With the rainy, cloudy weather — all dominated by the intense news coverage of the death of Pope John Paul II — it hasn’t been the most uplifting past couple of days. Since we can’t add much more to what’s been said or written about the late pope, we’ll do a survey of obituaries and headlines on the jump. But first, here’s what you may have missed on DCist. — If you’re late for…

We’ve been doing some tinkering under the hood here at DCist headquarters, and we’re excited to announce some site improvements. First, we’ve added an events listing to the main page called the “Public Calendar”. It is located in the right hand column beneath the recent comments section. The events are drawn from the Washington, D.C. metro on the community events sharing website Upcoming.org. Upcoming allows users to upload information about events they are attending, post…