April 30, 2007 – It feels like home to me.

Not a lot to report today, but I thought I’d check in, anyway, just because I keep leaving the entries until two days later lately.

Sara drove me around a bit today and I saw a few things that I wanted to see and at least one thing that I didn’t even really think about.

It took us a while to get going (lots of false starts for lunch, meeting friends, trying to figure out what the fuck to do that didn’t involve normal touristy stuff that Sara hates doing), but we did finally manage to drive to some pretty cool places.

First off, was a pretty important place that has something to do with a blind lady and some scales.

What’s interesting about the Supreme Court is actually interesting about a few of the buildings in this area. The Court is right behind the Capitol. The House and the Senate buildings are on either side of both buildings. These branches of the government are all supposed to be watching each other.

I’m surprised that the current administration hasn’t tried to move the Capitol to the other side of the Mall.

Next up was a little hotel that you all might have heard of.

(Where the Republican Party had a little illegal party. Poor Nixon.)

Finally, we headed into Georgetown mainly to try to find the Exorcist Steps. Well, that didn’t work out, but we did find this old building.

(The National Cathedral was built so that it would be big enough to hold the entire nation.)

That’s all the pictures I got today, but we did have one more cool adventure.

Sara and I finally got out of Georgetown (their branch of the public library was in the process of burning down, so traffic was diverted all over the place) and headed back downtown to where Sara works.

VOA (Voices Of America) is kind of like a news station for the rest of the world all about America. Sara is an editor there and she works with people from all over the world to edit their tapes with their reporters talking about our news. It’s kind of American propaganda filtered through foreigners. Very strange.

Anyway, she showed me around the building a little bit and introduced me to some of her work friends. Cool people who make the best out of a kind of strange job.

Then we headed back to Alexandria for dinner: The Austin Grill.

That’s right, folks. I just can’t get away from Austin.

Sara says that this place was rumored to have been opened by Amy’s ex-husband. That’s Amy, as in, Amy’s Ice Cream.

Whoever opened it did a GREAT job of putting a little bit of Austin in the DC area. (There’s one on Capitol Hill, too, but this one is supposedly better.) It’s a Tex-Mex place with posters of Austin bands and gigs all over the place. Every year on Texas Independence Day, they give free meals to people who can prove that they’re from Texas and they take in more Texas paraphernalia.

Yeah, the wait staff sometimes wear those stupid Keep Austin Weird shirts, but don’t hold that against them. They obviously know what they’re doing, because I felt totally at home. It kind of had a vibe like Chuy’s. Even in the restroom, I found a sticker for KO-OP radio that someone had put on the wall of one of the stalls. And, in front of the urinals, there was a poster for the Coca-Cola Texas Sesquicentennial Hot-Air Balloon Races. It was sponsored by K-98, the radio station I was listening to back in 1986 when all of that was going on.

Yeah. I was home.

Just to keep with the Austin theme, I hear that they’re going to tear down the old building that the restaurant is in and put a condo in its place, incorporating the restaurant into the bottom floor.