2010: A Look Back at The Earth-Toned Year That Could

What a year 2010 was in Reston! Starting with Dear Leader gaining gang colors and ending with a defining cultural event, there wasn't a dull moment. Okay, there were quite a few dull moments, but some semi-interesting stuff actually happened. Let's reminisce, shall we?

We had an earthquake! And strong wind! And a bit of snow! And controversy about snow, and elections, that we somehow got dragged into.

Meanwhile, with projections suggesting that Reston could triple in size as the Metro finally arrives, we finally got a look at what the future of our beige community might look like. A long-serving (and still impossible to write in acronym form) task force unveiled visions of future development around the Wiehle, Reston Parkway, and Herndon-Monroe Metro stations. Fortunately, we only need $95.8 million more in funding for infrastructure, and everything will be as right as rain!

The first concrete hints of what these broad planning principles might mean in practice also started coming across the transom, from the fanciful, bollard-strewn civic plaza of the Comstock Wiehle Metro development to the grainy drawrings of the Reston Excelsior project and the as-of-now-postponed-indefinitely Fairway apartments redevelopment proposal, among others. Closer to our own hearts, the owner of the Spectrum Center sued Fairfax County over redevelopment issues, leaving the fate of the Macaroni Grill in limbo. People also wandered over to Bethesda to see how this whole "transit-oriented development" thing might pan out, and started calling for fewer developer voices in the planning process as the focus shifts to the village centers in 2011.

RELAC got a rate increase. Our BFFs at the Reston Association finally moved, and then their landlord filed for bankruptcy, narrowly averting foreclosure. And indoor tennis continued to inch forward, or whatever a good tennis metaphor for something moving slowly would be. Lob? No, probably not lob.

Reston lost a newspaper in 2010, but gained a magazine and a Web site, though another fanciful web venture was sadly not to be.

Meanwhile, we got to know our doppelgangers to the north and in the old country. We also had to come to terms with Reston's own sordid past.

The treepocalypse moved north of the Toll Road, while the deerpocalypse moved south. Sallie Mae got the @#!#$ out of Reston, but a whole bunch of super secret agencies will ultimately take its place, as we learned by reading Wikileaks some "news paper."

And the crime! We had a Jersey Shore wannabe, a really bad golfer, and a serial hamburglar. But it was a hardened criminal named Swiper who stole our hearts.

The cultural scene began -- and ended -- with Reston: The Opera. But before the defining movie of our generation was released to an unsuspecting public in the dwindling days of December, we tried our own hand at making movies.

And we'll close the book on 2010 with this, the Saddest Tweet in the history of the Internet:

So long, 2010. It's been surreal.