Argh! Tourist season!

All the trouble begins with a few flowers on a few trees. The type of thing you can see in most cities around spring time. However DC apparently has magical cherry trees unlike anything, anywhere, ever! They have the magical power to make people stop in the middle of the sidewalk and stare aimlessly. They have the power to make a Saturday afternoon on the metro seem like the orange line during rush hour after a train malfunction. They can even make people think that they can just park their gigantic stroller right in front of the train door and not aggravate everyone trying to get on and off. These trees are amazing in their power, they can pull in bumpkins and classy foreign tourists alike. Of course, even i cant resist their power for ever, i may have escaped the kite festival this year, but i am sure my camera and i will be down there eventually taking the same pictures i take every year, those trees are just too darn pretty...

Ad Perversion? you decide...

This was a billboard from my Seattle trip. You may feel it is just an innocent thing, but between the phrase and the imagery i just feel dirty for some reason. At the very least it should provide all with a new catch phrase when describing meals.

Proper usage example: "...so then i opened my snack hole and had a delightful time..."

It will be the lingo sweeping the nation!

Noah takes a photo of himself every day for 6 years.

while i'm on a youTube kick i thought i should share one of my all time favorite vids for anyone who doesn't spend enought time goofing on the internet :-)

Snow Show, Saint, Stroll

I started the weekend with a journey into the upper reaches of NW into the land of American University. As always, the traffic was horrible since it was a Friday night, and it took twice as long to get there as it should have. I was so glad i wasn't driving for a change.

Once we found the campus we had to find the Bender "Arena". Unfortunately this "arena" would be more accurately described as a gymnasium. I've seen high schools with bigger gyms. We were there for the Snow Patrol concert (with guests OK Go and Silversun Pickups). Nothing like the cozy club atmosphere i had for the last Snow Patrol concert i went to (two years ago). Instead it was in a gym with pull out bleachers, and lazy bums sitting down for the entire show. The only concessions were the Poweraid and Snickers bars being sold by the crew team. In the future i may pass on concerts at this venue.
All that aside, it was still a decent show. OK Go didn't get up on treadmills or anything, but i thought they had some really interesting slo-mo type videos during some of their songs. Snow Patrol seemed to play better this time (probably because they couldn't get drunk before this show). They even had audience participation for their song "set fire to the third bar" since the duet singer, Martha Wainwright, was busy on her own album and couldn't tour with them. They invited some girl up from the audience to do the song with them, and she did such an awesome job i wondered if she was a plant. Its a pretty good song, and i should have a posting of the youtube video by the time you read this.

After the show, we called it a night. Saturday night then involved a trip out to one of my favorite U St. haunts, cafe St. Ex. I had a total blast, even though i succumbed to the temptation of the SoCo and Lime shots and drank/spent way more than i had originally intended (the story of most of my weekends...).

I woke up early on sunday and was fired up to enjoy the beautiful weather, and retrieve my credit card from the bar (i had to leave in a hurry the night before or may not have been able to share my cab home). The manager was as thankful for my bill as i was to get my card back, never a good sign. I then decided to be ambitious and walk home enjoying the beautiful weather. I even did a little shopping in Georgetown and got my first sunburn of the season. My triathlete peer pressure group had a cookout that night and it was overall about as laid back and relaxing a sunday as one could hope for.

Video that made OK Go famous

Set Fire to the Third Bar by Snow Patrol

St. Patrick's Day

Thanks go out to all my friends who stuck with me from SW, to NE, NW, and finally home to Arlington. You all made it a night i wish i could remember better :-).

Seattle Rains

I must say, i have a love-hate relationship with Jet Blue. I love the fact that they have direct tv, so i don't need to bring as much entertainment with me, but i hate the fact that you have plenty of time to watch this tv while sitting at the gate for over half an hour waiting to take off. I flew out to seattle, via boston, and nearly every leg of the trip had some plane troubles (cancelled then replacement plane, hour delay, improperly loaded luggage causing delay, gate assignment problems causing delay on landing...). They really need to get their act together or just have really low prices to make it worth the hassle.

Seattle was nice, once you got used to the constant light rain that is usual this time of year. Went out to a divey college bar on friday night, where i totally should have won at darts, and then walked around the University of Washingtons campus with the midnight tour.

Saturday was spent in relax/recovery mode, we then went to the Bodies exhibit downtown. I found it highly informative and interesting, but i'm sure some people would find looking at preserved bodies a little disturbing. My random facts i took from it: Baby's pot bellies are made up primarily of their liver; the liver is the only organ made up of only one type of cell; people, especially pregnant women, can get tumors in their body that are made up of hair, teeth, and skin (in places they don't belong, and the grossest thing in the exhibit).

Sunday we went out the Redhook Brewery and took a tour, with free samples aplenty. The Blond and the Blackhook porter were my favorites. I liked the Blackhook so much that i got a Blackhook float for desert, which was suprisingly delicious (Blackhook pint with two scoops of Blackhook flavored ice cream). Finished Sunday night with a red-eye flight home that made me completely non-productive at work for the next 3 days.

DDOLMFN

I have a disturbing run-in with a DDOLMFN (Disgustingly Dirty and Overly-Long Male Finger Nails = DDOLMFN, reading all the lemony snicket books slowly makes one become obsessed with acronyms) on the Metro this week.

There i was minding my own business, holding on the the upright pole and reading the Express on my way to work, when at the Clarendon station disaster strikes. As the train gives the usual jerk as part of pulling out of the station I feel a rough scratch on the back of my hand.

Upon looking for the source i see that the suited, and seemingly well groomed, man next to me has reached out for the bar without taking his eyes off of his newspaper. In this blind grab he has scraped his thumb nail against the back of my hand, and to my repulsion, it was one of the most disgusting nails i have ever seen. It was longer than most women's and where it grew away from the finger, instead of the clean white you would expect, was a black mess tapering up through grey and finally a cleanish white toward the tip (so at least i wasn't assaulted by the worst part :-/). Rarely have i seen such a sorry excuse for nail hygiene.

I was so shocked that i uttered an audible "Ugh!" which was heard by another guy standing near me. He saw what i was looking at and gave me a "better you than me" look. I really think metro should introduce hygiene police to enforce common-sense levels of personal grooming and deodorant use...