Come along, Train Wreck.

In the moments of random adventure I am most appreciative for my youth and freedom. To my more mature counterparts who find comfort in marriage and babies, I applaud their commitment. But having teetered on the edge and survived nearly becoming one of them, I relish in my rampancy.

Playing Tourist.
In the meantime I played tourist in my own city, taking a pretty sweet tour of the National Building Museum. It is a space that I've visited a number of times but had never taken the time to learn about. I went for the Green Community exhibit, but when offered a tour I found myself saying yes. Sometimes yes is so much easier to say than no, and you just never know where it will take you. In this case it took me on a tour through the history of one of Washington's most successful fusions of form and function to date.

The call to food was getting louder, so I met up with Rich at my favorite Smithsonian cafe at the National Museum of the American Indian. I think my visits to the cafe have to be counted on two hands whereas my visits to the museum don't require any fingers at all; so we decided to check out the actual Museum part. I believe that lasted about 2 minutes or 20 feet, whichever came first...

H: "Art instead?"
R: "Yea."
H: "Alright. We can even go look at that old stuff you like."

So we braved the decreasing temperatures and rough terrain crossing a post-inauguration Mall to get to the National Gallery of Art West Building. Luckily the time spent in the sanctuary of one of the inside fountain gardens (definitely amongst my top ten oases in DC) was greater than the time wandering around the tourist-filled French impressionism section.
Train Wreck.
This weekend I also put a stamp for Virginia on my passport with a trip to Clarendon and then Fairfax. Continuing the trend from the last few months of blasts from the high school past coming up, I met up with another greenwave classmate transplant and some of his coworkers for an evening at Clarendon Ballroom. Totally my normal hangout... just trade the colorful strobes with dim incandescents; the cover band on stage with a testy jukebox; trade the stilettos and hair gel for Docs and a few days worth of grime and I'm right at home. But there's nothing like a few car bombs to make you feel assimilated into any crowd. If you squinted just right, you might have even caught me tearing up the dance floor to the tune of some pretty awful '80's covers.

It was inevitable to happen at some point, and this weekend my time was up. We missed the last train. Stranded in Virginia? Eek! Though by taxi we were able to make our way to a place to crash for the night, the clarity of daylight and sobriety brought one glaring reality: we were stranded in the suburbs of Virginia. For a few hours we played Swiss Family Robinson, wandering around to various venues of Fairfax Corner sketching out elaborate plans of how to get back to the car and metro or any form of public transportation.

What seemed like an annoyance actually came to be a fun catch-up session on the last few years as well as afforded us the opportunity to overhear one of the best child nicknames I've ever heard. As we were tearing into our respective Italians at Potbelly's, this adorable toddler with blond locks and big blue eyes fixated on Mark. (This would have been a little less awkward if she wasn't standing a mere eighteen inches from our table.) Mom comes over with one of those big marshmallow jackets and says:

"come on Train Wreck, get your jacket on."

Brilliant.

In Other News.
I finally finished The Places Inbetween: fantastic - totally recommend it; and started Reading Lolita in Tehran: decent so far. Classes finally resume today, doubtlessly bringing more delirium to my life (and subsequent posts.)

Happy Monday.