Friday Five

The Excuse

Two weeks in a row! Go Me!

The Week

There are weeks when I get to go somewhere cool, see interesting things, and hang out with people that I like. Then there are weeks like this when I have to go to DC and hang out with Abram.

All kidding aside, it was a fantastic week.

My class was in Arlington, but through the magic of Hotwire I wound up staying at the Hyatt by the Capitol Building. While I had a bit of a commute, the location of the hotel was fantastic.

Abram and I were able to hang out quite a bit. We watched the Giants game and the Chargers game on Sunday (and neither of us want to talk about those games.) We took in the Georgetown/Syracuse game on Wednesday – great game, great atmosphere if not a close game.

The weather nearly did me in. I mentioned before when I visited Morristown, NJ that I could see myself living in the Northeast again. My very wise wife reminded me they have winter out there, but I was not going to be deterred – I could handle winter again. Yeah, not so much. It only got down to +20 at its worst when I was out and about and I thought I was going to freeze to death. I think we’ll be staying in San Diego, thank you very much.

The Exercise

Yeah, huh.

The Restaurant

I managed to find a small sushi joint just around the corner from my hotel named Momoyama. Upon walking in (to what appears to have been an apartment at one point) I was greeted by (I'm assuming) the chef's wife and co-owner. The place is very small (21 chairs by my count), and there was one table taken and someone sitting at the bar. The waitress directed me to a table, and then pointed me at the TV. She changed it to ESPN without even asking.

She pointed out the specials - $9 for a "tuna boat", which came with a handful of different items involving (oddly enough) tuna and salad - as well as happy hour - $2 beer/saki and $1 nigiri.

I started with the tuna boat, which had a couple of small rolls as well as two pieces of nigiri. The spicy rolls had a good bit of kick to them, which was nice. Everything was very fresh and very tasty. I moved on to a couple pieces of nigiri to take advantage of the happy hour (which the waitress was polite enough to tell me was ending momentarily) - red snapper and yellowtail, both of which were great. I finished off with an "Orange Roll", which contained krab and avocado and was wrapped with salmon - again, just fantastic.

The bill came to $25 – a steal at twice the price!

The Travel Note

My class was over in Arlington but as I mentioned I was staying in Capitol Hill. As a result, I wound up riding the Metro every day during rush hour – read: times when damn tourists^[1] shouldn’t be on the train. I learned that people apparently don’t grok the concept of how a subway system works.

I had to nearly shove a group of people out of the way who had stopped at the end of an escalator – Ummm… These stairs are moving and I can’t stop.

There was a brief outage of service, so there were many people waiting to get on trains when they started back up again. When this happens they run one right after the other. But sure enough there was one guy who was going to catch the train I was on – everyone else be damned. We were packed into the train, but he leaned against the door demanding we shove in even tighter rather than wait. Finally, he was able to shove his way onto the train after a good 3 minutes.

And finally – my personal favorite. There’s a good 2-3 warnings they’re about to close the doors before they actually do. After the second, the guy standing next to me decided this would be a good time to stick his head out the door to look around. Sure enough – he got his head caught in the doors. I would feel sorry for him if, well, he didn’t stick his head in the doors.

The Five

One of the my favorite recent trends with DVDs is for TV shows to be released in that format. It’s great for someone like myself who travels and needs entertainment on a plane (I find TV shows work better on a plane than movies), as well as being able to watch shows we had missed before. Here’s the 5 shows I find myself watching most commonly on DVD:

1. Dexter – A Showtime series about a serial killer. Yeah, it’s a tad disturbing and morbid, but it’s such a great show. Watch two episodes – if you’re not hooked I’ll be amazed.
2. The West Wing – I loved this series when it was on the air. It’s great to be able to go back and rewatch the series. It’s also amazing how timely the show remains.
3. SportsNight - I’ve mentioned in the past how much I love this show. They recently came out with a 10th anniversary edition of the DVD set which my wonderful wife was kind enough to buy me for Christmas. I thoroughly enjoyed the different cast interviews as well as watching some of my favorite episodes again.
4. House – The show does have a bit of an everyplot, but it’s not the medical part that really interests me. It’s the exploration of human nature and societal demands that intrigues me.
5. Animaniacs and Pinky & the Brain – Cartoons produced by Steven Speilberg in the mid 90’s. I don’t watch them nearly as often as I’d like, but I still get a good chuckle out of them.

^[1]An inside family joke