Georgetown French Market

I am not quite sure what I was expecting when I saw these French Market posters, but sidewalk sale was definately not it. Basically just four blocks of Georgetown had their stores spill out into the street. Unfortuneately, these are not really the stores we shop at anyway though there are some nice upscale interiors places, mostly antiques. The one french patisserie in that stretch did not even really capitalize on the theme to great effect.

Duke Ellington's Sophisticated Ladies

Sophisticated Ladies was playing at the Lincoln Theatre though it is run by Arena ReStaged. This is probably a good exampl of poor expectations management. I was expecting something with more plot, a traditional musical, interspesed with dance and song. What we saw was more of musical revue, a lah Smoky Joes Cafe. Maybe if I went in expecting that, it would have been all right, but I didn't and it was really just ok. I mean the music was ok, all jazz numbers, some of which I recognized as they are just really famous, others I did not. The vocals were mostly pretty good though the acoustics of being in the upper tiers of the Lincoln dampened the effect. Tap is definately something better seen in person than on TV on So You Think You Can Dance, though I think the youg dancers just blew away Maurice Hines. Its just that by the time intermission came around there was not really any tease for me... I did not really expect to see anything in the second act that I had not already sort of seen inthe first. So we left. Ah well.

Old Glory

The NBA Playoffs started on Saturday but the Magic did not start their series till Sunday with a 5:30 game against the Charlotte Bobcats.  We headed over to Old Glory, a bar-b-Que restaurant and bar with a big open air 2nd floor deck in Georgetown on M Street just off Wisconsin.  We have walked by this place many times, always looking in on the deck and seeing what appears to be a great place to sit out.  The weather was a bit chilly today for an outdoor deck, but this one had some heaters making it pretty manageable.  The bar-b-q was just ok.  A plus is that they had about 6 different sauces from all the big Bar-B-Q regions sitting on the table so you can experiment.  As for a sport watching venue though, this place is not ideal.  No one seemed particularly interested in the games as all, and people were standing in front of the tv blocking our view.  Anyway it was not too bad.

Great Falls

We got an early start on saturday and took the dogs out to Great Falls for a little hike along the VA side of the Potamic.  It is really beautiful out there.  Dogs actually did a bit of hiking, climbing up into the hills, but once again tired out pretty quickly.  We were only there for about an hour before heading back.

Georgetown Gallery Gaze

Georgetown's monthly gallery openings is slated for the third friday of the month, so we finally made the rounds this past friday.  We started at the north end of Wisconsin and made our way down.  Highlights for me were some photos of Roman landscapes and tuscan fruits and veggies that had what looked to be an acetate like wash at Susan Calloway Fine Art; mexican painted wood animal figurines at Phoenix; hand made jewelry at Poppy; some city scapes of NYC and Paris with a playful take on perspective at Thomas Moser, and I loved a sculpture of several little men climbing over each other at Parish Gallery.  Only the last found me tempted to purchase - the gallery owner suggested I keep coming to his openings and his price may come down (he thinks my price will come up and who knows).  I am pretty sure he just wants to offload it as it is sitting in his back office.  Only problem with it is it is sitting on a block of wood that I think somewhat takes away from the actual surface. Not sure if it can be remounted but the artists signature is on the wood.

The Liar @ Lansburgh

Every tuesday at 10am, the Shakespeare Theatre releases there under 35 tickets for shows that week. This was my second week calling in and there were seats available for thursday's show, The Liar. This was not a Shakespeare play, but a classic play writen by a frenchman, Pierre Corneille, in the early 1600s, about a young upwardly mobile gallant with a talent for... exaggeration. The re translation to english was quite modernized, sometimes a bit jarringly so, but in general made understanding the dialogue very easy. That being said, the dialogue was very funny, and well delivered. The plot was very complicated, filled with mistaken identities which seemed to be a signature of plays of this era. Looking over the upcoming season with a whole slate of plays, half Shakespeare, half not, I look forward to expanding our exposure to some of these classic playwrights.

In Darfur @ Theatre J

Sam starts her new job this week and had a happy hour with her new co workers wednesday afternoon followed by her spanish class. I headed down to the theatre district to try to get some rush seats. My first stop was Theatre J, my first time there, on Q and 16th NW, in the Jewish community center. There turned out to be no need to go further as I scored discount seats to In Darfur which was in it's final week.

This was a short play, about 80 minutes with no intermission. It was very well done, good acting, about a difficult subject. Considering the scope of the humanitarian catastrophe, I felt the play brought me into it to experience a day in the life pretty well. I am not sure if that is because I am already somewhat familiar with what has been happening there or not. Nevertheless, I thought this was pretty well done.

Il Canale

We decided that Monday will now be pizza night.  Sam read somewhere it would be a good idea to make monday have a ritual we enjoy so that we would look forward to monday rather than the usual dreading it.  Since DC seems to have a pretty good selection of wood fired pizza places, we will be doing a tour of them.  The Washington City Paper had recommended Il Canale as the best new pizza place and since it is right here in Georgetown, we went there on Monday.  

They have a great little roof deck that we happened to be sharing with a birthday party on Monday.  Weather was nice and I can see this being a popular spot throughout the summer.  We ordered a white pizza with anchovies and green olives and a red pizza with prosciutto.  The crust was excellent, neopolitan style, in league with Paradiso and two amys.  The toppings though did not measure up, so this one comes in fourth (behind Posto too).

National Gallery of Art - Part II

Sam has joined a kickball league that plays on Sunday afternoon on the Mall. This probably deserves a post of its own... maybe if I play one day. I accompanied her to the Mall though and went to the National Gallery of Art while she went to meet up with her team. I wanted to complete by tour of the main floor of the West Building so I started in the Dutch masters of the 17th century and proceed counter clockwise into the east wing of the building. I was only their for an hour. Standouts were Aelbery Culp's The Mass at Dordrecht and Andrew Wyeth's Wind from the Sea. I found myself skimming through French and German painters of the 18th and 19th century. I suppose the most interesting thing about the Frnech 19th is the beginnings of impressionism but nothing really stood out. I am not sure if that is because of the collection, or if their was really the evolutionary equivalent of an explosion at the turn of the century.

Nerdnite - April

Saturday was April's monthly Nerd Nite at DC9 so we got there at 6:30 sharp, ordered some awesome, heavy on the garlic, french fries, and a couple of drinks and went upstairs. The evening's roster started with a stream biologist who talked about how government ecological enforcement agencies can use the count of insects in the water to measure the health of streams. The speaker had great stage presence and was pretty funny. He was also a member of the band that played between speakers, which also had three entomolygists, and played bluegrass. Pretty good as well. I was pleasantly supplied by their female vocalist who really had some pipes. THe next speaker was an older guy with long silver hair, a former student at Berkley who talked about the life and works of R Buckminster Fuller. This is especially interesting as apparently he is connected to the performance at the Arena Stage that we have tickets for later next month. He was also handing out discount coupons which we could not take advantage of because we had already bought our tix. Boo. Last was a kooky, blond afro-ed, french canadian dentist with a funny accent. He talked about the potential of stem cells to regenerate teeth. I just got a kick out of watching him because he reminded me of the lead in Mel Brooks Dr Frankenstein.

Arsenal of Democracy

Politics and Prose had a three pm talk by Julian Zelizer about his new work, Arsenal of Democracy. The premise is that foreign policy partisanship, far from being a recent phenomenon, has always been a tool and a weapon of the parties to advance their agendas. He only goes back to FDR, but he traces each presidency to show instances of how these administrations and their oppositions at the time leveraged the foreign policy events of their times for partisan gain. I suppose I never really doubted this despite the whining and gripes of David Broder types, but I suppose it is impressive that Zelizer managed to get 600 pages out of this premise.

His actual talk I found even less enlightening as he decided to focus on dispelling some "myths", such as historically republicans have been hawks, democrats doves, George W Bush was an absolute Hawk, etc. Not really sure where to go with all these. Most of it is just dismantling straw men, and the last just ignores the political situation at the time (loss of both houses of congress) and somehow takes the position that the surge in Iraq was actually not a Hawkish move. I actually got to ask a question at this discussion which was to comment on how many of these supposed myths were actually just the talking points of the opposition rather than an actual description of a platform. Zelizer acknowledged that many of them did indeed originate as opposition memes but claimed that they had indeed taken hold in the popular consciousness. I am not sure whether that is true or not, but more importantly, I am not sure that it matters.

Once you acknowledge the political science literature that elections can basically be predicted by the state of the economy and the status of incumbency, then all of this is merely descriptive. I just mean that Zelizer may very well accurately be describing what past presidents have done but I am not sure whether he offers very good advice for how future presidents should react to such partisanship. In my own opinion, if individual decisions have little affect on reelection, than presidents should just enact their agenda according to their own ideological beliefs. Period. I think George W Bush actually did this pretty well. And by well, I mean he attempted to implement his idea of an agenda to the best of his ability. I happen to disagree with just about every element of his agenda, but what I wish we got out of this was for a Democratic president and congress to also implement their agenda to the best of their ability instead of inventing imaginary constraints of process and partisanship. The constraints are self imposed and a critical observer will notice that Republican feel no compunction to adhere to them.

Hirshhorn After Hours

Friday night was the quarterly After Hours at the Hirshhorn museum on the Mall. This is basically a dance party complete with cash bar, DJ and access to the galleries. I did not realize though that the main event was outdoors in the central open courtyard of this cylindrical museum, and that it would be quite cold in the evening. So I was a bit underdressed. The tickets were $18 each and considering the cash bar only served $5 coors lite in the beer department, I don't think we are the targetet clientelle. I remember when I was single, any excuse to combine drinking with meeting young members of the opposite sex sounded like a grand idea... "what? Only $100 to get into that singles mixer at the department of sanitation parking lot? You can count me in?" OK, perhaps a slight exageration but you get the idea. In fairness, the DJ was pretty cool and they had a stage for some hip hop and break beat dancing (which I could not really see because I was intimidated by the large crowd). The $7 crushed blueberry margherita was actually pretty good too.

As for the museum, we had to race through it as they closed it at 10 and we only made it in around 9 but we managed to get through it all. They currently have a long running exhibit called Colorforms going now, representing a style of simple geometric shapes and bold colors that I have never found particulary engaging. Much more interesting was their very impressive sculpture collection occupying the inner corridors of each level, and some mobiles by Alexander Calder.

Progressivm on Tap - Foreign Policy

Wow, it has been a busy week.  Last night we headed over to Busboys and Poets on 14th & V for our second lecture from the Center for American Progress.  This one was about defining Progressive Foreign Policy, and it had Spencer Ackerman and Brian Katulis.  In describing the event to Sam I said this series feels like you are sitting in on a staff meeting of a think tank.  In other words it is assumed you already know what everyone is talking about.  In that light, this was not really a lecture describing what progressive foreign policy is to a someone who does not know what it is, or even to draw sharp distinctions between it and Bush Doctrine policy, as several questioners pointed out.  It feels more like a bunch of people sitting in a bar intellectualizing.  If anything, the speakers did talk a little about drawing a distinction between idealized progressive foreign policy and the Obama Doctrine, such as the problem with drone strikes in Pakistan, intervention in Sudan, and a bit about deescalating in Afghanistan.

Depending on what the ultimate goal of this particular forum is, that could be fine.  Much of the audience is young, probably students and recent grads, and being in DC, many of them are looking a careers in government or policy.  So a forum like this that makes the audience positively attuned to CAP and can extend the CAP sphere of influence when the audience actually gets those jobs.  Just a guess.

I started to get a headache towards the end, otherwise I definitely think I would have enjoyed sticking around to talk to the presenters and audience members afterwards.

Clybourne Park @ Woolly Mammoth

Sam had her spanish class on Wednesday night leaving me with nothing to do. So I explored my options and opted for trying to see Clybourne Park at the Woolly Mammoth Theater company. They were sold out but had some standing room only tex available and I was hoping to get some rush seats so I took the bus over getting there at 7. No rush seats but I did secure the standing room tix. I went to Teaism around the corner to read a bit. That place really deserves it's own post as it is an excellent tea house and I will be looking forward to heading there again.

The play itself was amazing. One of the best so far. The standing room seats did not really bother me at all. The first act was uproariously funny, about a black family moving into a white suburb on the south side of chicago, probably in the late 50's/early 60's. The second act told by the same actors in different roles told the reverse tale, of a young yuppie couple moving into that same now predominantly black neighborhood today. The second act was funny as well but I think because it hit a bit closer to home left me a little less comfortable laughing at the characters sticking their feet in their mouths than those safely distant relics in the first act. Nevertheless, superbly executed and original reinterpretation of Raisin in the Sun. The theatre was very cool as well with a comfortable lounge area with plenty of seats, large complex set (including a 2nd story), and a back stage audience section with reduced prices.

Reasons To Be Pretty @ Studio

We went to see Neil Labute's play Tuesday night at the Studio Theatre. Excellent. The dialogue was very real, and I thought it laid out a very plausible scenario about the differences in how men and women think about physical attraction, and about our relationships.

I had read a review earlier in the DCist which was critical of the slightly excess gesticulating by the characters in the opening scene. Having now seen, it, I see what they mean. I wanted to confirm with Sam whether she thought the same thing without having read the review before hand and she did. That being said, it is not really that the characters were unrealistic as I can imagine people that really would act that way. Its just that it was slightly distracting from the dialogue which I though transcended these two characters.

Perhaps more importantly, the review claims the subject matter of this play vs the others in Labute's trilogy is a bit on the shallow or trite side and I suppose I see what she means. I would just say that a lot of young adults (I am guessing the characters are in their twenty's) are pretty shallow and trite.

Easter at All Souls

Sam really wanted to celebrate Easter morning in a quasi traditional manner so we explored DC's offerings. The short list was a sunrise service at the Lincoln Memorial, a regular Easter morning service at a Unitarian church, or the big service at National Cathedral. We eliminated National Cathedral as apparently everyone else has the same idea and you need to get tickets which were already handed out. We opted for the sunrise service which would force us to wake up at 5am to get there in time at 6:30 but at 2am when we went to sleep, we changed our mind to go with Plan B.

This worked out for the best as we were really in no shape to drag ourselves to a sunrise service and would not have enjoyed it. All Souls is the Unitarian Universalist at the intersection of Mt Pleasant, Columbia Heights and Adam's Morgan neighborhoods. It won out over the Universalist church closer by in Dupont Circle because that one had no special Easter service times posted on its web site. There is not really a great direct public transit way to get there (45 minutes) so we drove instead (10 minutes) and were lucky to find a space. There are several "headquarter" cathedrals on the same corner so Easter morning served a brisk business, even for the early 9:30 service.

The church was very nice, not overwhelming with architectural or artistic features, white walls inside. The sermon was really appealing, promoting the idea of resurrection as about how remembering the deceased keeps them alive. It did not feel contrived. Some very cool singing and dancing from a large excellent choir including some African rhythms and Caribean dancing.

Harvest Cobb

I admittedly stole this idea from Chopt Creative Salads, so here is to them. This is great:

Ingredients:
1 large cooked beet, diced (I used golden but red is good too)
1 Rotisserie Chicked, meat removed and chopped
2 Apples (lean towards the tart)
10 oz goat cheese, separate into crumbles
6-8 oz roasted walnuts, roughly chopped
4 cups chopped green (arugula or spinach work best but romaine can be used)

Dressing:
4 tbs dijon mustard
1/4 c red wine vinegar
1/4 c olive or grapeseed oil

Combine ingredients in large bowl and toss. Whisk dressing ingredients and pour over salad. Toss some more. Refrigerate.

Saffron Israeli Couscous Salad

Ingredients:
1/4 tsp crushed saffron threads
1 1/2 c israeli couscous
1 3/4 c vegetable or chicken broth
4-5 fresh roma tomatoes (or equivalent), diced
8 green onions, thinly sliced, separating white from green parts
4 cloves garlic
6 oz feta
1 tb olive or grapeseed oil

Dressing:
6 tbs olive or grapeseed oil
4 tbs Apple Cider Vinigar
juice of 1 lemon
zest of 1 lemon

Instructions:
In medium sauce pan, saute with 1 tbs oil, white part of green onions with garlic for about 1 minute over medium heat. Add broth and bring to a boil. Add saffron, couscous and cook until liquid is absorbed (5-10 minutes). Place in regrigerator or freezer to cool. Add to bowl and mix in feta, diced tomatos, remaining green onions. Whisk dressing ingredients, pour over salad and toss. Refrigerate.

National Arboretum

This weekend was gorgeous with temperatures getting into the high 70s so we put the dogs in the car and headed to the National Arboretum.  We have the perfect dogs for taking to social events where we can walk around with them as everyone loves seeing a bulldog walking along.  The only problem is that they are exhausted after walking three blocks.  That and Oscar lunges at other dogs.  Anyway, we can never figure out how people are walking their bulldogs on the mall as there really are not that many residential areas close enough to the mall for a bulldog to walk to without being exhausted.  So are these people driving there and being dropped off, or are they paying for parking?  I mean I want to know these things.

That is all neither here nor there.  So we went to the National Arboretum (The Mall was parking lot because of this whole Cherry Blossom madness).  It was really beautiful out there.  Much better place to see the cherry blossoms plus a whole assortment of other flowering trees.  We packed a picnic with some new salads whose recipes I will have to post.  Dogs loved being out and about, but they were exhausted by the time we got back to the car and made sure everyone within hearing distance knew it from their wheezing.  Good Times.

Progressivism On Tap with Tod Lindberg

One of the things I had been meaning to do since coming to DC was to check out the Politics. How to do that?  Well one of the blogs I read daily, Matt Yglesias, writes for the website of the Center for American Progress.  So I checked out there events link on their website, and sure enough they have stuff going on pretty regularly.  Most of it is during the day, but they have a lecture series called Progressivism on Tap that runs weekly in the evenings so I registered to attend.  This worked out well, because I also got to check out Busboys and Poets (the one on 5th & K) at the same time.

I arrived at 6, and got to snack on the food that was provided, and due to some technical difficulties, the dialogue got started at about 6:30.  The format for this was kind of a long form interview format between the host and Todd Lindberg. who is a conservative thinker and author.  I loved being there for it.  I mean I pretty much disagreed with everything this guy was though philosophically but he was pretty honest about the stating the politics of things and I respect that he came to talk to a room full of liberals.  The Q&A that followed was even better as he tried pretty valiantly to answer our questions.  I left thinking I could hold my own in such a dialogue as there were questions I felt I could ask (did not really get a chance as time was limited).

Let's see.  I would have asked him that given the nature of our institutions, did he think that whn Republicans regained control of the Senate (it has to happen eventually) did he think they would eliminate the filibuster given that they have traditionally been the party to push that type of aggressive politics.  And if so, is that a good thing?  And what are his thoughts on how the Republican party acts like a partisan parliamentary party with strong party discipline.  You know, just to hear the conservative take on these issues.

Cherry Blossom Festival

It turned out that Wednesday was also the peak blossom day of the Cherry Blossom Festival.  This is news only because it was originally supposed to be April 5th and then it basically kept getting moved up by a day until I heard on Thursday that Wednesday turned out out to be the peak. Which worked out well since that is the day we went.  I guess everyone should do this so they don't have this lingering idea that they are missing something.  They're not.  Lots of people, not much going on.  And I'm not saying that because I don't think the trees blossoming are not beautiful, because they are, really.  It's just that walking through a parking lot with 10000 other people taking pictures of them does not really enhance the experience.  And the festival part of the whole event is really lacking.  There is a stage with a bunch of community dance competition winners which basically made me feel like I was watching a bad high school movie.  There were some food stands with overpriced corporate looking Japanese food.  And it was all so spread out that it all seemed somewhat random.  So if anyone is asking my advice... Skip it.

Tryst

On Wednesday I worked from home and went with Sam and Nikki to Tryst in Adam's Morgan.  This is a huge coffee shop/lounge filled with couches, armchairs and coffee tables.  They serve food but do not have a grill so the menu is limited to waffles (must have a waffle maker), salads, and sandwiches plus an assortment of danishes and desserts.  I had a coffee (not great) and lemon poppy waffles with a fresh blueberry sauce.  Waffles were good but I did not really get a lemon poppy flavor.  The venue is excellent though.  There we were at 11:00 on a wednesday morning and the place was packed with people, most of them with laptops (free wifi) or reading.  Very cool.

Local 16

One of the venues we were told about by the couple we talked with at the Ethiopian Gala was Local 16, which they said was their favorite bar. So after dinner at 2 Amys, we headed over to give it a try. (This was after finding out that Busboys & Poet's open mic night is popular enough to sell out on a cold drizzly Tuesday night, alas). Local 16 is a two story venue with two rooms on the first floor, having a bar on one side and dining room on the other. The beer selection is pretty good, prices reasonable ($6 for a micro). Upstairs as an awesome rooftop deck that was unfortuneately closed as was the other lounging rooms arranged around it because I suppose it was still early in the week. Still I could tell that this place has potential and with warmer weather coming down the pike, I will keep this place in the back burner of cool places to go.

2 Amys

This pizza place was rated best of DC in the Washington City paper (reader's poll) so we thought we needed to compare it to our lcoal favorite, Pizza Paradiso. We headed over on Tuesday. It is a relatively quick bus ride up Wisconsin. There beer menu is decent and we started with some potato croquetes that were just ok. Then cam the pizza. We ordered a stuffed pizza with Ripieno Basilico Ricotta, fresh mozzerella, grana, pesto, tomato which was really what I would call a calzone. This was AMAZING. Dough had the perfect consistency (for me), crisp on the outside yet chewy throughout, almost like a good bagel. We got the Santa Brigida pizza with Tomato, fresh mozzarella, cherry tomatoes, arugula. This was also excellent. I would say though the dough is very similar to Paradiso, I liked 2 Amys better. On the pizza, I think the crust was just a hair two thin at 2Amys, leaving too little crust in your bit until you get to the end. Paradiso does better in this regard.

Rosa Mexicana

Nikki came into town on Monday night and our first outing was to head to Rosa Mexicana, an upscale Mexican restaurant in Chinatown. We took the bus/metro over and arrived early, so we walked around the block to see the Capital and some of the buildings in the area then headed back for our 8:30 reservations. The interior was trendy, white table cloths, good music, vaguely mexican themed. There specialties were supposedly their guacamole and margheritas, so we ordered both.

The guacamole, was pretty good, very fresh if a little bit on the bland side. They provide a medium and a hot sauce to go with it to spice it. The medium is a green sauce without a ton of flavor, and the hot was a chipotle barbecue flavor that overpowers it so not really impressed there. I ordered a basic margherita on the rocks with salt and it was very stiff. If your looking for a strong drink I guess that is good, but all I could taste was the alcohol so I was not a fan.

Dinner was much better. I ordered some chicken enchiladas with mole and it was amazing. Spicy and flavorful. I was going to take half home but could not stop eating. They brought out yellow rice and a black bean puree for the table that was also really good, even though I rarely eat the rice and beans.

The Dragons Gift

Sunday saw us return to Politics and Prose for a reading from The Dragon's Gift. Here is there blurb:

A professor at American University’s School of International Service, Brautigam
is a longtime observer and former resident of China. In her new book she
documents how China, having established a higher standard of living for itself,
is now working to effect better conditions in Africa.

I found the speaker very interesting and was tempted to purchase it, but not enough to buy it new, even with the 20 percent member discount. I'll wait for this one on DVD (otherwise known as amazon used books). The question and answer period was great with many students and experts from the African NGO scene and students in the audience. The author talked about many specific countries, specific deals and arrangements, and specific news accounts.

My question had I asked it would have been for her to comment on the result of China's participation in these arrangements on China herself. She alluded to the fact that China did not in fact deal extensively with authoritarian regimes in Africa (did little to criticise them or sanction them but provided little in the way of financial suppoert). I did not find this surprising as any self interested country would prefer not to deal with an authoritatian regime as they are not transparent or trustworthy, hence the likelihood of returning a profit to China in the longrun is much diminished. Afterall these arrangements China is engaged in are menat to be mutually beneficial. It seems to me though that if China is engaging in bilateral trade agreements, then China is entangling itself in the international community in such a way that greater transparency and pressure to honor whatever commitments it engages in may lead to a liberalization of China itself.

Ethiopian Embassy Event

Saturday evening saw us head to the Ethiopian Embassy for a Gala. This was formally called the Black and White Gala and while not black tie did encourage us to at least where the appropriate colors. The event was organized by thingstododc where we purchased the tickets. They essentially use the embassy as a venue and bring in Ethiopian food from a local restaurant, some cultural dancing, and music. We even got to hear someone from the embassy staff and watch a 15 minute video on investing in Ethiopia. The food was pretty good, the woman doing the dancing had an infectious smile and tried to get all the women in the room to dance along with her to sometimes hilarious effect, and we met another couple that told us about some cool things to do in the area. This event was $75 per person and while fun, I am not sure it is really worth the price. If the price was $50/person I'd go to another, or if the caliber of the evening included more...

Kite Festival

Saturday was the annual Smithsonian Kite Festival at the Washington Monument on the National Mall. We packed a small picnic and headed over around 11. The weather was brisk but sunny and we dressed warmly for it, bringing a blanket just in case. The mall was pretty crowded with families with their own small store bought kites and there was a section roped off for the Official participants. These were for the most part pretty large. There was an Ocean themed entries that had multiple parts linked together such that as one would get up, it would help pull up the next piece. It consisted of a Ray, an Octopus and a shark. We stayed for about two hours.

39 Steps @ Warner

I did not really know what to expect when heading to thursday's 39 Steps at the Warner Theatre. I did read a good review which gave me an inkling. You see, I was sort of expecting a play about an Alfred Hitchcock movie and since my preconceived notion of an Alfred Hitchcock movie is a suspense thriller, I just supposed this would be a stage version of the same. It was and wasn't and the result was far superior. It was basically a spoof of spy thrillers that reminded me of the Fugitive with Harison Ford (though that is just my age showing as I know that was in fact just a remake of an earlier version). But in addition, it had wonderful effects, amazing slapstick choreography, and ingenious use of costume and character transitions as there was only a four person cast. LOVED IT.