The folks at the Capitol Riverfront Business Improvement District (covering Near Southeast and Buzzards Point) have posted a small online questionnaire about the current state of the area and priorities for service as the BID gets itself up and running, if you feel like spending a few minutes passing along some feedback and opinions...

Building 136 at the Southeast Federal Center, the low-rise beige building along Tingey Street east of First that was home at one time to a Government Printing Office operation, is meeting its maker this morning. It is within the footprint of The Yards, and eventually an office building will be developed on this spot, but that's most likely a number of years away, and so in the meantime the space is slated to be a surface parking lot. (There's already a surface lot next to it, fronting First Street directly across from the ballpark.) Even though as of this writing there's still a fair amount of the structure left, I'm betting that nothing will prevent this demolition from being completed, so I've added it as #139 on my Demolished Buildings page.

Some Nationals players took part in the first "batting practice" at the new ballpark on Saturday afternoon. The Post says: "[A]n hour-long program in which [Ryan] Zimmerman and teammates Ryan Church, Justin Maxwell, Wily Mo Pena and Brian Schneider took a bit of batting practice at the unfinished park put the focus where this franchise wants it -- on the future. [...] A group of construction workers -- many of them on the job site at 5 or 6 a.m. -- joined the players, gathering for autographs. The players marveled at the new scoreboard, where a massive high-definition television will be installed, and thought to next year." MLB.com has a piece focused just on the hitting practice, quoting Zimmerman as saying: "I never hit in a place like this. It's like a video game or something. I haven't been here in a couple of months. It has come a long way. It looks real nice. We are real excited to be here next year." And here's the WashTimes article. Also, Yahoo has some of the AP photos of the batting session.