Tag: friends

Busy Chanukah?

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I’ve had a very eventful Chanukah, actually! Although I’m not Jewish, I figured this would be a good way to mark the time period and also its a fun holiday where you get to eat fried food (hit me up with some latke and sufganiyot) and play with dreidels and chocolate gelt. (In another life, I was destined to marry a nice Jewish boy.)

Let us begin!

On the first day of Chanukah, I spent the day ambling about the National Aquarium. I’ve been 2 times before, but I have this apparently unique habit of wanting to read every single sign. All of them. After all, someone worked very hard to make the signs and I want to learn and know what I’m looking at when I’m in an aquarium/museum/art gallery! It was nice to spend the day there without having someone rush me through the exhibits.

This is Calypso, their sea turtle. She is missing a fin/foot but is still the star of the aquarium.

I got to see the beautiful little golden lion tamarins, looking at me with their giant eyes and hugging each other.
(They later started humping each other about arm’s-length away from me and I will just assure myself that doesn’t mean anything.)

I had a lovely dinner and a lovely birthday cake. (But srsly, can a girl get some Carvel ice cream cake with those delectable chocolate crunchies?)

Chocolate cake!!! With a snowman and a tree on it. (They weren't edible...)
Chocolate cake!!! With a snowman and a tree on it. (They weren’t edible…)

I took my dad to the airport on Thursday (before seeing the last Hobbit film again) because my grandfather is unwell and he wants to look after him. This would begin a long weekend of me chauffeuring my family around.

On Friday, I was able to crash attend my old company’s holiday party at – wait for it – the Newseum! For those unfamiliar, the Newseum is a really cool museum that looks at our history and relationship with news. News is intensely important in informing us what is going on, whether in our own background or across the world, and it’s really amazing to see how far the news has come as well as how far we have come in parallel with the news.

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Bartending in an elevator
Bartending in an elevator
I was craving doughnuts and LO AND BEHOLD! Doughnuts, macarons, and tiny pies
I was craving doughnuts and LO AND BEHOLD! Doughnuts, macarons, and tiny pies

Also it was fun scaring the bejeezus out of people who thought they would never see me again.

Even though it’s not free admission (SADNESS) (in a town with all the free Smithsonian institutions, it’s difficult to get me to pay for a museum or art gallery or zoo), I would really like to come back to the Newseum for a proper visit. While it’s a really cool venue, I don’t think it’s a great place for a celebratory party, given that a lot of news is, well, bad news. The coat check line hugged the wall with all of the Pulitzer Prize-winning photos and people were stumbling around drunkenly through the 9/11 exhibit. It felt distasteful, in my opinion, but that’s no fault of the museum’s.

A tissue box provided by the museum in the 9/11 exhibit
A tissue box provided by the museum in the 9/11 exhibit
One of the antennae from the Twin Towers

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In any case, I had a lot of fun with my old coworkers and I’m glad I was able to see so many old familiar faces.
(ALSO WE HAVE A SLOW-MO VIDEO)

I came back from DC really late that evening, and was supposed to go to an alumni meeting Saturday morning but I totally slept in and missed it, whoops. Luckily, they very kindly invited me out to lunch and we had dumpling at “Mama’s Dumplings” (aka China Bistro) and tried the famous new bubble tea place SnowBots for some snow cream! I don’t really have many photos from Saturday but it was nice to catch up with this group from college that I really had fallen out of touch with. I also picked up my brother from school after picking up an extra boba for him as a post-finals treat.

On Sunday, my Yelp region had our annual holiday party! I went dressed as Santa (kinda) and a fun time was had by all. There was White Elephant, a gingerbread house contest, a mimosa bar, Italian food catered by Venti Tre, bagels galore, eggnog, a photo gbooth, etc. etc. Again, not many photos since I was working the event, but it was a lot of fun.

Afterwards, I went to a belated birthday dinner with my closest friends and my boyfriend and then we went back to my room to just chill for a bit and so that I could give everyone their Christmas gifts. (I’m so glad I cleaned my room!)

Yesterday, I mostly chilled before picking up my mom from the airport, thus having chauffeured every member of my immediate family and making a second trip to the airport.

And that’s been Hanukkah for me! If only I could get my hands on some potato pancakes and jelly doughnuts…

Friendsgiving 2014

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Thanksgiving is the time of year that we gather our family ’round and feast a-plenty.

For your family away from family, there is Friendsgiving.

This year’s Friendsgiving was the best one yet! We really stepped up our food game this year:

Clockwise from top left: mac & cheese, stuffing, mashed potatoes, rotisserie chicken, gravy, cranberry sauce, salad, brussel sprouts

I accidentally ended up doing a lot of the food prep for our meal (oops) because I’m a bit of a control freak in the kitchen (ooooops). But I like to think it was practice for when I prepare a full-on Thanksgiving meal for my family + guests this week.

We also had a gorgeous veggie platter and some sparkling apple cider, hollaaaa~ (And my friends had wine XD)

We ran into a small SNAFU when the oven at Jen’s place refused to work, throwing off my plan to roast the brussel sprouts and bake the mac. So, in the end, I just sauteed the sprouts and left the mac unbaked. 😦 They still tasted great!

Awwwwwwww yeah.

I’m excited and also scared for my Thanksgiving at home, but I feel a renewed sense of confidence in my ability to cook. (Also, I’m trying not to think about the turkeys I’ve made in the past, which, as most turkeys end up being, were not properly browned and a bit dry.)

After helping ourselves to seconds and getting some pumpkin pie, we cuddled Jen’s cats and watched Love Actually, to kick off the holiday spirit with a classic Christmastime movie.


Best scene in the film because it’s one of the sweetest moments of the best relationship in the film

My friends and I may be scattered as we go off to school and new jobs and new things next year, but I hope we’re able to do Friendsgiving every year in spite of it!

Do you celebrate Friendsgiving?
What are you having for your Thanksgiving meal? What are you most looking forward to?

Also, stay tuned because, with any luck, I will have an actual holiday music playlist (or 5) ready for my Friday post! FRIDAY, the official day I may start blasting holiday music without fear of haters.

 

 

 

Birthdays & Bar Crawls

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This was one of the more eventful and social weekends I’ve had in a long time. Being the extrovert that I am, I was really glad to get to spend time with friends.

FRIdAY

I guess we can kick off with happy hour on Friday. One of my coworkers unlocked a work achievement, so we had sangria and bread and hummus at Levante’s. It was a bit chilly, but we asked to be seated outside. The waiter seemed completely bewildered by this request, but I don’t know, my group wanted to sit outside. It was nice to wrap up the week with some work buddies, and I’m glad I have work buddies to hang out with!

During this time, I was checking with some friends about a birthday dinner I was going to later. I had checked the map and thought I got the location wrong. No way we were going to the Biergarten Haus that was a 25 minute walk away from the nearest metro station? Really?

Yes, really. After about 5 minutes of bickering on the phone, I decided that my boyfriend shouldn’t wait for me at his place (where I was going to drop off my work bag and lunchbox) and that I would meet our friends at Union Station, where we would all walk to Biergarten Haus together. I wandered around the mall of Union Station, admiring the architectural details (it’s a truly beautiful building) and had some guy tell me that “they’re coming, don’t you worry” only to then see about a dozen Chinese tourists round the corner.
Oh yes, this man thought I was waiting on Chinese tourists because why not. -____-”

Anyhow, the walk wasn’t so bad with everyone together. I would’ve really hated having to walk there by myself. You go a mile through this residential area in eastern DC (keeping in mind that southeast DC is one of the most dangerous areas in the country) and finally stumble upon a very lively street. That is completely not metro-accessible. Even the buses don’t go out here. (WHY)

BUT Biergarten Haus is pretty authentic as a German beer place, and everyone really loved their brews. There was German music playing and I had schnitzel and the environment felt good. There is a lot of outdoor seating and the patio is supposed to be heated, but it was chilly that night. I liked it but it is really out of the way.

My drink of the evening was the Erdinger Kristall Weiss, here pictured with the three wurst platter of bratwurst, bauernwurst, and knackwurst and the Jägerschnitzel with sauerkraut and spätzle.
My drink of the evening was the Erdinger Kristall Weiss, here pictured with the three wurst platter of bratwurst, bauernwurst, and knackwurst and the Jägerschnitzel with sauerkraut and spätzle.

From there, we went to FM Karaoke, which is a Korean karaoke/noraebang joint that I have not been to before. My boyfriend’s best friend really wanted to sing “All of Me” by John Legend, and he claimed that while our usual karaoke place didn’t have it, FM Karaoke did. I always notice one interesting thing with my boyfriend’s group of friends and that is that even though it’s all Asian guys (I was the only girl in the group) every time we hang out, there are almost never any Korean people in the group. However, we still go to Korean BBQ and Korean karaoke relatively often. Both are places where it’s helpful to have a Korean person available to translate and interpret and butter up staff.

2014-04-19 00.46.00
Singing “Careless Whisper” set to some Korean drama/music video, with “Let It Go” on queue and soju in people’s bellies.

REGARDLESS it was a bangin’ good time. I have noticed some very major differences between karaoke-ing as a bro (I’m a half-decent bro when I put my mind to it) and karaoke-ing with girls. There is a lot more rap (I mean a lot more) and a lot less Taylor Swift, Spice Girls, Ke$ha, etc. And when I rap to impress potential new bros, I go hard. I only know a handful of songs, but I do pretty well considering I have negative street cred and have a children’s sing-along voice.


You think this is a game? I memorized the lyrics to this song when I was 11, with exactly zero idea of what they meant.


I get to combine my ability to sing Rihanna and my admiration for Eminem here by doing the entire song on my own.


This song is weirdly popular with my boyfriend’s friends, so I had a lot of exposure and time to learn the words.

I don’t typically sing these at karaoke, so it was a special treat (slash torture) for my new bros. I sang “Let It Go” and couldn’t belt that note that early in the evening, but I managed fine for “Titanium” (David Guetta ft. Sia) and we had a tambourine so I think the night went well.

Korean karaoke does hold the distinct advantage of understanding the importance of a tambourine.
Korean karaoke does hold the distinct advantage of understanding the importance of a tambourine.

ON SAMEDI (SATURDAY)

My boyfriend and I met one of my closest friends for the DC Bunny Hop Bar Crawl. Some of you may remember I don’t drink much, but I wanted to explore the DC bars a little bit and i thought this was just a nice occasion to get out and hang out.

We started at The Front Page at around noon to pick up our 21-verified (but you still get ID checked) wristbands, souvenir mugs, and a ticket for a free beer after 4 PM. We started at Mad Hatter, an Alice in Wonderland-themed bar that I’ve visited before for my college roommate’s birthday, for some brunch. Even though there were some brunch specials for bar crawl participants at other places, we wanted to just sit down and have a nice brunch nearby, and this was the closest participating bar to us. I got me some eggs benny (well, technically I splurged on “eggs Chesapeake” because I wanted crab cake) and we got to catch up on life.

Eggs Chesapeake at Mad Hatter
Eggs Chesapeake at Mad Hatter

Not wanting to limit ourselves to once place, we headed to Ozio to get our $3 mimosas, which didn’t turn our color-changing cups a different color as promised. It was really quiet at Ozio, and we could hear something electric crackling… so after nursing our food comas and spending a long time catching up on life even further,  we headed to Sign of the Whale.

Yo. This place was packed and bumpin’ and it was 3 PM on a Saturday. Lots of people dancing to loudly playing “Forget You” by Ceelo Green when we showed up. We each had a jelly bean shot, and I’m not sure what is in it but they tasted pretty good. (That’s a good bet that the alcohol content wasn’t very high, just the way I like ’em :P) We were in and out of Sign of the Whale, as it was rowdy and also getting a bit on the late side.

Our next stop was The Mighty Pint, where we had each had a Captain Morgan & Coke. At this point, we found that our color-changing cups did, in fact, change color with cold drinks and we were glad our cups weren’t defective. We took our time with our drinks and by the time we finished, it was close to 4 and we were able to head back to Front Page to pick up our free beers.

2014-04-19 15.21.42

After a quick coffee stop for my boyfriend at Panera, we headed back to Front Page where we each kicked back with a free Bud Light and tried to guess what the relationships between other people in the bar were. Girlfriend meeting the guys friends for the first time? Honeymoon-phase couple? First day-date?

Me, Molly, and Ben

THEN we stopped by Hello Cupcake for some yummy cupcakes. They all looked so good and inviting but I settled on a cookies-n-cream one, which tasted like a cookie but had that cupcake texture and was topped with a teeny cookie. So good. I haven’t had Hello Cupcake since someone brought me one my freshman year of college and this was my first time in the shop.

Mollys “you tart”, Bens red velvet, and my cookies-n-cream cupcakes from Hello Cupcake

My brother also came home this weekend, so it was nice to spend some time with him. All in all, it was definitely a good weekend. 🙂 And significantly less traumatizing that my Easter Adventure of 2011, which I wrote about on my Xanga and may share with you again next Easter.

How was your Easter?
What are your favorite happy hour bars? Dupont Circle in DC is an area just crawling with bars and not a whole lot else, really.

Yelp’s Winter Break in Atlantic City!

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On Friday, my boyfriend and I drove up to Atlantic City for a Yelp-hosted weekend getaway trip, sponsored by Bally’s & Caesar’s. My best friends also came up with us.

Let’s just say it was an amazing time.

We got there too late for the registration happy hour, where there were some free drinks and munchies, since we were coming all the way up from the DC Maryland region and most attendees were from the New Jersey/Philly Yelp communities. It was raining and foggy and we got hungry, so we didn’t check into our room until about 8.

It was so foggy outside our window that, literally, I couldn’t see maybe 100-200 meters past the hotel. I couldn’t even see any lights from neighboring buildings or parking lots or roads or anything. Just the street directly in front of (or behind…?) Bally’s and the roof of a building and that was it. That was our view for the entire weekend (until the morning of check out).

Ben and I watched a little bit of Source Code, which was playing on TNT, until my friends were checked in. Then we headed to Mountain Bar for the first party of the weekend. We each got 2 free drinks and the bits of free food that was left. I wasn’t that hungry though after stopping on the way for dinner. I don’t drink much, but I did try whiskey for the first time. It made my mouth hurt and then numb… what? Anyway, I also got this cool souvenir jar that was for a promotion in the participating hotels. Each one had different signature drinks, and we got to keep those mugs yay. It was a really fun evening watching the go-go dancers, people ride the mechanical bull, and a random appearance by impersonators playing Humphrey Bogart, Marilyn Monroe, and Frank Sinatra.

The next day, we got up and headed to a local joint that had good reviews, but was not quite what we wanted. We were expecting a little brunch place for our Saturday brunch, but it was just a bakery and a rather mediocre one at that. We hid in there as lightning struck startlingly close and waited for the rain to let up before we headed to a proper lunch place. We just stopped into a chain place because we were pretty famished at this point and it was threatening to start raining on us again.

After lunch, we managed to complete the scavenger hunt (after skipping some steps oops), which means we each have a free night at Harrah’s sometime during the week. Then, we went to Piers Shops at Caesar’s to enjoy the fountain show and do some window shopping, since we canNOT afford most of those stores. (Yes, I see you Tiffany’s. No, I won’t even bother walking in.) Just some fun casual browsing, the highlight of which was getting massages in the chairs and foot-massage devices at Brookstone.

Hourly fountain show at the Piers Shops
Hourly fountain show at the Piers Shops

We were pretty tired at this point, so we all went back to our rooms for naps (haha). Afterwards, we went to Johnny Rocket’s in Bally’s for dinner. It was my first time in a Johnny Rocket’s, so I was a little surprised by things like turning off the lights for birthday celebrations, and the we-wish-we-weren’t-here performance in the middle of the restaurant. My burger and shake were yummy, but my milkshake may have given me a bit of a bellyache, so I headed back to my room for some hot water and The Big Bang Theory while my friends tried their luck in the casino.

Multiple cups of hot water for me (some pre-game beverages for other people) and episodes of The Big Bang Theory later, we got dressed for the final party of the weekend at Caesar’s. We were BLOWN AWAY by what we saw. There was an entire ballroom reserved for us, and the room was decorated in true Caesar’s style for our toga party. People went all out with costumes, there was an open bar (a mistake for Yelpers, trust me), lots of delicious food… it was way more than I was expecting and I was so excited!
I still had a bellyache though, so I didn’t get to eat very much. But the bites I had were delicious. Apparently, as my friends were coming back from the bathroom, they saw cops haul away some people fighting over a girl. I missed out on that action 😛

Swanky
Swanky

By the end of the night, I had an awesome goodie bag and was fully prepared to come back next year for another wonderful weekend. This was definitely a lot more fun than I anticipated and I have to give mega props to the Yelp organizers who put this together.

2014-01-16 15.35.48At least there was sunshine to send us off.