David at the Hirschorn

My poor friend David.  I drag him to a temporary exhibition that's all about color and the man is colorblind.  So his experience of this piece was completely different than mine. In related news, shortly before we left for the Hirschorn, David says: "What is the difference between blue and purple?" And now, photos of David at the Hirschorn: This photograph is particularly interesting to me because he is red/green colorblind.  This probably looks like a normally-lit portrait to him.

Random from the D80

I'm really hard on my cameras.  Lenses, I coddle to death but camera bodies get banged around, dropped, rattled, bumped.  And because I like to have a camera on me at all times, it tends to be the one that can sustain the most damage.  Therefore, my "bang around" camera is the D80, demoted from main camera to backup camera and finally to "oh, do I still have that?" camera.  So it sits in my purse and comes out when I'm bored or on the metro and cursing myself for not doing more street. Today I downloaded the files to see what was on there.  Snaps from a hotel tour, Jasmine Star from her little speaking thing a while back, metro shots and, well... cheese. little girl on the washington dc metro dc metro street photography Sooooo there was this cheese.  Moody Blue, made by Roth Kase.  I tasted this cheese at Cheesetique (a magical place, you must go if you are near!) and then it disappeared from their shelves.  Every time I took David (the best friend, not the husband - that's George, who hates cheese) to a cheese store, we would look for the cheese but it was nowhere to be found.  So for my birthday, the ever-intrepid David actually phoned Roth Kase and specially-ordered an entire block of the stuff.  Yes, folks, what you see here is a seven pound block of blue cheese. seven pound block of blue cheese Oh, that huge cake-like slice cut out of it?  That's the part I had consumed about a month after receiving the block.  At this rate, I estimate it will take me near two years to finish the cheese, accounting for vacations and getting tired of it and such.  In the meantime, isn't it kinda gross?!  You can see where they drilled in to put the mold in.  Fascinating!  Ah, cheese. It is one of life's supreme pleasures.

My surprise birthday party (or, my husband is ridiculously awesome)

My husband is not a planner.  When we go out, I pick the restaurant.  If I don't have a wedding on a Saturday night, I'm the one who decides if it's bowling or art gallery or movie or skeeball.  I planned the entirety of our Italy trip.  In the four-odd years we've been together, I have seen him put together a handful of house parties and one birthday party - four years ago on my last birthday (yep, I'm a leap day baby!).  So imagine the extent of my surprise, believing we were going to fancy dinner, when I came out of the elevator to find tons of friends and my PARENTS and BROTHER yelling "surprise" at me.  (All photos are compliments the wonderful Marcella Treybig.) My mom and stepdad (blurry, behind her). This is the "I can't believe you pulled this off" look for George. And this is the face of someone who realizes her brother has flown from California to be there. George explains how he pulled off this feat. No one had ever thrown me a surprise party, before.  It was pretty neat.  Yesterday, I got to play tour guide.  We gave them our patented "night tour" of the monuments because we had to somehow squeeze in a two-hour lunch at Jaleo.  You gotta know what's important.  Then we hit up the Air and Space. In sum, my husband and friends and family are totally amazing and I'm so grateful to be surrounded by such an outstanding group of people.  Looking forward to the next four years!