A regular summary of irregular news and notes from neighborhood blogs and email lists around the District.

Cupcakeless: There were no Curbside Cupcakes for Congress Heights on the Rise when the blog tried to venture onto Saint Elizabeths yesterday to patronize the food truck. The campus, the new home for the Department for Homeland Security, is gated off to the community for security reasons. The blog writes, “I understand the need for a ‘secure’ campus. I know the times in which we live but there has to be a middle ground. You cannot be in a community that already feels like an afterthought and treat them like they are an unwanted imposition.”

Can It: The Bloomingdale Blog posted a message from someone seeking advice on who to contact about trashcans left in the alleyways. “The house directly behind mine (which I think is a small apartment building) not only leaves their 4 or 5 cans out in the alley, but there is ALWAYS trash lying on the ground near their cans.”

Ripped Off: A member of the Cleveland Park email list warns members about the perils of using “loss leader” coupons you may find in circulars like ValuePak. Apparently, she wanted to use a company’s services to clean her HVAC systems; with the coupons, her bill would have been $88. When the technician came, he first opened her furnace (which had nothing to do with the HVAC), then attempted to talk her into $1000 worth of repairs. After she declined, she went to walk her dogs. Upon returning, the technician was gone and her HVAC was broken. When she called, she spoke to a “snotty young woman” who yelled at her for leaving and said she would have to pay the original $88, and then $199 for having the company return. Instead she called another company, “The man who came out found that the first technician had deliberately yanked several wires out of their sockets, some of which were visible, and some buried underneath the blower motor.”

Rotting Away: Two fountains that were once a part of the District’s landscape until about the 1940s are, for the most part, rotting in the Fort Washington National Park in Maryland, according to Left for LeDroit. The top half of one fountain was placed in McMillan Reservoir in 1992. But, its base  is in Fort Washington Park. “I went to Fort Washington in search of these discarded works of art. I asked a park ranger where the fountain was and she drew me a map, saying that it stood in the park’s ‘dump’ and partly behind a fence,” writes the blog.