I’m in the middle of a glorious vacation. It’s not quite one of those trendy “staycations” the mainstream media has just discovered as a (fake) trend. I still have to go to work. No, I’m house sitting for a colleague (the guy who takes all those amazing, soulful pictures for WCP). He lives a block and a half away from my apartment. But it could be another world. His neighborhood is quiet and leafy. My block is nearly treeless. His block has strollers and dogs. My block has a boarded apartment building and drunks. He lives in a sweet house. I don’t.

This feels like a vacation because of the following items:

1) Cable. The last two nights, I spent serious time sunk in the couch hooked on Law & Order and its various spinoffs. This isn’t a surprise. That show is on constantly. But I also get to indulge in a little wide-screen Charlie Rose. I’m used to watching his shows on the laptop.

2) The prospect of free laundry facilities. Now I quite haven’t taken advantage of this. But it’s there–no lines, no coins!

3) Free food. OK. There’s a lot of frozen meat in the freezer. Not my thing. But there’s tons of bread, organic bread. No pre-packaged slices for me! There’s also plenty of rice, weird sauces, and kettle corn. Hell yeah.

4) The house is quiet. I live in a noisy apartment building. Open the window and there’s a good chance I’m going to either a) hear people talking or b) hear the woman next door sing along to slow jams on the radio.

This morning, as I woke up to free coffee, I couldn’t think of a more relaxing and cheap way to kill a week. I don’t have to use up my vacation time. And I get to experience another part of the city. I can’t think of a better way to explore the District than through house sitting. We had a staff writer here—not too long ago—who managed to get by on nearly house sitting full-time. I’m pretty sure I made fun of him. I regret that now.

House sitting—will this replace the staycation?

Fresh off of Fuego/Frio’s first foray into transcontinental media commentary, Erik and Ruth tackle the Politico, the Post, and People Magazine. This week, it’s all about pork-barrel spending, interior decorating, and a pregnant man who can bench-press 250 pounds.

Got a story you’d like to see discussed on the next Fuego/Frío? Let us know in the comments.

Last time in Managing Your Rodent Infestation, we planted new snap traps, baited, once again, with delicious peanut butter. A while back, we switched to smooth butter after our mouse simply ate the chunks out of the chunky, leaving only the butter behind. Picky, picky!

Since setting our new traps, my roommate and I haven’t heard a squeak out of our as-yet-unnamed mouse. The traps are set, the peanut butter is creamy, but the mouse isn’t licking. What, wee rodent? Lost your appetite, have you? Or perhaps, sensing your impending doom at the hands of our advanced weaponry, you have retreated from our basement in order to seek your scrumptious protein-rich handouts elsewhere?

The mouse isn’t talking. But the public is! As it turns out, everybody’s a mouse extermination critic!

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The Post’s New York correspondent David Segal attacks bedbug hysteria today, pointing out the problem with reporters calling pest-control companies looking for evidence of a resurgence of the evil little critters. He makes a compelling case that the return of bedbugs has been overstated, to say the least, in the press, noting that the New York Times alone has done 12 bedbug stories in the past half-decade.

My last year in New York was 2002, a year before the media fever, but as usual I was on the cutting edge—our apartment in Brooklyn got infested by bedbugs. It happened after a trip to Richmond, and I’ve always figured the shabby hotel we stayed in there was to blame. The first thing we noticed was bites on our legs, then small blood stains on the sheets. Then we started seeing them.
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For the few who may have missed it (I mean who wasn’t watching the Rose Parade on New Year’s Day?), HGTV announced the results of its contest “Save the World: Start at Home,” naming our very own Anacostia as one of four winners out of 10 finalists for a series of spruce-up projects. (The contest actually has five winners, but New Orleans was a lock. Whatever.) Several weeks of online voting were required to nudge the other four into the money. D.C. went up against Atlanta, Baltimore, Boston, Denver, Long Island, Portland, San Fran, and the Twin Cities. Ballmer also won. Go Ballmer!

The deal is that the network Home Depot built will now hand over grants to local branches of Rebuilding Together, a national org of mostly volunteers that helps low-income folks fix up their houses. In D.C., the Anacostia project includes three elements, one at Anacostia park, the second at Bethel Christian Fellowship Child Development Center, and a third at individual homes on S Street SE.

Harold and Mary Brown, owners of one of those homes, are featured on the HGTV Web site. A camera crew arrived several weeks ago to film Mr. Brown, who has been taking sponge baths for years and living on the first floor because he can’t climb the stairs to the bathroom and the rest of his house. Mary Brown, when I called her a few days after the announcement, was delighted to hear people were actually coming over to her house to do some work. Since this has been such a slick and interactive campaign involving a bunch of money and, presumably future TV shows and Home Depot ads, I didn’t expect to be the one to tell Mrs. Brown that she and Mr. Brown were getting a fancy new chairlift. But, hey, they’re coming and they’re doing a nice thing for the Browns and for Anacostia.

If Janice T. Stango, executive director of Rebuilding Together of Washington, D.C., didn’t call the Browns right away, she should be forgiven. Stango was busy in the leadup to the announcement getting everyone she knew and plenty of people she didn’t to hop on HGTV.com and pick D.C. She put fliers on bulletin boards, handed them out in dog parks, and roped in students who needed to fulfill community service requirements. Around 11 p.m. two nights before Thanksgiving, she was in a Shoppers Food Warehouse in Fairfax and noticed a couple of ladies buying what looked like the staples for a food bank holiday. “I ran out to the car and got some fliers and they distributed them for me.”

“This did not just happen,” she said about winning the prize. And it hasn’t happened yet. Rebuilding Together is now looking for volunteers to do the work, especially during the last weekend in April (the 26th and 27th). Let’s face it: Saving the world and being on HGTV is a helluva lot better than watching it.

Now, I am all in favor of lawns and art and lawn art. And these little statuettes from home-furnishing cataloguer Frontgate might just make a fine gift. But boy putting and girl putting will run you $2,500. Each.

At around 11 p.m. on Nov. 26, Ronald Thornton was watching a home improvement television show when he heard what sounded like a truck smashing at high speed into a building. Then he felt the floor tremble.

Thornton and his neighbors in Mount Vernon Square filed onto Ridge Street NW to see what had happened. Across from Thornton’s home, part of an abandoned two-story row house had crashed to the ground. Bricks lay scattered across the street. Some had tumbled against a home nearby. A side of the building was gone.

The collapse was the end of what neighbors say is a storied history at 460 Ridge St. NW. Neighborhood lore has it that the boarded-up house, which is owned by the District, has sat vacant since 2002, when crack smokers accidentally set it on fire.

It was “demolition by neglect,” says Cary Silverman, president of the Mount Vernon Square Neighborhood Association.

The fallen house is one of more than 100 vacant buildings in a seven-block radius in the neighborhood, many of which are owned by the District, Silverman adds. “All of these properties are a danger,” he says.

Editor’s Note: Earlier this year, Justin wrote Iceland, a blog about his band’s American tour. Justin isn’t on tour anymore, but Iceland continues, twice a week, on City Desk.

“I fear I have a hardware-related problem,” I explained to the owner of my local hardware store. “Subcategory: plumbing.”

“Yes,” replied the hardware-store owner.

“My house is equipped with a, ahem, main, ahem, hot water, ahem, delivery line,” I continued. “My terminology is incorrect, but you understand my meaning?”

“Yes,” replied the hardware-store owner.

“And the small, ahem, wheel that turns this, ahem, delivery line on and off has gone missing,” I explained.

“Yes,” replied the hardware-store owner.

“Because this wheel is gone, I fear that, in the event of a water emergency, I will not be able to, ahem, turn off the water that flows to this, ahem, main water-delivery valve,” I explained. “My terminology is incorrect, but you understand my meaning?”

“Yes,” replied the hardware-store owner.

“So, my question to you, sir: Do you sell the replacement, ahem, wheels that, ahem, turn this water-delivery line on and off?” I paused. “Do you understand?” The hardware-store owner nodded and walked to the back of the store. I followed.

“You know, Justin,” the hardware-store owner began. I blinked—I was not aware that this local businessperson knew my name. “I sense that you are reluctant to call a plumber to complete a small job like this one. After all, such a job may be difficult to do on one’s own, but not so extensive as to require an expensive contractor.”

“Correct,” I replied.

“However, you should know that you are part of a community,” the hardware-store owner explained. “This store is founded on this community principle. Thus, I have the names and numbers of many handypersons who would be happy to complete small jobs like this one at a fraction of what a professional plumber would charge. I do not give these numbers out willy-nilly. However, we know you and are here to help you. Would you like one of these numbers?”

“I am speechless,” I replied. I considered the hardware-store owner’s generous offer. I have become an insider at this hardware store, I thought. Thus, I am privy to insider information. But what of the anonymous householder/tenant in need of home repair? Where does this invisible man turn for advice? No specialized list of handyperson numbers awaits this tragic figure. He or she is God’s lonely man or woman. He or she must go it alone. Such is the problem of community—communities are islands and must remain exclusive to remain viable. By definition, as the community walks, it rolls up its red carpet behind itself. Will our society ever escape this ubiquitous, vicious, inescapable game of who-knows-who?

“Do you want one of the numbers?” the hardware-store owner repeated.

“Thank you,” I replied. “I think I will take one of those numbers.”

Editor’s Note: Earlier this year, Justin wrote Iceland, a blog about his band’s American tour. Justin isn’t on tour anymore, but Iceland continues, twice a week, on City Desk.

“I will be back on Thursday to complete my work,” the chimney-repair specialist informed me. I had contracted this individual to construct an aluminum pipe from my boiler to the open sky. My chimney would be the conduit to vent my home’s excess carbon monoxide. I preferred to expel this invisible, odorless, very deadly gas into the atmosphere rather than poison my neighbors and myself.

“Thursday it is,” I agreed. Then, I looked at my calendar. “I wonder,” I ventured. “Friday might be better for me. Might Friday be better for you?”?

“I’m sorry,” replied the chimney-repair specialist. He looked away. “I must attend a funeral on Friday.”

“I am sorry for your loss,” I remarked.

“Oh,” the chimney-repair specialist remarked. No one spoke. A great silence opened between the chimney-repair specialist and myself.

“I hope you are not too upset by the prospect of the impending ceremony,” I asserted. The chimney-repair specialist did not reply. I considered my comment. In retrospect, the word “ceremony” did not seem appropriate to refer to a funeral. Yet I had said this word and could not unsay it.

“Don’t worry about it….I mean, thank you,” the chimney-repair specialist offered after a moment. “We are all born knowing that, one day, we will die.”

“Yes,” I agreed. I considered the implications of the chimney-repair specialist’s quiet fatalism. I had spent much of the morning reading Arthur Koestler’s Cold War morality tale Darkness at Noon, and the novel’s unrelenting pathos had smeared a dark melancholy across my psyche. Koestler spends many pages agonizing over ethical questions that, in the face of mortality, seem willfully obscure. Should disgraced Communist Party leader Rubashov affirm Stalinism before he is executed, or should he hold fast to his oppositional views and, as Koestler puts it, “die in silence?” On one hand, Rubashov is the architect of Soviet revolution. If he holds true to his revolutionary premises, he should embrace Stalin, as Stalin is the product of this revolution. However, to embrace Stalin, Rubashov must disavow his own reason. For the condemned Rubashov, this is unacceptable. In the words of Oliver Hardy, Rubashov is in “a fine mess.” However, in the face of this chimney-repair specialist’s grief and need for catharisis, Rubashov’s dilemma struck me as irrelevant and tedious. Fuck Rubashov, his self-absorption, and his vanity, I thought. This chimney-repair specialist—nay, this man—struggles onward in the face of misery without making fireworks of his misfortune.

“So,” I said to the chimney-repair specialist. “Thursday, then?”

Editor’s Note: Earlier this year, Justin wrote Iceland, a blog about his band’s American tour. Justin isn’t on tour anymore, but Iceland continues, twice a week, on City Desk.

“How much mortar would you like to purchase?” inquired the hardware store owner.

The rigors of time have taken their toll on the brick staircase leading up to my house. Though I am no mason, I had resolved to repair this crumbling entryway. I assumed mortar was necessary, and had initiated mortar negotiations at a local shop.

“I will purchase the smallest amount of mortar available,” I replied, ambiguously. The hardware store owner disappeared into the dark recesses of his shop. He returned a moment later with a 10-lb. package of mortar.

“That’s $4.89,” quoth the hardware store owner.

“A fair price,” I ventured. I handed the gentleman my American Express and searched for a way to ask what mortar was and what mortar did without revealing that, until today, I had never spoken the word “mortar” aloud. “Now, if I may ask…,” I casually began. “Working with mortar is easy, yes? You spread the mortar and stick the bricks into the mortar and slide the mortar between them, just like in the movies—yes?”

“Yes,” replied the hardware store owner. If I expected a treatise on masonry, none was proffered.

I returned to my house, retrieved a bucket, opened my bag of mortar, and poured the mortar into the bucket. The mortar regarded me, silent and silicate. Following water-to-mortar ratios recommended on the bag of mortar’s directions, I poured watEnthused, I smeared this mortar soup all over my home’s crumbling entryway. Then, with little regard for straight lines or other aesthetic concerns, I shoved the many broken bricks littered before my home’s façade into this soup. To my delight, the broken bricks seemed to adhere to the mortar and the formerly broken front stoop.

“Some genius has devised this substance!” I exclaimed aloud. My housemate, hearing my cries, walked out of our home and regarded my work.

“That’s kind of a home job,” my housemate remarked.

“A ‘home job?’” I repeated.

“You know—an amateurish job,” my housemate clarified. “Look—the line of bricks isn’t straight,” he observed.

“A ‘home job,’” I said again. I stared at my handiwork. “I must admit that my geometry is less than virtuosic,” I declared. My housemate and I bent down to more closely inspect our now poorly mortared stoop. Then we were accosted by an unknown person in a moving automobile.