Monday, October 25, 2010

The Weekend Report: PACKED! Kayaking, Going Out, Ending Slavery, and the Environment!

This weekend was excessive, even for me! But the blog must be blogged, so I’ll try to keep it concise. Here we go...

Friday night I ventured all the way to Clarendon to meet up with my CAR teammates. I’ve never been out in Virginia, and Spider Kelly’s was packed! (I promise I’m not a District snob, I’m just lazy and highly value proximity to my bed.)

Saturday morning I got up bright and early to go to the Stop Modern Slavery Walk on the Mall. It was a gorgeous morning for a trail of red-shirted walkers to parade around the Tidal Basin raising awareness. Did you know that 27 million people are enslaved worldwide? (Go here to learn more about human trafficking.)

Saturday afternoon I had another Pocahontas experience on the Potomac River.  A four-mile run along the Canal Towpath brought us to Fletcher’s Boathouse where we life-jaketed up and climbed into kayaks. My arms were already sore due to a pumpkin-carrying experience on Friday (three professionally-dressed young women walking through downtown DC carrying ginormous pumpkins = priceless), so kayaking added an extra element to my upper-body workout. And when you’re four miles from home there’s only one way to get back – run. My hamstring held up shockingly well! (And a solid half-hour of foam-rolling when I got home didn’t hurt either.)

After such an epic day, I was hungry. So I was an easy sell when LOTR-Emily called to ask if I wanted to do Ethiopian for dinner. We attempted to go to Dukem, which is supposedly one of the best places in DC. But it was a 40-minute wait and LLC, 6x6 and I were getting hangry, so we walked about 20 feet down the sidewalk and tried out Madjet instead. It was soooo good! Some of the best Ethiopian I’ve ever had! The veggies were fresh and flavorful and the portions were huge – and best of all, there was no wait.

And then the night really began. I spent Thursday and Friday psyching myself up for Saturday night because I had extremely ambitious plans to attend two parties in two quadrants! Mollie? Leaving Northwest? Craziness.  But we did it. PhotoMan’s housewarming party in Colombia Heights was great – his new house is fantastic! And then 6x6 and I got on the metro and went all the way to Stadium-Armory to attend another friends’ pre-Halloween party.

A relaxing Sunday was not in the cards. LOTR-Emily got free tickets to the Green Festival at the Convention Center, so we put on our hippie-faces and spent a few hours sampling an interesting assortment of vegan/vegetarian/raw/organic products. It went a lot like this: hemp butter sample, GAH get that taste out of my mouth…organic chocolate sample, YUM…raw vegetable crackers, surprisingly good…tofurkey, again surprisingly good…vegan burger, GAH that’s bad! Etc. etc. etc. 

I probably ate 3 bars worth of Fair Trade Divine Chocolate samples. Yummmmmm! My work snack drawer is now well-stocked with sample-sized portions.

And then I had to get myself to Riverdale to see my refugees. I didn’t have a book in my purse at the Convention, so before hopping on the metro I hit up the library and checked out some Roald Dahl short stories to keep me entertained on my journey. 

By the time I finally got home it was late and I was tired. But you can’t say that I didn’t make the most of my weekend!