Kayaks

We're back from a hilarious visit to D.C. to visit Roger and Mary. It began Friday: we left work, Wojo, Craig and I, heading to Penn Station via the E train. There, we shuffled onto the New Jersey Transit train packed with commuters. We traveled to Princeton, Jersey where Karen picked us up and the four of us drove the 4 hours or so to Arlington, Virginia. Roger and Mary had drinks all ready (Mary, of course, was drinking juice and water only) and we hung around on their back deck for hours, tiki torches blazing. They're such great friends and hosts. Mary has some interesting compositionally unique still lifes arranged around the house. I threatened to steal the arrangement in the fireplace but relented to snapping pictures only. (By the way, posting pictures seems to be "broken" right now, so I will have to post my pictures later. Bummer. I managed to get one up only.) So Saturday morning we woke up relatively early, especially considering Rog and I talked until 5.30 a.m.! and Mary made us breakfast of scrambled eggs, blueberry pancakes, sausage links and fresh fruit. She served us coffee and let us spread her amazing raspberry homemade jam on our pancakes in lieu of syrup, if we wished (so good she even beat out my deceased Grandma's homemade raspberry jam from when I was young!) We ate outside on their nice deck furniture. Following breakfast, we all suited up to head to Georgetown. The sensation of memory is strange. As we drove across the Francis Scott Key Bridge, I could feel just as though following that same path in 1996 or 97 were just yesterday (I went there in college to visit friends for Spring Break.) Anyway, Roger and Mary own kayaks and they often kayak the Potomac River. Karen, Wojo, Craig and I rented tandems (I'm pretty glad we didn't rent singles) and off we kayaked along the Potomac! The weather was indescribably beautiful - blue skies stretching forever, perfect temps in the seventies, sunshine, sunshine, sunshine. I am a little bit afraid of water sports but this was peaceful and good exercise all the same. Roger shot a hundred photos and I shot a lot, too. I was using their "dry bag" to keep the camera and all of our wallets dry. It wasn't too splashy but there was water here and there. We rowed past the Lincoln Memorial and Washington Monument. There were gorgeous full weeping willows that I liked (not shown above). Really, the experience was impressive and exciting and I'm glad we spent the two hours out there that we did. After kayaking, we returned to Arlington to their house, changed clothes, grabbed a beer for the road and walked to Clarendon, which is a quaint little neighborhood in Arlington. We fell into an interesting bar with columns wrapped in spray-painted ends of 2x4's (each end painted different bright colors), paint buckets as light fixtures overhead and exposed black ductwork in the ceilings. We ate wings and spring rolls and wraps and drank pitchers of beer. They're all so comedic and I love spending time with them. I had been keeping a notepad with various quotes through the weekend. I will recap shortly. We finished dinner and headed back to their house, stopping at a 7-11 for a bottle of wine for me, ice and anything else we felt we might need for the night. When we got back to the house, we had Jager Bombs (it's a staple of Roger and Mary's - Rog loves the Jagermeister!) and sat on the deck some more, chatted, then decided to play a round of some card game called Apples to Apples or something. At this point I was beyond a very comprehending frame of mind, so each round Roger or Wojo or Craig had to re-explain the rules of the game to me. These guys each qualify as my team of micromanagers (it started with Roger micromanaging me in St. Louis and of course was followed shortly by my micromanagement by Craig when we finally moved in together in Atlanta, and then Wojo joined the force to offer additional micromanagement - on the River I made a comment about the joy of having all of my micromanagers in one place and the overstimulation thereof!) and so I can only imagine how annoyed they must have been having to teach and re-teach the card game to me. No matter, because I wound up passing out along the way through the game there on the couch. And this morning I woke up totally well rested! but hungover, too. Instead of putting Mary through the headache of cooking again, we showered and walked to a place in Clarendon called Something-on Wilson. Wojo and Roger took full advantage of the brunch buffet bar, which had such things as crab legs and bacon and omelet stations on it. The rest of us selected items off the menu. I ate a tuna steak sandwich with olives, artichokes, mesclun and Dijon mustard plus a side salad. Craig and Mary ordered omelets and Karen ordered a cheeseburger. Oh, before lunch, Mary walked Karen and me to this cute little shop which had lots of fun items, sort of like the shops I've wandered into in Brooklyn. There was a wall of baby things - mostly funny onesies, like one that read, "Someday I will egg a house" made by a company called "wry kid" or something and their mission statement is, "raise funny people." Another shirt read, "Pictures with Baby: 25 cents" and another read, "I'm not a girl". Funny! And one wall over there were "action figures" - Van Gogh action figure, Obsessive Compulsive action figure...I liked seeing clever stuff. Well, so after brunch we walked back to their house and packed it up to head out. We probably won't see Roger and Mary until after the babe is born now. I will see Rog at our company's Annual Meeting in a couple of weeks, but nothing after that for quite some time. They won't know if they can fly to the Wojo-Karen wedding in January until right at that time...and the Gordo-Julie wedding might be way out of the question if the baby's too tiny at that time. Anyway, I loved seeing them. They're such perfect friends to know and have. So are Wojo and Karen. Our ride back was fine. I pawed through Karen's Elegant Bride magazine and found two adorable dresses I'd surely love if we knew when we were going to go through with it - if it's more than two years out, why bother with looking at dresses so soon...plus, it kind of jinxes me a little! Wojo and Karen dropped us off at a NJ Transit station and we were back home by a little after 8. I've had a lot of problems with Blogger tonight, making it work, which is annoying but I did want to post about seeing my friends before it got too far away from me. And now, to recap the really funny things, only the ones I jotted down, of course, that elapsed over the course of time with Roger, Mary, Wojo, Karen and Craig...

"I think I have more Jager than Bomb." - Karen, holding up her shot of Jager next to her glass of Red Bull

(insert: Wojo's nickname at work has evolved somehow to Poppy Waxahachie...)

"Poppy...what did you say, Chattahoochee?" - Mary, trying to remember his nickname in full

...two things I can't mention because parts of it are still secret...

Roger had some laser device and he was measuring the temperatures of Wojo's and Craig's groinal region from inside the kitchen through the screen...he announced said temps...funny...

"Taking the pigskin bus to Tuna Town..." - Wojo's description of having sex

"Roger is going to come back out here as soon as he is done making pizza." - Craig, seeing as we just learned "making pizza" is code for having sex

"He's a loose cannon." - Wojo, re: someone whose name I cannot disclose but it's very funny how he said this all the same.

"Chicken-howski." - Roger's addition to Wojo's ever-extended nickname.

"Poppy Waxahachie Chattahoochee Chincilla Chicken-howski." - Wojo's full nickname, with an additional nickname of Furry Box of Kittens, named after a rapids they all went on not long ago.

"Pee Wee wasn't that big." - Wojo, when asked if he played Pee Wee Football in Oshgosh, where he's from in Wisconsin. "Pee Wee still isn't that big."

*I really love having clever friends. It makes all the difference in life in general. So now it's off to bed and time to gear up for another work week. Yuck!

This week is nice and empty. Sharon and I don't meet this week because she's going to the Symphony Wednesday. And Friday Craig and I have plans with Wojo because Karen is out of town. Saturday is Eric and Lynn's first Astoria apartment party. Fun things are happening all the time. I'm so glad!