This week’s three beautiful things:

1. Last night, I got up from the computer to brush my teeth and discovered all three cats clustered at the bathroom door. Feeling that such collaboration a little suspicious, I moved the door and discovered what I think might have been a young cricket/grasshopper/weird bug hiding desperately under the safety the 1 1/2 inch door provided. When I got back inside from escorting the bug back to a more hospitable environment, I congratulated the trio on their protective and hunting instincts.

2. I bought the first peaches of the season at last weekend’s market and have been eating them throughout the week. They were a little hard when I bought them, but Eli and Misty’s stand just smelled divine, so I knew they would ripen into something delicious. And the juice that’s been dripping off my chin each evening is the evidence I was right.

3. Yesterday, my friends came through in spades — an IM conversation with Shelley, emails from Danny and Wendy, a train ride home from a meeting with Susan and John, a phone message (relayed through Rudi) from Jason, and a nice long phone chat with Karen. As they say down here, I am blessed.

Y’know, the National League almost managed to pull it off, attempting a comeback late in the game. It was just like a Nationals or a Mets game. (Okay, perhaps a little more like a Mets game than a Nationals game since we lost…)

But the cool thing is that they showed the stats for the Wild Card and every team in the NL East is still in the running. Granted, the Mets will have to start beating their in-division rivals if they expect to have a shot at it, but it’s a nice feeling to know that it’s still a definite possibility. And we always have been a post-All-Star-Break team.

What a relief to have actually read the book I am. It would have been so embarrassing to have been named Ulysses or To the Lighthouse.

You’re Watership Down by Richard Adams.

Though many think of you as a bit young, even childish, you’re actually incredibly deep and complex. You show people the need to rethink their assumptions, and confront them on everything from how they think to where they build their houses. You might be one of the greatest people of all time. You’d be recognized as such if you weren’t always talking about talking rabbits.

Take the Book Quiz at the Blue Pyramid.

Well, another weekend over. Disappointing. I could have used another few days in my weekend.

Friday night I went out to the Brickskeller with some friends from DC for Democracy.

Yesterday, I did not play softball. Other softball teams around D.C. got to play — Grateful Dating’s, our friend Raj’s — but not ours. No.

I did, on the other hand, wander out with Rudi for ice cream and some shopping — we came home with some large tea cups and a battery-powered cookie shooter (solely for the Christmas spritz cookies) from a sidewalk sale at the local kitchen shop and vouchers for the new HP6 book (which we’ll pick up in Bethesda Friday night at Olsson’s party) — before he went to the D.C. United game. After he left, I headed back over to the Western Market special event where I picked up a birthday present for someone (who reads this blog, so it shan’t be revealed now).

Today, I hit the farmers’ market, checked out an artisans’ market fruitlessly for a wedding present for my cousin’s upcoming nuptials, and sat outside at a local café and read some more of HP5. Then Susan and Phillip stopped by on their way home from Georgetown, so we got to set up our next games night. A nice upnote ending for the evening — a look forward to next weekend!

My college friend Kim has had her second baby, Thomas Robert, late in June. Both she and Thomas are doing well, as are husband Warren and two-year-old Katherine. Congratulations to the whole family!

I work a block away from the old Washington Convention Center, which was blown up and knocked down earlier this spring. I walked past the empty site earlier this week and speculated about what would end up going into the site. I’d heard rumors of a new library building, but others had pooh-poohed the idea as not being revenue-generating enough for the Council.

Well, it seems we all could be right. I have yet to see this news anywhere but in Ward 2 Councilman Jack Evans’ weekly email, so here it is:

“… The DC Council recently reached a decision on how to develop the old Washington Convention Center site at 9th & H Streets, NW. The approved legislation authorizes Hines and Archstone-Smith to develop a mixed-use project creating 300,000 square feet of retail space, 550,000 square feet of office space, 1,372 units of housing and at least 1,900 parking spaces. In addition, at the District’s option, 120,000 square feet of the site are reserved for uses that could include apartments, stores, a new central library and/or hotel.”

Hines and Archstone-Smith will develop a master plan (with “community” involvement) over the next 9 months and, pending approval by everyone from the City Council to Congress to Yo’ Mama, construction will begin sometime in 2008.

Evans’ newsletter lists a number of advantages they hope will arise from redeveloping this space. The one I find most exciting is that they intend to use some of the space (they don’t quite mention where they plan to fit that in) for open space programming — festivals, markets, educational programming, and the like — leaving the District (slightly) less reliant upon the Federal government for their okay in our event-planning processes.

I’m not sure how I feel about the plan yet. A part of me would have liked to have seen it turned into a park/greenspace. But that was unrealistic from the get-go, so I suppose multi-use space that encourages actual living in downtown is generally a good thing.

A caveat worth noting about “affordable housing”:

20% of the housing will be reserved for “affordable housing.” Interestingly, in this instance “affordable” is being marketed to those earning less than $55,750. Hmmm…

Yes, yes. Five percent of that (69 units) will be reserved for people earning $16,725 — twice the poverty threshold for a single person or just slightly above the poverty threshold of a family of three, or the income of someone who makes, at $8.04 an hour, slightly more than minimum wage.

Another five percent of the apartments will be reserved for people earning $33,450, above the median income of both Latino and African-American households according to last year’s Census Board Report, Income, Poverty, and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States: 2003.

A final 10 percent of the housing will be reserved for those earning $44,600 (approximately the income level of the average American household). For the record, that surpasses my income on its own, although not our household income. But it certainly would never have occurred to me that I was in need of “affordable housing” even if I were single.

Of course, this still means that 80% of the apartments (roughly 1,100 units) will be aimed at the über-elite. It doesn’t sound like it’s going to be a really level playing field here or that there’s anything more than a passing interest in keeping things affordable for those people who are being run out of the District for lack of anywhere affordable to live.

So I will wait to see what the plans are from Hines and Archstone-Smith before I make a final judgment on the proposed space, but I’m disappointed that our City Council didn’t see fit to reserve more of the residential space to encourage truly economically-integrated housing.