Our Best Post This Week

Monday was a rude awaking for Kelly. This was her first day back at the office which brought her first experience commuting to work on the bus. Fortunately our offices are close enough to each other that we can take the same bus. Of course, the bus was jammed packed and we had to stand for 70% of the ride before getting a seat. It was not a good start to Kelly's bus riding career. With the exception of the commute, getting back to the office wasn't that bad. 

(Kelly has joined Ben in occupying the greater K street area during the work day.)

After coordinating efforts to make sure we were on the same bus, the ride home wasn't that bad. As the week went on, the commute became easier, but still takes some getting used to.

(Food Truck Friday may be in our near future.)

Friday after work we decided to head down to the Verizon Center to try to get Washington Wizards vs Miami Heat tickets. We had a pretty low price range that we were willing to pay for tickets.  Ben haggled with scalpers for a while, but nobody was willing to budge to a reasonable price.  As one guy put it, "it is Friday night and LeBron is in town - there are no cheap tickets."  Unwilling to be ripped off by the hype, we headed home.  It was probably for the best as Kelly has been fighting a cold for the last week or so and went to bed around 8pm and slept for the next 14 hours, which was an impressive effort.

Ben enticed Kelly out of bed Saturday morning with some delicious breakfast burritos. Filled up, we headed out to visit the Smithsonian Air and Space Annex in Mananas, Virginia.  It is a enormous airplane hanger that has a variety of "Air and Space" exhibits that are too large to display in the museum in D.C.

We weren't sure what to expect, but was blown away by the museum. The hanger was filled with hundreds of planes of all kinds, including a Blackbird, Concorde and an actual space shuttle.

There were military fighter jets, bombers, and even Nazi and Japanese planes from WWII.

(Apparently missiles are excluded from the stop, drop, and roll advice.) 

There were fun 'space' items from the past.

(This phone was out of this world.)

There were even satellites.

(Our phones had all the bars at the Air and Space Annex.)

And if all that wasn't enough, there were even props from the Transformers movie that was partially filmed at the museum.

(This piece of the All-Spark from Transformers was left because it couldn't get past TSA at the airport.)

All in all the Air and Space Annex was much more than meets the eye.  The only downer was the cost of parking, but it was definitely worth it.  

Famished from all the museum wandering, we stopped for lunch a Five Guys for a hamburger before picking up a few things at Target. After that, we headed back to D.C. to take care of life chores and relax for the evening.  We also watched "The Double" starring Richard Gere on Netflix.  It was fun to see the scenes shot in DC, but for the most part The Double probably deserved only two stars.  

Sunday we headed downtown for lunch at St. Louis' own Pi.  The pizza place recently opened a DC location.  Many of the menu items are named after St. Louis neighborhoods which made us a little nostalgic for "The Gateway to the West."  After filling up on some pretty good pizza, we walked to the Verizon Center for the Georgetown vs St. Johns basketball game.

Georgetown, ranked #11 in the country, struggled against a below average Red Storm team but was able to pull away in the last two minutes to secure the victory.

The highlight of the game was the Georgetown Athletics hall of fame  introductions at halftime. The marquee athlete was Dikembe Mutombo, a 8-time NBA All-Star and recently retired after 18 year career.

(We felt welcome in the House of Mutombo.)

After the game, we hurried home so Kelly could watch the final round of the AT&T Pebble Beach tournament. It was a crowded leader board with Tiger and Phil Mickleson at the top. On a cold and snowy afternoon, it was nice to watch a tournament that is held in northern California. As Tiger struggled to a 75, Phil made 8 birdes with no bogeys to shoot a final round 64.

Monday it was back to work and on Tuesday we celebrated a low key Valentines Day with dinner after a long day of work.

(This guy might be trying a little too hard to find his valentine.)

We ate at Bistro Italiano on Capitol Hill. It is a small restaurant in the middle of a bunch of row houses that has about 10 tables. It was a decent meal capped off with an excellent cannoli for dessert. Located only 7 blocks from our apartment, we will definitely go back to try a few other menu items.