On the Ground and in the Air

P3292605
Originally uploaded by KierDuros.

Got up early on Saturday morning and made the crawl over to Seth's place for tasty pancakes.

From there, a bunch of us made our way down to the Kite Festival near the Washington Monument and, of course, the Cherry Blossom Festival around the tidal basin.

It was nice--a little chilly in shady spots, but nice. More importantly, the company was good. I always like having the chance to run about with people I've only met once or twice (or never before). You learn so much more through actual out-and-about interaction than you do in the dark and loud club-type environment (or the almost pre-scripted for geek-dom game nights... which are, of course, fun in their own way).

After a few hours of watching kites, marveling at cherry blossoms and eating cheese and pretzel chips, that crew called it an afternoon and I segued into the second group of friends of the day.

Doug, Mguyet, Rhiannon and a few other people spotted my hat in the crowd and popped over just in time for me to join them in their wanderings. Later, as other people went their own ways, Doug's mom joined the crew.

We did a whole lot of walking around--again checking out cherry blossoms and magnolia trees and kites--and eventually decided it was time to eat. We didn't quite realize what time it was and found ourselves trying to get seating at the beginning of the dinner rush. What we didn't know at all, as we hit the Gallery Place restaurant area, was that our search for food was timed perfectly to coincide with the circus getting out.

Yeah. Crowded doesn't even begin to describe things.

And so, we hopped on the metro (ok, more like fought our way on) and decided DuPont circle would be a more sensible venue for food. Which it was. mmmm... tasty Thai food. (And super thanks to having friends willing to spontaneously pay for dinner... despite my protestations. Makes it all the tastier.)

Still needing to waste a bit of time, we headed down the street a little more to Cosi and chowed on some dessert type things.

Again, I parted ways with my traveling companions and made my way a few bocks down to Spellbound where adventure was had. (But that's another story all together.)

All in all a very good day. Of course, come Sunday afternoon when I woke up, my legs and feet were hating me something fierce. But that was expected.