Winter Fun Day
Sure, you're setting expectations high when you christen a day "Winter Fun Day" weeks in advance. But while we may not have quite managed the "winter" part of the equation (DC is still weirdly tropical at this point), today was a wonderfully fun day.
Jen and I had taken a vacation day and we started off by trying Sonoma, this cute wine bar and restaurant on Capitol Hill that's been on my list for some time. Part of the reason for choosing it was that it had a cozy fireplace, but without a reservation, we ended up sitting at the bar (at noon on a weekday! Damn Capitol Hill). We had an amazing meal of cheeses, tomato soup, and pasta for Jen and risotto for me. We checked out the Capitol Hill Christmas tree (Washington is the state this year; yawn), took some goofy photos and made our way over to the sculpture garden.
One of these days I'm making good on my resolution to buy ice skates, because rental skates continue to taunt me. Jen was a good sport on the rink and we enjoyed spending about an hour circling and avoiding falling. We got some hot chocolate and headed to my place to prep for the holiday gathering.
Andrej, John, Becky, her friend Shiva who's visiting, Audrey and randomly, Joe, joined us for a night of way too much food. I tried to not make it a total Missy Overload party and delegated a lot of the food tasks, but it just resulted in people bringing way too much delicious stuff. I'd planned to make a leg of lamb on the rotisserie, but a mechanical problem led to my roasting it, with happy results. Also featured on the menu: spinach rolls, chocolate covered pretzels, Iranian salad, whoopie pies, seven-layer dip, ginger cookies, wine, mashed sweet potatoes, sauteed asparagus, Tuscan white beans, homemade hot chocolate, mulled cider, prosciutto-wrapped breadsticks...I'm probably still forgetting a bunch of stuff. No one could even stomache the grilled s'mores I'd planned by the end of the night. Or, in hindsight, the champagne and sparkling cider I totally forgot about, hehe. It was so good, and so insane.
And we exchanged presents! I love giving gifts even more than getting (I feel like most people our age do), and people seemed pretty happey with what I got them (I was particularly pleased with the framed print of Las Ramblas in Barcelona that I'd snagged for Becky). And I got wonderful things - no less than three board games ("Battle of the Sexes" from John, "Electronic Catchphrase" from Andrej and 007 "Scene It!" from Jen), a beautiful knife rack from Beck and a John Irving book I hadn't yet managed to read from sneaky Audrey.
It was a really fun night, and I'm glad I got to see the core DC group before heading home for the holidays. Cheers to Winter Fun Day!
Jen and I had taken a vacation day and we started off by trying Sonoma, this cute wine bar and restaurant on Capitol Hill that's been on my list for some time. Part of the reason for choosing it was that it had a cozy fireplace, but without a reservation, we ended up sitting at the bar (at noon on a weekday! Damn Capitol Hill). We had an amazing meal of cheeses, tomato soup, and pasta for Jen and risotto for me. We checked out the Capitol Hill Christmas tree (Washington is the state this year; yawn), took some goofy photos and made our way over to the sculpture garden.
One of these days I'm making good on my resolution to buy ice skates, because rental skates continue to taunt me. Jen was a good sport on the rink and we enjoyed spending about an hour circling and avoiding falling. We got some hot chocolate and headed to my place to prep for the holiday gathering.
Andrej, John, Becky, her friend Shiva who's visiting, Audrey and randomly, Joe, joined us for a night of way too much food. I tried to not make it a total Missy Overload party and delegated a lot of the food tasks, but it just resulted in people bringing way too much delicious stuff. I'd planned to make a leg of lamb on the rotisserie, but a mechanical problem led to my roasting it, with happy results. Also featured on the menu: spinach rolls, chocolate covered pretzels, Iranian salad, whoopie pies, seven-layer dip, ginger cookies, wine, mashed sweet potatoes, sauteed asparagus, Tuscan white beans, homemade hot chocolate, mulled cider, prosciutto-wrapped breadsticks...I'm probably still forgetting a bunch of stuff. No one could even stomache the grilled s'mores I'd planned by the end of the night. Or, in hindsight, the champagne and sparkling cider I totally forgot about, hehe. It was so good, and so insane.
And we exchanged presents! I love giving gifts even more than getting (I feel like most people our age do), and people seemed pretty happey with what I got them (I was particularly pleased with the framed print of Las Ramblas in Barcelona that I'd snagged for Becky). And I got wonderful things - no less than three board games ("Battle of the Sexes" from John, "Electronic Catchphrase" from Andrej and 007 "Scene It!" from Jen), a beautiful knife rack from Beck and a John Irving book I hadn't yet managed to read from sneaky Audrey.
It was a really fun night, and I'm glad I got to see the core DC group before heading home for the holidays. Cheers to Winter Fun Day!