I'm just a bill

I'm back from our nation's capital. It was a really fun, whirlwind trip. I stayed with Kristin in her very nice condo in Alexandria, which is a very neat town. I forgot how different the East Coast *looks*. Houses are brick and pointy and OLD. Oh, and the sun comes out there.

We had a great time eating and shopping and spa-ing. I also saw Kristine almost every day I was out there, which was great, and saw Asha a few times as well. I didn't get to meet Beanie, Asha and Sanjay's dog, but I guess I'll do that next time.

I took Kristin out for her birthday to Restaurant Eve. Go there. Get any one of the drinks from the special cocktail menu. That bartender is amazing. I had a Black Currant fizz that tasted like flowers and an interesting lemon-licorice concoction. Yum.

Dessert was actually not great, but the rest of the meal more than made up for it. We had a five course tasting menu which was more like 9 courses when you count the amuse bouche, the sorbet, random chocolaty truffle things, etc.

And then we tried to get into the oh so cool "secret" speakeasy bar, PX. And got rejected. Twice. There's a secret password, and apparently I just wasn't getting it right that night. I guess they're too cool for me. From the link here, I guess I was supposed to tell them we had a reservation. Not sure if you were supposed to lie about it. Hmmm, I guess I should have done some Googling before we went there. I mean Windows Live Searching. Whatever.

Kristin and I caught up with Delwyn, a college friend we hadn't seen in about 15 years and met his fiance Christy (sp?) as well. They were fun. We had a lot of drinks, then called it a night.

The next night was Asha's surprise birthday dinner for her husband Sanjay. He was really surprised to see us all there. I also got to see Asha's brother Ashok and his wife Larissa, so the "catching up with people" quotient was high on this trip.

And of course Kristin and I marathon shopped. On multiple days. I am now the proud owner of four (!) new pairs of shoes and a nice digital Kenneth Cole watch.

And then I tried to go home. About 2 hours before my flight it started to snow. Hard. By the time I boarded the plane, the snow was piling up and we had to be de-iced 3 times. We finally took off about an hour and a half late. Annoying, but not awful, since I was in the first row of coach, with no one sitting beside me. Probably the best seat I could have had in coach, so I'm not complaining! It was a loooong flight.

But now I'm home, and settling back into the usual routine, which includes going back to Phase I of the phenomenally successful Fat Smash. The first 8 days (horrible cheating on the 9th) worked really well. YAY!