IRRITATING

prologue: there are certain rules, which must be adheared to when working in an office.

for the past 2 days someone has been reheating fish in the office kitchen.
now maybe i'm biased because i don't like fish, but am i wrong in assuming fish shouldn't be reheated? it smells foul, i mean really foul. whenever my mom cooks fish i am unhappy and my brother has a fit, saying it gives him a headache. so stop reheating your disgusting food in our microwave! IRRITATING.

instead, you could bring: peanut butter & jelly, peanut butter & jelly or peanut butter & jelly.


let's reverse this for a minute. it's breakfast, and i'm enjoying a nice warm bowl of strawberries & cream oatmeal. i'm satisfied, and then someone starts cooking bacon.
really?
really?
you're going to cook bacon, quite possibly the most delicious and permeating smell known to man?
how are you even cooking bacon? you're AWFUL. IRRITATING.

i'm going to start putting bacon salt in my oatmeal.

credit to monica.

annie anyone?

oh my

oh my

photo taken today on my iphone at the good stuff eatery with heather.

Richmond

Virginia's capital: A place that is seeped with history and PBR. A place where hipsters and hoodlums can live in harmony.

Richmond, VA. Okay, i'll admit you have some pretty good restaurants and porches and maybe the church bells sound really good on Sundays. And okay, so it was 60 degrees over the weekend, bigggg deal. Remember that time it snowed and everything was closed except Kuba Kuba?
Yeah you're right, i guess that's the exact place we wanted to go for lunch, but still, i didn't even bring boots for godsakes. And yeah, i guess the Byrd Theatre was open as well and I got to see The Fantastic Mr. Fox, which was soooooo good.

What i'm trying to say, Richmond, is that I had a pretty good time with you this weekend. The pickle plate at Balliceaux was a lot of fun and the fried oysters and truffle fries were delicious. The duck hash at The Black Sheep was pretty good too (and i've now been there for breakfast lunch and dinner).

Also you look good in warm weather. No really, you do.

What the Hell is That?

Seriously, what is that? It's red and brown and squarish. Oh could that be the goddamn ground?

Good News, i can walk again. Apparently Georgetown needed one good weekend of sunlight to make the sidewalks appear for the first time since i've moved here.

Me: This calls for a celebration

Me: What kind of celebration?

Me: A run!

Me: That's not a celebration

Running in the rain is really fantastic, it feels great. How do I know this? Well, 1. because i do and 2. a Georgetown student said so as i was running on the campus and dey smart.

Something not so fantastic is when scary people sit in their cars and say things to you as you go by.

"Yeaaaah you got that longevity girl."

Uhhh thanks? Wait:

Longevity

Noun. [lon-jev-i-tee]: 1. a long individual life; great duration of individual life.

No yeah, I was right before. Thanks.

Dear Shaun White,

aka, the Flying Tomato. It has been said that you are what it would look like if Kathy Griffin and Carrot Top had a daughter.

you give me faith in America.

i am fascinated by you.

Wake up in the Morning feeling like P Diddy

Or at least Shaun White: Last night I had a dream that I was snowboarding a half pipe and did a really "sick" trick and immediately woke up after I landed it. I knew then that it would be a good day.*

Georgetown Steps

A lot of funny little things happened before 9am this morning: My daily walk to the metro is always peppered with odd sights, especially since everything has been buried in snow. Every once and a while you will see bike handles poking through the top of the snow. Today I decided to take a peek through a break in a fence because I heard barking behind it. Here's an incomplete list of the dogs I saw playing in a makeshift doggy playground:
Golden
2 Bloodhounds
German Shepherd
Beethoven
3 Labs
English Setter annnnnnd
A Wolf.

I want a dog, big time. The rest of the walk was dedicated to deciding which was best: golden retrievers or bloodhounds. Still not sure.

I also saw a little boy walking down Barracks Row marking Xs in the snow drifts with a stick.

*It only turned out to be an okay day.

Oyamel

I've been very fortunate in that i've been to some amazing restaurants over the past few months. Was Oyamel on my list New Years list? I don't know, but I loves me some Jose Andres. Megan and I went on a whim during DC restaurant week. The decor was clean, interesting and colorful and the tables were pretty intimate, perfect for the date night Megan and I had planned. It's also located right in Penn Quarter near a ton of shops and the verizon center (i'm always amidst Caps traffic).

My Menu

Drink: Ponche. Pretty unimpressive, but it was just too cold to get a Margarita. It sounded like a Sangria formula with wine, tequila and fruit, but it honestly tasted like lightly flavored water.

To Start: When we sat down at the table they brought us chips and salsa, which had hints of coffee in it.

Dinner: Oyamel is a small-plate restaurant, so we had a choice of 3 entrees and a dessert. My first entree was a mexican squash casserole. It was a squash sliced and topped with crumbled queso, crushed peanuts and hibiscus dressing. The flavors were interesting but it's nothing I would ever order again. My second entree was scallops. They were seared, topped with pumpkin seeds and garnished with pumpkin seed sauce and orange segments. Though the presentation was really interesting, that's ultimately why i put that picture at the top (and i took it from yelp because when mine uploaded it was too brown), I could have done without the garnishes. The scallops were, however, cooked perfectly and melted in my mouth. The third entree was a choice of a soft-shell taco. I had a classic beef taco, the beef was amazing. It was simply topped with fresh salsa. Megan had a mushroom and guacamole taco, which was better than mine.

Dessert: Amazing. It's not on the menu anymore (I went to look it up to make sure I got it right) but maybe they will bring it back for the sake of mankind. The dessert was a chocolate custard with fresh pomegranate seeds mixed in. The custard was topped with a dark chocolate sorbet and coarse sea salt. CHOCOLATE AND SEA SALT TOGETHER IS AMAZING. This was really the stand out for me.

So all in all very good, I thought Megan was going to die because she was so full, she couldn't even finish her last two plates (pish-posh, i was fine).

Ellicott City, MD

A few weeks ago I went to visit some of my family Maryland. Saturday morning we went to Ellicott City, a charming town built around the history of a train stop. They had a lot of antique shops and restaurants, a classic combo.

It is supposedly one of the most haunted places on the East Coast. Discovering this tidbit was not a surprise to me because it seemed that nearly every building we passed was haunted, according to my younger cousins.

Ellicott City is part of the B&O Canal that runs through DC, and the many of the buildings along the Main St. are built over the river, it was pretty neat.

Anyways, here are some pictures, the colors really seem to be off when I post them up here, but I'm not dealing with it now because my hot chocolate is almost ready. The last picture is of a black stiletto inexplicably up in a tree.

DC Winters, enough already.

After being snowmageddoned in this weekend, i've learned a few things:

1. i love all things Trader Joe's.*

2. i could star in a Campbell's Soup commercial.

3. sledding has lost zero of its charm.

*when shopping at Trader Joe's, always check to make sure your corn dogs aren't meatless.