Sisters, sisters

(I wrote this a few days ago, so apologies for the slight delay in posting!)

Waiting for my laundry to be done, so I'll take a few minutes to write a bit down. Yes, I should've done my laundry before now, but going to the gym and watching Pretty Little Liars and making dinner takes some serious concentration.

This weekend, Kara came to visit! Wooo! Friday afternoon Bailey and I went to Jazz in the Gardens, a weekly occurrence in the summertime when the National Sculpture Gardens have a jazz band playing from 5-8:30pm, and there's refreshments and a lot of people bring picnic food, and it's just a really nice atmosphere. It's absolutely PACKED, but it's a lot of fun. This week, I ran into Chelsea Collier in the Gardens, a girl from Seneca who I just found out is down in the area working as well. Small world indeed, especially because she's working a few blocks from my office. The weather was gorgeous, the band was great, and it was a nice way to end the week.

Kara showed up around 9:30pm, so we only had time to walk around Tenley for a bit, and visit my frisbee friends before we collapsed for the evening. Saturday morning, we were up and out bright and early in order to avoid most of the crowds, and get good spots in the air conditioning (it was around 95˚ and high high humidity all weekend). We went to Dupont Circle for breakfast, where we ran across an all-female percussion group performing in the circle. They were great, and very enthusiastic! You could tell they completely loved performing, and the sound was amazing. We wandered past my office, and then headed to the mall to be your oh-so-typical tourist. The day started at the Museum of American History, definitely the best one if you're a Branby. We were able to see the original Star-Spangled Banner, a huge collection of the inauguration ball dresses of the First Ladies, and a large exhibit dedicated to the effect of war on American history, among many others. My favorite part was getting to see the inauguration dresses of Jackie O. and Michelle, and the Civil War portion of the war exhibit. The staff has made the war exhibit surprisingly interactive, and it even included a real stuffed horse from the Civil War!

Following the museum, we wandered through the Sculpture Garden to the National Archives, but there was a wait of more than 45 minutes to get INTO the building, and neither of us felt like getting sunburned for the sake of the Declaration. We headed instead to the Capitol building and wandered through the exhibits in the new visitor's center. It's really an amazing collection of documents, architecture, and objects, and brings to life the workings of the government. Hopefully I'll be able to get closer to all of the proceedings through Bailey's internship, but it was nice to be able to show Kara around a bit. The rest of Saturday consisted of wandering to Union Station, a local Target (to replace my sunscreen; the mean Capitol guards wouldn't let me take it inside!), and back to Tenley to have movie night with Bailey.

Sunday morning started much the same, with Kara and I heading to Dupont for breakfast. This time, though, we went to a restaurant Laura and Hillary took me to a few weeks ago, called Le Pain Quotidien (which translates to something about a communal table and bread). It's an all-organic place, with the cutest interior and really delicious food. We both ordered a Paris Ham and aged Gruyere omelette, and split a delicious fresh-fruit salad – delicious! We found an adorable little farmer’s market, too, that I’ll definitely be going back to to find some fruit and vegetables and yogurt. From Dupont we headed to the Jefferson Memorial, and spent the rest of the morning playing around the Tidal Basin before Kara had to head home.

Work’s been kind of slow this week, mostly just your typical intern busy work. My boss is out of town most days, traveling for meetings and other business events, and about 2/3 of the office is currently at a conference in Raleigh, NC that we’re hosting about carbon markets and other conservation issues. Soon, though, we’ll be gearing up for VT and Chicago!