This and That: A Random Mosey Through Reston News

• Hey now, one new bit of information came out of a "news paper" story about last week's meeting about Brown's Chapel Rec Center: "The Center for Survey Research of the University of Virginia will conduct a telephone survey to determine public support for the new center." Awesome! We love unsolicited phone calls! There's also a survey form you can fill out on the Reston Association's "web site" if you're so inclined.
  
• Signs of construction on Metro's awesome new Silver Line, until now marred in the pristine urban exemplar that is Tysons Corner, are now visible in the median of the Toll Road. The thousands of orange cones with blinking lights on top of them we'll soon see on our rides home are a small price to pay for the future promise of 'rad 80s art.
  
• Hey, did you hear about those pigs in the Philippines who got Ebola Reston, the virus so nice they named it after a planned community, and had to be exterminated, only the stun gun didn't work? If you read this filthy "web log," the answer is yes, months ago, but despite the lack of new information, the outbreak got a recent spate of coverage in sources ranging from the BBC to NPR to the Apache Junction National Ledger in Arizona. PANIC!
  
• After being spurned in its plans to build a particleboard hospital in particleboard Loudoun County, HCA has announced its long-expected expansion to Reston Hospital Center. The 350,000 square feet of expansions include new buildings, additional floors to existing buildings, and lots of those wooden dispensers. The weird thing? They're trying to get all this done under something called "Planned Residential Community (PRC) status," which seems a bit odd, unless they're planning to rent out excess hospital beds as condo space once the market picks up again.
  
• The Counter, some fancy "west coast" burger shack where they presumably use elitist condiments like "mustard," opened in Reston Town Center last week. Judging by the Twitters, this event ranks somewhere between the Moon Landing and the Second Coming in importance.
  
• Obama's "political machine," called Organizing for America, met with local residents at at the North County Government Center last week. Or was it a ruse to do advance work for a future visit by the president to the aforementioned fancy burger place?
  
• Remember how Fairfax County Police came up with a cool name for anti-gang efforts in Reston, and now there's no gang activity any more? Here's a TV broadcast of the "action," assuming the station's cutting edge "embed" function ever decides to work:
  
  
• Finally, and also from the Twitters, it sounds like the "open carry" gun people descended last week on Champps in Plaza America, one of their favorite hot spots. The tweet said that RSVPs were "expected," and we wouldn't argue with a bunch of folks packing heat.