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Sunday, August 24, 2008

Great weekend;

Good evening!

How is everyone?  Great, I hope.

Amanda and I had a pretty fun filled weekend.  Friday night I went to a potluck dinner party with my friends from my investment club.  It was really fun.  I made fruit salad, brownies, and took some Nathan's Famous pickle spears (we love Nathan's Famous, great company).  We also had hotdogs, chicken, cookies, hummus, and tons of other junk.  Fun!  Amanda didn't make it, she had a happy hour to celebrate a friends birthday.  She had fun too, which is what's important.

Saturday, we went to the Eastern Market neighborhood of DC.  It was really fun.  We walked through the arts and crafts section, the flea market, and had fun looking around at the wares.  The locally grown produce and flowers were beautiful and smelled wonderfully.  We walked around for a couple hours before going a few blocks south to grab lunch.  We went to the Banana Cafe, a Tex-Mex/Cuban/Puerto Rican restaurant.  It was really tasty.  Then we went back to the Market and walked through the large food section.  They had so much meat, fish, and other foods, it was really something.  Amanda and I both agreed we'd love to live in the area.  It'd be fun to be able to shop at the market daily for our food.

Today we went to the National Gallery of Art to see the special Afghanistan exhibit.  The exhibit was the featured article in National Geographic Magazine, from several months ago.  Reading the article, I instantly wanted to see the artifacts.  Lucky for me, at the end of the article it said that the exhibit was in DC until September 7th!  I probably never would have heard about the exhibit if it wasn't for the article.  It was very interesting.  Lots of gold, glass and clay pieces.  I couldn't believe some of the glass vases they had, very amazing.  Great condition, especially for being 2200 years old.

After going through the exhibit, we went back to the Eastern Market to try another restaurant we walked past yesterday.  It was a small little Thai restaurant.  It was very very good.  I'd go back, definitely, although I can't remember the name of it.  Something like, Old Siam, or something.  I'd suggest it to anyone that likes Thai.

Not much else going on.  I'm falling asleep sitting on the couch, so I'll leave it at that.

:)

JMB

Monday, August 04, 2008

Weekend adventures;

Hello, hello. How is everyone? Great, I hope.

I'm doing well.

Saturday was pretty boring. I had to work and spent 6 hours at the office. That was about all we did. Had dinner, relaxed a bit, and then watched a movie before bed. We watched "Revolver", one of the newer Guy Ritchie movies. It wasn't good. In fact, it was terrible. It was very confusing, and not all that entertaining. If you're reading this, saw the movie, understood it and enjoyed it, please shoot me an email explaining why. I must have missed something that made it entertaining. Anyway, that was about all we did Saturday. Amanda made banana bread. It's delicious.

Sunday was more fun. Our friend Keith came over at about 9:30 in the morning and we loaded into the car. The three of us drove up to Baltimore to spend the day. We started our day at the Maryland something something...science center? Something like that. Anyway, we saw the Body Worlds exhibit, which was very interesting. It was a little strange but worth the trip. It's an exhibit of actual human remains that were preserved using a technique dubbed "plastination". It's not as creepy as it sounds. It isn't too gross or weird, but is meant to be educational and interesting. Interesting it was.
We spent a few hours browsing the exhibit and the rest of the Science Center before heading out in search of lunch. We bought day passes on Baltimores inner harbor "water taxi" service, which was only $9. I thought it was a great deal, and we definitely got our monies worth. We caught the taxi right out the front door of the science center, and road across the harbor to Little Italy. We grabbed lunch at a restaurant named Sabatino's...or something close to that. It was pretty good. I had the chicken parmesian. We caught the water taxi again back to the National Aquarium, but after looking at the lines and the expected entrance time (about 1.5 hours), we decided we didn't want to wait around that long (another future trip is already tentatively planned!). There are five large water vessells that you can tour as well for a small fee. We toured a WWII era battleship. It was very interesting but scorchingly hot. The sheer temperature of the inside of the boat was enough to ruin the whole experience. We did the entire self guided tour but didn't stop to look at anything in detail. Amanda hated it. But she did it anyway without complaint...she's the best.
By this time we were hot, sweaty, exhausted, and ready to head out. We decided to take the water taxi around the entire circle one last time, since all three of us love being on boats. After that we stopped at a little shop to get beverages and then went back to the car. We arrived at home at about 7pm and bid farewell to Keith. Then we relaxed and ate a nice dinner before bed. It was a real adventure!
Hopefully we'll make it back to the Aquarium one day soon. I'd like to get back to the zoo as well, once the temperature cools a bit.
:)
Until next time,
John