Thursday, July 05, 2007

Happy 4th?

So...The 4th was an eventful day...Dave and I were GOING to take it easy...but...as per usual-that didn't happen.
We started the day off normally, and tried to sleep in-then headed to the mall where Dave got some nice shirts and ties at Macy's and I spent a small fortune at the MAC section on a new blush, eyeshadow and lipstain...I may not have money for food, but I MUST have my MAC cosmetics...lol
Sooo-after that, we went to LUSH and did a bit of browsing...(they FINALLY put one into Tysons---Sarah and Kath are ready to scream---I can hear it...)
Then we did a barbeque with friends, set off fireworks and played videogames---btw---I SO want a Wii now...
the whole day up till then...fairly ok---except for the tornado warning that turned out to be nothing.

So then me and Dave decided to head home, to beat traffic from the DC fireworks...Famous last words would be, "We're tired...let's get home before the traffic starts."
well..........needless to say-by the time we made it to the 14th street bridge-all there was, was a parking lot.
It was kind of surreal.
We've decided that someday it'll be a cool story to tell our kids, but last night-it was like..."I can see home from here....and all I wanna do is go to sleep..."
So-we watched the fireworks and listened to Johnny Cash-we decided it was good All-American music to celebrate the 4th with and blast the other cars out with...hehe
Then once they were over we attempted to drive into the city-yeah, right.
EVERY SINGLE STREET downtown was closed off.
We must have tried every alternate direction we could think of-finally ending up BACK in Virginia an hour later, only to turn BACK around trying to head to Rosslyn to get over the Key Bridge HOPING against all hope that Georgetown would not be blocked.
It was not blocked off-but horribly backed up because apparently this was the ONLY funnel back into the city....oy.
I give my husband TREMENDOUS props because in the face of all of that traffic I never heard him yell once-even at the 7 or 8 cabbies that tried to cut us off (he DID however manuever his way deftly through the traffic and cut them off--it was pretty hot)
We did however both go through a pack of cigarettes...lol---but I figure, the amount of secondhand smoke from the fireworks was equal-at least there was a filter.
*WHEW*
Anyhow
On our way through Rosslyn-which seemed like an eternity, we happened to pass 2 pieces of AMAzing artwork which I feel almost made up for the awfulness of the 3 (count that) 3 hour drive home, which incidentally should have at MOST taken us 35-40 minutes.

The first piece was this LED light installation that looked like fireflies on poles all lined up. It would be so cool to have this in a yard.
It is called
CO2LED and was created by Jack Sanders, Robert Gay, and Butch Anthony. Ironically, the piece is only up for a month, and if we had been there ANY other time, which we never are because it's in a part of Rosslyn we never go to, we never would have seen it.

The second piece is a piece of work done by an experimental artist by the name of Ned Kahn. It looks like there is a waterfall running down the side of this bulding, but is sort of stops midway. It's amazing.The piece is called Liquid Pixels and was soo cool to see at night with lights reflecting off of it.


So....We DID finally make it home...and I ran to go pee because frankly---my appreciation of that artwork made me think about running water and having to pee and suddenly---everything had a yellow filter...
SO--happy independance from ENGLAND.....LOL
love you duckies---hope it's great across the pond!

3 comments:

Lexie said...

Those pics are AMAZING!!! Did you take the ones of the fireworks?
I'm so sorry you got stuck in all that traffic :-/ Don't you love DC? lol.

emyink said...

Sadly, I took NONE of these pix, as I was not expecting to BE on the 14th street bridge that night---but thank GOD for Google Images!

It was all worth it tho for our impromtu art show :)

Kath said...

Em! That was an awesome post, I think you should do colors more often (almost said awesome there, but might be an overuse of the word...). I didn't do much to celebrate the 4th, but I did notice it, tho'! London is having a street art festival this weekend (and for the past couple weekends) that you would love. In fact, there are so many things you would love over here you and Dave should consider a temporary move ;-)