Three of Three

So our last trip of the summer was to Washington DC, we saw family, more family, and old roommates (yes there were lots of reasons to go besides that we just wanted to see DC). We stayed with my Aunt, toured with Brad's family and I extended my stay to chill with my roommate Camille. DC was almost the complete opposite feel from our west coast adventure, defiantly a more conservative feel. We rented bikes the first day to see all the monuments at the Mall the first day (good idea because it was super hot and humid that day, riding the bikes helped give us a breeze). We also spent time in some Smithsonian museums, the White House, the Capital, Mt. Vernon, and the Pentagon. Brad always loves museums, but he was even more excited because he just finished reading 1776 and was all into learning all he could about George Washington now. I loved the patriotic feel that you get just from being in the city, it is just in the air there. And we will definitely have to go back some day because there is so much to see that you can't do it all in just 3 days.

Here we are ready to go on our bikes

We found Colorado at the WWII memorial

Classic tracing the name at the Vietnam memorial

Standing in front of the wall of names

Pointing to the tip of the Washington memorial (really it is much bigger than it seems here)

One picture, Two Abes

Brad is reading outside the library of Congress

There was also lots of security checks to go through all day long

Here I am outside our nations capitol (congress was out of session so there was like no one there)

Wow we found Brigham Young at the Capitol

Also found Lady Liberty (who is much taller)

We tried to find Pres Obama, but he wasn't home

Brad found lots that peaked his interest in the American History Library

Brad is ready to fight with the troops

We also spent some time with our childhood friend Kermit

Brad with the eternal flame that is still on in the rain (it may not look like it but it was raining) that is lit over JFKs grave

We also went to Washington's home (he was also not there)

But a statue of him was

Iwo Jima was much bigger than I thought it would be

The FDR memorial was full of water fountains and statues depicting quotes from his life

Thanks for following us around DC and actually making it through all those pictures.

Locks for Love

I did it again, third time donating my hair to Locks of Love. The first time doing my hair after my haircut (awesome job by Sarah) I realized that it really is the shortest it has ever been. But I was encouraged by the response from Brad, who before the cut was sceptical about me going short.

San Fran

Brad got 4 weeks off this summer from school and research so we are using this time to fit in 3 fabulous trips. Trip one Brad already took a week to visit Colorado and do a sweet backpacking trip with his old roommate, he still has to post that one since I wasn’t there. Trip two, San Francisco. I would name this itinerary ‘tourist and beyond.’ We took transit everywhere, well besides the taxi Brad and I had to get from the airport in the middle of the night. We saw the Golden Gate, the Warf, Pier 39, Ghirardelli square (and got three pieces of free sample chocolates), rode the cable car, and did all the typical tourist in San Fran things to do. But in addition we had food culture day: Japantown we had a Japanese bakery treat made with some sort of ground up rice, The Mission we ate at a taqueria, Chinatown we had an eggy custard cup, in Little Italy we had gelato, and even the hippie district (Haight/Ashbury) we had wonderful crepes. We also visited my work and got to see the traffic wall up in action. We visited the Golden Gate park and tried to get in a beach day, but as warned the nor cal beaches just aren’t as warm as so cal. Even though we didn’t end up changing into our swimmies we still made sure our feet got wet. There were two things that I failed at for the trip, first our hotel was in a pretty bad area of town so we got to enjoy hearing the shady characters outside our hotel all night, and two I didn’t get Alcatraz tickets in time. So next time you plan a trip to SF make sure you get your Alcatraz tickets before hand because they do sell out. So instead of going to Alcatraz we took a sail boat tour which went by it and under the Golden Gate Bridge too. All in all it was nice to see our friends again and show them the real Sco.

Above is a pic of the device that changes the lights for the fire trucks (this is what I worked on when I was there and so I got to see them actually constructed)

Here we are at the Full House Park and also a sweet view of the city

Shad and Brad on the Cable Car

Here we are chowing down on our burritos

Here is the Chinese Custard Tart

The corner of Haight and Ashbury

Brad found a new hat at the park

And of course Lombard Street (no car though so we only walked down it)

Brad still loved playing at the beach

We were lucky that there was no fog the day we went to see the bridge!

Here is a nice city line pic from our sailing tour

And of course proof that I got some sweetness gelato for TKO

That Was Awkward

So Brad and I have each had a kind of awkward experience lately and I thought it would make a good post so that you can see some of the everydayness of our lives. First, I said “That was awkward” to Brad and some friends after returning to the table from the lady’s room. We were eating dinner at Giordano’s, Chicago’s most famous pizza place, after a temple trip. They are acclaimed to have the best deep dish pizza, which is funny because we found out we had eaten there before with Brad’s family when we randomly chose the closes pizza restaurant while walking around in Chicago. Anyways, so the awkward part takes me back to inside the woman’s restroom washing my hands, when a young teenage boy walks in and starts heading towards the stalls. I look at him with probably a puzzled look and I am thinking ‘is that really a boy’ and then respond with “you know this is the woman’s restroom?” The boy responds to me like I am the weird one with “yeah I am waiting for my mom” and continues to enter the stall. I look around all confused, there are only two stalls in the bathroom and I just came out of the other one, then I walk out to see if there is for some reason a long line at the men’s room, nada. That is when I walked back to the table still trying to figure out why I had just experience what I just did…I don’t know what is wrong with some kids these days, he is just lucky that I was so confused by it all or else I would have had some words to say.

Awkward number two, for Brad. Brad has been doing a week of externship, which includes getting paid to follow around an internal medicine doctor. Brad has really enjoyed it because the Doctor lets him go in and do all the initial interviewing of patients all by himself, then he reports to the doctor and takes his guesses on what is wrong. So the other day we both returned from work to a house with no electricity. We decided that this must mean we should go get fast food for dinner, so we opted for our local Taco Bell so that Brad could prove that you really can get lunch for $3 (from an earlier discussion of ours). As we were sitting there eating, we spent more than $3 but it is true you can get three tacos for $3 still, Brad tells me to look over at a lady sitting across the restaurant and says “Wow, that is awkward”. So I look over and take a unsuspicious scan at the woman that he is talking about curious to see what is so awkward. I think to myself as I am looking at her that she looks pretty average compared to some of the other people there at Taco Bell, this one is past 60^th St. if that helps you know what kind of people are around. As I am still looking at the lady in my peripheral Brad says to me that he knows more about this lady than probably anyone else in around right now. I flash another puzzled look, and he continues to explain that he just did her interview in the clinic, really she must have also come directly to Taco Bell after also (this was really coincidental since the clinic was 30 min away from where we were at). Brad was trying to decide if he should go up and say hi or if that would make the situation weirder. Since I didn’t think the woman had looked over and recognized him we hurried and slipped out of the restaurant and Brad decided to ask the doctor what he should do in that type of situation in the future.