I got CRABS for my birthday!

I know I'm a bit late on posting this, but this is what we did for John's birthday.  Big deal in DC (Virginia, Maryland) in the summer is blue crab.  So, pretending to be natives, we thought we try it out.

Our good friend from MN, Drew, who is living just outside of Baltimore drove down and joined us.

We went to a place called The Quarterdeck in Arlington.  Basically you sit down, order some beer (see pitcher in upper right hand corner) a few appetizers, and put in your crab order.  The crabs come in small, medium, or large and you can order them by the half-dozen. The crabs take between 30-45 minutes, so you drink beer and eat appetizers while you wait.  Then some guy carries them out on a huge tray, dumps them on your table and walks away.  Which if you are actually a native, is no big deal.  However, if you've never done this before it presents a small problem.  The 3 of started whacking away with our mallets and trying to figure out where exactly the meat was and what was edible.

After we had each completely decimated a crab with little to no success, we were finally able to flag down our waitress and learn the trick to eating crab. Amazingly, they have a pull-tab.  As my co-worker Nate claims, crab was invented by God specifically to be eaten by humans since they are the only food with a pull-tab.  Basically you pull on this thing, and the crab open right up.

After that, mmmmm delicious!

This is what you do in Washington DC if you are a dog....

This is the living room in our apartment.  
(Yes, I know there isn't anything on the walls, I'm getting there! Besides the hospital "white" is growing on me.)

Our living room is really cool if you are a dog.  Miss Lula is actually in this picture, can you find her?







This is her favorite place in the apartment.  Notice the bone in front of her.  Typically she also has one of John's shoes and a few other favorite toys.  She lays behind the couch and watches the people walk by in on the sidewalk below.  Most of the time, she grows at the dogs that walk by.  Pretty funny, her protecting us from 7 stories up!

What a View!

When I told  people that we were directly south of the Capital, I'm not sure they understood what I meant.  This is what we look at our of our living room windows.  At night it is absolutely stunning!

And so it begins.....

For anyone that has ever driven one of these more than 100 miles, it's not fun.  And no, I didn't do any of the driving.  John was a trooper and drove the whole way.  John's parents followed us in the Pontiac.
Aside from a small detour in Michigan (yup, I'm a bad navigator) we made it to DC on Aug 20th at 4:00PM.  It took us another 90 minutes to make it the last 16 miles to our apartment.

Hello Washington DC

I figured this was the easiest way to keep in touch with all our friends and family. It's also the easiest way for me to share pictures and updates about what is happening out here during our adventure.