Movie Review

Actually, I'm going to review the theater, the special program and the movie.

On Monday, Rachel and I went to the movies.  That's right, I took a seven week old baby to the movies.  The Angelika Film Center is a boutique theater and cafe that shows a combination of smaller independent movies and the bigger studio releases.  The theater is located in Merrifield at the new Mosaic District complex.  There is a lot of free parking at Mosaic and many stores and restaurants for a meal before or after the show.  There are eight auditoriums with stadium seating.  You pick your seat when you buy your ticket, which is kind of neat and this is the only theater where I have seen this.

One of the special events they hold at the Angelika is the the Crybaby matinee.  Every Monday at 11:00, they have a screening of a movie for parents and kids.  They keep the volume down and the lights up a bit and no one gives you the stink eye if your kid cries or you whip out a boob to nurse.  Tickets are a special matinee price of $6 for adults and kids under 5 don't pay.  Just so you know, the movies are for the adults.  These are not kid movies.

Monday's movie was The Way, Way Back.  This is a wonderful coming of age story.  14 year old Duncan is forced to spend the summer with his mother, her boyfriend (Steve Carell) and his daughter in a small beach town.  Duncan is an awkward teen and has a hard time fitting in until he meets Owen, the manage of Water Wizz water park.  Liam James, the actor who plays Duncan, gives a fantastic performance, as did Allison Janney, who plays the quirky neighbor and provides a comic foil to Duncan's mom, Pam (played by Toni Collette)  I found the characters played by Carell and Collette both to be flat and I could not connect with them.  This was vastly different from every character that worked at Water Wizz.  These characters, even the ones with minimal screen time, were vibrant and interesting people.

Overall, I really enjoyed this movie and think that it and Liam James will probably earn lots of award nominations.

November and December

In November and December, we saw a lot of performances at the Kennedy Center, hosted some holiday dinners and had out of town company.

November 10th - We saw a concert with Lang Lang that was essentially a masters class for 100 local piano students between the ages of 8 and 18.  It was fascinating to watch him work with these students.  We had also had a first tier seat on the side so we could watch him play.

November 22nd - We hosted Thanksgiving dinner and all ate too much.

November 23rd - We saw Jekyll & Hyde, starring Constantine from American Idol in the lead.  This was a very enjoyable show.

November 27th - The Kennedy Center dedicated the new Rubenstein Organ with a free concert.  They showed a time lapse video of the installation of the pipe organ that was just amazing and the instrument is beautiful.

December 13th - Merry Tuba Christmas at the Kennedy Center.  This was the 39th anniversary of this holiday tradition founded by Harvey Phillips in which tuba, sousaphone, and euphonium players from around D.C. play traditional Christmas music.  It is always a packed event; the audience fills pretty much the entire Grand Foyer.

December 15th - The National Symphony Orchestra Holiday Pops concert, with New York Voices.  They made it snow inside the Concert Hall. 

December 22nd - Irving Berlin's White Christmas.  They changed some of the songs from the movie (my favorite holiday movie) and rearranged the story a little bit, but did get all the big numbers in there.  This time they made it snow in the Opera House.

December 23rd - The Annual Messiah Sing-a-Long.  My sister got here just in time for us to go to the Kennedy Center for the sing-a-long.  I've been trying to do this since I moved here and have never made it.  We had a blast!  They have soloists for the arias and restatives, and the audience sings the choruses.  The Kennedy Center has been doing the sing-a-long since 1971.

December 24th - We (Jim, Sara and I) went to the Newseum.  If you haven't been, this is one of the coolest paid entry museums in D.C. and totally worth the price.  Especially since the ticket lets you in on two consecutive days.  That evening, we hosted Jim's mom and sister for our traditional spaghetti dinner.

Happy New Year!

Way to completely ignore the last quarter of the year, Reeb.  We did stuff, I swear.  Let me 'splain...no, there is too much.  Let me sum up.

October:

In October, we spent the weekend in Baltimore for my birthday.  It was a wonderful trip.  Jim had a hydrangea delivered to our hotel room, we ate some really good food at Miss Shirley's Cafe and we visited the National Aquarium (huge, definitely takes most of the day.  We didn't see it all) and the Baltimore Zoo.

The next weekend, we drove out to the Shenandoah Valley/Skyline Drive.  Once we got out there, we got a wild hair and decided to go on to Luray Caverns.

Finally, at the end of the month, we saw a ballet production of Dracula at the Kennedy-Center.

Next post: November.

Wednesday Photos

On Monday, my sister and I went the National Museum of Natural History and visited the butterfly pavilion.

Summer Restaurant Week 2012

Saturday was the last day of Restaurant Week for this summer.  I was so excited that my sister was going to be here to experience it.  Plus, with three people, we get to try even more great dishes.  If you haven't been before, 200+ restaurants in D.C. offer a prix fixe three course menu for $20.12 for lunch or $35.12 for dinner.  It's a great chance to eat at some fabulous places that we wouldn't go to otherwise. 

This time we tried District Commons, which is located right at the Foggy Bottom metro stop and is owned by the same restaurant group that operates Acadiana, D.C. Coast and Passion Fish.  I love to go to restaurants in this group because most of the restaurants that participate in the Restaurant Week give you a limited number of choices for your meal, but Passion Food Group lets you choose any entree on their menu. 

Appetizers:   For our first courses we had Texas Chili (Jim), Mixed Greens Salad (Sara) and Seafood Chowder.  Jim's chili came with this adorable star shaped cornbread and my soup had Hidden Valley Ranch oyster crackers.  The salad had excellent deviled eggs with pralined bacon. 

Entrees:  Jim ordered the Pork Rack Chop “Blue Ribbon” with Benton Ham, Mozzarella, Eggplant Chow Chow and a Jonnycake.  My sister ordered the Roasted Duck “Low & Slow” with a sorghum chili glaze and Wild Rice-Sweet Potato Hash.  I ordered the North Carolina Mountain Trout with Broccolini, Pine Nuts, Citrus Burnt Butter, because I can never say no to trout when I see it on the menu. 

Dessert:  Honestly, I'm surprised we had any room left for dessert at this point, but we had the Boston Creme Pie, Peach and Mango Sundae and the Chocolate Raspberry cake.

A fair is a veritable smorgasbord...*

I see that it has been nearly two months since I came to visit you at this blog.  What can I say, I've been busy.  In that time, we found new tenants for our rental property, got said property ready for the new tenant (carpet cleaning, painting, etc), went to Tennessee to see Jim's brother and his wife and all our nieces and nephews, went to a baseball game, went to a soccer game, and celebrated our third anniversary.  I'm exhausted!

Food on a stick

Last night, we went to the Arlington County Fair, mainly to indulge my addiction to traveling death rides and fried food on a stick.  It did not disappoint.

Keep your head & hands inside the Sizzler

It was starting to get cloudy when we left the house, so we were just hoping to get some rides in before it started to pour rain.  Plus, you always want to do the rides before you eat.  We almost made it.  First we rode the Sizzler.  The Sizzler, which is sometimes called the Scrambler,is my favorite carnival ride.  It has three main arms with four buckets on each arm and it just whips you around so that it looks like you are going to hit either the middle support or the fence around the ride. 

After the Sizzler, we went to a ride called the Hurricane.  This ride has six arms with a bucket that seats four people.  It rotates and uses compressed air cylinders to bounce riders up and down.  This is ride we were on when it started to pour rain.  It was also at the far end of the fair ground, so we had to run the whole length of the midway to get back to the indoor exhibits.  Needless to say, we were completely soaked.

Mmm,  Twinkie

Fortunately the rain didn't last long, so we were back outside and looking for food on a stick.  We got corn dogs, the obligatory funnel cake, lemonade and Jim ordered a deep fried Twinkie.  I have to tell you, it was better than you would have thought, although how you would eat a whole one, I don't know.  I only had a small bite, but the Twinkie gets sort of melty and creamy once it's fried and it is very, very sweet.

So, as the title says (thanks to Charlotte's Web), a fair has a little bit of everything and I, for one, will never pass it up.

Soaking wet and lovin' it!

My New Favorite Place

We have great friends.  Great friends who own their own condo at the beach.  Great friends who will let you use that condo in exchange for caramel popcorn with peanuts.

The first weekend in June, we went to Rehoboth Beach, Delaware.  It's the closest beach to D.C. at about three and a half hours away.  We were going to drive over after Jim got off work on Friday night to try to avoid the weekend beach traffic, which can get ridiculous, but there was severe weather on Friday so we decided to very early Saturday morning.  We left home around 6:15 and I took this picture at 9:48, and we even stopped for breakfast.

It was a beautiful weekend.  We could not have asked for nicer weather, the beach is beautiful and was not very crowded because it was still early in the season.  We even got to play mini-golf (my favorite beach activity) and eat crabs with one of my friends who lives in my computer (hi Laura).  The only thing that could have made it better is if the water had been warmer.  It was icy cold, but Jim went in anyway.

They give you a hat to wear!

Shell We Golf

The beach at night.  Isn't it beautiful?

Dinner on the Water

Ok, so it was really brunch, but I'm still counting it.  Back in the fall, Jim bought a Groupon for a two-for-one brunch cruise on The Nina's Dandy, which we used on May 20th.

I'm going to start by saying we almost didn't make it on the boat.  I was positive that we boarded down at one end of the waterfront in Alexandria.  Not so much.  By the time Jim finally asked, we had to hightail it a couple of blocks to the other end and just made it.  They took our picture as we got on and I would share it with you because it's a great picture of Jim, but I look like butt.  They made me take my sunglasses off (which are prescription) and took the picture before I could get my real glasses on and I'm squinting into the sun.  Lovely.  So you get this one instead of us on the deck of the boat.

We were seated pretty quickly and brought our drinks - Bloody Mary for Jim and mimosa for me.  The dining room is a tight fit with the buffet taking up much of the open space that is normally a dance floor, so the wait staff controlled the number of people in line.  The food was good, typical breakfast stuff and Thanksgiving style dinner, but nothing special.  There was, however, a lot of it.    

After we ate, we went up to the top of the boat to enjoy the cruise up the river.  We went up almost to the Kennedy Center and then had to turn around because they were racing dragon boats at the Georgetown waterfront.  On the return trip, we went down river to the Gaylord National before coming back to Alexandria.

On the top of the Nina's Dandy

Medallion on the Memorial Bridge

Lincoln Memorial

The Kennedy Center

Catching Up

You know, it's a good thing that I have absolutely no desire to try to monetize this blog because I do a terrible job of keeping it up.  But don't worry; I have written and scheduled several entries for your reading pleasure.

I'm going to try to do some catching up in chronological order, starting with our trip to the Center of the Universe.

On Saturday, May 12th we drove down to Ashland, Virginia, which, I am not making this up, bills itself as the Center of the Universe.  It cracks me up every time we drive into town.  It is also where Jim went to school, at Randolph-Macon College.  They were having an alumni event and we hadn't been down in awhile, so we wanted to see what was new.  Turns out, the answer is a lot.  They have built new dorms, are building a new student center/bookstore and are reworking the football field.  We walked around campus, which is quite pretty, and dropped in to the event for music, food and beer.  We also found the brick that Jim bought (and several other bricks for friends and teammates).


Then on the way, we decided to detour out to see Chancellorsville, just because we could and neither of us had been there before.  We live in a place that is smack dab in the middle of a whole bunch of U.S. history and that is awesome.  That, and because I was going to exit there anyway to get a Sonic.  We got to the visitor's center and sidled up on a group listening to a ranger talk about the wounding and death of Stonewall Jackson, which was very interesting.  According to the ranger, Jackson probably would have survived his injury and amputation, if he had not been sick already.  Then we got the battlefield map and took most of the driving tour before we had to get back on the road home.

Philip Carter Winery

 You may not know this, but Virginia has some really world class wineries.  There 206 wineries in Virginia, basically running in a line along the edge of the Shenandoah Mountains.  Seventy-one of them are within about a one hour drive from our home.  Because of the seasons we experience here, Virginia produces a wine much more in the style of European wines that the very fruity wines that you get from California, where they have a much more consistent temperature and rainfall.

Baby Grapes

It's difficult to produce wine here.  They started growing grapes here 400 years ago.  Thomas Jefferson and George Washington both had vineyards and never produced a single bottle.  You have to survive the winter, the potential for an early spring followed by a sudden frost (which is what happened this year), pests, animals, and then harvesting all the fruit before it freezes again.
 
This weekend, we drove out to Hume, VA to visit Philip Carter Winery.  We got a Travelzoo voucher for a guided tour of the winery, a tasting of seven wines, picnic with cheese, meat and chocolate, souvenir glasses and a 10% discount on whatever wine we purchased.  We bought a bottle of Viognier, a grape that I had never heard of until I moved here.  Last year, the viognier was named Virginia's official state grape.  Viognier grapes make a dryish white wine and Philip Carter's wine has flavors of lemongrass, citrus and tropical fruits.  Their Viognier is aged in stainless steel, which I much prefer over oak-y wines, like chardonnays.  This bottle is going to be great with Maryland blue crab latter this summer.

It's a bird, it's a plane...

This shows how close the park is to the runway

Or a lot of planes.  Jim put me in charge of planning "something outdoors" for us to do this weekend.  I immediately thought that a picnic would be great, and I could cross something off of my 101 goals list.

Gravelly Point is a park on the George Washington Parkway, right along the Virginia side the Potomac, across from D.C.  However, it's main claim to fame is that it is located a few 100 feet from the north end of runway 1/19 at National Airport.  It is one of the best places in America for plane spotting and it has been on my list of cool, free things to do for a very long time.

We packed up a lunch of hummus and crackers, asparagus, mozzarella and tomato salad, turkey, cranberry, spinach and brie wraps and oatmeal-raspberry bars and headed on down.  It was a cloudy day, but no rain, and the park was full, but were able to find a place to park on the grass lot.   

Once we staked out a place, we ate lunch and then spent some time trying to catch good pictures of planes that are moving very fast with my little point-and-shoot camera.  After many, many tries and many bad shots, I figured out that using the setting for sports worked best and we got these pictures.

Three Course Bacon Dinner

Have I mentioned before how much I love D.C. Restaurant Week? I'm pretty sure I have. Tonight we went to dinner at Restaurant 3 in Clarendon. A quick explanation of Restaurant Week - you get a three-course lunch for $20.12 or dinner for $35.12 (the cents change with the year). It gives us the chance to eat at some very nice restaurants that we would otherwise never go to. I picked this restaurant because I looked a their menu and over half of the options, including dessert, involve bacon.

Appetizers: I ordered the Low Country Mussels, which were steamed in beer with leeks and bacon. I don't know why I avoided mussels for the longest time, because they are delicious and these were no exception. The broth was very flavorful with the smokey bacon and tang of the beer. Jim had the Fried Green Tomatoes, with goat cheese and a green tomato relish. This was his first time trying fried green tomatoes and these were very good. The crust was nice and crisp and the goat cheese made a nice contrast.



Entrees: Continuing my bacon themed dinner, I ordered the BBQ Shrimp and Grits. I've found that in Northern Virginia grits are a hit or miss proposition. These were done well, not sticky and not too thin, with the nice addition of asiago cheese. The shrimp were nicely flavored and the whole dish was topped with house cured bacon, caramelized shallots, tomatoes and BBQ sauce. I thought the sauce was a little strange at first, but the sweetness was a nice counterpoint. Jim had the Duck Breast, which was served on a sweet potato and duck hash (divine) with a pomegranate glaze. I've only had duck breast once before this, but I thought it was good, but the skin could have been crisper.



And, finally, Dessert: To round out my bacon dinner, I ordered the Bacon Studded Waffle with Maple Bacon Ice Cream and caramel sauce. I think that I am not a fan of bacon in dessert. Although the waffle was crisp on the outside and fluffy on the inside, I couldn't taste the bacon in it. I could taste it in the ice cream, but not the maple. Over all, I'd say it was just so-so. The other dessert was Chocolate Bread Pudding with a white chocolate sauce, which was also just so-so. It was moist and dense, but nothing outstanding.

Day #18

This is really the card for Sunday, but this weekend has been so messed up that we ended up doing it tonight. We love driving around and looking at holiday lights. My sister (wave hi, Sara) and family used to do this at home and she invented the term Christmas Craptactular to describe this particular type of holiday excess.

In the last week or so, we saw both of these houses on television and made it a mission to find them. The first one we saw on HGTV's Extreme Christmas: Bigger and Brighter. After the show, Jim somehow figured out who and where exactly this house was. We drove down there and there was a huge line of traffic, but so worth it. The lights were synced to music and if you tuned your car radio to the right channel, you could listen along to the show.

From there we went to the second house. This one we saw on the nightly news. Unfortunately, it was there because some teens were caught on home security vandalizing the display. The homeowner was out, handing out candy canes and talking to visitors. He said that whatever those kids were up to backfired, because he never had more support and help from the neighborhood in restoring the display. However, this will be the last year that they do the decorating, as it is just too much work. I'm really glad that we made it by.

Adventures in Commuting

Left Work - 5:30 p.m.
Got Home - 8:15 p.m.
Total Commute - 2 hours, 45 minutes
Normal Commute - about 1 hour

It's been awhile since I've written a blog about interesting things that happen on my commute. Today's was a doozy. Shortly before 5:00 tonight, someone fell or jumped onto the tracks at the Clarendon Metro station and was struck by a train. [Update - Metro authorities are reporting that the person intentionally jumped in front of the train. He was rescued from the track and taken to the hospital.] As you would expect, this created havoc on the subway system. Trains were not running between Rosslyn and Ballston - this is the way I go home.

Trains were running to Rosslyn where Metro was shuttling riders to Ballston by bus. I got on an Orange Line train to Rosslyn, only we didn't stop at Rosslyn because the station was so crowded that they were not letting anyone else off. Instead we were diverted to the Blue Line to Arlington Cemetery (6:17 p.m.).

I catch a train back to Rosslyn and get off there and we are informed that due to overcrowding, Rosslyn Station is now closed. Furthermore, the escalators are all out, which looks like this, so I walked up the longest escalator in the metro system (6:29 p.m.). Many people were in serious distress by the time they reached the tops and several ambulances were called to the station.

I finally get outside, but every bus is jammed full and not picking up any passengers, either the shuttle buses or the buses that normally stop at the Rosslyn Station (6:42 p.m.). At 6:56 p.m., Metro employees said the station was reopened, so I headed back inside.

After nearly fainting and sitting down in the middle of the aisle of the train, someone got up and gave me a seat. I just got way too overheated and stressed out. At 7:41 p.m. I finally got a break when I got to Dunn -Loring and the bus pulled up right when I got outside. One bus ride and a short walk later and I was finally home at 8:15 p.m. You can read more news coverage here.

Atlantic City

Yesterday, Jim and I took a charter bus up to Atlantic City. There were a few glitches in the trip, but on the whole, we had a great time.

We were told to that the bus would be leaving promptly at 8:00 a.m. from our favorite Mexican restaurant (who arranged the charter). Well, the bus didn't show up on time and then we had to load it up a ridiculous amount of liquor, so we finally left at about ten to 9:00. Which, if you ask me, is way too early in the morning for an open bar. The drive took about three and a half hours, but really wasn't too bad. I knitted the whole way up.

As soon as we got there, Jim and I headed to the Boardwalk so we could get lunch. Then we just walked up and down for a while. We were going to try to take pictures of all of the Monopoly streets and make our own game board, but they turned out to be hard to find, so we settled for this one. We also bought salt water taffy and fudge.

Then we went to Ripley's Believe It or Not, because I will not miss the chance to see some weird stuff and get a pressed penny for my collection.

We finally went to the casino around 3:00 and started off playing slot machines with the $20 credit that we got as part of the group. About an hour before we were scheduled to leave, we finally got an open seat at the $1 blackjack table which was excellent fun! I wish we had gotten on earlier. I kept a one dollar chip as a souvenir. We didn't win a lot but we didn't lose a lot either, so I was ok with that.

We headed back around 7:00 p.m. and got back to the car at about 10:30 and boy was I ready to be off the bus. About half the bus had been drinking way too long at that point and it was just obnoxious. Still, we had a good time and would love to go again some day.

Home on the Range

Some of you that know me in real life might be surprised to know that we have quite a large collection of firearms in our house - four handguns, three shotguns and a rifle. Jim got the shotguns a long time ago to use when he went hunting with his dad. He got the first of the handguns when someone tried to break into his first apartment, then added the others over time. I'm not sure how he came to have the rifle.

While I personally never wanted to own a gun, I don't care if others do as long as they are responsible with them. Therefore, since they are in my house, it's imperative that I know how to load, unload and shoot them. So off to the firing range we went.

We go to a firing range in Springfield called Sharp Shooters. This was actually my second trip there. We took three of the handguns with us today, the 9mm automatic, the .45 automatic and the .357 revolver.

They may have to revoke my membership card in the Democratic Party, because it turns out that I really enjoy shooting and shockingly I'm not that terrible at it. It's a shame that it's such an expensive hobby. I prefer the smaller caliber guns - the kick on the .45 is pretty hard, plus it has a tendency to shoot casings back onto my collarbone. Not painful, but irritating. The first time we went, Jim rented a .22 for me to shoot and I liked that one best of all. So he bought one. Yeah, that's right, he bought me my own gun.

Red, White and Blueberry Trifle

My sister-in-law and her husband host a family dinner every Sunday night, and because my mother would die of embarrassment if I showed up for dinner empty handed, I make dessert.

Jim and I are both trying to lose a little weight and strawberries and blueberries were on sale this week, so it was the perfect opportunity to make this Red, White and Blueberry trifle from Skinny Taste. I first found Gina's blog on a chat board on The Nest and I cook from it at least twice a week.

I love a trifle. They are so pretty and they look much more involved than the actually are. I had this whole dessert put together in a half an hour. I modified the recipe slightly, so my calories and points may be just a bit higher. My store didn't have the white chocolate pudding (boo) so I used regular vanilla sugar-free. Also, I prefer the lite Cool Whip over the fat-free, so I made that substitution.

Six Flags America

We redeemed a bunch of My Coke Rewards points and got two free tickets to Six Flags America that we used today. I love roller coasters and we rode all four of the steel coasters at the park. We could not have asked for a more beautiful day; it was sunny and not nearly as hot as it could have been here in July. Here's a look at the coasters that can be checked off of my master list.

Joker's Jinx
(from themeparkreview.com)

Superman: Ride of Steel: This is a point of view video of what it looks like to ride this in the front car.

Batwing

(from Coasterimage.com)
It's important that you see that you are laying flat when you ride this.

The Mind Eraser
(from themeparkreview.com)
This is a classic suspended coaster

We rode several of the classic rides - the carousel, flying swings & tea cups. We also rode one water ride that is closing this weekend, Skull Island that is a combination of a roller coaster and log ride. It was really a great day, with the exception of one wicked sun burn.