A (non-baseball) recap of Flenkerfest from the depths of the mess

I must give credit to Marin for coming up with the title for this post. Although her room is not exactly a mess. I've seen messes before, I've lived in them. This is more of a "cluttered" room than a "messy" one. But I digress.

Thursday I arrived after an uneventful afternoon of flying, getting into town around 6. Marin picked me up and headed off for dinner, an ill-advised meal at IHOP. Some pretty terrible service, and a poor meal choice on my part didn't get the trip started on the right notes. The iced tea was pretty good, though. I tried to talk her into going over to Best Buy so I could see if they had a Wii, but probably for the best, Marin wouldn't take me. Had I bought one, I think that's all I would've done over the weekend. Not that it's a bad thing.

The rest of Thursday was pretty much spent relaxing at her lovely house.

Friday had a lazy start, with breakfast at a little place called "Bagels and Baguettes," then a trip to the grocery store. (We planned for many meals, 3 or 4, and ended up actually making one. But, we did make Scotcheroos! They turned out delicious, something I'm very proud of.) After the store, we met up with a couple of our friends, AJ and Matt, and had an early dinner at Bread & Chocolate, home of what I remember as one of the best glasses of iced tea I've ever had. This time the tea wasn't quite as good as I remembered it, still good, but not enough to classify it as "best ever." I probably would've been better off not going and having the mental image of the best glass stay with me. Oh well.

We hurried off to the game after the dinner, eating a hot dog while we were there, of course. After the game we went home, made the Scotcheroos, then headed to bed.

Saturday morning brought some amazingly delicious pancakes, courtesy of Marin. Very very tasty! Most of the rest of the day into the afternoon was spent at the National American Indian Museum, probably my favorite museum, architecture-wise. The exhibits themselves are incredible, too. As is the food. They had an eating area where you can choose foods based on the cultures of many different areas in the US and South America, we went with the buffalo chili with some fried flatbread. Very delicious!

That evening we made our one meal that we planned, tacos! They ended up being more like over-stuffed burritos, but everything was so good, I had to put it all on my tortilla at once.

Sunday we had a nice breakfast of omelets and cinnamon rolls before we headed out to our second game of the weekend. And second hot dog at the ballpark for the weekend. AJ went with us, I'm pretty sure mostly due to the Family Pack that was being offered at the game: $10 got a ticket, a Pepsi, a hot dog, and a bag of chips. Heckuva deal!

Later that night, we went to La Loma for a wonderful Mexican meal, then spent another relaxing night in.

Today I went Thaiphoon, one of my favorite area restaurants. If anyone makes it out to DC, I would strongly recommend a visit here, and get the "drunken noodle" dish. It's amazing. And the iced tea was delicious.

Of course the weather was pretty hot today, and of course I walked about 6 blocks in the wrong direction heading to lunch. But I needed the exercise, because I found a Krispy Kreme with the hot light on. I ordered 3 glazed. Unfortunately, they didn't have any hot ones ready, but I was told if I wanted to wait a minute or two, there would be some right up. Since I was in no hurry and had just purchased a new book (Why We are Hungry by Dave Eggers), I told the lady I could wait for some warm deliciousness. After waiting for about 8-10 minutes, I decided to see what the hold up was. Apparently I was forgotten about, and the machine was turned back off. The lady at the counter felt bad and wanted to know if I wanted her to fire it up again to get some hot donuts since the others had cooled, but I didn't really want her to go through the trouble, I just took what they had. And she gave me 6 donuts! O glorious day! I headed home on the Metro with donuts and book in tow, feeling great.

Now I'm all packed up and ready to head back home, even though there are so many more things I want to do while out here. 4+ days is not enough time anywhere, let alone a place with as much going on as DC. This is my 3rd trip out here, and I feel like I've just scratched the surface.

Anyways, the next post will be from Iowa, and the very special post that I promised last week will be here soon. . . What could it be. . . ?