Weekend Report: Springtime, Concert-time, Easter-time, Basketball-time!

Holy springtime guys! Saturday was beautiful!!!

I started off the weekend with two bands from Brooklyn – Swear and Shake, and Here We Go Magic. The venue was The Hamilton, a kind of odd used to be a bookstore basement, feels like a jazz bar, but I’ve actually mostly seen bluegrass shows there, sort of place.

The opener, Swear and Shake, was surprisingly good! They had banjo and harmonica (there will always be a special place in my heart for harmonica) and good singers. Though the opener was significantly better than expected, Here We Go Magic was a bit of a disappointment. They weren’t great live – they just didn’t seem to be having fun. Maybe it was a bad night or it was the venue and sparse crowd? Who knows.

On Saturday, in celebration of the first spring-feeling day of the year, I went on a ridiculously long bike ride. I met a friend in Dupont and we went through Georgetown and allll the way out MacArthur Blvd into Maryland. We looped around Falls Road Golf Course in Potomac, then came back along MacArthur, passing the Billy Goat trailhead along the way (oh hello every semi-outdoorsy person in DC on the first nice day!).

See it on MapMyRun.

To get home from Dupont, I biked down the Rock Creek Trail, along the Potomac River, and then around the Tidal Basin, where I was reminded that it’s Cherry Blossom Festival time! (You see, this fact was easy to forget, since we don’t actually have any cherry blossoms yet…)

After such a long bike ride I did the only logical thing: ate Girl Scout cookies while sitting in the sun on my stoop, and then went to yoga. And I'm still sore. Whhhhyyyyyy is down dog the HARDEST thing ever?

Sunday was Easter, so I did what I do every family-less Easter: brunch with friends! (Read the 2012, 2011, and 2010 editions.) It was gloomy and wet and not beautiful springtime-y at all, but we put on our sundresses like the champions we are (i.e. with tights underneath) and celebrated accordingly at The Tombs next to the Georgetown campus. Five words for you: homemade complimentary coffee crumb cake.

Then last night I did a completely un-Eastery but totally awesome thing! My friend The Marathoner (a fitting blog name, since he's done 100 of them) and I went to a Washington Wizards game and we had aaaaaamazing seats. For serious – I was dead center in the 200 section. AND they won!

The game started pretty early, so we went to dinner afterwards at Hill Country Bar-B-Que. The restaurant is weird, kind of like a cafeteria, but bar-b-que is delicious, I was hungry, and it was perfect! I recommend going on a Sunday night and getting the “Feed Your Family Combo.” It’s $20 for 1/4 lb lean brisket, one pork spare rib, one beef rib, quarter chicken, two sides (we got collard greens and bourbon sweet potatoes), and one dessert (pecan pie!).

The end. Hope you had a good holiday weekend too!