The trip to Washington DC to meet the DC Chix was a bit of a failure.

We were able to get out of the Philadelphia area around 10 am like we had planned. Most of the drive down was very easy, and it being a Saturday morning the traffic was minimal. Around 12:20ish we arrived in the DC area. According to our directions from Mapquest at this point we were only about 4 miles from where we needed to be. It turns out that the Mapquest directions were completely useless. We got off at the exit we were told to, were unable to make a left where it said we should, so we went with the road (right) for about 5 miles. The directions said that our first turn would be in less than 3 miles. So we decided to go the other way. 5 miles in that direction still didn’t yield us any results. So we asked at a gas station, the guy said we were in the right direction the first time. We then went across the street to pick up a map. The map seemed to tell us something different from what the gas station guy said, so we decided to use that and try to at least get into downtownish DC with it.

Around 1:30 we were completely flustered we had been driving around lost for over an hour. The roads didn’t seem to make sense where we were (the map was much different from reality, or there were mutiple roads of the same name…). We stopped once again and asked a jogger where the station was. He gave us excellent directions, we were finally able to get on Connecticut Ave. (where the station was). There was traffic. Around 2 pm we made it to the station. We looked at both entrances, upstairs and down, with no luck. Apparently they had waited until 1:45 and then given up on us to go out for lunch. I don’t blame them, it is a long time to wait, especially when you are waiting to eat.

It was very unwise of us not to get each other’s cellphone numbers. I went to bed friday night thinking “I should just email them once more and ask” but I figured they wouldn’t respond by 9:30 am so it would be useless anyway. Well at least if they had responded later than that we could have had someone check our email and gotten the cellphone numbers! Gah, just poor planning.

Around 2:30 we decided to leave the station. We drove until we found a place to park (not an easy task). Then called our significant others to see if they could check our email, and send out a couple to the chix (including our cellphone numbers) in case we could still salvage the meeting, even tried to look up their numbers. No luck. So we decided to find somewhere better to park and walk into the city to find some food, we were so hungry!

Ended up at a seafood place called McCormick And Schmick’s. Apparently it’s a chain, but I had never been to one so it was fine with me. The food was really good, the service was excellent. I had a grilled samon club without bacon. We thought about having dessert, but it was nearly 4:30 already and figured we’d better get going if we were to get to any Smithsonian museum before they closed at 5:30. We stopped to take pictures near the White House. There were a number of protesters scattered around, TONS of police, and roads closed, but we walked around everywhere and it never caused a problem for us, pinkee and I even got our picture taken in front of the white house near some protest signs, it was funny. I’ll post the pictures tomorrow or something, my desk is a bit overrun by stuff right now so I can’t exactly get to my desktop to do what I need to do (I’ll get to this later).

Around 5 we got to the Aquarium. It closes at 5. Around 5:10 we got to the Smithsonian American History Museum. Walked around for about 20 minutes, got to see and exhibit on time (clocks, watches, time in general) which was amusing. Then the museum closed at 5:30. While looking through the museum booklet we saw that there were IMAX theaters that were open late. So we walked next door to the Natural History museum. They were playing an IMAX movie about going deep into the water to investigate the Titanic. Ugh.
So we decided to head over to the Air And Space museum so we could see a cool space one. Around 5:50 we get to the Air and Space Museum. Turns out that the last IMAX movie for the night was letting out. The brochure that we had was only for summer hours *groan* This was very disappointing.

Our feet hurt, we had endured much disappointment, and we were all a bit tired. Instead of walking to a metro station we just found a cab (which turned out to cost about the same for the 3 of us). The cab took us back to the car, and around 7 pm we started driving out of DC.

The drive home was nice and easy. We got back in the Philadelphia area around 9 and my companions were feeling a bit hungry so we decided to go to a Thai restaurant that Erin loved. I had never had Thai before, but I’m always up for new things, so we decided to go. The place was called “Thai Pepper” and I’ll have to get the location info from Erin because I still don’t know much about the area that it was in, so I can’t even say what town %) It was very very good. I got a spicy dish called “Sizzling Seafood” … and it was quite a dramatic sizzling. Yum. The service was some of the best I’ve ever had! These people were so wonderful. I ordered a Sapporo (japanese import beer, we have it often with sushi) and a glass of water with my meal, and it was all very nice. I’ll definately have to go there with Myk sometime.

Erin dropped Kristin off at home, then brought me home, so I guess I was home a little before 11. No one was here.

I knew Myk had his friend Bob over for the day so they could work on one of Bob’s systems and hang out and drink beer and be guys. So when I noticed Bob’s computer stuff here, and Myk’s car still here I figured they had gone out somewhere. The had taken over my desk to work on Bob’s computer, so I got onto my laptop to do some things. First I emailed the DC chix to explain what had happened. Then I went into IRC. Massive G-Lining was happening, and shade was the only Oper around. He explained that it was a botnet. There is some sort of virus/worm/thing that infects computers and so they attach to an irc server as a bot. This happens all at once, so you have hundreds of bots connecting from all different hosts so that the server gets overloaded and crashes if no one takes care of it. It was quickly realized that this botnet chose to only join one channel, so the channel was made secret, and everyone who tried to enter it was glined. This glining went on for hours. It sucked. It wasn’t the sort of thing I wanted to come home to.

Around 1:30 I realized that I really was exhausted and even though Myk wasn’t home yet I needed to go try and get some rest. I watch TV until about 2:30 and then went to sleep. Myk came home later, I don’t remember it very well, I think I told him that “the trip was a failure but I had fish, lots of fish.” And then I went back to sleep.

Woke up this morning at 8:30 (new time). I couldn’t sleep anymore, but now I am feeling quite drowsy, I might go to bed for another couple of hours so I’m not a zombie today.

Yesterday was full of disappointment and frustration. Luckily I had a very nice time spending it with pinkee and Erin, none of us got crankie or too outwardly upset during all the frustration and so we were able to have a plesent time. Even make jokes about our situation and how unlucky we had been all day. The food was also very good, and we all know, good food make me happy %) It really wasn’t a total waste of a day, I had a nice time with them, we got to talk about geeky stuff, joke around, we all really get along well. Of course we could have done this all spending a day in Philadelphia, but then we would have missed the protesters! *grin*

I am so tired. I am going to go lie down for a bit longer, it’s warm and snuggly there. *wanders off*