Pics from the weekend — I didn’t take as many as I should have.
Cherry Blossom Festival and Fireworks down at The Wharf, Southwest waterfront. Don’t all the houseboats look lovely with their pink lights??!
Yehaw indeed!! It’s almost the weekend. We have plans for carbo-loading tonight, a long, 8 mile run tomorrow morning at Centennial Park in HoCo, fireworks show down at The Wharf tomorrow night, Easter brunch with family on Sunday morning, and the second annual liquor-egg hunt at our friend Jen’s place on Sunday. Action! Packed!
I’ve noticed tons of Easter decorations up around the neighborhood recently, and I realized that we don’t actually have any. And then I realized that they’re kinda creepy-looking, and that’s why we don’t have any, and I’m ok with that. Gigantic bunnies and chickens just make me think of a combination of Donnie Darko and the few times I did costume jobs for Easter (see below) a few years ago. It’s just offsetting to me. The way some people are nervous around clowns, I don’t really like oversized Easter-themed things.
Here I was as Shelly the Chick a few years back. Yeah, I have pics of me with the head off to prove it, but there’s no way way I was posting those. JJ and I were reminiscing about this costume job last weekend while we were on the train up to CT. I can’t remember if she was that lady duck in the apron or if it was someone else? It was cold as hell that weekend, even inside the costumes, and there were no kids anywhere to be found around that shopping center. Not one of the better days to be an Easter costume.
Ahhh weekends, they go by wayyy too fast. On Friday, I took the Amtrack up to CT to visit Slutsky, along with Denise and JJ. Hard to believe it has been a whole year since her wedding!! Our girls-weekend consisted of 3 winery visits/tastings complete with a picnic, an afternoon painting class (results intentionally not shown), dinner at the Michael Jordan Sportscafe at Mohegan Sun, snuggles with Jolie-dog, and LOTS of catching up. Highlights included: JJ slowly learning how to be a proper train passenger, Denise drinking 36 bottles of water, Slutsky dominating her 12th painting with the best skills of us all, and me narrowly avoiding running over a skunk on Saturday night. Good times! wish we could have stayed longer..
DC is really, truly beautiful this time of year. I know I’ve written that before, but I just can’t get enough of the warm weather lately and the pretty blossoms everywhere and all the neighbors out and about. Soon it will turn into a hot mug swamp mess, so I’ll keep enjoying it while I can, and probably look back longingly at this post when I am covered in sweat just from walking Bowser down the block.
This afternoon I took some me time and went and got a pedicure and haircut. It had been months since I last did that and I was feeling a little disheveled. The great part about working for myself now is that I can just go do that in the middle of the afternoon, no waiting for the 5 o’clock whistle. I worked my butt off all week, put in a few late nights too, and so I decided to take the long route over to Capitol Hill today, walking only on the sunny sides of the street, admiring all the rowhomes, and I even stopped to watch an outdoor school lesson taking place. The kids were learning how to use yardsticks to measure things like the sidewalk squares and the height of a fence. Man it seems like all that stuff was so long ago…
I also spotted this tiny little patch of buttercups growing at the base of a streetlamp. I can’t remember the last time I saw buttercups. I love them! The remind me of our back field at the house growing up. We would run back there after Dad got home from work, pick some buttercups — the whole field was covered in them — and hold them under our chins to determine if we liked butter. I know we always thought it was some sort of magic when our chins turned yellow, and even when they didn’t, we’d still say they did.
Tomorrow I am headed up north on the Amtrak to Connecticutt with JJ and Denise to visit the one and only Slutsky! I am so excited for our long-awaited ladies weekend. The best is that we bought the train tickets way back in November, I think, so it almost feels like a free trip! Funny how that happens. We are planning to visit some vineyards, go to a wine-and-painting class, and wander around downtown Mystic. woo hoo!
Last night, Jill and I went to a poetry slam at The Fridge on Barracks Row. Ever since she had been raving to me about one she went to while she was living in Australia, I’d been wanting to check one out. I know from that photo it looks like we were hiding like weenies in the back row, but believe it or not, we were actually 2 of the 5 judges for the night, and there was really nothing we could do to hide. Don’t ask me how we ended up in those roles, personally I think they shouldn’t have picked such newbs to judge the performances, but there we were, handed dry erase boards and markers and asked to rate each delivery on a scale of 1 to 10, Olympic style. The first performance was then done as a barometer to judge all the rest against, meaning the first speaker was not part of the competition. From there, about 10 people read/performed their poems, and we rated them after each one. We quickly learned that anything less than a 10 was met with a chorus of boos from the crowd, but like I said, there was no where for us to hide, so we just embraced our roles Simon Cowell style and told it like it was.
I will say, it was really hard for me to compare each of the performances. For one, the subject matter ranged from funny to political to morose, and from soft spoken word to rapping to near song. Apples and oranges, my friends, but I did the best I could. After the first round, the bottom three scores were elminated and then the headliner, Carrie Rudzinski recited several of her works. She. was. amazing.
Then, in the second round, each of the top scorers recited another poem, and we awarded more scores until the top three winners were crowned. I thought all the poems got better and better as the evening went on, but there were definitely some standouts. So overall, a great experience, and I would definitely go again, but would probably leave the role of judge to someone else, since I found it a bit too stressful. Also, The Fridge is a really cool venue and perfect for this show — it’s tucked in an alleyway on 8th St between E and G, and there are tons of awesome murals and stencils that cover the brick walls. check these out –
Oh, did I also mention we grabbed dinner at Ted’s Bulletin? I love that place… We shared a homemade pop-tart for dessert. It was almost as amazing as the poetry. Here is the guy in the window making them from scratch… YUM.
