That’s right, if you are a’ hankering for your V1agra or Cali*s and you’d rather not buy it from the plentiful email pitchmen, the District’s website can direct you to a better way: import it from Canada.

To quote the DC Examiner:

On the D.C. government’s home page, www.dc.gov, is a link to Minnesota’s RxConnect program, which “provides information on safety and cost-saving tips and access to low-cost medication from Canada.” In addition, some medications ordered through Canadian companies can be filled by affiliate pharmacies in Britain, offering even more price options.

Yes, of course importing drugs from Canada is technically illegal. If we didn’t overpay the pharmaceutical mafia industry, we would have more affordable healthcare.

And we all know that’s the first step towards sanity affordability communism.

Today is the first day of school. For a three year-old this is a daunting day, especially if it is your first day of "public" school. What makes the first day of school worse is that older grades know the potential fear inhabiting the newbies. The "elders" even mark their playground territory with chalk hieroglyphics. This drawing was posted on the playground just outside the three year-old room. The message is very clear: big fish eat little fish. Or, is it big fish ALMOST eat little fish? Or, is it little fish are faster and just out-smart big fish? Or is this chalk drawning telling little fish to stay on their side of the crack on the playground? We’ll find out. I pick up the kiddo in seven hours. I’ll post results then.

Found at the entrance of Georgetown Visitation Preparatory School (1524 35th Street, NW) is my favorite sign in all of DC:

I love coffee… I thought that when Tom mocked the local scene for its obsession with Starbucks and Caribou, he was dead on. I used to work at Misha’s – four years to help pay my way through college. Murky is my haven when I’m working from home on a big deliverable and need to get a change of scenery. I love that both are succeeding in town that favors chain restaurants over independent successes. In fact, both Misha’s and Murky have grown into their current state from humbler origins – small walk-up coffee house a fraction of their current sizes. But what makes both great places – besides the excellent coffee – is the people.

Misha is a genius and his sense of poetry is evident when you read his descriptions of the Caravan and Route 66 blends. When the "new" owners of Bittersweet thought they could edge Misha out of the morning coffee rush, he took them on in a lemonade war that rocked the local soccer mom scene. We stopped carrying the Fresh Samantha’s line of products after the company reneged on a promise to keep Misha’s as the sole purveyor in a few mile radius. Misha’s brother is the owner of Funk & Junk, where I’ve never had trouble finding a cool gift for a friend (or more often myself). The customers treated all of us who worked their like friends – and we watched them interact with each other like some huge extended family To this day, when I walk down the streets of Old Town, I’m still recognized and greeted by the regulars – even though I haven’t worked there or been a regular customer in the past five years! And while I’m not as familiar with everyone at Murky, I still get the same sense of community when I sit down at a table to craft a new deliverable for work, or enjoy the Sunday Post.

However, despite my love and affection for both places, going to Starbucks is not beneath me… Particularly when I’m tired and need something quick before heading into work, or tackling the weekend chores, and don’t have time for the long drive/walk to get to either. In fact, I actually used to enjoy going to the Starbucks at the corner of Virginia Square because there were some interesting people who worked there. Granted, if I ordered anything more than regular drip, I had about a 1 in 10 shot of getting what I really wanted. But it was great trying to figure out whether the person taking my order was either hungover, stoned, or otherwise "off" and seemingly confused about why they were there, and what they were supposed to do.

I guess word got around to the corporate managers about the situation. I bet the person who ratted them out was the guy on his bluetooth headset, who did a crappy job parking his Mercedes in the Zipcar parkingspot, and didn’t have the capability to stop talking into space about the chick he was going to "bang" from the bar last night – at least not long enough to actually order his venti latte and lowfat muffin, pay with his Starbucks Duetto Card, and leave.

You know him, don’t you?! It used to be that the old staff would roll their eyes and give him shit for being so lame. In fact, since he somehow always seemed to be in the store when I went, I used to bond with the staff over what it was like having to wait on people like that.

Now, I’m greeted by happy people who seem to have stepped right out of a corporate training video. Yes, they are all really nice, and clean, and do a really great job…but I miss my old staff. They may have been on mind altering substances, but at least they had a degree of personality that wasn’t manufactured to serve people like the aforementioned asshole.

They were renegades! Fighting the power from the inside out!

Or at least now I like to believe they were…

Photo by DC Metroblogger

If you are single guy in DC, on the prowl for new supermodels for your harem, there is one sign you do not want to see on your way to the bathroom.

Granted, I don’t want to be stepping over drunk GW students either, but I was hoping that “Baby Changing” would not be a service offered at the bar I wandered into last night.

No, I do not remember which one, it was that hopeless good of a night. I just remember finding this sign an affront to my sensibilities.

That and a reminder that while my Mom is ready for grandkids, I’m still trying to figure out how to find someone to practice with.

For some of us leaf season is more important than football season. Football will only last a few more decades but leaves and the radiant changing of their colors will be with us for decades or until global warming fries us all up like kettle chips. This is your official notice that fall has commenced…falling. Even you novice and blithe watchers of life swirling around you will not fail to notice the gutters and walks are lined with gold. Yes, there is green still filling the trees. Yes, there are still blossoms kicking it up, but fall starts the same way baldness does to a man in his thirties. The event has started long before any major collections are admitted.
Get out. Enjoy the last of summer. Enjoy the start of fall, right now.

Imagine my surprise this morning when driving from Springfield/Franconia into Georgetown (yes, I went into the office) when the off/on-ramp from Interstate 95 to I-495 came a 1/2 mile before I expected it to. I gazed with awe and wonder and the new exit, the smoothness of the roads, the wider lanes, the number of lanes, the arc of the glorious curve that took me from I-95 and spat me out onto the opposite side of I-495 than I expect. So pleased I was with my new discovery that I had to share it with DC Metblogs readers.

The Post reported on Wednesday, a full four days ago, that this new wonder of road contruction that’s been (in my opinion) worse than enduring more than a decade of the Big Dig actually opened in time for the Thursday morning commute. Have you, the loyal Metblog reader notice a significant change in your morning or evening commute? Share your thoughts on the unmixed bowl.

Maybe I’m totally dating myself, but when I was a kid, I remember rocking out to “Afternoon Delight“, by the very 70′s ‘up with people’ type singers, Starland Vocal Band. So I’m walking around MacArthur Blvd. the other day looking for a place to eat, and I end up at someplace called the “Starland Cafe” (5125 MacArthur Blvd. NW), and I didn’t think anything of it cuz although “Starland” as a word is a bit dated, it’s not too obscure to not just be a coincidence. But I’m eating dinner there and they’ve got a Starland Vocal Band poster hanging on the wall, and that gets me curious, so I figure that they probably loved SVB so much they named a restaurant after them. But SVB only had one freaking song, so how could they muster that kinda loyalty? So I do a little research later on the internet and lo and behold, the place is actually owned by the main guy from SVB! How cool is that!

Ok, maybe it’s not all that cool, but the food was pretty decent, and if you want to reminisce about the time when it was popular to sing goofy songs with veiled references about having sex in the afternoon, this could be the place for you. I hear the time to go is Wednesdays, when they have half price burgers. And I bet, if you asked nicely enough, you could get the owner to sing you a few bars of Afternoon Delight. I bet he never gets tired of that song.

Photo by DC Metroblogger

At lunch today an Italian was told that his Italian drivers license was not sufficient to prove his age to drink.

The (bitchy) server said she needed a US Government ID or a foreign passport for her alcohol age check. She claimed that this is a new law in DC.

DC servers, have you heard of this? Is this right? Is this new?

Back when I waited tables a few years ago I do not remember this rule. If it is the law, what a pain in the ass.

This weekend the Wyndham Hotel (1400 M St, near Thomas Circle) is hosting the 38th Annual Atlantic Open. Hundreds of professional and amateur chess players will gather in the hotel’s convention hall for hours on end of intense play. It’s free to enter and walk around the playing area and I can guarantee visitors will experience some great and often amusing people watching. It runs until late tonight and until about 8:00 PM tomorrow.

Of course any other weekend the place for local chess junkies to be is Dupont Circle –

Photo courtesy of René Morgan.

Anyone who has never watched some games there should drop by most any afternoon to witness some of the best speed chess around. Don’t be intimidated to stand nearby and watch, as scruffy as some of them look the chessplayers there love an audience.