Visits

Monday, June 27th
My mom and sister, Alisha came to DC.  They got to my house as I was leaving for work.  Alisha had never been to DC and my mom hadn't been here since she was little.  The plan was that I would go to work and they would do all the tourist stuff during the day.  We ate so much food.  We ate at Floriana in Dupont.  If you are in DC and like Italian... eat there.  We had a Bruchetta appetizer followed by a Mussel/Lobster bisque and some sort of beef pasta stuff.  And a 1/2 liter of Sangria. I had never tried Mussels before, but since I am on a culinary voyage this summer, I tried them.  I like mussels!!! Who knew?!?

Later in the week we ate at Meskerem.  It is a Ethiopian restaurant that is well known in DC. The food is served family style and you eat with your hands by using a pancake like bread.  The first few things we ordered were pretty good.  The last thing... not so much.

To sum up the week, I worked all day.  Mom and Alisha walked all day.  Then we all ate and drank. lots.  It was very nice to see them! :)

*I'm skipping a few days here*

Sunday, July 3rd, 2011

Charlie flew to DC to see me! He got here in the morning so we walked around the National Mall at the Folk Festival.  We tried to go to the dress rehearsal for the concert that plays on the 4th at the mall.  We got in and sat down.  We watched some of the banjo-playin music... but it was unbelievably humid and hot that we left before any of the "stars" performed.  I think we lasted about 20 minutes.  After cooling down we went out to eat at a place called Neisha.  Neisha is a Thai food place that is not far from where I live.  I had the pineapple fried rice.  YUMMMMMM.  The rice had shrimp and chunks of pineapple and it was all placed in a hollowed out pineapple shell.

July 4th
Charlie and I went to his cousin's house for a BBQ.  His cousin's girlfriend had flown in from Hong Kong and is an excellent cook.  She made SO much food.  It was awesome.  After hanging out all day we drove to Hain's Point to watch the fireworks.  Unfortunately the fireworks had moved from previous years so our view was obstructed by trees.  It was still a good fourth because I got to spend time with Charlie :)
 
**yes I know I write about food a lot, but I'm good at eating :).  Plus the rest of my day is usually almost the same everyday.**

Lab SUMMARY
I have quite the list of things I need to do at work.  Unfortunately most of those things require PCR tubes (a type of tube) and we are out.  So today I spent all day working on data analysis for one of the post Docs.  I was sectioning some brains for the same post doc, but I broke the tray the brain goes on and had to make another.  OOPS!  So tomorrow I'll be sectioning two brains, doing data analysis, hopefully "digesting" more tails to run PCR, and snipping some mice tails to do more genotyping.    I need to put in some extra hours tomorrow and Thursday because I have friends coming on Thursday evening and I really want to go on a Capital Tour with them on Friday.  Which would require me to leave work early.  Sooo, I need to do work tomorrow!!!  I'm going to try to go in early and stay late if necessary.