Cards to Get, Squirrels on Debt and a Single Back Set

Happy Friday, Rockville!

Is everyone ready for an unofficial last blast of summer? Schools returned to session this week. College football is back (Fight on State!)—and the NFL season is almost upon us. The Nats are their usual 20-plus games out of first place. It must be Labor Day weekend!

Here’s your “cheers to not working on Labor Day” edition of “The Rundown”:

• I was in Town Square on Tuesday after , but I haven’t been back since the calendar turned to September. So I don’t know what to make of the “parking ticket” that I got at the counter with my slice of pie at on Tuesday. It’s a summons.
  “Starting in September,” its says in script. Then: “You are hereby summoned to PARK FREE at Rockville Town Square.”
  If you’ve tried parking in Rockville Town Square and achieved “validation,” please let us know about the experience.
• One of the first tests for the new parking rules will be Town Square’s new Friday Night Concerts on the Square. The concert series runs from 6 to 9 p.m. every Friday in September. It at with the tropical rhythms and Samba sounds of Mambo Combo.
• In case you missed it (and in our celebrity-obsessed culture, Rockville has received more TV news coverage and blog play on this one than it has on anything in some time, so it’s been pretty hard to miss) .
  Mayor Phyllis Marcuccio accepted Fox 5’s offer to “come on down” on Wednesday for an interview about Barker and deer with anchor Shawn Yancy.
• Do you have a library card? Do you want one? If you don’t and if you do, September is the month to get it. (Got it?) September is Library Card Sign-Up Month, sponsored by the American Library Association and Montgomery County Public Libraries. (The month features a cool national spokesman who is from Maryland.)
  Call Ask-a-Librarian at 240-777-0001 or visit the library online at www.montgomerycountymd.gov/library. A reminder: County libraries will be closed Sunday and Monday.
• The will be open Monday, but will operate on a Sunday schedule. The center’s outdoor fitness pool begins its modified fall schedule Tuesday. No Doggie Dip Day this year. (Whimper, whimper.)
  Summer is over, but trips to the pool don’t have to end. The swim center launches a new program this fall: The Kids Rock After School Program provides a safe and affordable place for children in the Beall community. The program encourages fitness, artistic creativity, academic success and self-discipline in students in kindergarten through fifth grade. Daily transportation from is provided.
• County Executive Ike Leggett acknowledged that U.S. Rep. Chris Van Hollen’s appearance at Tuesday’s Choice Hotels groundbreaking was just one of the many demands on the congressman’s time. Such is life when you’ve been as Leggett called Van Hollen during an introduction. Leggett added that Van Hollen is “going to watch out for our interests to make certain that nothing is left unturned.”
  Van Hollen seems to be taking his so-called super status in stride. “I got some calls of congratulations,” he said of the appointment to the bipartisan committee tasked with trimming $1.5 trillion from the federal deficit. “But the people who really understood what it meant called with their condolences.”
• For a look at what Van Hollen and his congressional colleagues are up against, check out the short film “The Spending is Nuts,” (a cartoon!) by Justin Folk. The film recently earned Folk $100,000 in a contest sponsored by Power Line and the Freedom Club.
  Full disclosure: The tales (and tales) of these squirrels have a political bent. Power Line is a blog operated by founders of the Freedom Club, a Minnesota-based 501(c)4 organization that supports conservative political candidates, including presidential candidate and U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann of Minnesota.
• In honor of this weekend’s kickoff of the college and high school football seasons, we leave you with this: A is making a name for himself in another kind of contest. Or, should I say, his name is making a name for him.
  Former Ram and current University of New Mexico Lobos freshman running back Crusoe Gongbay trailed “Houston county employee” Chuntania Dangerfield (who appears to be employed by Harris County, Texas) in an April 21 post describing the “Sithole Region” contest on the “Name of the Year” blog.
  There hasn’t been a fresh post on the blog since June 25. Unfortunately, according to that post, which listed the tournament’s Sweet 16 matchups, Dangerfield, a No. 8 seed, got all the respect and No. 9 seed Crusoe, well, he got the Gongbay. (Sorry to go there—mostly because that terrible pun also show my age.)
  Thanks to former Rockville Patch sports editor Aaron Oster (currently a radioman for the Carolina League Lynchburg Hillcats) for the “get.”
• "Like" Rockville Patch on Facebook. Follow us @RockvillePatch on Twitter.