Not everyone comes to Washington in the springtime to beg for bailout money, gloat about multi-million-dollar bonus rip-offs or to lobby Congress for special hometown pork barrel deals. For nearly 100 years, residents and visitors have had more important things to do. They stroll out into the sunlit D.C. streets to wonder at clouds of bright red that have descended on the Nation’s capital city. There they enjoy the annual Cherry Blossom Festival, with week-long events until Sunday, April 12.

The 2009 National Cherry Blossom Festival Parade starts festivities on Saturday, April 4, running from 10 am to noon. The colorful and musical procession struts along Constitution Avenue from 7th to 17th Streets, NW. Every minute, crowds of kids and young-at-heart viewers can thrill to giant theme balloons, tuneful marching bands and circus-act performers.

This could be an airline guy’s idea of a joke, but at a recent news conference in London, Ryanair CEO Mike O’Leary said he’s considering putting pay toilets on his commercial aircraft. If he isn’t kidding, this could make flying, already becoming more painful every day, an even worse ordeal.

One British newspaper reports that O'Leary "is touting the idea of putting a coin slot on the toilet door as a means of raising ‘discretionary revenue.' Hmm. Wouldn’t that better be described as “excrecionary revenue”?

Are you a fan of vintage baseball, a New York resident or will be visiting the Big Apple on April 3 and 4? If so, you may want to be in the stands of the new Yankee Stadium and relive a bit of history. There will be two pre-season games between the Yankees and the Chicago Cubs on those days. Team owners are charging the same prices for tickets as they did for the 1923 season Major League opener on April 18 of that vintage year. A limited number of bleacher tickets will be sold for 25 cents and grandstand seats will be $1.10.

Check out the video of the big ceremony here.