Mother-Daughter Weekend Part Two: Baltimore

After a restful evening enjoying the Bed portion of B&B (and let’s be honest how can you not sleep well with the Prince and Me on your mind), we packed up our stuff at the B&B, and went down for the second B, Breakfast. We chatted it up with the lovely proprietor, Heidi, and got to ask lots of questions about her gorgeous, partially-pre-Civil War (!) house. While she rustled up some breakfast (I do love the verb “rustle” when applied to food-making), Mom and I walked around the property again, all the way down to their dock, and back around the barn and farmy portion of the property. When we came back, me semi-winded and Mom fit as a fiddle, Heidi was waiting with tea, a lovely fruit bowl, and . . . raisin challah French toast, cut thick, and made in the eggiest of fashions. So yummy.

We drove to Baltimore, and headed straight for the Baltimore Museum of Art. I neglected to check the museum’s opening time, so we arrived about 45 minutes before that, which meant that we were forced to walk around the gorgeous sculpture garden. If I’m going to be forced to do something in future, I sure hope it’s as nice as this garden. It was warm (70 degrees!) and sunny, and I got lots of backlit pictures of sunlight filtering through trees, and the sculptures were cool and weird and thought-provoking . . . what a great way to start a museum visit.

The rest of the museum was also lovely, and it’s a relatively small collection (says the girl who’s used to the Philadelphia Art Museum and the Met, so my perspective may be slightly skewed. . . ), but really wonderful. I was particularly enchanted by the collection of mosaics from 5^th century Antioch, especially since I just finished As a Driven Leaf, much of which takes place in 1^st century Antioch. Also, Rodin’s the Thinker was wonderful to see up close – I never realized what a muscle-y, powerful figure it is. I don’t normally think of thinkers that way. Also also, it had a really great contemporary collection (especially the very moving and powerful and thought-provoking work of Hank Willis Thomas). Other things I loved: a. it’s free! b. the listening device thingymabob was free, so I got fun and interesting commentary throughout.

We checked into our hotel, and then went back out to investigate a Greek Food Festival sign we had seen. After parking in a semi-sketch lot, we galumphed into a large tent next to a gorgeous cathedral and dug into the most delicious gyros and calamari ever (note: this is where the kosher vacay started!). It was so homey and cute, and there were Greek children dancing, people watching the football game – a great way to start our afternoon.

After the vigorous eating, I was experiencing a little bit of a food coma, so we went to our hotel room for nap. While I was napping, Mona discovered some unfortunateness about our room (won’t go into details, but ick!), so we ended up switching rooms, and somehow ending up in this HUGE suite, with two bedrooms and a living room and a conference table and a kitchen and two bathrooms. So that worked out great.

We spent the rest of the afternoon walking around the Inner Harber, checking out my home for the summer of 2001 (the USCG Taney), the fabulous Barnes and Noble where I learned about minke biology that summer, and a number of lovely shops (we had a LOT of fun in the hat shop in particular). After guacamole and drinks at the Cheesecake Factory (yes it’s everywhere, yes it can be delish), we headed in for movies and bed.

The next morning, we followed the recommendation of my Baltimore friends and headed to Miss Shirley's for brunch. This turned out to be the best part of the whole trip -- Mom had carrot spice raisin pancakes (woah), and I had a sandwich with avocado, bacon, a fried green tomato and cheese. It came with either grits or potatoes, and I always order potatoes, since I'm not a grits kind of gal. At least, I wasn't until I went to Miss Shirley's Cafe. After some waiter-cajoling, I went with the grits, made with mascarpone cheese, chives, applewood-smoked bacon, and heavy cream. Let's just say, I will never again make a trip to Baltimore without having those grits. SO good. We ended the trip with a stop in Filene's (and the purchase of a lovely sundress), and then we went our separate ways. SUCH a good mother-daughter weekend.

Mother-Daughter Weekend Part One: Annapolis

This weekend was the Mona-and-Rachel mother-daughter weekend extravaganza. I warn you, this will be a food-filled blog post. Mona has decided that I’m a foodie now, and I think I’ve decided that I’m okay with it.

After a pumpkin pancake-filled breakfast with Alli on Saturday morning, we jumped into the car and sped off to Annapolis, a town not given to moving quickly, or speeding off anywhere. As we pulled into town, we drove by a very large and in charge Memorial Stadium, and decided to drive into the parking lot to check out what was going on. We thought we might find some tailgaiting or something football-related, but what we found was so much better: USSBA championships! That’s right, I happened upon the first marching band tournament I’ve seen since 2003, when, you know, I was in one.

We drove down to the city dock area, and checked out some of the cute shops – I really loved this place called Re-sails (they make backpacks and such our of old sails), and Mixed Greens, which makes lots of cool recycled things as well. We lunched at the Hard Bean Café and Booksellers, this lovely bookstore slash coffeeshop slash ice cream store. Lots of wonderful slash-ness there, especially the turkey-havarti-ciabatta sandwich I sampled.

After checking into the B & B where we stayed, introducing ourselves to the owners, and walking around their gorgeous property, we headed back into Annapolis and walked around the Naval Academy – I had been there on a CTY field trip in 2000, but Mom never had, so went to the Museum and then walked all around the campus. Apparently, they beat Notre Dame that day, so we saw lots of excited people wearing Navy gear.

Speaking of Navy gear, we also saw lots of students around town wearing their uniforms – apparently, the students have to wear them all the time their freshman and sophomore years. I wore a uniform of sorts my freshman and sophomore years, but it consisted of jeans and a rotating Brandeis sweatshirt . . .

After the Naval Academy, we galumphed in the area around the State House, where we walked all around the many circles in the center of town. There were gads of glorious shops, most notably the Annapolis Pottery, a great shop with beautiful pottery and even better glazes (I had never seen a rock-n-roll looking honey pot until that day), and a used bookshop that looked like something out of my most Henry Higgins-inspired library dreams, The Annapolis Bookstore. Although realistically, any bookstore with an Ollivander’s Wand Shop sign in the front is off to a good start indeed.

For dinner, we went to the lovely seafood-y Middleton Tavern in the center of city dock. I thought I was going to have to go on a kosher vacation earlier than expected (one prepares for this in Baltimore, less so in a new place!), but was pleasantly surprised to find tableside Caesar salad on the menu. Dinner preparation that involves a bit of a show always ranks high in my book, especially when the result is a vigorously garlicky and anchovy-y and delicious Caesar salad. We finished with a yummy Crème Brulee, and then headed back to the B&B for the Prince and Me, which Mona had somehow never seen (crazy, I know). We enjoyed the beautiful ridiculousness of Julia Stiles and the prince of Denmark, and then collapsed with exhaustion after a wonderful Annapolis day.

Hello, Salem! my name's Winnifred, what's yours?

Halloween has never been my holiday. Without a doubt, it is one of the holidays that Mommy Mona does the best -- not a year goes by without some new Halloween decoration, and the tradition of precariously-placing-pumpkins-above the shelf in the family room has become somehow a comforting seasonal ritual, even if I worry that Alli will fall everytime. In fact, Mona is so good at Halloween that she has three or four large tupperware 20 or 30 gallon bins full of the decorations for it. In college, I got a care package every year around Halloween time full of orange socks and bat garlands and pumpkin candy -- you name it, she did it.

I've had some good costumes over the years -- the clock and the Chiquita Banana girl were particular favorites. But since college, I've become more enamored with Purim -- it seems like I always have a wonderful time and Purim at Brandeis is second only to Simchat Torah at Brandeis (which consistently ranks as one of my top five favorite things about college). I met my first boyfriend on Purim, my best friend Prisco surprise-visited me on a Purim, and it always feels like a magical day to me.

That being said, the last Purim I experienced was just after I moved to DC, and while very nice (I was with D-kup and Fenster at Adas Israel), it felt like such a pale imitation of Brandeis-ness that I couldn't help but being disappointed. Needless to say, I didn't have high expectations for Simchat Torah -- this turned out to be silly, because I had a perfectly lovely evening at DC Minyan with Suzy and Sarah G, and got to spend time with lovely deis people as well.

Which brings us back to Halloween. Again -- not usually my holiday, since I've convinced myself that Purim is IT, but I ended up having a greatgreatgreat time anyway. I went to Janae's (friend of friends who I went to West Virginia with) lovely apartment, which was decorated even better than Mona would (can you imagine such a thing?!) for a potluck/party before going out. Most people were superhero or villain themed -- I was the devil, and Will, who came with me, was a Starbucks barista (which everyone declared the most important superhero of all, really). Janae is a FABULOUS cook, and made sweet potato casserole and red velvet cake (it was her birthday too!) and lots of other lovely things. I brought a momma-made pumpkin bread.

Anyway, that was fun times, but I really had a great night once we went out dancing. Somehow, I've managed to live in DC for 9 months and not go dancing once. I've been to lots of bar and happy hours, but no dancing. Luckily, I made up for all of that in one night of Halloween-wonderfulness. Bailey plotted out the whole evening the night before, and we went dancing at Saint Ex and at Policy, both of which had great music. Saint Ex in particular was wonderful because of the liberal sprinklings of late 90s rap and jock jams, and Policy was most enjoyable thanks to the vigorous music ADD of the DJ (some people might not appreciate this, but I certainly did). I came home with exhausted feet and a happy neshama.

I think Halloween has just moved up in the holiday-rankings.

A Short Ode to the wonderfulness that is Glee

It's like they opened up my brain and took all my favorite things in the world and put them in one show. And it really is. I love the corny plot, the oversized, ridiculous characters, and the glorification of musical theater. Clearly, Sue Sylvester's militant cheerleader coach is my favorite: you can't beat lines like this:

"Here I am, about to turn 30, and I’ve sacrificed everything , only to be Shanghaied by the bi-curious machinations of a cabal of doughy misshape teens."

Other things I love about Glee:

1. the entire jewish themed episode about Noah Puckerman, who is a. gorgeous, and b. a fabulous character, and c. should be singing more often. Great article about the jewishness here, thanks to Jonathan for sending it.

2. every time Will Schuster starts dancing. and singing. his acting usually makes me annoyed, but the rest is so lovely that I don't mind at all. also, SO sad I didn't see him in South Pacific

3. Mercedes. I think she might be my favorite. no question, this: is my favorite moment in the series so far. I bought the song on its own as soon as it came out on iTunes, and, according to my play count, I've listened to it 23 times since.

4. KRISTEN CHENOWETH. no further explanation is necessary, but I'll add that she should be tipsy all the time. also, 'Alone' was so cute

5. I love that they've made Will Schuster's wife such a caricature of a human being; I feel free to despise her and can spend all of my Glee-watching energy loving Emma, who sang "I Could have Danced All Night" while swirling and looking like a deer caught in headlights. That's just impressive.

6. any show that extols the virtues of musical theater is a-okay with me. any show that references Barbra Streisand in the second episode is golden forever.

To honor my vigorous love for the wonderfulness that is Glee, I just bought the soundtrack, and have been bopping around my room happily ever since. I really feel like this is going to be my favorite soundtrack for the next 6 months. At least.

did DC just skip fall and move right onto winter today?

brrr. It's cold in my living room. Time to move into my now heated (!) bedroom.

The past month has certainly been a lot calmer than the last one. Maybe not having a huge report to work on has something to do with it. Nonetheless, I'm feeling pretty good about work - I've had the time to go back and redo some earlier stuff, and to think about ways to improve the model, and those are finally turning into concrete ideas.

Twitter, which began as a way to find out the random thoughts of people from college and new friends in DC, has turned into a great way to get information about work, and to keep abreast of legislative news, even better than something like an E & E Daily. Plus, I like finding Twitterers who quote our work.

At the beginning of the month, I very seriously considered applying for grad school this coming year, specifically at an MPP program somewhere in the DC area -- the idea being that I would work while going to school. Still thinking about it, but maybe delaying that process until next year? I don't know, it's difficult when a lot of people are starting to go back to grad school and I feel like there are definitely skills I could gain from going, especially with an MPP program, since I could use some economics and policy skillz.

Speaking of skillz, I've been able to flex my interpreter skills the past few weeks in training to be a volunteer at the Zoo. I'm going to be volunteering in the Amazonia exhibit as an interpreter, basically doing the kind of stuff that I did at the Franklin Institute. Minus the live shows. Plus the live animals (win). Minus the being paid, plus the volunteering (actually, also a win because I've realized that interpreting is a really fun once-a-week thing for me and not as fun every day). I'm learning tons about the animals in the exhibit and brushing up on Tropical Ecology from my B-deis days.

Speaking of Tropical Ecology, or rather, really good books I read while I was studying Tropical Ecology, Tim Flannery, a very cool evolutionary biology and mammalogist (of The Eternal Frontier and Chasing Kangaroos fame) will be speaking at Politics and Prose on Saturday. I will be in New York City and therefore incapable of seeing him without splinching myself or getting a Time-Turner. I'm pretty sad I'm missing him, since he's Australian and therefore not in DC so often. And since, you know, The Eternal Frontier is in the top five books that make me excited about science.

Speaking of which, I want to get Richard Dawkins new book. I love his analogies and ways of presenting information, but don't love when he gets all preachy about the atheism.

One more day of work in this week, then Shabbos dinner, NYC on Saturday, and a Gold Family wedding (my cousin Josh) on Sunday. SO excited to see my Dad after 5 months of not seeing him.

obla-di obla-da, life goes on, la

This past week has been very weird in that I'm transitioning out of this intense go-go-go mode for the 50 States study (the paper and set of resources I just released). I definitely feel good about the work that I spent most of my summer on, and I'm getting some new projects to work on (our glossary, an update of our ACELA analysis etc), so that's good.

Although work has cooled down a bit, I still feel like I've been going non-stop recently, but in a really good way -- this past weekend was particularly good for taking advantage of all the wonderfulness DC has to offer. Friday night, Alli and I ordered in Indian Ocean (SO good), and then I went to an engagement party for Seth and Stacy (I was responsible for getting them to the party for the surprise part of it, and I must say, I was very Mission Impossible.) Fun times were had by all.

I woke up uber-early Saturday (okay, 8 am is not so early normally but for a Saturday . .. ) to find confetti all over my leg from the party the night before. Sweet. I also woke to a dramadrama email that I ended up wasting half of the day stressing about, but I'll ignore that one for now. I hopped on the Metro, expecting a mostly empty train. Instead, I was confronted by a PACKED train, full of people bearing American flags and various and sundry Obama- and Pelosi-hatin' signs. Being my relatively inquisitive self, I asked lots of questions, and totally pretended I was from Schwenksville, PA and that we had anything in common . . . I felt like I was on some sort Margaret-Mead-eqsue anthropological experiment. I had nothing in common with these people . . . totally nutty.

I left the Metro full of 'tea-baggers' (teehee) for the warm, comfortable Darwin Day Symposium at the museum of natural history -- I enjoyed 3 hours of evolutionary bio topics, including one great one on phylogenetic trees and spiders and another lovely one on statistical methods for comparing whether a given phenotypic pattern is more like phyletic gradualism or punctuated equilibrium . . . turns out Gould was right -- most of the time, they're finding that species tend toward stasis or a 'random walk' and that really directional evolution is pretty rare. Anyway, I left the museum around lunchtime, and walked to Foggy Bottom, where I met Alli to walk around the DC Veg Fest. We caught up with our friends Paul and Josh, enjoyed a game show with a nutritionist, and ate lots of lovely food before parting ways and heading home for the afternoon. I took my first nap in easily a month (which I enjoyed vigorously), and then went out for Thai with Jason and Gavi and some of his friends from the RAC. Came home and dealt with the unfortunate situation from that morning, and collapsed from exhaustion.

The next day, I staffed a fun trip to the Newseum with Rachel and her very fun BBYO kids -- a. awesome that it was free. b. that museum is amazing. I think it might be my favorite 'history' museum, unless you count the Met, which is obviously the second greatest museum in the whole world, second only to the Natural History museum in NY. The Newseum is so well-focused, with great interactives, and a wonderfully well-planned out structure . . . so good.

Also, I've spent much of the past five days tracking the FedEx website for my iPod touch. can't wait. !

09/09/09 and 09/09/99. which is better? hard to tell.

Tomorrow is 09/09/09. I’ve been waiting for this day for 10 years. Not really waiting in the chewing-my-fingernails, on-tenterhooks (what does that phrase even means?) sense of the word, more in the every now and then I think about this date sense. And it’s for the randomest reason.

Ten years ago tomorrow, Alli, Mona, and I were in the Poconos for a vacation, staying at the Galkin’s lake house, and thoroughly enjoying the cable television in the living room. At the time,our home TV only had three channels – ABC, NBC, and CBS, and ABC was the only one with solidly reliable reception (hence: lots of Oprah and General Hospital in our childhood memories). Anyway, we we were enjoying the cable, especially the MTV (!). To a 7^th-grader without cable having MTV for days straight is akin to the nirvana my I felt the first time I watched listened to Julie Andrews sing Camelot. Anyway, that year, the MTV video music awards were held on 9/9/99, which seemed like the coolest date EVER. I remember thinking that the next decade would be full of really fun dates, like 01/01/01, and 06/06/06. Frankly, I don’t remember a thing about any of those dates (okay, vague recollection that I was relieved the world didn’t get on 01/01/01), but I do remember figuring out how old I’d be in 2009, and thinking that I wouldn’t even recognize the 23-year-old me.

I suppose that’s partially true. I still look the same (maybe the glasses are a little less egregious, and my teeth aren’t sticking out at entirely un-human-ly angles) and I’m still over-enthusiastic, into putting on a show, and a bookworm of sorts. I’m pretty much sure I know less than I did in 7^th grade (I did go to the 1999 PA State Geography Bee, after all), and I certainly read less (much to my chagrin). But in a lot of ways, I’m really happy where I’ve landed, especially because of what tomorrow represents.

Tomorrow, we release our 50 State study of the house climate and energy bill, ACES, where we document the savings from energy efficiency and talk about how the bill could be made better for consumers and the economy. It’s pretty exciting stuff (well, I think it is), and it’s being released by Environment America in 41 different states. I’m really happy about the fact that I was the lead author on a major national report, and I’ve only been at the organization 9 months – I feel like I’ve learned more than I could possibly document here, but I’m most excited about what I DON’T know – politics is still new to me, and the possibilities of delving further into this fascinating world seem at this moment to be endless (we’ll see how I feel after tomorrow, but that’s how it feels tonight). Time for bed; Hill briefing in the morning (!).