Bowie Restaurant Project: (2) Wendy's

For an explanation of the Bowie Restaurant Project, look here.


For a collection of all the Bowie Restaurant Project entries, look here.

Wendy's,  16400 Harbour Way
Most Recent Foursquare Check-in: 7/6/2011
Total Foursquare Check-ins: 5
Pre-Foursquare Visits: Many
Rating: 2 out of 5 stars

It's a Wendy's. I figure if I waited until the end to review all of the chain restaurants, I'd quit halfway through. So I'll try to intersperse some of Bowie's less exciting dining destinations along the way.


I'd also like to clarify a few things. I'm not planning to release a new review every day -- it's just at the start of this project, I have a lot of pent-up opinions. Also, I'm not necessarily going to visit every restaurant just before reviewing it. In this case, though, I was out running errands, and it seemed like a good chance to get a picture to go with the review.


I can only find one thing that distinguishes this Wendy's from other establishments in the chain (see below). In general, that's a good thing. The Wendy's on Kenilworth Avenue has the distinction of "only Wendy's I've been panhandled at the drive-thru" and "only Wendy's I couldn't visit one time because it had just been robbed." So if I had to choose between the two, I like this one better. The only specific negative thing I can say is that it has a poorly-designed layout for the parking lot. When the drive-thru gets busy, it wraps around the parking lot, which makes it hard to leave parking spots and can cause the line to back up into the shared driveway with the nearby gas station. Minor enough that it doesn't lose any points, but I thought I'd mention it.


So where does that leave us? It's a chain. On the other hand, I think of Wendy's as a cut above McDonalds -- slightly tastier burgers, slightly more interesting menu. And it is Bowie's only Wendy's. A city of this size should probably have at least one, so I'll give it a not-terrribly-enthusiastic 2 stars out of 5.

Bowie Restaurant Project: (1) California Tortilla

For an explanation of the Bowie Restaurant Project, look here.


For a collection of all the Bowie Restaurant Project entries, look here.

California Tortilla, 3941 Evergreen Parkway
Most Recent Foursquare Check-in: 7/5/2011
Total Foursquare Check-ins: 92
Pre-Foursquare Visits: Countless
Rating: 4 1/2 out of 5 stars

From the moment I decided to review all of Bowie's restaurants, I knew I had to start with California Tortilla. Not only have I eaten there more than any other Bowie restaurant, I've probably eaten there more than all other Bowie restaurants combined.

What do I love about California Tortilla? First of all, it's fairly nutritious. You can use their on-line nutritional calculator to count calories. Getting their burritos in a bowl (as I always do) is a great way to trim calories from your meal. Skipping the chips and queso is another good way, but I never seem to be able to manage that.

Which brings me to the second thing I like about "Caltort" -- the food is quite tasty. I don't love everything on their menu (the "California Screamin" burrito doesn't do it for me, especially in bowl form), but they have enough consistent hits (the Havana burrito and Sunset Bowl are two of the better lower-calorie options, and the Blackened Chicken Caesar is a nice indulgence). The fish tacos are pretty good -- not quite San Diego authentic, but a worthy substitute. And when I just don't feel like having a burrito bowl, the quesadillas are a nice change of pace.

The third thing that brings me back are the specials. They range from the prosaic (the "Burrito Elito" card's rewards turn into an effective 10% discount) to the wacky (the annual Free Pop Tart day is a must-visit event).

OK, so it is a chain. It is, however, a local chain, headquartered in Rockville and numbering 36 locations in Maryland, DC, Virginia, Pennsylvania and Delaware. Based on the few I've visited, the Bowie location appears to be one of the better-run franchises.

Since I'm considering effect on the Bowie restaurant landscape, I have to dock California Tortilla a star simply for being part of a chain. If it didn't have a Bowie restaurant, you could still go to College Park or Laurel or wherever. But it gets half a star back for the new Coke Freestyle machine. Want to try a Raspberry Coke Zero or a Vanilla Sprite? Not a problem with this machine that mixes your soda on the fly and is worth a visit for its own sake.

Bowie Restaurant Project: Introduction

When we started to talk about moving to Bowie, one of the things that worried us was the lack of quality restaurants. When I discovered that the City of Bowie had posted a restaurant guide, I hoped that it would help me get a handle on the local dining options. At first glance, the choices did not look promising. Among the guide's 91 options were 2 McDonald's, 2 Pizza Huts, 3 Starbucks, 1 Starbucks/Pizza Hut and 7 Subways.

And yet, I knew there were some decent restaurants in Bowie. Grace's Fortune, for example, is always an excellent choice for taking someone out to lunch who is visiting our office.

Soon I got the idea that I would visit all of the restaurants in Bowie and review them on my blog, to ferret out the gems in between the fast-food sameness. I call this my "Bowie Restaurant Project".

Some explanations/ground rules.

1. I am using foursquare to track my visits to these restaurants. (As of this writing, it looks like I've been to 21 of them.) In some cases, I visited restaurants before I started using foursquare in January 2010. I will try to revisit those to have a more recent experience, but I don't promise to.

2. In fact, I reserve the right to modify the project as it goes along, based on my whims and tastes. In particular, I may not visit all 7 Subways, and even if I do, I probably will not be able to tell them apart.

3. To start, I am going to knock the total of 91 restaurants down to 89. First, Bowie counts "Vacant" at "13015 9th Street" as one of the 91. Although that location appears to be served by "Mama Cocoa's Delights" now, since it isn't listed in the guide, it doesn't qualify. (Maybe when the 2012 guide comes out I'll be able to determine whether a candy shop counts as a restaurant.) Second, another of the 91 is Seattle's Best, which was located in Border's, which is now closed.

4. I am going to rate the restaurants on a 5-star scale. Rather than rating solely on quality and value, I am also going to judge how much the restaurant contributes to the Bowie restaurant landscape.  A mediocre Chinese restaurant might get 2 or 2 1/2 stars, because Bowie already has 10 Chinese restaurants. But a hypothetical mediocre Thai restaurant might get 3 or even 3 1/2 stars, simply because Bowie currently has no options for Thai food.

5. You can view all of the reviews collected here.

6. Update (7/23/11): I have disqualified 10 more "restaurants" for either not serving meals or being takeout-only.

Nebula Update: Powers by Ursula K. Le Guin

Powers by Ursula K. Le Guin
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Powers won the 2008 Nebula for Best Novel, so I read it as part of my project to read all of the Nebula novels. That puts me at 32 out of 46, including all of the ones 1992-2009. Earlier this year, the novels Blackout and All Clear by Connie Willis won the 2010 award. I started reading Blackout last year, but my increasingly hectic life got in the way of finishing it before it was due back to the library. I'm going to try the Kindle route with George RR Martin's new Song of Ice and Fire book later this month; if that goes well, maybe I'll do the same for the Willis books.

But back to Powers. It's the third book in the Annals of the Western Shore trilogy. I really enjoyed the first two (I don't believe in taking shortcuts into series). Powers is in many ways classic Le Guin -- deep themes (the role of women in society, the need to fight against injustice) set in a science fiction, or (in this case) fantasy setting. The fantasy, however, in this book is pretty weak stew, however. The protagonist's "powers" are more something he runs from than anything else (in contrast to the first two books, where the magic looms larger). Mainly what makes this feel like fantasy is the non-Earth, vaguely medieval setting. I liked this as a book, but I'm disappointed it won the Nebula, since it doesn't really feel like fantasy. (I felt similarly about "The City & The City", which was nominated for, but did not win, the 2009 award.) So it ends up getting 4/5 stars. A heavier fantasy element would probably have pushed it to 5.

Once again, I find the county insistence on shelving these books in "Young Adult" to be puzzling. The book contains references to rape and child murder. These themes are treated with the appropriate gravity, and perhaps high school is a good time to learn how awful the world can be, but I think it's a weird label to place on very sophisticated books (that I would still recommend to a bright teenager).

View all my reviews

World Heritage Update: Rideau Canal

This week, I had the opportunity to visit the Rideau Canal in Ottawa. It is one of the best-preserved 19th-century North American canals, built partially as a defense should the US block the St. Lawrence Seaway.

This is my 48th World Heritage Site visited, so I'm up to 5.3% briefly before more are inscribed later this month. Since I've visited none of the candidates, that will drop my percentage back down again.

I was in Ottawa 15 years ago, but I don't remember making it to the canal. If I come across the pictures that prove otherwise, I'll update my World Heritage page to reflect the visit.

Where's Jon? Estonia Edition

It's time for the latest in a continuing series of posts where I examine the pictures conference organizers post and try to find myself in them. This time, it's last month's conference in Estonia, where the game was somewhat tricky.

See me in that picture? It's not easy, but I'm there in the upper left.

Geocaching and Waymarking Estonia

Can you spot the geocache in this picture? (Answer at end of post.) Ordinarily, I'm not a big fan of urban geocaching, but I wanted to add "Estonia" to my list of countries geocached. I think that makes 10.

There aren't a ton of waymarks in Tallinn, but on my recent trip, I decided to hit a few of them and add a couple more. I started out with adding a "You Are Here" ("Asud Siin") sign just outside my hotel.

I think my favorite part is the other "You Are Here" sign right behind it. (No, I didn't mark that one; I don't have time to be a completist.)

Next, we come to what was probably my favorite waymark, "Moment After the Kiss". Near the hotel, just outside Old Tallinn, is a park with a hill known as "Kissing Hill". The government (no idea whether local or national) commissioned this sculpture a few years ago. I think I just like the fact that a government was able to install something other than a bland, literal statue of two people kissing. Props to the Estonians for their taste in art.

Hmm. According to the sculptor's web site, there was also a "Moment Before the Kiss" sculpture that I missed. Oh, well. Maybe next time.

I visited a couple more waymarks of minimal interest, and created one more. I had been to the World Heritage site of Old Tallinn almost exactly four years ago. Although I had just started waymarking, I didn't create the waymarking in the "World Heritage Sites" category. I rectified that this time.

OK, well what about that geocache? It was under the post box.

Sorry for the odd angle on the picture, but it was actually harder to take the picture without attracting notice than it was to retrieve the geocache. To retrieve it, I just sat on the ground and pretended to fiddle with my phone (OK, I actually was fiddling with my phone, trying to get WiFi) until nobody was looking too closely. Sadly, neither geocoin I had with me fit in the box, but I did accomplish my goal of finding an Estonian cache.

Department of e-mails you're slightly happier to get from a TA...

Jon: Good news.  I found your name on a fax from Frithjof.  (It was not with the other names, which is why I didn't get it when I was recording grades--sorry about that.)  In any case, I'll have the "I" removed.  Your paper grade was "A" so that should figure toward an "A" or A minus for the course.  Sorry for the confusion. --Jeff

This e-mail (received 20 years ago today) is a follow up to the one from four days ago. I figured it was better off not asking why anyone would fax a list of names with one of them in a different place than all the others.

The paper? I think this is a draft of it. Intriguingly, it seems to only contain the first part, "Law and Punishments"; the intriguing second part, "Existentialism and Mathematics" appears to be lost to history except for this first page.

Written on an airplane earlier this week...

Spending 8 hours crammed into a plane seat in coach is not generally my idea of a good time (oh, how I miss those upgrades). One advantage, though, is that it gives me time to let my mind wander -- time that has been in short supply lately. I don't have to think about diaper changing, or work, or groceries...

Of course, many of the thoughts are still about the kids. Listening to a podcast which mentions "The Right Stuff" makes me think about how it would be fun to show the kids that movie some day -- maybe when they're 13 or so. And then the thought pops into my head -- what if one of  them wants to be a pilot? While that would be cool, I think it would be very stressful to have the same kid who right now can't feed himself in charge of making a hunk of metal hurl through the air.

In order to slow down the mental percolation enough to  get some sleep, I switched from my podcasts to a playlist of my favorite songs. (The measure of success I've had can be seen by the fact I'm composing this blog entry five hours into the flight.) As my fickle fingers skipped some songs
and lingered on others, I pondered what constituted a really enjoyable song for me.

I feel like it's easy to make a decent song out of common themes -- love (requited or no), growing up, etc. Some of the songs on my favorites list come from this source -- "Take Me, I'm Yours",
"In My Life" and "Scenes from An Italian Restaurant," to name three examples.

But what I find really cool are when an artist can take a song about a theme few others would think to sing about -- and then make it work.

Some examples I've listened to tonight:

·       Elvis Costello's "Veronica" -- a song about a woman with Alzhemier's. It brings tears to my eyes most times I hear it. (But not tonight for some reason -- maybe it's the dry airplane air.)

·       The Band's "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down" -- about the end of the Civil War -- not a usual topic for top 40. Also, I always take a moment to enjoy the fact that the good guys won that one.

·       Ben Folds' "Levi Johnston's Blues" (with Nick Hornby) -- Not just a song about Bristol Palin's baby daddy -- not just a song from the viewpoint of Levi Johnston -- but a song that incorporates Levi Johnston's own words from his Myspace page and makes them sound melodious. (For the record: "I'm a fuckin' redneck, I live to hang out with the boys, play
some hockey, do some fishing and kill some moose. I like to shoot the shit and do some chillin' I guess. You fuck with me, and I'll kick your ass.") I guess this is technically about love and growing up, but it comes at it from such a different angle.

Sometimes this leads me a bit in the direction of the novelty song -- I don't think anyone's going to confuse Manfred Mann's "The Mighty Quinn (Quinn the Eskimo)" with a work of genius. These are the songs that earn a look from Christina that says, "Really?"
when they come on the iPod shuffle. In some cases, they earn a quick fast-forward -- say, Jump 'n' the Saddle's "The Curly Shuffle", or most of the"Weird Al" oeuvre -- unless she's feeling particularly indulgent.

I like to think that these are the types of songs I'd  write if I wrote songs. I don't think the world would be any poorer without another song of love lost or regrets of youth. But wouldn't it be a nicer place to live if there were good songs about pseudoprimes or meeples or identical
twins or one of the other things that race through my head on a transatlantic  flight.

You might think, "Jon, I can imagine what those songs would sound like if you wrote them, and I'm glad you don't write songs." Ah, but that's what makes songs like that so wonderful. "The Cask of Amontillado" is a great American short story; I'd have no idea how to turn it into a song -- but Alan Parsons and Eric Woolfson did. "Right Here, Right Now" was probably not the most brilliant song of twenty years ago, but the end of the Cold War was a pretty big deal, and I find it odd that this was its only musical commemoration.

I should try to get some sleep now.

Maybe the "E" doesn't stand for "Estonia"

When I visited Estonia in 2007, I made fun of the "Old Estonia" restaurant for spelling their name with a superfluous "E" in tacky "Ye Olde Shoppe" style. On my return this week, I was gratified to see lots of signs for "Old Estonia". I figured they had come to their senses.

Examination of my old photo, on the other hand, shows that they had already rubbed out the extra "E" in the metal sign, with only the awning emphasizing "Olde". The new awning does as well, although it is not captured in my new picture below. Their web site confirms that the correct name is, in fact, "Old Estonia," so my new theory is just that there's a signmaker in Tallinn who doesn't know how to spell.

A nice memory...

OK, the picture is closer to forty years ago than twenty years ago, but here is an e-mail from May 18, 1991:

I played Spite 'n' Malice w/ Oma today...she seemed tickled to death when I suggested it, although she said "You're only doing this to be nice".  There are worse reasons to do things, and besides it was fun.
I won $0.05, too.

(Not posted: various grumpy e-mails about how she always managed to wake me up a few minutes before my alarm went off, even when I tried to anticipate her and set my alarm for a few minutes earlier.)

Department of e-mails you don't want to receive from a TA...

Twenty years ago today, I got this note:

Jon: When Frithjof faxed the grades for the final papers, yours was not on the list.  I'm going to double check everything just to be sure, but I'm quite certain your grade isn't there.  Assuming that there was nothing unusual about the way you turned the paper in (putting it in a box, sliding it under a door, etc.--if any of that happened, let me know because it may still be sitting somewhere), the best thing to do,if possible, is to get another copy to me via the Dept. office (i.e. give it to the secretary).  If there's a problem with this, let me know. Sorry about the confusion.  --Jeff

I find two things remarkably modern about this: that the bad news was delivered via e-mail, and that I was just able to grab another copy off my hard drive. Not bad for 1991! On the other hand, two things seem quite ancient -- that copy was to be printed off and mailed, and the grades were faxed in.

The Joys of Waymark Posting

On my waymarking profile, I have the following defense of visiting waymarks, which I think I originally posted years ago in the waymarking forums. (Many waymarkers only create their own waymarks, but never visit others'.)

56 reasons why visiting is better than posting.

1. It's easier. You don't have to spend a bunch of time looking up information on when the sculpture was created, or the web site of the library...
   
   
2. It's deeper. After your visit, the waymark page will have more than one perspective on it, possibly including pictures from different seasons, or as the site changes.
   
   
3. It connects you with someone else. You get to see the site through the eyes of the person who posted the waymark.
   
   
4. It connects someone else with you. The person who visits the waymark will (probably) be happy that someone else has enjoyed it.
   
   
5. It acts as a double-check. While in San Diego recently, I found a couple of waymarks where the coordinates were off by about a mile. I pointed that out in my log, so the owner apologized and corrected.
   
   
6. You don't have to wait for approval to post a visit.

I haven't posted a waymark since August, but lately I've been considering the other side of the equation -- namely, what do I get out of my posted waymarks? Well, for one thing, I get notifications every time someone visits my waymark. In particular, it's fun to think that some German guy posted the above photo to verify that he had been at the waymark. Of course, for this waymark (Roman ruins in Cologne), he had taken the picture to log a virtual geocache. Because of the geocache, it's probably my most-visited waymark, but consider my Tim Horton's waymark in Ontario.

This guy undoubtedly took this goofy picture not as a souvenir of nabbing some delicious Canadian donuts, but rather to post to my waymark. Awesome. It makes me want to post more waymarks. Of course, this only works if other people buy into the idea of visiting them. So I'll try to do both on my upcoming trip.

Math Reviews

I have a post up at my mathematics blog about my first review to appear in Mathematics Reviews.

First Bike Ride of Spring

On Saturday, while the kids were napping, I went for my first bike ride of the spring. I tried to do some geocaching at the College Park Airport, but I could not find the geocache.

Since time was short (and the kids were probably going to wake up), I tried to cut through Riverdale. Unfortunately, there was a train stopped on the tracks.

Not knowing how long this would last -- there have been a couple of human-train collisions in the area recently -- I headed through Hyattsville. When I got to the train bridge underpass over the Northeast Branch, I saw the train moving at about 10 mph. So it probably would have been faster to wait. And my legs would have thanked me. But this was a nice ride, and a good workout (about 10.5 miles).

First Ride of Spring at EveryTrail

Because I didn't have a blog in 1991...

20 years ago today,

The donut sale that we were supposed to have today got cancelled because the student government told us the wrong day & the Korean Christian Fellowship was actually the group scheduled for today. For a while, we were stuck with 360 donuts, but the marching band, which is having a sale elsewhere today, bought most of them & the student government bought the rest since they messed up & we don't have any money.

 I believe the "we" is the Undergraduate Math Club.

The "Stay at Home Bowl": Dubious Achievement Update

In 2003, I gave a list of all of the teams to defeat both Super Bowl participants. Teams that can sit at home and say, "We can beat either of these guys." At the time, I was rooting for a Patriots-Seahawks Super Bowl, since the (5-11) Redskins had beaten both teams and would have tied the 1981 Browns for the worst team to have this "dubious achievement" had the Seahawks not exited the playoffs before the Big Game. I was reminded of this post recently when I heard Bob Ryan on Tony Kornheiser's radio show talk about how great the 2010 Patriots were because they had beaten both Super Bowl entrants. So which teams in the past 8 years get added to the list?

• 2010 New England Patriots (14-2)
• 2008 Philadelphia Eagles (9-6-1)
• 2008 New York Giants (12-4)
• 2005 Jacksonville Jaguars (12-4)
• 2004 Pittsburgh Steelers (15-1) 

The Patriots are second only to the 2004 Steelers for the team with the best record to hold this distinction. Let's ask the following question, though.  Of the 15 previous winners of the "Stay at Home Bowl", how did each team fare the following season?

• Won Super Bowl: 2005 Steelers
• Lost Super Bowl: 1979 Rams
• Lost in Conference Championship: 1980 Chargers*, 1981 Chargers, 2008 Eagles
• Lost in Divisional Round: 1994 Dolphins
• Lost in Wild Card Round: 1982 Browns, 1987 Seahawks
• Missed Playoffs: 1986 Dolphins, 1997 Cowboys, 2001 Titans, 2001 Redskins, 2006 Jaguars, 2009 Giants

So these teams have a 60% success rate making the playoffs next year, well above the normal rate (which has been between 35 and 43 percent, except for the 1982 strike year). Perhaps more impressive, these teams have a 33% rate of making the conference championship game, well above the 12-15% rate when you consider all teams.

Book Review: Voices

Voices by Ursula K. Le Guin

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Voices is the second book in Le Guin's Tales of the Western Shore trilogy. I read it because the third book, Powers, won the 2008 Nebula. I'm also reading it because Le Guin is a fantastic writer. If I counted correctly, Le Guin has won the most Nebulas for Best Novel with 4 -- nobody else has won more than 2. Even more impressively, her wins were in four different decades. I wouldn't put it past her to add a 5th in the coming years. She's also won a National Book Award and a Newberry Medal.

I had been avoiding reading fiction recently, except on travel, because, you know, babies. But I find it important to read a little before bed to unwind. I figure that since I can renew books twice, nine weeks is more than enough time to finish a novel. What I didn't count on is the compelling nature of Le Guin's writing. I planned on reading a chapter at a time, but sometimes I got so absorbed that I went through 2 or 3 chapters, robbing me of precious sleep. (Of course, sometimes my eyes drooped after a few pages, and I couldn't get through the chapter.)

Voices is less of a sequel to Gifts than a companion, set about twenty years later in the same general setting. The two main characters from Gifts appear in important, but not leading, roles. It tells the tale of a young woman in land under foreign occupation. She is from a prominent family, but a branch of it who have ended up as servants. Nobody in this land is doing particularly well due to the occupation (she is in fact the daughter of a soldier who raped her now-deceased mother). The book chronicles the awakening of her somewhat-vague magical powers and the struggle of her people to free themselves.

It was interesting reading this book while, in the real world, protests shook the Egyptian dictatorship. I don't want to be too glib in drawing parallels -- in particular, Egypt is not under foreign occupation. But there was a certain resonance that made Voices more exciting to read in this context.

My county library continues their practice of shelving much science fiction in the "young adult" section. It used to bother me more to have to go there to retrieve what I consider quite-sophisticated fiction. Perhaps parenthood has softened my perspective, though -- if it means that well-written books with mature themes are more accessible to kids, maybe it isn't so bad.

In the end, I gave Voices 4/5 stars rather than 5/5 because I found it compelling, but not gripping. Maybe I'm splitting hairs, but while it was very enjoyable and thought-provoking at the time of reading, I don't see this as a book I'll be mulling over in the months or years to come.



View all my reviews

Geocoin Update: Free State Generic #3

I haven't had the chance to find any geocaches since the two in November (winter is always a slow season, even when you don't have twins to juggle).  But the geocoin I dropped off then has been getting some updates.

Three days after I dropped it off, someone picked it up.  They dropped it off New Year's Eve in a cache in Delaware.    Yesterday, someone picked it up with the note that it was their "first geocoin". That makes me a little nervous, since it seems more likely that they won't know what to do with it or that they will give up geocaching shortly.  Then again, I've been holding on to a trackable for two-and-a-half months, so I'm one to talk.

Sadly, since my last update, the other geocoins have been MIA.  I marked them as such, and have pretty much written them off.

Foursquare, reconsidered

A year ago today, I wrote a post about this new site called "Foursquare" I had started using. At the time, none of my friends were using it, so that dampened my enthusiasm.  Well, a year later, I'm still using and enjoying it.  Here are my reflections after a year:

• Being mayor is cool, but a majority of places I'm mayor of, I have a very tenuous hold on -- someone visiting two days in a row could knock me out.  
• I like saying I'm the mayor of a park or a good restaurant, but less so a grocery store or a gas station.  As the parent of twin infants, I find my opportunity to visit places frequently to be fairly diminished.  That should pick up again as they get more mobile.
• Nobody cares about Foursquare points.  They need to revamp them or get rid of them.
• By April, five of my friends had started using Foursquare, and when Christina started in May, it became a lot more interesting.  Sometimes, seeing where people check in interests me more than a Facebook status update.
• I still haven't used it for a spontaneous meeting with a friend.  I think it promises a lot of, "Hey, so-and-so is at the bar down the street, let's meet up," but at my age and place in life that isn't going to happen.  As I said last year, "I could see this being pretty neat 15 years ago in grad school."
• The badges are awesome.  I think they're my favorite part -- I especially enjoy generating badge envy.  Some badges I'm envious of: Just Desserts, Historian, and for some reason most of all, I'm on a Boat!
• They've addressed the cheating pretty well, especially with the recent requirement to use a location-aware phone for check-in.  It would have prevented me from getting any mayorships and badges from last January to April on my old Palm Treo, but I guess the world moves on.
• It would really help if the game got more developed.  For now, as long as they release more badges, I'll be pretty happy, but the whole real world meets digital gaming nexus probably needs more dimensions to take off.