Last Weekend

What do you do on your last weekend in DC? Well, I didn't really do anything. Not for lack of things to do, but rather, I think the heat finally got to me.

Yes, on week 10, I decided it's too hot/humid for activity. To be fair, it was an especially hot and humid day, that terminated today with 4 hours of thunder/threatened rain + some actual rain, and my apartment (for unknown reasons) was also super hot.

Yesterday I dragged myself far enough to visit Dunkin Donuts, only to find that they don't really sell donuts any more, and the line was out the door. So then I went to Whole Foods to do my grocery shopping for the week and get a pink homer simpson style donut. I've finally realized (that also took me 10 weeks) that Whole Foods is my most metro-accessible functioning grocery store. I visited three whole foods before I realized this. Unfortunately, Whole Foods is also the most expensive grocery store on the planet except for maybe bristol farms. I actually picked my tomatoes by price. Also, it's impossible to buy bread or animals without talking to the bread/animal person, and I don't do that kind of thing. So I settled for slightly moldy bread (whole foods bread is by definition so fresh mold grows instantly), and random packaged sausage. Oh, Whole Foods doesn't sell donuts either.

On week 10, I finally made a meal to last myself the entire week. My coworkers would have been proud. It consisted of all the things left in the fridge piled into a pan + the whole foods sausages. My last week of lunches will be spaghetti w/sausage mixed with a pound of frozen spinach and dinner will be couscous drowned in tomatoes, leftover frozen chicken strips, and parsley. I've mastered microwave cooking.

Today I made it as far as Union Station, where I ate and hung out at the bookstore. I pretended I was in Tokyo hanging out at shinjuku/takeshimaya. The illusion worked because in Tokyo and in DC, the rain confined me to the bookstore in the train station. However, Tokyo doesn't have crazy security guards following you around, thinking you're going to steal a magazine and stuff it into your super small purse or down your super short skirt.

I really admire a bunch of professors, judges, and legal professions, but you don't get a chance to see those people in San Diego. However, this is DC.

Work sent me to the American Constitution Society's Convention yesterday. It's like the ideological opposite of the Federalist society, and they had insanely smart panelists. I think the majority of speakers clerked for at least one supreme court justice. Now I didn't say the panelists were engaging....I only note their superior legal intellect. Some of them are actually assholes to non-Yale/Harvard grads, but that doesn't really matter when everyone at the convention (save me) graduated from Yale or Harvard. Also, this was a con law convention. That means I saw the author of my con law textbook, the author of my treatise, and my con law professor. It also means attendees had some type of real interest in con law litigation. I'd have that interest if I had any real chance of employment as a con law lawyer (and I'd like to), but item #41 I learned this summer: I don't. Null. Zero. Let me clarify. By con law, I don't mean first amendment law or basic civil liberties stuff. I mean representing people in Gitmo, working in voter election law, or in one guy's case, writing the patriot act. That's pretty amazing stuff.

All the same though, I really wish I was at Comic-Con instead.

Monuments are Monumental

As our loyal readers will know, I was visiting in DC for a few days last weekend. It was great fun, and I took many pictures, many of our nation's great memorials. I was going to make a big post with a comprehensive memorial tour, and maybe I still will. However tonight I was scanning in pictures from the album chronicling my grandparents' honeymoon. I'm not sure exactly when that was, but more than 50 years ago, when everyone still had cars like this (that's my grandfather looking under the hood):
Anyway, they drove across the US, and one of their stops was Washington DC. Here is proof that Monuments are the same forever, as they should be.

Front of Lincoln Memorial now:

Front of Lincoln Memorial then:


Lincoln now:

Lincoln then:


Washington Monument now:


Washington Monument then:

Microwave Dinners

Living out of a suitcase means resourceful "cooking." For a variety of reasons, I can only use the microwave here. On the weekends I try to make something that'll last me the entire week for dinners. Usually it's some type of heavy salad. This week features instant mashed potatoes, iced tea, and a salad of salami, mozzarella, green beans and parsley, with tomatoes, olives and peaches on the side of course. This is borderline not cost efficient, but it tastes better than anything I can get on the way home.
Other weeks featured a pasta salad that was basically pizza deconstructed and uncooked, and tabouli, and one week, a box of arugula. The arugula week I'd call the worst week ever. If you ever wondered what arugula tasted like since fancy restaurants only give you one leaf/appetizer, don't buy a box to find out. Just trust me, it's barely edible.

Ethnic Museums

African Art Museum:

No really, the museum itself is awesome except when you notice all the little tribes that made the pieces are located in the Congo, where civil war #2.5 just finished. The other awesome pieces come from Sierra Leone. Ya, Kanye West's Sierra Leone w/ the blood diamonds. Would it be better if non-Africans just left the continent?

I'll fix the tilt later.

Monuments @ Night

I did it, I braved the Murderzone. There I was, single female tourist, walking around with my camera at 11pm at night checking out the monuments. Cut to scene of me standing in the deserted metro. Then me walking alone deserted streets back home. The proper mindset is to think of yourself as the aggressor, and others as potential victims. Like if you're out in the Sahara and starving, you'd kill the next animal you saw, which would probably also be starving. I had no weapon, I'd use my bare fists.

Anyhow, it actually wasn't dangerous or a real murderzone at all.

Creepy folks having a picnic, creepy guy flying a kite? Both present.


WW2 memorial + creepy girl.

The Vietnam + Korean memorials were completely packed, no walking room. I guess some buses operate night tours of the monuments, and those are the most popular because the lights are so dim you get this eerie barely discernible glow on the figures.

Also stopped by the portrait gallery in Chinatown (the joke of a Chinatown)..

Smithsonian Castle

White House + Corcoran Gallery (not free). The gallery has an excellent very complete exhibit on Modernism if you're interested in that type of stuff. Modernists invented stacking bowls, were obsessed with the machine and industrialization as utopia, and basically created what we would call conformity today. Except back then it was all nouveau!

Here's a picture of the Eisenhower house from when I visited last fall. If you ever hear the phrase "summer in DC," run the other way.

Of course what's a trip with C and yellowcat without visits to overpriced restaurants? We visited Zaytinya (mediterranean tapas) and Georgia Brown's (upscale southern). Tonight we're going to Raku, which is kind of a running joke around here at work that only I find funny. You see, every time someone has a friend or family member in town, they all go to Raku. I never thought it was that great, good but not authentic Asian. But it's where people take out of town visitors. So, in following the grand tradition, I'll be visiting Raku tonight.

C came to visit me! We did a ton of stuff, including visiting the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier @ Arlington. Saw the changing of the guard too of course.

Checked out the Hirshhorn Museum of ridiculously contemporary art.



Visited the Renwick museum, also free. They've got the famous Yellowstone canyon picture that inspired Congress to make the first national park, along with portraits of Native Americans.

C is visiting me this weekend! Yay! Work has been really boring this week so this is definitely a good change. I've been researching sub-Saharan Africa, and when I go home, I read magazine articles on the Congo. Africa's one of those places that just sucks you in, with its stories of chaos and adventure and rebirth. But in reality, living in Africa is probably pretty bad and it takes a special type of personality (not mine) to make it.

Everyone else at work passes time writing cover letters and either dreaming (2Ls) or dreading (3Ls) their futures. I went to a federal gov't career fair for interns in DC last night, and they had a turnout of 1,500 people. It made me wish I stayed in science...because that's the degree employers wanted to see. And then I go home and my roommate tells me she got a new job, one that totally blows all federal govt jobs out of the water. I hope that happens to me one day.

Georgetown

The first triple digit day, so I had to do something that involved a lot of air-conditioning. Shopping. Since I've already visited the Pentagon Mall, it was time to check out Georgetown. You can get there via bus from Union Station, provided your bus drivers don't all suddenly need to take a break and disappear leaving everyone standing in the heat for 20min.

Once I got there, I visited the official mall. It's not really airconditioned nor did people actually go inside, but it's got a Victorian (?) feel to it.


Tried to make it to the school, but I failed, due to the heat. Francis Scott Key's memorial was as far as I got. They've got his bust and a few boards explaining his accomplishments. You can see the general architecture of the area in the background. It's a beautiful area, where you'd go to see cars that aren't drivable on real roads and women dressed in clothes you can't get in DC. Shopping wise, you see the same chain stores you see in any other strip mall and not much else...but the restaurants are 99% French bistros and they plaster their windows w/reviews ala NYC. I ate at Dean & Delucca for lunch. Greek salad. By far the most popular shop in town. They provide shaded seats and jazz musicians and security guards.


Then I trekked down to the waterfront where they're building a new park. It's revitalization at its best!

Saw Ratatouille here. I think the theatre is in the same building as the Ritz Carlton and the Ritz's fancy restaurant.
I also discovered that Georgetown has canals. You know I love industrial warehouses and canals, so I took a bunch of pictures and feel compelled to share them. That's the mall on the right in this shot:

Old Post Office

The Old Post Office is the third highest structure in DC. If you're lazy like me and don't want to line up for tickets early in the morning up the Washington Memorial, this is the place to go! It's also free!

The windows are all covered w/narrow wires so photography w/ larger lenses/cameras would be very difficult. Here's Penn Ave down to the white house. The White House is that white building behind the official looking white building below.

People who live in this area have awesome lives. For example, see rooftop garden. No, this was not the only one.

Full res shot of Penn Ave down the other way towards the Capitol.

Assorted Pictures

The FBI's idea of security is to put up caution tape and some rope (this is their building). On the other side, they parked a police car next to the entrance, so you'd need to go through the car to break in.
The DOJ goes for the impenetrable fortress-style doors. I like this better.

I made Union Station look empty for you. Look, it's all yours.

I even brought back a piece of Africa. Look, no one's staffing the shop...

American Indian Museum & Live Earth

Quick programming note: Out on the East Coast, we call them American Indians, not Native Americans.

So I went to the American Indian Museum. Actually, I went there to eat. They've got this cafeteria that serves food from all kinds of Indian tribes. Bad news: it was all tasteless and sucked. Good news: I went by myself so I easily got a table right during the lunch rush, and since I was sitting alone, no one wanted to sit anywhere near me, so I was surrounded by 12 empty seats while everyone else was frantically looking for seating. And yes I took my sweet time.

Since I was already there, I checked out the museum. Whoever the hell designed this museum needs to be dragged out back and shot and dumped in the cesspool that is the Reflecting Pool. Because it's like Post-modern building design meets art from before time started. And it's not a good mix. In fact, I could not find the entrances to the exhibits on floors 1-2, there may not be exhibits, I don't know. Floor 3 consisted of a Vietnam-wall like video display wall, where they play a video but you can see your reflection in the video wall. Oh wait, it also had deer dresses. That was kind of cool, except the designer set all the displays on these curved ultra reflective clear walls so you can't actually see where you're going.

Floor 4 is so completely bad I'm not even going to discuss this, only that it involved walking into diorama displays but the doors aren't clearly marked, and have like a 5' clearance.

So the museum has deerskin dresses, beaded things, and
Bibles..
and Guns.


At least the crazy design looks good on the outside, and serves one purpose: it lets people cool off in the heat.

One of the live earth concerts was also playing outside. It's free because Al Gore put it together at the last minute (24hrs ago), the venue is really small, and Garth Brooks was the main guy. I didn't see him...I saw some Native American artists. But you can see everyone's really excited like they're watching someone really famous, but they aren't.

US Capitol!

It's the start of a heat wave, so I slapped on my sunscreen (rated by the NY Times to cause other forms of cancer) and headed off early. I walked over to the US Capitol to check it out. Couldn't get a tour because the tour groups had it all booked up though.

Here's the front. I tend to take really geometrically based picture, so you can't see the water fountain to the left of this shot that centers the building. It's not that great of a fountain anyway, it lacks a sculpture, probably because tourists are constantly standing in front of it posing for pictures. Human sculpture at its best.

If a picture could tell you what it feels like to step into my shoes, well it was kind of like this:


Out in front of the capitol sits the Ulysses Grant Memorial. He's surrounded by people fighting on chariots and muffy-lions. The Muffys look towards the Capitol:
Our warrior 18th president:

View down the mall. I put this in full size so you can see the folklife festival in full gear.

I was sick on the fourth of july. Actually, I was sick on Tuesday, but I didn't realize this until after work. The office AC broke last week and the temperature has been steadily rising. Others were complaining about the heat and I felt totally fine, thanks to a low grade fever. On the holiday I felt like I had been hit by a truck, and no one was home and I had no medicine, so I spent the day in bed in what has to be the most boring 4th ever.

But how can you miss the fireworks when you're in the Nation's capital, likely the only time in my entire life?? So I dragged my diseased corpse down to the Mall at 8.45pm for the show at 9.10.

I was kind of late. The security line had swelled to huge proportions from like late comers.
So instead I sat at the back of the capitol building, a full 2 miles from the fireworks launch site, and behind the concert so I couldn't see that. But it was a decent view of the show, and it's where all the locals sat.

Afterwards I walked back. The Supreme Court was closed...officers wouldn't let people on the steps. Same for the other attractions in the area. The fourth of July is the city's emergency evacuation/deployment practice day so all 37 federal law enforcement agencies + their helicopters, bikes, dogs and segways went all out to keep us safe!

Early 4th of July at Petco Park

There's nothing more 4th of July than a baseball game with fireworks, so much so that the Padres scheduled two firework games on the 3rd and 4th. I chose the game on the 3rd because Greg Maddux, one of the greatest pitchers ever, was scheduled to start for the Padres.

To get to Petco without paying exorbitant parking fees, the first step is to park at San Diego's other sports stadium: Qualcomm.
Then you hop on the express trolley to Petco. The express trolley still stops at all the stops, but it does mean you don't have to transfer trolleys twice.

The trolleys criss-cross over the Rio San Diego, which, although it runs down the center of Mission Valley, is largely invisible from everywhere except the trolley.
When you get to Petco Park, you will learn that it is actually run by Muffy.
Her buddies are all there,
She has a litter-box in the outfield,
And there is a big grassy hill for her to sit on and watch the game.
I had a great seat, field level, about 9 rows directly behind home plate. Actually, these seats were not quite as excellent as their location suggests, as there was (1) a protective and very visible net between me and the field and (2) there was very little height difference between my row and the row in front of me. As you can see from this shot (Kouzmanoff!!), the result was almost as much view of mesh and heads as there was view of the field.
Like most living legends, Maddux's best years are behind him, and so he sucked it up, giving up 6 runs in 6 1/3 innings. Here he is, about to give up a run.
Soon it got dark, and the pictures became more atmospheric, but blurry.
And then it was time for fireworks.