Week 30: Cape Cod

This past weekend I took a mini-vacay to Boston/Cape Cod with my family and some of our close family friends who have a house in Mashpee. On Saturday, we took a ferry to Nantucket and spent the day on the island. We biked somewhere around 25 miles over the entire weekend, the majority around the trails and roads of Nantucket. It was quite the workout but a great way to explore the island! Weekend highlights included: a delicious lobster roll lunch in Boston, a home-cooked surf & turf dinner on Friday, celebrating my birthday early with the fam, introducing Auddie to Settlers of Catan (she loves it! woo!), repeatedly losing to Auddie in foosball (who knew this girl was such a gamer??), and of course some quality time on the beach. All in all, it was a great bonding weekend with my fam and I'm bummed it went by so quickly! Pictured here are Auddie, Molly, and me on the ferry to Nantucket. As evidenced by my wacky hair, we were riding the high-speed ferry, which gets us from Hyannis to Nantucket in only an hour.

Week 29: Orchard Lake

I spent a few days this past week in Orchard Lake, Michigan, where John's family owns a lovely house on the water. It was a great trip that involved rowboats, regular boats, lots of scrabble & checkers, fireworks, plenty of dogs, delicious food and drink, and generally a very relaxing time with John and some of his family. Pictured with us here is Murphy, who is Uncle Dick's standard poodle and a very sweet pup. Not pictured here are Anna & Kasey, the Cangany German Shephards, as well as Jack the dog and Grace and Charlotte the cats. Also - please don't mind my bangs in this photo - blame the windy boat ride!

All in all, I had a great time exploring another new midwestern state. Can't wait for a return trip!

Week 28: The Wire

This week I'll take a break form the usual excitement and plug a TV show I've been watching while sitting on my butt. In case you haven't heard of it, The Wire is a police crime drama set in Baltimore, Maryland. It originally aired on HBO for five seasons and has been widely acclaimed as the best TV show ever (or substitute any other similar hyperbolic statement). As one who usually gives in to this type of media hype, I thought I should check it out. A friend of mine was kind enough to lend me the entire series on DVD, so for the past few weeks John and I have been tuning in. The past few days have been particularly productive (or unproductive, depending on how you look at it!). From Thursday night through Sunday, we got through all of season 2 (twelve episodes) and the first three episodes of season 3.

While parts of the show are pretty violent and graphic, and though sometimes I don't understand all of the plot intricacies, the show is pretty addicting, mostly for the well-developed characters. It's definitely interesting and eye-opening to see all the crazy stuff that happens on a day-to-day basis in city that's so close to here. Also, the complexities of the "war on drugs" have always intrigued me, so this is just further education. Anyway, shouldn't be long before we finish all five seasons! Stay tuned for the verdict.

Week 27: Happy Birthday, America!

To celebrate the fourth of July, I enjoyed a truly all-American weekend. I kicked off the festivities with my first-ever visit to Nationals Stadium. We got some great $10 seats and it was a comfortable and breezy summer night. With a cold beer, some Ben's Chili Bowl (my fave!) and good company, it was the perfect start of the celebration of America's birthday. We even saw a fireworks show after the game! The rest of the weekend continued in similar food/drink fashion. Needless to say, I needed most of the workweek to recover. Not a bad birthday celebration, if you ask me! Hope everyone else celebrated in similar patriotic fashion!

Week 26: Eastern Market Grand Reopening!

Yikes! I just realized Week 26 marks the halfway point of 2009. Unbelievable how it's flown by! This past Saturday was the grand reopening of Eastern Market after the fire just over two years ago. Hard to believe that my parents have been in the DC area for over 30 years but this was their first trip to Eastern Market! Needless to say, my mom enjoyed the jewelry vendors and found some nice items to take home. After a couple consecutive weekends out of town, it was a great day to stroll around and take in one of my favorite parts of DC. And after mostly straight up SPs, I hope you enjoy this little artsy number!