The Big Dig Downtown DC at H and 9th Streets NW

big hole at 11th and H st NW

Just one of the concrete trucks

I've been in awe of the big dig going on at the site downtown at the block between 9th and 11th and H and I streets NW for the past year. I've been watching the action as I take a bus by this site often. First it was a demolition of the old DC convention center with literally tons of debris and dust created and trucked out. Then they started digging the ground out with literally tons and tons of brown clayey earth being taken out in those larger Mack trucks. This then became a huge brown hole that I kept meaning to photo but missed it. Then they drove piles around the whole perimeter, framing the huge pit with wooden planks. That pile driving noise must have annoyed many of the people working in the buildings overlooking the site, or at the nearby hotel. It's now at the stage where they are putting down the concrete floor and hundreds of tons of concrete seem to be going in there. There are at least five cranes looming over the site.  Hundreds of men are working in the pit site, and now they are building the floors and whatever it takes to put up a new construction. I've been meaning to photograph this for a while but it's only now that I got to it. And I'm amazed by how fast the work goes!

Get me out of the Drilling and Digging Noises

For the past ten weeks -- or even longer -- they (whoever they are) have been waking me up each morning drilling and digging on the street outside my house. Just when I want to roll over for another 5 minute snooze, the gouging, whirring, screeching, crunching, dragging sound of heavy machinery starts up propelling me to unGodly words and unladylike oaths and forcing me out from under the cozy covers and flannel sheets that cuddle us each night. Apparently, there's some gas pipes being replaced that is causing all the fuss. But it's been a noisy, long drawn process and it's still not over. The street has many large holes in it, covered with one inch thick sheets of metal bolted down and those orange traffic cones scattered about and one of those hideous blue portable toilets smack dab in the middle of the sidewalk for the workmen. All the earth digging has kicked up lots of dust so our cars are covered in dried up clay in addition to the autumn leaves that find their way into every crack of the car. I don't know where I'm going with the blog but it's your basic whine about a public works project and its noise and inconvenience. Don't get me started on the parking places lost to trucks and piles of earth and so-called tree protector fences that aren't protecting anything. Usually, our street in the fall is pretty with orange and yellow maple leaves and the last of the roses and marigolds. This year, it's been mud and dust and drilling and digging noises for weeks and no end in sight.

Google This, Kim Kolchiak!

Well, if Kim Kolchiak can sing a song called "Google Me," then I can certainly post a photo taken in Google's DC office when I was visiting once, using the miracle of my cell phone camera.  I sort of like the fun decor and bright colors and the plant, but you do have to sign in electronically at the nice young receptionist's desk on some great long form that no one really takes the time to read but is probably some sort of non-disclosure thing. There's candy to eat too as well if you like as well as a screen on the wall which gives an electronic picture of where all the Google searches in the world are taking place -- beams of light of higher and lower density coming up from a map of the earth. It really does reveal where or where there isn't electricity on the planet (e.g., there's not that many people googling from the middle of Africa).  Then it sometimes switches to another view, showing all the keywords that people are searching on all across the world in all the different languages. I'd be real surprised to see my name being searched, that's for sure! But I bet Kim Kolchiak gets searched a lot and I wonder if Google likes her new cute song?  Someone told me that the most common things googled for are religious things, like people use Google to search for all kinds of things in the Bible, or when they start looking for God.  Now that's awesome!