Sunday, June 27, 2010

One Week in Our New Place!

So today marks one week since Blake and I moved into our apartment.  At 2 AM last Sunday, my family and I (minus Becca who's in Honduras for the summer) rolled into DC.  At 2:30 AM I was asleep with Blake on an air mattress.  At 8:30 AM on Monday Blake and I were awake and getting the apartment ready for my parents' arrival with the U-Haul.  They pulled up at the apartment loading dock, and --I kid you not-- all of our boxes and earthly possessions were in our apartment on the 8th floor in under half an hour.  Mine and Blake's parents are troopers!  Not to mention that Steve, Blake, and my dad put together an IKEA desk and 5' x 5' bookshelf.  And Dorothy and my mom put together our bed frame and mattresses and comforter set.  Blake and I sat back and watched with a glass of sweet tea.  And encouraged them of course!  Haha just kidding!  We were working too.  All the work has been sooo worth it.  Our apartment is adorable and really starting to feel like home!

Today has been a relaxing day for Blake and me.  We work up early (which is a lot easier when you actually have some place to be!) and went less than half a mile up the street to attend a church service at the National Cathedral.  
The Cathedral is breathtaking and huge!  I'd visited once before, but I'd forgotten how gargantuan the buildings are.  The walk was fun and relaxing this morning, but it was also HOT!  There were some reprieves of shade on the sidewalk, but for the most part, it was an uphill walk in the sun.  And being raised in the South led us to dress up for church... if only I'd seen the ensemble of many of the tourists before I chose long pants this morning! 
We had planned to attend the 10 AM contemporary service, but we went to the main gathering area instead of the smaller chapel where the service was offered.  It was just as well though because the Cathedral was hosting their weekly Sunday Forum on issues in DC with special guest speakers.  Today's speaker was Colbert King, a Pulitzer Prize winning Washington Post columnist.  It was a very interesting conversation between the dean of the Cathedral and King about how DC has changed since the early '40s when King was growing up and what it is like now.  Race and the stratification of class were popular subjects during the question and answer session.
One thing he said did stick out to me: He mentioned that he doesn't let the readers of his column stay comfortable.  He mentioned giving back to the community and the importance of volunteering in answer to many of the social justice issues raised.  I'd never read any of his columns until this evening, but I liked how he called people to step forward on behalf of the 'have nots' in DC.  


After the discussion and Q and A session was over, Blake and I walked around the rest of the Cathedral.  We'd heard rumors of a pretty garden nearby.  There were plenty of things to see.
And then we finally did find the Bishop's Garden.  It was hot, but the garden was really large and beautiful.  

We had a lot of fun exploring!

We headed back to our apartment and ate leftovers that we'd scored from the roof party the night before (see previous post!).  And then we relaxed and read.  I read the entire book I, Alex Cross by James Patterson!  Blake's been reading The Great Influenza by John M. Barry, his groomsman gift from Dylan and Ellen's wedding!  His read is a little heavier than mine!  

We tend to have a hard time not putting down our books and telling each other what is happening while we read together.  But that's ok!  We're team reading!


We made some awesome spaghetti for dinner.  I'm so lucky to have married a chef!  I'm only slightly kidding... Blake really did want to be a chef for awhile when he was growing up.  And he's always enjoyed cooking, and he's really good at it too.  So Blake made, no joke, 5 meals worth of spaghetti for under $5 TOTAL.  And we're talking flavorful meat sauce with bunches of fun ingredients and whole grain spaghetti noodles!  We'll definitely be returning to this cheap and delicious meal in the future!


In other news... Thank goodness for Facebook!  I'm a 'fan' of the law school on facebook, and I noticed a post they had today that involved a free movie screening and panel discussion at the Law School this Wednesday.  So Blake and I reserved tickets for a film called The Response.  This is what they said about the movie:


"'The Response' is a 30-minute award winning courtroom drama based upon the actual transcripts of the Guantanamo military tribunals... This non-partisan film revolves around the tribunal of a suspected enemy combatant and the military officers who must decide his fate.  For the first time, an audience can see and hear for themselves what occurred on Guantanamo."
Evidently it's been shortlisted for the 2010 Academy Awards and it won the 2009 ABA Silver Gavel Award as best of the year in Drama & Literature.  It's even been screened at the Pentagon, West Point, and some school named Harvard (hehe).  Blake and I are really excited about it!  And it means we get to go inside my law school for the first time ever!  There will be plenty of discussion then I think!


Well this has been a really long post.  Thanks for reading... you know once school kicks in we won't have quite as much to write about!  Sample post from the future:  Well, today I studied.  What day of the week is it?  Did I eat yesterday?  Love, Catie.

2 comments:

  1. Great post. Enjoyed reading about the trip to the National Cathedral, the pictures, the description of the film. Very interesting.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I am really enjoying your posts Catherine and Derek! I'm getting to know D.C. and you much better! :-) Charlene

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