(Long weekend + birthday) x friends = contented sigh of happiness + smidge of exhaustion

And also apparently equals the longest blog post title ever, but Sarah throwing in a mention of calculus today just inspired me to go the math route.  At any rate, I had birthday #28 (yipes, 28, really?) to celebrate this last weekend, and I was very much looking forward to my dear friend Kami flying into D.C. for the weekend to join in on that celebration.  I miss my wonderful Dallas friends something fierce these days, and knowing that she was going to be here was the best birthday present I could ask for...except for maybe the incredibly awesome camera that I'm totally in love with.  Would that be wrong, to love an inanimate object more than a dear friend?  Yeesh, yes!!  Which is why I say friends win out over cameras.  Phew, my moral compass and soul are in check.  I hope that "best birthday present I could ask for" business gave you some inkling of just how excited I was to see her, so imagine when I opened the apartment door, greeted her with a big hug, spun around and saw that CAROLYN WAS THERE, TOO!!  I probably frightened my neighbors with screaming and tears and my general loudness, but honestly, any smaller reaction to such a great surprise would just not do it justice.  Let Fantastic Friend + Birthday Weekend in our nation's capital begin!!  Oh, and it was nice having a fall birthday where you can actually tell it's fall:

Pretty, Capitol, pretty.

The gals arrived Thursday night a little bit later than planned due to some unfortunate flight delays, but that did not get in the way of our plans to enjoy dinner together (you know it's all about the food, people, which is even better when enjoyed with friends), so we walked the two-ish blocks to Matchbox for a glass of wine and some tasty pizza.  You know how I'm on this spicy food kick?  That may have had something to do with my ordering the "fire & smoke" pizza, which features a chipotle tomato sauce and other sources of fiery goodness.  Delicious.  And so, so good to share a meal with my girls and catch up on life.  

After either a good night's sleep (if you were Kami) or a rather long night filled with Harrison moments of disturbance (if you were Carolyn or myself - he felt compelled to make himself known throughout most of the night, and I'm really cutting short a pretty interesting series of events of here - let's just say that all we could do the next day was laugh and have Kami laugh along with us at Harry's escapades), we headed out for an adventure of utmost importance when visiting our nation's capital.  Capitol building?  Washington Monument?  Lincoln Memorial?  No, sillies, H&M!!  With our shopping appetite satiated and many cute things purchased, we hopped on the Metro and made our way to the lunch counter at Eastern Market for one of Kami's requests, a crabcake.  I particularly enjoy those bad boys in sandwich form, and they make a pretty darn tasty one here with some exceptionally soft and delicious bread.  It's especially tasty when coupled with fried green tomatoes AND cole slaw AND french fries.  I'll never tire of visiting Eastern Market and gazing at (and enjoying!) the food.  We grabbed some cookies and amazingly moist and delicious pumpkin pound cake for the road and walked our way generally in the direction of home through the Capitol Hill neighborhood, encountering candy corn traffic cones, beautiful fall foliage and leafy fun...

...dachshund friends (how does Kami always find the dachshunds??), adorable houses, and gourds way into the Halloween spirit of things:

We wound our way home past the Capitol and through the Botanical Gardens and along the National Mall and past the National Gallery of Art Sculpture Garden, where for some reason they were painting a tree silver.  Hey, it's art - anything goes.  After a stroll through my neighborhood and a stop at the fancy city Safeway (that mercifully opened right before I moved here!  A REAL grocery store within walking distance!) for incredibly important things like bacon and champagne (more to come on those key ingredients later), we headed back to the apartment to rest up for dinner and a night out.  I finally finally cracked open my bottle of Freemark Abbey cabernet that I picked up two and a half years ago on a San Francisco, Napa, & Sonoma adventure with these same two great girls for a little pre-dinner wine.  We'd each purchased this same bottle on our trip a few summers, and since I'd been saving mine for a special occasion, what better special occasion than sharing it with these two on a birthday weekend?  After imbibing and prettying oursevles up a bit from the day's adventures, we walked over to Bibiana for our 8:30 dinner reservation. 

The restaurant hasn't been open very long, but we were craving Italian and it's within walking distance and the menu sounded great, so we figured we'd give it a shot.  And typically...I'm going to say an 8:30 reservation gets you seated around approximately...oh, I don't know, let's throw out an 8:30 or maybe an 8:36 or even the possible 8:41.  When we didn't make it to our table until 9:15 or so, I wasn't necessarily perturbed - just hungry.  Which the veal-stuffed pasta managed to take care of pretty quickly.  And props to the new restaurant in its infancy for recognizing our excessive wait time and sending over four free desserts and limoncello for the table.  Sweet!  Literally!  A mountain of pistachio and chocolate and creamy goodness later, we choked down our limoncello (potent stuff!) and followed that up with some drinks, dancing, and more friends at Madhatter before crashing in the wee hours.  Usually I'm too exhausted on Fridays to do much of anything, but since I didn't work on Friday (woooohoooo!) and was in a generally celebratory mood, a glorious evening was had with my dear friends.

You know the bacon and champagne bit I mentioned earlier?  You're just going to have to wait until tomorrow to see how those come into play.  Although I doubt there's anyone out there who gets as excited as I do about bacon and champagne (which, yes, I'm insisting on italicizing to give them just a little more pizzazz).  And I hope you didn't guess anything other than a breakfast application, because anything else is really just unnecessary.  Let's end with the fact that the idea of limoncello may actually be a little more appealing than limoncello itself (just look at that pre-drink grin!)...

and that happy birthday desserts, complete with candle, are always, always appreciated.  And in this case...delicious.