Sweetpea’s Garden

I’m going to replace my typical three beautiful things list with a recap of what turned out to be a pretty busy weekend. Given that last week was, overall, fairly uneventful, my beautiful things (Post-marathon pancakes at Eastern Market! Free baseball tickets! Homespun yarn party!) were all from the weekend anyway.

I started out my Saturday a lot earlier than usual in order to go cheer on the National Marathon. (I woke up about the same time, actually, I just got moving a lot sooner — my Saturdays generally tend to involve very little activity before mid-day.) I met up with Julia and Michael around 8:30 and we wandered over to Lincoln Park to wait for our friend Phillip, who was running his first marathon, to run by, which he did around 9:15.

I didn’t get my camera up in to commemorate the moment until he was already past us, but here is his on his way toward the 15-mile mark. Phillip would be the one on the left with the gray and blue shirt, and the, um, fanny pack. He apparently wore his tourist costume for the race.

Continue reading ‘It’s No Wonder I’m Tired Today’

The Cherry Blossom Festival, which begins this weekend, marks the start of tourist season in DC, adding tens of thousands of occasionally-befuddled out-of-towners to our trains, restaurants, and sidewalks. I haven’t been down to the Tidal Basin in several years, but since there are flowering trees — the ubiquitous cherry, but also magnolia, as well as forsythia, azalea, and other bushes — throughout DC’s neighborhoods, slogging through crowds to see beautiful flowers just isn’t necessary.

I pass the tree below on my way to and from work every day, and happened to get a few nice shots of it last week, when the sky was blue. It was before the much-vaunted peak (which is, I think, today) so the tree isn’t in full flower. It still looks beautiful to me, though.

Updated to add:

For the second week in a row, I almost forgot to include the list of other people taking “My DC” photos: Hillary, sprite, randomduck, and MsP — and knitplaywithfire in Frederick, DC’s neighbor to the north.

And other random thoughts on an uneventful Thursday in an unremarkable week:

» Several times over the course of the morning, I was informed by the radio meteorologist that I should bring my umbrella because it was going to start raining around noon. The thing is, it was already raining, and had been since I woke up. Look out the window, dude. That water you see coming from the sky? That’s rain.

» I’m sure that any of you who have been reading this blog for a while will be thrilled to see this update: it took nearly six months, but the horrible-smelling restroom “air fresheners” at my office have finally been replaced. Fruity freshness has, at last, replaced the scent of 70s-esque men’s cologne. So, at last, I can stop worrying that Magnum P.I. or Johnny Fever are lurking behind the stall doors.

» My friend Karen is running a marathon (her second) and has decided to use it as an opportunity to raise funds for charity. She has selected a small group in Mali called the Joliba Trust, which (among other things) promotes sustainable development, offers midwifery training, and educates about the dangers of female genital mutilation. Her goal is to raise $2,000, which can make a tremendous difference in the developing world. You can make a donation and read more about the organization — as well as Karen’s training — at her new blog, rungasperrun.blogspot.com.

» I’m late to the blogosphere party on both of these items, but I feel I’d be remiss if I didn’t pass along two of the funniest things I’ve seen on the Internets in a long time. First is the Sarah Silverman “I’m F***ing Matt Damon” video, which cracks me up every time I watch it. (The rebuttal video, I’m F***ing Ben Affleck isn’t as good, but is still pretty amusing.) Second, the blog Stuff White People Like is a dead-on, wickedly funny satire of 21st century yuppiedom.