This coming Saturday, four coworkers and I will be getting up early and heading out to work in D.C. as part of an annual community service marathon. The event, Servathon 2008, is hosted by Greater D.C. Cares, a nonprofit that matches volunteers up with community service projects year-round.

Servathon 2008 is focusing on improving the D.C. schools and buildings this year and more than 3,000 area residents will pitch in to paint, landscape, and make general improvements to school facilities.

My friend John likes to refer to this sort of event as “Painting over the Problem.” In a way, it’s true that this is literally a cosmetic feel-good effort. You aren’t making a substantial contribution to the schools or their students in any meaningful way. On the other hand, when you walk into some of these school buildings, it can sometimes be hard to imagine that the infrastructure problems don’t interfere with the learning process. So I’d like to think that it does make a tangible, if small, contribution to education in D.C.

Our team, Science Serves, will be up at MacFarland Middle School in Petworth, which is 85 years old this year. If you live in the area and are free Saturday morning, we welcome additional hands. If you aren’t able to pitch in personally, but would still like to make a difference, Greater D.C. Cares has asked each participant to raise funds.

My donation page can be found here.

According to the Servathon website, small donations still make a big difference:

• $10 buys the landscape materials to revitalize the grounds of a high school
• $25 will help paint an elementary school classroom
• $50 will help restock a D.C. Public School library

A fresh coat of paint won’t fix D.C.’s schools. But it will help D.C.’s students focus on what they should be learning — and remind them that an awful lot of people care about their success.

Thanks for any assistance you’re able to offer.

I’ve taken lots of pictures of RFK over the years, since I’ve seen both soccer and baseball there since moving down here. But over the last month, I’ve had the chance to see the unveiling of a spic and span new ballpark.
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Three beautiful things from the past week:

1. I’ve spent the past two nights up through the wee hours working on some editing/proofreading. At 3 a.m. or thereabouts, certain birds wake up and start calling to one another.

2. I arrive home from today’s farmers’ market (fewer veggies left when you arrive at the end, but I still brought home cake and gelato, as well as some healthier items) tired and crabby (probably from #1 above). I lie down in bed with the cats and sleep for an hour and awake feeling sooooo much better.

3. Charles arrives at the pub on Sunday more than 90 minutes after his wedding shower was due to start. (Apparently his fiancée had a tough time keeping him on a schedule without giving away why she was hurrying him along and wisely opted for surprise over punctuality.) You can tell from the adorable look on his face when he crests the stairs that he totally was not expecting to find a room full of his friends awaiting him.

Let’s say you’re going to make custard as a midnight snack.

Let’s say you’re going to use Bird’s instant powder.

Let’s say you’re going to opt for a snack-sized bowl (so as to save on the washing up).

Let’s say you’re going to adjust the Bird’s recipe to account for the fact that you don’t have quite two cups of milk in the older container and don’t feel like opening the new one.

Let’s say you’re going to think this is just as well because aforementioned bowl does not hold two cups of milk.

Let’s say you know to be aware of this problem because you’ve made instant custard in a too small bowl before.

Let’s say you’re going to have a very big mess to clean up and very little pudding left in your snack-sized bowl to eat.

Let’s say you’re a bit of an idiot.

Empire Magazine has revealed its list of the “50 Greatest TV Shows” ever. Below is the list and here be the rules:

1. Bold the shows you’ve watched every episode of
2. Italic the shows you’ve seen at least one episode of
3. Post your answers

50. Quantum Leap
49. Prison Break
48. Veronica Mars
47. Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
46. Sex & The City

45. Farscape
44. Cracker
43. Star Trek
42. Only Fools and Horses
41. Band of Brothers

40. Life on Mars
39. Monty Python’s Flying Circus
38. Curb Your Enthusiasm
37. Star Trek: The Next Generation
36. Father Ted

35. Alias
34. Frasier
33. CSI: Las Vegas
32. Babylon 5
31. Deadwood

30. Dexter
29. ER
28. Fawlty Towers
27. Six Feet Under
26. Red Dwarf

25. Futurama
24. Twin Peaks
23. The Office UK
22. The Shield
21. Angel

20. Blackadder
19. Scrubs
18. Arrested Development
17. South Park
16. Doctor Who

15. Heroes
14. Firefly
13. Battlestar Galactica
12. Family Guy
11. Seinfeld

10. Spaced
09. The X-Files
08. The Wire
07. Friends
06. 24

05. Lost
04. The West Wing
03. The Sopranos
02. Buffy the Vampire Slayer
01. The Simpsons

What do we learn from my annotations to the list? I watch a lot of different shows, but not a lot of each of them.

What do we learn from the list itself? That people at Empire Magazine have questionable taste in tv and that their tvs didn’t work before 1968.

Seriously? Where’s MASH? The Cosby Show? The Mary Tyler Moore Show? The Dick Van Dyke Show?

What would appear on your lists if you were writing a similar list?