The Weekend Update

I usually like to theme my entries, but this weekend's activities don't seem to really align in any coherent sense. No matter, I want to share some stories anyway, so breaking convention, let's see the weekend's "Best Of," in no particular order!

- I went to fiddle lesson #2, and my teacher tells me that I'm doing really well so far; in his words, I "have a good ear" and will "definitely make a good player" (read: someday, with a lot of practice). At the moment, I can barely eke out an approximation of the theme from the Ken Burns' documentary about the Civil War, as apparently this is a good first tune to learn. I can manage any one of the 3,000 or so components of playing this danged instrument (i.e. finding the right notes, bowing in a perpendicular fashion, holding the bow correctly, keeping my arm loose...) if and ONLY if I'm focusing on that one thing. Put them all together though, and I sound... amazing. Colleen, I'm really going to test your patience for a while until I get the hang of this thing.

- After the amazing fiddle lesson, however, I definitely got lost in Northern Virginia, and spent far longer than I would have liked driving aimlessly around Fairfax County (damn them and their lack of street lighting and poor signage!!) before seeing a sign that pointed towards "Washington" and following it until I hit recognizable turf. My little "detour" took me past the White House and through a bunch of one-way streets in NW before I actually wound up at home. Needless to say, DC = not a very driver-friendly city. I feel lame to have been bested by the transportation authorities in N. VA, and I resent this feeling tremendously. The good news, however, is that I know the city well enough now to be able to drive around without a map and (ultimately) wind up where I need to be.

- Spent an entire morning hauling a futon across the city in my ZipCar for a friend. Payment included pancakes and specialty fall-themed TJ's beers, plus a chance encounter with a black and latino motorcycle rally.

- Had a ridiculously epic walk across the city on Saturday, which involved a number of excellent things. Some highlights included: eating fresh shrimp and oysters at a waterfront fish market, getting my picture with a man in a dog costume (although I'd like to imagine it was a young Drew Barrymore in her E.T. years), a geeky pilgrimage to the NPR headquarters (i.e. the mothership... haha), scavenging for seaweed in Chinatown, a contemporary art museum (more below), and, oh yes, the well-deserved Frappuccino for energy. All told, 6.04 miles and five hours of awesomeness.

- At the Hirshorn Museum (Smithsonian's contemporary/modern art collection), there were fewer bizarre pieces than I remembered from last summer, but definitely a few winners, like the seizure-inducing wall of video feed and a film of different things lighting on fire. First prize went to this dark room with a very dimly lit red wall in back. You had to hold onto a railing to walk into the room, and were expected to sit on this wooden bench in the back. However, since it was essentially pitch black and IMPOSSIBLE to see anything for the first minute or so after you enter, you basically had to make a fool out of yourself and stumble blindly forward until you hit one of the following things: the bench, the wall, or the person next to you. I managed to accomplish all three before finding a seat, whereupon I was molested by a young Japanese tourist who, in her desperate search for the bench, groped my ear and half of my face. Basically it was the funniest situation I've come across in a long time. I couldn't stop laughing, and once my eyes adjusted so that I could see the silhouettes of each newbie entering the cave, I had the luxury of mocking them just as I'm sure the people who were there before mocked me. I'm betting the artist designed it as some sort of social experiment which would force total strangers to become oddly intimate and vulnerable in a dark room, all under the pretense of modern art. End result: total hilarity.

- I had a brush with celebrity as I met the boy (drumroll please) who used to date MISS FINLAND 2006!! (No small accomplishment: she is exactly what you would imagine a Scandinavian beauty queen to look like. Go ahead, picture it. Yep, that's her.) Apparently, even dating MF06 is cause to be in the Finnish newspapers, and I was regaled with stories of how he is now a recognized personality in Finland because of their frequent appearances in the gossip rags. So if I ever make it to Helsinki, I'll be able to drop names and wow people with my cool connections. Ha.

'Nuff said. All told, it was a good weekend.