i love long weekends

with the day off on monday, we figured we'd really take advantage of the extra weekend time. we sure did pack it all in.

after the uva game (nice win hoos!) we watched half nelson. ryan gosling (aka young hercules) was amazing. so was the girl (sister/daughter of omar epps??). movie was kind of all over the place, but good overall.

after about five plan changes we ended up at posh on saturday night. it's a fun new "lounge and supper club" right at metro center. on our "tour" of the place upon arrival the guy told us that they had nelly perform a few weeks ago (sad i missed that one, if it's actually true) and apparently dominique dawes had her thirtieth birthday party there.

we were escorted upstairs to the vip room (thanks to our elevator man "collassel") to meet the rest of the party. and don't worry i was quick to go check out the bathrooms. pretty nice, but there was an annoying bathroom attendant that just sat there. i don't tip bathroom attendants anywhere, but if you're just going to sit there and chat then i am most definitely not going to leave you any money.

the dj was spinning some fun old school jams. we clearly requested whitney, to which he responded "of course i had whitney." we danced up in the vip room, and we even made it down to the dance floor for a bit. but, when we went to check on the status of whitney he told us "oh sorry, i don't have any." thanks for getting our hopes up.

all and all a really cool place. i want to go back and try it out again soon. and i want to try their food. it looked pretty delicious (especially the fondue fountain at one couple's table). i've heard the veal chops are yummy (and reasonably priced).

NOTE: if you have to go to the bathroom at metro center and the metro person tells you "sure, it's right inside the hotel." don't believe him/her. susie and i found ourselves in this situation saturday night. we noticed we have six minutes until the next train home so we decided to go inside the hotel lobby and try to find the bathroom. we made it all the way to the front of the hotel, couldn't find a bathroom anywhere and made an executive decision to sprint back to the metro station in order to make the train. let me tell you, running in heels when having to use the bathroom is quite possibly the worst combination ever. also - who knew there was a giant pool in the lobby of the hyatt downtown??

luckily we made it on the first car on the train home so we avoided the big crowd of people. or so we thought. two guys got on at foggy bottom. suddenly we noticed a burning smell. now on the metro that isn't too unusual, but as it persisted someone said "wow, i wonder if the track's on fire." to which the guy behind us responded, "no, don't worry my friend is just lighting matches." what?!?! lucky for those guys they got off the train (later babes...) and didn't start any fires.

sunday we decided to go exploring in dc. we headed up to u st. for some brunch and shopping. we finally made our way to busboys and poets and after an hour wait in the bookstore we finally got a table. the food was delicious and definitely worth the wait. it's a very cool atmosphere in there - lots of cool art all around.

we meandered around u st. and stopped in a bunch of fun boutique/vintage shops. on our trek down u st. we passed cake love and decided to stop in on the way back for a few cupcakes. for a while now i've been on a search for the area's best cupcake. i work across the street from baked a wired so i might be a little biased, but i was very disappointed in cakelove's cupcakes. first of all they keep them in the refrigerator. and the icing was entirely too sweet. the cake was ok, and probably would have been even better if we had let it warm up a bit. but clearly we had to inhale them immediately.

next stop was hawk and dove. somehow we made our way down to SE and even found a parking spot right near the bar. we went into say hi to the birthday girl and caught up for a while. we'll definitely be heading back up to the cap hill/barracks row area again soon - there are lots of fun places up there to explore.

saw breach yesterday afternoon. great movie. kind of freaky that hanssen lived ten minutes away and sold secrets to the russians for twenty two years. also weird that there was a question about him on my espionage final exam fourth year. chris cooper was great. so was ryan phillipe. apparently he only likes playing "sidekick/good guys" in movies (crash, training day, breach, etc.)

tragically susie had to go into work today, so nari and i clearly offered to come meet her downtown for lunch. we went ot matchbox over in chinatown. very cool place. it's narrow but tall - we sat all the way up on the third floor. unfortunately our food took forever to come out, but the pizza was delicious. i want to go back late night to try their infused alcohols - i've heard they're good.

i still had to make up for the disappoinment in the cakelove cupcakes, so i got some cupcakes from buzz over in alexandria. way better. the icing is fluffier (a little too sweet for me, but most icing is too sweet for me). the cake is really moist and buttery.

and as if we didn't have enough cupcakes i decided to make red velvet cupcakes from scratch. i was a little freaked out when i saw the recipe called for two ounces of red food coloring, but they turned out well! and i even made a homemade cream cheese icing. i really should just start a baking company out of our kitchen (what with the scones, cookies, cupcakes).

can't wait for the short week. and it's supposed to be almost sixty degrees on thursday!!