Sailor Soldier of Love and Justice

Saturday was Maggie's 12 week trip to the vet. She didn't like the car ride. She kept trying to squeeze to the front seats, getting herself stuck between the chair and the door. Poor puppy. But she was super excited when she got to the vet. As soon as she saw the woman at the desk, she exploded with excitement. I can't believe Maggie was able to remember her after two weeks! She jumped out of my arms, ran across the desk, and leaped into the arms of the woman at the desk to furiously lick her face. It was unbelievable cute.

Once she calmed down a bit, we were taken to the examination room. Maggie gained about 2.5 lbs since last time. She's getting so big! And then she was given another booster shot. She didn't cry this time. She's such a good girl.

After that, Maggie was a little tired so I let her sleep in the front seat. I brought her inside and she slept the rest of the afternoon.

Sunday was the night we had ticked to see Wicked. It was an extremely good evening. I got dressed up and everything. We had no trouble finding parking at the metro and we only had to wait about 5-10 minutes for a train.

We had an early dinner at Tonic, which was very tasty. I had an heirloom tomato salad and stole some of ben's tater tots. The restaurant was also a short walk away from the shuttle to the theater, so it was really perfect.

The shuttle was waiting for us after we finished dinner. It was a nice short ride. Everyone else was also there for Wicked and were also very excited. We arrived at the Kennedy Center just as the doors were about to open. Very good timing.

I thought our seats were perfect until an extremely tall woman sat in front of me. Tall people should be forced to slouch in theaters.

The show itself was very good. The first act was fairly similar to the first half of the book. A few changes to simplify the plot. They made Elphaba a bit more innocent and Galinda a bit less intelligent. I thought the actress for Elphaba was very very good. She made my inner teenage nerd cry out for her. If I had seen this show in grade school, I would have OBSESSED over it. Galinda was the understudy. I thought she did a good job of being ditsy.

My only major complaint is that act 1 ended so epically that act 2 felt weak and lost. Defying Gravity was just incredibly emotionally climatic. How could anything compare with that?

Act 2 is nothing like the book at all. Nearly everything was changed. I'm ok with that though because it had a happy ending! I hated the sad ending in the book. I like believing that Elphaba lived happily ever after.

One other small thing I noticed and really liked was the glasses at the emerald city. Most people forget that in the original Wonderful Wizard of Oz, all visitors were required to wear sunglasses in the emerald city supposedly to protect their eyes from all the glitter and glimmer, but in actuality to make the city LOOK green. Since the wizard was a humbug, he couldn't actually build an emerald city. So when Elphaba had the glasses on and was saying how wonderful it was that no one was looking at her oddly, I had a little giggle to myself.

It really was a very good evening. Good company, good dinner, and a good show. I went to sleep very happy that evening.

Too bad it's Monday now. Work always gets in the way of my fun!

I woke up yesterday morning feeling a bit under the weather. I had all the signs of coming down with something - headache, sore throat, congestion, and sensitive skin. But I didn't feel so bad that I couldn't get up and move around, so I went to work anyway.

I took my misery out on our marketing agency. I was extra harsh on them each time they messed up. Especially over misspellings in the copy. Supposedly this stuff is going over to a proofer, but time and again they have proven that this is not the case.

In the afternoon, we had a feast of balls in honor of colbert. There were cheese balls, meat balls, popcorn balls, cake balls.... It was quite extensive.

I wasn't feeling better at all by the time I got home, so ben and I decided to pick up dinner instead. We decided to use my groupon to The Pollo Factory. I had heard good things about the place and had been meaning to try it, but it's in a lousy location so I had always put it off. The groupon was good motivation. I'm glad I got it cause that was some amazingly good peruvian chicken. The skin was caramelized and crunchy while the meat inside melted in your mouth. The guy at the counter said they imported their spices from peru, which I thought was an interesting little factoid. Ben must have really liked it because he ate half a chicken by himself. We will probably go there again in the future.

I did feel a bit better after a good dinner, but I decided it would be best if I rested up to beat whatever I was coming down with. I crawled into bed and alternated between sleeping and watching tv. It was kinda annoying when I'd fall asleep during the middle of the show, wake up at the end, and have to search through to figure out at what point I lost consciousness.

This morning, I don't feel any better, but I don't feel any worse either. I have fed my pets and eaten breakfast. I will probably head back to bed again soon. I'm trying to spent a little bit of time with my bird, who was totally neglected last night as I tried to recover. She's a very social animal and gets very upset when she doesn't get some quality time with me each day.

I need a weekend from my weekend. My mother in law came to visit so it was very very busy.

She arrived Friday night, so we took her out to a local german restaurant. They had live music, which was a bit overwhelming for me. Accordions! And spoons!

The next day, we took her out to the museum of american history. The hardest part was getting her through the fare gates on the metro. The gates didn't open because my old cards were bad, but she tried to force them open. It does not work that way. Once I found my spare smartrip card, it went smoothly.

I was mildly stressed because ben's mom didn't have any preferences on what we did or saw. I was a bit relieved when we left early.

For a late lunch, we went to a restaurant that served authentic mexican food. Which meant gross stuff like grasshoppers and tongue. I had refried beans. They were surprisingly bland. But everyone else seemed to enjoy their meals. (Ben had the grasshopper tacos.)

Sunday was miserably rainy so there wasn't anywhere fun for us to go. I was getting stir crazy though, so we took a trip to the comic book store. It was pouring super hard. I could barely see. In fact, if it had rained any harder, I would have had to pull over.

But we made it! And I got comics! A new issue of d&d, fables, and jericho. The issue of fables was a bit boring because they are just setting up the new story arc but I look forward to where it is going. Their latest plan to defeat mister dark is to form a superhero team. I approve of them using modern mythology to increase their belief magic powers.

In the evening, we went out to the diner. Ben ordered far too much food. Then we returned home and watched the 1992 version of Lost World. It was terrible. Not enough dinosaurs.

And now it's Monday again! I need sleep and rest. I wish I could take a nap at my desk.

Yesterday I gave my dog new dog food. I decided to splurge and get her the good stuff. The kind where the first ingredient is a meat rather than a by-product or a plant. She LOVED it. She consumed the whole bowl nearly 10 minutes after I poured it. I felt bad and gave her extra because that was supposed to last her all day. But she immediately consumed the extra bit too.

Work was work. The usual demoralizing stuff. The super nice coworker from online found a new job and is leaving next week. I hope it ends up being a really good place for her to work.

Metro had another breakdown in the evening, so it took me a very long time to get home. Trains were running every 15 minutes instead of the usual 3-5 minutes. When I got to the bus station, I had to stop and put more money on my card. I ended up at the end of the line for the bus.

The bus filled up, leaving about five of us behind. But another one came about 8 minutes later. And since the trains were 15 minutes apart, that meant there was no one else but us five. We had the whole bus to ourselves. It was really nice and totally makes up for having to wait a couple extra minutes.

After ben picked me up, we went to microcenter so ben could buy more monitors while they were still on sale. He really liked the one he got on his birthday. Then we went to the pho place which was just a few shops down.

Pho is a perfect meal on a cold rainy day like yesterday. Ben had veggie and made it deathly spicy. I had dark meat chicken and made it super sweet. We also got bubble tea. It was a good dinner that left us very full and sleepy.

Unfortunately ben ended up getting called into work. I slept for a few hours without him. It was sad and lonely. I was glad when he came back.

Today is bitterly cold. I wish spring would get here already.

To celebrate his successful review, ben and I went out to conveyor sushi!

I grabbed edamame, nasty fried tofu skin (which they didn't charge me for, because it was so gross), and strawberries with candied ginger. Also, I ordered a small plate of chicken teriyaki. That one was weird cause they used the sushi rice for it. Not a good idea.

Ben had many many plates of many many things. He seemed pleased.

It was a fun adventure, even if it was inefficient. I'm glad we went!

I never did manage to make the apartment clean. I just made it less messy.

We picked up ben's sister without any problems and then took her out for lunch. I had a meatball sandwich but I really think I should have eaten something lighter.

After that, we went to see Wall-E, which was ADORABLE. And dark! It was a good mix of distopian future and cute robot love story. I liked how they weren't afraid to be unsettling at times.

Ben bought me ice cream after the movie. Cause he is sweet like that.

And then we played rockband for many hours. Ben's sister is very good at the guitar! I think I might have to move myself up to the hard singing level. That scares me.

For dinner we went to Tavern on the Lake, which is a tapas restaurant. It's one of the few non-chain restaurants in reston. I think tapas works well for be because I am such a picky eater. We ordered a bunch of different things, and I was able to just stick with the stuff I liked best.

Ben and his sister drank a whole bottle of wine on their own! They were pretty giddy and animated by the end of the night. Ben is so cute when he drinks.

Today we are going into dc for the Folklife Festival and maybe some museums. As soon as everyone wakes up. I wish my dog would let me sleep late on weekends.

Ben, the most perfect boyfriend ever, took me out for dinner tonight. We went to some Ethiopian restaurant. I'll admit, I didn't like it too much. The bread had a weird taste to it. (You eat the food by breaking off pieces of weird spongy bread and scooping stuff up.) But it tasted better once I only used the bread to scoop things up and not actually eat.

Afterwards, we went to Target because I wanted to impulse shop. Ben bought me a winter coat! And warm pjs. And a SKULL CANDLE!! He is such a fantastic boyfriend!

...And my dog just brought her food bowl into the living room. She's chewing it and licking it like she's starving to death. Weird dog.

Sunday night Ben and I watched an old 80s movie called Real Geniuses...Or something like that. It had a vast amount of unpleasant characters, but made up for it with the fantastic Laslo. He is the best character ever. :)

Monday after work I discovered that ben had done almost all the cleaning in the apartment. So I took him out to eat. We went to a place called Euro Bistro. The advertisement for it describes itself as, "Austrian, German, French & Italian Fusion with Asian Accents." Now THAT is a strange combination. It was the only place I've ever seen that had potstickers and wienerschnitzel on the same menu. When we walked in, they were playing German folk-type music. It was so fantastically goofy, I couldn't help but smile.

The food wasn't bad, though what we ordered turned out to be a surprise. Ben ordered something german, but his accent was so bad he got something else. I ordered curry and got something that looked like chicken noodle soup. It was pretty yummy, but certainly not what I expected. I wouldn't mind going there again. Especially if they keep advertising coupons. ^^;

Ben is asleep right now. I'd like to wake him, but he has work tonight. I want to make sure he gets enough sleep. Oh well, I guess I can blither more.

My mom now wants me to come visit her. If it keeps her from coming down here, I am all for it. I need to take off from work though, because ben can't and mom wants him there too. Well, that's what vacation time is for, right?

I'm thinking I will continue my long process of setting up my sewing room. That's a good way to keep busy! :)