'....it's not because it is the grand old seat....of precious freedom and democracy....'

Alternate title: Where I've been for the last few days and why I have not blogged.

Friday- My baby brother is studying in Spain for the summer and he was off to 'the continent' on Saturday. He's in Santiago de Compostela, on the northwest tip of Spain. If I can scrape together the cash, I'm definitely going over for a short visit. Of course, the goodbye party commenced on Friday evening and ended in the wee hours of Saturday morning. His friends are excellent. Have you ever met someone that you knew was going to be wildly rich and famous? One of my brother's friends busted out in a freestyle rap that was just incredible. I know a lot of people who rap and I've heard plenty of amateur rappers, but I've never heard anything like this. Add to the fact that the kid is seriously good looking and I can see him being huge. I've told him to post his raps online and I will link when he does.

Saturday- So, on 3 hours sleep, I got into Dawn's car at 7am to drive to Maryland. She has a yearly tradition with another friend of hers to go to a crab place in Maryland over Fourth of July weekend. This year both I and her friend's boyfriend were invited to come along. The crabs were great though I badly cut my thumb cracking one of them open. When I got back to NY and showed Peter my thumb he said 'what happened?' I said 'Crabs!' He said 'um, ewww' and took a step back.

Saturday night- Dawn+I had a free hotel room in DC because she had stayed at, and hated, the hotel previously and they gave her a free night for her trouble. We left her friends in Maryland and headed toward the District. After resting for what seemed like 4 minutes, we were off to hit the town. I had invited a bunch of people to a bar supposedly near our hotel. I say 'supposedly' because it turned out to be a bit of a trek. And, on top of that, the bar kind of sucked. So, after meeting up with the fabulous Candace we went in search of bar #2 forgetting/ignoring that people may be coming later to our original bar. We were tired. That's our excuse. We did meet up with A.D who had been my boss in Colorado during the election. It was the first time we had met and he was as cool as I imagined he'd be. He also reacted well when he told us he was going to head home at about 11:30pm and was told 'no' by Candace who then made him stay out with us till 2am. Another visiting New Yorker, Ms. Esther, met us at the second bar.

After trying and failing to find a third bar, the five of us ended up back at the hotel. Dawn got into bed and incited Candace to beat her with a pillow, which was fun to watch. Esther kept us entertained with funny quips, while A.D wondered what he had gotten himself into and kept eyeing the door when not enjoying my itunes selection of Johnny Cash songs.

Sunday: Got up ridiculously early for the second day in a row, again with minimal sleep, and drove to Long Beach Island, New Jersey for a July 4th party featuring a one-on-one poker tournament. A fun, excellent day watching the beach, playing poker and enjoying the weather.

I hope your weekend was as good as mine. I'm sure Dawn will have a funnier post about all of it up at some point. It was so fun that now I need to sleep for the next few weeks to recover. Happy 4th!

Update: Dawn has the first installment of her story up here.