Two well-written opinion pieces from former senators about the directions their respective parties should take in the future:

A Party Inverted

In the Name of Politics

(The NYT requires registration.)

Dear Tourists,

Thank you for coming to Washington, D.C. We have a great many monuments, galleries, museums, governmental buildings, restaurants, and parks we hope you will visit during your stay.

For our part, we will brush off our cobwebs and try to put on a good face while you’re here. We will ask you if you need directions and eat at odd hours in order to stay out of your way as you make reservations.

But, please, please, PLEASE do us one favor: When riding the Metro escalators, please stand on the right and walk on the left. It’s the same concept as driving on the highway, except in this case, you’re the little old lady who can’t see over the steering wheel puttering along in the left lane 10 miles an hour under the speed limit.

We are home to the longest escalators in the Western Hemisphere (Wheaton’s at 230 feet), and the natives get grumpy when we can’t get past you, causing us to miss our trains.

Thank you for your consideration,

A D.C. resident

Grammar usage problems: In the book I’m editing, I had originally okayed, “In this way [protozoa] are more like animals or people than bacteria.” My proofreader rejected it and suggested either “…[protozoa] are more like animals or people than bacteria are” OR “…[protozoa] are more like animals or people than they are like bacteria.”

Researching protozoa on the internet just made my head hurt. (Why do they think science is hard to understand? Jeez…)

So I rephrased the simile thus: “Rice is more like oats than pasta is like oats” vs “Rice is more like oats than rice is like pasta.”

Ultimately, I believe the latter choice is correct because we care more about the difference between rice and pasta (protozoa and bacteria) than we do about oats (animals or people).

It may have cleared up the grammar question, but now all I can think about is the old children’s song “Mairzy Doats,” which led me to discover this unbelievable piece of musical trivia. Who would have thought it could be an intercontinental hit? I suspect it’s because the soldiers couldn’t get it out of their heads…

The Civil Unions bill (SB963) has passed the Connecticut General Assembly’s Finance Committee by a vote of 31-11 (and 8 abstentions).

The bill will now move to the Senate floor (and then, presumably, to the House) for a vote. This is fantastic news, particularly if Connecticut legislators manage to ward off “Defense of Marriage Amendments” opponents will inevitably try to add.

So, if you live in Connecticut, please CALL your legislators and ask them to approve the bill without any DOMAs. If you are unsure of who represents you locally, you can follow this link, fill in your zip code, and click on the “State” link in the top right-hand corner.

If you live outside Connecticut, please use this link to email the members of the state legislature and tell them how much you admire state legislators for taking on the issue and why you feel it’s important Connecticut pass the bill intact.

Either way, just make sure you highlight that Connecticut is leading the way on this issue and that it is far better to have legislators proactively deal with the issue than to have it come down as an edict from the state judicial system.

If you need more facts or statistics, please see my post from March 21.

Remember, an in-person visit or a phone call is better than a postcard or a letter, which is better than a personalized email, which is better than a form letter or email. But even a form email is far better than nothing. So make sure you follow through and tell others to do the same.

You have a voice. Make sure it’s heard!

My best friend once had me in a fit of hysterical laughter as she went on a late-night search for something with which to kill a centipede she’d discovered in her bedroom.

Apparently, she had more cause for concern than I realized, as this AFP wire story suggests.

Ultimately, after she cut it in half with scissors, she discovered it was already dead. But now, frankly, I’m glad she took the precaution.

This week holds the excitement of a date night for watching the extended version of The Return of the King — finally!; tickets to the first major league baseball game at RFK in more than 30 years (against my beloved Mets) — even if it is just a spring training scrimmage; the cherry blossoms’ arrival on the Tidal Basin; and the annual kite festival on the Mall.

Hopefully it will also hold the first bike ride of the season, but that remains to be seen.

Currently reading: The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, by Michael Chabon (a gift from Sam a few years back), and A Life on the Road, by Charles Kuralt (pilfered from Dad’s collection).

Somehow yesterday slipped away from me without my getting to the blog, but I wanted to send a quick shout out to Dianna:

Dianna is the best officemate a sprite could ask for, and I miss her tremendously now that I’m not at Wes anymore. And, in addition to being a kick-ass officemate, she remains a wonderful friend and an inspiration for what someone can accomplish when she follows her bliss. If anyone can inspire me to put down the book and get off the couch, she can. Thanks, Di, for all you do and for being such a groovy chick!

One of the things I miss most about Connecticut (aside from the obvious loved ones) is pizza. Yes, they sell something called pizza in D.C. — and some of it is even good — but it’s not actually pizza.

District friends have stopped asking me to join them for pizza, afraid to hear once again my treatise about the subject. My folks try to oblige us by having pizza whenever we visit them in the northern reaches of the state, but the Sicilians must have preferred to stay by the shore, because it’s just not the same.

But Friday, in our second annual Good Friday Pizza Dinner, the random duck and I managed to convince 7 friends still in the region to join us for our own version of a religious experience at Modern Apizza in New Haven.

For the uninitiated, New Haven has boasted some of the most famous pizzerias in the world since the 1930s. The Wooster Street eateries — Pepe’s and Sally’s, in particular — are the most well known and should be experienced periodically. But in my book (and, now, my blog), Modern on State Street is the best.

The lines are shorter. You can generally find parking without having to circle the block 12 times. And the pizza — oh, the pizza! The crust is dark, but not tooth-breaking (my biggest complaint with Pepe’s). And the sauce, mozzarella (pronounced moot-za-rell-(optional)a), and crust are all tasty. (Living in D.C. has really made me appreciate how underrated a good crust is.) And the pies are hot!

We ordered four pies for the table — cheese (the perfect, unadulterated pizza — to which all others everywhere are compared), pepperoni with half mushroom, bacon with half artichoke hearts, and the Veggie Bomb (which was laden with probably a dozen different vegetables) — as well as several salads, and garlic bread with cheese. No one left hungry and no one left slices behind (a sacrilege if ever I heard one).

The only downside to the night? It will probably be another long, long year before I make it to Modern again. But memories of an evening with great friends and great food will fuel me for quite a while.

Life is good.

It’s been a long time since I experienced the dichotomy of wanting to hurry, hurry, hurry and finish a book while simultaneously wanting to slow down and have the book last forever. But Summerland, Michael Chabon’s baseball fantasy novel (as opposed to a fantasy baseball novel — a very different concept), gave me just that reaction. (more…)

Giant Food (which is essentially a Stop & Shop) announced today that they will step up to the plate and build a grocery store east of the Anacostia River.

For those of you from out of the area, DC is divided into eight wards, two of which lie east of the Anacostia (DC’s other river). Residents of Wards 7 and 8 are almost entirely African American and many of them are poor, and they regularly complain that they are the city’s forgotten. To be completely honest, they nearly are.

They have not had a full-service grocery store on the other side of the river in seven years, which means the city’s poorest families have to take some form of public transportation to the grocery store and then have to take the long ride back over the river while laden down with all their shopping.

Meanwhile, plans move ahead to convert an old roller-rink two miles from The Burrow into an upscale grocery store. That would make it the seventh grocery store within two miles of my mostly white, generally child-free neighborhood.

Cheers to Giant for finally taking the first step. May they finish the job quickly.

Click here for The Common Denominator’s complete story.