Not blaming the franchisees, but it is utterly unconscionable that any restaurant has a mobile order app with no simple way to go to your recent order and press a button for "I did not get what I ordered" to have things fixed. ALL the major chain apps have this issue where if you don't get what you ordered, the local shop can't do anything and the app can't do anything, you have to go to their website and use their generic contact form and wait for someone to contact you and typically it involves them giving you a coupon or telling the manager to comp you something - never "We just cancel the charge and refund your money"

Honestly, this is the first time i realized that the bathrooms being locked was abnormal. They kept them locked up tight back in the '90s in my small-town high school. Sad they're still doing it.

Columbia is also very deliberately green in a way major cities tend not to be.

I lived in Baltimore for ten years and my allergies never bothered me. The first spring I moved to Columbia I got a massive sinus infection and they've been a recurring issue ever since. Most of the time, it's better here than when I was growing up on the Eastern Shore, but there's a couple of weeks in the fall and spring that are nightmarish.

There are some communities that are bereft of lights, but there's also a ton of places that have pretty extravagant displays up. Then on top of it, there's the big elaborate displays at Merriweather.

There's actually a holiday light registry the county put up this year to help people find the houses with good displays. It's crowdsourced, so it only covers people who know to use it, but it's pretty cool that they're trying: https://data.howardcountymd.gov/HolidayLightsFinder_View/

I'm glad they added bike lanes but the proportions feel wrong on some parts of the road. Since long stretches in the middle now are basically dead space, I wish they'd narrowed it and left a shoulder on the southbound side