection, where everything looked absolutely, refreshingly perfect.

    not only were all our inspection issues resolved, but the sellers actually went above and beyond — which was a great relief because we were frankly a little nervous about whether they were going to do anything at all. (get us drunk, we’ll tell you the whole story.)

    anyway, a friend today asked if I was concerned about the walkthrough and i said that — while we had trouble with the sellers leading up to this point — if tonight went well, all would be forgiven.

    all is forgiven. and we close tomorrow at 3pm.

  • seven days

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    in the next seven days:

    • monday — we sell our place on Park Road, and start our seven day rentback from the new owners.
    • tuesday — we walk through the new house to make sure they haven’t trashed the place.
    • wednesday — we close on the new place on Monroe Street.
    • thursday — the lady sparker takes sparklet to Tejas, and our POD is delivered bearing all the crap stuff we packed away last February.
    • friday — movers come to take the rest of our crap stuff from Park Road to Monroe Street.
    • saturday — i unpack.
    • sunday — our rentback ends, which means we’re fully out of Park Road.
    • monday — and on the eighth day, he rested.

    actually, we kicked everything off this afternoon with the buyers walking through our house to make sure WE hadn’t trashed the place.

    we hadn’t — well, except for all the boxes.

  • video: blowing soap

    httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5SWuBGX3Flo

  • play-doh

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    See Slideshow of the Photos on Flickr:
    play-doh
  • scratch ‘n sniff

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    sparklet’s latest trick is rubbing a plant leaf in between her fingers, and then lifting them to her nose for a sniff. (no, i’ve got no clue where that came from either.)

    speaking of — why we can’t be trying to sell our place now?

    See Slideshow of the Photos on Flickr:
    scratch ‘n sniff
  • shopping bags

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    it’s become impossible to go to the store now without sparklet having her own shopping bag. of course, that means that she eventually needs something to put in it.

    today, we had to pick up some spaghetti sauce for dinner — it can’t all be homemade — and i was slightly panicked. either she was going to freak out about not being allowed to put the sauce into her her bag, or i was going to freak out about what would happen if she did.

    so we bought a box of pasta (that we didn’t need) so she could drop a good, strong, unbreakable box of pasta onto the concrete fifteen-times-in-half-a-block-on-the-way-home.

    See Slideshow of the Photos on Flickr:
    shopping in mt. pleasant, washington, dc
  • bubbles

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    See Slideshow of the Photos on Flickr:
    bubbles, washington, dc
  • out: somewhere

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    i just found these on the camera, and i have absolutely no clue where they were taken — we’ll never fully understand the secret life of nannies.
    See Slideshow of the Photos on Flickr:
    out: somewhere
  • video: buhb-buh-bub-buhbb

    httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IZeFI2U3uqw

    about fourty minutes after going to bed tonight, sparklet woke up and started doing this… lasted for about fifteen minutes until, presumably, her lower lip finally gave out.
  • goodbye, boyfriend

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    today was the final day of sparklet’s bourgening love with her nanny-share-partner-turned-boyfriend, who has set sail for the golden shores of north carolina.

    his replacement (as nanny share partner, jury is still out on the boyfriend part) doesn’t start full time until August 1st, so we’re finding her some interims (again, “shares” not “boyfriends”) to keep her occupied until el español picante swoops in.

    and who knows, maybe they’ll give the whole long distance thing a try — though i’m not holding out hope, because sparklet has the attention span of, like, an 18 month old. yeesh.

  • frito pie

    God only know why this is called a pie, but you can’t argue with it being good.

    The traditional way to consume frito pie, according to our resident Texan, is to slit open a bag of fritos and pour in a cup or two of chili. To eat it any other way (eg. on a plate) is, according to the Dallas Morning News, “allowable but frankly lacks street cred.”

    i’m fairly certain this chili recipe was based on something i got somewhere, but what you see here has been through (quite literally) a dozen different variations in search of perfection — so even if my memory was good enough to recall its origin, a citation would be wholly unwarranted.

    you can tweak pretty much anything you like about the toppings (sour cream, onions, cheese) but don’t you dare add beans to the chili. seriously. my wife will hunt you down.

    full recipe after the jump.

    (more…)

  • video: dancing at haydee’s

    httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aCiQaq7JGjs

    shakira, again — at least this time it’s with the bff.
  • out: bancroft playground

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    happiness is pushing your stroller…
    See Slideshow of the Photos on Flickr:
    out: bancroft playground, mount pleasant, washington, dc
  • the boxes rise again

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    the boxes are starting to rise again, only this time we’re moving for realz — 18 days.
  • how i met your mother: house 1.0

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    dear sparklet,

    this is the nineth in a series of letters from daddy about how i met and married your mother.

    it has been quite some time since your mother and i started living together — and for some reason daddy wasn’t smart (or brave) enough to blog about it at the time.

    so, now that we’re all getting ready to move into house 3.0, it seems like a good time to flashback to the house (or two) that started it all.

    when mommy and daddy met back in 2004, daddy was living unceremoniously in his boss’ basement in a place called “Glover Park.” it was in a neighborhood that was a lot like Mount Pleasant — only filled exclusively with 25 year old female interns from the midwest whose daddies were determined that their daughters would be geographically removed from anything that might possibly resemble a city.

    (oh, and the 45 minute walk to the nearest metro stop, and the $30 a plate restaurants, and the whole foods, and the small children running around wearing designer toddler clothing that they would out grow in the next two weeks — other than that it was exactly like Mount Pleasant.)

    mommy, on the other hand, lived about 30 feet from the (literal) wrong side of the tracks in “old town” Alexandria, Virginia.

    on the rare occasion where it made sense for daddy to spend the night in Alexandria (read: we were flying out of national airport the following morning) it was a lovely experience (sweating, with no air conditioning) through the parts of the night (those without gun shots) through which we would sleep like lambs (in between freight trains).

    considering that mommy had (obviously) even worse taste in living arrangements than daddy, i tried desperately to convince her to move into D.C. with me — not into my boss’ basement, somewhere else — but she’d have none of it. her love of strip malls and horrible drivers was just too strong.

    the one legitimately nice thing about our living arrangement was the drive — daddy lived a couple minutes off the rock creek parkway, and mommy lived a couple minutes off the george washington parkway, a pair of beautifully scenic roads connected by the (equally stunning) memorial bridge.

    so, when i came time to develop some kind of master plan for our residential future, we picked a neighborhood in Arlington (called “Rosslyn”) pretty much entirely based on the fact that it was located just off our beloved parkways, halfway between our two houses.

    now, i actually remember precious little about the moves (plural, there were two houses after all) themselves. i remember that it was July, hotter than blazes, and mommy had managed to find a new job the week before and “just couldn’t take time off work to help out.”

    the apartment (and the complex) was a pretty unremarkable place — probably best illustrated by the fact that we never bothered to take any pictures of it.

    fortunately, the apartment complex’s website hasn’t been updated since the hoover administration and just happens to have pictures of our exact model:

    so, there you go … the “house” that started it all, and the one that set us up for the first home you ever knew.

    and with that, good night. ’cause daddy has to go pack. ’cause daddy is moving y’all into a new house in just 19 days.

    love,
    daddy

  • jasonbucy.com

    turns out that i know funny people.

    another side project — this time for a really funny guy (and brother to the couple of the century) who does stand up in L.A. if you do nothing else, visit the site and watch the “jesus chrysler dodge and suburu” clip up top. (oh, and “like” him on facebook while you’re there, too.)

    funny stuff.

    Jason Bucy
    http://jasonbucy.com/

  • still saving the kids’ farm

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    each time we go, i take pictures like it’s going to be our very last trip ever — so far, so good.
  • egg hunting 201

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    See Slideshow of the Photos on Flickr:
    easter egg hunting 201