Author: Jon

Wirefly National Marathon

I just realized that my street is closed from 8:25AM to 12:05PM on Saturday as the marathon goes past. That should be interesting. Our flag football game is at noon, I think, so we’ll have to make sure we can get the car out. I don’t suppose parking around here is going to be easy at that point. Maybe we’ll have to take the bus or something.

A little while back my sister told me about Map My Run. It’s a site integrated with Google Maps that lets you plot out your running route, and share routers with others. It’s really cool in that you can add point by point to your route, so you can show how you turned left at that intersection and doubled back at the next one and all that. It also tells you how far you went, and lets you share a list of your public runs. This is mine, so far. I did the “Up 29th in Woodley Park” run today. 29th is pretty rough.

So far there aren’t a lot of runs mapped out in Columbia Heights and the surrounding area, but I’m going to do my part to change that. And now that I’ve told all of you, I’ll be embarrassed if I don’t.

Ever gone in the back entrance of the zoo? The one off Adams Mill and Harvard, not Connecticut. If you haven’t, you probably have no idea that every single path in the zoo going from east to west is uphill. Every one.

I found that out the hard way, it turns out. Went out for a run, decided to go through the zoo and see if I liked that route.

I don’t.

Actually, it wasn’t too bad. It was about a 45 minute round-trip from Columbia Heights through Mount Pleasant through the zoo, past Woodley Park Metro, back through Adam’s Morgan, and home.

Now it’s starting to rain, and of course I have to move my car. It’s a few blocks away, furthest away I’ve had to park since we moved here.

I’ll wait until 6:30 when both sides of the street are open for parking. Meanwhile, I’m going to get out a pen and paper and try and figure out how I managed to run for 40 minutes, return to my original destination, and never go downhill. By my calculations, I should be about thirty feet above the roof of the house.

This was the first weekend where I really feel like I took advantage of living in the city. Friday night, we went to Georgetown to see Hexagon. Saturday, we went to Luna Grill in Dupont Circle for lunch, back to Georgetown, then to Woodley Park. We ended up at The Raven in Mount Pleasant, which many consider to be the best dive bar in DC. I’m not inclined to argue. Sunday, we took my brother-in-law and his girlfriend on a monument tour, which gives me an excuse to be a bit of a tourist.

Hexagon was pretty interesting. I didn’t know what to expect. The brother-in-law had said that he was going with some friends, and we should get tickets. Except then they didn’t get tickets. So the wife and I went alone. It was a great opportunity to learn a bit about the buses. We found that the 42 bus takes us right down to Dupont Circle, which is convenient. It was very cold waiting for the bus to Georgetown, and the sleet in our faces didn’t really help matters. But at least we were inside during all of the snow.

So, we got to the school where they were performing. We walked in, and it took me a minute to find someone less than twice as old as me in the crowd waiting to take their seats. There were young people, but I imagine the bulk of the crowd was 50+. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. Just that I felt very young, and under dressed. So, the show started. They dance and sing songs about politics. Some of it was pretty funny. One of the funniest things for me, that probably doesn’t amuse anyone else, was that the woman they had playing Nancy Pelosi a few times could have been Laura Bush’s sister. Or maybe it was actually Laura Bush. Apparently some politicians have had cameos on stage with Hexagon, including Janet Reno. I wonder if her appearance was as funny as her SNL skit. Did you see the one where Will Ferrell was doing “Janet Reno’s Basement Dance Party” or something like that, and she smashed through the “brick” wall wearing the same outfit? I almost wet myself.

Anyway, Hexagon was good. Some of their stuff missed. They did a little Borat skit that I think most of the audience didn’t get. But they did a song called “Turning the Elephant Pink” about how the entire Republican party is closeted gays. A little juvenile, perhaps, but the dancing pink elephants and the guys dressed like the Village People were pretty funny. All in all, I’d say go see it, but don’t cancel cooler plans to do it.

I had been to Luna before, so it wasn’t terribly exciting, but the food was good, as usual.

We wandered around Georgetown, then met a friend of the brother-in-law, then went to Dean and Delucca for coffee. I wasn’t impressed. The BIL got bad service, and my coffee was mediocre. But the company was good, so I can’t complain.

That evening, we went to the Afghan Grill for dinner. Service was a little slow, and they were out of coffee, but the food was great, and they brought us free dessert to make up for the coffee.

The Raven is exactly what a neighborhood bar should be. It’s smallish, but it never got too crowded, even though it was St. Patrick’s Day. I guess everyone nearby was down the street in Adam’s Morgan getting belligerent and puking in alleys. We overheard one of the bartenders mention that she didn’t know anyone in the bar, implying that she usually does. The wife and I will definitely go back. If you’re going to go, remember that they don’t do tabs, and it’s cash only. They have Magic Hat #9 and PBR in bottles, so there’s not really anything else you need. It’s cheap, too.

Sunday morning, we went to the Mall. I had actually never taken a photo of the White House, which seems kind of strange. It’s nice to have people visiting from out of town because then I don’t feel so bad about taking pictures of the Washington Monument and stuff like that. We saw the Lincoln Memorial, the reflecting pool, the Korean War memorial, WW2, Vietnam, and most of the stuff in between. The Vietnam Memorial is funny – it’s much more solemn than the WW2 Memorial, even though a lot fewer people died. I think because it’s so personal – you can actually read the names of real people who died. It’s pretty powerful. People are even quieter there than a lot of other places.

We closed out the weekend with lunch at Potbelly, which was delicious, as expected.

So, it was a full weekend. Got to see a lot of the city, and learned a few helpful bus routes. And now I’m back at work.

My brother-in-law is in town for a job interview, so last night we went out get some dinner. He was craving a burger, so we went to The Diner in Adam’s Morgan. I’d never been. I’d recommend it – the service was good, my burger was good, and they have Sierra Nevada on tap. Ten minute wait at 8pm on a rainy Thursday wasn’t great, but it could have been worse.

What was great, though, was watching the end of the Duke-VCU game. I had been glancing at the score now and then throughout the second half. Like any normal person from the DC Metro area, I hate Duke. And so the highlight of the evening was definitely when VCU’s Eric Maynor pulled up and hit a quick jumper from the foul line to put VCU up, 79-77, with 1.8 seconds left. Most of the restaurant yelled. The two girls sitting at the table in front of me, who probably didn’t even know there was a TV in the place, let alone a tight game going down to the wire, jumped.

It was anti-climactic when Duke missed their desperation three to end the game. But it was still nice to watch.

Have I mentioned that I love living in the city? Now, when we have guests, we can walk 5-10 minutes and find all kinds of cool stuff. A walk like that from our old place left you in a little strip mall with an old Safeway and a Radio Shack. We can give them directions to Sticky Fingers rather than Dunkin’ Donuts. They can hop on the Metro when they need to go somewhere instead of borrowing a car.

Actually, we don’t need guests to do all that. But we have guests now (Well, technically we have A guest until his girlfriend arrives, and I think she’s on the Flyer from Dulles to West Falls Church right now).

A Pet Cause Celebre link via my mom

“They have never eaten meat in their whole lives,” [Ward 1 Councilman Jim] Graham said. “They are about as green as you can be for white Westies.”

Well, that’s nice to know. Our Councilman buys additive-free food for his dogs from a local store. I still don’t know much about him, which is probably something that should change. I imagine he’ll be up for re-election at some point, and since I don’t (yet) have a senator, I’ll be desperate to get my voting fix.

And I think I might have to drag the wife down there to get some additive-free food for my crazy cat, too. Actually, dragging the wife probably isn’t going to happen. It’s pretty clear that it’s MY cat, not OUR cat.

Anyway, maybe they have something to keep the cat from being so weird. She is more active at 5:15AM for about half and hour than she is the entire rest of the day. Luckily she didn’t adjust for Daylight Saving, and now she doesn’t bother me as much because I’m usually awake. But this morning she was scratching at something for a while, and I couldn’t quite bring myself to get out of bed and see what it was. I didn’t see anything destroyed, so I guess it was something harder than her claws, but it’s never good to hear your pets (Or children, I suppose, but I don’t yet have children) making destructive noises.