Running Errands and Races

March 24-25 was an exciting weekend full of golf, basketball and cherry blossoms.  Kelly has made a concerted effort to watch all of or part of each game in the NCAA tournament. With the help of two computers and one TV, this dream became a reality. The bracket challenge with Kelly's family made the games even more exciting. 

As of Final Four weekend, Kelly overtook her Dad, who had the lead for most of the tournament. Ben was in a respectable second place, but with all the same picks as Kelly, there was no way to make up any ground. Kelly's sister Katie had an outside chance of winning if Kansas were to win the national championship. We will keep you updated. (Update, we didn't post the blog in time for there to be suspense, but you the reader can just pretend.)  

Sunday we watched the final round of the Bay Hill invitational. Tiger Woods had the lead and was trying to win for the first time in 3 years. He played excellent golf and steamrolled the competition to secure the win. It was good to see him playing well, even though he is a jerk, because of what he means to the PGA. It will be interesting to see how he plays next week at the Masters.

We went for our final long training run before the cherry blossom race. Since is was only 5 miles we thought Mosely could come along. She quickly proved us wrong. Soon after the Capitol, Mo decided she had enough exercise and would rather seek out attention from tourists on the mall. With 4 miles left to run, we use constant encouragement and breaks as motivation for her. We stopped by to tidal basin for one last look at the cherry blossoms, or what was left of them, and Mo somehow found the energy to go up to every person for a little attention.

Dexter on the other hand, simply wanted to run and did not enjoy the slower pace, several breaks and all the people. We managed to get Mo back home and in one piece and she and Dex quickly past out for the rest  of the evening.

 

Monday was dreary and chilly so to lift our spirits, we met up and had lunch from "Red Hook Lobster  Truck".

 

Their specialty is the lobster roll, with the lobster flown daily from Maine. The fresh lobster meant it was a high dollar sandwich. We have heard great things about this truck so we figured we would bite the bullet and give it a go.

 

It was delicious, however the $15 price tag took away some of the enjoyment of the meal. As frugal people, we felt our hard earned money could have went a little further somewhere else.

We finally completed our taxes and shipped them off to Uncle Sam. Due to the complexity of our taxes this year, we had to take them to a professional. Different jobs, living in different states, moving, getting married etc. all contributed to the headache. We took the Metro up to Cleveland Park on Wednesday to sign all the papers and as a reward, we had lunch at our favorite Thai place.

Another big development for us was our membership to Capitol Bikeshare.  All over the city are Capitol Bikshare racks and you can check a bike out in one location and drop it off at another. This allows us to walk to work and then ride a bike home or visa versa.

Our first experience didn't go so well.  Nervous about riding in rush hour DC traffic, we got all flustered and took the worst route possible to work. Because of our poor judgment and execution, we were unable to get a feel for how practical it will be as a mode of transportation to work.

Friday brought to close a long week for us. We decided to celebrate with lunch at Loeb's Deli. It is located in the middle of our two offices, so it is a good meeting place for lunch. Kelly got the "Loeb" and Ben go the "Times Square". Both delicious, Kelly's sandwich was on a great twist roll and Ben's featured a fried egg on pastrami. What more could you want?

After work we rode our bikes to the National Building Museum to pick up our race bibs for the race on Sunday. Our training program for the race was somewhat suspect. We had good intentions, but laziness often won out. However,  along with a few long runs, we had consistently been running from work which we hoped payed off on race day.

On Saturday, we took care of a few chores.  We had to get the oil changed and take care of some shopping.   While out we decided to have lunch at Chevy's, which holds a special place in our hearts.  Also, Ben had acquired a game piece that got us a free lunch.

On the way home, we stopped by the kite festival that is part of the festivities for the cherry blossoms.

Sunday morning we got up early and headed to the Mall for the race.  It was a crazy scene on the Mall. Thousands of runners and spectators were gathered at the base of the Washington Monument milling around before things got underway. We did a little stretching and were ready to go. We started near the Washington Monument and headed toward Arlington National Cemetery. We ran around the round-about and came back into the district. Then we headed toward the Kennedy Center along the Potomac River for a mile and then headed back south for two miles. We ran past the tidal basin and into Hains Point for three miles. In terms of cherry blossoms, Hains Point had the best offering. We finished back at the Washington Monument in 1 hour 46 minutes. We were pleased with our time.

 

After the race, we grabbed a snack, water, and our medals before heading toward the metro. Ben had to work from from 10-2. While Ben was occupied with work, Kelly took this opportunity to shower and pass out! The day was not done yet. After practice, we had to take the dogs to get their vaccinations. There is a clinic in Price George's County (on the MD side of DC) that offers cheap vaccinations on the first Sunday of the month. With Mosley's haircut scheduled for Tuesday, we had to take this opportunity to get her shots up to date. While not terrible, the experience did require us to stand in line for 45 minutes with dogs constantly barking and the sun bearing down on us. On a typical afternoon, this would have been ok, however the fatigue and soreness was setting in from our morning activities. All said and done we were out of there in an hour. As a reward, we got ourselves and the dogs an ice cream cone.

We spent the remainder of the day recovering which involved watching the movie Footloose. A modern day take on the classic film was entertaining, but did not have enough dancing in it for Ben!

Spring Has Sprung

Its been a busy few weeks for us and unfortunately our blog posts have suffered.

A couple weeks ago, we finally managed to track down Wizards tickets and with some luck of scheduling, they were playing the Lakers. It was Kelly's first NBA game and we were hoping for a decent one.  Unfortunately, the Wizards are one of the worst teams in the league.

(Verizon Center is home to the Wizards)

The stands were pretty full as a lot of people came out to see Kobe Bryant and the Lakers.  For much of the game it seemed like at least half the crowd was for the Lakers.

(Kobe has been sporting a mask since having his nose broken in the All-Star game.)

(Kobe and John Wall)

(Kobe Bryant scored 30 points)

At one point the Lakers were up by 19 points and fans had to be amused by puns on the score board.

 
There was also some good fan-cam dancing that was embarrassing for this woman.

However, as as the game went on, something began to change. 

(G-Wiz, the Wizards mascot, seen here bribing the ref with a burrito.)

Whether it was the free burrito for the ref or that the Wizards began playing well and Kobe went cold... the Wizards somehow managed to win!  The crowd got pretty into it and it was fun to see what will likely be the highlight of the Wizards season.

Ben made a trip back to the midwest last week for work. He had a whirlwind tour through St. Louis and Jefferson City, but managed to visit a few old friends and old favorites, like Oscar's Diner. 

We have continued to walk the 2.5 miles to work in the mornings, which have become more pleasant as Spring arrives. The unseasonably warm weather has caused D.C. to start blooming.

Dexter and Mosley are doing well. They are enjoying the nice weather and the long training runs on the weekend. We took them both for a 6 mile run on the national mall a couple of weekends ago, however Mosely was not impressed after the two mile mark. She was a trooper and made it the entire 6 miles. We decided to leave Mo at home for our 7 and 8 mile training runs, and let Dex pick up the slack.

After an entire year of anticipation, the cherry trees have finally blossomed. It is the 100 anniversary of the Japanese giving DC over 3,000 cherry blossom trees. Our first visit was last sunday on a run. We tried to run past all the major groves of trees including the mall, around the tidal basin and through East Potomac park. The blossoms were truly specular. A few days later we decided to head down the see the blossoms at their "peak". The peak means that 70% have bloomed. It was a beautiful evening and perfect for taking pictures.

Knowing that storms were coming and that the warm weather meant a short season for the cherry blossoms, we made another trip down to the tidal basin area on Saturday morning.

It was interesting to see how the blossoms had changed in only a few days.  The were more pink than they had been on Wednesday, but many were beginning to lose their petals.

With our fill of cherry blossoms, we headed out.   Ben had seen an advertisement for a beaded Beetle at the Native American Museum. Intrigued, we decided to stop by and check it out. The picture doesn't do it justice, but this Bug is covered in hand woven bead work. Very impressive. After a very brief visit in the museum, we were back in the car and off to brunch.

We finally made it to the Argonaut on H street. We drive by often and always put it at the top of the list of places to try, but have never made it happened. It was definitely above average and has a few items we would like to try. Due to its close proximity to our apartment and its really cool vibe, we will go back at some point.

After brunch, we headed home to take care of a bunch of life chores around the house.  With storms coming, it was a good day to get some things done and to finally put up a new post on the blog.  

Taking a Bite Out of Our Nation's Capital

The week was fairly standard at the office with a few lunch hour highlights. On Tuesday, we met up  at Farragut Park (a park that is halfway between Kelly and Ben's office) to go to  the "DC Empanada" food truck. We split beef, chicken and pork empanadas and unanimously voted the pork the best.  

Tuesday's culinary highlights continued as we observed National Pancake Day for dinner.  Unfortunately, our sourdough starter had gotten a little funky - so sourdough pancakes were out.   Fortunately, Ben found a great recipe for buttermilk pancakes.

On Friday Kelly got to experience the P.O.R.C food truck. Overall, it brought a lot to the table.  We have been very critical about BBQ in DC, but this food truck provided an above average pulled pork sandwich.

Our friend Paula, formerly of Missouri and currently of Rhode Island, stayed with us Friday night and we spent a busy Saturday out and about in D.C. We stopped by the Botanical Gardens to check out the Orchids exhibit. It was an entire greenhouse full of beautiful orchids.

(Ben offered this kid 10% of all the money he pulled out of the fountain as a finder's fee.)

We wondered through the other four greenhouses including the "jungle", "dessert", "medicinal flowers" and "Hawaii".

(Who knew what cocoa looked like before it gets hot?)

(Kelly is a little suspicious of the bird of paradise.)

Next up was the Portrait Galley. Paula had never been and it is our favorite museum so we are always up for a visit. There was a great exhibit "In Vibrant Color" that included color photographs from the early to middle half of the century. It was interesting to see color pictures of people that you see all the time in black and white.

(Ben contemplating how to get bacon this big.)

With a fair amount of touring already under our belts, we decided that lunch was in order.  We went to the nearby Rosa Mexicano.  We were enticed by the other patron guacamole and the fact that it was apparently somewhat of a signature starter.

(The Original Guacycle.)

It was pretty delicious as was the rest of our meal, particularly the shredded chicken sandwich we had.  Full and rested, we headed over to the MLK and FDR memorials. While Paula looked around, we further discussed our obsession with the cherry blossoms and how excited we are for them to bloom. The trees have buds on them and should be blooming in just a few weeks.

Our final stop for the day was Eastern Market. We looked around, indulged with a canoli and stopped for a cup of coffee before heading back to the apartment.

After a long day of exploring, we took Paula to Union Station so she could catch the red eye train back to Rhode Island.

Sunday had highs and lows. After sleeping in, Ben made biscuits and gravy for brunch. We searched for something to watch on Netflix and settled on Die Hard. Kelly had never seen any of the trilogy. While enjoying a lazy afternoon, we ended up watching all three Die Hard movies which gave each of us the confidence to save the world if called upon.  We also watched most of the final round of The Honda Classic, including Tiger Wood's 62 earning him second place behind Rory McIlroy. Kelly is fond of watching The Honda Classic because she played PGA National, the host course, when she was in high school. After procrastinating all day, we finally set out on a 6 mile training run to the Washington Monument. It was a bit chilly, but overall a great night for a run.  The dogs were especially happy to go on the run.

(Dex only wished we would have run farther.)

And finally, this is the first installment of a new feature we will call "license plate of the week" - though it will probably not appear every week.