One of the best things about my office is how "green" it is. We recycle. We compost. The cafeteria doesn't sell plastic bottled water. All the straws and carry-out containers are made of paper rather than styrafoam. Reduce, reuse, recycle! (Sesame Street taught me well.)
All these measures are great, but by far the best thing we do is Green Fridays. What does that mean? Well, we save the environment by not going to work every other Friday in the summer (to, ahem, reduce on a/c and building operation related energy expension)! Genius. Pure genius.
So on Friday I arrived at work at 9 am...but I wasn't there to work! I met up with 4 members of my company's Outdoors Club to go hike Old Rag in Shenandoah (Almost heaven, West Virginia, Blue Ridge Mountains, Shenandoah River...anywho, you can listen to the whole song here). This was my second DC hiking experience.
We ate lunch on the peak (360* overlooking Shenandoah valley - it was beautiful), pb&j's all around...the ultimate hiking food! The 4.5 mile return-hike was a nice gradual downhill that eventually became a fire road. A lot of the hike reviews online warn about crowds, but since we were there on a weekday, it really wasn't that bad. For more Old Rag resources, go here.
We also had a few wildlife experiences: we saw the biggest spider I've ever seen outside the zoo (shudder shudder), and a few vultures, and wood-peckers, and a ton of colorful beetles, butterflies, and centipedes, and a big black snake!
On Saturday I went for a 50 minute run with my new roommates. You can't even begin to imagine how HAPPY I was to run that long! It was absolutely glorious, in an extremely hot and sweaty way. Mid-run we went up in the Post Office tower to see awesome views of DC. I can't believe I've never done that before! It's free, and so easy - you just walk in and go up the elevator.
Then LLC and I hit up the Phillips Collection (say hello to Luncheon of the Boating Party!), the Textile Museum, and the Woodrow Wilson House as a part of the free Dupont Kalorama Museum Contortion Walk Weekend. This is my third free Phillips Collection experience - I just love that museum!
Hope you had a good weekend too!