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Our week of crossover posts continues! Yesterday, you thrilled to the tale of Team Boston vs. the DC Beltway over in 'Tales of the ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
qlewkr'. Today, though, things get even stranger in 'We're Going WHERE Now?'
Anyhow, Day 2 in NoVa/DC. Just as a reminder (for myself as well as the rest of y'all), my goals this week are pretty simple:
1) Have D's back as she visits/encounters/deals with her relatives. So far so good, I think, although listening to her brother-in-law complain about his employees quitting all the time and, by the way, isn't it ridiculous how they talk to each other instead of being at their desks working quietly? And still expect to get paid for the time they spend chatting? Yeah, that got old.
2) Using the excuse of cooking for D's mom, enjoy my week of being able to cook non-vegan, meat-a-licious suppers. Oh baby baby. Yesterday was a chicken & dumplings meal with white wine in the gravy and fresh dill in the dumplings; tonight was seared salmon with a balsamic glaze. Tomorrow I would ride out*, dog at my side, kill a wild yak with a spear and roast it on a spit over open flames after stuffing it with sweet potatoes and brown sugar...but I'm going to a restaurant withforesthouse. My point is, all this protein is heady.
3) Explore DC and environs. This, well, is where things have gotten tricky.
Yesterday, as you might have already read, we left the house with pretty much no plan at all and spent the day wandering around like blindfolded chickens. Blindfolded chickens who were occasionally horrified by the public bathrooms. ("The toilet seat's on the floor beside the toilet!") So today we spent about an hour on Yelp, looking up vegan bakeries for D, chocolateries for me. We had step-by-step goals: Alexandria first, then Dupont Circle, then Capitol Heights for a late lunch. We were golden.
We actually made it to one (1) place. A little chocolate shop in Alexandria.
And it sucked.
To be fair, by the time we made it there we'd already stopped at a restaurant (Firefly's, REALLY good sandwiches and a waiter missing six teeth who seemed oddly insistent on talking to us about his thoughts on 'Moby Dick'), and a place called 'Exotic Planterium Comics and Collectibles' which really REALLY rang my 'twilight zone' alarm bells. For starters, no lights were on inside; the only light was what came in through the front windows, which were mostly full of the 'exotic plants'--which were spider plants and a few small cacti. Past the plants were comics. Boxes full. Some on shelves, some still in longboxes...none more recent than 1990. None, except 9 or 10 on the wall, in bags. No prices anywhere. I picked up two almost at random, early Cerebus (from before the writer went totally insane, so lets say mid-80s)...and the clerk/owner charged me cover price.
For you non-comics collectors out there, lemme explain: comic books are like cars in that as they age, they either lose value really quickly (if they're poor quality and/or start to fall apart) or get much more expensive (if they're in mint condition and are good stories). You can't walk into a store and pay cover price for mint condition '80s comics any more than you could walk onto a car lot, plop down $100 and drive off in a brand-new Model T. It just doesn't work that way.
Except, apparently, at the Exotic Planterium Comics and Collectibles.
Like I said, 'twilight zone' alarm bells. In my head. Ringing oh so loudly.
So after that, everything else was anti-climax. The chocolate shop owner got his wares from four different suppliers, seemed to be totally disinterested in them, and seemed a little perplexed to even have customers. The highly-recommended ice cream shop, The Dairy Godmother, was closed. And when we did find a place that sold desserts, the slice of cake we split? Was stale.
But tomorrow, ah tomorrow, the fun really begins. We're getting up at 6 to get into town to scoop up D's 4-year old niece, then rendezvous with other family members including D's Dad and her teenage niece** Who's In Big Trouble With The Family After Getting That Lip Ring. Sleep deprivation, small children AND monkeys! What can go wrong?
_____________________________________
*Yes, in my VW Golf. It could happen.
**It'd be totally unfair to call her the FAVORITE niece in a public post like this.***
***Hi Ashlon, if you're reading this.****
****Which you SO are.
qlewkr'. Today, though, things get even stranger in 'We're Going WHERE Now?'Anyhow, Day 2 in NoVa/DC. Just as a reminder (for myself as well as the rest of y'all), my goals this week are pretty simple:
1) Have D's back as she visits/encounters/deals with her relatives. So far so good, I think, although listening to her brother-in-law complain about his employees quitting all the time and, by the way, isn't it ridiculous how they talk to each other instead of being at their desks working quietly? And still expect to get paid for the time they spend chatting? Yeah, that got old.
2) Using the excuse of cooking for D's mom, enjoy my week of being able to cook non-vegan, meat-a-licious suppers. Oh baby baby. Yesterday was a chicken & dumplings meal with white wine in the gravy and fresh dill in the dumplings; tonight was seared salmon with a balsamic glaze. Tomorrow I would ride out*, dog at my side, kill a wild yak with a spear and roast it on a spit over open flames after stuffing it with sweet potatoes and brown sugar...but I'm going to a restaurant with
foresthouse. My point is, all this protein is heady.3) Explore DC and environs. This, well, is where things have gotten tricky.
Yesterday, as you might have already read, we left the house with pretty much no plan at all and spent the day wandering around like blindfolded chickens. Blindfolded chickens who were occasionally horrified by the public bathrooms. ("The toilet seat's on the floor beside the toilet!") So today we spent about an hour on Yelp, looking up vegan bakeries for D, chocolateries for me. We had step-by-step goals: Alexandria first, then Dupont Circle, then Capitol Heights for a late lunch. We were golden.
We actually made it to one (1) place. A little chocolate shop in Alexandria.
And it sucked.
To be fair, by the time we made it there we'd already stopped at a restaurant (Firefly's, REALLY good sandwiches and a waiter missing six teeth who seemed oddly insistent on talking to us about his thoughts on 'Moby Dick'), and a place called 'Exotic Planterium Comics and Collectibles' which really REALLY rang my 'twilight zone' alarm bells. For starters, no lights were on inside; the only light was what came in through the front windows, which were mostly full of the 'exotic plants'--which were spider plants and a few small cacti. Past the plants were comics. Boxes full. Some on shelves, some still in longboxes...none more recent than 1990. None, except 9 or 10 on the wall, in bags. No prices anywhere. I picked up two almost at random, early Cerebus (from before the writer went totally insane, so lets say mid-80s)...and the clerk/owner charged me cover price.
For you non-comics collectors out there, lemme explain: comic books are like cars in that as they age, they either lose value really quickly (if they're poor quality and/or start to fall apart) or get much more expensive (if they're in mint condition and are good stories). You can't walk into a store and pay cover price for mint condition '80s comics any more than you could walk onto a car lot, plop down $100 and drive off in a brand-new Model T. It just doesn't work that way.
Except, apparently, at the Exotic Planterium Comics and Collectibles.
Like I said, 'twilight zone' alarm bells. In my head. Ringing oh so loudly.
So after that, everything else was anti-climax. The chocolate shop owner got his wares from four different suppliers, seemed to be totally disinterested in them, and seemed a little perplexed to even have customers. The highly-recommended ice cream shop, The Dairy Godmother, was closed. And when we did find a place that sold desserts, the slice of cake we split? Was stale.
But tomorrow, ah tomorrow, the fun really begins. We're getting up at 6 to get into town to scoop up D's 4-year old niece, then rendezvous with other family members including D's Dad and her teenage niece** Who's In Big Trouble With The Family After Getting That Lip Ring. Sleep deprivation, small children AND monkeys! What can go wrong?
_____________________________________
*Yes, in my VW Golf. It could happen.
**It'd be totally unfair to call her the FAVORITE niece in a public post like this.***
***Hi Ashlon, if you're reading this.****
****Which you SO are.
