iTunes currently playing: Tosca Tango Orchestra, from the Waking Life soundtrack. makes me want to go dancing.
it's sooooo hot! omg.....i opened my windows for the first time since i moved here. it was in the mid to upper 80s today.
well, now that the mcats are over i have more time to reflect on what's been going on:
janet, julia, and albert's visit was a really really nice mini-vacation. i was starting to feel excruciatingly burnt out from studying that those 4-5 days left me feeling refreshed and ready to chill at barnes and noble for hours on end. unfortunately, the weather wasn't cooperating all that much - it was cold and rainy most of the time. I took them to see the cherry blossoms by the tidal basin and the requisite monuments/memorials - washington, lincoln, jefferson, vietnam, korean, fdr, passed by the not-yet-opened WWII, etc. Janet and i had a funny moment at the Jefferson memorial - we were looking at his statue and commented on how smug or happy he looked....i suggested that he was thinking "i like my memorial," or "look at that view i have.." i guess you had to be there.
It was also a mini-vacation of good food. "the good food vacation," janet said. The afternoon that they came....hm wait let me talk about the awful freeway that is the Beltway.
So i left work early that afternoon to go to Dulles and pick up the girls. I'd gone to Dulles before and it usually take about 20-30 minutes from where I am to get there. Now, it was a Friday afternoon. I'd expected traffic just because of the time, but i'd never really experienced beltway traffic until that afternoon. it's AWFUL. (prior to that time, i'd gone on the beltway as an alternate route to get to Georgetown and it didn't take very long). It took me about 30 minutes to go about 5 miles to the Potomac river. and then i still had a few more miles to go before the Dulles Road. just awful. And after i picked up the girls, there was this massive line on the connecter road back to the beltway and i had to cut through to get in the correct lane. only one connector lane! it was so bad, i was getting a headache.
Anyway, after they got settled, i took them to the Bethesda Crab House for crabs. (maryland's famous for their crabs). People at work had wanted to go there but we haven't gotten around to it. It was an interesting experience, to say the least. The tables are covered in newspapers and they give you mallets/gavels to smash the crabs (which you can just smash on the newspaper tablecloths). The crabs were really well seasoned and covered in this salt seasoning. They were really good! and i'm not big on eating crabs because they're a pain to de-shell. i'm gonna have to take my parents there when they visit me next time. we thought we would have to rush in order to get albert in time, but it turns out his connector flight was delayed quite a bit. so we enjoyed our last couple of crabs a little more slowly before heading to the Metro.
Saturday i took them to the cherry...oh wait i said that already. that night we went to a Thai restaurant in Cleveland park. My memory's a bit jumbled, so i don't correctly recall the order of things we did....but we saw Harry Potter I one of those nights cuz we were exhausted from the day's outings. We also got supplies to make homemade Pizookies...well albert made them. we just ate them :). thanks alot albert!
Sunday i had to work in the morning, so i left the sleepyheads sleeping. Scanning went surprisingly smoothly; just one little snafu that wasn't terrible, considering the problems we've encountered before. Afterwards i took everyone down to Georgetown for brunch at the Tombs; (after telling Erin this, she told me we had missed out on their famous coffee cake because we went so late...ohwell!) we walked around Georgetown and down to the waterfront, and got sandwiches at Wisey's for later. I drove towards the Mall for the Lincoln/Vietnam/ etc memorials and got lost and ended up in a traffic circle by Arlington Cemetery....so i felt like an idiot because i still don't have that much experience with traffic circles, merging isn't my favorite thing to do, and i'm timid when it comes to merging into traffic. some cars purposely went in front of me because i wasn't going when i should have. better safe than sorry, man!
we spent some cold times by the memorials and drove back.. i got lost (again) and somehow ended up on the rock creek parkway....which is a pretty neat parkway. i liked it. reminded me of the old areas of the 110 freeway, where it's all curvy. fortunately i found my way back to Wisconsin and back to my place. and i think that's when we saw harry potter 1. and had more pizookies.
monday i took them to the NIH and introduced them to some of the lab people, and showed them the magnet, sort of. we went to the National Library of Medicine, which i'd never been to before myself. In the connector tunnel between the visitor's center and the library are PubMed headquarters, the database where pretty much everyone goes for journal articles in the sciences. They had flat screen tvs with graphs and demographics of how many people are accessing the journals as close as the past 15 seconds. very impressive. There was also an exhibit on women physicians, which i should visit again because my motivation is waning, and it'd be nice to read about other people's experiences.
after lunch in bethesda we went to the Hirshorrn (sp?) museum, part of the Smithsonian museums. It was part of their modern/contemporary art museums. Interesting stuff. The cool part about the smithsonian museums is that they're all free. and there are so many of them. we tried to go to the national archives after it closed, but all these other tour groups had the same idea, and there was a massive line. so we opted out of that and went to the white house instead. dinner in Dupont circle. we had smores at cosi's. i showed them around dupont, went to Kramerbooks and a music/dvd shop and got cds and dvds. we watched Waking Life that night; i really like that movie, it just takes me a few viewings to fully grasp it.
Tuesday we went to the Library of Congress and took a tour, which included a view of the Jefferson reading room - very impressive. I need to get me a card so i can use it. We then went by the Capitol and to the Air and Space museum, had fun being little kids (and i got some minute studying done, with all the physics explanations in the exhibits), and chilled some more. We had dinner in Adams Morgan at a really cool Spanish restaurant with goooood sangria before heading to U street and the Darkness concert. They rock.
So the next day we woke up really early and dropped everyone off at their destinations before going back home (on a clear beltway day) and napping before resuming work.
As for yesterday, i hope i did well. I wasn't able to finish physical sciences on time because i wasn't keeping track of time well during that morning session. I just hope i made up for it on the other sections. No big "I'M DONE" celebrations...just vegged at home. i should just go to barnes and noble for the hell of it now; i need to finish my bookstore books anyway.
I went running on the capital crescent trail on friday to get rid of the stress (and to lose the 5 pounds i've gained since moving here)....well it's a start...i ran the equivalent of maybe .5 to .75 of a mile and walked the rest of my 3 mile excursion. I went rollerblading on the trail this morning (and it was a crowded since it was such a nice, hot day) for 6 miles. There's one area that was a tunnel (the trail used to be part of a local railway) that was really cool (in temperature) compared to the rest of the trail. It's my goal to either run to the halfway point (the DC/Maryland border, which was my turnaround point when rollerblading), or rollerblade all the way to Georgetown. I like the trail - it's pretty much flat (or really low grade) with one major hill/bridge/overpass where i just clung onto the fence....it's been a while! i was practicing stopping whenever i could. no wonder everyone here stays in shape - there are so many trails around, and so many people bike! there were so many cyclists on the trail, all age ranges. i hope to be that active when i'm old.
erin flaked out on me about seeing Kill Bill vol. 2 today, so i'm gonna have to phenagle some irtas into going with me this week.
it's sooooo hot! omg.....i opened my windows for the first time since i moved here. it was in the mid to upper 80s today.
well, now that the mcats are over i have more time to reflect on what's been going on:
janet, julia, and albert's visit was a really really nice mini-vacation. i was starting to feel excruciatingly burnt out from studying that those 4-5 days left me feeling refreshed and ready to chill at barnes and noble for hours on end. unfortunately, the weather wasn't cooperating all that much - it was cold and rainy most of the time. I took them to see the cherry blossoms by the tidal basin and the requisite monuments/memorials - washington, lincoln, jefferson, vietnam, korean, fdr, passed by the not-yet-opened WWII, etc. Janet and i had a funny moment at the Jefferson memorial - we were looking at his statue and commented on how smug or happy he looked....i suggested that he was thinking "i like my memorial," or "look at that view i have.." i guess you had to be there.
It was also a mini-vacation of good food. "the good food vacation," janet said. The afternoon that they came....hm wait let me talk about the awful freeway that is the Beltway.
So i left work early that afternoon to go to Dulles and pick up the girls. I'd gone to Dulles before and it usually take about 20-30 minutes from where I am to get there. Now, it was a Friday afternoon. I'd expected traffic just because of the time, but i'd never really experienced beltway traffic until that afternoon. it's AWFUL. (prior to that time, i'd gone on the beltway as an alternate route to get to Georgetown and it didn't take very long). It took me about 30 minutes to go about 5 miles to the Potomac river. and then i still had a few more miles to go before the Dulles Road. just awful. And after i picked up the girls, there was this massive line on the connecter road back to the beltway and i had to cut through to get in the correct lane. only one connector lane! it was so bad, i was getting a headache.
Anyway, after they got settled, i took them to the Bethesda Crab House for crabs. (maryland's famous for their crabs). People at work had wanted to go there but we haven't gotten around to it. It was an interesting experience, to say the least. The tables are covered in newspapers and they give you mallets/gavels to smash the crabs (which you can just smash on the newspaper tablecloths). The crabs were really well seasoned and covered in this salt seasoning. They were really good! and i'm not big on eating crabs because they're a pain to de-shell. i'm gonna have to take my parents there when they visit me next time. we thought we would have to rush in order to get albert in time, but it turns out his connector flight was delayed quite a bit. so we enjoyed our last couple of crabs a little more slowly before heading to the Metro.
Saturday i took them to the cherry...oh wait i said that already. that night we went to a Thai restaurant in Cleveland park. My memory's a bit jumbled, so i don't correctly recall the order of things we did....but we saw Harry Potter I one of those nights cuz we were exhausted from the day's outings. We also got supplies to make homemade Pizookies...well albert made them. we just ate them :). thanks alot albert!
Sunday i had to work in the morning, so i left the sleepyheads sleeping. Scanning went surprisingly smoothly; just one little snafu that wasn't terrible, considering the problems we've encountered before. Afterwards i took everyone down to Georgetown for brunch at the Tombs; (after telling Erin this, she told me we had missed out on their famous coffee cake because we went so late...ohwell!) we walked around Georgetown and down to the waterfront, and got sandwiches at Wisey's for later. I drove towards the Mall for the Lincoln/Vietnam/ etc memorials and got lost and ended up in a traffic circle by Arlington Cemetery....so i felt like an idiot because i still don't have that much experience with traffic circles, merging isn't my favorite thing to do, and i'm timid when it comes to merging into traffic. some cars purposely went in front of me because i wasn't going when i should have. better safe than sorry, man!
we spent some cold times by the memorials and drove back.. i got lost (again) and somehow ended up on the rock creek parkway....which is a pretty neat parkway. i liked it. reminded me of the old areas of the 110 freeway, where it's all curvy. fortunately i found my way back to Wisconsin and back to my place. and i think that's when we saw harry potter 1. and had more pizookies.
monday i took them to the NIH and introduced them to some of the lab people, and showed them the magnet, sort of. we went to the National Library of Medicine, which i'd never been to before myself. In the connector tunnel between the visitor's center and the library are PubMed headquarters, the database where pretty much everyone goes for journal articles in the sciences. They had flat screen tvs with graphs and demographics of how many people are accessing the journals as close as the past 15 seconds. very impressive. There was also an exhibit on women physicians, which i should visit again because my motivation is waning, and it'd be nice to read about other people's experiences.
after lunch in bethesda we went to the Hirshorrn (sp?) museum, part of the Smithsonian museums. It was part of their modern/contemporary art museums. Interesting stuff. The cool part about the smithsonian museums is that they're all free. and there are so many of them. we tried to go to the national archives after it closed, but all these other tour groups had the same idea, and there was a massive line. so we opted out of that and went to the white house instead. dinner in Dupont circle. we had smores at cosi's. i showed them around dupont, went to Kramerbooks and a music/dvd shop and got cds and dvds. we watched Waking Life that night; i really like that movie, it just takes me a few viewings to fully grasp it.
Tuesday we went to the Library of Congress and took a tour, which included a view of the Jefferson reading room - very impressive. I need to get me a card so i can use it. We then went by the Capitol and to the Air and Space museum, had fun being little kids (and i got some minute studying done, with all the physics explanations in the exhibits), and chilled some more. We had dinner in Adams Morgan at a really cool Spanish restaurant with goooood sangria before heading to U street and the Darkness concert. They rock.
So the next day we woke up really early and dropped everyone off at their destinations before going back home (on a clear beltway day) and napping before resuming work.
As for yesterday, i hope i did well. I wasn't able to finish physical sciences on time because i wasn't keeping track of time well during that morning session. I just hope i made up for it on the other sections. No big "I'M DONE" celebrations...just vegged at home. i should just go to barnes and noble for the hell of it now; i need to finish my bookstore books anyway.
I went running on the capital crescent trail on friday to get rid of the stress (and to lose the 5 pounds i've gained since moving here)....well it's a start...i ran the equivalent of maybe .5 to .75 of a mile and walked the rest of my 3 mile excursion. I went rollerblading on the trail this morning (and it was a crowded since it was such a nice, hot day) for 6 miles. There's one area that was a tunnel (the trail used to be part of a local railway) that was really cool (in temperature) compared to the rest of the trail. It's my goal to either run to the halfway point (the DC/Maryland border, which was my turnaround point when rollerblading), or rollerblade all the way to Georgetown. I like the trail - it's pretty much flat (or really low grade) with one major hill/bridge/overpass where i just clung onto the fence....it's been a while! i was practicing stopping whenever i could. no wonder everyone here stays in shape - there are so many trails around, and so many people bike! there were so many cyclists on the trail, all age ranges. i hope to be that active when i'm old.
erin flaked out on me about seeing Kill Bill vol. 2 today, so i'm gonna have to phenagle some irtas into going with me this week.
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