Black Friday and beyond

Waking up Friday after Thanksgiving was a challenge, however, Ben being an above average husband decided to let Kelly sleep in a bit longer while he walked the dogs and made pancakes. As it turned out, he was just trying to bribe her into heading downtown for a tour of the Bureau of Engraving and Printing. It worked.

The Bureau of Engraving & Printing is only open Monday-Friday and closed on holidays, which leaves us with little opportunity to take the tour. The day after Thanksgiving is literally the only day we can take the tour without taking a day off of work.  After a hour long wait, the twenty-five minute tour was decent.

(Ben has always liked money.  He has some, but would like more.)

It was more the mystique of all the money and looking at the employees and wondering how often they think about taking ways to take some of the leftovers home. They print on average $900 million a day in that building.

(This is what a million dollars in $10 bills looks like.  $100s probably makes more sense for large transactions.)

(Ben has always said he wouldn't trade Kelly for $1 Million - clearly that is a good decision.)

The rest of the day was spent watching football and catching up with the dogs at the house. While we missed out on most of the traditional thanksgiving dishes, Ben made a sweet potato pie to celebrate the holiday.

Saturday was used to fully recover for the last few days and enjoy some great college football match-ups. We were excited for the Oregon vs Oregon St. and Alabama vs Auburn games, but disappointed when both were blowouts.

On Sunday, we woke up early and headed to a few museums. We checked out the two Andy Warhol exhibits at the Gallery of Art and Hirshhorn Museum. They were somewhat interesting, but overall disappointing. Little of the exhibit was paintings or some of his notable pieces, rather it was more of his early sketches. 

(It took us about 15 minutes to get through the exhibits.)

While we were at the art museums, we checked out the rest of the exhibits.  

We also ran over to the Air and Space Museum to see the new drone on display.  Finally, we noticed there was no line at the National Archives, so we decided to run in and see the Constitution and Declaration of Independence without the pressure of summer lines.

With our museum quota more than filled, we headed back home to enjoy a big bowl of chili and spinach cornbread for lunch. The remainder of the day we spent watching football and working on Christmas shopping.

Monday brought a return to the work week and the bus.

However, Monday evening was full of excitement because of the "Sing-Off" finale was on TV. The "Sing-Off" is a contest to find the best a capella group and one of our guilty pleasures. After casting our ballots for our favorite group, the winner would be announced tonight. Much to Kelly's delight, the "Pentatonix" took the championship, $200,000 prize and the Sony recording contract!  

After work on Tuesday we headed to the Verizon Center to watch the St. Louis Blues vs Washington Capitals hockey game. Neither one of us are real hockey fans, but we thought it was a chance to check out the scene and be around some St. Louis fans for a night.  

Before the game we grabbed dinner at Capitol Q, a bbq joint near Chinatown. Due to our low standards for DC bbq, Capitol Q was decent. Terrible coleslaw, despite the false promises made to us by the Capitol Q staff, but decent pulled pork and brisket. 

Full, we headed over to the game.  The Capitals had just fired their coach and had not been playing very well.  That said, the turnout was very strong - especially for a Tuesday night against the St. Louis Blues.

After the first St. Louis goal, we realized their were only about 9 Blues fans in the audience.

The game was fun and included 3 goals, a fight and a St. Louis Blues victory.

However, the most fun was probably reserved for the Chipolte burrito toss.  What could possibly be cooler than throwing/catching a burrito?  For those of you who have been to a Lambert's "Home of the throwed roll," you know the thrown burrito is a gold mine waiting to happen.