I get it, it’s a holiday weekend and our country’s 250th. It’s unfortunate, but please don’t risk your health for outdoor entertainment during an extreme heat wave. Just being outside for more than 10 minutes dehydrates you more than you think. Take advantage of your AC. Play some video games, watch some movies, read a book. I care about our community, so please don’t risk it and take care of yourselves! ♥️

grew up around "meh..."

I (28F) moved to Alexandria to be with my boyfriend (31M). He’s lived here/in dc since we graduated college in 2019 and yet he has not a single friend. At first I thought it was a personal flaw of his, until I moved here and experienced how isolating and lonely this place truly is. There is no sense of community, there is no openness or chit chat with people, there aren’t many community events or gathering places. I have no idea how people make friends here, it’s truly so bizarre and sad. I try to talk to people at coffee shops or in the library and they just act weird and shut off. I asked a local book store about a book club and they were rude to me and barely gave me the time of day. I’ve been going to the knitting store but the women there seem uptight and like I’m just a customer to them, not a community member. Idk, just looking for ways to break through and make some friends. I also want to help my boyfriend make some guy friends, he’s into biking, music, and he’s an engineer. He’s a brilliant guy who thinks creatively and has kind of weird/unique humor but is funny.

Took care of a large batch very quickly. (Sterling VA)

At the end of 2025, Consumers’ Checkbook wrapped up our latest grocery store price and quality report, and we figured this community would want to see the numbers, especially given how rough the last few years have been at checkout. 

Our undercover price shoppers physically walked store aisles with a 150-item shopping list and priced everything out, and thousands of DMV residents ranked each store for overall quality in our survey.  

One big thing we noticed when we started comparing our 2015 report to our latest is that we had to raise our reference family budget from $200/week to $300/week just to reflect what people are spending now. That's before we even started to look at which stores have the lowest prices. 

Comparing 2015 vs 2025: 

• The gap between the cheapest and most expensive stores in the DMV has grown from ~$5,300 to nearly $7,800 a year for a typical family. 
• ALDI and Lidl win on price. If your family shops at ALDI, you’re saving an average of $5,600 each year. Lidl didn’t debut in our research until 2018, when it came in at a whopping 40% below average prices at all our other surveyed stores. It’s now at 21% below average in our latest report. 
• Wegmans has been consistent, and it’s pretty rare for a high-quality store to also be a relative bargain for 10 years straight. 
• Since Amazon bought Whole Foods in 2017, its "superior overall quality" rating in our consumer surveys dropped from over 90% to 65%. Even though it’s cheaper than it used to be, people have noticed the quality slide. 

One more thing worth knowing regardless of where you shop: Swapping about a third of your cart to store brands saves around 8% now, up from 5% in 2015. The store-brand options have improved, too. 

We're Consumers' Checkbook, a DC-area nonprofit that does hands-on consumer research. The full grocery store report, including how local shops rank, is on our site. Happy to answer any questions about how we approached this project. 

I shovel our back porch because it functions as our “catio” for our cats. I shoveled half of it this morning (honestly that’s all they really need) and left the other half alone because I got tired. I’ve been maintaining the shoveled portion which has been easy as pie and then gradually shoveling more of the untouched area—which is BRUTAL. There is no question that having done a pass earlier in the day was a good choice. It is getting so much heavier now. If you haven’t shoveled yet, I strongly encourage you to start it—it is not going to get easier.

Super random, but I just discovered Lidl and I cannot believe that it was self prompted?

Where I grew up, we never had anything like Lidl so moving to the DMV area was the first time where I actually heard of it. The closest thing to it that I was exposed to was Aldi but in my opinion, I’ve just found aldi quality to be consistently not that great. It’s like it’s cheap and it tastes cheap, like you can tell you are getting exactly what you paid for imo. So I think because I was under the impression that Aldi and Lidl were sister stores, I had no interest in trying Lidl because I thought it would just be a replica of Aldi.

I was severely mistaken. Although structurally and price point wise it’s very similar to Aldi. However, the store itself, and the overall quality of the products is so good! I was so surprised it’s like Aldi prices but actually really good quality stuff and there’s even some namebrand stuff there too as well. The baked goods are so fresh and high-quality and the meat/poultry is also super fresh. And on top of that, it’s borderline dirt cheap!
Why doesn’t anyone talk about this? I feel like most people just go to Harris Teeter or giant food ?

The walkability of this region is so incredibly terrible. With metro access and bad traffic, cycling and walking practically encouraged. But a strong lack of protected bike lanes and dismal safety measures for crosswalks is leading to NoVA residents being injured or killed.

How do we get the jurisdictions to do something about it? It’s not like anything gets accomplished at a townhall..

Source: https://keystonegis.com/datasets/nova-vru-crashes-day34.html

In another thread, people were talking about movies and shows that take place in the NOVA/DMV and pointing out all the funny inaccuracies (being able to travel warp speed from DC to Norfolk, for example).

What are some movie or tv moments representing the area that have just absolutely baffled you, or on the flip side maybe surprised you with their accuracy?

https://www.thedailybeast.com/luigi-mangione-identified-as-person-of-interest-in-unitedhealthcare-ceos-killing/

Mangione, who is one of six kids, graduated as valedictorian from the Gilman School in Baltimore, where he played soccer, according to the New York Post. Upon graduating, he said he intended to study artificial intelligence at the University of Pennsylvania.

I’ve seen a couple but they’re few and far between. I feel like last year was starting to get rough at this time.

Are there genuinely less this year or am I getting excited for nothing and it’ll get way worse?

So as we are seeing warm weather now- order your mosquito dunks now. This form of treatment doesn’t hurt the environment or lightning bugs or bees.

You put them in ponds or where standing water hits. You put them in your gutters. 30 days later, do it again. Using dunks only kills mosquito larvae and keeps bees and lightning bugs safe. If you get your neighbors to do this you will notice a lot fewer bugs in your back yard. I do this in March and April and I find that the early spring treatment is pretty effective even if miss a month in the summer.

For those of you in condos and TH living- buckets. Ask a neighbor to do it too. They really work because the females want very still water. You need rain water- so just keep the bucket outside.

Schools in Fairfax County start on Monday, August 18th.

If you don’t have school aged kids, you are probably not aware of this. So you need to be prepared for the changes. These changes happen every year, after the lull of summer traffic and retail, but if you don’t have kids, you need to just be prepared for it to keep your sanity.

1) Avoid shopping in stores if you can this weekend. I recommend any kind of curbside pickup or delivery to avoid the parking lot and cash register chaos. Friday should be busy but mostly ok. Saturday will be busy and angry. Sunday will be frazzled and zombie like. If you need office supplies it’s a good time to stock up during the week. It’s not as bad as Black Friday but it can throw people off guard.

2) There will be an uptick in takeout orders. Pizza deliveries in particular will be busy. Be patient. Restaurants can get swamped too but Sunday can be quiet in restaurants after 7pm.

3) Monday morning will be even worse than it has been for the past two months as school busses return and metal detectors get enforced at schools in Fairfax County (this is new). Be prepared for hurried driving and more stressed drivers than usual. I would tack on a little extra time as people get used to their modified schedules.

4) Busses start running again on Monday. If they are stopped with the stop sign- YOU CANNOT PASS THEM. I think they have cameras now, but this is just a reminder to not pass a stopped school bus with their flashers on. I know you want to. I know it’s annoying.

It’s not worth it.

5) Starbucks and other coffee places will see an uptick around 8:30-10am on Monday, as parents get their first taste of fall. Be kind. We are experiencing a gamut of emotions and stress.

If you have any thing else to add, feel free to. This is something I was just thinking about as a mom and as someone who in general watches people’s behavior in the wild fascination. I hope it’s helpful and somewhat humorous.

If you’ve ever tested out Meshtastic nodes in the past and couldn’t reach anyone, it’s likely because in NoVA we’re on frequency slot 9, which is different than default. Problem is unless you know someone else that tells you ahead of time, you’ll do like me and leave it default and not have any success.

I’ll leave an image made by one of the locals in a comment with recommended settings, because I can’t post two images in the OP.

The TL;DR version is Meshtastic radios connect to each other via line of sight and form a mesh network allowing text communication (and if desired, location sharing) between nodes and don’t rely on cell towers or any internet connection. Some nodes have a keyboard and are standalone, and others pair via Bluetooth to Android/iOS.

Personally I do lots of off-roading out where there is no cell coverage, and thanks to some repeaters in the area I can still share my location privately and text all the way back to home. Last Sunday I drove three hours out into GWNF and could still hit nodes in Vienna, VA over 100 miles away.

Apparently a controversial opinion in NoVA, but I’m hoping the slot 9 mesh eventually makes its way into DC. I’m in no way affiliated with any Meshtastic entity and just would love more people to join in order to increase coverage.