Get rid of your old electronic junk

Bethesda Green is hosting an E-Cycling Day on Sunday, December 14, noon – 4 p.m. at Walt Whitman High School (7100 Whittier Blvd, Bethesda, MD 20817).

The Electronics Recycling Drop-Off Event, partnered by Montgomery County Division of Solid Waste Services, offers residents an opportunity to recycle small electronic appliances, calculators, camcorders, CDs and floppy disks, CD players, cell phones, computers and computer-related products, consumer electronics, copiers, cords and cables (including chargers), digital cameras, electronic typewriters, fax machines, microwave ovens, personal digital assistant equipment, printers, projection equipment, scanners, telephones, small electronic toys, TVs, and VCRs.

There will also be a free raffle for a Samsung LN26A330 26-Inch 720p LCD HDTV (ENERGY STAR® qualified).

I know I have some stuff that I want to get rid of. I hope they re-use it where possible instead of just crunching it up.

[where: Bethesda, MD]

Duckhead

I was walking through Bethesda Place Plaza over the metro station today and saw a duck head lying in a corner. I had to look at it a couple of times to be sure about what it was, and no, I didn't take a picture, nor do I plan to. But it did get me wondering about how it got there without it's body, I've never seen ducks in the plaza, and with the fountains off, there doesn't seem to be anything to attract them. I couldn't come up with a single plausible scenario about how it got there, but I did come up with several implausible ones.

• Someone is walking into work and reaches into their bag for keys. On getting the duck head instead they say "Oh, so that's where it went" then they toss it on the ground.
• Someone sees a duck in the plaza and rips its head off, keeping the body (as a souvenir? to cook and eat?) And again, I haven't seen ducks there before.
• A duck is in the plaza and some duck-predator catches it and eats it. But how many duck-predators live in downtown Bethesda? and if there are any, are they big enough to take off with the body? I could see a cat catching a duck, but not removing the body.
• A duck is flying and hits one of the buildings, the dead bird falls to the ground. This actually seems most likely, but I'm still left with the messy detail about where the body went.

Any ideas?

[where: Bethesda, MD]

The Bethesda Apple Store

It seems that the Apple store on Bethesda Avenue will be closing. That sounds provocative doesn't it? It is really just moving, so the current store is, in fact, closing, but a new one is opening on the other side of Bethesda Ave. The new store is being built next to Rio Grande Cafe and will be a two-story affair. I read about it and decided to go by the construction this morning to take a look.

In case you are curious, the place they tore down was part of the strip of stores next to it. There used to be a blockbuster store there. Google Maps still has the old photo.


[where: 4860 Bethesda Avenue, Bethesda, MD]

Bethesda's First Snow

I have a pretty loose definition of "First Snow" About the only requirement is that it sticks to stuff and doesn't immediately melt. That was enough, however, to discount the flurrys we had a couple of weeks ago. This morning, I woke up to Snow, stuck to stuff. Yes, not much, and just on leaves and such, not on the street, and it is gone this afternoon, but I'll count it as Bethesda's first snow of the year.

[where: Bethesda, MD]

Bethesda Avenue at night

As winter rolls ever closer it is sometimes nice to forget about the cold days, the wet days, and remember the warm summer nights. An evening stroll along Bethesda Avenue makes my list of things I am thankful for. This picture is from July, outside the Barnes & Noble book store. Photo by G. Edward Johnson.

[where: Bethesda, MD]

Here there be eels.

I went for a walk on the Sligo Creek trail in Silver Spring, MD and saw a sign from our friends at "Friends of Sligo Creek" letting me know that American Eels live in Sligo Creek. I really had no idea. (I didn't even know that there were freshwater eels, let alone living in Maryland, let alone living this close to me.) They breed in the Sargasso sea but spend most of their life here. Another interesting tidbit is that Maryland produces the largest harvest of eels of all the states.

I also learned that posting advertising on trails by creeks is an effective way of reaching people like me.

I didn't actually go there to look at the flyer, I went for the walk and to generally check it out, I've never been there before. Sligo creek is fairly narrow, one side of it has Sligo Creek Parkway and the other side has the trail. The park itself is pretty narrow so you can almost always see both the road and the houses along the side of the park. Along the trail there are numerous small playgrounds for the surrounding neighborhoods. This time of year most, but not quite all, of the leaves are off the trees and the paved trail was covered with a layer of leaves. There were a reasonable number of people on the trail (it was a weekday morning after all, why weren't they at work). A mix of joggers, walkers, and people pushing strollers.

[where: Silver Spring, MD]
[where: Sligo Creek Trail, Silver Spring, MD]

We're number 30!

Congratulations Bethesda, MD (and the rest of the Bethesda-Gaithersburg-Fredrick statistical area) the CDC ranked you the 30th healthiest place to live in the US. Handily beating out Northern Virginia, which came in at 41. 30th doesn't sound so bad when the list has 184 entries, putting Bethesda comfortably in the top 20%.

From there, things get a bit more confusing. It is supposedly based on 2007 data, but the study that is linked by several news outlets is for 2006. "Surveillance of Certain Health Behaviors and Conditions Among States and Selected Local Areas --- Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS), United States, 2006" That's a mouthful. Further, the CDC says "A news outlet recently conducted an analysis of CDC′s Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS) 2006 data, released August 2008. The outlet ranked some cities healthiest vs. unhealthiest, but CDC does not rank cities."

Other news articles reference a particular part of the BRFSS the Selected Metropolitan/Micropolitan Area Risk Trends (SMART) database. It doesn't explicitly rank them, but I guess you could get a decent ranking if you put the time into it. It also has 2007 data, so I bet that is the true source of the report.

It has all sorts of nuggets of information, for instance, 10.5% of the people here are binge drinkers, 34.3% are overweight and 18.1% are obese, even though 31% consumed 5 or more fruits and vegetables a day.

[where: Montgomery County, MD]
[where: Bethesda, MD]

They even pulled out the hoses

This morning the fire trucks came to the Chevy Chase bank building on the corner of East-West highway and Wisconsin Avenue (Route MD-355) in Bethesda, MD. They closed off two northbound lanes on 355 (out of 3) and two westbout lanes on East-West (again, out of 3). That really causes traffic problems. I didn't see anything obviously wrong although they did have the hoses out and connected to the buildings standpipe. As I am writing this, they are packing up the hoses and getting ready to go home, so lanes should re-open soon. I didn't see anything on the WTOP traffic page about it but it was the lead story on the traffic report I heard.

[where: MD-355 and East-West Hwy, Bethesda, MD]

Hmm, what to eat

Whoever got this license plate had a great sense of humor.



see more pwn and owned pictures

Free Food on election day

I saw this article on the WTOP web site. There are a number of places that will give you free food today if you vote including California Tortilla, Krispy Kreme, Starbucks, and Ben & Jerry's.

It's neat, and patriotic, but it really is to get you to go into their store, not to get you to vote. I can't even imagine someone saying "I wasn't going to bother voting, but since I could get a free donut, I did."