Gretchen, Dan, and I watched Sweeny Todd last night. It made me sad. It had all of the perfect elements to make the WORLD'S BEST MOVIE, and I was bored through most of it. How can you take Tim Burton, Johnny Depp, and add a musical that I adored as a kid and get a bad movie? I just don't get it. I'm still sad. I know it is a musical (and generally I love musicals), but they took my favorite song out "The Ballad of Sweeny Todd" - and that is what I remember most from watching it in middle school. The other songs tended to drag along - it seemed that you heard the same song for almost the whole movie, which can get very boring. They almost seemed to be pretty love songs in my mind. I want odd, discomforting music! The only time the sweet love song is appropriate (in my mind) is when he was gazing lovingly at his barber's knife before he used it to slit a throat. All other love songs were inappropriate. Everything is very pretty, even when there is blood shooting up into the air, but that isn't enough to make me want to watch it again or to buy it. So sad.

Took my car in for the yearly state inspection this morning. FAILED. I have no brakes. $500 to fix.

Happier note... I rearranged my schedule and am going to see Sweeny Todd at the Drafthouse tonight!!!!! YEAH!!!! Anyone interested in going along?

This week sucks. I have always been able to see life from the bright side, never having to deal with depression, but I think that an entire 28 years of BAD has finally caught up with me. Individually the events don't seem that bad, and there have been a few bright lights this week, but overall this week has left me exhausted and bawling myself to sleep every night. Can this week PLEASE end soon?????

( So this is what has knocked me over the edge…… )

Who says I am too old for trick-or-treating!!!! Last night's event on Embassy Row was fabulous. I love events done by Things to do DC - they are always well run and quite a bit of fun. We got candy from 8 different embassies/residences and from quite a few private residences as well. ( Highlights of the evening include:  )

So, the total embassy count for 2007 is currently ten. Five during the EU Open House, I have gone to the French embassy numerous times for ballroom dancing classes, I attended events at the Chinese and Ethiopian embassies, and I went into Monaco and Romania last night.

My laziness caused me to pass up going to a free happy hour at the Australian Embassy (through my membership with the Smithsonian) and I also was to lazy to attend the Kalorama House and Embassy Tour, where I would have visited additional embassies. I still plan on attending an event at the Italian embassy in December, so hopefully I can hit 11 by New Years!

( Last night I ushered at the Shakespeare Theater for the first time. )

On another, unrelated note today is HALLOWEEN!!!! HAPPY HALLOWEEN ALL!!!! I am at work dressed in all black, with spider jewelry, and a black cat scarf around my neck. I'm counting down until this evening when I will be going trick-or-treating on Embassy Row with Things to do DC! Tonight I will be a flapper. Friday night I will be a belly dancer! Last Saturday I was a wench. Hopefully sometime next week I will be able to post pictures of all of my costumes!!!! I have realized that I am a complete costume whore. I think it's a disease!

As a last note, this post is in direct response to addictionkitten's comment last week in CT during survivedestiny's beautiful wedding, asking for me to update more often. I promise to try!!!!!

8 p.m. Friday, July 20
Information: 703-836-2498
Price: Free

King Street will be transformed into Diagon Alley, with local businesses and organizations offering Harry Potter-themed treats all night. Kingsbury chocolates, The Sugar Cube and Candi's Candies will sell wizard delicacies like chocolate frogs. Gadsby's Tavern Museum will offer tours, complete with herbology lessons. Dog bakery and boutique Barkley Square will host a costume contest for dogs. The Alexandria Symphony Orchestra will play music from Harry Potter films at Union Station. Other activities include trivia contests and wandmaking.

Copies of "Deathly Hallows" will be issued at 12:01 a.m. at A Likely Story Books. Preorder by 6 p.m. on July 20 and receive $10 in "muggle money," valid for any store purchase until July 21, 2008.

I often hear people complain about DC - about the people, the traffic, and even surprisingly enough, the lack of things to do. I've never understood how it is possible to dislike this city. Sometimes I get into the rut of spending all my time in northern VA and forgetting about the activities available in the city, but when spring comes around I usually remember all the activities that are available to take advantage of. For people that say that DC is too expensive, they need to open their eyes - there are free and cheap events constantly in this city!

The upcoming weeks remind me of why I love living in DC:
Tonight - Free showing of "Love's Labor's Lost" for the Shakespeare Free for All
Thursday night - Dance lessons at the French Embassy ($20)
Friday night - Free HBO taping of Dave Attell comedy show at Lincoln Theater
Saturday morning - Free tour of White House
Saturday evening - Very cheap camping at Prince Williams Forest
Tuesday night - Free Drag Queen Bingo at Club Chaos
Friday night - Cheap ($18) lawn tickets at Wolftrap to see Jesus Christ Superstar

That's not everything I'm doing in the next two weeks, but it is a good example of the wide variety of activities are available in the city for next to nothing! Thinking of other examples of free/cheap activities that I enjoy….

Screen on the Green, Jazz in the Garden, EU Open House, Millennium Stage at the Kennedy Center, Restaurant Week, dancing at Glen Echo, Meetup language groups, the various festivals (Folklife, Cherry Blossom, Greek Festival, Scottish Walk, Crystal City Rocks, Taste of…, etc…), the parades (St. Patrick's Day, Cherry Blossom, Memorial Day, 4th of July), Torpedo Factory, and this doesn't even hit on the monuments and museums (Smithsonian, National Building Museum, National Archives, National Geographic Society Museum, National Gallery, National Museum of Women in the Arts, Holocaust Memorial Museum, Dumbarton Oaks, Woodrow Wilson House, Tudor Place, Old Stone House, Frederick Douglass Site, etc…) that are available.

So tell me, what are you favorite free (or cheap) things to do around the city?

A picture from the EU Open House....

( Dancing in the street )

This weekend I attended the first ever European Union Open House. Twenty-three embassies opened their doors to the public this past Saturday, and in the six hours that they were open I was able to visit five of the embassies: Portugal, Luxembourg, Ireland, Bulgaria, and Germany. The event was well organized with many buses to transport people back and forth between the embassies, fliers distributed showing the bus routes, embassy addresses and hours, and each embassy was prepared with stamps so that you could have your "passport" stamped at each location. Since this was the first open house of this magnitude, no one expected such a large turnout - we averaged only about 1 embassy per hour due to the lines that were wrapping around blocks to get into each embassy, and when we did go on the bus to ride to the German embassy there was no room to breathe there were so many people stuffed onto each of the busses. Many of the embassies ran out of food and drink within the first few hours. I'm hoping that the popularity of this open house means that this will become a regular event. It was wonderful going into the embassies, learning the history about the buildings as well as learning about each individual country.

( Portugal )

( Luxembourg )

( Ireland )

( Bulgaria )

( German )

I do hope that the next president of the EU will organize an open house. I'm sure that it was quite expensive for the involved embassies, so it can't be very often, but it is an opportunity that you can't find anywhere else in the world. I look forward to visiting other embassies in the future.

On a completely unrelated note, last night I decided that James Cagney is my all-time favorite actor.

Since 2007 started I have not been home for more than three weeks consecutively. It seems like I have not kept up with any of my friends because of this, but thankfully the next trip (excluding weekends in PA) isn't until September and that isn't even a definite trip! I look forward to hanging out with all of you a lot more in the upcoming summer months!

So, here's a not-so-quick look at everything that has been going on so far this year.... just a warning, I have quite a few pictures in this post (if it works correctly!) so don't open this up unless you have a good connection.

( Here goes.... )

This weekend I went to a ( teddy bear party...... )

Happy 2007 everyone!

I hope everyone had a stupendous New Years celebration. I certainly did! Partied with addictionkitten, katcracker, silveredmadness, shad0w_angel, survivedestiny, thrashbluegrass, and 13 other friends until the very wee hours of the morning. Most of us crashed at silveredmadness's house and the next morning/afternoon we recuperated together with katcracker’s yummy breakfast casserole, 3 lbs of bacon, fruit salad, croissants, a mega container of Gatorade, and lots-o-Starbucks coffee. Very good way to ring in the new years! After hanging out, talking, and watching a movie it was time to go home to make the traditional pork & sauerkraut. It cooked while I napped and the perfect ending to the day was watching “The Family Stone” (strange movie) and “Mrs. Henderson Presents” (fabulous movie!) while eating the pork & sauerkraut over mashed potatoes.

I’m looking forward to this year. I will be going on a 4-day Bahamas cruise (stopping in Freeport and Nassau) this month with my mom, I have a 10-day trip to Germany planned for February, and I will FINALLY be visiting Boston in March for a weekend. In addition to this, I have a few work trips planned (St. Louis in February, Puerto Rico in March, and Germany in September are the current work-related trips that are planned.)

I’m looking forward to working at the Cherry Blossom Festival in March/April, we are talking about having a pizza party at the top of the Washington Monument for the volunteers (still in the very early planning stages), I have an overnight planned with the exchange student from Sweden that I am working with this year, and I will be taking the DC Tour Guide Certification test within the next few months.

All-in-all, after a very bad first few months, 2006 ended up being a fun year where I met a lot of new people, got involved in a lot of new activities, and was able to really start moving my life in the direction where I want it to go. I’m expecting that 2007 is going to be an even better year!

And since I had set 30 goals last year at this time, it’s time to review how I did:
( 7 goals complete )
( 6 goals worked on  )
( 17 goals failed )

Life has been very strange this week. Another year older, this year celebrated with no fanfare because it just didn't seem necessary. I have been seeing some major perks from my company - box seats at the Monday night Caps game and tomorrow night we are having a sector-wide happy hour at the Arlington Cinema-n-Drafthouse which should be a lot of fun. Monday at work my boss mentioned a job opening that I may be interested in, so I talked to a few people about it. Although it meant a considerable raise and travel - two things I have been dreaming about - I had decided to not take the job after speaking to many people whose opinions I respect. There was to be no interview, resume submission, anything - I would have simply reported to a new boss. Today my current boss mentions to me that he spoke to über-boss who now thinks I should take the job (yesterday he didn't think it was a good career move), then about 2 minutes later new boss shows up in my cube and shows me my new salary and tells me I will be transitioning next week. We shook hands and I called him "boss". I guess it is official? This decision was made without my input, but honestly I am okay with that. Everything that has happened to me on my career path has happened without any considerable work on my part. I have landed jobs that have gotten me where I am - I have not gone on many interviews or submitted many resumes in my entire life. So far it has worked out for me, so I'm sure this change will as well.

Wow - it has been months and months since I posted! I'm only behind on two WoF get-togethers though, which means I really need to get my butt in gear and start planning the next one!

This week was restaurant week in DC, which I had never participated in, but Jaime and Tammi invited me to go along to Notti Bianche with them, so of course I couldn't pass up the opportunity! We were celebrating Jaime's 28th b-day (The 2nd time this week I celebrated with her! The first time I joined a group of people at "Carpool" in Ballston, which is a bar I have to spend more time in!)

So, if you don't know what Restaurant Week is (which I didn't before this week)... quite a few ritzy/high-price restaurants choose a menu of appetizers/main course/desserts and offer it at $30. This is an amazing deal, considering many of the main courses tend to run in the $25-30 range on a normal day.

( Restaurant Week: Notti Bianche )



( WoF: Taste of Morocco )



( WoF: Four Sisters/Huong Que )



So, I hope to not wait this long before writing again. Life is getting quite interesting lately - I have been spending a lot of time volunteering for the park service and am loving the work as well as the people I have been spending time with. I look forward to introducing them to everyone at some point! I will be starting classes soon - Regional Tour Guiding I & II every Saturday and I still have to register for German class. I am contemplating a job in Berlin, and will be e-mailing soon to get more specifics on the job. If I end up taking it, I will need to brush up on my German language skills quite fast! I have started going to some of the German language meet-ups (Stammtische) recently, as well as reading some of my books that are in German. I'm sure that I will be able to get back to almost-fluent by January!

Okay, I heard about this on the radio this morning and just had to try it! Go to MyHeritage. They have a face recognition program that compares your face to celebrities faces! They are trying to build a database of faces so that people can try and trace their relatives via face recognition, but the celebrity comparison is just fun!!!

Go try it out and let me know who they match you with!!!! (Try to use a picture that shows your face clearly - if it is covered by anything it will be difficult for them to compare.)

My male & female matches (and a brief Wiki about them behind the cut):

75% match - Andie MacDowell
( Read more... )

71% match - Edmund Stoiber
( Read more... )

70% match - Chaka Khan
( Read more... )

HAVE FUN!!!!

I have been wanting to post for awhile now and things have just been to crazy!

I finally got the new job that I have been waiting for MONTHS for! I now am a "Project Control Analyst", which basically means that I am here to make the Project Managers lives easier - I help them set up processes to get their work done faster, I double check invoices and contract modifications and other documents to make sure that everything is submitted properly, and I generally get things organized! I love it! (Of course it is only the first week, but I definitely have high hopes for this job)

Last weekend one of my best friends from High School was in town, and she brought two of her closest friends with her. We had an absolute BLAST. Shopping in Georgetown, going to the monuments, partying in Adams Morgan, going to three of the Smithsonian museums, taking the DC Ducks tour, .... the weekend was packed full of fun stuff!

I realized how much I enjoy going out and partying while they were here! This is not something I do often, and something I usually shy away from doing... but they are such a fun bunch of girls to go out with! It's been a long time since I've spent time in clubs with single people.... it's a completely different outlook to life than my friends who are married have! We hit on guys, gave out fake numbers, talked to random guys driving down the street, stayed in the bars until they were closed, and got pizza at the craziest pizza joint in the world after all the bars shut down! The life in Adams Morgan is just unbelievable to me! I just found out that they are coming back in May to visit - I can't wait!!!!

A few weeks ago we hit up the latest WoF joint "Fogo de Chao", which is a ( Brazilian steakhouse )

Tomorrow night I'm going to see the Washington Caps play the Florida Panthers with s33k3r and Justin. Can't wait!

I love the fact that it is springtime. The Cherry Blossom Festival is coming up, and I am scheduled to work the following hours:
March 25: noon to 7pm at the Information Trailer on Independance Avenue
March 26: 1pm to 5:30pm at the Information Tent near the Jefferson Memorial
April 8: Cherry Blossom Festival Parade
April 9: 1pm to 5:30pm at the Information Tent near the Jefferson Memorial
So if you are in the area feel free to drop by and see me!

The other thing I love about springtime/summertime is the visitors! I already mentioned my visitors last weekend, and mom will be in town this weekend... I need to find people to come visit in April... May the friend from HS will be in town again with her friends... and then in June I will have visitors from Germany for a week! I'm absolutely ecstatic over this! I lived with this family for 3 months in 1999 or 2000... and now the mom and the 15 year old daughter (who I babysat for while I lived with them) will come and visit me. It will be wonderful!

Okay, gotta stop writing and get back to work... just one additional note... the only bad thing that is happening lately... I have strep throat! Gak. Thank god for antibiotics which will make me non-contagious by the end of today!

Can anyone help me?

Two weeks ago I met with one of my closest friends from High School. She and I have always had very similar tastes in literature. She recommended that I read "The Clan of the Cave Bear" series, which I will be picking up at McKay's next time I am in the area. She also recommended a book (or a series?) but didn't know the name. I'm hoping the details (which I am trying to remember, so they are very sketchy) will ring a bell in someone's mind so that I can learn the title or author.

This book starts off when before humans had truly evolved from monkeys, and tells a story at this time. Then the story skips generations upon generations and settles in many different time periods (Inquisition, Civil War, etc...) to follow members of these families.

This is a very brief sketch, but it is all I could remember. She was trying to remember the name and thought that the word "Power" might have been in it.

Anyone?

Well, I did... but since I was at my physical therapists at the time we are going to split it (I had the phone and the number - she knew the song to call in for)... so after taxes it is about $700... split two ways... I really only won $350... but STILL!

If you go to the MIX 107.3 website you can see my name there today... or sort of my name... guess they didn't quite understand me when I was screaming in joy!

I'm also in the running to win a luxury beach house in North Carolina for a week! My odds are one out of twenty - which is pretty darn good! Wish me luck....

Sunday we had our latest WoF meal, which was Dim Sum, a tradition Chinese meal that reminds me of the tapas style of cuisine.

( Chinese )

s33k3r has tagged me for the following:

Ground Rules: The first player of this "game" starts with the topic "5 Guilty Pleasures" and people who get tagged need to write an entry about their 5 Guilty Pleasures as well as state this rule clearly. In the end, you need to choose the next 5 people to be tagged and list their names. (Keeping it G rated)

Now this was difficult for me... I don’t have many guilty pleasures. I’m pretty open about all of the goofy things that I love... Veggie Tales, Scrapbooking, Mary Kay, Disney movies, contemporary Christian music, Renaissance Faires, musicals, etc... Certain people could easily consider all of these guilty pleasures, but I am pretty open about my love for all of them! So here goes my attempt at thinking of the “guilty” ones...

( My 5 Guilty Pleasures )

Well, I am going to be nice and not tag anyone... I hate when people do that to me (hint hint s33k3r), but I would love it if any of you either reply to this post with yours... or post it in your journal! It’s fun!!!!