Happy first day of August! Can you believe we’re in the home stretch of summer already?
I realized I haven’t really checked in about what I’ve been up to since AwesomeCon. (Vlogs are coming… I think…) So let’s get going with just a bit before July started!
Ai Wei Wei instameet
I had the opportunity to go to the Hirshhorn for their new exhibit, Ai Wei Wei: Trace at Hirshhorn, on the opening day just a bit before the museum opened to the public thanks for the lovely HM. (Fun fact: She also was responsible for my first ever Instameet, which means that she is responsible for me getting involved with the Instagram community at large!)
The exhibit consists of two main pieces:
- Trace, which was originally housed at Alcatraz, and features portraits of political prisoners made of Lego. The children’s toy adds to the pixelated feel of the portraits, as several of the original source photos are only available as blurred, pixelated surveillance footage stills. Some of the featured figures are still in prison today.
- The Plain Version of the Animal That Looks Like a Llama but Is Really an Alpaca, which is a wiiiiiiiiide wallpaper composed of arrangements of the Twitter bird, surveillance cameras, handcuffs, and “alpacas”. These are actually grass mud horses (草泥马), a subversive Chinese meme that sounds like an expletive directed at your mom that is a penultimate Chinese symbol of fighting censorship and Ai Wei Wei has a history of incorporating the furry creature in his art.
It’s a great exhibit and I highly recommend stopping by to see it when you visit the Hirshhorn!
Gretchen’s Baby Shower
This was my first-ever baby shower (outside of one for our account lead at work) and it was a lot of fun! Gretchen is the Yelp NoVa Community Manager and it’s been so great being on the NoVa team since I moved to this area. Her sister and sister-in-law, Jen and Taylor, did such a great job with the decorations! My only regrets were having her registry gifts sent directly to her house (I showed up with just some little trinkets for her to enjoy because in my head, I didn’t want her to have more stuff to bring home? This was kind of a silly thought) and then dropping the clothespins for the game down my front and not realizing I should have won. Oops! It was still a great time and a great day to celebrate Gretchen and her incoming little one!
Daybreaker DC @ The Hive
The National Building Museum has their summer installment up and it is Studio Gang’s Hive. I got to attend a fun Daybreaker where I was able to do yoga AND dance in the cool PVC pipe hive. It was an extra treat because Ben accompanied me, since my usual Daybreaker crew was unable to make it to this one and I really really wanted to see The Hive.
Girl’s Night
The evening after Daybreaker, I had a great girl’s night with my friends. We haven’t had one like this since… December? We had Annie’s pro photobooth setup, delicious snacks, a BUMPIN’ 2000s summer dance jams playlist playing, face masks, and Monopoly Deal, a surprisingly addicting game.
sweetlife block party
sweetgreen is a popular salad chain that started out in DC and for the past few years, they’ve had a big concert/festival up in Columbia, Maryland. This year, they kicked it back to their roots, with the original sweetlife festival being a block party in DC. The weather was pretty great, if a bit hot and balmy, so I ate a lot of gelato. (Thank you Dolcezza!) There was great music, there was a fun photobooth with vegetable props, and lots of yummy food. It was really great spending an evening with my friends at maybe the hippest event I have ever stumbled into. (I kept looking around thinking someone would realize I was not cool enough to be there…) It was a night to remember for sure.
Devika’s Birthday Brunch
I got to see my friend Devika’s beautiful house and meet her super kind mom and meet her super nice friends. It was just a low-key, really nice party at her house, I’m so grateful for my friends and for her (and her nice mom).
Sunflowers at McKee-Beshers
I’ve been seeing photos online for years of people frolicking in fields of sunflowers and I finally got to see them in person myself! The McKee-Beshers Wildlife Management Center plants fields of sunflowers every year to attract wildlife, and I was able to visit twice in one weekend. On the Saturday, the clouds overhead looked extremely ominous, so we tried to take our photos fast. Suddenly, the wind picked up and, despite it being a really hot and humid day, the air temperature very quickly dropped and got comfortable. I didn’t have much time for relief because it then started pouring, and we stayed in the rain for just a while longer, soaking in the sight of the blooms in the storm before running to the car.
We went back the next day with Ben’s parents and got some nice photos in the sun. I did miss that cool summer storm breeze, though, and the crowds were significantly bigger.
Visiting Delaware
My brother is interning in Delaware this summer, so my dad and I visited him this past weekend. It was actually my first time going to Delaware as the destination and not as a state I pass through on my way to/from New Jersey. It was a lot of fun to see my brother and to watch Girl’s Trip, despite it not being a good, er… family movie?
Yacht Ride
My dad had a friend who invited us out on his yacht, so I got to enjoy a truuuuuly beautiful day on the water. The weather was PERFECTION and I really enjoyed being on the water, it remains one of my favorite things in the world.
With that, I am looking forward to August! There is more summer fun coming up and I am trying to stay in the summer mindset in September, since it’s always hot for most of September anyway and the autumnal equinox isn’t until the last week of September anyway!
What do you have planned for the rest of summer?
What are you going to miss about summer?
Sip of Starrshine 