Tuesday, August 5, 2008

it's good to be home again

THE D.C. LEG OF THE EAST COAST TRIP

We're back from a whirlwind trip to the east coast. It was a lot of fun, but I am beat. On the day of our flight, I spent a few hours scrubbing and cleaning so that we'd have a clean apartment to come home to. The cats were thrilled to see us again (they kept following me from room to room, but in typical feline fashion struggled out of my grasp when I'd pick them up for a cuddle).

Our first stop was in D.C. to see Heather. (I forgot to adjust the light setting for the camera before I fired off a few shots so the photos are not the best.)

Hi chew!
I made her a bag and enclosed a few goodies as a thank you for letting us stay at her place. Despite the blurriness, I think you can make out the energy of that grin.


She agreed to model the bag.


H says these are hard to get goodies in her neck of the woods.


H is for Heather


And, a clear shot of the bag put to test on the streets of D.C.


It was a little rough day for us. We'd flown in red-eye and managed to squeeze in a bit of sleep during the three and half hour flight. But traveling cross country is tough! And I guess we're getting old. We managed well enough after a little nap at H's place. Then we headed out to the zoo for a bit. This tired guy is a red Panda. Amazing, right?

His friend is walking around the misted area. Looks more like a long legged raccoon, doesn't he?


I hadn't been to the zoo during my last trip to visit H. It's just down the street from where she lives and as part of the Smithsonian, the entry is free. Incidentally, I love H's neighborhood. It's close to really cool shops and restaurants (I'd like to point out that H is known by name at the wine shop down the street. We had to ask what that meant about her drinking habits - wink), there's a subway stop just a stone's throw away and she lives in a beautiful building with really nice neighbors.

Here she is setting up our dinner table out in her courtyard.


Pizza, salad and drinks from her local wine shop.


I'm glad M got a chance to check out the neighbordhood as well. He agreed that it was a great neighborhood, that the neighbors were nice and of course ran some numbers as soon as he had a chance to open up his laptop.

Later in the evening H's neighbors Erin, Brook and Todd from Cleveland (!) joined us out in the courtyard. My photos from that bit just aren't worth posting. But it was fun to sit outside and share wine and tales with H's neighbors. They are a nice bunch and nice to talk to.

We learned from Brook that the air quality in D.C. is pretty poor and from Todd that the closest beach is about an hour's drive away. Those were the only two cons to the overflowing list of pros on the desirability of moving to D.C. The biggest pro of all of course being that we could live in the same city as H. I think that trumps all the cons.

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