Nothing is a whole lot cooler than living in DC. Being able to spend a Saturday afternoon walking around the National Mall or browsing the Smithsonian makes life significantly more interesting. There are a lot of things that are completely different to me. For one thing, I can get anywhere I want by walking or taking the Metro. It is not as depressing to be without a car as I thought it would be. I think it actually makes my life a little more interesting.
On Saturday Levi and I took the Metro to Dupont Circle to meet someone who is interviewing Iraq war veterans for a research project. Before we met her, we stopped for flatbread sandwiches at Cosi. Mine was chicken, tomatoes, fresh mozzarella and basil. Levi's was roast beef and wasabi. They were delicious.
Then we wandered into a little bakery / coffee shop and picked up some Valentine's Day sprinkle cookies that I ended up trying to feed to a sad-looking statue later on.
After the interview we walked around Dupont Circle and admired the buildings. Then it was off to Embassy Row. Not on purpose... we just stumbled upon it.
There were statues everywhere... some of them were people and some were elephants. This is in front of the Indian Embassy. We also saw Ghandi and Buffalos and lots of political leaders from around the world.
This is one of the most tolerant churches I have ever seen. On the other end of the church was a SaveDarfur.org banner. Nice to know someone is aware of how Jesus would have really wanted things. (Psst... he would have been a liberal.)
Across the street from the church was a gas station where I had a very random experience. After walking around for a couple of hours, we both realized the need to find a restroom. We spent the next fifteen minutes spell-checking an essay for the clerk's English class. Odd, but kind of fun.
There are so many restaurants in DC, we could eat out every day for the next ten years and never hit all of them. This realization inspired us to make a promise not to eat at chain restaurants anymore. We are pretty good about that anyway, but this experience made it necessary to pinkie-swear. (We might cheat with the occasional Chipotle burrito.)
The next stop was a little independently owned bookstore. It made us promise not to shop at Barnes & Noble anymore either.
While we were strolling, we came upon a street that was all blocked off to traffic. There were a few people walking and biking around, so we thought we would check it out. Turns out it was Pennsylvania Avenue, so we got some nice White House photos.
Right in front of the White House there was a guy with an arsenal of picket signs. Everything from anti-war to pro-life posters. He was sorting through them when we walked by, and I got this picture as he was picking out two of them to hold up. It seems to me that protesting kind of loses its impact if you have a sign for everything.
After several hours of exploring, we jumped on the Metro to head home. We had to change lines in Chinatown, and we decided to get dinner at a place that we had walked by a couple of weeks ago called Wok and Roll. Awesome name for a restaurant. They had great sushi and sesame chicken. Yum.
We have been checking on Joe and Charlotte's dog this weekend, so we stopped for some Corona and went to their house. We played with Georgia-dog and watched Charlie Wilson's War, then one of us had the brilliant idea to take advantage of the Rock Band. Needless to say, we didn't get home until very late. Overall, it was a perfect day.
Tonight we are checking out the Grammy's. There have been a few highlights, but generally not too impressive. Right now I am watching Little Richard and Jerry Lee Lewis and their dueling pianos. That is definitely entertaining.
Before the Grammy's was Katie Couric and Hillary Clinton on 60 minutes. After the interview she spoke about John McCain not being able to show up for an interview. Here is something that Katie did that needs to stop:
"We look forward to having him on...
...in the near future."
There was a very pregnant pause between "on" and "in." Right in the middle of the sentence. Go ahead, say it out loud. You hear news anchors do it all of the time. It sounds so unnatural, Ms. Couric should probably knock it off. Of course, she is the professional, not me.
I will end this post with a picture of the darling coffee shop birds eating our sprinkle cookies. I don't think I will ever stop getting excited over all of the birds and squirrels that are running around this city. We even saw a mouse trying to get into a Slim Jim wrapper under the Metro tracks. Aw, cute.
