Ithaca is far

I rented a car and went to Ithaca over Labor Day weekend. I hadn't been since January, and decided I'd better make it up for the last weekend of summer. I saw NCSV and Deano and Nell and Jepetto, who'd just gotten his Ph.D. that week. Also some people who don't have names on my blog (yet). And I visited some of the places I've missed, like the Chapter House and the Carriage House and the Commons and (to be a stereotypical girl for a second) the shoe section at Bon-Ton.

Interestingly, almost as soon as I reached the Ithaca city limits I noticed I'd grown bossier. I don't think I'm very bossy in DC, but I'm rarely shy about telling my Ithaca friends what to do. Maybe the move has been good for me...

Tourists

One nice thing about living in DC is that it's easy to impress out-of-town visitors.

A few weekends ago NSCV came down for a festival involving Flogging Molly, a pseudo-Irish band we both like. M.M. came out with us, and I introduced them both to Turkish food one night and Ethiopian the next, both at restaurants within walking distance of my place.

This past weekend G.R. made his first trip to our nation's capital from his new home base in Delaware. G.R. is naturally enthusiastic, and actually pays attention to things like the Supreme Court, so he was like a kid on a sugar high. If kids on sugar highs kept dropping the F-bomb and talking about evolution.

So what could have been a somewhat brutal post-St.-Patrick's-Day slog around the mall actually turned out to be quite fun, with stops at the Botanic Gardens, the Canadian embassy, and the Museum of Natural History. I may have even learned some things about evolution.

California girl

Just got back from a week in San Francisco: part work, part play. I hadn't been to the West Coast at all in two and a half years (except for Peru), so it was very exciting. There are myriad things I could blog about from the trip, and maybe I will if I'm feeling ambitious lately, but I think for now I'll just say that it was a fantastic trip, and that I got to catch up with friends from college, friends from grad school, friends I met in Ithaca, and people I've met at various meetings, so it was action-packed.

NSCV was there, and got me a new tacky souvenir pig. It's official: I am the pig lady. But please do not send me any ugly pigs. It's only cute if NSCV does it.

Rock & roll sleepover

This weekend three of my friends from Ithaca came down to visit, and we all went to the Virgin Music Festival in Baltimore. Since these friends know way more about music than me we didn't just roll in in mid-afternoon--no, we were there at 10:30 to make sure we didn't miss the first band. Fortunately, they were worth it: Kasabian (no, I'd never heard of them either). NSCV didn't pace herself at all. She was the only one in the crowd dancing during Kasabian, and boy did she put us to shame.

Other acts I saw (in chronological order):
Wolfmother
The Raconteurs
Gnarls Barkley
The Killers
Thievery Corporation
The Who
Red Hot Chili Peppers
The Flaming Lips

It was a lot of fun, if exhausting. I'll leave the reviews to the real critics (it's almost my bedtime) and share the language-geek anecdote behind this picture. I saw the sign hanging up at a booth selling some sort of roasted nuts (which didn't smell at all, by the way), and had to memorialize it. When I walked over to take the picture, I had to wait for a guy to take his own photo with his cell phone. As he started to walk away I said, "I guess we both had the same thought. It's just so bad."

Cellphone cam guy: "Yeah, me and my friends have this thing about Baltimore and its inappropriate use of quotation marks."

Me: "I thought it was everywhere, but this is particularly egregious."

Cellphone cam guy: "You're very cool."

Me: "You, too."

And then we went our separate ways.