theparkerfamily.org

  • 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?

  • photo of the month: january

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

  • “hey, can you teach me how to fleece a bag, too?”

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  • treatment

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    today was treatment no. 2 for sparklet’s port wine stain — and this one not only seems to have taken hold a bit better, but was a bit less traumatic to boot.

    of course, we get another two weeks of people looking at us like we beat our children, but it’s a small price to pay for dermatological happiness.

    See Slideshow of the Photos on Flickr:
    horsing around

  • boxes, part two

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    we’re up to fifty-two boxes packed now — which is pretty impressive considering i had the flu for four days over last weekend and the lady sparkler just got back from three days in san francisco.

    well, if anybody had any doubts — it looks like we’re really putting our place on the market.