Alvado Campbell spent the afternoon in the puzzle room at the Armed Forces Retirement Home.

He spends a lot of afternoons there. Evenings, too.

"Puzzles are a habit of mine," he says.

Campbell, is a 78-year old Korean War vet. He's a DC native, and moved from over by RFK Stadium in Southeast to AFRH a year ago.

Campbell's daily routine ends with him working on puzzles till his 10:30 bedtime.

He's now working on a 1000-piece farm scene that will take "7 to 10 days" to complete. He started putting the pieces together last night, after watching Fred Astaire in "Daddy Long Legs" in the Retirement Home's theater.

"That was a good movie," he says. "Then I came here."

Campbell says that he's amazed how many activities are available to residents. He would have gone to the golf course on the complex today, he says, but was worried that yesterday's rains would mean no carts could be used.

So he did puzzles instead.

As he heads off to the Retirement Home cafeteria for Thursday's dinner, hoping salmon cakes are on the menu, Campbell tells me he'll return to the puzzle room later tonight.

Again, that's his routine.

There's a lot of buzz at the National Endowment for the Arts (headquartered in the Old Post Office Pavilion) about Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm's (Dem.) decision to cut the state's arts budget. Teacher Margaret Charette, a Poetry Out Loud advocate, testified before the Michigan State Senate Appropriations Subcommittee in defense of the arts budget today, citing Hasari Pal: "All that is not given is lost."

NEA's Poetry Out Loud budget is $1 million, plus $500,000 from Chicago's Poetry Foundation. That comes to $20,000 per state, which the participating states must match as part of a partnership agreement with the NEA. Granholm's decision to cut Michigan's budget is a bit of a shock, especially since most states overmatch the $20,000.

It's also an especially bad time to show a fractured front, as the BBC is launching a similar competition and has contacted the NEA for advice on how to get its program up and running. The BBC will allow students to choose from 10 poems to recite, while Poetry Out Loud has a list of over 600 poems.

Andrew Beaujon's response to this? "America: better than Britain."

Reporting by Andrew Beaujon

No, not on the political front, stupid. On the technology front.

Hizzoner long ago made a name for himself as a BlackBerryholic. One for general city business, one for critical, emergency alerts from police Chief Cathy Lanier and other public safety biz; and a third! for personal stuff.

Now here comes At-Large Councilmember Michael A. Brown, leaving a council hearing carrying a similar bounty of gizmos. The boundaries for Brown's three BlackBerrys go as follows: One for council business, one for the business of his firm, Edwards Angell Palmer & Dodge, and one for personal affairs. Too much!

By Mike DeBonis

The pizza 'n' wings-slinging AU eatery graciously called "The Tavern" looks nothing like the old timey Colonial Williamsburg-esque mock-ups. With prison-issue seating, electric blue backlighting and neon red, orange and (more) blue-lit ceiling reliefs, it looks like a hospital cafeteria masquerading as a Berlin nightclub.

But it's here that Tony, a graduating senior and Print Journalism major, chooses to take a moments' respite from the day's demands. In a bright blue sweater vest and black slacks (that article of clothing that screams "take me seriously"), he looks out of place among the motley crew of jeans and AU T-shirts.

Read More "It’s Hard Out There for a Print Journalism Major" »

We left Keith here. Sad place, right?

February 19 is not being kind to Keith.

"This is not my average day," he tells me. "This is an unfortunate situation."

Keith identifies existing, underground utility lines for a living. Too bad, he failed to see what was right in front of him: His gas gauge.

Right now, his car has no gas in it. He feels stupid. Sometimes, he leaves his truck running when he's getting out for a relatively short period. He thought he was more vigilant.

As Carlos Iglesias and I leave our latest stop on Bladensburg Road in Northeast, Keith approaches us. He wants help. He's crying out for it (from up the block and across the road).

Read More "District Dude Runs Out of Gas, Suffers Below-Average Day" »

Leslie Liberato and Maryrose Flanigan of the National Endowment for the Arts are brainstorming marketing strategies for the Poetry Out Loud finals coming up in late April. Their list reads:

• Making fliers for teachers
• Contacting school groups
• Getting stories in the traditional press and reaching out to bloggers
• Finding bookstores still in business
• Find judge for semifinal slot

One problem: There's no money for any of these ideas.

Evelyn Y. Davis wants to go to Petworth, she just doesn't want to go now.

Just across the street from the U.S. Soldiers' and Airmen’s Home National Cemetery sits Rock Creek Cemetery, an equally beautiful resting place for civilians. It's on the grounds of the oldest church in DC, St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, and bodies have been buried here since 1719.

Teddy Roosevelt's daughter, Alice Longworth, Constitution signer Abraham Baldwin and "Meet the Press" icon Tim Russert are among the assembled dead.

And, again, it's a beautiful place to visit.

Seeing the burial plot for Davis is alone worth the trip.

She’s a DC resident who has gained international fame after decades of playing the gadfly role at stockholders meetings.

One more thing about Davis: She's very much alive.

Read More "…But I Wouldn’t Want to Live There" »

Jenn munches an apple outside the Dav. It's 42 degrees out, and she's one of the few brave souls making use of the quad's ample banks of benches.

Engrossed in her meager meal, she ignores the crisp weather. She hasn't eaten since 9:30 a.m. Besides, it's almost 3:45 p.m., and she has a date in 15 minutes. Sort of.

"I have to meet this guy for coffee," she explains. "It's going to be terribly awkward, I'm sure."

Jenn met her "date" when they were both studying abroad in London last semester. They were sorta friends, she guesses.

"He had a giant crush on me, and I just don't have any feelings for him, so..." She fixes her wind-wracked hair and returns to her apple. "I'm really not looking forward to this."

The Dipper Man has nodded off. Dante Dickens is sitting outside Courtroom 321. His belly is full of Burger King. His eyes are closed. His shiny head tilts off to the left against his jacket color. He is wearing his work boots, dark blue work pants, and a work shirt with his name sewn on his chest. In a few minutes, he gets to see the resolution of his drug case. Prosecutors and police alleged that he was found asleep in his idling car, a dipper in his hand on August 22, 2008.

Dickens had gotten to D.C. Superior Court at 8:30 a.m. He says he works as a maintenance man in a White Oak apartment building.

Dickens had to wait on the prosecution's last witness, the chemist. Judge Harold Cushenberry Jr. decided to call for lunch. The proceedings are set to begin in a few minutes at 2:20 p.m. Dickens wakes himself up and walks into the empty court room. He takes a seat in the back.

Judge Cushenberry appears.

"Where's the chemist?" he asks from the bench.

Prosecutor Matthew Kluge goes and gets her from the witness room just outside the courtroom. It's 2:27 p.m. and that dipper has to be examined.

Read More "The Dipper Man Faces The Judge" »

“We’re losing a World War II veteran or two every week,” a resident of the Armed Forces Retirement Home told me this morning.

But if that’s true, the dead aren’t being buried across the street. That’s where the U.S. Soldiers’ and Airmen’s Home National Cemetery sits. (The name of the residence changed, the affiliated cemetery's didn't.)

The Petworth cemetery has been accepting bodies of military dead since August of 1861, three years before the more famous Arlington Cemetery opened for business.

And after all these years, the soldiers’ cemetery on Rock Creek Church and Harewood Rds NW is almost filled up: 14,420 bodies have been placed in 13,893 graves, according to cemetery records. (Families and couples occasionally pile onto each other in the same plot.)

“We’ve only got 121 slots left,” says Dr. David Moshier, the caretaker of the cemetery.

Read More "A Nice Place to Visit…" »

In between bursts of reporting on the National Endowment for the Art's inner workings, Andrew Beaujon decided to eat an average lunch in the Old Post Office Pavilion. His thoughts: The food court is aswarm with students visiting D.C. The NEA's Maryrose Flanigan says tour groups visit the Pavilion because there's good tour-bus access. Onstage, two guys with acoustic guitars performed songs such as "Losing My Religion" and "Redemption Song." Beaujon had a combo meal from the Indian vegetarian place: "$7 for soup curry, rice side thingy, nan, and papadum. Soup tasted like cheebah--everything else was very good."

He also offers this procedural gem from the NEA handbook: Usually, people approach NEA for funding;
national initiatives such as Poetry Out Loud or the Big Read are conceived here, but how they're executed is up to the states. What works in West Virginia might not work in Alaska.

At-Large Councilmember Kwame Brown was committed to going big for the inauguration, in all possible ways.

So he plopped in the lobby of his council office a 61-inch Toshiba television, the better for constituents and staffers to take in the historic occasion. The gigantic device served its purpose, and now it's serving another one. As a problem, that is.

This sports bar-caliber electronic appliance is a beast, and the office has had trouble with moving arrangements. "Nobody can fit it in their vehicle," says Irma Esparza, Brown's chief of staff.

As a Washington City Paper reporter and Esparza were discussing the situation, the councilmember walked in. The reporter suggested that the councilmember select his greatest moments from the dais and transfer them to a DVD and play the thing over and over on the Toshiba, on a loop.

Brown one-upped that plan: "No, it should just be me, my face. You walk in, 'Hi, it's me.' In the words of Lil Wayne, 'I'm me.'"

Tore has been selling sex toys at Dupont sexuality emporium the Pleasure Place for a couple months now. Before that, she was selling cars at Eastern Motors. Pleasure Place is easier, on average. "I have to like what I do," says Tore. "And I like sex."

So it didn't take long for Tore to learn the shop's selection of prostate probes, anal douches, and vibrating rings like---well---the back of her hand. "No time, really," says Tore. "No time. I knew nothing about half of this stuff until I started working here. But there's not a lot for us to do here, so it's like one-on-one with the products most of the time," she says.

Beyond helping women try on stripper heels and accommodating hordes of pre-party bachelorette crews, working at the Pleasure Place includes a lot of down time. "Usually I'm just chilling out, messing with the toys," Tore says. But it's more than just fucking around: The practice helps Tore field a barrage of obvious-to-obscure queries from customers. "What's this for? How does this work? Where do I put this?" says Tore. "They'll ask anything, man, really."

SEX SHOP STATS:

Average vibrator size: Eight inches, Tore says: The biggest they offer is 10 inches; the smallest, six.

Average dildo color: "Most people like the flesh color, something pretty close to their own skin."

Average number of batteries sold per week: About 200.

Average customer: Not applicable. "We got strippers, gay men, lesbians, straight freaky people."

Average item: The Pleasure Place's most popular item is the "The Rabbit," a vibrator that Tore says has been endorsed by both Oprah and the ladies of Sex and the City. Tore plucks a couple batteries from behind the register to show the basics of the Rabbit---what it's for, how it works, where you put it. "The ears move fast to stimulate the clitoris," Tore explains, making the machine's little critter bounce. "And you can bend it to hit the G-spot," she says, making the flexible dildo move at inhuman angles. "You can't get a penis to do that," she says.

Perhaps Tore's learned a little too much about the product for the store's own good.

"What are the pearls for?" a customer asks.

"They make it cost five dollars more," says Tore.

It's 2:53 p.m. in the Davenport Lounge, or "the Dav" as the (mostly) flannel and tight-clad students who frequent the chapel-turned-budget coffee house call it. The Dav is the archetypal student coffee house - mismatched decades-old furniture is scattered between bookcase barriers stacked with crusty encyclopedias and political tomes, deictic markers of the hole-in-the-wall's home in American University's School of International Service building.

An hour into her shift, Danielle sits behind the till at the short marble counter, one hand propping up her head, the other splaying The Unbearable Lightness of Being in two. Little Richard and the din of discussion compete with the whir of the juice and milk refrigerator. She's seldom interrupted by customers at this hour, the majority already served and sunken into worn leather couches or behind cracked marble tables, hunched over laptops.

Read More "At the Davenport Lounge, Business as Usual" »

Footage of an average day's lunch at Catholic University's food court, which includes Chick-fil-A.