Night on the Town

Last night the Redhead and I decided to actually get out and about and have a “night on the town”. We ate in an interesting little French restaurant called “La Madeleine” (which, for those of you who do not parlez français, means in French, “The Madeleine”). It was kind of cafeteria style, and no one there spoke English as a first language. (In the case of when we went there, the three people working there spoke French, Spanish, and something akin to Ebonics. It was most definitely NOT English, however. I understood the French guy better.) I felt a little dumb not knowing how the restaurant worked, but the soup and sandwiches were very nice.

Afterwards we piled in a bunch of cars with a bunch of friends and went off to see an Orioles game up in Baltimore. Unfortunately, leaving DC at 5:00 on a Friday evening is no easy task. We spent more than two and a half hours traveling the 45 miles from West End to Baltimore. In fact, two hours into the drive we were only about 15 miles from home. This is why I use the Metro.

I enjoyed the evening at Camden Yards. Baltimore isn’t the city I think of when someone mentions big east coast cities with pretty skylines, but it nonetheless fits the description. Orioles Stadium is nice and new and I liked the view of the city as we drove in. We got there in the top of the third inning, and the first pitch I saw resulted in a homer for the Red Sox. The game was actually close until the 7th when the Sox put a run in and then smacked a three-run homer. We left during the bottom of the 9th with the score at 8-2. I didn’t really expect the O’s to win anyway, and I had little emotional attachment to either team. I was more entertained by the shirtless drunk guy that tried to get the wave going around the upper deck the whole night.

This whole weekend has been pretty noisy. There’s supposedly a huge IMF conference going down a few blocks from my apartment, and most of the dignitaries are staying at swanky hotels nearby. They get shuttled back and forth in shuttle busses escorted by two squad cars with lights and sirens blazing. So every 15-30 minutes a little convoy comes right by and stops traffic and makes a big hubbub. And in the case of this morning, one of these convoys also woke me up repeatedly. That’s what I get for sleeping in until 10:30, I guess, but I was tired. We didn’t get home until around 1:00 this morning. Oh, how I love the weekends.