Have I ever shared here how much I hate the intentional walk? I think it’s a particularly overused action in contemporary baseball. You want to skip a batter? Pitch around him. He hits it anyway? Them’s the breaks!

It particularly grates me when it’s done to load the bases, and I don’t care how many Sabremetrics guys want to tell me that it’s a savvy move when there are no outs and a hot batter is at the plate. You intentionally walk the bases in that situation and you deserve to have a grand slam smacked against you.

Because eventually, that next batter is going to get really tired of being deemed the lesser threat. And he’s going to demonstrate that he, too, can make the clutch move. And, honestly, extra innings in the final game of a playoff series is a really great time to make such a statement.

Thanks, Howie Kendrick, for channeling all the dismissiveness the Dodgers showed you and smacking that baseball back toward the D.C. crowd who’s waiting to buy you a beer when you get home.

Let’s go, Nationals! St. Louis, we’re coming for you next!

I realize I’m giving you a lot of light content recently and I’m sorry about that. The new job is a lot, mentally and emotionally, and I seem to spend a lot of my downtime napping. I assume I will build up a tolerance in the days to come and will be able to resume having a life. This week is already better than last in that I haven’t had to cancel all evening plans to nap instead, but simply fall asleep when I am home. So, maybe next week?

Anyway, this shot, taken yesterday evening, is from the balcony of The Anthem, one of the concert venues on the Wharf, looking out over the Washington Channel.

I swear that I will have get back to regularly scheduled content soon. But I dozed off on the couch earlier and now I just want to get to bed. Working is hard!

Today was my first day at the new job. It went fine and everyone is very nice, but god I needed a nap when I got home. Unfortunately, I dozed longer than I should have and missed the movie showing I’d hoped to attend, as well as the coffeehouse’s patio hours. But I did not miss the sunset, so we shall look on the glowing side of things.

A long weekend is definitely time to look at life through rose(ate spoonbill)-colored glasses. Feel free to (Goeldi’s) monkey around — you deserve to goof off during a three-day weekend!

how you rebuild a bridge?

First, you need to drain the waterway so you can get to the footings.

In the case of the 31st Street bridge over the C & O Canal in Georgetown, built in 1867, they run the water from the canal through a series of tubes, holding containers, and pipes to give them a relatively dry section on which to work on the bridge. The wooden structure you see the water pouring back over is what the canalboat sits on when it’s not in the water.

They’ve mostly got the canal blocked further upstream because they’ve been doing repairs to the locks and the canal itself, so the water is already running pretty lightly and slowly through this section, but it was still impressive to see.

The bridge closed to vehicular traffic at the start of the summer and will remain closed until this time next year. However, they’ve built accommodations for pedestrians and cyclists to continue to get around the area, which has to be a huge relief to the couple dozen businesses and restaurants on the affected stretch of road. (It has the added benefits that the restaurants are super-excited to see foot traffic and that the two neighboring Italian restaurants often have samples of pizza at the maître d’ stands outside for passersby who might, for instance, be walking home from the movie theater.)