Yesterday, Saturday, was such a wonderful day. It started out when I overslept by an hour, but I hit the road and drove into the city to meet eyes_of_cyrene at her hotel. I got there at about 11:30, valet-parked the car, and spent the next 16 hours with one of my best friends, who I don’t get to see very often because she lives in Iowa! First we got something to eat, and went to the National Museum of Women in the Arts, and did some shopping at Filene’s Basement, where I got a new purse. We went back to her hotel and chatted for a while, and then we went to dinner in Chinatown. She taught me about beer! I have no idea what all I had - this was at RFD and we got lots of samples - but the one I liked the best basically tasted like raspberry juice. (She said - “yeah, except this will get you drunk!”)

We had leftovers when we were done with dinner, so we were going to take them up to the room and then go back down to the hotel bar for another drink. But she realized she’d forgotten her hat at the restaurant, so we went back and picked it up, and then went to the hotel bar. I ordered a “chocolate covered cherries” drink, and I remember it had Godiva liqueur and Smirnoff Black Cherry Twist in it, but there was something else that I don’t remember. Oh, and at no time during the night did I get carded - Gretchen said it was because we were signing, and they assumed I was deaf, and they didn’t want to deal with asking for my ID. (Or hey, I didn’t get carded Friday night either, maybe I finally look old enough to not get carded?) Anyway, we also got shots of the new Bailey’s Flavors…the caramel was very good but the mint chocolate was nothing to write home about.

When the hotel bar closed, we went back to her room and chatted for another couple of hours, and then we took a three-hour nap before it was time to get up so I could take her to the airport! Oh my god, I had such a fabulous time. I seriously did not want to take her to the airport…I wanted to keep her here! I don’t have a huge number of people that I am really close to, and virtually none of them live in the DC area. I had so much fun.