Last weekend

Last weekend was a fun and productive one. We made another journey out to Rockville, Maryland on Saturday to pick up our car and to treat our friend Diana to lunch in thanks for letting us stay with her/keep our car with her while we were getting all moved in to the city. We went to a Peruvian restaurant in Rockville called La Limeña. I had found it in the Washingtonian magazine and it was highly recommended. It turned out to be really nice! The food was good and tasted authentic, the service was friendly, and the atmosphere was comfortable. Carlos, Diana, and I all loved everything we had to eat and drink. Overall we had: ceviche mixto, papas huancaina, parihuela, tacu tacu, chicha, and jugo de maracuya. At the end of our (huge!) lunch, we shared a delicious bowl of lucuma ice cream. Lucuma was a fruit I had in Peru and is only found in the Andes -- the ice cream is bright orange and tasted like vanilla and pumpkin (sort of). Next time we are in Rockville, we will have to go back.

We also visited Eastern Market again (we basically do this every weekend) on Sunday where we bought some pickles and browsed the flea market. The days here have been so beautiful and autumnal -- the weather is clear and crisp~

Update

It's been pretty busy 'round these parts recently and that hasn't left me with much time for blogging. Boo. I also don't have any interesting pictures to show because I have mostly been working at the museum in the office and writing papers. Things on that front are going well and I am preparing a manuscript for submission in a top ecology journal. We shall see if it will be accepted! I am also working on ideas for a post-doc position that I want to apply for involving hyper-abundant native herbivores (in this case peccaries, which I worked with in Costa Rica for my Ph.D) and how they may facilitate plant invasions. I need to write up a project outline and get in touch with a potential advisor at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center (SERC) and then start working on that fellowship application.

I am really liking Washington DC right now -- we are finally getting some nice, crispy cool fall weather -- time to break out the sweaters and coats! I can't believe that it was about a year ago now (last week in fact) that Carlos and I were here scouting out the place and visiting the museum -- we had no idea we would be living here then! It seems like that trip (and also the trip visiting with my UCSB friends here) was a ton of time ago...I guess I was pretty busy last year!

Squirrels!

I love squirrels. They are a lot like agoutis (and of course I love agoutis!). I especially love all of the squirrels that I see daily here in Washington DC. Sciurus carolinensis (the Eastern gray squirrel) are everywhere and they have a lot of color variation in their fur. I love seeing the black-colored (melanistic) squirrels, but I have also seen a bunch of white or really blond squirrels too (they might be more rare because they are more evident to predators). Also, the squirrels here are fed by tourists all the time because I make clicking noises at them and hold out my hand and they come right over -- close enough to pet! Maybe I need to start keeping peanuts in my pockets?

Crafty Bastards day 'o fun

This past Saturday, Carlos and I went to Adams Morgan for a craft show called Crafty Bastards -- it was awesome! We had a really fun time seeing all sorts of cool crafts and people and dogs. We arrived right when it opened (10 am) and there were already tons of people there. By the time we left (a couple of hours later), the place was packed and it was hard to walk around and even see what was for sale in all of the booths. We bought a few cool things and I will put pictures of them up in another post. It is so exciting to finally live in a city where creativity is appreciated and celebrated (so NOT Miami!).

After exploring crafts, we metro'ed to Cleveland Park and ate some delicious lunch at Lebanese Taverna -- one of our favorite food spots so far.

After a nice lunch, we walked a couple of blocks to the National Zoo to enjoy the fall weather. We stopped in the small mammal house and visited the maned wolf area -- everyone was very sleepy that day!

Lunch at Jaleo

On the same day that we visited the Crime and Punishment Museum, Carlos and I had lunch at a Spanish tapas restaurant called Jaleo. After looking at crime, we walked across the street and had a delicious lunch (with a gift card courtesy of my friend Christina -- thanks Christina!). We ate here once before during restaurant week and the food is awesome (if a tad pricey).

During this lunch we shared...

Bread with oil:

Gazpacho estilo Algeciras (a very delicious gazpacho that I found the recipe for online and have since duplicated at home!):

Arroz cremoso de setas (wild mushroom rice with some nice cheese on top):

Sandia con tomates, Caña de cabra y pistachos (watermelon with tomatoes, goat cheese, and pistachios -- it sounds weird but was very nice and refreshing):

Gambas al ajillo (shrimps sauteed with garlic and peppers -- it isn't too spicy and has a tasty garlic flavor):

There you have it -- a delicious lunch as part of a fun day! We will definitely go back, but it is a little expensive so maybe for special occasions~

Crime and Punishment Museum

This past Saturday was free museum day -- this means that some museums around here (and around the entire country) that cost $$ to enter were free if you printed a ticket out online and brought it in. Carlos and I chose to visit the Crime and Punishment Museum (the Spy Museum wasn't participating, otherwise we would have gone there!).

Overall, this museum was pretty fun, informative, and had well put-together exhibits...but I'm glad I didn't have to pay the normally $18 entrance fee! I didn't like how crowded-feeling the exhibits here were, and if you looked closely at the signs, many of the items on display were replicas or props from movies (i.e. the Bonny and Clyde death car, replica of Wyatt Earp's pistol) -- that wasn't expected! The exhibits ranged from Ted Bundy's Volkswagon to mob boss stuff and pirate memorabilia.

Despite their misleading exhibits (I'm sure most people didn't even notice!), I especially liked seeing the America's Most Wanted set -- this is where the show is actually filmed! It was exciting to see~

Overall, this was a fun museum to see for free, but I would feel disappointed had I paid the steep entrance fee!

Library card catalog drawers

This past weekend was a really fun/busy one. On Saturday, Carlos and I went to the nearby (1 block down the street) BBQ place and bought a pulled pork sandwich that we brought to the park and had a little picnic. On the way there, we passed a local library that was having a book sale and on the way back home we peeped in for a look. We found some good and super cheap books, but the big treasure find was this beautiful 6-drawer library card catalog set! I have been looking for one of these FOREVER (on craiglsist, ETSY, etc. but they are always expensive). I scored this set of drawers for $30 (they usually sell for hundreds of dollars!). It is a little scuffed up and worn in some places, but it is in very good shape with intact metal drawers. It is really well-made and beautiful and I can't believe I have finally found a card catalog drawer set of my very own! I am going to refurbish it (add some stain and wax and line the drawers with felt) to make it a nice home for my art supplies. If you ever find a library sale going on, hunt around for these drawer sets because they are awesome!

Randomness

I haven't had much time to organize what I have been up to recently into a proper blog post so I thought I would throw in a bunch of pictures instead!

Carlos and I shared a watermelon/vanilla (blue!) snow cone at the USDA farmer's market:

We also attended a chili pepper festival at the farmer's market (where I won a free T-shirt!):

We had surprisingly good sushi in Union Station:

We brought this really nice Riesling to a BBQ:

We went on a secret adventure one night after the Natural History Museum closed. We explored all of the floors and found lots of human bones in the anthropology department!

We just wandered around, enjoying the sun. Here is one of my favorite trees here: the Crape Myrtle:

All of the reflecting pools around here have lots of ducks (and geese) in them!

New apartment!

Things (as usual) have been pretty busy around here, but Carlos and I have finally moved in to our new place on Capitol Hill! We love our new apartment and are very happy to have found such a good deal smack dab in the middle of the city! We are in a nice, walkable neighborhood, up the street from a pretty park, and a 10-minute bike ride from the Mall. Here are some photos that I took before we moved most of our stuff in.

Here is our entrance -- we have a little space here that leads to either the kitchen, living room, or bedroom. This view looks to the kitchen and living room (bedroom is behind me):

Our kitchen is really pretty and light! They also put in new sandstone tile floors before we arrived. It's a lot bigger than our last kitchen in Miami:

Our living room is huge (advantage of being a corner apartment!) and we have lots of windows (nice and breezy) looking South and West toward the Capitol and National Mall.

View of the Washington Monument taken through one of the screens in our living room (the Capitol is behind the tree on the left).

The bathroom is accessible from either the living room or the bedroom.

Here is the bedroom sans furniture:

Finally, here is a picture of our semi-furnished living room (we still need a dining table and chairs).

We have moved everything in from our pod (did that on Saturday) and now we have to organize it all. I will take more pictures once everything is put away and our bed is assembled (the replacement headboard was delivered yesterday)~

DC Memorials

Last week, at some point, Carlos and I made a little tour around some of the memorials near the mall. I hadn't visited most of these before -- I think of all the ones we saw, I had only been to the Washington Monument before! We walked from the mall to the Washington Monument first. We didn't ride up in it this time, but it is always a fun sight to see. From there, we wandered over to the World War II Memorial and looked around.

Next, we walked along the Reflecting Pool (it was pretty green and full of mallard and Canada goose poo!) -- it really needs a thorough cleaning.

We were walking up to the Lincoln Memorial when the skies opened up and it started pouring rain. We made it inside just in time, but a lot of other people there were soaked! It was fun to see huge Abe and we walked through all of the memorial (I didn't know it had a downstairs room).

From the Lincoln Memorial, we walked over to the Korean War Memorial. I think this is one of the newer memorials and it is very nicely-done. I liked the sculptures a lot.

After seeing all of the sights in this part of town, we walked back towards the mall and spied a little rotunda -- the World War I Memorial. It was kind of off the beaten path, but very nice.

Eventually we made it back to the metro station and zoomed back home. This was a nice way to see some of the sights in Washington DC that I had never had the time to look at before!