Friday

Before I continue, I want to tell you that I hate Blogger. I hate Blogger because I am writing this post twice, because it froze the first time without saving anything. I guess I had been warned, but I'd gotten that nasty error message before while writing, but it always did save or manage to post. But not this time. Perhaps I should be directing my ire at Firefox, because when I finally gave up, there was some updating action. Did Firefox crash my draft on purpose so I would hurry up and let it update? Those jerks. Anyway, here it goes again.

***
Do you ever have songs come into your head as if on cue? Like, whenever you're shopping at a certain place, you think of a song about that place? Or about shopping? Sometimes it's a good sign. When "Under the Milky Way" (Church) finds itself in my head, I'm usually looking at stars or thinking about stars, which means I'm usually traveling or camping (not a lot of stars to be had in this area). Other songs have less fortunate associations; "Send in the Clowns" (Sondheim) means I'm ruing my personal life; "Good Fortune" (P.J. Harvey) means I've gone into work hungover ("In Chinatown/hungover..."). Which was the case this morning.

See, we went to see the Big Band with Macy Gray at the Howard Theater. It was worth it just for her costume changes, though the last one was sparkly enough so as to be blinding. But the Howard Theater, unbeknownst to us, had a $10/person minimum, which was not an issue in and of itself, but was an issue because (1) we didn't know--didn't even know they served food--so we had eaten and drank beforehand and (2) there was nothing--NOTHING--on the menu that I could eat. Even the fries, according to my friends, were cooked in animal grease. So we got a bottle of wine, and left tipsier than we'd intended to.

I crashed at my friend's house--she lives near the theater and not far from work--and rode in with her the next morning, at the crack of dawn. And my head felt it.

I left work earlyish to go museum-hopping with Jay, who's in town for MAL (hint: it's neither woman- nor vegan-friendly). First, through the sculpture garden of the National Gallery, where Jay proudly, correctly identified a sculptor or two, we headed to the Sackler Gallery. Outside of which he saw something that looked to him like a cookie, which made him want to lick it.

An anthropomorphic stele in the Roads of Arabia exhibit

We came inside the building, where I took off my coat. Jay gasped in quasi-horror at my frame.

Jay: you don't even have a badonkadonk anymore! 

A.: [Horrified] I DO TOO! [Sticking out said badonkadonk]. I'm tweeting this. Did we ever agree on how to spell badonkadonk?

Jay: We agreed to disagree. You spell it differently.

A.: I thought we looked it up.

Jay: There were various acceptable spellings.

A.: Have we had this conversation too many times? 

This was one of those questions where if it has to be asked, the answer is yes.

Anyway, we proceeded to the exhibits, where we saw some Ai Weiwei and other cool stuff, and then we proceeded to the Hirschorn, where we saw some more Ai Weiwei and more other cool stuff. Much of which reminded Jay of other foodstuffs. From there, we went to the Archives, where there was, miraculously, no line and very little crowd, and there we saw (original) copies of the Magna Carta, Declaration of Independence, and Constitution, as well as an exhibit on the Cuban Missile Crisis. 

Afterward, we parted ways, Jay to a happy hour, my away from (a different) happy hour. I was more in need of a detox hour. I can drink more when we meet up again tomorrow.