One Reason to Live Near DC

Yesterday after work I hopped on the metro and headed into the city to meet up with some friends and see . . . BATMAN!

No, I'm not a crazy batman fan (although I am a Christian Bale and Joseph Gordon-Levitt fan), but who wouldn't want to see a movie on the huge IMAX screen at the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History?? It was 100% worth it. The movie was great and the screen was so big that I almost felt like I was in the movie . . . it was kind of amazing.

Anyway, I got there a little early so I hung out on the Mall and snapped a few pictures, awkward tourist style

Washington Monument

Batman IMAX here I come!

my shadow!
I felt super awkward taking this one. . .

Another highlight of the night? The amazingly absurd hat the guy in the row in front of us was wearing. I tried to snap a pic surreptitiously, but failed miserably. 

no flash + darkish movie theater = picture fail.

Never fear! I found it here!

nice and classy

Yes We Should!

Last night my classmates and I officially finished our first year of grad school. Yay!

We celebrated with a champagne toast, brownies . . .

. . . and presentations.

Oh well . . . at least there was champagne!

congratulations to us!

one year down,

one to go.

Good Job OED

The other day I was looking up a word for one of my books in the Oxford English Dictionary.

The word, Aberystwyth, is actually the name of a town in Wales, so rather than heading to my usual word reference guide (Merriam-Webster), I chose to use the OED, assuming that, being British and all, it would include this English town.

Boy was I wrong.

Sometimes its fun to be nerdy...

We watched this video recently in my marketing class and I'm pretty much obsessed with it. I love these nerdy statisticy videos. This one was done by a website called Socialnomics. If you like them too, check out this one by National Geographic to find out if you are a typical human being. In the meantime, let's be nerdy together and watch this little gem.

via

I may or may not have downloaded the song in this video and it may or may not be my new happy tune... although this one still does it every time, too.

Quarter Life Crisis???

Fortunately not yet! But considering that today marks my quarter-century milestone, I feel like one should be coming on pretty soon...

via

Fortunately I have lots of friends who will help me be a whole parade to make it all better!

Happy Birthday to Me!

DC Fireworks!

Yesterday I experienced my first ever Fourth of July in a big city, and it wasn't just any big city, it was DC!

Well, technically I never left Arlington, but that's just getting technical.

My friend and I decided that rather than braving the crazy crowds that were clogging up the metro and the National Mall, we'd take it easy and walk over to the Air Force Memorial to watch the fireworks instead. What a great idea.

Air Force Memorial

For those of you who don't know, the Air Force Memorial is on a hill in Arlington that over looks DC and the surrounding area. From there you can see the Capitol Building, the Washington Monument, Arlington Nat'l Cemetery, and the Pentagon. More importantly, you can see the National Mall's fireworks display. Added bonus? You can also see the fireworks displays from tons of surrounding areas... no lie, the whole of the skyline was filled with fireworks. It was awesome.

USAF Band playing the 1812 Overture

The USAF Band was playing a Fourth of July concert when we got there, which was very cool. I absolutely loved that they played the 1812 Overture at the end of the concert, complete with cannons (which totally freaked out the little girl who was sitting next to us) at the end. They were super loud and bright, but we were also basically sitting right next to them.

Smoke from the cannon fire...
So glad they included them!

As soon as the overture ended, the big fireworks show started. It was very cool to watch fireworks bursting over DC, although it made me realize how much I love watching fireworks in the valley. You see, one of my favorite things about fireworks is the sounds they make... I love the booms and crackles and wizzes. These sounds are magnified 10-fold at home because the sounds bounce off the mountains and reverberate through the valley. In the city, which is relatively flat and mountainless, the fireworks made almost no noise. It was crazy!

Fireworks over DC.
To the right you can see the Washington Monument.

On the way home, we each picked up an American flag from the information booth. It was a great end to what has so far been quite the stressful week!

Happy Fourth of July everyone!

Apocalypse Now.

I don't know if you've heard about it, but the middle atlantic area (i.e., Arlington/DC/where my parents live) was party to a killer wind/rain storm on Friday evening. 

I happened to be in downtown DC at the time and not only witnessed a funnel cloud of newspapers, dust, and popcorn (not a real tornado obviously, just an annoying wind thing) and a ridiculous frog squelcher of a rain storm, but I was standing in it. 

Soaked.

Great times.

Eventually it ended and on Saturday we all started picking up the pieces. We had tons of branches and leaves down in my complex and so many people didn't have power (and still don't have it) it's crazy. I'm pretty sure that we are in worse condition than last summer when the hurricane hit. That was basically a day long storm, Friday night's storm lasted two hours at most.

huge tree branches fell everywhere!

People were pretty much acting like the apocalypse was happening. Grocery stores (at least the ones with power) were cleared out and gas stations were (and some still are) completely depleted of their gas supplies...

Which made this super scary... 

Super scary. Never want to see that again!

 Yes. That is my car's distance to empty meter. I actually had about an eighth of a tank, but when I last got gas, I foolishly only put about a gallon in because I thought I could get it cheaper elsewhere.

Big Mistake!

After trying to get gas at two separate stations (which were completely out of gas) I ended up having to wait in line with all the people who were fearing the worst (no gas ever again) and the people who were silly like me, for about 20 minutes. Then, I paid about 20 cents more than I had paid earlier because the only gas left was super duper premium.

I think I've learned my lesson.

But at least I have power and internet, which is more than many, and my car didn't get damaged by falling branches or anything. Too bad my window fell out again, otherwise I would have come out completely unscathed.

Maybe next time.