Hiking to the Ice Cream Shop with Abe Lincoln...or something like that

The work week was filled with conferences, webinars and several meetings about writing letters and making calls. The highlight for Kelly came at a conference on Wednesday at a building across from the White House. During the lunch break, she walked over to see if the President was available to talk Illinois politics. On her way back Kelly walked past St. John's Church. Always intrigued by historic churches, she stopped in a visit. As it turns out, due to the proximity to the White House, many Presidents would worship there. The pew in the very back of the church was were Abraham Lincoln often chose to sit during a service.

According to a plaque on the wall, Lincoln would normally show up after the service had started and leave a little early so to not draw attention.  Kelly was able to sit in the pew and reflect for a few minutes   before heading back to her conference.

We stepped up our physical activity this week in an effort to prepare for the "Cherry Blossom 10 Miler" race that we signed up for, which circles through DC during the Cherry Blossom Festival. Many of you remember Ben got in a good habit of running home last summer, so we decided to incorporate that into our training regimen. In our three attempts, we have beaten the bus that we normally take home. We have also started walking to work in the mornings, it takes approximately ten more minutes to walk than taking the bus, but it is good exercise and a chance to spend some quality time together.

Things have been really busy at both our organizations, so we were excited to make it to the weekend.  On Saturday, we woke up at a reasonable hour and set out on a training run. Our training route provides much needed distractions along the way. We run past the Supreme Court, around the Capitol and onto the National Mall. The Mall has great gravel paths with either the Washington Monument to look at if your running west or the Capitol on the way back.

We ran a little over 4 miles on Saturday, which is a good start to our training. We spent the rest of the day hanging with the dogs and taking care of life chores. Ben picked up a movie at the grocery store for our evening entertainment. We watched all two hours and 17 minutes of "J. Edgar" and walked away disappointed. While both of us were intrigued by the subject matter, something didn't translate to the big screen.  Luckily, we had a decent treat for dinner with the movie.  In the tradition of turning lemons into lemonade, we made a pizza out of leftover pulled pork and collard greens.

(These last two bites didn't last long.)

Sunday we headed to Harper's Ferry, West Virginia for a little sightseeing. After about an hour drive, we made it to this civil war era town.

(Yes, that is a wax museum.  No, sadly we didn't go.)

Harper's Ferry played a major role in several Civil War battles and events. Most of the downtown remains preserved from that era and offers little shops and restaurants. It is a little bit touristy, but overall a beautiful little town.

 

It sits on the corner of the Potomac and Shenandoah Rivers and has mountains in the background. We walked around, reading the dozens of historic markers and checking out a few museums.

 

Harper's Ferry is most famous for John Brown's raid. On October 16, 1859, abolitionist John Brown and several followers seized the United States Armory and Arsenal at Harper's Ferry. The actions of Brown's men brought national attention to the emotional divisions concerning slavery (Thank you Wikipedia).

We ate lunch at the "Canal House". They don't have a regular menu and only serve dishes with local and fresh ingredients.

 

It was a delicious lunch and we were now ready to hit the trail.

We headed out on a section of the Appalachian Trail. The Appalachian Trail starts in Georgia and spans over 2,000 miles  across 14 states and ends in Maine. It takes approximately 6 months to complete from beginning to end.  Ben would like to hike the entire trail, but Kelly believes hiking the trail in moderation seems more attractive.

We hiked up to Weverton Cliffs, which was a two mile trail and a 500 foot climb in elevation. The result was a beautiful view of the Potomac River and miles of mountains.

(1 mile down 2,179 to go.  They say the first mile is the hardest.)

After descending back down to our car, we headed over to Antietam National Battlefield.  Luckily, Ben recently read Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter.  Aside from learning some tips about killing vampires, the book reminded/informed Ben about a significant amount of Civil War history.

 

For the most part, it was field, but the more we learned, via signage and pamphlets, the more we could visualize the events of the battle. Over 100,000 soldiers participated in the battle and it was the single most bloodiest single-day battle of the Civil War with over 23,000 killed.

After walking around for a while, we headed back toward DC.  On the way home we stopped in a small Maryland town for some ice cream.

(It isn't every town that has a Mt. Dew vending machine next to a Restaurant/Guns & Ammo establishment.)

It had been a long day and it was good to get home and relax before another week living the dream.

Movies, Mascots, and Sub Sandwiches - Oh my!

The work week passed with little excitement. On Thursday both of us had to attend a conference. Ben was there with his organization and I was there with mine. It was fun to be "working" with each other. People are always caught off guard when they find out we are married and both work in the same field.

Friday we decided to walk to work. It was a nice day and we are easing our way into training for the Cherry Blossom 10 mile race that we are running in April. The 2.5 mile walk wasn't bad and ended up taking just about ten more minutes than taking the bus. We both had to attend the second day of the conference in the morning. The highlight of the conference for Kelly was listening to Ben on a panel. After lunch, we went our separate ways and finished up the day at our offices.

Saturday we woke up early and headed down the National Stadium. One of us, who signed a waiver not to blog about the experience, was trying out to be a Nationals mascot.

(This is from a game last summer.)

Because the Nationals are historically terrible, the President's race is often the highlight of the game. In between the 4th and 5th innings, 4 people in a Teddy Roosevelt, Abe Lincoln, George Washington and Thomas Jefferson costumes race from the outfield fence toward first base.

The tryout included a 40 yard dash, two races, a freestyle dance, and a victory pose - all while wearing a costume.  Out of costume, there was an interview section as well.  Based on the waiver one of us signed, we really think that if you want to get a better feel for the experience, then you should check out this press coverage.

http://districtsportspage.com/nats-happy-racing-presidents-day-with-photos/5098

http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/big-heads-bigger-rewards/2012/02/18/gIQAI3VOMR_gallery.html

http://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/mascot-hopefuls-enter-presidential-race-119/2012/02/19/gIQAxmCyNR_video.html


http://espn.go.com/espnw/more-sports/7601949/espnw-amanda-rykoff-auditions-spot-nationals-running-presidents-team

After the tryout, we went out to the golf course and had a little contest on the putting green.  This was an opportunity for Kelly to tryout her new belly putter.

Sunday's forecast was cold and snowy, so we planned to have a quiet day at the apartment. It turned out to be a pleasant day catching on some quality R&R.  We watched the movie Contagion, which only encouraged Ben's compulsive hand washing tendencies.  We also spent some quality time with the dogs.

Monday was President's Day.  Sadly, Kelly had to work.  Ben took the opportunity to do something that celebrated freedom in a way that George Washington and Abe Lincoln could not even have begun to imagine.  He watched the Harold & Kumar Christmas movie.  Kelly had refused to watch this with Ben and as it turned out that was a good policy because it was pretty terrible.  Luckily, Ben rebounded by picking up sandwiches from Mangialardo's, which we are big fans of but is only open until 3pm and only on weekdays.  President's Day was a rare change to get a delicious Supersub and G-Man.

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.

Super Bowl = Super Post?

Last week was a busy work week for both of us, but Ben also had several networking/social functions after hours that made for a long week.

We got our weekend off to a good start with "G-Man" subs from Mangilardo's and a movie. We rented 50-50 with Seth Rogan and Joseph Gordon-Levitt. We spend most nights hanging out at the house with the dogs and going to bed at a reasonable hour. We like to joke that we're glad we moved to the big city, pay quadruple the rent, deal with the traffic so we can rent a movie from Red Box and stay home!

On Saturday morning, we took the dogs on a decent walk around Lincoln Park and let them socialize with a few of the neighborhood dogs at the park. We ran a few errands around town before heading to the National Portrait Gallery to see the Annie Leibovitz exhibit. Parking downtown can be very tricky. There aren't many spots to begin with, and the ones that are open challenge even the best parallel parkers. Kelly's skills were put to the test, but she prevailed and we had a front row spot outside the museum.

(Not much room to spare)

There were some outstanding photographs of various subjects, but Kelly's favorite was a picture of Niagara Falls. The gallery also had an "Black List" exhibit, displaying portraits of prominent African-Americans.

After the gallery we headed to Cleveland Park for lunch at our favorite Thai restaurant. The"Siam House" is so good, we have discussed moving to the Cleveland Park neighborhood just to be closer. With a full stomach, we headed up to the National Cathedral to look around.

It is a beautiful church with great stain glass windows. During the earthquake this summer, some of the church was damaged, including several pinnacles and buttresses. They displayed some of the fallen pieces throughout the church.

Our next stop was the Smithsonian Zoo. It was decent weather for a day at the zoo and the crowds were small.

We made it around to all the animals, but the cutest by far was the Giant Pandas. There were a few beautiful peacocks that were roaming around the aviary.

 

As we were wrapping up it started to rain, which somewhat dampened what was otherwise a great day in D.C. We made it back to the apartment in time to try a new homemade thin pizza crust recipe and for Kelly to prepare to win an ebay auction for a belly putter that she is obsessed with.  As most of you know, Kelly enjoys playing golf but has always struggled with putting. Convinced by the hundreds of professionals that have switched to belly putters, Uncle Tom, having a dream recently about being runner up in a major championship and desperation have convinced Kelly to try to acquire a belly putter and see if that is the ticket out of a day job and onto the tour! Unfortunately, she lost that auction, but was able to win a putter later on. We will keep you updated on how the belly putter works out.

Super Bowl Sunday was a good one.  Before settling in for the big game, we decided to do a few things.

We stopped by Dick's Sporting Goods to mess around on their virtual driving range and putting green (again, this was for Kelly to try out belly putters). We picked out a driver to demo and asked the employee for permission so he could tape it up. His reaction was somewhat disturbing. He first asked us how often we play golf and then told us we couldn't hit the club if our swings weren't good enough. Offended by this subjective judgement, Kelly offered her opinion on this company policy and told them that "the golf industry was built on people with bad swings." After giving him our two cents, we decided to continue on our way.

Back at the apartment we started our Super Bowl food preparation, including pretzel wrapped hot dogs, guacamole and cheese dip, little smokies and sugar cookies. Mo and Dexter got to indulge with a extra big rawhide. Mosley doesn't get excited for much, but rawhides gives her a reason to keep breathing.

State of Our Union

On Monday we met up with a group of folks that we worked with in Missouri. With Steve in town, we were all able to get updates on Jefferson City and the Secretary of State's office. We had dinner and a few drinks at the Dubliner and then hit another bar before heading home.

Tuesday was the State of the Union address by the President. Living only 10 blocks from the Capitol, we were sure to stay away from all the security and traffic that was sure to ensue. Ben made enchiladas and we enjoyed the address from our apartment while playing several intense games of darts.

Steve headed back to the midwest on Wednesday, which left Dexter broken hearted. With most all of our guests, Dex falls deeply in love and shows them throughout their entire visit!

We finally made it to the end of the long work week and headed to  Georgetown for a nice dinner at Il Canale. It is a nice little Italian restaurant off of M street. Both of our entrees were very good, but the Cannoli we had for dessert was outstanding.

After dinner, we headed to Jack Rose Saloon in the Adams Morgan neighborhood for happy hour. Kelly's coworker is taking a new job, so the office met for drinks to say goodbye. It was a fun scene and a great bar. We had fun and stayed much later than we planned (translation = 9:30pm).

Saturday was our flag football leagues playoffs. We won the first game but lost in the second round. While we were bummed we lost, physically, we were not prepared to play in the championship game. Kelly's ankles were bleeding, Ben's knee made a few irregular sounds and both of our backs are extremely sore. We made it home, showered and collapsed for the rest of the day.

Sunday, Ben made some homemade biscuits for breakfast before heading out to run a few errands. More people our jobs in Missouri were in town on business, so we met up with them Sunday evening for dinner.

(Kelly, her sisters, baby Layla, and a wild raccoon named Jax in Florida)

Back Home

While we are a little over 20 days into the new year, we are still recovering from the holidays. Particularly on trying to keep up with the blog.  So, maybe the best thing is just to hit some highlights and give some general summary.

We decided to venture out to watch Arkansas play in the Cotton Bowl.  

We first headed to Trusty's, but as Trusty's is the local Arkansas bar, the place was packed. We decided to watch the game at a bar down the street, were we meet up with a high school friend of Ben's.  The game was closer than everyone would have liked, but the Razorbacks pulled away in the 4th quarter.  After the game we headed back to Trusty's to meet up with a few friends and catch up after the holidays. 

The late night was cause for sleeping in on Saturday. Ben decided to get out of bed and start the day on the right foot with homemade sourdough biscuits and deer sausage gravy.  

After brunch we took care of some life chores and finished up the night by watching "The Debt" with Helen Miren. It was a suspense/ mystery about a botched espionage mission from 1966. It was a bit confusing, but overall not bad. We are glad we waited for it to come to DVD.

We kept it fairly casual the next week and spent time at home with the dogs. Kelly's family had congregated in Destin, Florida, where her parents are spending time during the winter.  Kelly decided to  abandon Ben and the dogs to head south for the weekend. Kelly played a few rounds of golf with her dad and spend some quality time with the twins before heading back to D.C. It was a short trip, but fun to see her parents act like teenagers in their retirement community. Unfortunately, her mom and dad were eliminated in the first round of the shuffleboard tournament, but we are sure they will be a team to watch out for in the near future.

While Kelly was gone, Ben and the dogs took the opportunity to catch up on some movies that Kelly would prefer to miss.  

It was a pretty intense couple days, but we got through X-Men: First Class, Green Lantern, Captain America, Fast (& Furious) Five, Harry Potter & the Deathly Hallows Part II, and Cowboys & Aliens.  When Kelly returned she was not sure if the moisture in Ben's eyes was from the joy of seeing her again or watching about 12 hours of explosions. 

Sunday evening, Laura and Ron, who we worked with in Missouri, came over to the apartment for dinner. Ben made homemade pizza and root beer floats for dessert. It was good food and great company.

We spent the Monday holiday (MLK Day) catching up on life chores and running errands. One of our errands was returning something to Dick's Sporting Goods. Kelly noticed they had a hi-tec indoor demo net with a launch monitor. After almost straining her back to increase her driving distance (to beat Ben), they decided it was time to leave before they broke something. 

After only reuniting for one day, Ben had to fly to Orlando for a work conference. In true rock star fashion, he flew down early Tuesday morning and flew back late Tuesday night. This schedule made for a long rest of the week.

Kelly's office is still in the process of moving, which means she is still working from home. It is great in the mornings because the commute is about 15 seconds, but the days can be long with only the dogs to talk to. Overall, it has been a great experience working remotely and has been very productive.

The weekend was highly anticipated. We were looking forward to sleeping in and spending quality time together. We started Saturday with delicious breakfast burritos. We headed downtown to the Smithsonian Natural History Museum for a IMAX film called "Coral Reef Adventure". It was somewhat disappointing because it wasn't in 3-D, but overall it had some beautiful shots and some interesting facts about the dangers facing the coral reefs. We walked around the museum for a bit after the movie before heading out of the district to do a little shopping. The highlight of the afternoon was finding a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle dart board.

On our way back to the district, we stopped for lunch at Red Hot and Blue. So far, it is the best bbq we have found on the east coast. The rest of the day was spent playing darts and watching the movie "Ides of March".

We started Sunday out by watching "The Help" and enjoying a special breakfast treat made in Ben's corndog maker that he got for Christmas.  He covered sausages with pancake batter and they turned out to be pretty delicious.  The only thing missing was a stick.

The rest of the day was spent picking up around the house, doing a little work, watching football and welcoming Steve from Jefferson City, who is in DC for a couple days.

With the blog back on track, we should be off to a fabulous 2012.

Happy Holidays! Part 3

We woke up early Monday morning and headed for Pasadena to see the Tournament of Roses Parade.

After struggling with the crowds, we found a good spot to view the floats. Neither of us had seen much of the parade on TV in the past, so we were very impressed with the detail and design of the flower covered floats.

Following the Rose Parade, the "Occupy" movement had their own parade, filled with creative signs and props. 

There were hundreds of participants all under the close supervision of riot control forces.

With most the restaurants around us closed, we decided to grab a deli sandwich at a nearby grocery store and ate lunch on the bleachers of the parade route. It was a beautiful day in Pasadena and nice to be off our feet. As game time approached, we headed down to the tailgate area outside the stadium. 

We played a few games, drank several Coke Zero free samples and Kelly sent a few frantic work emails before heading into the game.

We had great seats in the Wisconsin fan section, which created some friendly banter as Kelly took her seat in Oregon gear. Ben wore his Wisconsin jersey and an Oregon hat, which created an unbelievable amount of confusion with people. Once we explained that Ben's grandpa played for the badgers and Ben attended University of Oregon law school, people's concerns were eased. It was a great pre-game show, including a fabulous Wisconsin marching band performance. We also saw the B-2 stealth bomber fly over after the national anthem. 

The game was exciting from the kickoff. Each team scored on their first 3 possessions and we saw a total of 10 touchdowns in the game. 

It was back and forth for much of the first half, but it was the Ducks that had a great defensive stand on Wisconsin's final drive to secure championship.

After the game it was a race back to Las Vegas to catch our 1am redeye flight back to D.C.  Luckily, we also squeezed in a stop at an In-N-Out Burger.   

We made it home by noon the next day and enjoyed the rest of the day before getting back to work.