Our 4th of July weekend was pretty fun and staggered so we weren’t too tired on Tuesday. We went out to dinner (read to the Buffalo Wing Factory in Ashburn 30 miles away) on Friday before coming home sleeping for an hour and then picking Matt & Julie up at the airport…in Baltimore (54 miles away). But they’re worth it! On the way back there was torrential downpour which made the drive home even worse because I was forced to slow to like 35 on the freeways and kept getting past by ambulances. When we pulled out the mattress from the couch, Stoli freaked out and started crouching and barking at it. Everything has to be just so or she doesn’t know what to do. Casey’s boots were in a spot that he doesn’t normally leave them and she started barking because that’s not where they belonged and she didn’t want them in her space. 🙂 Such a personality!
Saturday we took Matt and Julie sighseeing around DC. Well, Casey led the way since I have only gone down there a couple of times and have only sightseen (is that a word) once since we’ve been here and that’s when Julie was here at Easter. She knows more out the touristy stuff and Metro stops than I do! I figure I’ve already seen a lot of it before having lived in the area when I was younger so I don’t make a point to go see it again. The new thing I saw this trip was they completed the World War 2 Memorial which is pretty substantial and impressive. DC has one of the biggest fireworks displays in the country as you can imagine and it was packed with tourists so we tried to do the quickest walking tour of “all the white buildings” as possible. That and the humidity was making us sweaty and miserable. They even raised parking rates in DC to deter tourists from clogging the already congested streets and encouraging them to take public transportation.
Sunday we went to the Air & Space Museum (part of the Smithsonian Museum because you can’t really fit all those planes into a building in downtown DC) that’s out near Dulles Airport. Matt’s a pilot and an aviation geek so we were there over 3 hours! I could have seen everything in 10 minutes but I was a good sport and just kinda meandered around because I knew Matt and Casey were digging it. Casey’s boss, Joe, made some BBQ pulled pork for us to come pick up for dinner (6 pounds of it that only lasted 2 days) and we stayed in and drank White Russians and watched The Big Lebowski.
On the 4th we went to see a movie. Now since we haven’t gone to a movie since we saw Ocean’s 12 in LA we didn’t know how to get to the theater we always saw from the freeway. We tried to take the exit that should have taken us right to it but it was only open during the week and with the holiday was closed. We ended up not getting to the theater soon enough for our intended showtime but we were already late so it worked out better that we got there late so we coould get there early if that makes sense. It was a really nice stadium seating theater and even had a bar inside but you couldn’t take it into the theater so not really an asset. My only complaint next to the inflated ticket prices ($7.75 for a matinee) was that they served Pepsi instead of Coke. I’ve never gone to a theater that’s served Pepsi, it’s un-American! I was glad I brought my water bottle, better water than Pepsi! It was pretty good – on the Netflix rating scale I give it a 3 of 5 stars. It was full of action but some of the scenarios seemed far fetched and not well executed as far as the ending was concerned especially. I’m actually this is the movie that broke our no-movie record. Now we probably won’t make it to the theater again until my movie, The Skeleton Key, comes out on August 12th. I’ll probably have to see it twice because the first time I’m gonna be looking for my feet, hands, and my backside so I’ll probably miss a lot ofthe story – good thing I read the script! Matt and Julie left after the movie and flew back to Louisville (as the trailer for ‘Elizabethtown’ pointed out it’s pronounce Louavull).
We were not tempted in the slightest to try and brave the crowds downtown to fight for a spot on the Mall to see the Nation’s firework festivities. Nor did we want to claw our ways back out of the city and onto the Metro with cars that Casey compares to Indian buses with legs being shut in doors. I guess they created some alternative routes or something to try and move people efficiently and speedily out of the city but with so many people it still would have been such a waste for 30 minutes of oohing and aahing that we do every year and could see on TV if we were that interested. We weren’t. We could hear the fireworks and see a glow over our building but there are so many trees and other tall buildings in our complex and we’re at the bottom of a hill that it was hard to see the shows that were going on around us. But we’re all adults here so nothing we haven’t seen before right? Besides I’m sure it would have freaked Stoli out anyway – what doesn’t? I’m proud to be an American but as I get older firework displays in large crowded areas don’t seem as appealing. I’m all for BBQ’ing and watching them being shot into the air from a safe distance across town.