Capital Gains

I apologize to everyone looking for their Monday morning blog fix, but we took a little four day trip down to Washington D.C. for Bethany to present at her first conference (good job sweetie) and we caught up with several different groups of friends. The nation’s capital is the site of our first vacation together in the spring of 2002 so it will always have somewhat of a special meaning to me. We did visit the Arboretum yesterday, but I never have great stories about site seeing in D.C. because I usually am trying to spend time with friends which is much easier to do at a restaurant than attending a museum to look at The Fonz’s jacket. It’s not that I hate site seeing, but I visited numerous historical landmarks with my family and I think I unconsciously found them to be very boring at the age of eight so I don’t get psyched up for them now. With that being said here are some highlights from the trip:

• Thanks to our host, the ever talented and occasional nudist, Chris White. Master of the Taco Soup and Oreo Cake, Chris always welcomes us to his apartment in Capital Hill. Chris will be working in Ann Arbor, Michigan this weekend so please throw some tomatoes at him if you are in town.
  
• Friday night we visited Old Glory in Georgetown and we had one of the best waitresses around. She recommended a wonderful peanut butter dessert, dealt professionally with some difficult clientele and we somehow ended up with a bucket of lollipops on our table by the end of the night.
• Do not take a cab ride from Dupont Circle to Georgetown because there zone fare system averages out to $6 a minute
• We caught Chris’s final show Saturday night at the Baltimore Comedy Factory and while I enjoyed the performance, I am disappointed this was the .00001% of the time someone doesn’t show up hammered beyond belief for the eleven o’clock start and tries to heckle the entertainment. I did, however, see a woman pass out with a good thirty minutes left, but her date stayed and at one point was clapping while using one of his arms to support her.
• Visit Café Luna at 1633 P St NW for lunch and substitute cole slaw for sauerkraut on the Rachel.
• Be warned of the militant bartender at Burke’s in Baltimore who had a Golem like obsession with making margaritas. I thought we were joking around, but then I grew concerned he would try to put my hand in a blender so I began avoiding eye contact
  
• Sunday night, I offered to buy everyone at the bar a drink (using Chris’s credit card), but I had to pick the combination. Surprisingly, no one wanted a Grand Marnier and Coke, Chardonnay and Cream, Dewars and Pineapple Juice, or Courvoisier and Sprite.
• My obsession for the weekend became determining whether a street name exists for every state and I found a map indicating this would not be the case. On our way out of town, however, I saw a Kentucky Ave, which once again proves you can never trust Rand McNally. Communist Bastards
• I met my cousin Danielle’s new boyfriend who works for an airline and we inquired as to whether the Mile High club is fact or urban legend. He proceeded to tell us a story about one of his friends taking up a student to fly the plane as he fulfilled the membership requirements with his stripper girlfriend. Petrified, the student would miss a radio call, the teacher kept his headset on for the entire flight. In addition, if you ever see one of the pilots roaming the cabin, start saying your rosary.