This weekend has been really awesome. Disclaimer: this is going to be a long post.
On Friday I hung up with Kyle's family in DC. We met up at the Museum of Natural History and then moved on to explore all of the major monuments along the mall. It was so fun to hang out with my family! And my cousins are getting so big! It was also really cool to see DC from a different perspective. Instead of being the tourist, I felt more like the local person showing the tourists around. This is a little bit of a stretch because I am far from feeling any sense of ownership of this place, the way I would if I was showing someone around Port Orchard or Parkland, but it was still like I was seeing DC with a different set of eyes.
When it started to get dark, we met up with some of Michele's extended family who had also been hanging out in DC, and we all made a stop at the whitehouse before going off in search of a place to have dinner. We found a nice Italian restaurant in Georgetown where our 15 person party got right in. The food was delicious, and the family we were eating with were all so nice and welcoming to me! It was my aunt's sister's husbands family (they are all here from California for a wedding) so we were had a lot to talk about with the family relationship and the big day of sightseeing that everyone had.
One of the family members in our party was Rich Talauega, who, along with his brother, is a pretty major hip hop choreographer. I'm talking Madonna, Usher, Chris Brown, various commercials, movies (i.e. Save the Last Dance), ... you get the picture. I'm not going to over-exaggerate the extent of our meeting, because he was at the other end of our very long table and so I didn't have a chance to talk to him very much. (On the other hand, he is related to me by marriage!) Anyway, I wanted to give a shout out here because his family was so cool to me AND he paid for my dinner. So if you get a chance, check out Rich and Tone's website: www.talauega.com.
When I got home that night, I pretty much left immediately to go out to a club in DC with my roommate. I was pretty tired, and it was already midnight, but it was her friend's birthday party so we really had to go. It was pretty uneventful, but I'm blogging about it just to note that the friend whose birthday it was (I don't remember her name) had shelled out a few hundred bucks to get a table. So once again, Allison and I got right in past the line of people waiting outside. Only this time, we had a catered spot, elevated and separated from the floor by a rope, and we also had access to the VIP lounge on the fourth floor. I pretty much felt like a famous person. I also wanted to write about the club so that I would have an excuse to post this cool picture I took:
On Saturday, I celebrated my early birthday to myself. I got a haircut, then went to see David Sedaris at George Washington University. If you don't know who David Sedaris is, then you better run to the bookstore ASAP and fill a major void in your life. He writes humorous essays, mostly about his own life, but there is some fiction too. If you listen to This American Life, then you have probably heard him before (and PS if you haven't listened to TAL, then that is another thing you should add to your list).
Anyway, the night was fabulous. He read an old essay that I hadn't heard before, then he read some of his newer stuff. Afterwards, he did a Q&A followed by a book signing, where I purchased a copy of The Santaland Diaries. When I finally got up to him, I was so nervous that I didn't have anything intelligent to say. But that was okay. The only way I can describe him is "charming". I loved every minute of it! For all of you in Tacoma, he will be in town later on this month. Everyone should go! Here is a video that I took from the Q&A session where he talked about American and British soap operas. I apologize in advance for the poor quality, but that's video in a dark, crowded auditorium for you.
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