This past weekend I went back to the DMV area (D.C., Maryland, Virginia) to attend my 20th high school reunion from Largo High School. Nothing earth shattering happened, it was your typical "wow, has it really been that long" type of event with the requisite exchange of info and "see you in 10 years." I went to the dinner on Friday night and planned on going to the picnic on Saturday but I had an incorrect address, hence an incorrect google map and no GPS, so I decided to call it quits after driving around the back roads of rural Maryland for about 20 minutes. I'm truly a city girl at heart - give me a grid street structure any day of the week over single lane roads and tons of trees. It all looked familiar but I had no clue how to troubleshoot the fact that I was on the back side of a very large park, far away from where the "official" entrance was located.
So I cut my losses on the picnic and decided to visit my old neighborhood and the family that I grew up next door to for 18 years. We caught up and laughed about the good old days when I was this goofy little girl (guess I still am actually).
[telling Cedric the neighborhood boxer dog to "go home" - he frequently would jump the gate and run around the neighborhood. bossy then, bossy now. change much?]
That evening I had tickets to the Nationals/Giants game and prior to leaving L.A. had no one to offer my extra ticket to...until the plane ride to D.C. There I am at LAX, waiting to get on the plane when I bump into a friend that I haven't seen in about 10 years. A friend that I know from L.A. but who happened to be traveling back to D.C. with his wife on the same flight as me. Then he mentions a mutual friend of ours who lives in D.C. that I haven't seen in about the same amount of time and a little light bulb turns on in my head. Bingo!
I met Khalil at his coffee shop, Pound, and from there we took the subway to the beautiful new Nationals Park where we proceeded to sweat our a$$es off. Mind you, there was a small little heat wave happening with temperatures soaring near 100 degrees during the day with something like 100% humidity, making it feel like an oven-sauna. D.C. is not like L.A. where the temperature breaks in the evening, it stays hot and muggy and in a word...disgusting. At the game we pulled up weather.com on his iPhone and it said the temperature was "88 but feels like 98." With no scoring well into the 7th along with no breeze we did the L.A. thing and left. Turns out S.F. got 6 runs in the 8th so we didn't miss much. We thought about going and getting a drink but the heat had done us in and we parted ways at the Chinatown/Gallery Place metro stop.
[Khalil at his coffee shop]
[This is what you see upon entering Nationals Park. It's a beautiful stadium, by the way, I just wish it hadn't been so freaking hot!]
[the "W" in the grass]
[the largest HD jumbotron in the league]
[you know me, gotta get my "art shot" in]
[the view from our seats]
[another shot of K - the t-shirt he's wearing will be explained in a forthcoming post]
[Goodbye, off to find AC!!!]
To add insult to injury, all weekend long my phone was peppered with text messages from my L.A. friends telling me of the "beautiful 75 degree and sunny weather with not a cloud in the sky." Bastards.
Overall I'm happy I went back and although I didn't have as stellar of a time as I did a few months ago I did realize one thing, nevermore will I bitch or complain about the cold and the rain when I visit again.
x
Comments