We’ve written about it before, because Crisfield’s in Silver Spring is one of our favorite seafood places. And now here’s a photo of the signage in their parking lot (which they share with a car tire place). I think more things in life should be as witty and concise as this. It’s perfectly fitting for the type of no-nonsense restaurant that it is.
Hail to the Redskins!
Hail Vic-tor-y!
Braves on the Warpath!
Fight for old D.C.!
A lady that lives near Kalorama Park has these two parrots. She lets them perch outside while she is gardening her little spot there, and we’ve walked past them a few times on our way back from getting breakfast sandwiches. I’m not kidding when I say that, one time, we heard someone on the nearby basketball court screaming obscenities at the birds to be quiet. The weird part is that we didn’t even hear them making any noise! crazy birds!!
It’s a chilly morning, and the first one where I truly wished that I was wearing a sweater when I walked out the door… Try not to hurt your eyes looking at this picture.
Hip hip hooray today is World Carfree Day! The picture above was taken this morning on my 3 mile commute across the city from Adams Morgan to NoMA. No cameras were hurt in the taking of this photo but it was most certainly in peril.
Here is a link to all the fun “Carfree” events that are happening across the nation and around the world. Pretty cool stuff. Hopefully people will take it to heart and try some “alternate” modes of transportation today such as walking…running…biking….skateboarding….rollerblading…cartwheeling….skipping…leap frogging…pogo sticking…teleporting……
Just a guy with an eye patch, singing and dancing for the masses….
You could park just about anywhere in the city in this little thing. I hope the horn sounds like a clown car honking.
We sat in Dupont Circle for a little while and watched this guy and his friends dancing. It was kinda like a robot dance.
Oh wow, a watermelon house! This is both hilarious and yummy looking. Although, if I had the chance to paint a large fruit on the side of my house, it would be a pineapple. Here is the story behind it.
We did it! Woooooooo, we are triathletes! Here is a photo of the Potomac swim (it’s taken with Matt’s new birthday present ) Congrats to our entire Team in Training Team for finishing this race, and thank you to everyone who cheered us on–parentals, coworkers, Jill, Pat, Jami, Slutsky, JJ, Jessica, Zack, Brigid, Keith, Jayluf, and Kristen, and everyone else (Aine, Carolyn) in my swim corral who helped me stop freaking out. yay, you guys rock! (please feel free to comment on your favorite part of race day.) Here are some of the other photos from the day…
Time results:
Lori/Matt
overall place: 1563/314
TIME: 3:18:04/2:37:31
swim: 39:25/33:53
transition1: 3:03/2:28
bike:1:27:01/1:10:02
transition2: 2:25/1:24
run: 1:06:12/49:45
The course itself was great- the Potomac was less gross/intimidating than we had been thinking all summer, and the water was actually refreshing at 7:45 in the AM. No bodies or Loch Nessies were spotted, though I did graze a piece of driftwood. eeek! Sighting on the back end of the swim was nearly impossible – foggy goggles and the sun directly in my eyes. I had to stop a few times, remove the goggles, and tread water to look for the yellow buoys. But I made it out of the water, and up the ladders, and to me, that was as good as finishing the race because the part where you could drown was over.
The bike course was smooth “these roads are like butter” as Matt would say… and no real hills, up or down. There was, however, a more-than-24-hours-dead deer on the side of the road that stunk like nobody’s business, but other than that, no real issues. AND, most importantly, no flat tires!!
The run was tough for everyone it seemed. By that point in the day, it was getting really humid and into the mid-90s. Black pavement is hot. No shade was unfortunate. But I did happen to look up a few times and see things such as the Washington monument, the Jefferson Memorial, and the place on Hains Point where The Awakening used to be. Pretty!
Now we are looking forward to getting those finish line photos back. I did a standard arm-raised in victory motion, but Matt went for a leaping fist-pump. Sure to not let me down.
Also wanted to point out everything that I ate today, starting at 5am:
pre-race: 1/2 banana, 1/2 whole wheat bagel, 1 bottled water, 1 caffeinated cherry sports beans pack
during-race: 1 orange sport bean pack, 4 bottles water, 1 lime sport bean pack
immediately-post-race: 1 bottled water, 3 powerades, 1 pickle, 1/2 turkey sub, 2 mini packs of Skittles, 1 banana, 1 slice cheese pizza
lunch: a baked potato, steak, cantaloupe and grapes, 1 dos equis, veggies and dip, 12-ish caramel cream candies, cherry-whipped cream pie
10pm: pomegranate fro-yo with fresh pineapple, strawberries, and blackberries
Now time to sleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep……
In 48 hours, Matt and I will be furiously be riding our bikes towards the finish line of the Nation’s Triathlon. woo! I can’t believe it is only 2 days away, especially because I remember when my countdown thingy was over 100 days to go… But here it is, race weekend! We are ready!
The two of us alone raised over $5500 for the Leukemia and Lymphoma society for blood cancer research… and as part of Team in Training, as of yesterday, we raised $1,158,459.31!! Thank you to everyone who gave to this cause.
We’ll post the race results on Monday!
This morning I woke up and thought, I can’t believe that the Sept 11th attacks happened seven years ago today. It seems like an eternity when I think of all the things that have changed in my life, and in the world… but I can remember that morning like it happened just yesterday. Today at the Pentagon, a memorial to Flight 77is opening near the west wall to commemorate the victims at that site. There are 184 light benches for each one of the victims.
Recently, I succumbed to my ebay addiction and added yet another analog camera to my ever growing family (much to Lori’s chagrin). The newest addition is the 35mm half-frame Olympus Pen EE-S. Because the Pen EE-S is a half frame camera it has a few cool features: you get twice the number of shots out of your standard 35mm roll of film, the view finder is portrait in lieu of landscape, it allows you to compose in-camera diptychs and triptychs. The EE-S takes no batteries and will automatically adjust aperture and shutter speeds based on the selenium light meter that is built into the lens. All of this from a camera that was built in the early 60’s, not bad. Other shots from this roll here.
The triptych seen above is part of WMATA’s “Art in Transit” project which is aimed at bringing community based art to the various metro stations. This project named “Journeys” is at the New York Ave Metro station (incidentally I can see it from my window). Journeys is a collaboration between Barbara Grygutis, a sculptor from Tuscon AZ, and Dolores Kendrick, Poet Laureate of Washington D.C. Delores’ poem is incorporated into the sculpture and can be seen on the walls of the station.
Today I have no picture to offer, only a story and a link to what the picture may have looked like had I been calm enough to try and document this experience.
I get into my car yesterday after work, and I’m on my way home, down 16th street, the same way I commute home every day. I’m close to the Carter Baron tennis place for those of you who know where that is. I look over my shoulder to change lanes around a slow car, and then OH HOLY CRAP WHAT THE HELL IS THAT THING!!!!!!?????
Now I’m swerving off the road, driving forward but still staring into the back seat to make sure it’s not moving towards me. Possibly the most unsafe 30 seconds of driving I’ve ever done in my life, since I usually prefer to look out the front windshield. I throw the car into park and jump out, arms flailing (maybe a slight exaggeration) and leaving the door wide open. I am starting to hyperventilate.
This is the closest picture I can find online to what I was looking at in the back seat, approximately 10 inches from my face. PLUS, it was in a gigantic web that stretched from the back of my headrest all the way to the rear of the back seat.
And so I start frantically looking through my trunk, trying to slow my breathing down, and looking for something like a 12-foot pole to scoot this creature from hell out of the car. At this point, cop #1 rolls by and asks me if I’m ok. I can only guess that he saw my antics flying out of the car and/or was about to give me a ticket for reckless parking lot driving. I tell him, “I’m fine, but there is an enormous spider in my car.” He starts laughing, probably thinking “silly woman” …I tell him to come look at it, and even he is surprised. He radios his other cop buddy, nearby in the park, to come look. They both think it is nasty.
In all honesty, the web might have been the craziest part. I’m desperately hoping that thing wasn’t there when I drove to work in the morning, and that the huge orange spider was working his web-building hiney off all day long to make that thing. Anyways, cop #1 finally whisks it out for me. shudder. All I can think of now is that I wish my friend Lazyeye had been there, because she probably would have thought it was cute and petted it, and then saved it for her bug collection.
Now, I’ll bring you back to the title of the posting for a second because it is actually relevant. My mom used to always tell us the story of when she was driving when she was younger, and a little black spider came down on its string from the front windshield. And she freaked out. And we always made fun of her. But i’ll take it all back now, because I’m guessing that’s where I got my reaction from… And I will say that finding a weird orange spider chillin’ out in your car is scary. I suppose he crawled in from the edge of Rock Creek Park, which I park adjacent to every night. I will be doing thorough spider inspections in my car when I get in from now on…
Every so often, DCist.com has a Touch-Up DC Contest where you are supposed to use some Photoshop fun to enhance a DC monument, street, or scene. This was one of my submissions from last week–my photoshop work on one of Matt’s photos. Can anyone (not living in DC) guess what’s fake here?
Ok, I know it might be bad luck to post this old photo from the so-called “deluge” of 2006 in Rock Creek Park. But, with Tropical Storm Hanna coming up the east coast this weekend, I couldn’t help but remember how powerful water damage can be… The DC area is expected to get up to 5″ of heavy rain and winds tomorrow. Luckily, our apartment is stocked with lots of wine and food, so now we’ll just have to hope the power stays on. Otherwise, it’ll turn into operation:eat all the food in the fridge a la my freshman year at UMD when a hurricane came through that knocked out the electricity for 3 days.
One guy coming into the metro, one photographer going out… Everything in equilibrium, just as it should be.
Here is a photo of something happening at Matt’s place of work, a construction site in NoMa. I’m not sure what is going on here, except that I see some concrete and some rebar, which looks straight so I give the workers an A+++ for their job so far.
Feeling the urge to do something “naturey” with our long weekend Lori and I bravely headed into NE DC to visit the Kenilworth Aquatic Park and Gardens. I save bravely because, no way around it, you have to pass right through a fairly decrepit looking housing project to get to the parks gate and deal with about the most confusing traffic detour in the world to get to said project. Once parked and out of the car it was very much worth the minor headache. The Kenilworth Aquatic Gardens is set on the Southern/Eastern banks of the Anacostia river across from the much larger National Arboretum. As the name indicates the park consists of a large swamp/marsh area with a boardwalk that reaches out into it and a series of smaller ponds which you can walk around (no fences or rails either, almost fell in trying to take a photo). It was worth the trip to see the giant lilly pads. These things were a good 6′ across. Crazy big.
I’m thinking next spring we will try to come back and visit again.