Roller Coaster Weekend

Jackson Lucas: [after being revived] I can't see anything! Am I blind?
Ned: Good news is you're not blind. Bad news is you're dead.
Charlotte 'Chuck' Charles: Makes blind seem like a walk in the park, doesn't it?

—Pushing Daisies, "Pigeon" (10/24/07)

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Yow. A few minutes to breathe, finally. So of course I'm burning them up with the likes of you.

The last few days have been a bit of a whirlwind. Even when I thought it was going to slow down (like it was SUPPOSED to), it didn't.

The Pig Roast was a lot of fun, despite the rain that drove everyone indoors for a little while, but we rallied and had one of my best pigs ever. Unfortunately, dealing with the rain and some of its effects on the party as a whole (notably, getting all the food moved inside) meant that I lost over an hour of mingling and socializing. So if I didn't get to chitchat with you much (or at all), my sincere apologies and I hope you had a good time. Even if I did get to chitchat, I hope you had fun as well, but at least I have a better handle on how your evening went.

Because my brother was in town, he and his wife were using my bedroom. GF was in Wee One's bed (Wee One was with her father), and I was on the sofa. This doesn't bother me specifically, since I tend to fall asleep on the sofa roughly once a week, watching old movies on TCM. It's quite the comfy couch, if you ask me. This season we're using the Idemo Dark Blue slipcover. Anyway.

Sunday morning and the phone is ringing at about 7:15. Amazingly, I'm not hung over, but I did get to bed pretty late and I'm just a bit too groggy to get to it in time. A half-hour later there's a knock on the door. I answer it and it's GF's parents. Her father asks me, "You know why we're here, right?"

It takes a second and then the light goes on. His mother, GF's grandmother, has died.

This wasn't entirely unexpected, but you still don't like to hear it. For that matter, I'm sure they didn't enjoy saying it, either. GF was very close to her grandmother, so this was naturally a huge blow to her. The three of them left right away.

Now, our plans for the day involved going to Washington DC to see some extremely historical objects and some very Federal buildings. This was pretty much up in the air now. GF called a couple of hours later telling us to go to DC anyway, without her.

Our DC tour was rather whirlwind, but we saw a lot of stuff, considering. The Museum of American History is still closed for renovations, so my plan to follow up on Friday's theme was shot to hell, since I couldn't show them the original Star-Spangled Banner. But we spent some time cruising around the Capitol Hill area, then we stopped in the Natural History museum. We had lunch in the Atrium Cafe (I highly recommend the burrito). Then we walked past the Washington Monument to the World War II memorial. I'd never seen that before so it was new to all of us. From there we walked along the Reflecting Pool to the Lincoln Memorial. Up the other side of the Reflecting Pool to the Vietnam Memorial. I felt badly about passing up the Korea memorial but time was getting to be a factor for us. By the time we got back home, darkness had about fallen and GF had made all the necessary plans with her father. She still had some details to hammer out on Monday, so we still wouldn't see much of her then.

Monday was my brother's last day in town, so I set up another quickie tour of the city, starting with breakfast from the Fractured Prune. They were on the South Beach diet when the came up; now I'm not so sure anymore. It may have morped into the South Park Diet.

Our tour started in Hampden, since my brother wanted to see "something funky". The first thing I thought of was the flamingo in front of the Cafe Hon. We cruised the neighborhood a little bit and I pointed out a few details. (Try explaining the Miracle on 34th Street to someone when it's 80 degrees out.) From there we went down Falls Road to get into the downtown area. This is a great way to go if you're touring people around, since you spend so much time on a road that does NOT allow you to believe that you're so deeply within city limits. We stopped for lunch at Lexington Market, which is only "World Famous" on the signs out front. My brother had a sausage from Polock Johnny's, which he liked enough that I now have to bring a box of them down next time I visit.

From Lexington we headed past the Inner Harbor (since we'd already seen it), cruised through Little Italy and stopped in Fells Point for a bit. We poked though the stores and stopped into Maggie Moo's for some ice cream cones (yeah yeah, I know, Vaccaro's, but my S-I-L was insistent on this one: Waffle cone, butter pecan). MM's has ice cream that's flavored just like Twizzlers, by the way. My curiosity got the better of me and I had a taste. For what it's worth, it does taste just like Twizzlers, which is why I'd never get an entire cone full of the stuff. We also spent some time in Sound Garden, where I bought a T-Shirt, since I'd had a minor ice cream mishap, and at Ten Thousand Villages, where I picked up a couple of baubles. More on those in a near-future post.

Back in the car and we cruised through Highlandtown and grabbed I-95 to get home. On the way I stopped at a supermarket and picked up some fixin's to make crab cakes. May I say I did a fine job, especially for a non-native.

And then it was to the airport, but there's a new story in that and this post has been in draft for far too long.

Comments

[yellojkt]

Sorry I missed the pig roast. We had just gotten out of The Rotunda watching Indiana Jones when the heavens opened up. I couldn't talk by wife into following the storm up the road.

That is quite the thorough tour of Baltimore. I do like the Falls Road route into downtown for a change of scenery.

[Chrissy]

Hey, I'm glad the pig roast still went on... I'm sorry about the bad news. I too, was close to my grandparents.... and some people just can't relate to the sadness I feel. Oh well. I could go on and on.

Anyway, thanks for the verbal tour.... I love Maggie Moo's and did you say crab cakes? Wow! I'll be right over...

My BIL and SIL and 3 kids are goint to the aqauarium in a few weeks...

Us... we just work... NO vacations for us...me and the hubby are die hard work a holics... out of necessity unfortunately.