Archive for September, 2008

I’m all up in my head and thinking much too deeply at the moment, so instead of actually writing anything of substance and consequence, I present a people pictorial:

A picture of Nate, Molly, and Lyndsay eating or about to eat crepes In Baltimore


A picture of Molly browsing the fruit selection at Reading Terminal Market in Philly

A picture of Molly taking a picture of Old City Hall

Another picture of Molly taking a picture of reflections in a window – or a bell. You decide.

A picture of Molly and Lyndsay not taking pictures

And of course, a picture of Molly taking a picture of Lyndsay taking a picture of the sunset

After arriving at our hotel in downtown Baltimore, we set out in the direction of lunch, and immediately went the wrong direction. Luckily, we stumbled upon some fantastic old architecture at Washington Square.

Baltimore seems to be a city of tall spires and cathedrals. One of the skyscrapers downtown even emulates the style. This old church was among the most notable ones we saw.

When we got oriented in the right direction, we ended up at Attman’s, a famous Baltimore deli.

They are best known for their corned beef and authentic Jewish rye, so I had corned beef on rye. It was excellent.

After lunch Nate headed back to the hotel and Molly and I took a walk towards the waterfront. I hadn’t spent much time pondering Baltimore architecture before arriving and was surprised by how many old buildings there ware, but I did know it is a big port town. The South Harbor is no longer used for shipping, but is now the museum/aquarium/park area of downtown.

Molly and I were both torn about the use of some of the older buildings. On one hand, reusing old factories is a really cool idea, but it just seems like one more example of consumer culture trumping real culture and history.

After the walk, I wrote the event recap from the weekend’s event, waited very patiently for the snail-pace hotel internet to load pages, and watched some TV. I met up with Nate and Molly again for some Thai dinner, and then was going to go Geocaching with Stephen, but those plans got postponed until tomorrow morning. Instead, I spent an hour trying to get the internet to let me create and publish this blog post.

Or at least that’s what working at the race yesterday morning felt like. Between 90+ degree heat and a great deal of humidity, it wasn’t particularly pleasant outside.

This finish line was right on Pennsylvania about 4 blocks from the White House, and looking back up the finishing stretch, the Capitol Building stood out in the distance.

I just took this picture because there were a lot of medals. That’s reason enough, right?

Having forgotten my sunglasses at the hotel, I borrowed a pair of Crocs sunglasses and naturally had to try on the accompanying highly fashionable head strap. With the wind goggle attachment for the glasses, they were rather uncomfortable.

Nate took it to the next level by removing the sunglasses from the equation entirely and simply strapped the wind goggle attachment to the head strap.

Along the lines of lots of medals, there was probably more pizza in one location than I have ever seen in my life.

After packing up our tents and heading back to the hotel, I went with Nate to a sports bar in Chinatown to watch numerous football games at once. I headed out just before any of them ended to go meet up with Rhett and his mom in Alexandria to go see Burn After Reading, the new Coen Brothers movie (famous for such titles as No Country for Old Men, O Brother, Where Art Thou, Fargo, and The Big Lebowski). Along the way, I got to watch the sun set from an elevated metro station.

The movie itself was great if you’re a fan of dark comedy. It’s quirky and yet violent, serious but ironically aloof. Parts of the movie reminded me of Fargo, but overall it was much, much funnier. The audience was cracking up the entire movie. The Coen brothers do such a good job of creating situational humor from what would otherwise be insignificant and uninteresting events. I give it two thumbs up. Though don’t expect a traditional movie ending, just like any of their other films.

Many of the previews also got my attention. I’d like to see Body of Lies (Leonardo Decaprio & Russel Crowe espionage thriller) and The Soloist (Robert Downey Jr & Jamie Foxx drama about a homeless Julliard trained musician). Eagle Eye has my attention, but I’m going to wait for reviews on that one.

On the way home, I rode a very deserted metro train. Not surprising for late on a Sunday.

Tomorrow, Baltimore.

Today I had the first part of the morning off from the expo, so I went on a run with Stephen that ended up being just under 8 miles. After figuring out our parking for the night, I headed towards the expo and had lunch at (you guessed it) Chop’t. Along the way, I saw an amusing advertisement for the spy museum.

The expo had a few moderately busy streaks, but overall was slow again. From 5PM on, there was really no one there. We entertained ourselves for a bit by playing the celebrity name game, and spent some time checking footballs score updates. Oregon had a nail-biter of a game that they won in double-overtime. After packing up the expo setup, we got back to the hotel and had dinner while watching part of the USC-Ohio State game. I’m not at all surprised to see USC dominating. I predicted at least a two touchdown USC margin of victory ahead of time, and looks like I’ll be right on that one. It’s a little wierd to be cheering for all PAC 10 teams rather than against them as key Oregon rivals. On a national scale, cheering on your conference suddenly makes much more sense.

Oh, and check down a few entries to the one that starts with a picture of Chop’t. I forgot to enable that post the other day and only today realized it was missing.

Tonight was one of those “Is this really a job? Am I actually getting PAID to do this?” type of nights. I took a walk in the dark and found myself surrounded by peaceful tranquility resulting in a great deal of introspection.

Today’s expo attendance was underwhelming, and we spent chunks of the day figuring out how to entertain ourselves. Here is Stephen “sticking it” to Lyndsay (wonderful massage tool).

I tried on a pair of XXXXL Beaches (size 16-17) which dwarfed my fairly large feet.

Far too much of the day, our booth looked like this:

Oh, and Molly now has an iPhone to keep busy with. I’m glad she joined the party.

Tonight we headed to a Mexican place between our hotel and the capitol building. It was really tasty, and the wall decor included a Bud Light neon capitol sign that will likely show up on a co-worker’s blog.

Today I got some more lunch at Chop’t, and was equally impressed the second time.

Then we had to switch hotels using the Metro, which had a number of comedic and awkward moments with lots of baggage on a fairly busy train.

After spending some downtime at the new hotel, Molly and I went meandering up towards Capitol Hill. We saw the supreme court and countless other government buildings.

Molly was craving frozen yogurt, so we made our turn-around destination a place called Mr. Yogato near Dupont Circle. It was very tasty and hit the spot. The tiny shop itself had lots of personality, with discounts being awarded for various random acts or answering trivia questions. They will also name a flavor after you if you eat there every day for a month.

After wondering what exactly the height restriction laws were that are in place in DC, we looked it up and found out that the original law was that buildings couldn’t be taller than the Capitol Building, but was later revised to buildings could only be the width of the adjacent street plus 20 feet.

Speaking of the US Capitol Building,

Tonight we get to set up our expo booth from approximately 11PM to 1AM.

Yesterday Nate and I headed out to the Washington Mall area to see the sights. We walked past the Washington Monument,

The WWII Memorial that is new since the last time I was in DC,

The Lincoln Memorial (Lincoln got the best memorial in my opinion – location-wise particularly),

The FDR Memorial (I’d never seen this one before, and it’s a really peaceful outdoor, natural-feeling monument that gives a really nice tribute to Roosevelt),

Besides numerous quotes, the memorial also features waterfalls scattered throughout.

We walked along the Tidal Basin towards the Jefferson Memorial, and along the way encountered this amusing sign. I’m pretty sure if you don’t see the low-hanging limbs, you’re not going to see the sign.

We stopped briefly at the Jefferson Memorial and noticed that a swath has been cut through the trees so that you can see the White House from the steps of the Memorial.

After the Memorial walk, Nate and I met up with Molly at Chop’t Creative Salad Company for some lunch. The restaurant features many different salads made right in front of you. If I had one near where I lived, I’d eat there a lot.

After Lunch Molly and I ended up at the National Air and Space Museum, where we wandered through some of the exhibits for a while.

We hopped the Metro back towards the hotel and Molly continued on to go to an Apple store to get a case for her new iPhone.

The Rosslyn Metro stop by our hotel features an extremely long escalator (as do many of the Metro stops). I’m still amazed by the infrastructure put in place for the Metro, and how much time, effort, and money had to have gone into building it.

This hotel is a nice 4 star (good work, Nate!), and the cars out front reflect that. Today I’ve seen a couple Maseratis as well as this Aston Martin.

Plus there’s that whole free wine hour thing. Nate and I took advantage of that again.

I met up with Perry and Megan for some pizza at their place, and I was greated by a very excited Bailey (their dog).

While having pizza, we heard a transformer blow outside, and their power promptly went out. We finished dinner in the dark, and they dropped me back at the Metro station near their house.

There I met Rhett, and we went into DC to grab a drink. We ended up playing some pool.

Which turned into lots of games of pool, including a few with this guy named Larry.

I got back to the hotel just after midnight and promptly fell asleep.

Hey impulse shoppers, check it out! A Sony vending machine in the airport. Now you can buy a PSP to please your upset child since you forgot your other one at home!

After getting to Baltimore, the drive to the DC hotel took slightly longer than I would have like due to the A/V door on the side of the truck popping open and the lack of direct routes that allowed for truck traffic. My drive was 20 miles longer than it would have been in a regular car.

After arriving at the hotel to drop my stuff off, I drove the truck right back to another airport in DC (Reagan again) to park. I hopped the Metro to the hotel, and that will be our mode of transportation for the next couple days.

I spent a good chunk of the afternoon troubleshooting why my laptop wouldn’t start up correctly. I kept getting the infamous blue screen of death, but I was actually able to use the stop code it was giving me to look up potential problems on my iPhone and spent a while enabling and disabling various drivers until I was able to isolate my wireless card driver as the problem. I’m having difficulty finding an updated driver, but now I know how to fix the problem at the very least.

I took a break from computer troubleshooting to take part in the free glasses of wine being poured at our hotel. We’re staying at a nice 4 star, and apparently that’s a standard perk.

For my birthday dinner we crossed the Potomac and walked down to M street in Georgetown and ended up at a place called Clyde’s. The food was tasty, the atmosphere cozy if not cramped, and it was a good dinner overall.

Molly used my birthday as an excuse to buy some cupcakes (I appreciated the gesture greatly regardless) and the four of us sat downstairs in the hotel “living room” and split 6 differently flavored cupcakes 4 ways with some milk. Definitely the most cake flavors I’ve ever had for a single birthday. Yum.

Now I’m going to get in bed and will be asleep within approximately a minute whether or not I try to fall asleep.

Starting off any day with an omelette is hard to beat. Especially when you’re using leftover grilled veggies to make the omelettes.

Yesterday we had a relaxed day with some shopping in the afternoon. I picked up several more books for the road, and I finally got my hands on the complete Arrested Development DVD set. It’s the best comedy I’ve ever seen, even when compared to The Office. That’s saying something. Thanks Mom and Dad!

In the evening, we played a game of cribbage on the patio and finished off the evening with watching a few episodes of Arrested Development. Hopefully I got my parents hooked enough that they will have finished the series by the next time I’m through town.

On a side note, I also spent a fair amount of time outside just enjoying the backyard, which includes a very refreshing and calming fountain. One of my favorite features of the new house.

The other part of the house I really like is just how open and inviting it is with plenty of light.

Today I packed up and we headed to Vegas in the afternoon. We stopped at my parents’ favorite Vegas destination first. That’s right, cactus lover heaven. I had no idea what I was in for when we stepped around the back to see the rows and more rows of various desert plants.

The business is run by a couple out of their own (massive) backyard, and we got to eat some pistachios straight off the tree branches they were growing on. The Macaws protested heavily while watching us eat until they got some too.

Next we found a local sports bar and settled in to watch the season opener Packers game, which happened to be a Monday night game against the rival Minnesota Vikings. It was a big night for the Packers – their first without Favre in a long time. During the game, a rare Vegas downpour occurred outside.

The Packers won.

After the game we drove past the strip on our way to the airport. It’s impressive by day, but much more so by night.

My parents dropped me off at the airport and headed back to St. George to get some sleep. I’m currently perched near a terminal window waiting for my red-eye flight. I think I set a new personal record, making it from check in through security to my gate in probably less than 10 minutes. Good thing I was 5 hours early.

I just watched Entourage from last night, and now plans include hitting “publish post”, listening to some music, reading, net surfing, and if I’m feeling really daring I might even ride the airport tram between terminals a few times.