Cupcakes!

We take a break from our regularly scheduled Staycation posts (I promise to write about our awesome Day Four at Mount Vernon very soon!) to bring you pictures of...CUPCAKES!

In the last two weeks, I've baked two batches of cupcakes, my latest non-ukulele-related obsession. The most recent were orange(-ish) with orange buttercream frosting. The cake was particularly moist and delicious, but I had to deviate from the prescribed buttercream recipe, because I couldn't find the required orange flower water for the life of me. I'm incredibly curious, so if anyone knows where to find some in a brick-and-mortar near Silver Spring, I'd love some intel! Otherwise, I'll turn to these here interwebs.

The tastiest cupcakes came last week, when I baked to impress some out-of-town guests. (Yes, even husband's former college roommate/our best man/great guy and his awesome wife deserve to be impressed every now and then.)

I made vanilla cupcakes with raspberry jam running through, and a vanilla buttercream with raspberries plopped on top. Enjoy the picture:

Yum! Will have to make these again sometime soon. Slight modification next time (which the recipe actually calls for, but I left out): cut a hole in the top of the cake and plop some more raspberry jam in there before frosting. Oooo.

Staycation: Day Three

In which Jenn and Jake actually get to go to the Botanical Garden and traipse around the Mall in the rain.

What a full day of sightseeing on Wednesday! The great thing about staycating in mid-August is that the town isn't as full as it might be otherwise; families are getting ready for back-to-school, so vacations have pretty well ended; most camps are out of session, so there are fewer field trips; and the locals are still out of town. All of this led to many fewer tourists than I had originally anticipated, which was awesome.

After the jump: the Botanical Gardens, Museum of the American Indian, Smithsonian Museum of American History, and the Freer/Sackler Galleries (links and pictures included). All within a few compact blocks on the Mall!

Staycation: Day Two

In which Jenn and Jake run around Gallery Place (and other galleries) and apparently don't know what time things close!

We planned on seeing a lot on Day Two of the Staycation. (Not as much as Day Three, but that's another post.) The goal was to head out to Gallery Place, hit up the National Portrait Gallery, get some lunch in Chinatown, head down to both the East and West wings of the National Gallery, and then to the US Botanical Garden for a nature-y close to our day. And we accomplished most of that...Be advised, if you go to the Botanical Garden, it closes at 5:00. The website says 7:00, but it doesn't specify that the outside part closes at 7, while the inside part closes at 5. No big, we went back this morning, but it was still a chunk of time walking in the DC summer-hot-n-humid air.

We had a great time at the galleries, though...details and pictures after the jump!

Staycation: Day One

The idea was multi-fold:

1. I had to burn up at least a week of vacation time before the fiscal year ends on the 31st.
2. Going someplace costs too much money.
3. People spend tons of money to visit DC.
4. I can get to DC for a pittance on the Metro.
5. There's stuff I've never seen in my own area.

True, I came to the area at least once every other year on field trips in school (even "lobbied" for gun control to Senator Mikulski when I was, like, twelve). And, yes, I lived in DC for ten years before moving five minutes away in MD. But there comes a time in every urban dweller's life when they stop going to do touristy things, no matter how awesome they are.

And so, my summer staycation was born! I wanted to visit sites I've either never been to, or hadn't been in a long time. The itinerary:

Monday
Day o' Journalism (Newseum, then home to watch Citizen Kane, which, no, I'd never seen, shut up)

Tuesday
Gallery Place Day (National Portrait Gallery, lunch in Chinatown, quick walk to the National Gallery of Art)

Wednesday
Smithsonian Day (Botanical Gardens, American History, American Indian, and the Freer)

Thursday
Day trip to Mount Vernon

Friday
Day trip to the National Arboretum, and then catch-up on whatever else we feel the need to see

And with Jake working from home this summer, I have a perfect tour group of two. After the jump...How I spent my Monday!

The Many Loves of Donald Draper

Mad Men is such a great show, and I'm looking forward to blogging about it every week. I don't want to do a recap, though--that seems to be too par for the course, and besides, I couldn't possibly do it better than TLo. So, instead, I'm just going to post my random musings about things that I've been fixated on.

Tonight: hair color.

Something has been striking me as odd about the women this season. It's not that Betty is a bad mom (we knew that already.) It's not that Peggy is way more headstrong and assertive than we've seen her in the past (a lot can happen in a few months and a change of venue). I finally put my finger on it yesterday: there are more blondes this season than we've ever seen before.

Don was married to Betty--the epitome of the blonde early-sixties housewife--for years. And besides her, we never saw him with a single blonde. Not one...except Anna Draper (more about her later). As far as I can recall, all of the women he's related with except Joan (more about her later) have been brunettes. And that's completely changing this year. After the jump is my breakdown of the women in Don Draper's life, categorized by hair color. Just see if you notice the same pattern I did...I put way too much thought into it. :)

With Kindness

Today was a very full day, for reasons I'd rather not get ingot in a public forum. But something really nice happened--like, jaw-droppingly nice--and I just have to share. :)

I was picking up a prescription from CVS, and the girl behind the counter complimented my hair color. I just redid it on Friday--red fades so darned quickly--and it does look pretty good, if I do say so myself. So, I told her, "It's L'oreal 6R."

"Really?" she asked. (As though she couldn't believe she could have this color for $8.00.)

"Sure. I can get you a box if you want." It was, like, two aisles over.

"Really?" she asked again. I nodded and she thought for a moment. "You're not from DC, are you?"

"Well, I lived in DC for twelve years or so, but I live in Silver Spring now."

"Oh, ok." She started counting out pills, and I ran over to the hair color aisle and pulled a box for her. You know, just so she could see what it looked like. We talked more about hair for a little bit (she wasn't sure red would look good on her; I gave her my mantra that hair is the one thing you can change, and if you don't like it, dye it some other color) while she typed my info into the computer, and then she handed me the prescription. I asked if I could pay with my FSA card, and she said...

"You know, you were so nice, I took off the co-pay for you."

I think I must have just silently blinked a few times, and then I remembered her scanning a CVS gift card. I think I thought she was just scanning one of the behind-the-counter CVS scan cards. But, no, she COVERED MY CO-PAY. I told her that was incredibly sweet, and she said, "You were nice to me. No one is ever nice to us. Like, one percent of people, but they're not as nice as you. So, thank you."

I thanked her very much and left the store. And then I called my mom, one of the two people (along with my dad) who taught me to always be nice to strangers. It really pays sometimes.

When Are We?

As you and the rest of the pop-culture-aware universe know, the fourth season of Mad Men started last Sunday. We found ourselves at Thanksgiving dinner, 1964, as Betty and the children ate with Henry's family and Don...got slapped in the face by a hooker. Because he asked her to. November 1964 means that we've missed the Beatles on Ed Sullivan (which we would have thought would be a big deal, since SCDP deals heavily in TV ads at this point), the release of the Rolling Stones' first album, and the opening of the New York World's Fair.

So, what are going to be the big pop culture/historical moments this season? Here are my guesses:

• Some mention of Lenny Bruce's obscenity trial
• Malcolm X's assassination
• Some mention of the TV broadcast of Rodgers & Hammerstein's Cinderella
•  Bloody Sunday/the march on Selma
•  Dylan goes electric/releases Highway 61 Revisited (definitely something about the changing music scene)
• Cigarette advertising banned on British TV
• Maybe a mention of the creation of the Pillsbury Doughboy, like the parsing of the iconic VW ad a couple of seasons ago
• The Northeast blackout of 1965 could have very interesting plot implications

And, of course, Joan's husband gets drafted and either (a) killed in Vietnam, or (b) flees to Canada. Either way, we get our swinging single Joanie back! (And I'm rooting for the former. He's not a good person.)

Of course, some of these aren't the most important things that happened in 1965 (some of them are), but I think they're the events that are most likely to have some bearing on the world of SCDP. I'll be happily watching to find out if I'm right.