Foodies have a great reason to get excited about fall!

September marks the return of Historic Manassas Restaurant Week. Restaurant Week is a tourism and marketing promotion celebrated throughout the U.S. to help bring in new customers and grow local businesses. Local restaurants feature their cuisine and offer a multi-course tasting experience for a special price.

Historic Manassas Inc. produces this event to showcase the City’s exciting culinary scene and encourage people to visit downtown businesses. Diners can try out places where they haven’t yet dined and regulars can score a great deal at their local favorites. Most Restaurant Week promotions are two courses for $25 or three courses for $35 and the specials run September 20 – 26.

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Insider’s Scoop on Restaurant Week Specials

Carmello’s (9108 Center Street) brings seasonal fine dining and an award-winning wine list to Historic Manassas. Their Restaurant Week dinner for $35 will offer a choice of a chopped house or caesar salad to start; a choice of gnocchi con carne, veal Napolitano, or marinated pork chops for an entrée; and either crème brule or chocolate hazelnut cake for dessert.

C.J. Finz Raw Bar & Grille (9413 West Street) is the City’s surf and turf destination. They have a fantastic deal that starts with your choice of a pint of beer or wine and is followed by a half-dozen shucked oysters or a half-pound of spiced shrimp. Your meal continues with your choice of several sandwiches, including a lobster roll, fried oyster po’boy, tuna tacos, salmon BLT, as well as non-fishy options like rib-eye steak, grilled chicken, or a burger on pretzel roll.

City Square Café (9428 Battle Street), where many enjoy artisan charcuterie and cheese boards, will entice diners with a choice of appetizer, entrée, and dessert for $35 during dinner. For $48, you can indulge on a wine pairing with your meal.

El Cactus (9406 Battle Street) offers fresh Tex-Mex favorites. During Restaurant Week, two can dine for $36. Pick one of five different appetizers to share, including the Manassas Soup Bowl-winning chicken tortilla soup. Entrees on special include carne asada, smoking fajitas, mole salmon, shrimp-topped tilapia, honey roasted cilantro chicken, and sweet honey salmon salad. Dessert features churros or the Taste of Manassas-winning tres leches.  

Mackey’s (9412 Main Street), an American pub, is home to bourbon-glazed, “drunken” meats from the grill as well as plenty of “pub grub” favorites. They are offering an appetizer and entrée combo for $25.

Monza (9405 Battle Street) is where you can enjoy live music on the weekends and your favorite team on the big screens. They will be offering a choice of bruschetta, mozzarella sticks, arancini, or fried calamari for an appetizer and a choice of chicken picatta or pan-seared Atlantic salmon for an entrée for $25.

Okra’s (9110 Center Street) brings a taste of New Orleans to Manassas. This Cajun Creole favorite will feature a different dinner special each day of Restaurant Week. Swing by to see what the day’s special entrée will be and enjoy it with the choice of an appetizer and dessert for $35 during dinner. 

Philadelphia Tavern (9413 Main Street) offers authentic Philly fare and boasts hoagie rolls that come straight from Amoroso Bakery. Grab a pal and enjoy two of their famous cheese steaks and two draught beers for $25 during both lunch and dinner.

The Bone (9420 Battle Street) is downtown’s home for smoky barbecue and hand-picked craft beers. Come by for a two-meat combo platter with Banana Puddin’ Pie for dessert and a local craft beer for $25. Choose from pork, brisket, turkey, chicken, or ribs and pair it with two sides and bread.

Note: The full menus at every restaurant will still be available in addition to the Restaurant Week special menu items, deals, and pricing.

The visit of Pope Francis in Washington will mean those who normally take OmniRide buses to Washington will instead be bused to Metro stations.

The Potomac and Rappahannock Transportation Commission, operators of OmniRide commuter bus and OmniLink local buses, will enact its Emergency Service Plan on Wednesday, Sept. 23.

The Pope has a full schedule of events planned in Washington. He will begin Wednesday with a meeting with a meeting at the White House with President Obama. Later, a papal parade will travel along 15th Street NW and Constitution Avenue.

The Pope will attend midday prayer at the Cathedral of St Matthew The Apostle on Rhode Island Avenue NW. A mass will be held later in the day at Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception.

Pope Francis will later make an appearance at the U.S. Capitol for a joint address to Congress. He’ll finish the day at St. Patrick’s Church. 

All of this means PRTC OmniRide buses will not serve regular stops in Washington. Riders will picked up Wednesday morning at their regular stops and taken to Metro stations. 

Buses serving eastern Prince William County will take passengers to the Franconia-Springfield Metro station on hte Blue line. Buses serving Manassas and Gainesville riders will take passengers to the Tysons Corner Metro station on the Silver line. 

PRTC Metro Direct buses will run on a regular schedule on Wednesday. Here’s more in a press release: 

Because the implementation of the Emergency Service Plan is being announced in advance, fares will be charged for OmniRide service. OmniRide fares to and from the Metro stations will be $3.85 cash or $3.10 with a SmarTrip card, which are the equivalent of Metro Direct fares. OmniRide fares during regular, non-ESP service, are $8.30 cash or $6.20 with a SmarTrip card.

More information about the emergency service plan, and OmniRide schedules is available onlinehttps://www.prtctransit.org/index.html.

When you turn on your computer, do you ever see a window, telling you it’s time to update? Every software program requires updates at some point, while new features are added and vulnerabilities in the program are fixed.

And for those that run a legal firm, having software on your side for billing purposes can be a huge help. Programs like Amicus, TimeMatters and Sage Timeslips will allow you to accurately track billing for any meetings, research or calls made to your clients far more efficiently than tracking it with pen and paper or your own spreadsheet.

But even excellent programs like these need maintenance and updates in order to continue functioning properly.

“Just like any other software, they usually have integrated update notifications,” said Chris Dittrich, a solution architect for JTC, Inc.

These updates typically include annual upgrades, patches, bug fixes, and new operating system updates.

While you could handle the updates on your own, if you want to eliminate any potential error that could severely impact your ability to rely on the software, then it’s best to allow an IT company, like JTC, Inc., to handle software upgrades to your legal billing software for you.

“We subscribe to the software. When we’re working with a software platform, we have an email that goes to the engineers that will give us updates and tell us when there’s been a service update,” said Dittrich.

Especially with a full caseload, it makes more sense from a time management perspective.

“If you have a company that’s using the software, it’s advisable for them to put their IT company team on as a contact for the software vendor, so the IT company can adequately assist them in making sure those updates get done,” said JTC, Inc. spokeswoman Kristen Maxey.

Additionally, trusting the updates of your legal billing software with a company like JTC, Inc. will ensure that your system is free from any bugs or viruses.

“We want to eliminate any potential vulnerabilities that there are inside of the software,” said Maxey.

Save yourself time and effort and make sure you’re always billing your clients with up-to-date software by utilizing the services of an IT company like JTC, Inc.

When it comes to exploring options to improve our personal impact on the environment the old adage, “Reduce, reuse, recycle” rings as true as when it was first heard in kindergarten.

Looking from the outside, one might not make the connection on how the three R’s apply to yard sales. The R’s are indeed there having an impact even if it is simple or subtle.

The greatest impact one can have when going green is to reduce.  Typically this means that one should avoid purchasing new items or reduce consuming resources like water or electricity.

Another perspective is to reduce clutter within the home. Clearing out unused appliances, for example, means fewer items plugged into power strips slowly using energy.

Even turned off appliances can still be using energy to run background tasks or maintain WiFi connectivity. A half-empty chest freezer, a TV that is never used or a treadmill bought with the best of intentions can all be slowly consuming energy without providing any real benefit.

Reduce their impact by clearing them out!

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Clearing out is just the first step. Now the question becomes what to do with it. Properly disposing of the item is an option.

For example, there are facilities and services that take electronics like computers to break down for their components. Another option is to reuse it! The more items kept out of landfills; the healthier our environment becomes.

Reusing also reduces the pressure to gather new materials and harvest new resources. A great place to see reusing in action is at a yard sale. If somebody is looking for a chest freezer to store their bulk purchased frozen foods then a yard sale vendor selling their underutilized chest freezer is a perfect match!

The vendor makes a little money, the purchaser gets an item they were seeking for a discount and less pressure is applied to the environment.
That’s a win all the way around.

Sometimes an item is in disrepair or functions poorly. The piece overall is still in good shape, but perhaps there’s a tear in the fabric of a chair.

The handier people in our community can reach out and enact the third R – recycle. Suggesting somebody reupholstering a chair is the same as recycling may be a bit of a stretch but all one has to do is look at the myriad of Pinterest projects to see how well reusing and recycling go hand in hand.

Maybe for the purposes of this article the third R should be repair. The underlying fact still remains true: The less pressure that is put on the environment to supply brand new items the greener it will be for future generations.

Come see how you can apply the three R’s at the upcoming yard sale at the Manassas Park Community Center on September 19th from 8 a.m. – 12:30 p.m. Will you be a vendor reducing the clutter in your home?

Perhaps you’ll be a shopper looking to reuse, recycle and repair? Whichever role you assume, hopefully from now on you’ll look at yard sales with green tinted lenses.

This promoted post is written by Jason Shriner, at the Manassas Park Community Center.

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For the past decade, city planners have been discussing the ways that Boomers and Millennials are going to reshape communities.

These two demographic groups comprise almost half of the U.S. population — the Census Bureau estimates there are 75.4 million Baby Boomers (those born between 1946 and 1964) and 83.1 million Millennials (those born between 1982 and 2000).

How many times have hopped off Interstate 95 south and taken Route 1 through Dumfries? 

Have you ever noticed that just after the median splits in two, a large brick building rises on your right – so close to the road it looks like it’s going to jump in front of you? 

That’s the headquarters for Prince William County’s Historic Preservation Division – and if you’ve ever wanted to learn more or take a peek inside, stop by on September 12 and 13.

For those two days the Williams Ordinary will reemerge as a busting stop it was in the 18th century. The building has seen a lot of change – built by John Glassford and Company in the mid 1760’s the structure was a popular store through the Revolutionary War.  

George Washington stopped at “the storehouse” in Dumfries to resupply on his way to victory at Yorktown at the end of the war. Just a few years after the war the building would become a Ordinary, or tavern, providing food, drink, and a place to lodge for people passing through area.

From 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. on September 12 and 13 you’ll find William’s Ordinary and the nearby Weems-Botts House a bustle of people that would have passed through here during its early history. 

Infantry, artillery, medical and cooking demonstrations will be on the two sites. At the Ordinary you can stop inside the recreated tavern room and meet George Washington, our Tavern keeper Alexander Henderson, or any number of other characters from our past.  

On Saturday at 1 p.m., Author John R. Mass will be discussing his latest book “The Road to Yorktown.”

Don’t miss the one of a kind event after the sun goes down on September 12; join us at the Ordinary for historic beer, appetizers, and live music for a chance to get a taste of the 18th century. 

Call 703-792-4754 to make your reservations – just $35 per person.

Parking is available at Dumfries Elementary School for both the day and evening events, with shuttle service to Williams Ordinary, located at 17674 Main Street, Dumfries, VA 22026

When a lawyer walks into the courtroom, they need to know that they have all of their information and records they need. In many cases this is sensitive information that can have a big impact on a client’s case. But what if that information were to vanish during a system update?

This is something a law firm really can’t afford, when it comes to building their business, and providing a reputable service that clients can count on. And this is why law firms and lawyers need to have a good backup of all of their records and files available, in case something goes wrong.

“If you don’t have a backup, you’re taking a huge risk of losing data,” said JTC, Inc. spokeswoman Kristen Maxey.

If a lawyer is utilizing legal billing software or an electronic records platform, you’re going to have to update these programs from time to time, as updates and patches are released. And if you don’t utilize the services of an IT company, like JTC, Inc. you may end up accidentally wiping some of these crucial records.

Especially when you’re doing a big update to one of these databases, it’s important to have both a local and off-site backup of your records. That is something that JTC, Inc. can manage.

“You have the potential for corrupting files. Because when you’re updating a database, there are sometimes what’s called ‘schema’ changes, which is changes to the format of the database itself. When you do a large update like that, there’s always a risk or potential for corruption because you’re doing mass changes to the database,” said JTC, Inc. Solution Architect Chris Dittrich.

JTC, Inc. will not only help with installation, but they will manage and alert you about system updates, assist with the updating process, and maintain an off-site copy of the records you need.

As a growing business, don’t risk losing your data. Legal billing software can save you time, and JTC, Inc. can keep your software and databases backed up and secure.

Jewell Technical Consulting will expand its market territory to include Fredericksburg and Richmond.

A Manassas, Virginia-based company, JTC, is the official IT provider of the Prince William Chamber of Commerce, and has long concentrated on the Northern Virginia market. The expansion marks the first time JTC has expanded into a new regional market.

Charles Sowers will lead the expansion and concentrate on growing the business in the Richmond, Fredericksburg, and Stafford areas in Central Virginia. Sowers will manage technical sales for JTC in these markets.

“I met Charles in 1995 when we were working on a project for Capital One Bank,” said JTC, Inc. President John Jewell. “We moved the bank from a Macintosh network and put it on a Windows network.”

JTC will market solutions to new customers in the medical and legal fields. The company will offer a wide range of solutions to include managed services of electronic medical records systems, disaster recovery, private cloud services, and IP telephone services.

“JTC Cloud is a private server. Unlike being on a Google, Amazon, or Rackspace server, we own the equipment, and our customers data is stored in a data center right here in Manassas,” said Jewell.

A large number of hospitals along the Interstate 95 corridor, and ancillary medical facilities that surround them made the area attractive to JTC. The expansion has been in the works for about a year, added Jewell.

JTC is a Microsoft Certified Partner and a Dell Certified Partner.