As promised...

Fashion show pictures!

Thanks to Steph for being my photog when I forget my camera! Also, as if selling fab clothes and putting on fun parties with free booze were not enough to make me heart this store, Sangaree happens to be run by legitimately awesome women. At the party Steph got this super hot yet refined dress (think Dita Von Teese-esque) that she wanted to wear on her upcoming work trip. Well a few hours before her flight, Steph goes to pack the new dress and realizes it still has that annoying plastic theft-prevention thingy on it. (Although, the plastic thingy is apparently not doing its job very well seeing as Steph walked out of the store without a single alarm going off. So Sangaree might want to check into putting actual working alarms on their clothes and not just big plastic pins for show. I hear the alarms are much more effective.)

Anyways she calls the store (everyone is very apologetic in a totally sincere way for the inconvenience they caused her) and drives over there on her way to the airport in order to have them remove it. Of course there is no parking anywhere though, I mean this is Georgetown, but Steph is up against a flight deadline. She doesn't have any extra time to deal with parking. So she calls the store again to explain the predicament as she is driving around the block. One of the Sangaree ladies, still apologizing the whole time, runs out and jogs by Steph's car as Steph throw out the dress during her second loop around the block, and by the time Steph is on her third loop, the lady has returned with the plastic free dress in hand. She jogs with the car again as she throws the dress back in and waves good bye wishing Steph a great flight. What great service, right?! Steph made her flight and got to wear her dress!

My Re-debut into Society

So my life, until this past Saturday, had been consumed with studying for the Lsat's, but as of February 2nd, I am free from that test forever! (Unless I bombed it. In which case I'll probably have to go through the whole again ordeal come June, but let's all cross our fingers that that doesn't happen because I am just a way more fun person when I am not stressing and studying and stressing about studying constantly.) So now that I am willing to go out on week nights again, my awesomely supportive friends, Amy and Steph, decided we needed to celebrate. So Steph (who is not only a fabulous event planner but also has lived through the Lsat's herself and thus totally understood the importance of the occasion) came up with a girls' night full of fashion and food. It was perfecto!

We started off the night at Sangaree which is this very chic boutique all the way at the end of Georgetown. They were having a little fashion show to promote their new spring looks which were all from Alvin Valley and Ports 1961. The clothes were so classy but not a bit stuffy, and I am not totally coveting this Ports brown dress for work and play. It's like a mullet: business in the front, party in the back. (But it is unlike a mullet, this dress is beauuuuutiful.)

Sangaree was also offering free cocktails and hors d'oeuvres. So after 2 pomegranate martinis, I had released enough inhibition to have mini splurge on this blue and white striped pencil skirt. Those clever bastards, mixing yummy cocktails and beautiful clothing. They must have known my will power to save money would crumble in the face of such opposition. The best part of the night, though, was when Steph spotted Tall Redheaded Lawyer BFF of ASJiNE blogger Johanna. For Steph and I, huge ASJiNE fans, this almost constituted a celebrity sighting. (I know that sounds kinda pathetic, but I dare you to start reading ASJiNE and not get sucked in! I tried in the beginning to resist. I thought she a bit judgmental, but she slowly seduced me back to her blog.)

After all the energy spent ooo-ing and aah-ing the clothes, we needed some serious sustenance. Fortunately Pizzeria Parasdiso is right next door. The pizza was good, but really it was their Sangria that sold me. That was fantastic! We contemplated going out after the pizza, but Erin and I decided just to head home. Seeing as it was not too bad of a night out, we were up for the long walk from Georgetown back to our U Street digs. The long walk is always nice after Erin and I get boozy because we love revisiting the same 3 conversation topics every time we drink, and this walk was long enough for us to hit on pretty much every one of them. We are so predictable. I heart it.

Also when Steph sends me pictures from the fashion show, I'll post them!

The less I behave like Whistler's mother the night before, the more I look like her the morning after...

Truer words were never spoken.

So after Erin and I moved to DC we had an apartment warming party to celebrate our independence from parents, college, homework, and awkward one night stands. We had lots of old friends come all the way down from wherever they were, and a handful of friends from DC swing by. I thought the party went really well. My opinion of the party might have had something to do with the fact that I drank the better half of the 2 cases of champagne we ordered, but in any case I thoroughly enjoyed myself. Erin's experience of the party was slightly less pleasant. Personally, I suspect it was because she didn't consume enough champagne, but she claims its because the DC portion of my acquaintances were being jerks. Theories aside, one bitch fight, a broken vase, and a lot of crying (on Erin's part) later, we woke up feeling... um... not awesome, but we had friends over who needed entertaining. What is a girl to do? Two words. Drunk. Brunch. Our weapon of choice on this particular morning: mimosas at Cafe Saint-Ex, the aviation themed cool kids bar.


I'll warn you ahead of time, the mimosas are a little pulpy. For those of you who are like me and only suffer through OJ to get to the booze, you might be better off with a kir royal (or just a shot - no one's judging). However, one thing Cafe Saint-Ex does not mess up is their food. We went with 4 friends, and not a single one of us didn't enjoy our meal. My one friend got some locally made sausages with her meal. They were greasy, flavorful, and sinfully delicious. Mmmm sausage. On nice days Saint-Ex's outside seating fills up uber fast, so we were unfortunately relegated to an inside table despite the gorgeous weather. My recommendation would definitely be to pop some Tylenol Migraine (that shit is hardcore) the second you wake up and drag your butt there before all the others who are looking for a little hair of the dog. But even if you get stuck inside, it'll still be a good time. Just look at Katie J and Lauren having a ball!


Side note: neither of these two lovely ladies looks anything like Whistler's mother, but I certainly did that morning which is why there is no picture of me.

To market, to market, to buy a fat pig

"Home again, home again, jiggety-jig," Erin and I sang as we skipped hand and hand to Eastern Market on our first weekend together in DC. Siiiiiiike! We took the metro there and tried to look cold and unapproachable so the homeless people would stop asking us for money. Mission accomplished. We made it in with the change in our pockets, and Erin experienced her first trip to one of the best outdoor markets around.

There's Erin, taking in the wonders of local produce, arts, and cheeeeeeeeese. Say that last part in a super high excited voice because that's how Erin says it every time we walk up to the cheese shop, and she is totally justified. The cheese shop in Eastern Market has an extensive variety of cheeses that I have never heard of and cannot not pronounce, and they are always giving out tons of free samples! (Not that I have learned anything from sampling all these cheeses week after week except I like cheese a great deal, a great deal indeed.... ok that's a lie. I learned that the best cheese is the double gloucester with chives and herbs. Oooo sooo yummy. We routinely make the trip down to EM just for this cheese, and sometimes we even use this cheese as our wager in bets. Like the time I bet Erin that our old cat's legs were only 2 inches long (it was a midget cat), and she said they were 4 inches. She won, but only because the cat had long hair making it hard for me to see that its legs extended further up. Anyways I had to buy her some double gloucester, even though I felt cheated.)

After gorging ourselves to the point of annoying the entire cheese staff, we went over to peruse the meat counters. Now I know this is going to sound like I am trying to slide some sexual humor into the blog, but in all seriousness Erin and I love sausage. Go ahead have your little 'that's-what-she-said' giggle. It's not going to diminish our adoration for those little links of meaty goodness, and if there's anywhere Erin and I can total indulge our obsession, have a sausagefest if you will, (Ok that was low brow. I'm sorry. Better you learn now that I have no shame.), it is at EM. The different meat purveyors have so many gourmet sausage options! We went through this huge faze where we would get 3 or 4 different kinds every weekend and then plan meals around them. One time Erin made us some delicious sausage sandwich samples.

Before: (The one of the left is a Greek sausage with spinach and feta and pinenuts, and the one on the right is a spicy sausage of some sort. I forget the exact details of it except for that it was tasty)

After:



There's much more that we love about EM, but sadly I have no pictures capturing the rest. Look for a follow up come spring when the produce is back! It will probably be titled: 'To market, to market, to buy a fat hog,' and I'll give you a dollar* if you can guess what the first line of the post will be.


*By dollar I mean high five.

We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold...

The effects left me with a deep desire to create a blog. But first we need the car. And after that, the cocaine. And then the tape recorder, for special music, and some Acapulco shirts. The only way to prepare for a trip like this was to dress up like human peacocks and get crazy, then screech off across the desert and cover the story.

But what story to cover? What to blog about? The market has already been cornered on fugging celebrities, ranking socialities, sartorializing pedestrians, reviewing restaurants, and an abundance of other topics. Then it struck me, no one has called dibs on the subject of Erin's and my lives in DC. It was perfect. I just happened to be an expert on that topic. The Search for J Street will be our soapbox for the exciting things we discover and want to share as we work through our gynormous to-do list (see sidebar for a link to the current list) in our new found home.

While wearing crazy peacock suits.