eat your heart out

the other day my dad made the observation that it seems like pretty much all i do since i moved to d.c. is eat. which is a fairly accurate assessment. especially since it is what i spent basically all of saturday doing.

it was the taste of georgetown festival, you see, wherein delicious restaurants from all over the city set up tents on wisconsin avenue and serve little sampler tastes of some of their most popular dishes, and you just walk around and trade tickets for little pieces of heaven in the form of clam chowder and lobster rolls and paella and ribs and chocolate tarts, or whatever else strikes your gastronomic fancy.

and, as if it could get any better than that, uncle john was in town so i had a partner in gorging. (that stack of plates only represents part of our consumption.)





but, never fear! that wasn't the end of my daily caloric intake (though it probably should have been) because later that night i met up with out-of-towners becky and marina for dinner in dupont circle. (seriously, i wish there were gay rights marches in washington every day. they bring all my favorite people to town.)






and then i had to roll myself back to the metro.

i would say maybe this is perfect preparation for a side career as a competitive eater, but i don't think i could pour a bunch of water on hot dog buns and mash them up into a ball and then stuff them in my face.

a cake, maybe. but hot dog buns? that's just gross.

alive and well

hello, friends!

i just didn't want anyone to worry about my well-being, what with the lack of action on the blog lately. i am happy to report that it is a direct result, not of a fatal illness or debilitating accident as you might have feared, but of lots of action in real life.

which i will report on more fully soon, when it is not so close to my bedtime, and when i am not so engrossed in (not to mention grossed out by) a book about the curious lives of human cadavers.

deal?

i'll find my way

i ran out of work totally late last night, just in time to catch the last hour or so of a set by brandi carlile at the 9:30 club. if you do not already love brandi carlile, you should. and that is all i am going to say about that.

the opening act was katie herzig, who i had never heard of before, and who i probably never would have heard at all if she and her band hadn't come on stage towards the end of brandi's set (or should i say the end of the end of brandi's set) to perform "wish you well."

and it was heart-felt and it built and it fell and it was loud and soft and everyone was smiling and you could close your eyes and sway and not feel ridiculous and it could have gone on forever and i would never have been sick of it, which is just how a song should be.

i couldn't find anything online that came even close to the awesomeness of last night, but here it is anyway.



according to the little postcard i got on my way out of the club, you can visit www.katieherzig.com and get a free copy of her acoustic record, "acoustic trio," which also seems like something you should do.

and that's all i am going to say about that.

when the moon hits your eye

dr. siak has a little saying about pizza that goes something like this:

pizza is a lot like sex. when it's good, it's really good. and when it's bad, it's still pretty good.

cristy and i are not convinced this assessment is exactly accurate, having heard (through the grapevine, natch) that bad sex is actually pretty bad. we can state from our own experience, however, that the pizza at red rock pizzeria, voted one of the two best pizza joints in d.c., is pretty darn tasty.






anyone out there willing and able to validate (or refute) our theory about sex, please feel free. (and please bless that it is not one of my parents.)

virginia is for lovers

today i put virginia license plates on my car.

and just like that, with the swift turn of a well-placed screw driver, the last vestige of my formal life was replaced. the transformation is complete.

(except that it wasn't really a swift turn at all because, man alive, those screws holding my utah plates on were rusted on there pretty tight. in all honesty, it was sort of a battle to get them off. but that is not as poetic as a "swift turn." though, on the other hand, i guess it could serve as a nifty analogy for my own final, emotional resistance to letting go.)

really though (and you know this is true because it is out of the parentheses), i am feeling really good about taking the last step and putting both feet firmly into my new life. i've had those plates for a little more than a week now, but today i was ready.

(also, my utah registration expired yesterday and i do not think an arrest would help engender any good feelings towards my new home.)

i hope you're ready too, virginia, because i am here to stay.

also, on a completely unrelated note (except for generally being about virginia and love), today as i was running down the stairs so as to only be five minutes late for work, i passed uncle bob and aunt joyce's room. and there they were, curled up in bed, him reading aloud to her from a book about the history of the constitution. it was straight up darling.

pour some sugar on me

here are some things that are very distinctly "washington d.c."

the white house
cherry blossoms
the smithsonian museums
massive tour groups
politicians
harried hill staffers
monuments
espionage and intrigue (if you believe the jason bourne movies. which i do)
clothes from ann taylor and brooks brothers
think tanks
retired military officers

and, that classic 80s cover band, the legwarmers.

the legwarmers are a phenomenon perhaps unlike anything i have ever seen.

their shows sell out within minutes. their fans are deeply devoted. and those fans show their devotion in several ways.

like by dressing like this:


{yes, those are pleated denim shorts i am wearing. pleated.denim.shorts.}







and also by staying up into the wee hours of the morning, singing, dancing, jumping (in the case of the guy standing next to me i am pretty sure going to the bathroom to partake in some kind of illegal substance) and definitely sacrificing the potential for long-term healthy hearing.

it was all i could do to drag myself home, and that was after patti and i fortified ourselves with lemon-berry-meringue shortcake after the show.

and once i dragged myself home i still had to take a shower to get rid of all that hairspray and blue eye shadow.

my ears were ringing until sunday.

and i would do it all again this friday.

eight days a week

i pretty much celebrated my birthday all week last week, which is pretty much how i think a birthday should be celebrated. to be perfectly honest, i wasn't sure how far my nascent social capital would get me, but i think i did all right.

first up was a lovely dinner at dana's (she roasted a chicken!).







the event included my first ever molten lava cake...






... and a visit from dave, who happened to be in town for work. a birthday miracle, if you ask me.




the actual natal day brought me whiteboard messages, a completely scrumptious lemon cupcake from katie and plenty of cubicle revelry.









thursday, emily hosted a little cupcake party (never mind she had just gotten back from france the day before) and i have to say that every single person there was someone i was just thrilled to see. which is the way every cupcake party should be.













i also accepted the challenge to eat as much of amanda's delicious mini-coconut cake as i could in one bite. i think i pretty much killed it.






and the festivities wrapped up with lunch on saturday with aunt joyce, my birthday twin.




and with that, my birthday week came to a most satisfactory end. not to worry, though, if you haven't gotten around yet to bestowing me with lavish gifts and/or praise. i'll be accepting anything of that nature until around this time next year, at which point you'll owe me double.