The sun was bright, the sky blue, the weather cool. A burst of map-inspiration and a full tank of gas led me to Mt. Vernon, where I enjoyed the grounds immensely.

The entrance was spectacular, consisting of half a mile of chain-link fence covered smartly by black tarps.

In the process, I passed by a large 16-sided building described as a replica of a barn originally miles away. Thinking such a process to be at best mundane and at worst a waste of the historical society's limited funds, I walked around to the back of the structure, where I noticed a large ramp leading to the second story of the barn. It turns out that I was wrong about the barn. It was not an ordinary structure designed to hold hay or feed or animals. It was, instead, designed for the Day of The Treading.

The siren song of the loudspeaker beckoned poor tourists to come inside and witness the majesty of The Treading, although it would be days until all the materials were assembled and the place was properly prepared. Desperate to escape, I walked quickly away toward another building called the "Pioneer Video Celebration Room". Upon entrance, I noticed that this room too, had a far sinister purpose. The walls were covered upon every surface with a variety of cutting and drilling instruments of torture. Anxious to escape from adzes and augers, I avoided the "instructional video" and made for the wharf.

Other than these moments, the day was spent pleasantly.

Afterward, I traveled with Jill to Mason Neck, in our pursuit of an afternoon spot near the river. We somehow stumbled upon the breeding grounds of the upper-class adventure addict: the area was full of fresh water windsurfers with expensive audis, some kayakers and even a couple of parasurfers. Definitely wet-suit high society, which segued nicely into our evening entertainment, of watching Pride and Prejudice from netflix with a little chipotle love. Having never read the book itself (yes, I'm an English major gone rogue), I was delighted to see the story end, very un-vikram-seth-like, with the girl getting the right guy, with the big estate, that she actually likes. A model for us all: never settle.

Football game followed. Ronald whooped it up over me for the first half, but as the second dawned, and Ed Reed scored the quafecta of forcing a sack, causing a fumble, recovering a fumble and scoring a touchdown, Ron realized the problem: the Redskins just love to choke. The Ravens, thank god, managed to overcome an anemic offense to triumph by the skin of their teeth again.

Now it's Columbus Day. Or as they say in Helena's workplace, "Genocide Day". So I'm off. Thanks to ICapture, I was able to resolve some stupid mac-issues with the backend this morning. And post this. Now it's time to do a little gardening, followed by shopping. Another full day ahead.

Okay, so our team's best offensive scorer is our kicker. And our leading rusher is going to jail for a few months. So what? We still beat the skins, due to our exceptional defense and terrific special teams.

The Skins are hurting, frankly. I was just happy to see the Ravens come from behind to dominate the final half.

Kerry was flawless in tonight's debate. His best line?

I just think I can do that far more effectively, because the most important weapon in doing that is intelligence.

Yeah, intelligence. Nice double entendre there, John. Any other thoughts from the peanut gallery?

It's clear, the WaPo headling says it all.

96,000 jobs a month isn't enough to keep up with a growing population. Period. We're losing ground, not gaining it.

JibJab has done it again.

It's worth it for two reasons: hearing politicians sing a song to a rebel tune, and getting to see John Ashcroft rip off his shirt to reveal a gay pride t-shirt underneath.

Go check it out today! It's sedilicious!

I'll cover the VPOTUS debate in a bit (hopefully Meat posts first) but for now, just three minor code notes.

There is now a music reviews section to the website. If anyone has any other sectional requests, just e-mail me and I'll add them. (Dwight, I moved your article into the proper section, fyi.)

Also, evidently there was a problem for IE users who wished to add articles. Normally, I'd say I don't care, but I want everyone to be able to post, so I fixed it. However, it's several days late...so next time, if you try to add an article and cannot, you should tell me. I'm happy to help.

Finally, when you make links to places on the website, you now need to include the full path. In the past, you could use a root symbol "/" to indicate a path relative to the root. Unfortunately, because of the way the RDF feed works, you need to have full paths specified in the link. Yes, this conflicts slightly with the archive system. (In the past, using an archive page would keep you at that time period as long as all the links were relative.) But the archive page is rarely used, so I'm not concerned. Besides, you can still go back in time...you just can't move between certain pages the way you used to without using the back button. Which I assume most people can use.

Okay, I've finally added an RSS feed to the website. Just click on the little "RDF" icon at the bottom of the page to pull up the feed.

Rather than get into the holy wars surrounding RSS and RDF (and the unholy Atom!), I'll just say that I'm using RSS 1.0, which is to say, RDF. I contains full posts, so any good RSS newsreader should be able to visit the site completely without, actually.

And that's why, really, I've resisted implementing RSS. Because I'd rather people come to the site, instead of reading it in a newsreader. Because the next round of changes will require people to visit the site to get the full effect. However, in the interim, I figured throwing up an RSS feed was good form, so I did. The code was annoying but it's now up and I now know more about RDF than I ever planned to.

My coding procrastination now has to end, as the next three projects (staff, charts and foreigners) are major and I have nothing left until them.

I've uploaded the sailing pictures here. Unfortunately, I need to get a new camera phone with a better resolution, but Nokia keeps delaying the 7610. Annoying.

The mainpage image currently is of a helicopter (one of several that morning) that buzzed Kevin and Carrie and myself while sailing. It felt as if it were right on top of us, although the image doesn't do it justice.

Okay, back to work. Things here are extremely busy...

Simply hilarious.

Go check it out...who says the French are best at montage?