The surprise appearance by the sun on Thursday gave me the chance to update some north-and-east photos on the way to the ballpark, mainly along Half Street, with a few from First, Cushing, and Van thrown in. You can see the entire batch of new photos, or you can check the 70/100 I, 909 New Jersey, Velocity, and Monument Half Street pages for a little bit of context as to what you're seeing, or you can look for the icon by intersection (Half and I, Half and K, Half and L, Half and M, First and I, Cushing and L, Cushing and M, Van and M). Make sure to check out the new photos I took last week along First Street if you missed them, to get a pretty complete view of what's happened in the neighborhood in the past two years. (Or just come down and see for yourself.) Hopefully soon I'll get some additional updated shots from along South Capitol Street and New Jersey Avenue (which will be changing thanks to 909 New Jersey now beginning the showy phase of its construction).

(Nick Johnson getting hit by a pitch during last night's 4-3 loss to the Marlins)

Bruce Johnson of Channel 9 has blogged about this a couple of times, and now the Post picks up the story of the fight between the mayor's office and the city council over tickets to Nationals Park. There are not enough tickets in council's suite to allow all 13 council members to have two tickets each; instead of giving the tickets to Chairman Vincent Gray to distribute, the mayor's office is distributing them, and for all three games this week, the same four council members (Alexander, Brown, Mendelson, and Schwartz) have been left out. So, each day, Gray has rounded up the distributed tickets and sent them back to the mayor's office.