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Yup, Cafe Rio has come to the east coast. Given the number of Mormons we saw there, I'm surprised it took them this long.
Jason warned me that he would need to work quite a bit during my visit this summer; I assured him that I expected nothing less. So after dinner he pulled out his laptop while I unpacked into the closet he so kindly emptied for me and we went to bed relatively early in anticipation of a day of work ahead for each of us.
Rather than diving into sightseeing, I dedicated Friday to Getting Things Done (which, when done properly, can bring as much pleasure as sightseeing). I worked out at the gym in Jason's building, ironed all of my clothes, made several phone calls regarding The Great Flood, and ran errands around the neighborhood. The weather's beautiful right now - in the low 80s without too much humidity, and I enjoyed walking to each of the stores instead of needing to drive everywhere.
Among my errands was a stop at Sweetgreen to pick up dinner. Some of Jason's friends invited us to stop by the sculpture garden at the Smithsonian for a picnic/jazz concert/farewell gathering in honor of one of said friends leaving next week for Afghanistan. I met Jason at his office building with wraps in hand and we walked to the Mall.
The National Gallery of Art hosts Jazz in the Garden concerts every Friday in the summertime. Who knew it was such a social scene? Once we passed through the security inspections, Jason called Jennifer to locate the group while we walked down an avenue lined with people with cellphones pressed to one ear and fingers plugging the other ear. The entire area was jam-packed with people and somewhere, muffled by the din of hundreds of hipsters and yuppies chatting, I could vaguely hear the dixieland jazz that was the supposed purpose of the gathering.
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Even when we found the group it was apparent that the point of the concert was not to listen to the music, but rather to socialize and drink the Sangria provided by the pavilion. And, oh! The hipness! The men were in ironic t-shirts or dress shirts over khakis while the women wore sun dresses or cute skirts and fedoras and designer sunglasses adorned both genders. Although I lost points for not bringing our dinner in a Trader Joe's bag (or even the lesser Whole Foods bag), I made up for them by wearing a skirt that I made myself. Go, hipster, go!
Although our food was not from Trader Joe's, it was delicious! Sweetgreen's June special is a salad/wrap made with chicken, spinach, goat cheese, diced peaches, chopped fresh basil, and almonds tossed with a balsamic vinaigrette.
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We bade farewell to the group at 7:30 to head to the Shakespeare Theater. Jason has season tickets and I joined him for the last show of the season: The Merry Wives of Windsor.
It was not very good. I've seen Merry Wives before and knew what a weak play it is. It is essentially a sitcom spin-off for a popular supporting character from a different (and much better) set of plays and, like many a spin-off, has far too many new characters without much variation in jokes or plot. In addition to the weak material, the acting and directing in this production were sub-par. They missed quite a few possibilities for humor, both those textual and those based on the characters they had developed for this production. There were flubbed lines and at one point Master Ford missed an entrance which the other characters covered remarkably poorly ("Oh, where is Master Ford?" "I don't know! Wherever could he be?" "Maybe you could read a story to us while we wait for him, Mistress Page?" "Yes! I'll just flip through this book.... Hmm, I can't seem to locate the story." "Oh, really? Well maybe, Master Page, you can go look for Master Ford?"). We were both tempted to leave at intermission, but I think exhaustion kept us from decisiveness. We yawned our way through the second act, picked up more bandages for Jason, and headed home to sleep.
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