Loved SPN last night.  Laughed and laughed 'til I coughed and wheezed.  Which probably says bad things about me.

Desk for the win!

In other news, D had two clear cultures and walked in the hall at the hospital.  Yay!

In other other news, went to dinner with Barb at Chez Collette last night--totally accidental, we forgot that it was Valentine's day.  We had arranged for first day of good weather after the rain and ice.  All was tasty enough, but the butternut squash soup with the scallop at the bottom ofthe bowl was so good I almost canceled my dinner for another bowl of soup.

In still more news, going to see Cyrano the OPERA tonight.  Not the play with Kevin Kline of the icon, but should be interesting to compare.  I didn't even know there was an opera of Cyrano.  Tom says the sets were so elaborate they arrived in six trailers instead of the usual two.  Fun week.

Hi, mom!  (wave, wave!)  Just in case you stop by.  You can hit "comment" if you want to say hi back. 

I am back from Washington, which was a stressful trip because going to Headquarters always is.    I had a short and easy walk to the hotel, and no one was mean to me or anything--and I had a great time with one of our headquarters editors at dinner at Jeleo's, which was wonderful.  But it is always stressful for me to be away from home and away from the people who know me and who, frankly, make me feel both valued and protected.

The family bits were grand fun, though--yay, fam!  It was my brother-in-law's birthday, so we went out to celebrate three nights while I was there, and alas!  I had to head for home before the assado on Sunday.  So, forget about the work part--lets talk about the food!

Jeleos is a Spanish tapas place.  They have a white sangria with strawberries and mint leaves instead of citrus that, I could have dived right into and drunk my way to the bottom.  Just about the most delicious drink I've ever had.  It was lightly sweet, but not like a sweet wine--just, a happy taste.  Yum.  Not all plates are created equally.  The garlic shrimp were so wonderful that we had seconds.  (I scraped off the garlic because I can't eat the actual bulb, but the flavor in the sauce and on the shrimp was zippy and savory--there was much dunking of bread and I would go back just for the shrimp.  And the white sangria.  The eggplant and roast peppers were yummy, and so was the cheese--I love manchego and there were a couple others I didn't know, also tasty, with an apricot sweet relish, made with whole dried apricots with it, that was also worth the trip.  The chickpea stew was tasty, and so were the lamb chops, but not so click-your-heels and ask for seconds as some of the other dishes.  We were too stuffed for dessert and rolled home (me to my hotel) early to contemplate the delicous.

Primos was Primos--good, inexpensive greek/italian diner-y food.  I had chicken with sun dried tomatoes that was very good.

ETA:  I forgot Outback, where I had ribs and chocolate cake with vanilla ice cream.  After buying a new suit because I needed a bigger one.  ::hides head in shame::  Tasty, though.

More about Satuday, and sister-prom, on the next rock!

Back from DC, where we had snow on Saturday.  It was gorgeous looking out my sister's back door, with dawn coming up over the whitened trees of the nature reserve and the path sort of cutting through it so that it looked mysterious and serene, even though I know it just ends at the road a quarter mile or so on.  But it was so wrong that far south this deep into spring.  The wind was biting.

Saw the National Symphony Orchestra at the Kennedy Center while I was there.  They started with a set of Ravel dances which were okay but not exactly inspired.  But the Liszt was really fun.  The pianist, Yundi Li, performed with verve and, I am tempted to say humor, though I don't know why I think that.  It was a completely different experience of the piano from March with the Philadelphia Orchestra, but almost as much fun.  Again, the program had received very good reviews, so the hall had a lot more people than usual.  So, the key to a great audience does seem to be a great performance.  And, perhaps, a rock-star level classical soloist.

After the intermission they did a collection of music from Prokofiev's Romeo and Juliet.--more than a traditional suite, I think, but less than the whole ballet.  I liked that very much.  It is one of my favorite ballet scores, and they played with a full orchestra in the grand tradition of the 40s rather than the smaller orchestra that you would normally hear at the ballet.  And they seemed to be having fun with it.  I could see the dancers in my head for the party scenes particularly.  Great fun.

Much family visiting in spite of the weather after that.  And now, to work.

Back from DC. Yawn. Sleepy from travel. Saw NSO on Friday--they did Brahms 2nd symphony and something called Einstein's violin, a modern piece, but still accessible. Very nice. Saw may sibs. Visited. Came home. Hockey on the tv--tie game going into the third. 3-2 now--Knuble make a goal in the first thirty seconds. Yeay!

The Army-Navy game was just ended as I was coming home from the train station. West Point Cadets in the subway, singing cheers. The temperature has dropped precipitously since yesterday, which meant the cadets were wearing those lovely long greatcoats. The Naval cadets on the street, looked suitably sharp in Navy. I couldn't help it--they made me smile.

For those of you who don't live in the land of college football, the Army-Navy game is the big grudge football match between the two oldest service academies in the country. They've been playing this big game for over a hundred years, most of those years in Philadelphia, which sits at roughly the midpoint between West Point,(army) in New York, and Annapolis, (navy) in Maryland. When I was eighteen, not quite a hundred years ago, I attended the game at JFK Stadium as the date of a West Point cadet I had met at a college mixer I attended with a friend from Vassar College.

The day of the game was horribly cold. There had been a big snowstorm, and the grounds crew had packed the snow under the bleachers at the stadium, so we were sitting on packed snow. And did I mention that I don't actually like football? But that was 1968, in the middle of the VietNam war. I was a liberal even then, but even at eighteen, I understood the historical significance of the game and wanted to see it and understand it. Twenty years later at the same stadium I saw U2 and Bruce Springstein perform together. By then I had figured out that I wanted to understand all sorts of odd traditions from the inside out (smirk), and was halfway through the Ph.D. program at Penn.

But I never saw that cadet again, and that was okay.