Keep Your Head & Hands Inside the Mixer at All Times

Last night we went to the parking lot carnival at Landmark Mall, affectionately referred to as Traveling Death Rides.

We rode this, and this and this:


The BF is not fond of the Sizzler pictured to the left, not so much because I was squishing him, which I was, but it made him dizzy. We loved the Starship 3000 (Gravitron) - they played Hotel California inside and I was singing my butt off.

We got a corn dog for the BF and I was a good girl and said no to cotton candy AND funnel cakes.

Cool Things Happen on Monday

So far today, two totally cool things have happened:

1) I got voted onto Team Artemis at diet.com (It's a competition like Biggest Loser in reverse). Now I am super motivated so I don't let my team down.

2) I got chosen to be a secret shopper at Coldwater Creek, one of my favorite stores. They are going to send me two $50 gifts cards to go shop twice between now and the end of July. I just have to report back on my shopping experience.

EU Open House

On Saturday, many of the countries of the EU were having open houses. We choose to go some of the more popular, bigger embassies so we only were able to make it four during the five hours they were open. This picture was taken at a little cafe table at the French embassy, late in the day. I'll back up and start at the beginning of the day.



We started at the Kennedy Center and walked up to Foggy Bottom to see the Embassy of Spain. It was the smallest of the embassies that we toured and is a pretty building on 23rd and Pennslyvania. It blends right into the neighborhood. They had Spanish wines, olives and olive oils to taste and one of the chefs from Jaleo (my favorite tapas restaurant) was there carving lovely little slivers of ham. They also had Spanish guitar and flamenco dancers.



From Spain, we caught the bus out to the German embassy. The Germans have a huge compound out west of Georgetown and we were able to see the Chancery and the lower level of the Ambassador's residence. We also got bratwurst (well, Jim did) and pretzels, sampled beer and Gewurztraminer and pastries. And they had a band. This bear is in front of the Ambassador's residence and we couldn't resist a photo op with him.

From there we went to the French embassy. We got a strawberry tart and a croissant and sat at the little outdoor cafe tables for a rest. The day was winding down and we had one more embassy to see. So, we said farewell to France and boarded the bus for House of Sweden.




The last stop was the Swedish embassy, which is on the waterfront at Georgetown and a short walk back to the Kennedy Center. The best part of this embassy was the view from the roof.

Missing Papers

This morning I finally figured out what has been happening to our paper. The dumb cow who works the security desk has been throwing them away. I'll back up...

Last week, my boss asked me to renew our subscription to Roll Call, which is Congress's newspaper. I checked on it and we already had a subscription, good until December. So I called the paper, said we weren't getting ours and they delivered copies of the last three days. This morning, on my way in it occurred to me that I hadn't seen any issues since then, so I looked around the lobby for them and they weren't there. I casually said to the desk cow that I would have to call and complain again. This is when she said that she has been THROWING THEM AWAY!!

Apparently, an employee who left in January had been getting them and didn't tell anyone else to pick it up when he quit. So, they had been piling up in the lobby and she just took it upon herself to chuck them. I guess she couldn't be bothered to come up one floor and say "Hey, you know you have a pile of papers in the lobby?", or stop one of us when we come in. Too much work.

A Full Weekend

We had a very busy weekend. On Saturday, we went to the Friends of the Library Book Sale, which is huge, and where I accidentally spent $30 on books. It's ok, though, because I got a cookbook and two books that I can read and set free (Murder at the National Gallery and Murder at the National Cathedral - I thought it would be fun to release them in those locations). And I got 7 books for the Resource Center for Faith Development library, so that is a charitable donation and doesn't count :)

After the book sale, we drove into D.C. to see the Newseum. It just opened this month in its new location on Pennsylvannia. It used to be in a small building in Rosslyn and now it is just massive. This is a picture of us on the 6th floor terrace, looking down Penn to the Capitol. We had tickets for 1:00 and they nearly had to run us out of the building, because they closed at 5:00. If you go, go early. We didn't see everything.

Saturday evening, we went to visit Leon and Dee, friends of Jim's and by then we were beat. On Sunday, Jim went to work and I decided it would be a good day to figure out how to drive to my office. So , I loaded up the car with plants and headed into town again. It's easy to get to the building but a pain in the butt to park. After I dropped off the plants, I drove THROUGH DOWNTOWN, to the Folger for Shakespeare's birthday party. It is the one day a year that the reading room is open to the public and it is fantastic. What a great weekend! I should get a gold star for parallel parking three times in two days.

Alumni Soccer Day

On Saturday, we went to Randolph-Macon College for Jim's Alumni Soccer Game. It could not have been a prettier day. It was sunny and about 85 degrees outside. I got a little sun and Jim seems to have gotten a lot of sun (nice sock tan line, honey). The traffic could have been better, but that is standard operating conditions for I-95.

We got there right as the game was starting and I have to say the old guys held their own pretty well. They lost, but they didn't embarrass themselves. Even scored one on the current team. The soccer program is building an endowment in the name of their long-time former coach. They are 3/4 of the way to the goal of $120,000.

After the game, they provided a barbecue lunch and adult beverages. We also got RMC Soccer tee-shirts. Since Jim has a UGA t-shirt (see photo), it's fair that I have one from Randolph-Macon. It's unfortunate that they have the same mascot as Georgia Tech, but I think I can forgive them. The other guys in the picture are some of Jim's teammates.

Rocky Mountain High

Wow, I've been a bad blogger in April. I am blaming work. We were eyeball deep in putting on a conference in Denver last week and it made all of us way too crazy. The conference actually came together great. We had a good turnout (airline trouble notwithstanding) and everyone who attended seemed enthusiastic and like they were getting a lot out of it. Sadly, we didn't get to see any of the town, but I did get to look at 'real mountains' on Friday morning before we left (the only day it was clear enough to see them).

However, after working 12+ hour days for three days, I was really glad to get home on Friday night. Especially since it snowed in Denver on Wednesday night until about noon on Thursday. And I missed my sweetie while I was gone.