Mr. Obama goes to Washington

A couple pictures from the Inauguration:

	It took us about two hours from the time we started walking near the Capitol to when we ended up at this joint near the Washington Monument to catch the Inauguration Ceremony. A good view of (just a SMALL) part of the crowd...
	At one point I hoisted up some young kid in the air so he wouldn't be stuck watching people's butts as Obama was taking the oath of office. But we also found that other kids had elevated themselves above the masses through other creative means...
	At the Eastern Ball, J.J. and I somehow found ourselves standing right next to Massachusetts Governor Patrick's wife, Diane Patrick, who had made it through the crowd to join us as we watched James Taylor perform.
	Finally, the Obamas made a surprisingly early appearance. President Obama talked briefly with the crowd, then danced with his First Lady Michelle for approximately 2 minutes before leaving. Total length of the visit: maybe 10 minutes max. But I still managed to snap off over 20 photos :-)

New Post

I finally bumped into our wonderful local blogger (and fellow A.U. alum!) Esbee on today's trip to Simply Yummy. She chastised me for not blogging at all in over a week, and said that she was thinking of posting a comment somewhere on my blog to register a formal complaint.

FINE. I'LL WRITE A NEW POST ALREADY!! Geez... give me a break...

Fall Foliage in Review

I walked outside today and spotted a quarter inch of snow on the car roofs and on the piles of fallen leaves. This prompted a "WTF!?" and made me wonder whether our string of Indian Summer-ish fall days were coming to a close. Indeed, a look at the 10-day forecast shows a nasty run of 50 degree highs with the occasional scattered snow showers (more WTF!?'s to go around!).

So I thought it would only be fitting to say goodbye to a wonderful fall with a couple recent pictures of the fall foliage.

	A view from Crowders Mountain just outside of Charlotte, NC
	Walking down a side-street in Georgetown -- just minutes away from cupcakes...

Goodbye Fall '08 -- we hardly knew ya.

That's Why They Call it a "Cupcake Transport Device"

We had a couple left over cupcakes from Cupcake Binge '08, and were having a beast of a time trying to figure out how we might be able to split the remaining cupcakes among ourselves to take home. By this time Sarah had finished drinking her chai latte, and had happened upon this brilliant idea for transporting her mint chocolate cupcake back home:

Someone else suggested that perhaps she would take her own cupcake back in her bra. To which I responded, "they're not called bra-cakes now, are they?!"

Cupcake Wars

A friendly cupcake-pusher next to the goods at Baked & Wired

I decided to visit DC last weekend to visit friends, and discovered that I had walked right into the middle of a war -- for the last two or three months, the residents of Washington, DC has been searching high and low, near and far for the best cupcake in town.

Darcy asked if I would be interested in joining the hunt on Sunday with our friends Sarah, Michelle, and Shanley. I put on my coat, surrendered my man-card at the door, and went out a-hunting for the perfect cupcake.*

We soon found ourselves at the Georgetown Mall with a dozen cupcakes from Georgetown Cupcake, half a dozen from Baked and Wired, and two from Dean & DeLuca (at total of 20) to split between the 5 of us. We started our sampling by trying to match similar cupcakes from the different vendors: the red velvets, the coconut creams, and the carrot cupcakes, and as sugar-sickness set in I eventually suggested that "we shouldn't feel obligated to eat the next 10..."

A look at the Georgetown Cupcake's cupcakes. The missing coconut cupcake is in my belly.

Our general conclusion was that Georgetown Cupcake made the best, although Baked and Wired won in the important Carrot-Cupcake category. Oh yeah -- Dean and DeLuca's cupcakes were awful. At the end, we took votes for the best overall cupcake, and this ended in a split decision between Georgetown Cupcake's chocolate ganache cupcake (middle row, far left in picture to the side), and their coconut cupcake (unpictured). The key lime cupcake (upper left corner) also pulled in a first place vote.

Finally, below we have a video of some of the exercises we did along the Potomac to work off the ridiculous amount of cupcake we had just eaten:

* Darcy attempted to convince her husband Andy to come by suggesting that they had manly cupcake varieties like "Rock-N-Roll Razorblades" at the shops, but Andy was not fooled.

A Raki Roads Reunion

My Turkey blog ended a year ago missing a very important post: could it be that our Turkey journey ended with my traveling partner Jennie beginning a romantic relationship with a fine Turkish fellow on the very last day of the trip? It is possible...

Ah, the troubles of blogging about people you know. There is so much I would like to say, and it makes for a very fine story, but for the sake of discretion I won't say too much about her relationship except to say that one year later it is progressing well. Jennie has continued to learn Turkish, and Fatih is now able to understand my Pacific Northwest English much more easily (or whatever accent I have... who knows?). Fatih was also in town when I came to visit D.C., and the couple made an appearance at the Fourth of July party. The three of us were able to catch up on things together for the first time in over a year.

Moments before the epic, bloody ATATURK Championship.

This was all well and good, but what Fatih failed to anticipate was that while he was continuing to learn English, I have been continuing to delve deeper into the dark arts of tavla (backgammon). And so when we played Round 2 of our Annual Tavla American/Turkish (The "ATATURK") Championship, I was prepared to defend my title, established last year by a dramatic come-from-behind victory at the Istanbul Airport.

I was again able to beat the Turk at his own game, but in defeat Fatih did raise the important point: I had infact learned some of my greatest gambits with the help of an esteemed tavla champion during my journey through the southern coast of Turkey (true!). And that distinguished pedigree, after all, makes me an honorary Turk!

I don't fully understand the logic, but I will accept his gracious offer of Turkish citizenship. After all, the country treated me very well.

Water Sports

I attended a Fourth of July party in D.C. last Friday, and the guests did much to stay cool through the summer heat (let's forget the fact that it rained much of the day). Here's the prescription:

Step 1: Get a Slip-N-Slide.

Step 2: Set up Slip-N-Slide so that it ends about 3 feet from a hard wooden porch.

Step 3: Make sure to drink several cups from keg before attempting to use Slip-N-Slide.

Step 4: Participants should get a running start, and then launch themselves toward porch headfirst at top speed.

What could be safer! We went to a water park the next day, where we got endlessly whistled at by the life guards for unsafe use of inner-tubes at the Lazy River. I was tempted to explain to the guards that we were professionals. After all, we had just survived hurling ourselves at a porch on a Slip-N-Slide while drunk.

Amateurs...

Pre:

Post:

Matt knows: The only way to Slip-N-Slide is Superman-style.