Solomons Island, MD - Amanda in DC

You can tell things have been quiet around here by the lack of posts. However, last weekend I did go into DC to visit Carrie, Dan, and four-month-old Sammy which was great. My day started at 5am on Friday, taking a cab to the next town to catch the commuter bus, which put me in DC at around 7am, way too early to see any sights. So I hung out at the Old Post Office (which is now a cafeteria) and at 9 am I wandered over to the Ford Theater, the site of Lincoln's assassination. Then I meandered around some of the Smithsonian galleries until it was time to catch the metro to visit Carrie.

Their house is adorable, and it is located near just about every possible shopping outlet and chain restaurant you could dream up. The house is huge -- especially to me after living on this boat for so long -- and they have a nice back porch where they've got Dan's latest purchase -- a massive bbq grill. So for dinner on Friday he grilled up some delicious steaks and portabella mushrooms. Then Saturday, Carrie and I got to work on covering the bright orange wall in the kitchen with a more sedate white. For some reason, the previous person had settled on a color scheme of sky blue and tangerine (!?) so Carrie has been slowly working to bring that color scheme to a more neutral tone. The orange had to go. With two people working, we had it done in no time and it was a big difference. It makes me wonder what my renters think of my "high noon" (desert brown) accent walls in my house. Oh well, too bad.

Dan kindly volunteered to babysit Sam while Carrie and I indulged in a chick flick -- "The Devil Wears Prada". I had low expectations, it is a fashion movie after all, but Meryl Streep never fails to deliver so it was actually pretty good. Of course the quality of the film was only secondary to the real reason for being at the movies: an excuse to indulge in movie popcorn with extra butter. The next evening, Carrie and Dan hosted a dinner party with another couple, Sean and John. Sean is an adventure traveler and has been all over, including a trip where she followed the route of the Tour de France while Lance Armstrong was riding in it. So hearing her

stories was really interesting.

I had a jam-packed weekend, got to catch up with Carrie, was able to hold, feed, and play with little Sam to my heart's content. He is so smart and such a good baby; it didn't even phase him to have this strange person making ga-ga eyes at him all the time -- he just went with the flow. You can tell he will be a real people-person, just like his parents. On the way back I realized that neither Carrie nor I took ONE SINGLE picture, even though we talked about it many times, and even left the camera out at one point to be sure to take photos. So I have manufactured one of Carrie, me, and Sam in front of the tangerine orange wall. That's the beauty of photoshop.

On the way back from Carrie's I stopped in at the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History to have a look at the Hope Diamond (enormous 45 carat blue diamond). I wandered around the rest of the jewel exhibit, checking out how my engagement ring stacks up against the worlds biggest gems. I think it looks okay, especially when I "jedi-mind-trick" the photo so that it looks about the same size.