Failed Karaoke, Hillary Clinton and the NEWSeum

Friday

Well, the 20/20 viewing party on Friday night was a bit of a flop. It was really crowded and pretty boring, so Karin, Alyssa and I hightailed it out of there pretty quickly. We stayed for about 45 minutes, I think. We met some people from the Heritage Foundation, which was alright.

After we left, we figured we were in Dupont, so we might as well hang out for a little while. So we got ice cream at Larry's Homemade Ice Cream and Cupcake Shop and talked and had fun. Then we went over to Chad's house and watched a movie with him and some guys that live in his house.

Saturday

I slept until 1 p.m., woke up, realized my bread was moldy, my milk was sour and I had no fresh anything left. But I managed to find two pieces of bread that weren't moldy and make some toast. I also had cereal, but that was how I discovered the milk was sour. So, clearly I didn't finish it.

Took a shower and went to the American History Museum with Sarah and Christine from next door (both ASP). There were pretty much a million people there (spring break, jr. high trips, etc.), and we had to literally stand in lines to get into each exhibit we wanted to look at. But it was still fun. We got to see the ruby slippers, Kermit, Oscar the Grouch, the speed skates of Apollo Anton Ohno, the First Ladies' Exhibit, a bunch of old musical instruments, a bunch of Abraham Lincoln stuff, presidents' stuff, etc. It was fun.

We went back to the apartments and relaxed a bit. Then, we had girl's night.

A return trip to the now familar area of Alexandria and King Street was made, and we headed to the Rock It Grill for a night of karaoke...that didn't happen. Unfortunately, you have to be 21 to get into this karoake night, and at least half of our group of nine girls were not 21. So, the karaoke-ing didn't happen. But we ended up at a Tex-Mex place down the street that was really good. We demolished six baskets of chips with salsa. Then I ordered the Hangover Burger, which was a burger with chili, a fried egg, cheese, and bacon. It was pretty good. Better than Tommy's - sorry Dad!

Came back to the apartments only to find that John had purchased a life-size, cardboard Hillary Clinton. He had her propped up against the door to the lounge with her back to the entrance, so we thought she was a real person at first. When we got closer, she just genuinely scared the crap out of us.

Then Karin, Christine, Ryan and David and I watched "Extreme Days," that old Christian movie they made about eight years ago and released in theaters about the group of guys that take a roadtrip up the California coast. Totally cheesy and corny, but a fun throwback.

Sunday

Went to church at Capitol Hill Baptist. They're talking about Revelation right now, and this is most definitely expositional, straight from the Bible preaching. He taught for a solid hour on Revelation 1:9-20.

Free intern/college lunch afterward, where we had a pasta bake sort of thing wth rolls, salad, and peach cobbler. Yum.

Then it was time to go grocery shopping. It was just time. It was raining (it rained all weekend, pretty much), so Karin, Christine, and I took the bus down to Safeway. We got there, did our shopping as quickly as possible, and checked out, only to miss our bus just barely again. This time, though, it was due to the extremely slow woman at the register who was taking her sweet time talking to the bagger.

The next bus wasn't supposed to come for another 35 minutes, so we stood in debate of what to do. We couldn't walk back, because we had bought WAY too much food, and also, it was raining. We obviously couldn't take the bus at the moment, and we had no car. So, we decided to try and catch a cab, since it's only about a mile away.

We headed down to the street with our cart FULL of groceries, only to find out about halfway there that this Safeway has their carts on that automatic-lock thing when you go too far away. The cart wouldn't move. We thought, "Well, if we just get back into the good part, the lock will go away." WRONG. They do not unlock. So we were literally stuck in the middle of the Safeway parking lot in the rain with a shopping cart that won't move and no way to get home.

After a long time of unsuccessful pushing and pulling on the cart on our part, a nice man sitting in his truck outside of Safeway helped us carry it back to the curb, telling us we could just drive our car up to the curb. Too bad we didn't have a car.

So I was sent as the delegate to go catch a cab on the street. Unfortunately, there are not many cabs that go by this Safeway. I saw none. So I called a cab, only to find out it would be about a half hour before the cab got there - we could just wait for the bus at that rate. I headed back up to the Safeway overhang where Karin and Christine were waiting to tell them the bad news.

As we discussed what our next move would be, the man who had helped us carry the locked shopping cart came over to talk to us again. He was very nice, and explained that he wasn't a creeper, he wasn't trying to pick us up or anything, he just wanted to help. He told us that there are courtesy drivers for Safeway that have their own cars, but they are hired by Safeway and have ID and are totally legit, and they will drive you where you need to go for whatever amount of money you give them.

We had no other option at this point, and so we trusted him and took a van home with "Cowboy," whose real name was John something, and who had some sort of speaking impairment so he was extremely hard to understand. But that didn't stop him from talking.

He took us right home, we gave him some money and a big thank you and finally headed up the stairs with our many bags.

Then I talked to Juel for a while. And then Mandi's parents, who were here for the weekend, made us dinner - chicken parmigiana, spaghetti, salad, french bread, and Italian pastries for dessert. A real meal!!! Her parents are great and told us all kinds of stories about Mandi as a child, which was fantastic. We hung out for a while after dinner, just talking and enjoying being with good company.

We also got to watch a video of Andrea and John having a cheer-off. Andrea was a cheerleader, and John is the farthest thing from, but he's hilarious. It's pretty close to being the best video I've seen in a long time.

Then I cleaned the kitchen. It was my chore for the week, and let me tell you, the kitchen sure needed it. I spent a solid hour and a half cleaning, then Zack and I took a walk around the general area around the apartments, catching up since we haven't talked in a while.

Came back, mopped the floor in the kitchen, and then drank hot chocolate with my apartment-mates and we went crazy decorating our apartment (finally) with famous pieces of art defaced with pigs and pictures and name word things and all kinds of ridiculous junk. It's fantastic. Haha.

Monday (Today)

Newseum day! It was awesome. All of WJC went together to the Newseum instead of class, and spent the whole day looking around. The program paid for us to get in (and paid for lunch!) and let us be free in the building.

It was genuinely really cool. The place is six levels of pure journalism. There are exhibits on all kinds of stuff: The role that newspapers played in the assassination of Lincoln, a huge room containing tons of newspapers dating back to the 1500s that showed the progression of newspapers and simultaneously the way they portrayed the major historic events that have taken place, all the Pulitzer prize winning photos of the past 60 years, a whole thing on 9/11, lots of interactive exhibits, movies, just tons of journalism everything.

It was pretty fantastic.

Karin and I stayed until the museum closed with a couple other WJCers, and headed back to the apartments. Family dinner was tonight, and in honor of St. Patrick's Day, we had all green food. Chicken pesto pasta, salad, veggies, and mint chocolate chip ice cream for dessert. Delicious as usual.

We had our bi-weekly worship night, and then I've just been hanging out with my apartmentmates. It's been good. I'm reallllllllly tired and I really don't feel like going to work in the morning, so I think I'm going to head to bed early. Beautiful.