It's the milk chocolate...or is it?

The highlight of this past weekend was visiting Hershey Park with my boyfriend. We usually make a trip about once or twice a summer to a local amusement park. If you're not familiar with Hershey Park, it is 2-3 hours north of the DC area. They have a few wooden roller coasters, some modern "why am I getting on this"-scary coasters, and a water park. They also have Chocolate World, home of some unnervingly sassy animatronic cows.

Likes:
My favorite ride there is the Storm Runner. This roller coaster starts off with a burst of speed into a 90 degree drop instead of a painstaking climb. The effect is quite thrilling when it's dark and you can't see. It is so good it will make your head hurt afterwards.

Dislikes:
The water park is not worth going to. The storage lockers are an exorbitant $10, the rides are not that entertaining, and the lines are stab-me-in-the-eye-with-a-rusty-spoon long.  By the time we got on one ride, our teeth were chattering, and I was no longer amused.

La Fete de la Musique

This weekend, I went to La Fete de la Musique (The Festival of Music) that was hosted at the French Embassy in DC. The Embassy is an enormous concrete compound, taking up more space than I even thought there was in the whole District. Having come here once some years ago to pick up my student visa, I'd never have imagined that outside its staid, bureaucratic walls could be a carefree summer festival. So I was stunned, and I was happy. Bands were set up all around the hills, and as we walked by we heard a band playing world music, a DJ spinning funk, a cover band singing american songs in a french accent, and people singing along and dancing. Inside the embassy there was more music: an old-time jazz orchestra, people swing dancing, an a cappella singing group, and a jazz trio with bass, piano, and fiddle (my personal favorite of the evening). I was amazed by those guys. Aside from the jazz trio, the other best part of the evening were the flamethrowers. They fought with flaming swords. I was again, of course, blown away.

The DJ in the courtyard:

A video of the flaming sword fight:

From Fete de la Musique

Baltimore aquarium

Boyfriend and I went to Baltimore yesterday to see their amazing aquarium. I highly recommend it! There are jellyfish, dolphins, fish both local and tropical, turtles, sharks , rays, and even a rainforest. Here's some highlights...

just another weekend around DC

Since my boyfriend got an iPhone recently, we checked out the "urbanspoon" app to find a good place to eat on Friday. We locked in on a "$$" place in "Old Town Alexandria", and shook the phone. For those of you wondering, "$$" is supposed to be 10-15 per entree. Bam! Instant suggestion. It suggested that we go to "Landini Brothers", an Italian place. Well, the restaurant was great, very romantic and candlelit, but the "$$" was definitely very off-base. It was more like $16-25 per entree. There was a $780 bottle of wine on the menu! $780! It's a recession, folks! Maybe they mean that you only have $10-15 left in your wallet after you eat here. Anyway, it was a fun little outing, but I'm not sure if I will trust Urbanspoon if I'm feeling frugal in the future.

No success with finding a bike this weekend. More slippery folks on Craigslist. One guy wanted to drive here from the beach to sell bikes and was trying to get everyone together to look at bikes at the same time (I have a hard enough time getting people I actually KNOW together to do something, getting a bunch of strangers together to meet at a metro just sounds like a poorly planned idea). Another guy kept telling me to call him back to see if he had anything in his shop (I really love telling you the kind of bike I want each time I call you). And another set of folks were "in town for the weekend, but maybe we can meet you somewhere, we've heard DC is convenient to navigate". Translation: telling people where to meet you in an unfamiliar location almost always winds up with you sitting around for half an hour while they get lost. My other favorite: "It's a small bike...I'm 5'9". Oh yeah, and the chain is a little loose!"

Now I know how people on dating websites must feel.

Anyway.

I also did one of my favorite weekend night activities this weekend....Sunday Night bowling! I love going out on Sundays because, well, what else is there to do. There's a couple of places in the area that I like to go to, that have "trendy" bowling, meaning the kind where you DON'T show up with your own bowling gear, and those are Lucky Strike in DC, and 300 in Gaithersburg. 300 is very large, with lots of lanes and music videos playing. They also have a nice system for getting your balls and shoes - you pick the ball out at a counter along with the shoes - so you're not rooting through balls trying to find the right size. However, their menu is lame (they have "gourmet chips" on the menu). The music videos also distract me from beating my boyfriend in bowling, which I love to do. I start grooving to "Put a Ring on It", and the next thing you know, my ball is heading straight down the gutter.

We actually went to Lucky Strike this time instead. It's not really that crowded on Sunday evenings, which is awesome (try getting a lane on Saturdays...). I like the food there (as bowling alleys go). They also only show sports on the big screens, which has the distinct advantage of NOT distracting me. I am very excited because last night, I bowled over 100 in one of my games! I got 2 strikes (plus one 9) on the last turn! (Yep, I beat the pants off the bf on that game.)

How to Have Fun in Only 28 Minutes!

Duckpin bowling.

That's right, kids. It's what you get if you mated bowling and NES Duck Hunt. Little balls, little pins, no ducks. 

Duckpin bowling is a game popular in certain parts of the East Coast. Such as the DC suburbs of Maryland, current home of your faithful narrator as I quickly learned. How quickly? 28 minutes quickly. 

One evening a few weeks ago, I had a hankering to try out the local bowling alley, so boyfriend and I moseyed (as much as you can mosey in a Jeep Grand Cherokee) into town to play some good old ten-pin. Or so we thought. 

We enter the bowling alley at exactly 8:30 pm, ready to put on our shoes and pick out our balls. I began to notice something strange, though. All the balls were the same size and color, little brown midget balls, lined up in the alleys. And this was no Lucky Strike bowling alley, aglow with disco lights and fancy schmancy screens. No sirree. There were no tv screens, only defunct projector machines that gave me flashbacks to the dismal days of 7th grade science class presentations. 

We went up to the counter to purchase our game. An older woman greeted us with, "It's a slow night and if I don't get enough business, I'm going to close up soon." Give us a game anyway, we say. 

"I saw you looking at the alleys. This is duckpin bowling, not ten-pin bowling." Pause for effect. "It's either one or the other. They're not interchangeable." She must be the Women's Duckpin Champion of the East Coast or something because she continues on to tell us the history of Duckpin, the location of notable Duckpin alleys, and an explanation of how to score by hand on the tally sheet we've just been handed.  

So we played, and we scored (by hand, not by foot or anything). It's surprisingly difficult to knock down the pins with such a smaller and lighter wooden ball. I think they call it "the sport of a lifetime" because it takes you that long to knock down all the pins. I still have much to learn from the Women's National Duckpin League I suppose. I hope to sign up for lessons.

And then sure enough, the manager decided to close up early, shooing us through our last frame. We were the last ones there at 8:58 pm. No sooner had we discovered the existence of duckpin than we had finished our first game.

So next time you have 28 minutes to spare (or to strike), be sure to check it out. remember that it will take you at least twice as long to discuss and dissect the event afterwards so leave ample time for dinner at the local Applebee's (the only bar in town not frequently solely by underage college students).   

 

 

Colbert On The Fly

In a little museum in this nation's capital city, in a tiny, quaint place that some call the "National Portrait Gallery", there is a portrait more prominently positioned, more revered, and more photographed than the portraits of our nation's presidents. More guests ask how to find this portrait than any other in the collection. More visitors want to know the story, the origin, the myth behind this portrait. It is not of Washington, Lincoln, Kennedy, or Reagan. 

It is the Colbert.

 

Local legend has sprung up around the portrait of the pundit. When I arrived to behold the Colbert for myself, to ponder the significance of its position amidst the water fountain and the bathroom - all necessary amenities of life, mind you - I witnessed a myth come to life before my very eyes. There stood a frumpy middle-aged woman and her frumpier teenage daughter, holding posters praising Colbert and supporting his historic race to the Smithsonian.

"We heard that the show is going to come here to film people admiring the portrait, taking pictures of it. We got here when the museum opened, but apparently they're not coming until 1 or 2 so we'll have to cycle back around then.  We hope Steven Colbert comes. We're going to try to get him to speak my daughter's bat mitzvah."

Could I be witnessing national news in-the-making? I had to get down to the bottom of this, so I went to the docent's desk for answers. 

"Ah, ohh, hmm, no. I have not heard anything about this. They have not said anything about any camera crews coming today. They would have to have a permit for this."

Steven Colbert's camera crew is flouting the rules of our nation's finest museum in order to make history??!

BRILLIANT!

Also brilliant:

For your post-museum hunger, check out the eco-friendly On The Fly vendor at Gallery Place, which sells organic teas and healthy tacos and empanadas.

On the Fly

Ladies...

...Have you ever dated a llama, with baby mama drama? Well today, that llama is me!

If you want to see hilarious reality tv-slash-dating show, stop and take 30 minutes out of your busy book-reading, marathon-training, and concerto-practicing schedule to watch Hell Date. It will be the funniest 30 minutes of your day. It comes on BET practically every weekday, luckily for those who may be laughter deprived. Hell Date features a wannabe "dater", who's dressed to impress and ready to meet the love of their life, and a "hell dater" - read: master prankster who comes up with crazy antics to make sure that dater has the worst date of their lives. Take for example, the crazy cat lady, the chauvinist Nigerian, or my favorite, the llama with baby mama drama.

But let's not focus on unimportant details. The real deal here, folks, the factor making this show COMEDIC GOLD, is not the hell daters, or the innocent daters' reactions, but the devil that reveals the truth at the very end:


"YOU ON HELL DATE!!"