these are the things that make the world go round

when meghan and i were talking about toys we wanted and never had as little kids, the grape escape came immediately to mind. remember that game? you create little playdoh grapes and move them through the “jam factory” where they have to avoid getting smashed or dashed or anything like that. i think it was on the market for about 2 months before someone realized that this game might encourage kids to try chopping each other in half or using oversized rolling pins (aka bulldozers) to squish their friends.

anyway, thank my lucky stars for ebay, i found it! it came all nice and ready-for-violence yesterday. it’s the best game i’ve ever owned. well maybe it’s a tossup - mall madness is a close second (technically that wasn’t my game though.) in other board game news, we decided the other day that if meghan shaved her head and grew a beard, she’d look like richard on guess who! i just now got to thinking – how fun would it be to set up a game of guess who with real people? like a family reunion or company guess who or something…

(p.s. look how sad all the emo kids look in the background of this picture)

we went to the death cab for cutie concert at red rocks where we decided that we’re getting too old for such shenanigans. next time we’re taking “butt donuts” (as meghan called them) to sit on. concert was awesome, people watching was even better. i’m not that far removed from high school, but i feel so out of it on the styles and the groups. like, for example, could somebody please explain to me the definition of emo?? and how is it different than punk or goth or indie?? all i know is i think that jojo on horton hears a who (fabulous movie) is emo. meghan just bought a sweatshirt that reminds me of jojo every time she wears it. and i tell her everytime she wears it even though she's never seen the movie. maybe i have a crush on jojo. don't judge me

the boy saw this van today. i’m so jealous i wasn’t there.

taking the boy to the ol’ stomping grounds

highlights of our dc trip

i knew it was going to be a good trip right at the beginning when the boy pulled out and wore a foam pirate hat through the entire airport – from security to sitting on the plane. still not entirely sure why.

we went to the smithsonians because the boy hadn’t been since he was a kid. i discreetly hid the foam pirate hat where he would forget about it for the rest of the trip.

air and space museum. we went into the planetarium and watched a show on how all of the constellations are colliding and we’re all going to die. it wasn't quite that dramatic but it may as well have been. robert redford was our tour guide – telling us all about how it only took the moon one week to form (how does he even know that??) and that we can avoid going extinct like the dinosaurs because we have what looked like computer-generated crayons floating around in space to pull the meteors away from earth. as much as i love crayons, that’s not that comforting. and no offense robert, but i’m not taking you that seriously. you make a good sundance kid… maybe not so credible as a scientist though.

contemporary museum. we spent a good 15 minutes watching this piece of art (this is what i love about contemporary museums. you can actually watch art. i bet a good idea for a piece of contemporary art would be a foot of grass sod. you can encourage people to just sit back and watch it grow. it’d be an international hit). the video was a very cool display of the process of things and there was a lot of fire involved, but after 15 minutes, we realized it wasn’t ending anytime soon. so, i’d suggest watching this video some night when you have insomnia and therefore all the time in the world to sit and watch fire push over tires and stuff.

i told the boy to bring a surprise (one of his surprises was the pirate hat). a second surprise he brought was a barbie puzzle. i love this boy. we put it together at around 1:00am on the bed while eating room service. he bet me i couldn’t sleep the entire night without disturbing the puzzle. piece of cake, i told him. and it was, until 5am when i woke up with stingy eyes and realized i probably hadn’t really been sleeping because i was so concentrated on not rolling onto my puzzle. so then i ripped it up before we could even take an after picture. you do crazy things when you’re half asleep. to my credit, it was still almost entirely intact before i ripped it up. go me.

international spy museum. they had a special exhibit going on called operation spy where you get to act like a spy and go through this whole rigamaroo to figure out who stole what – it included bugging and deciphering telephone calls, breaking and entering, getaway cars… you know, wholesome stuff like that. it was a blast!

random invite-only costume party at local coffee shop. invite-only doesn’t apply to us. we make ourselves welcome anywhere. i guess i could have let the boy wear his hat for this one… p.s. isn’t that a great picture? it looks like superman is flying towards my camera. cool.

wedding was great (and the real reason we went out there…) congrats peggy!!

then we went to mount vernon to see the digs of our first prez. am i the only person who didn’t know he died of a throat infection? how embarrasing. and i've even been to mount vernon before! i guess i wasn't listening the first time.

then we rushed back to the airport where it somehow worked out that i was able to check in but the boy wasn’t because by the time he got up to check in, it was 44 (literally) minutes before the flight took off and they close check in at 45 minutes. dumb airports. so we said a very aggravated goodbye and i boarded the plane leaving him in dc. i guess i should have left him with his hat so he could have entertained himself. is it funny that i didn’t even talk to the guy sitting next to me but i hated him anyway because he stole my boyfriend’s seat?

so now we feel a little bit better skilled at puzzles, could become spies and know that george washington died of a throat infection. oh yeah, and be sure to print your boarding pass out before you go to the airport. thanks dc for all the valuable lessons.

doing things we've never done

in the spirit of doing something every day that i’ve never done, we’ve created a couple of opportunities to… well, do things we’ve never done. we started by buying some dairy-free chocolate chip cookie dough to make cookies. we’ve tried baking our own dairy free choco chip from scratch before and the choco chips (we’ve tried all different vegan varieties) always end up burning or becoming radioactive or something. so this was a good idea. then we remembered it was made in canada (that really has nothing to do with anything, but it's still true) and we were reading directions like this:

i also think it was bad marketing to “enlarge to show texture” because that’s not at all what our cookies looked like. if i was to market these cookies, i’d say they were “soft to the touch.” in other words, they fell apart right when you touched them.

i asked meghan what she’s always wanted to do but has never done and she said – “i always wanted gak. mom never let me have it.” (which was smart on my mom’s part) “and then… they came out with FLOAM!” i’ve never seen such a dreamy look in her eyes. so we went and found her some floam. it’s supposed to look like this:

hers looked like this:

so we’re kinda 0 for 0 in the trying new things department, but that won’t deter us.

in other news, i always wondered why the doggie poop bags in my apt complex had a picture of a dog wearing a crown on them. meghan informed me matter-of-factly yesterday that it’s because that dog is the king of poop. thanks meghan.

i bet audrey had never played with a mule before

the boy and i watched breakfast at tiffany’s this weekend. i’d never seen it before. not only had i never seen it before, but i’ve fallen into the owning-something-with-a-picture-of-audrey-hepburn-on-it-is-cool trend and even have a shirt with a silhouette of her with her tiffany’s garb on. how embarrassing. but now i can wear that shirt with pride. only i think it shrunk in the wash.

the movie was good - my favorite part was when they decided to spend an entire day doing things they’d never done before. like buying stuff at tiffanys (for $10) and stealing masks from the convenience store. it was inspirational. so inspirational that i think i’m going to start consciously doing something every day that i’ve never done before. i’m already ahead of the game because on friday (and saturday…i fell asleep halfway though on friday), i watched breakfast at tiffany’s, which i had never done before.

and yesterday, i bought some dolmas which i threw away right when i bit into them because they were disgusting. i’ve never thrown away a dolma before. they are my favorite (unless they’re disgusting ones)

i was thinking maybe today i’d go skydiving, but then i remembered that i had to work instead, which is too bad because i have worked before. geez – everything’s getting in my way of my new goal