March 13th-16th, 2003
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Wooohooo! D.C! Another reason to visit Kelly and Chris! This time it is to help a friend
get a job. Kelly and Chris have moved and I have not seen their new place. Last week was the big martial arts tournament,
so I missed that, but this means more quality time with Chris and Kelly! Chris just spent 3 weeks in China and Kelly spent
a week in Vienna or some place like that with her parents.
Jen I've only for a short while. She's graduating in May and looking for anything in her field that is hiring. Very few companies are recruiting at this time, but it is better now than it was a year ago. Jen is awesome when it comes to money so she should have no problem convincing anyone to hire her. She already has an offer from Glaxo-Welcome in RTP, but is looking around for the best that the market can provide. D.C. has meny opportunities if you know where to find them. I'm just going in the role of a tour guide to show her around the parts I know when she's done with the whole interview thing. We ditched Raleigh Thursday night and hauled to D.C. She stayed at a hotel in Chantilly and I stayed at Chris and Kelly's place. Friday I took her from the hotel to the interview with Centrex Homes and I worked from the apartment. I drove out to meet Chris for lunch and had some good mexican food. After dropping Chris back at work, I finished the work day at their apartment and headed over to pick up Jen from the interview... little did I know that they would keep her until 7 PM. That has to be one of the longest interviews, 10 hours. She told me about her near-death experience anbd I dropped her off at the hotel to revive a bit before heading back over to meet the group for dinner. Jeannie and her boyfriend were over at the apartment. All of us piled into a couple cars and headed out for dinner at a mall downtown. Good food, but a loud atmosphere so it made it difficult to have good conversation. Chris left early to head home because Nikki was coming into town for the evening. The rest of us finished up and piled into the cars to head out for a little fun on the town. The bars were fairly crowded, so we headed west out of the downtown area to find a nice pool hall. We chanced upon Josh and Dimitri and played pool for a few hours. After that we called it a night and dropped Jen off at the hotel. The next day we all took the metro into the Mall. Jen wanted to see all of the monuments, so we hit the Washingtown and Jefferson early. There was a protest going on for the war in Iraq. I'm guessing five to ten thousand people were present, but it was hard to tell. They centered on the Washington monument and then did a march to the White House around 2 PM. We looked at some of the other buildings nearby, like the Holocaust Museum, but did not spend much time in any one place. For lunch we headed over to the Chinatown area and stopped in at the ESPN Game Zone. Decent food but as always, pricey due to it being D.C. After lunch, most of the group departed, Nikki had to head out of town and Chris and Kelly had a wedding to attend. That left Jen and I to hit whatever else we wanted.
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We walked to the Capitol area and took a few shots from the outside. I think due to the protest and the
war about to begin, they were not letting anyone to the upper level. The pool in front of the Capitol was drained which was just weird.
One big concrete tub with nothing in it. Everyone was walking across it, so we followed along. The protesters were packing up and leaving
and a stiff breeze was blowing through. It was a good day to walk around and enjoy the sites, even if it was a bit cool.
Most of the Smithsonians were crowded with a line out the building, so we avoided those and hiked over to the Lincoln memorial. We did swing by the Smithsonian castle garden which has been there for quite a while, but I had never been through it before. There are some fairly interesting landscapes and sculptures in the garden as well as some neat water fountains. The Lincoln Memorial is a hike! They had sectioned off part of the Mall to work on the new WWII memorial that will be installed by the end of 2004. We skirted around the construction and caught some of the scenery on the side. The view from the Lincoln Memorial is supposed to be a great reflecting pool of the Washington Monument, but with the big cranes in the way there was not much of a view. From the memorial, we headed over to the Vice President's Office and the White House. The security was pretty tight at the time. They were not letting anyone approach the fence of the White House nor would they let any car pass in front without authorization. There were armed guards standing post at the concrete barrier, but they were pretty friendly and let me climb up on the barrier to take pictures. After the White House, we headed to the Metro to get out of the town. On the way out, we passed one of the block parks inside the city and there was a Capoeira group playing a game. The roda was only a dozen strong, but still looked to be having a good time. We watched for a few minutes and then headed back. The night ended pretty early. We were both pretty zonked out from the day of walking and the long night previous. Chris and Kelly were off at the wedding until late in the evening. I dropped Jen off, watched some TV, did a bit of surfing and then called it a night. The next morning, Jen and I headed to the Mall again. We had intentions of seeing the Holocaust Museum in its entirety, but that turned out to be a bigger task than expected. We saw the public side of the museum and then walked over to the Aerospace Museum. The security was pretty tight, but it was still early in the morning and the lines were not long at all. We hit many of the exhibits there and then decided we had seen enough of the Mall and headed back to have lunch with the rest of the group before departing from D.C.
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Lunch was at a Tex-Mex place near Chris and Kelly's house. We had a decent bit of food and then Jeff showed up to chat a bit
before we had to take off. It is always so good to hang out with friends...
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