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Your Montgomery County tax dollars at work…

May 30, 2013, 6:42 PM

Yes, fellow Montgomery County residents, your tax dollars pay for what I’m about to describe here.  First of all, let me show you what the original problem was:

Solid green light out on left turn signal out at Veirs Mill Road and Edmonston Drive in Rockville.

Yep… a bulb on a traffic light is out.  This is the corner of Veirs Mill Road and Edmonston Drive in Rockville.  It’s the solid green light on the left turn signal for northbound Veirs Mill drivers turning left onto Edmonston (right here).  I consider a light out on a left turn signal to be a very serious matter, because in many cases, there’s only one of them, and it has many different combinations that can be displayed that all mean different things.  It can be a very dangerous situation if part of that light isn’t working, and therefore unable to signal drivers on how to proceed, since its operation is more complicated than a conventional signal.  Plus, there are usually at least two conventional signals at an intersection anyway, so if one is not working, the other one picks up the slack.  But when there’s only one left turn signal, it has to be running at 100% all of the time.

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Categories: Rockville, Some people

Tonight’s commute was definitely more exciting than most…

May 14, 2013, 10:09 PM

Yes, tonight’s commute was definitely more exciting than most.  You may have heard about the Red Line train that caught fire this evening at Silver Spring.  That was my train.  Apparently the Metro gods thought we all needed a little excitement in our commutes this evening.  And that’s exactly what we got.

The ride started out pretty normally.  I got the train at Dupont Circle, boarding Breda 3147 – the lead car.  I was doing Facebook, and noticed this man who looked like a very serious businessman in a suit with his tablet computer and all that…

...but he's playing Angry Birds.

…and then I noticed that he was actually playing Angry Birds on his tablet.

When we got to Takoma, the train operator powered the train down and left the cab.  My first thought was that he was being relieved to use the restroom, and that a supervisor would be taking over the train shortly.  But no supervisor arrived, and I was starting to get a little bit concerned about when we were going to leave Takoma station.

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Categories: Commuting, WMATA

Kale pops?

May 8, 2013, 11:57 PM

So last week on Facebook, a friend of mine posted a status where she scoffed at a recipe for kale pops.  Basically, the gist was that it seemed gross, and this was a bit over the top for getting kids to eat vegetables.  I thought it was crazy enough that it just might work, and asked my friend to pass the recipe along, which she did.  Basically, to make these Yogurt Kale Popsicles, you take the kale, some nonfat plain yogurt, frozen strawberries, frozen pineapple pieces, and some stevia, and then you throw it all into a blender and blend it until it’s smooth.

This evening, I went over to Giant after I went swimming and got all of the stuff to make it happen.  I had the stevia, and I had previously gotten the popsicle molds on Amazon (I tried several places locally, and none had them!).  Then I just had to get the kale, the yogurt, and the fruit.  Giant was out of both the frozen pineapple and the frozen strawberries (hey, it was late in the evening), and so I substituted fresh.  Just as well, I suppose, considering that I was blending it all until it was smooth anyway.

And then when I got home, I started throwing things into the blender.  First, the kale and the fruit:

The kale and the fruit, all loaded in

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Categories: Food and drink

Food photos…

May 5, 2013, 6:57 PM

As evidenced in a few places on this site, most notably the Fruit Stands set in Photography, I like photographing food.  I don’t quite know why, but I enjoy it.  I like capturing the details on food items.  I like seeing the food items up close.  It’s kind of fun like that.  Since, outside of the aforementioned Fruit Stands photo set, food photos are usually not planned shoots, I don’t have my real camera around.  Thus these are phone photos.  Still, I have fun with them.  I took some this week, so I thought I would share.  Enjoy…

Sandwich fixings at the cafe in the building where I work.
Sandwich fixings at the cafe in the building where I work.

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