Closing the Gap
Fairfax County is mailing out the latest home assessments this week, so I went online to get a preview of what to expect. After last year's assessment problems, I wanted to try to make sure I was prepared this time. Unfortunately, it's not clear that I'll be able to stem the tide like I managed to do last year.
Our house will be going up from $374,400 to $497,350, a 33% increase. One of the houses down the street from us recently sold for $560,000, so the gap between assessment and sale price is closing rapidly. The county is supposedly lowering the tax rate, so the taxes will "only" jump by 29%. That bill will increase by about $1080 a year.
Frankly, while I enjoy the county's services, I don't see a 29% increase coming back to me in return for those taxes. It's time for a cap. Even a 7-10% cap would be plenty of money for the county to increase its budget every year, give people the appropriate raises, etc. I don't think we're asking for too much. 29% is asking for too much.
Cycled!
Time for another fish update. It's been a while now, and the fishies have been cruising along. At one point, the nitrite levels were really high again, so we changed out the water to bring them down, but for the most part, we've just been feeding them, testing the water, and waiting as nothing happened. Then suddenly, on Saturday, the nitrites were completely gone! I don't mean that they dropped to a reasonable level, they're just plain not there any more. Crazy how one day, they can be in the "stressful for the fish" level, and the next they're just gone.
So that's great news. The fish are happy and adjusted. The one fish is a bit of a bully when it comes to feeding time, but the smaller one gets his fair share. I'm very excited that the tank is cycled. I want to get a couple more fish, like something that will be a bottom feeder, and suck up all the junk the other fish miss, and maybe some little bright neon tetras. Very exciting!
Shopgirl
Shopgirl by Steve Martin
My review
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
The library was taking a while to get me my copy of "A Scanner Darkly," so I decided to read this quick novella by Steve Martin to pass the time. It was also made into a movie last year starring Steve Martin and Claire Danes, so naturally I couldn't help but picture them as the two main characters. And unlike some other books that were made into movies, that wasn't a bad thing in this case.
Shopgirl is a very interesting character study type of book. Since there are really only two, maybe three, characters, Martin is able, in just over 100 pages, to fully flesh out each one of them and their motivations. It's very different from the books I've been reading, and for that reason, I liked it a lot, even though one might characterize it as a "chick book."
The library came through and got my copy of "A Scanner Darkly" in, so I've now started on that.
Holy crap, part 2!
I'm so tired. On Saturday, well over 500 people came through the Potomac Curling Club for our open house. I was there from 12:30-4:30pm, and there were people there before I arrived, and people there after I left (Ellie was getting a bit cranky, so we had to leave early). Sunday morning, another 450 people went through. All told, 1200+ people went through our three open house dates. Insane what a little bronze medal and some TV exposure will do for you.
Lots of pictures in the photo gallery. Here's the peak of the line outside at 2pm on Saturday:
The line inside was just as bad.
Holy crap!
The initial reports are in from the Potomac Curling Club's first Olympic Open House last night. On a Thursday night, the people started showing up an hour before the prescribed start time of 7pm and the last went through about an hour after the end time of 9pm. About 250 people in all went through. Previous experience with these things says that Thursday night will usually account for about 15-20% of total attendance, so we're looking at over 1000 people easily. I'm starting to rethink whether I really want to volunteer for our open house tomorrow. It's going to be nuts. Saturday from 1-4pm with 400 people is starting to sound like a minimum.
The best part is that we requested, but didn't require, a $5 donation to cover our costs, and almost everyone agreed to chip in and pay, so we raised $800 last night alone. Now we just need to focus on getting even just a small percentage of the people who showed up to convert to full membership. Very good news for our club.
Bronze Update
The US men took on Great Britain in the curling bronze medal game this morning. Click below to read the spoiler results.
Crash and Burn
The US Men's curling team sure picked a bad time to each have their worst game. Really, every one of them had his worst game in the semifinal matchup against Canada yesterday. Most particularly, not to pick on him or anything, Shawn Rojeski, who had been bailing the team out of several predicaments in previous games, had a horrible game. When he hogged (didn't get his rock over the second hog line) his rock, the US was pretty much done for. Canada just had them on the run the entire game, very similar to their first game. Every time Canada had the hammer, the US would just miss a shot and the Canadians would throw the perfect shot to get two. When the US had the hammer, the Canadians would throw great shots and force the US to scramble just to get their one point. Much credit to Pete Fenson for managing to get that point every time and keep Canada from stealing, but he was just in tough situations all game long. Hopefully the guys will play better on Friday, when they compete for the bronze! Any medal is a huge accomplishment for US curling. Our club is having open houses this weekend, and we've got a ton of people coming (I think I am personally responsible for getting about 15-20 people in there). I can't imagine what would happen if they actually win a medal.
Ceili Dancing
Last night, Lisa and I went to our first ceili dance class. We read about it in the newspaper a while back, and signed up for the class. We weren't really sure what to expect. The "Sunday Source" section is kinda hip sometimes, but at the same time, it seemed like Irish line dancing might not attract a young crowd. The latter assumption turned out to be correct, as we were the youngest people there.
It's not that big of a deal being the youngest really. The harder part was that I was one of only 5 men there, with about 15 women. The dancing is a lot of couple movements, so there was a lot of confusion when some of the ladies had to impersonate men for some parts.
We learned the "Siege of Ennis" Ceili dance and the Clare Plain Set dance (only the first figure, 5 more to go!). We had a lot of fun, even if other people were way too Type A for dancing. The instructor even said at the beginning of class, don't worry about how you get there, just get to where you're supposed to be at the right time. Some of the people were a bit too concerned about doing the proper three steps/seven steps and spinning right. I'm of the thinking that it'll all come to you eventually, and for now I'm just concentrating on not smashing into other people as we're going.
Lisa thought it was a lot like doing a polka. Lots of short choppy steps, sliding your feet across the floor, and a bit of spinning thrown in. I just thought it was fun to get a night of dancing with my wife, while Ellie had fun playing with the neighbors across the street. Now I just hope I can remember all the steps next week!
Big Time
Ready for yet another curling post? Good.
You know you've made it to the big time when Google does a logo of curling.
NPR also did a story on the post-Olympic curling boom (that's how I got into it after the last Olympics), featuring several members of our club. The audio is online so you can listen.
The Washington Post ran a big article in today's Sports section on Joel "mit der mullet" Retornaz and the new Italian fascination with curling.
Finally, it seems even our Texan President is a curling fan. Go figure.
USA vs. Canada. Semifinals, tomorrow at 5pm on CNBC. Don't miss it.
Conceptual
Jason Kottke notes a new movie genre (coined by Alissa Quart, picked up by Roger Ebert) called "hyperlink movies." The idea is that the movie has several interlocking stories that all drive toward a conclusion that you might not have expected of each individual story. In other words, it's a small world.
Ebert notes as examples Syriana, Traffic, and Crash, and more distantly, The Player. Of course, this trend is not limited to movies. Just look at 24, and my favorite, Lost. Lost is increasingly showing links between the characters that go beyond a single plane crash. In "The Long Con," we saw Kate's mom as the waitress serving Sawyer in her diner. The producers hinted in their podcast that there would be more of this character interaction/small world action in future episodes (we've already had hints that Hurley owned the box company (bought with his lottery winnings) where Locke worked).
It's this kind of smart writing that I find fascinating, and I would love to have more of it.
Books
My Goodreads ListAmazon Wishlist
GSI Outdoors JavaGrind
