I’m home and have plowed through a few of the things I wanted to take care of before turning in for the night. Rudi enjoyed his ski trip and I had a lovely visit with Gramma (and with Karen on Saturday), and the cats celebrated our absence by discovering they could reach some yarn I had left out (but not in a spot they’ve ever frequented before). According to Rudi, they had unwound the ball and chased it all over the living room. I’m sure it would have been cute to watch on YouTube, but not so much fun to come home to. (Thanks, Rudi, for unwinding the ball from around table legs and other furniture.)

More updates tomorrow. Now I’m off to bed!

Sure, the point of doing this My D.C. thing is to show you what the tourists miss when they come to our city. But you have to understand that some of the perks of living in a well-trod city are just the things that the tourists also love.

Case in point? The cherry blossoms:

My friend, Sweetpea, is celebrating her birthday today.

One of the things I like best about D.C. is the abundance of great friends I’ve made here, particularly through the old D.C. for Dean campaign. Not only is Sweetpea sweet and funny and erudite, but she also knits and reads and is willing to brew rootbeer with me. What a friend!

Tonight we will join her celebration by helping her win Trivia Night at the Argonaut. (No idea. But it sounds fun, doesn’t it?)

So please mosey over to Sweetpea’s blog and wish her a happy birthday and smart friends. And I’m sure she’ll appreciate any random trivia you think might come up in tonight’s match.

Remember the book The Saturdays, by Elizabeth Enright? The main idea was that Saturday afternoons, which ought to be the jewel of the week, so often are not. In the book, four young siblings combine their allowances and work together to give one of them an adventure each week that they weren’t likely to forget.

Well, that was kind of what my today was like.

I slept away the morning. I’d say I’m not sure how that happened, but that would be a lie. My sleep schedule is all backwards right now and I’m waking too late and staying up too late and the cycle continues… Hopefully a weekend with Gramma next week will put it a bit more to rights.

After Rudi left for his bike ride and I toddled over to the computer to break in the day slowly, my friend Susan called and invited me to join her for lunch. I practically bounded out of my pjs and out the door in my excitement at having A Plan for the afternoon. We ended up eating at Raku, an Asian diner with a patio in Dupont Circle because the afternoon was (mostly) warm enough to sit outside. Opting for a veggie bento box and a passionfruit limeade, I was delighted with my food. The drink was sweet without being cloying and responded well to the ice melting. And my lunch box, preceded by a generic bowl of miso soup, was full of light, but tasty morsels: a cucumber-avocado roll, veggie tempura, a veggie egg roll, seaweed salad, and a delectable asparagus-parmesan-portobello dishlet. Ahhh, me! Susan and I ate and talked, and after we could eat not a bite more, wandered around the neighborhood for a bit and then sat on the front steps of her building to talk some more.

In and of itself, that would probably have tided me over with happiness for the week. But I was struck with inspiration and called Rudi, who had recently returned from his ride, to invite him to join me for an ice cream cone. I love Larry’s and, as always, my scoop of Paradise was … well, you know.

A short while later, Rudi was heading out to an evening bike meeting, so he suggested that he could drop me down at the cherry blossoms en route, and I took him up on the offer. I spent three hours wandering the Potomac banks, the FDR Memorial (my favorite in the city), and the Tidal Basin before the sun set. I parked myself at a picnic bench with my knitting (I’ve reached the stockinette foot of my sock, so it was fine for nighttime knitting) and waited for the dark to grow black enough for the Cherry Blossom Festival fireworks to begin. The lower fireworks were obscured by the cherry trees, but those launched higher up were cheery and colorful and all one could hope for in such a show.

I concluded the day with plain and chocolate salty oat cookies from Teaism, a compliment on my t-shirt, and a pot of tea (Ceylon OP from the Porto Rico order that arrived this week).

Really, who could ask for a nicer Saturday afternoon?

On April 1, 1621, the Pilgrims created the a peace treaty with Massasoit and the local Pokanoket tribe.