Three odd bits from the trip up to Washington to see a Wild Things game:

1. Tomorrow night, they're playing an exhibition match between the Pittsburgh Riverhounds and the Columbus Crew at the stadium. I still don't understand how they fit a soccer field at a baseball stadium. To promote this, they bring in the Riverhounds mascot. I didn't realize that despite the logo, the mascot is a hound. A basset hound. A very sad looking basset hound. The kind of basset hound that's suffered a team getting dropped from USL First Division to Second Division.

2. On my birthday, Bob Dylan is playing the stadium. Good to know he's still too cool for the county fair circuit (which is going on about a mile away on the same day.)

3. In between and temporally equidistant, the big deal is the folks at Build-A-Bear Workshop is allowing kids the opportunity to build their own fuzzy version of the mascot. I do have to say there's just something awesome about the promotion name. "Build A Thing Workshop" Nothing quite gives me the feeling of "We're way behind on production. Screw quality control, we don't care how bad it looks, just get it done." like the phrase "Build A Thing Workshop." It even has that slight whiff of special education euphemism about it. I may start using this at the office. "C'mon folks, this isn't Build A Thing Workshop here, we gotta get the bugs down."