Abbie's Real Life Blog

I didn’t actually miss any work for the weekend trip, but there’s something about being away all weekend that really makes you feel like you have to play catch-up when you return.  So I’m playing catch-up but I’m mostly caught up… here.  Not at home, though.  I’m still behind at home.

We had a really pleasant trip to DC, all told.  The weather for the outdoor wedding did not work out on Saturday, but it was held at a fairly enormous house in suburban Northern Virginia, just outside DC, and there was plenty of room for the guests to party down in whatever fashion fit their bill: sitting & chatting, standing & eating, dancing wildly with several children clad in tulle, dancing discreetly in the corner with a cupcake, or hiding in an unfinished basement room with several grey tabby cats.  Guess which one of these described Tracy!  Yes, of course, it was the last.

To review: Tracy & I went to St. Louis on Friday night and checked into an airport Holiday Inn.  We ate at House of India (at Delmar & I-170) and then went into the city city to the City Museum, which is super super super cool.  Especially if you’re between the ages of about 8 and maybe 22 or 23.  It’s open late on weekend nights (until 1am or so) and sometimes on Fridays they turn out all the lights and you can explore with a flashlight.  Explore is really the right word, because the museum is a completely tactile, hands-on, avant-garde place, full of connected rooms on multiple levels in an old warehouse.  The second floor has been completely covered in concrete, paved into a series of caves with winding paths that twist away into darkness.  Follow one, and it starts to narrow until you have to nearly crawl or turn sideways, and then all of a sudden there’s a little porthole into another part of the place, and even though the place is packed you are pretty much alone, until you find yourself out on another part of the cave system.  Another path might end in a tiny staircase that ends on a different level.  The third floor is home to an aquarium.  On the fourth floor is a skate park, another room where circus acrobats perform high above the floor, another room where you can make art projects, and more.  We didn’t see it all.  From the fourth floor to the first floor, you can take the stairs, or the multi-story slide, or you could climb through one of many spiraling circular metal tubes suspended between any particular level, through which you are encouraged to squeeze.  Rarely do you see any actual museum employees supervising the madness, even on the outside structures that obscure the entire front of the four-story building.  On Friday night, there were packs of teenagers everywhere, mixed with some families.  Small children would get trampled, and if you’re an Old like me, you probably won’t be as interested in climbing all over the place as you might have done when you were a kid.  But the people-watching is pretty great.  I would pay the fairly steep entrance fees ($10 after 5pm, $12 normally, and that’s for all ages) to see it again sometime.

We were out pretty late at the museum on Friday night, so up again at 4:30am to catch the flight to DC was painful.  The flight was pretty much empty, which was nice.  We got into DC and rented a car, so we were able to go down to our old area in Greenbelt, Maryland, to drive through the town, see our old house, and stop at the Greenbelt Co-op grocery before we went to Berwyn Cafe near College Park for lunch.  Then we headed towards Rockville to wait for family and get ready for the wedding.

I did end up bringing a backup outfit beyond my new dress, and because it was a rainy and chilly day, I opted to wear the backup instead.  I was ultimately happy with this choice.  I think I would have been freezing in the dress.  But I can wear the dress to Tracy’s graduation in June, for one, so I don’t think it was a waste.

The wedding went very nicely, with lots of great vegan food.  We saw people from back-in-the-day and met lots of Tracy’s sister’s new in-laws (and there are bunches of them).  It was fun.  Tracy’s sister is now married and on her way to a honeymoon in the American Southwest with her new wife.  It was a wonderful wedding… a nice little party… regardless of the weather.

On Sunday, we met up with some family for a Panera breakfast in Rockville before everyone had to head home again by car or plane.  Our flight was a little later than most, and we ended up driving down into northwest DC to the Politics & Prose bookstore, and then a winding trip towards the airport from there with a stop by a natural foods store in Columbia, Maryland, before we returned the rental car and headed to the airport for a very packed flight back to St. Louis.

All in all, it was a nice trip.  I wish we’d gotten there on Friday, but it worked out like it did.  Maybe another DC trip this summer would be nice, though we really are booked for a beach trip to Florida in June, so probably unlikely!

And now all the students are back in Columbia, Missouri, back at school after spring break.  Traffic is heavy again (though that is always a silly thing to say after one deals with DC traffic… where, even on a Saturday afternoon, I-66 in Virginia is at a virtual standstill) and the parking garage at work is packed again.  But it’s just a few short weeks until they all go away for the summer.