Wine and Meeko (a.k.a. My First Raccoon)

Last week my friend, Elspeth, and I decided to FINALLY use the Living Social deal for The Winery at Bull Run that we had purchased way back in July (read: it was about to expire).

So, we made plans to meet at the winery after work on Friday. . . . We left our respective locations at exactly the same time. I made it there on time, she got there an hour and a half later. . . . That's the difference between going to Centreville from Sterling and going there from Arlington. Gotta love that Northern VA traffic.

Anyway, while I was waiting, I decided to walk around the property a little bit and just enjoy nature. It was a beautiful night and it had been a little too long since I had spent more than a few minutes outside, especially outside in a deliciously cool, woodsy/field smelling spot.

A view from the winery

The Winery at Bull Run

The cool hearth/stone space where I sat for a little
while just enjoying the November evening.

Once Elspeth finally got there we did a wine tasting and enjoyed the yummy bread and cheese basket that the Living Social deal got us. The wines were all really good. I probably would have bought a bottle or two if I were feeling rich enough, but since I (1) barely ever drink and (2) am very happy with wine that costs under $10, I decided that a $29 splurge was above my price grade for the moment.

When I got home, I had another exciting event. I saw my first raccoon (I think). 

It was huge, sort of adorable, and digging through my dumpster. I acted like a huge city girl and sat in my car taking pictures with my phone . . . I felt like my college roommates who got excited when they saw cows or ducks or most "wildlife" in general.

I may or may not have even waited for him (her?) to climb back out so that I could get a better shot.

It was so big!

I was super surprised at how much he looked
like Meeko from Pocahontas!

DC Wandering, Friends, and TOTEM!

A few weekends ago, my friend Jason came down from the Big City to visit me in the Capitol City for the weekend.

Love this guy!

I met him at Union Station and we proceeded to walk around the city a little bit... it was only his second time in DC, so he was excited to see more of the memorials/important buildings.

Side of the Postal Museum

First we tried to go to the postal museum, which is conveniently located next to Union Station. I've been there before and I found it fascinating (although my a weird obsession with stamps may have had something to do with that). Unfortunately these plans were foiled by the smoothies we had only partially finished, because drinks are not allowed in the museum.

The building that houses the museum is very cool though. It's also a real post office, so we looked around a little bit, and I managed to snap a quick photo of the ceiling before we left.

I would love this to be my post office!

Then we started walking towards the back side of the Capitol building. I'd never realized you could get there so easily from Union Station. On the way we saw this cute little squirrel "sleeping" on the side of the road.

RIP poor little squirrel.
Now you won't be able to chew anyone's fuel lines.

I've never seen the Capitol building from the back before and it was beautiful! There is so much more to it than I ever realized! We walked around for a little while before heading back home.

The Capitol from the back

The Capitol from the front/side.

Then on Saturday night we saw TOTEM, a Cirque Du Soleil show! We were joined by Jenny and Mik and my friend from school, Jamie. Totem was probably one of my favorite Cirque shows so far (I've seen two others, Kooza and Ova).

The show is sort of an evolution/nature based one, so there were lots of "animal" acts and Native American things and then the introduction of science and technology a little at the end via an appearance by Charles Darwin. There was one hilarious scene where they recreated the monkey to human evolution picture. There weren't as many terrifyingly dare-devilish stunts in this one as there were in Kooza, but there was so much cool artistry and the acts were just fascinating, that I didn't feel like I was missing anything.

Jason, Me, Jamie
and the TOTEM frog man!

The Cirque logo was projected onto the ceiling and it looked very cool.

Check out the TOTEM trailer below... The Native American ring dancers were one of my favorite acts!

Adventures in Wine Country

No. I didn't go to California this weekend (although that would have been really cool)... rather I went to  a winery in the country... get it?

Sorry, that wasn't even funny.

Anyway, my friend and I decided to get out of the city yesterday and go check out a not-so-local winery wayyyy out in Delaphplane, VA (about 1.5 hours from DC) called Cobbler Mountain Cellars. She had purchased a groupon a while back and had been planning to use it with her friend that's a boy, but he backed out at the last minute and I got to go instead! The deal included free tastings, two full glasses of wine, and $12 off the purchase of a bottle, plus, you got to keep your tasting glass.

Wine tasting table set-up outside the winery.
There was also a cool tasting area inside.

The drive wasn't too bad once you got out of the city and off I-66, which is annoying and trafficky at the best of times. But it was super nice after that—complete with cow pastures, trees galore, and lots of long, winding, super narrow, gravel roads... it felt like being back at home!

The view from the porch of Cobbler Mountain

We got a tiny bit lost and the GPS took us a slightly roundabout way, but once we found the place we were pretty charmed. Their website has this slightly ridiculous poem which I will not post here, but you can get to through the link, which supposedly explains their story, but in my opinion is just a little over the top. Almost as silly, but slightly more explanatory is the story on their Facebook page which states...

Cobbler Mountain—home to the "Little Winery That Could"—is where the fairies live in big poplar trees, children run barefoot to Thumb Run Creek and stories of the wise Grandfathers and kind Grandmothers are shared around the Grand Fire Circle at the foot of the forest. A legendary dreamer, Grandfather McCarthy, discovered Big Cobbler Mountain in 1959. His love of creatures and exploring has been preserved and passed down to his children and grandchildren. Come hike a wooded trail. Open a bottle of imagination. Sip handcrafted wines with the makers. Find a little fantasy under the old apple tree. Who knows who you will meet along the way?

Charming, huh? Anyway, it's a super cute little woodsy area and their wine was pretty good too. My favorite was definitely the chardonnay. It was delicious.

Best. Glass. of Wine. Ever.

On the winery porch.

After we we had tasted all the wine we could, we headed out in search of somewhere for lunch. We were originally planning to go to some pub that the winery people recommended, but we were starving, so we decided to stop at a little gem called Old Salem Cafe (and sports bar). We partly picked it because it was the first place we came to, and partly because of the huge sign outside that proclaimed, "Bikers Welcome!"

They had the best onion rings ever there. The other highlight of the meal—the time the waitress asked me if I had just come from graduation... in June. In other words, she thought I had just graduated from high school. Typical.

The Old Salem Cafe.
Bikers welcome.

Becoming an American

This weekend something awesome happened... PEOPLE CAME TO VISIT ME!

That's right folks, I had my first official prolonged, non-family member visit. KT and Jason, two of my friends from college, braved the terrible Friday afternoon east coast traffic to make their way down to my side of the potomac!

When they got here, we headed down to Old Town for a stroll down the waterfront, dinner, and some of the best ice cream I've ever had (chocolate orange... yum!).

I also told them about the amazing water goblet playing guy that is usually by the Torpedo Factory on the weekends.

Side note: check out this video of him playing What Child is This?

Anyway. Saturday was the most important. Saturday was the day Jason became a true American. Having never been to America's capitol before, he was pretty jazzed to check out all the sights.

The first stop: the Pentagon Memorial. On our way over (we had to walk to the memorial from the Pentagon bus station), we were questioned by a guard who wanted to know if we had security passes. Apparently we took the wrong path and ended up in a secure location by accident. Whoops. Crisis averted, we made it to the memorial itself.

We were slightly confused about the way it was laid out, the benches are arranged by the birth year of each victim, and some face one south while others face north. We also couldn't quite figure out why there were several benches representing children who were younger than 10-years-old. Our guess was that they had gone to work with a parent that morning. I've since done some more research on the memorial and I discovered that the benches represent everyone that died in the Pentagon as well as each passenger on the plane, which explains the 3-year-old kid. The direction the bench faces is determined by whether that individual was in the Pentagon (facing the south) or on the plane (north).

Next stop: The Mall! While there we acted like tourists, took tons of pictures, and I bought a free map to help prevent homeless hypothermia for $0.50. Yes I know I was probably scammed... but the other day I bought three books at goodwill and was only charged $1.30 when I should have been charged at least $6, so I guess we're even now.

Our LONGEST stop: The Smithsonian Museum of Natural History... we spent about four hours there.

Our biggest FAIL: Our attempt to see the movie Hugo in 3-D. It's supposed to be AMAZING, so we decided to carve two hours out of our sightseeing schedule to see it at a movie theater in Chinatown. Added bonus, at around 4:00 (the movie was at 4:20) it started raining and by that point our legs were very tired from walking around all day. So we trekked the eight blocks to Chinatown (in the cold rain) and made it to the movie theater at 4:17. Unfortunately. The movie was sold out. Bummer. So we walked back to the Mall and went to the Air and Space Museum for 30 min instead.

The birthday dinner: Our other friend Jenny's birthday also happened to be on Saturday and she happened to be in town visiting her bf, so we all met up in Chinatown for dinner. We had Mongolian BBQ. It was delish.

A final act of culture: While we were eating the rain stopped, so since it was still earlyish and Jason really wanted to, we trekked back to the Mall and walked up to see the rest of the major sites, including the Washington Monument, WWII Memorial, Korean War Memorial (a first for me), and the Lincoln Monument.

Then we walked to Foggy Bottom metro, got a free shuttle ride back to the Pentagon (thank you weekend track work) and finally got a bus home about 30 min later.

It was an awesome day. And, Jason officially became an American.

Where Were You LeVar?

When I was little I was OBSESSED with the show Reading Rainbow... well except for the egypt episode (I could never quite get passed the part where they explained that during the mummy embalming process they scrambled the brains with a piece of metal and then let it drip out through the dead guy's nose. eww) but I digress.

One of my favorite episodes was the one where LeVar visited the Movieland Wax Museum and had a wax figure made of himself.

 

This is the whole episode, but if you go to about 15:30, you'll see that part.

While you're there though, scroll back about 3 or so minutes and you'll

get to see some bakers making some of the most amazing cakes ever.

I think this episode may have helped to inspire my love of cake decorating, too.

That is seriously the coolest thing ever. 

So imagine how excited I was to see a Groupon deal to visit the Madame Tussauds museum in DC! I snapped up two tickets (I made a friend of mine come with me) and over the weekend we went to see those waxy guys in all their glory.

Madame Tussauds was very cool. The first thing you do when you get there (after watching the token learn the history of our museum movie) is get your picture taken with all the presidents via a green screen photo shoot. Then, you are immediately thrown into the President's Gallery, where you get to meet all 44 American presidents.

First impression... James Madison was tiny.

As in 5' 4" tiny... at 5' 5 1/2" I'm taller than him by an inch and a half.

Second impression... I was slightly weirded out by just how real everything looked. I kept thinking someone was standing next to me, turning around to say something, and realizing that it was just George or James or Teddy. Then I would feel silly.

But my favorite part of the museum was how interactive it was. There are quiz stations everywhere that test your knowledge about the founders and founding of our country, army (WWII) history, the wax figure making process, and a bunch more. Elspeth and I rocked the colonial history quiz (we got 10 out of 10) but completely failed the army one (3/10)... that's probably because growing up in VA we got a healthy dose of virginia (and consequently our nation's birth) history but not a lot of in depth learning about the foreign nonsense that was the second world war (which wasn't really covered too much in the SOLs when we took them). 

Anyway, they totally encourage interaction with the statues which was cool and sometimes even provided props to enhance the experience. For example, one photo op featured Jackie O and JFK as disembarked from Air Force 1. They provided faux fir jackets for non-germaphobic people (aka not me) to put on to join the first couple in a paparazzi photo storm that came complete with flashing lights and the sounds of cameras clicking away and people screaming. 

We did get into the interactive action a bit though...

Just hanging out with my ancestor Pres. Grant.
I definitely think you can see the family resemblance!

Not sure what's going on here...

He's about to get shot... morbid I know.

Other highlights included the Rosa Parks bus experience that literally scared me out of my seat, remembering what Al Roker looked like before he got skinny (his statue really needs to be updated), and of course, getting up close and personal with Baden Powell and Johnny Depp.

The founder of the boy scouts indeed. Humph.
(this is a super veiled reference to the Muppets Christmas
Carol which I watched wayyy to much last month)
On a completely different vein, you should totally read the book The Radioactive Boy Scout.
I read it in high school and it was kind of amazing.

I took this for my favorite roomie Jenny.

The ONLY downside was the absence of LeVar. I had sort of hoped his statue had found its way to DC.

So. Much. Driving.

Well I'm officially calling my vacation season to an end. Bummer! Throughout the month of December (and start of January) I basically traveled the whole length of the east coast 1.5 times, put nearly 3,000 miles on my car, and saw a whole lot of friends and family.

Here are some of the highlights from the super southern leg of my journey...

Magic Kingdom in the morning... so pretty 

Pretty at night too...

Sea World!

Shamu show!

Getting ready to drive a race car in
the Richard Petty Driving Experience!

My new favorite "family photo"

Apparently I got tired of taking pictures because I basically have none from Christmas/New Years in Vermont, and really have none from my secret santa party in PA. That realization makes me very sad.

A White Christmas!

Sherman Christmas at the Welshes

Getting ready to hand out drinks for
our homemade holiday drink contest 

Homemade Kauhla with milk,
Lemony-Gin Fizz,
Chocolate-Peppermint Martini,
and Welsh Christmas Drink (aka a Scarlett O'Hara)

When I finally got back to Arlington (almost for good)
I was treated to the snow storm we never got in Vermont.
Pretty!

Here's to an exciting 2012!