Active Rain/Tomato Blog

Shortly before Christmas last year there was a notice on our local neighborhood list serv.  Someone wrote to say that a puppy was arriving from Florida as a present and needed somewhere to stay for the four days right before Christmas.  We had just lost our "Mac" - a fine feline specimen who had ...

Alexandria will kick off Restaurant Week, August 20-29, 2010.  More than 60 restaurants, bars and coffee shops will take part in this annual summer eating extravaganza.  There are three categories of participation - a $35 Prix-Fixe Three Course Dinner a $35 Dinner for Two and $3.50 Sweet Treats. ...

Ted Landphair is a long time Voice of America reporter and essayist.  He also has a blog called Ted Landphair's America and he writes about the thousands of places he has visited in this wonderful country of ours.  Today I was lucky enough to stumble across a recent piece in which he notes that V...

Should you be driving?  There is an excellent article in this morning's Washington Post that addresses the painful, but often necessary, question of should you be driving for older family members.  Whether residing in the family home or living independently in a retirement community, the ability ...

Today we heard from a site that calls itself Change of Address.  Basically they have taken everything you need to know about changing your address and put it together in one place for easy reference. In addition to change of address forms for the U.S. Post Office, they also offer change of addres...

An enterprising neighbor has put together a Google map of the Del Ray area in an attempt to chart the trees lost in Thursday's devastating storm.  View Lost Trees of Del Ray in a larger map The map came through on our local list serv and folks are being asked to add what they know about the lost ...

With the number of trees down in Alexandria from the massive thunder storm that swept through on Thursday, it's worth asking -  who pays for tree damage? Essentially, it's going to depend on how the insurance policies read and what a claims adjuster decides.  If the tree was already dead or disea...

In the wake of Thursday's crushing thunder storm and the damage to more than 17,000 trees, the City of Alexandria has issued these tree removal guidelines: "Over the next seven to ten days, crews will be collecting tree debris from the curb and public rights-of-way. The City is temporarily relaxi...

The City of Alexandria has announced that some 17,000 trees were damaged in Alexandria in a freak thunderstorm that roared through the area late Thursday afternoon. A majority of that damage was in the Del Ray, Rosemont and Beverley Hills neighborhoods. We were lucky.  Several large limbs crashed...

The Washington Post Magazine recently ran it's Best Bets column on a favorite, calorie laden treat - french fries.  According to the Post, the best french fries in the DMV - the District, Maryland and Virginia - can be found at these spots around the beltway: ***BGR: The Burger Joint.  Multiple l...