Taking the Nation's Capital by Storm

It has been a whirlwind of craziness since I rolled into DC yesterday evening. My friend Jessica has an incredible apartment right near DC in Arlington, lives steps away from a Metro stop, and possesses a wealth of knowledge about Washington and the surrounding area, so I've been quite busy. Last night was relatively tame, as all we did was eat at Chipotle and drive around so Jessica could show me her close proximity to all the sights of the nation's capital, except that it was very foggy and I couldn't quite see said sights. However, this did give me the opportunity to ride around in her sweet new car, an electric blue Honda Fit, which I have eloquently dubbed "The Blue Meanie," in the fashion of her old bright teal Civic, which I had named "The Green Lantern."

Today was much busier and more eventful. For some reason, I felt a desire to go to the mothership of American consumerism that is Tysons Corner, so we went there and browsed, and we got a special key of Jessica's apartment made for her boyfriend: it has an illustration of Lucy pulling the football away from Charlie Brown on it. Classic. We then went to lunch at Jason's Deli, which I had never been to before, but I really like it. They advertised it as one of the healthiest restaurants in America, and I buy it (except for the delicious and free soft serve they peddle to unsuspecting patrons). We then got Coke slurpees at 7-Eleven (a pastime of ours) and went back to her apartment, where we poured liquor into them and, fittingly, watched Animal House, which I had never seen. (Understandable why it's a "classic," but being a judgmental theatre person I was quite underwhelmed.)

Then, we went to see the Washington Nationals play the good ol' New York Mets with Jessica's friend Laura, which turned out to be a much more expensive proposition than we had anticipated. First off, the game was a "premium game," which automatically meant ticket prices were higher; on top of that, the ticket machine we went to wouldn't let us buy the seats in the $20 section like we wanted, so we ended up getting $33 tickets in left field, which was nice and less painful for me because Jessica put them all on her credit card for convenience's sake. I then proceeded to spend over $21 on ballpark food and potables, which I know is extortion, but at the same time, you want the authentic experience when you go to a baseball game, so you gotta pay the price. I tell ya, these guys know how to screw you. And while I did take pleasure in the number of Mets jerseys I saw at the park, I was disappointed by the Mets (as one can depend on) in the 7-1 spanking the Nats served them--but Jessica was elated that her traditionally awful Nats won, so I felt some iota of happiness for her.

The three of us then went to a bar near U Street in DC called The Black Squirrel, where we had delicious macaroni and cheese and got up the nerve to try absinthe. This was probably my worst and most expensive decision of the night--$12 for a vile licorice-flavored concoction that I ended up needing to chase with ketchup from the bottle sitting on our table. Jessica was crazy enough to get a second, but Laura and I moved on to beer to save ourselves from more misery. The bar had really good rock music from the '90s playing, which was nice; a good time was had by all.

Now it is late and I need to go to bed. (And get away from technology--I've been Twittering via text message all day. Sometimes I loathe myself.) But tomorrow we're sojourning to Old Town Alexandria, amongst other adventures. More updates to come later...