The Weekend
J & I went to DC for the weekend to celebrate our first wedding anniversary. Got a bitchin' deal at the Grand Hyatt via Priceline. They practically give away DC hotels on the weekend. Got there late, though, because the cat chose the moment we were leaving to vanish without a trace & we couldn't leave in good conscience until we knew she was indoors and not trapped in basement or attic. After a long search, she was suddenly standing at the top of the stairs like nothing ever happened. Damn cats.
So we got there at about 10pm and they were out of king rooms & we got stuck in a parlor room for the night (read: sofabed). We were given $80 in free breakfast vouchers for the weekend for the inconvenience & were moved to a real room the next morning. So it was basically worth the inconvenience, though putting a big fluffy featherbed on top of a sofabed only makes it marginally more comfortable. Found ourselves hungry & went downstairs to Cure for some late night snacks and mango mojitos. What happened after that is none of your damned business.
We'll pick the narration up again after Breakfast on Saturday. Saturday was drizzly all day, but that nice pacific northwest drizzle that doesn't actually get you wet even if you're in it for hours. After breakfast we went to the Native American museum for a couple hours until our 2pm reservation at the Spy Museum. It's a breathtaking space, and the exhibits are actually created/presented BY Natives, and it was awesome. And horrible. I can't go into places like that without grieving. Fucking white people. We're a goddamn plague. Not that we have a monopoly or anything, but we have achieved a pretty gruesome scale of destruction. Can I please quit my race and sign up with one that seeks to lives in peace with nature? Please?
The Spy Museum was C.R.O.W.D.E.D. We waited almost an hour to get in, even WITH reservations. It was still cool the second time, but we ran out of energy in about the same place I did the last time I went. We decided we'll go again and just start at the history section. So then we walked over to Jaleo & had awesome tapas, including fried bacon-wrapped dates of yumminess. Everything was tasty and I wish I had had room for lots more, but I was a good girl and stopped before it started hurting.
We went back to the room to rub our feet and for J to catch a quick nap, then back to the Spy Museum for the Spy at Night program, which was just ridiculously fun. You get to play an operative for an hour and try to capture a nuclear device before the bad guys. I'd tell you more about it, but I'd have to kill you. I loved it. I love the adrenaline and the problem-solving and the sneakiness. I wish it hadn't been so structured, though. I think if they'd set us free to do it rather than forcing us to go through a script as a team, it would have gone much better. But actors are expensive, and recording them on video to play repeatedly is much cheaper. The sets were pretty well done.
Afterward we had drinks and played cryptography games. Then we went to Cure for dessert and fell exhausted into bed.
Sunday morning was sunny, so we decided to stay a little longer. After breakfast we checked out and packed the bags in the car, then set off to look at more of the Native American museum (4 floors!!!) and the Air & Space musem. Along the way we played "that could be a dead-drop". W poked around for a couple hours, but we quickly found ourselves more and more attracted to the sit-down video presentations, so we had yummy Native lunch at the Native museum cafeteria (I had frog's legs! tastes like a cross between fish & chicken) and got a taxi back to the car (got a surprise cheap deal on parking - yay for traveling during Venus retrograde!), beginning what would be a multi-hour adventure of being either stuck in traffic or hopelessly lost.
First, the gas tank was on empty and we got bad directions to a gas station. Fortunately, the phone gps service was able to get us there. Then we were going to head down to the Tidal Basin & check out the cherry blossoms. But so was the rest of the east coast. The line on 14th St. backed up all the way to G. I tried to get us around, but wound up getting us stuck elsewhere, then we took a wrong turn and went past the cherry blossoms and onto 395 into Virginia! We turned around at the Pentagon and figured out how to get back, but got gridlocked again trying to get close to the flowers, so we just drove slowly by them and got out of dodge.
Unfortunately we didn't know how to get back to 295N, so we let the phone GPS tell us, but we wound up somewhere in Virginia at an entrance to 295 freakin SOUTH. Figuring it would be better to turn around on the highway than get further lost in the DC burbs, we took it. For some damn reason I figured we could get off at Anacostia and turn around there, but instead we wound up driving through great pits full of water and crossing a bridge and turning around at the Washington Nationals' stadium to finally get onto 295N, which immediately came to a dead stop. We finally got past the accident, and made not too horrible time after that, stopped for dinner, & got home at about 9. At which point we sat down to watch some BSG miniseries, but gave up after a couple hours and crashed.
All in all, an awesome weekend and a good segue into another great year of marriage. Being happy is so cool. I wouldn't even give it up to be a spy. But damn, do my legs hurt today!!!
Oh, also: I'm halfway through Dune. Why did I wait so long to read this book?
So we got there at about 10pm and they were out of king rooms & we got stuck in a parlor room for the night (read: sofabed). We were given $80 in free breakfast vouchers for the weekend for the inconvenience & were moved to a real room the next morning. So it was basically worth the inconvenience, though putting a big fluffy featherbed on top of a sofabed only makes it marginally more comfortable. Found ourselves hungry & went downstairs to Cure for some late night snacks and mango mojitos. What happened after that is none of your damned business.
We'll pick the narration up again after Breakfast on Saturday. Saturday was drizzly all day, but that nice pacific northwest drizzle that doesn't actually get you wet even if you're in it for hours. After breakfast we went to the Native American museum for a couple hours until our 2pm reservation at the Spy Museum. It's a breathtaking space, and the exhibits are actually created/presented BY Natives, and it was awesome. And horrible. I can't go into places like that without grieving. Fucking white people. We're a goddamn plague. Not that we have a monopoly or anything, but we have achieved a pretty gruesome scale of destruction. Can I please quit my race and sign up with one that seeks to lives in peace with nature? Please?
The Spy Museum was C.R.O.W.D.E.D. We waited almost an hour to get in, even WITH reservations. It was still cool the second time, but we ran out of energy in about the same place I did the last time I went. We decided we'll go again and just start at the history section. So then we walked over to Jaleo & had awesome tapas, including fried bacon-wrapped dates of yumminess. Everything was tasty and I wish I had had room for lots more, but I was a good girl and stopped before it started hurting.
We went back to the room to rub our feet and for J to catch a quick nap, then back to the Spy Museum for the Spy at Night program, which was just ridiculously fun. You get to play an operative for an hour and try to capture a nuclear device before the bad guys. I'd tell you more about it, but I'd have to kill you. I loved it. I love the adrenaline and the problem-solving and the sneakiness. I wish it hadn't been so structured, though. I think if they'd set us free to do it rather than forcing us to go through a script as a team, it would have gone much better. But actors are expensive, and recording them on video to play repeatedly is much cheaper. The sets were pretty well done.
Afterward we had drinks and played cryptography games. Then we went to Cure for dessert and fell exhausted into bed.
Sunday morning was sunny, so we decided to stay a little longer. After breakfast we checked out and packed the bags in the car, then set off to look at more of the Native American museum (4 floors!!!) and the Air & Space musem. Along the way we played "that could be a dead-drop". W poked around for a couple hours, but we quickly found ourselves more and more attracted to the sit-down video presentations, so we had yummy Native lunch at the Native museum cafeteria (I had frog's legs! tastes like a cross between fish & chicken) and got a taxi back to the car (got a surprise cheap deal on parking - yay for traveling during Venus retrograde!), beginning what would be a multi-hour adventure of being either stuck in traffic or hopelessly lost.
First, the gas tank was on empty and we got bad directions to a gas station. Fortunately, the phone gps service was able to get us there. Then we were going to head down to the Tidal Basin & check out the cherry blossoms. But so was the rest of the east coast. The line on 14th St. backed up all the way to G. I tried to get us around, but wound up getting us stuck elsewhere, then we took a wrong turn and went past the cherry blossoms and onto 395 into Virginia! We turned around at the Pentagon and figured out how to get back, but got gridlocked again trying to get close to the flowers, so we just drove slowly by them and got out of dodge.
Unfortunately we didn't know how to get back to 295N, so we let the phone GPS tell us, but we wound up somewhere in Virginia at an entrance to 295 freakin SOUTH. Figuring it would be better to turn around on the highway than get further lost in the DC burbs, we took it. For some damn reason I figured we could get off at Anacostia and turn around there, but instead we wound up driving through great pits full of water and crossing a bridge and turning around at the Washington Nationals' stadium to finally get onto 295N, which immediately came to a dead stop. We finally got past the accident, and made not too horrible time after that, stopped for dinner, & got home at about 9. At which point we sat down to watch some BSG miniseries, but gave up after a couple hours and crashed.
All in all, an awesome weekend and a good segue into another great year of marriage. Being happy is so cool. I wouldn't even give it up to be a spy. But damn, do my legs hurt today!!!
Oh, also: I'm halfway through Dune. Why did I wait so long to read this book?