I Am Alive

Due to a crashed hard drive on my work computer and a loaner that is slow as molasses, I do not have the energy to blog.  However, I will hopefully post soon about my visit to see my family this past weekend in NY, my reaction to the finale of The Bachelorette, and the upcoming early-birthday festivities we have for Dan's birthday this weekend (shhhh, I told him we're going to London for the opening ceremonies of the Olympics.  That's not really where we're going!!).

I hope you're all having a fabulous week!

Shipping Up to Boston!

I'm not going to sugarcoat this; I am not happy to be back in DC and back to my everyday routine.  I had the most fabulous weekend imaginable in Boston, and a large part of me wanted to evade returning to reality and just stay there forever.

Dan and I got to our hotel shortly before 10 on Thursday night, and, wanting both to explore and get a snack, we ventured out to Newbury Street, where we were luckily able to find an ice cream place open.  I got a cup of DELICIOUS black raspberry ice cream with blueberry pieces and white and dark chocolate chunks.  Seriously, people.  DIVINE.  I woke up early-ish on Friday morning to go for a little jog at the hotel gym, and it was such a bad run that I should have just let myself sleep in, as Dan had done.  Afterward, we grabbed breakfast at a little place in the neighborhood and then walked to our first stop of the day, America's Most Beloved Ballpark (a.k.a. Fenway).  I was very grateful to Dan for indulging me on that one, and, luckily for him, I did not make him go on a tour (I have been on two myself and have been to the ballpark numerous times for games, so I didn't think it was necessary).  From there, we walked downtown, through Copley Square and then through the Public Gardens and the Commons.  Poor Dan...since he has never been subjected to a vacation with my family, he has never experienced our ten-mile walking days (seriously, there were days when we walked that far in Europe).  He is a very active guy, but all of that walking can take a lot out of the most in-shape people!

America's Most Beloved Ballpark

New England Aquarium



We finally ended up at Government Center, where we toured the Aquarium (which we both loved) and went to an IMAX movie which was, strangely, narrated by Jim Carrey (neither of us could get over this fact).  Before we headed in to the movie, each of us gobbled down a grilled cheese that we had bought at a food truck. It was my first food truck experience, and it was delicious!  After the movie, I agreed (and, after all of that walking, it wasn't too difficult to convince me!) to take the T back to the hotel.  Over the course of the weekend, the consensus was that, as much as we may complain about the Metro (and, while we were gone, Metro experienced two total system outages, which would have left me spitting tacks had I been riding.  But I digress), the T is so far inferior.  T trains are dirty, noisy, not well ventilated, unannounced (there is no board with a schedule of trains) and poorly planned (the arrangement of the lines does not make too much sense, and, due to the layout of the stations, you often have to pay twice if you are switching lines).  However, the T got us where we needed to go, so, for the course of the weekend, it served its purpose.  We showered and changed before meeting up with Dan's sister Emily for dinner in the North End. 

Emily was the lone member of Dan's immediate family who I had not yet met, and, when we saw his parents a few weeks ago and I told his mom how excited I was to go visit Emily, she assured me that Dan had been getting pressure from both sides to make this trip happen.  I really liked Emily a lot and instantly felt comfortable around her, which was not at all surprising, given how much I love Dan's entire family, and the three of us had a really nice weekend together. We started off with a fantastic dinner at this little hole-in-the-wall Italian place in the North End (that description could apply to any of the restaurants in the North End, actually) and then gelato from Mike's Pastry (the gelato line was nonexistent, as opposed to the crowded mess of a cannoli line, so we opted for the gelato).  We then went to a bar in the Government Center area that was fun, albeit way too loud; we could barely hear ourselves think above the music, much less have a sustained conversation!!

On Saturday morning, Dan and I, in keeping with his race plan (in true fashion, I am not doing a race plan, which will simply mean that I'll run slower than Dan haha), went for an eight-mile run around the city.  It was probably the best I've felt this year while running outside, and we got to see a huge swatch of the city in the process.  Our pace was actually faster than my half-marathon pace from last year, so I was pleased about that.  However, afterward I immediately started feeling sick to my stomach (the same actually happened after my half), and I struggled through breakfast.  I could barely speak (and, thus, was not my normal bubbly self) because I felt so awful, and was getting up every five minutes to run to the bathroom.  Poor Dan was practically eating breakfast by himself, and I felt so guilty :(  At one point, I walked back from the bathroom and hit my head on a low-hanging tree branch.  I initially started laughing but, as a delayed reaction, was tearing up, both from bonking my head and from how crappy my stomach felt.  Dan, great guy that he is, suggested that we go back to the hotel and rest for a bit, and, after conking out for an hour, I felt significantly better.

We took the T out to BC to meet up with Emily, and, after getting a tour of campus and of her apartment, we went out for yet ANOTHER Italian meal (we were sitting on Emily's couch discussing what we wanted to do for dinner, and, when she finally conceded that she wouldn't be at all opposed to another Italian dinner, I felt okay chiming in that I could definitely have some more pasta).  Again, the dinner was delicious although we had a bit of a bizarre situation when it came time to order dessert. Being that we had all just gorged ourselves on pasta, we were not in the mood to order dessert, but then our waitress brought us out some tiramisu! We all looked at each other and laughed, since we had not ordered dessert, and we wondered if she was forcing dessert on us, only to charge us for it.  After a few minutes of wondering aloud, we decided to go for it, and it was actually delicious.  Sufficiently stuffed at that point, we walked to a pub that had great Belgian beer.  We had lots of time to just chat, and I can't overstate how great a time I had.  Dan and Emily are VERY close, so it was very sweet to witness the interaction between the two of them.  She was so incredibly sweet to me as well, which made it so much easier on me.  I'm so glad that I finally got to meet her, and hopefully I'll see a lot more of her in the future!!

The delightful siblings

On Sunday, we were pretty lazy, heading back to Newbury Street for brunch at around 11.  We then walked back to the Commons through the Beacon Hill neighborhood, and back to the Government Center area. Once there, we walked through Faneuil Hall and the surrounding markets before heading to Ye Olde Union Oyster House to get Dan some clam chowder (or chowdah, as the locals call it; and yes, I did intermittently speak in an annoying accent that resembled a Boston accent over the course of the weekend).  Feeling sufficiently stuffed, we returned to the hotel, grabbed our bags and began our journey home.

Beacon Hill

I was actually pretty gloomy when I got home, because our wonderful weekend was over.  I said to Dan in the airport yesterday that I often feel very sad when our trips, in which we spend a lot of concentrated time together and go on lots of adventures, are over.  He "awwww"ed me and told me that our trips are so special because we don't go on them all the time, which I agree with.  If we could afford to travel all the time, our trips might not seem as special, so for now, until we win the lottery, I am perfectly happy to take the occasional trip.  As we were taking one of our sitting breaks yesterday, I told him that he is a wonderful travel buddy, because he is so easygoing (and, as I mentioned before, so am I, but only when I'm traveling haha) and doesn't have a specific timetable or agenda.  That is my preference when I travel; I definitely prefer to wander around and get lost on side streets rather than stick to tourist traps.  I look forward to hopefully taking many more trips together in the future (our next one is over Labor Day weekend for our half-marathon!!), as well as hopefully getting many more chances to spend time with his family!

T-minus 5 hours...

...until I get to leave work to head to the bus...and then to the Metro...and then to Union Station...and then to the airport...and then to BOSTON (God, I hate BWI! Planes, trains and automobiles to get to our final destination!)!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  I have not been able to sit still all day, so I'm sure I'll be a pleasure to sit next to on the flight haha.  Poor Dan.  He has never seen me in my New England element before.  We will not be traveling to the painfully boring charming little town where I grew up, but Boston is a close second in terms of hometown visits.  I think I will look something like this all weekend.  But seriously...

When I next post, I will hopefully have lots of fun stories and beautiful pictures to share (disclaimer: it may take me a while to weed through the ungodly large quantities of photos I will likely take.  One of my friends, while we were tubing last weekend, compared me to MacGyver because of how readily available my camera is. Yes, I brought my camera tubing, and stored it in a plastic sandwich baggie to keep it safe.  What's it to you??).  I hope you all have a lovely weekend!

Pictures From My Busy Week!

As promised...

4th of July fireworks as seen from Dan's apartment!

Yes, it was really that hot...Dan and I at a 4th of July barbecue

Stacey and Jamie floating down the river

Love this one of us!

The lovely Ms. Lauren

Wonderful friends, new and old!

Night out at Policy with Lauren, Jamie and Stef

COLDPLAY CONCERT!!!!!!

Weekend Roundup: Melting

As of yesterday, the DC area had had 11 DAYS STRAIGHT of 95-degree-plus heat, but I am happy to report that, today, it is a cool 79 degrees.  I LOVE IT!!!!  Anyway, this weekend was absolutely incredible, so I apologize in advance for the really long post!

On Friday night, Dan and I had a really relaxing night at home.  We went to Maggiano's for dinner, since we were both in the mood for some good pasta, and then got Frozen Yo on the way home.  He recognized that we had been watching a lot of his type of movies (a.k.a. not chick flicks or romantic dramas), so he said that it was my turn to pick a movie.  I had innumerable ways in which I could have tortured him, but I went with 500 Days of Summer, because it is definitely not your typical love story.  While I don't think it was his favorite movie of all time, he chose to grin and bear it, and admitted that it was not terrible.

On Saturday morning, we were up bright and early so that the two of us and Lauren could drive out to Harpers Ferry, where we were meeting up with a group of friends (there were 16 of us in total!) to go whitewater tubing.  It was supposed to be about 105 degrees on Saturday, so I was definitely apprehensive about both getting sunburned and getting heatstroke.  However, despite the fact that I used 15 sunscreen, which was the lowest denomination among our group, I did not get burned at all, and it was actually surprisingly refreshing out on the water!  As we stood around waiting to get bused down to the river, I was sweating like a pig and was starting to regret the decision, but, once we were in the water, I felt 100 times better.  So we floated down the Potomac for a few hours, stopping occasionally to eat and drink, and, while the "whitewater" part of the trip left a lot to be desired (those were some pretty meager waterfalls), I had a fantastic time.  I couldn't think of a better way to spend such an unbearably hot day, because I certainly would not have wanted to spend the day outside otherwise! 

On Saturday evening, Dan had made plans with friends, so I met up with the tubing group at Churchkey for a light dinner.  Like most places in DC, the air conditioning was apparently not working, so we were all sweltering.  After we finished eating, we walked down the street to Policy, my new favorite place.  Because we got there so early, we were able to get a large booth for all of us.  We ended up leaving relatively early, shortly after the dancing started, because we were all exhausted (and some of us injured) from tubing earlier on in the day, but it was a nice, relaxing night out.

Lauren and I had planned to meet up with my parents on Sunday morning to go to the Titanic exhibit at the National Geographic Museum.  It was my first time at the museum, and the exhibit was interesting.  We all agreed at the end that we had hoped to see more artifacts from the wreckage.  The information there was all very interesting, but we thought that it could have been better visually.  We checked out the samurai exhibit afterward, which didn't really interest any of us, and then a photo exhibit, which was very moving.  All of the photos were from stories that had been published in the magazine in 2011, but these particular photos were not published.  The one series that moved me the most was about child brides in Yemen. In one photo, a girl, whose age was not provided but who was described as "pre-pubescent", sat with her noticeably older husband and their four children.  In another, a woman sat with her husband, who she married when she was six and he was twenty-five.  I wanted to vomit upon looking at those photos, because it is truly tragic to me that, in this day and age, child brides still exist.

We grabbed some lunch after checking out the exhibits, and then I headed over to Dan's.  And THEN came one of the most anticipated moments of my summer to date: THE COLDPLAY CONCERT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  My wonderful Dan got the tickets for me for Christmas, and I think it was my most anticipated Christmas gift ever!  I had built the concert up a lot, since it was three years in the making for me (for those of you who know me, you'll recall the time when some friends and I were thwarted in our attempt to go to a Coldplay concert), and it really did not disappoint.  They are incredible entertainers, and I was belting out all of the lyrics and dancing around like a crazy person, not at all caring what anyone thought.  Dan could see the glee written all over my face, and I was so grateful for that amazingly thoughtful gift.  We got home much later than we normally would on a Sunday night, but, once again, we dodged a pretty nasty thunderstorm by about 10 minutes.  Jeez louise, I hope we keep this streak going!  I was having a hard time falling asleep, and was jumping every time I heard a large clap of thunder, so Dan made sure I was okay before attempting to fall asleep himself.  I am very lucky :)

I will post pictures of this epic weekend tomorrow, and I look forward to updating you all on our travels to Boston!  We leave on Thursday, and I'm pinching myself.  I told Dan last night that, as much as I was in my element last night, I will be like that ALL WEEKEND when we're back in my beloved Bay State!

Also, I usually take a look at the readership stats for this blog, mostly to see which topics seem to get the most hits (but maybe a little bit to reassure myself that people actually are reading haha), so thanks for making this gal feel good with that last post!! When I checked this morning, 18 people had read it!  I mostly blog for myself, to have a record of sorts, but it sure does help when you know that other people are finding some value in it!

As American as Apple Pie

Well, another 4th of July has come and gone, and I think that each and every one of us groaned this morning when we woke up, knowing full well that we still have another two days of the work week.  I personally believe that the 4th should always be observed on a Friday or a Monday (although preferably a Friday) haha.  It was a fantastic day yesterday, which made it even MORE difficult to wake up for work today.

On Tuesday evening, Dan and I started off our mini-vacation by grabbing a pizza dinner at Pizzeria Paradiso.  I think the fact that we are both training for our half-marathon means we're ravenously hungry all the time, so a big dinner was definitely necessary.  Then we went to T Sweet's, where I got my favorite Oreo frozen yogurt and Dan got a dish of mint chocolate chip ice cream that was nearly as big as his head (not really, but he definitely misjudged the size!!).  He had been saying for a while that, given the more relaxed dress code at his new job, he wanted to get some work-appropriate khakis, so we popped into Banana Republic, where he found not only a pair of pants, but also a gingham shirt!  Yes, I have been hoping for months that he would embrace gingham (and had even casually pointed a shirt out when we went to the outlets in the winter), not that I ever would have forced him to buy one.  I refuse to be that girl who tries to dress her boyfriend, even given my strong views on style, but I was practically bursting with joy when he picked it out on his own!  Then we headed down to the movie theater, where we saw the new Disney-Pixar movie Brave.  I was surprised that everyone there was our age or older; I think Pixar has that effect on people.  I LOVED THE MOVIE, and, once again, Pixar did not disappoint!

On Wednesday morning, we went on our respective runs (Dan was going for a shorter run, so he ran outside, but I wanted to do my normal six-miler, so I ran on the treadmill in his building) and then started our 4th of July right by going to Metro 29 (which was packed) for breakfast.  Nothing better than some Metro 29 French toast to start my day off right (although I was definitely feeling nauseous by the end).  We lazed around for a little bit, thanks to our respective food comas, and then we headed over to his friend Goran's house for the afternoon.  We were there from about 2:30 to 8:30, and it was about 9 million degrees the entire time with 100 percent humidity.  There was a slip 'n slide that a bunch of the guys set up, but neither Dan nor I had brought our bathing suits, so we decided not to partake.  So we were content to just hang out, eat and drink, and catch up with people.  I didn't know the majority of the people there (and Dan didn't know many more than I did), but it was nice to see the people we do know, as well as meet some new friends.  By about 8:00, I was getting antsy, because I did not want to miss the fireworks.  I think the fireworks were much less important to Dan, but he knows how much I enjoy them, so we headed out a little bit before 8:30.  It occurred to us that we would have to walk back to Rosslyn after the fireworks, so, rather than brave the crowds at 9:30ish, we decided to head straight back to Dan's place and watch the fireworks from his balcony. They have some really prime real estate there, and we had a fantastic view of the fireworks!  And the fact that we didn't have to march all the way home afterward made it so much better.  I was so grateful to get to spend another 4th of July with Dan, as well as with his friends, so I would say that it was a pretty awesome day!

Tim texted me on Tuesday to say that he's in town, so I'm excited to go over to my parents' house for dinner tonight and see him.  I might be wrong, but my little bro has been an excellent communicator with me this summer!  Here's hoping that continues!  I'm looking forward to a jam-packed weekend as well, from jazz tomorrow to tubing on Saturday and the Titanic exhibit at the National Geographic Museum on Sunday.  And, of course, the main event, THE COLDPLAY CONCERT ON SUNDAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Seriously, it's all I've been listening to all week.  This concert is three years in the making for me, so I couldn't be more excited!

Hot as Hades

Okay, folks.  I am 100% over this D.C. summer heat and humidity.  I do not enjoy feeling as though my breathing is constricted and my eyes are being scorched out every time I walk outside.  Over the weekend, there were times when the weather report told me that it felt like 112 degrees!  112!  We had a really nasty storm on Friday night, which actually left many people without power (a few of my coworkers still do not have power and, in fact, one of them said that she got a voicemail from Pepco saying that she may not get power back until Friday!).  We beat the storm home by about 15 minutes, and it was only when I thought I saw the lights flickering that we looked around and saw what was going on outside.  I am not a fan of thunderstorms (as a twenty-something child, I used to hide in my basement whenever there was a thunderstorm), so I kind of slinked down, prompting laughter from Dan, who is not afraid of thunderstorms.

Storms and oppressive heat aside, it turned out to be a lovely weekend!  Dinner with Dan's parents was really wonderful, especially since I adore the two of them and always enjoy the time I get to spend with them.  Dan's cousin (who, coincidentally, lives in his building) also joined us, and she was really great.  We bonded over our European travels (especially our love of Switzerland). We had dinner at West End Bistro, where Dan and I had gone once before for Restaurant Week, and it was once again delicious. Then we made it home just before the storm started and watched a movie.  It was a perfectly low-key night.  Dan had to be up early to go golfing on Saturday, so I didn't get to spend much time with him this weekend, but I used the free afternoon to go for what ended up being a painful 8-mile run (I ran at about 11:30 and hadn't eaten breakfast beforehand, so I learned that, while it's well and good to run first thing in the morning on an empty stomach, running that late without having eaten isn't going to cut it, and I felt like I was going to pass out with each and every step) and Skype with Kristin (whose wedding will be a year from this past Friday!!!!! HOORAY!).  I then met up with a group of girlfriends at Mellow Mushroom for some delicious pizza, and then a smaller group of us migrated to Rumba Cafe on 18th Street for DELICIOUS mojitos (seriously, delicious and strong).

Jamie and I at Rumba Cafe

Donell and Lauren at Rumba

On Sunday morning, I got up early so that I could run part of the way to brunch.  We were meeting in Eastern Market and it was already probably about 90 degrees and humid at 8 a.m., but I ran six miles and then metroed/walked the rest of the way.  It was not the best run, but it could have been worse given how hot it was.  I was also pleased with myself because, between my runs on Friday, Saturday and Sunday, I had run 8 miles!  I was pretty excited about that total.  I met up with Lauren and Cat at (where else) Ted's Bulletin, because Cat had never tried the legendary pop tarts.  As usual, they did not disappoint.  We poked around the market for a bit and then Lauren and I trekked back to her apartment, where the promise of air conditioning and water awaited.  We sat around chatting for a bit, and then I went home so that Molly and I could see Magic Mike (hilarious, but totally ridiculous haha.  Definitely entertaining!).  We ended the evening by watching an episode of Mad Men while having dinner, so it was a nice, relaxing end to the weekend before what I'm sure will be a hectic week.  Bring it on!  I'm so excited for all that we have going on!  And here's hoping that the heat will die down a little bit...

Beautiful flowers at Eastern Market