But feel free to chat in the comments about what you're seeing. CVS running out of supplies? Traffic-be-damned sledding down the neighborhood's biggest hill (M from Seventh to Fifth)?

In the meantime, I'm in my own person Snow Tracking Center, living a weather geek's dream weekend.

It's become a tradition for me to do a yearly overview of what's happened in Near Southeast over the preceding 12 months, and what the next 12 months are looking like, and in my typically understated way, I've dubbed it "the State of the Hood." This year's missive is now posted, and while the expectation would be that 2009 was a whole lot of nothing, there were more milestones of note than perhaps it seemed--two residential buildings and one office building were finished, the first residents moved into Capitol Quarter, water taxis and Circulators arrived, Cornercopia opened, and work began on the new 11th Street Bridges. There were less auspicious events, too, with construction being halted on two projects, foreclosures hitting various commercial properties and private homes, and the drying up of the "development pipeline." But there's still a few new things coming in 2010, like the Park at the Yards and Justin's Cafe.(Note that Capitol Quarter's numbers are a little behind the others, so these are higher now as the move-ins continue)

Definitely take a moment to browse through the photos from that chilly Sunday seven years ago, to see the buildings that are gone as well as some that are still here (hello, trash transfer station!). Enough time has passed that some of the vistas--like this one of the boarded up rowhouses that stood until 2006 where the lobby of 909 New Jersey now sits--are now completely alien to the many new residents who have arrived in Near Southeast in the last two years. These photos also bring home what I feel is as important a part of JDLand.com as the never-ending stream of tiny tidbits of news, and that's the keeping alive of the history of this neighborhood, letting newcomers see what their surroundings looked like not all that long ago, before the city decided it was time for the area to get a makeover and before it was even considered a remote possibility that the Montreal Expos would be brought to DC and be given a shiny new stadium on South Capitol Street.

This anniversary is also always a good time to thank all of you who wander by and read my ramblings and look at my photos, and who send along tips and rumors, because there's no way I'd still be keeping the site going if I didn't feel the energy coming back from the folks who live and work in Near Southeast or who just find its redevelopment oddly fascinating. I will admit that much of 2009 was tough for me as I dealt with a persistent bout of flagging enthusiasm, but I feel like the doldrums have finally passed, and hope to keep chugging along for the foreseeable future.

Check back later today for my other January 19 ritual: the State of the Hood!

(Note to Mom and Dad: See, I told you that ditching journalism school and getting my degree in history would work out okay.)

(And, as an aside, "Near Southeast" and the "Capitol Riverfront" are actually slightly different areas, with Near Southeast being a subset of "the Front." The BID's boundaries include Buzzard Point in Southwest, an area just past my western borderline, the South Capitol Street median. My firm desire to *not* expand my zone keeps me tied to "Near Southeast" as my coverage area.)

First and foremost, I've brought back a map to the main screen (a much smaller and less cluttered one), highlighting projects currently in progress. I was sick of the old one, but found I just couldn't live without *some* sort of map offering in this spot. Hopefully this one suffices.

Next, I added a box called "This Date in (Recent) Near Southeast History," which will dig into the archives every day and show links to blog entries and random photos since 2003. (The photos aren't marked with their location, so for the early ones it'll be a fun guessing game.)

There's also a peppier version of my "Rearview Mirror," with links to the Photo Archive, the Demolished Buildings gallery, historic photos and maps, and more.

And I've finally taken the plunge into Google Maps mashups, with two new offerings. On the home page, under the DC Government Data Feeds, there's a mini-map marking the location of neighborhood crime incidents over the past 30 days. Beneath that is a link to a new interactive map showing all crime incidents from 2005 to the present, with a table breaking out the different types of crimes so that you can filter the map by year or offense or both. (The incidents, which all come from the city's data feed, are then listed beneath the map if you prefer the old-school table format.)

And there's also some slight changes to the general design and color choices, plus some cleanup of the offerings in the "General Links" box at the bottom right of the page, and a box for "Recent Updates/Additions" which I added mainly to do *something* with all the white space around the ad beneath the first blog post.

So, Happy New Year to everyone, and I hope you like the updates.

I will note that the crime reports show a bit of an uptick over the past few days--be sure not to leave stuff in your car....

Happy Holidays to everyone!

* We had a good session on the Kojo Nnamdi Show today about blogging, development, and transportation in the DC area; they've posted the audio if you want to check it out. It was also great to finally meet David Alpert and Michael Perkins after years of only "knowing" them electronically. And Kojo may have given JDLand a new tagline--"Jacqueline Dupree, letting facts get in the way of a good argument."

Kojo's doing a series of roundtables with local bloggers, including this one in June with Prince of Petworth, Frozen Tropics, and others, and in August with three Ward 8 bloggers.

It was important to have the map back when almost no one had a familiarity with this strange neighborhood known as Near Southeast, but now that the pace of change has slowed considerably, I think it's less necessary to be smacked with that graphic every time one visits the site. You can still reach the map and the tabs with the various projects broken out by type by clicking on the DC-with-an-arrow icon at right; and I've listed a few "Active Projects" to allow quick access to developments that are currently underway or of high interest.

Getting rid of the map also allowed me to make the blog part of the home page much wider, with bigger type, and I think everyone will agree it's now far easier to read. Plus, the Events Calendar is now "above the fold" (as we say in the newspaper biz). I was also able to enlarge the random before-and-after photos that appear at the top of the page, too, which I think is a nice change.

I know some people will be unhappy about the relegation of the map to inside-the-site status, but I do think that, for the next little while, this is a better way to go. As I'm nearing the end of my seventh year running this site, I've got to do *something* to make it fresh to my eyes every so often!

(And you guys even get a bigger box to type your comments in. Everyone's a winner.)

I haven't yet added them to my RSS feed--because I'm lazy.