Citzens arrest on Hill Country BBQ

It is a small miracle that this blog post was written. We have been sucked pretty far down into the '24' season 8 vortex. Also, Ben has been taking breaks to obsessively paint a dresser we picked up.



(just 7 coats to go)

Shockingly, we managed to leave the house (and 24) for over half the day. This is even more surprising because it was overcast and drizzly today. It was the first day since we arrived that the weather has not been perfect.

The so-so weather did, however, make for an excellent day to visit a few of DC's many fabulous museums. That said, the real driving force behind our departure was a desire to try a barbecue establishment that came recommended by one of our new friends from softball.

As many of you probably know, we are pretty passionate about quality bbq. We have generally conceded that DC would not be able to match the bbq we had become accustomed to in the past couple years, but were hoping this would be a good tip. Spoiler alert - we got burned.
It is tempting to go on a long rant about this and had we written this a few hours ago, that is what you would be reading. Instead, we will simply ask the readers of this blog to boycott Hill Country BBQ in DC. If we stick together, the readers of this blog can keep as many as 7-8 people from traveling across the country to this establishment.

Luckily from the depths of a disappointing dining experience rose a nice afternoon courtesy of two Smithsonian Museums (The American Portrait Gallery and the Air & Space Museum).

The Portrait Gallery was pleasant and has a collection that ranges from historic portraits of past presidents and first ladies to contemporary and modern art collections.


(contemporary portrait of Bill Clinton not inhaling)


      (Martin Van Buren I presume? )

The real treat of the afternoon was the Air and Space Museum. For those of you who don't know, Kelly is a space nerd and was like a kid in a candy store. This museum was outstanding. There were several used Apollo spacecrafts, including Friendship 7, Apollo 15 command module, Apollo 11 command module(1st lunar landing) and an unused Lunar module. (Feel free to comment and take a guess as to who wrote that last sentence.  Hint: not Mo) It was awesome to be so close to something so historic. That's what makes the Smithsonian museums so wonderful, they let everyone be apart of history. We were able to walk in a building and see and touch artifacts that have defined our country's history.  One such item was a moon rock that people were encouraged to touch.  Unfortunately, with no hand sanitizer in sight, Ben had to take a pass on touching the moon rock.  While in some ways this was a blow, it kind of just looked like a piece of glass and not worth risking the e. coli  no doubt residing on the unwashed hands of the throngs of 8th graders on class trips to the museum.


 

reflection in the heat shield (too hot to handle, too cold to hold)

After the museums, we went home and Ben added more paint to the dresser and finally, finally we finished season 8 of 24 and were freed to fully resume our lives. Who knows what we might do tomorrow -- the possibilities are endless. One thing that will never be a possibility is going back to Hill Country for BBQ (or at least having to pay for it ourselves). Not to belabor the point, but we want to reiterate to anyone who is considering opening a bbq joint, just because you put "country" in the name of the restaurant, put up signs that have "y'all" in them, and play country music doesn't give you the authority to serve BBQ.