East Coast Recap

Today is the first Sunday in a while where I've had nothing to do, no where to go, and some time on my own. It's nice. The new (to me) laptop that I got last weekend allows me to write this post from bed, which makes it doubly nice.

Yes, I got a new, three-year-old laptop from my stepdad, because it sometimes likes to shut down on its own, probably due to overheating. It doesn't really do it that often even, I think it's happened maybe 3 times since I've brought it here. So that's pretty sweet.

The past few weeks have been busy ones, with a trip out east (that rocked in every way), a trip to Iowa for the first Hawkeye home game (also a high level of rockage), a few Royals games (of course), a performance by my "band," five fantasy football drafts, all mixed in with some occasional laziness. It happens.

My east coast trip went down almost exactly as I had outlined it in my last post, only I didn't get to see my friend in Baltimore because she was in the midst of moving to New Jersey. It was a packed weekend, with a lot of driving, but definitely worth it. The Phillies game was fun, even if we showed up 4 innings late. We still got to see Greg Maddux pitch (and get rocked), and Chase Utley hit a home run (Ryan Howard had homered earlier, but we missed it). We didn't spend a lot of time in Philadelphia, but it seemed like a pretty cool city.

Vermont was beautiful. I really really loved it there, the air was so fresh, the rolling hills provided some nice scenery, and the wedding and reception were a blast. It's an area where I wouldn't mind living, if only there were an easy way to get there. There's not. But I did pick up some amazing maple syrup!

The wedding and reception were both held at the same place, at the home of a member of the bride's family. It was outdoors, in perfect weather, with some really great people, and good food (amazing corn bread, and some homemade chocolate truffles were my favorites). I even danced! That very very rarely happens.

On Sunday, we used the North Jersey Shore as a resting point in the long drive, spending a couple hours sitting by the ocean. Such a good choice. We relaxed, soaked in the sun and sounds, and played in the ocean. Not too far in, since the waves were getting pretty huge, but enough to enjoy it.

We made it back to DC in time to watch some of the Olympics' Closing Ceremonies, then hit the hay. The next morning I caught the train back to Baltimore, making it with a whole 2 minutes to spare (I made the train to DC by 4 minutes, so the timing on this whole trip was almost spot-on), and flew back to the Midwest. I didn't want to come back, but I guess that's the norm on vacations.

East Coast Swing

Well, I've got about 10 hours to catch my flight to DC. Barring any alarm malfunction (set for 6:30 am, just checked), I think I'll make it.

Here's a quick rundown of what I'll be doing out east:

Thursday

• Get into Baltimore tomorrow around 4:30. (Hopefully) catch the 5:08 MARC train to DC.
• Meet up with Marin, eat, hang around, go see Vicky Cristina Barcelona sometime in the evening. (I haven't been this excited about seeing a movie in like a month!)

Friday

• Get up, go to delicious bagel place down the street
• Take a tour of the XMU studio
• Head to Philadelphia
• Eat cheesesteak
  
• Go to Phillies/Dodgers game

Saturday

• Get up, go to Vermont
• Go to wedding
• Go to reception, hope for open bar
• ...
• Profit
  

Sunday

• Get up, start heading south
• Maybe stop at a beach
• Maybe meet up with a friend in Balitmore
• Arrive in DC

Monday

• Wake up really early
• Catch MARC to BWI, again really early
  
• Fly back to KC
• Go to happy hour for a girl leaving company
• sleep

Tuesday

• Back to normal life

See you all in a few days!

pictures from the east!

Things are going a bit better today. It's snowing, which always improves my mood. At least it was snowing, but now it appears to have stopped. Oh well, it already helped. I'm all showered up, with some clean clothes on, something that also usually is an immediate upgrade. Now if I could just get some good sleep, I may be in business!

Anyways, I thought I'd share a few photos from my recent trip. These are just some taken with my camera, Marin has some more, so when she uploads them, I'll pass them along.

Me and Marin in Times Square

A couple of cool airplanes in the Air and Space Museum

The Capitol Building

The National American Indian Museum (I was feeling artistic here, obviously it worked)

Another shot of the NAIM, this time from entrance, looking up

And, for your viewing pleasure, a mini-themed meal I had when I got back to Iowa

Mini tacos and mini cream puffs, both from Schwann's. The cream puffs are amazing, you don't do any cooking, just let them come to room temperature. mmm mmm

And of course, the perfect thing to top off my mini meal

Have a good weekend everyone!

My birthday trip out east, part 2 (DC and food)

I've decided to combine these two, to keep myself from writing about every little thing I did, no matter how insignificant, and to talk about the food, which was amazing.

When we got back to DC on Saturday night, we just took it easy. We found out that the Hawkeyes beat #6 Michigan State, played some Mastermind (a birthday present for Marin), made Scotcheroos, and just sort of hung out. It was a good night.

The next morning I met up with one of my friends from Muscatine and her boyfriend, and the 4 of us went out to for a delicious brunch (more below), and a little catching up. I had just seen her around Christmastime, but a lot, as you know, has happened since then. It was nice to see friends, though.


More friends came by later that evening, for my (soon to be) World Famous Pizza. I make a mean pizza, my friends. We played some Settlers of Catan (awesome game, for anyone who likes fun and has a few friends that like fun, and have like an hour, get this game and play it!!). Good times!



The next day was a Chris day, since Marin was at work. I went to a few museums, including the postal museum (more interesting than you'd think!), the Air and Space Museum (always fun for me, I like planes), the National American Indian Museum (my favorite, the architecture is beautiful, I have a little Cherokee blood so I've always loved learning about them, and the cafeteria is amazing. Seriously, if you're in DC, on the Mall and looking for food, go there), and the Holocaust Museum (very good, but sobering). I felt good about how I spent my day.

Later, Marin and I had reservations at Ceiba, as part of DC's restaurant week. Two weeks a year, a bunch of nice restaurants offer a smaller menu for a little cheaper price, $20 for lunch, and $30 for dinner, including an appetizer, a main dish, and a dessert. And it usually happens that it occurs during my twice a year visits. It's like I planned it or something. Again, this will be covered in the food section.

I left on Tuesday, and spent A LOT of time in airports. I took the MARC back up to BWI, and got there a few hours early. No problem, I started reading Love is a Mixtape (excellent!) and napped a little bit. The flight was on time, and trouble-free. Then I arrived in Detroit. For 3 hours. I ate a chili dog (and accidentally forgot to leave a tip. I felt pretty bad about that), finished Love is a Mixtape, and read a few short stories from books I had. And still had some time. My flight was delayed about 45 minutes for whatever reason. Tends to happen to me. Oh well!


Now, onto the food.


First night (Thursday), we went to some place that had Burrito in the name. I don't remember. Anyways, I got some Mexican dish. It was alright, but as you can tell, it didn't make a big impression on me. Especially compared to the meal that we had Friday night.

John's Pizzeria was amazing. It could have been because we hadn't eaten since the expensive Burger King, but it was seriously some of the best pizza I've ever had. It was a simple sausage and mushroom pizza, but everything tasted so fresh and delicious. Plus, while we were waiting for a table, we sat at the bar and I got the most delicious gin and tonic I've ever had. I don't know what they did, but it was amazing. Marin even thought so, and she doesn't like that drink normally. Same thing with her and sausage. She normally doesn't go out of her way to eat it, but she enjoyed the pizza. The building is an old cathedral, so they have a pretty awesome stained-glass ceiling. Check out some photos on their website. The prices were pretty good, too!


Breakfast the next morning was provided by the hotel, and like I mentioned in the last post, it was good. I'm a sucker for waffles, so that may have put it up a couple of notches in my book. We had a snack in Little Italy at a coffee shop, that was probably about the Starbucks equivalent of coffee shops in Little Italy, but it was still good. I had an espresso, Marin had a hazelnut coffee (that didn't really taste that hazelnutty), and we split an eclair. It was sweet and good. Our lunch on Saturday was the prosciutto and fresh mozzerella sandwich, assembled in meat shop in Little Italy, and eaten at Central Park. One of my favorite meals, it was so simple and so delicious, and in a wonderful setting. Dinner was back in DC, and was leftovers. A couple slices of pizza from Friday, and some tacos that Marin had made a few days earlier. Yum!

Brunch at the Banana Cafe was good, very tasty, and came with unlimited mimosas for just $4 more. What a deal! They had the usual eggs and potatoes and some great pound cake, as well as some rice and chicken, and beef. I liked it all a lot. Maybe the mimosas had something to do with it. That night we made my pizza, with Canadian bacon, mushrooms, and onions. I was very proud of how it turned out!

Monday I had some leftover pizza, and a Mexican hot chocolate at the American Indian museum. DE-licious! Dinner at Ceiba was good, but for me it peaked with my appetizer - a Cuban black bean soup. It had some ham and manchego cheese, mmm mmm. The main dish was pretty good, grilled shrimp, but there's not a whole lot that can be done with it. And I was jealous of Marin's dish, pork shank with black beans. For dessert I got flan, which was good, but not overly impressive. I would still recommend the restaurant. They had an amazing sangria, and the food was very, very good!

So that's my trip! It was a great time, I'm glad I was able to do it, and very glad I have such great friends! I really like having friends to visit in different places. I'll visit anyone that wants me!

the politics of lonely will return to its regular posting soon. Oh, and pictures will be shown when they arrive.

My birthday trip out east, part 1

My trip to DC started pleasantly, with a trip to the coffee shop on the way to the airport, courtesy of my step-mom. I got there in plenty of time, sat and did some crossword puzzles, and just relaxed. Both of my flights were on time, no problems, no rushing through airports to get to the right gate or anything. It was nice. I had made a (slight) mistake when purchasing tickets, I had been slightly tipsy and bought tickets into Baltimore instead of DC. I seem to remember there being a large difference in price, though, so of course I went with the cheaper option. Plus, there's a train that goes from BWI to Union Station, which is about 5 blocks from where Marin lives. And at $6, it was a bargain!

I made it into DC with some time to kill before Marin got off of work, so I just sat around and finished up What is the What by Dave Eggers (very excellent book, I'll get around to talking about it sometime in the future). Marin got off work, we met up, went for some dinner, then hung out the rest of the night.

The next day we left for New York. Of course it rained on us most of the way, and there were a few navigational errors, but we made it in pretty good time, even with stopping for the most expensive "cheap" burger I've ever eaten (here's a tip: if you're ever driving on the New Jersey Turnpike, don't stop for food whlie still on the turnpike. It's like airport prices. I think it was $7 for 2 cheeseburgers, a small fry, and a small drink between the two of us at a Burger King.) Our hotel was in Jersey, an excellent find by Marin. I highly recommend the Comfort Suites in North Bergen, New Jersey. Our room had a bedroom area with a large bed and tv, then a sitting area with a pull-out sofa, and a lot of extra space. And the breakfast was pretty good - eggs, ham, and a waffle iron to make your own waffles, in addition to the normal continental breakfast fare.

By the time we got unloaded and headed to the park-and-ride for the bus, I was getting stressed that we wouldn't make it in time to see the screening of Conan. I had pictured our bus ride to Manhattan taking much longer, like maybe an hour or more, but it ended up being around 10 minutes. Amazing! Of course, I had forgotten to look up directions from Port Authority to the NBC Studios, but a police officer pointed us in (basically) the right direction. He was off by a couple blocks, but once I knew where we were, I figured it out.

We made it with plenty of time, and then began the process of getting into the studio for the taping. It was a long process. And a hot process. First, we got a wristband and a ticket, both of which had to be displayed for most of the time. Then we were told to meet at a certain place at exactly 4:15, no earlier, no later. After we all gathered at the precise time and place, were taken through a metal detector, then to a hallway, then sorted out by numbers and letters that they had given us, and then counted, and recounted, and recounted again. Then we stood there for about half an hour. That was a fun time, especially listening to the douches in the line near us. We finally were taken into the studio after that, and seated by some dudes.

The studio was nice. Smaller than it appears on TV, but pretty cozy, with some nice HD TVs spread throughout, which were playing old clips from the show, and were also used during the taping to show any of the clips that they cut to during the show. A warm-up comedian came on for a few minutes, then the man himself, Conan O'Brien came out and talked a little bit (maybe a couple minutes), then went right into the taping. The guests for the show were Brian Williams from NBC Nightly News, a dude who wrote books on and studied cocktails, and Doyle and Debbie, a country-parody duo. (If you missed the show, you can watch it here (ok, if that doesn't take you there, the address is http://www.nbc.com/Late_Night_with_Conan_O'Brien/video/episodes.shtml, just copy and paste the whole thing. I don't know why that's not working. Oh well)! Just select the January 11th episode.) It was pretty fun to see how everything is done, and see how things are run during the commercials and whatnot. My favorite parts, actually, were during the commercials. The band plays the whole time, and Conan sits at the desk. You know how the host is always talking with the guest when they go to commerical? Well, that lasts about 3 seconds after the camera goes off, then they sit there awkwardly for the next 2 minutes. I thought it was hilarious. All-in-all, though, it was an awesome experience.

After the show, we wandered around a little while, and found a pizza place that I had seen featured on a Travel Channel show just a few days earlier. It was amazing. But again, that's for another post, when I tackle the foods of the trip.

That was it for night one in NYC. We headed back to our room, and fell asleep watching TV, until Conan came on that night, and of course, we had to watch. It was kind of a strange feeling, watching an episode that I where I was in attendance.

Day 2 in New York was spent just checking things out. We went to Chinatown and Little Italy, got a prosciutto and fresh mozzarella sandwich made at a shop in Little Italy, then went to Central Park and ate. An awesome day. We left for DC later in the afternoon, but still had a wonderful, albeit short time in Manhattan. And once I get the pictures from Marin, I'll put them up here!

Come back soon, when I'll go into the DC part of my trip. I promise it'll be informative, if not entertaining. I'll work on that a little bit too.