PENNSYLVANIA ENCORE

MOST EXCITING LICENCE PLATE SPOTTED TODAY: Mississippi!

Ugh. So we're in Pennsylvania again today. Maxy was told at the last minute last week to cover McCain's townhall meeting here this afternoon, then go out campaigning with some unions supporting Obama tomorrow.

So chauffeur Soph is back in the state that boasts Lebanon and very unfriendly people.

Things have only been made worse by the TERRIBLE satnav system we got from Avis (come back, Polly - all is forgiven!) that has taken us down many wrong turnings and given us directions in all the wrong order.

But we enjoyed listening to the new Coldplay album on the way here. I really really like the title track - I like that the idea they're going for, with the revolutionaries and overturned king.

It was only about a three hour drive to get to Pipersville, where McCain was speaking. Max - being the glamorous journalist that he is - changed into one of his many suits in a car park just down the road, then I dropped him off amidst a sea of protesters, who I should imagine he'd quite like to've joined. There was something quite moving about all those passionate people, especially the old man I saw as I drove off, who was trying to hold both his zimmer frame and a 'bring the troops home' poster.

It was quite nice to have the car to myself on the hour's drive to our hotel along the mercifully straightforward route. I played music very loud and sang even louder and enjoyed the distinctly Dorset-like country roads I was zooming along - it was really pretty.

I drove through Bethlehem, which I can exclusively reveal is far nicer than Lebanon. There are sliiiightly tastless signs all over the town, encouraging visitors to 'follow the stars to Bethlehem's attractions', like the trauma hospital (eh?!) and a kind of flat iron building with a barrel on it, called Ye Olde Ale House.

There's also a Nazareth nearby - home of Pennsylvania NASCAR - and a Harrow.

I suspect all these places might've been nicer than where our hotel is. It's a Hilton Garden Inn (after all, Pennsylvania does them so very well!) and it's basically on a motorway. From our window, I can see a delightful truck depot and a furniture outlet store and there is nothing else around apart from a very busy motorway. Oh, and a Waffle House and a Red Robin diner. Anyways, it's basically a tarmac wilderness.

I fell asleep soon after getting to the hotel. Either because of the 4+ hours driving I'd just done, or because of the episode of 'King of Queens' I was watching. Either way, it wasn't long until I was back on the pretty country roads, this time singing loudly to stay awake.

Just to remind me that I wasn't *actually* in Dorset, a beaver ran across the road in front of my car and I saw a field of bison! They were gone by the time I drove back past it (for the third time...), so Max thinks I made the whole thing up and am quite mad.

The townhall meeting went very well for both Maxy and McCain and Max got everything that he needed. He was starving when I picked him up, so we headed straight to the delightful Red Robin diner for fat food when we got back to the hotel. However, it seems they are no strangers to the Extremely Hungry Traveller there, as we were defeated by a massive pile of onion rings and couldn't make it through our main course. We felt quite ill afterwards.

But fortunately Max had the fuel he needed to get his article done and in fact had written most of it in longhand while he was waiting for me to collect him. He was jonesing for a beer, but was told by the front desk that it's against the law in Pennsylvania to deliver alcohol to hotel rooms. Someone had better tell the Hilton Garden Inn in Harrisburg...

We've cunningly brought our laptop and speakers with us, so weren't deprived of our now traditional pre-bedtime West Wing, which let us forget for a moment that we are surrounded by motorways and truck depots. Max still hasn't managed to firm anything up for tomorrow, with the pro-Obama union people, so who knows where we'll be going next?! It's almost exciting, but let's remember that wherever we go, we'll still be in Pennsylvania...

WEBCAMMERY

I came over all faint in church this morning. It's really annoying - that used to happen loads when I was younger, but hasn't happened for a while. So I had to come back to the flat and collapse on the sofa, upping my blood sugar levels with some medicinal peanut M&Ms.

Then we had a webcam chat with Max's Mum, Dad and brother Aaron. It was so nice to see them, if slightly hilarious as they have no speakers so were having to share one pair of headphones between three. But it blew our minds that they were right there, looking like they look, and with not too hideous a delay.

Because I was still feeling all funny after our chat, we retired to the sofa and had another afternoon of West Wing fun before heading back up towards Chevy Chase to watch 'Sex & The City'.

The screen we saw it in is a fancy one with big leather seats - a bit like The Electric in London - and there's a bar outside too, but it wasn't open when we went.

I didn't think very much of the movie, unfortunately. I was hoping to really enjoy getting to watch a 2 hour episode of S&TC. But it was just kind of boring and episodic and Max put his finger on it when he said it reminded him of the Spice Girls' reunion - everyone was just a bit too old and disinterested.

On the way home, we stopped off in Dupont for supper at Afterwords, which is a cafe attached to Kramer Books, just down the road from our apartment. It's a really cool place - all dark and atmospheric and we had tasty food there. It shall replace Raku as our impulse dining option near Dupont.

GAËLLE

BIGGEST KICK IN THE TEETH OF THE WEEK: I had a hangover this morning!! Surely proof that hangovers are more about dehydration and tiredness than anything alcohol-related. Hmph.

While it was annoying to wake up with a hangover, it was nice to remember what nice hangovers feel like - that snoozy, slightly slow feeling where you're in only just enough pain to remind you of the good night you had last night, and feel pleasantly just adjacent to the real world, rather than in the middle of it.

It was in this haze that we wandered up to Adams Morgan for brunch at a swanky-looking-but-reasonably priced place called Left Bank.

Deciding to no longer question my non-alcohol-fuelled hangover, but rather give into it, we then installed ourselves on the sofa where we watched 'The West Wing' and I snoozed until it was time to go out for the evening, for supper at Michael and Marie's house up in Chevy Chase. They have some friends moving to Senegal with the World Bank so threw a farewell soiree for them, inviting other displaced professionals that they know.

The couple in question were Belgian and really nice. I can't remember if it's the World Bank or the IMF or both that are bad, but the Belgian man had worked for both but seemed terribly jolly. We were joined by some neighbours of Michael and Marie who lived in Sao Paulo for a few years, working for the World Bank and we all exchanged stories of starting life in a new place. Though Max and I were a little embarrassed that we had far less adjusting to do than those acclimatising to life in Brazil or Africa. The most tricky thing we've had to negotiate here is trying to find somewhere that sells flannels!

The Belgian couple brought with them their two daughters who are 11 and 6 and I very nearly stole the 6-year old - Gaëlle. Oh my goodness, she's EASILY the coolest 6-year old I've ever met and just the most lovely little girl in the world.

I think my affection for her started when someone made reference to poetry and she said, 'Stop it, I mean it. Does anybody want a peanut?', which is from 'The Princess Bride', which turns out to be her favourite film. So we sat, like two excitable geeks, exchanging lines from the movie for ages and she knew LOADS! She was so fun!

When I went to the loo, she said, 'Oh do come back soon, Sophie - I like you'. Why aren't grown ups that straightforward?!

When I came back, we went through a bunch of other movies we like and then she uttered the immortal words, 'do you like David Bowie and Paul McCartney?'! And sang, with what can only be described as unfettered glee, endearing renditions of 'Space Oddity' and 'Ebony & Ivory'. Awww. It was when she then burst into 'Born In The USA' that I was really sold. But, just to prove that she wasn't in fact a 29 year old man, she and Max enjoyed singing Jordin Sparks' latest song together (Max LOVES that song!) as well.

By this time, her older sister who'd been keeping herself to herself, caught on that there was fun being had and came over to try to distract me away from Gaëlle. But she just reminded me of myself at that age - insufferably annoying and convinced she knew it all - too cool for school without actually being cool. She kept telling Gaëlle how annoying she was and then started poking her incessantly. While I would've gone nuts at her, Gaëlle just sat there through the barrage of poking, sweetly saying, 'please don't poke me. Please don't poke me'. She's a classy dame (/ 6 year old).

We were sitting out on Michael and Marie's deck, which had smelt like the Maldives when we were there last. There was rumbling thunder somewhere in the distance and fireflies darting about like mad. The food was DELICIOUS - a vast buffet of tasty barbecued meat and salads and stuff. Mmmm.

It had taken a lot to get me off the sofa this afternoon, but I was so glad that we went. Michael drove us home afterwards and we had made a vague plan with Megan last night that we would meet up with her to go dancing when we got back from Chevy Chase, but we were too knackered. And besides, I've got a new friend now - it's just a shame she's off to Senegal. Erm, and 6.

PARTY CENTRAL

NUMBER OF DAYS SINCE I LAST DRANK BOOZE: 28

It's Anne's 30th birthday on Monday and, while high from kayaking last week, I suggested that we throw her a party at our flat because her and Megan's is so tiny.

Anne was very grateful for the offer and we were happy to oblige, until Anne copied us into the invitation email that she sent to about 50 people! We've spent all week persuading ourselves that her friends are likely to be very nice and that our flat isn't going to get trashed, but it's weird to think of the place being overrun by quite so many strangers.

Anyway, the day came yesterday and I spent the whole day preparing for the fiesta. I was thrilled to discover that the eery similarities between me and Anne extend to her penchant for lists and we had an excellent time in the morning, drawing up a list of everything that needed to be done and who was to do it.

It was obvious that this was going to be a far more sophisticated affair than our party, where pizza and potato salad was the fanciest fare we served up. There was a cheeseboard, for a start. I took responsibility for the feta/watermelon/olive cocktail sticks (that ended up looking really good. In the words of R Kelly's 'Ignition' - there was food everywhere, just like the party was catered), the veggie sticks and dips and some secret things Anne didn't know about, including rice krispy marshmallow treats and brownies (hey, if it ain't broke...), on top of which I stuck the 3 and 0 candles from Max's party, by way of a surprise birthday cake.

I also decided to make Anne a birthday banner, but there's a real dearth of art shops around here and I was a little stumped as to where to find coloured card and paper. I had to improvise and my banner, which was going to be individual letters strung along a piece of string, became a poster, using ingenious pre-cut letters that are like postits.

To jazz things up a bit, I got some glitter and then set to work in the big hallway of our flat, putting the whole thing together. I decided to use the glitter as a border, so merrily sprinkled glitter down one side of the paper, only to discover by the time I'd done that and funnelled the rest back into the pot that there was no way, with the foolishly wide border I'd gone for, that the glitter would stretch to all four sides. So I ended up, in a sweaty mess of glue, newspaper, glitter and a painy back from bending down so long, with different coloured glitter along two of the sides. It didn't look great, I'll be honest. A little like a 6-year old who's bad at art swung by and had a go at a birthday poster.

Anyway, there wasn't time to brood - there was baking to be done, the flat to be cleaned and an impulsively-booked hairdressers appointment to get to. Who doesn't book themselves into a hairdresser an hour before a party they have to spend all day preparing for?!

This was the first haircut I've had since getting here and it was long overdue. Before leaving London, I asked my hairdresser for a really sustainable cut, half thinking I could get away with not cutting it again until I go home. But his very last snip was to cut off half my fringe and my hair's been all wonky ever since.

So I ventured to a salon recommended by Alison. No-one else here has short hair - all the girls have long flowing styles, so I didn't know if the stylist I went for would be able to handle short, frizzy hair, if she's used to hair like Alison's. Turns out I was at completely the wrong branch for Alison's stylist but got a girl called Barbara who has the exact haircut I dream of - all short and elfin and cool - and massive black tattoos down her arms of the Vidal Sassoon bob. Weird. Turns out she trained at Vidal Sassoon in London.

Barbara's really cool - like a tiny haircutting elf with dramatically short hair and dark eye makeup. She was reeeally slow cutting my hair - cue frenzied texts to Anne and Max - but gave me good tips for our trip to Baltimore in a couple of weeks, so that's good.

What was far from good was the torrential rain which started halfway through our session. Massive sploshy biblical rain. I didn't fancy my chances, getting home with new hair on my bike from downtown.

But the cut looked wooooonderful. I was so happy. Turns out Barbara is very much the tortoise to my London hairdresser's hare, as slow and steady certainly did win the race this time and I'm only sad my hair will never look like that again, once I wash it for the first time.

The rain had stopped by the time I left the salon, but I dashed into CVS to grab an ugly-but-cheap baseball cap just in case and tore home to do final preparations for the party. I love the bit where you get to open all the packets and lie everything out on tables, after preparing stuff for a party all day.

The flat looked great, Anne loved the remedial banner and my new dress looked pretty, so all was good with the world. We weren't inundated with 50 of Anne's friends in the end - more like 15-20 or so. Max and I had a really nice time, being the hosts but not having to care if the right people were speaking to each other or if certain people hadn't turned up. We met a couple of Anne's friends called Derek and Sarah who Anne had been wanting us to meet for ages, as she thought we'd get on. Sure enough, they were both really nice and Sarah used to be a cartographer, which is cool - I've never met a cartographer before.

Anne really liked the playlist I'd crafted* for her (* = cribbed from the one for our party) and we all had fun with the ringpops and loomy necklaces Anne had scattered around the place, to give a retro feel as she turned 30. I met Fiona - her nemesis who's one of Hugh's oldest friends and is jealously mean to any girl who gets closer to Hugh than she is - and sure enough she's horrid. I also met a nice chap from the Wall Street Journal, who is one of Megan's oldest friends, and got to speak more to Megan's boyfriend (and Josh Groban lookalike) Jonathan, who seems great.

Megan did a nice speech (well she is a speech-writer, so you'd hope...), mentioning how she and Anne used to pretend they were at boarding school when they were little and gave themselves fancy names - I blew their MINDS when I told them I actually went to boarding school. And Megan told a story about how Anne used to pretend she was a librarian and all the books at their summer house still have Anne's little library stickers in the front. She really is a girl after my own heart! I used to be obsessed with wanting to be a librarian who stamped the books and took the little card out of the pouch in the front.

Anne was really happy with her birthday brownies, as turns out she really doesn't like cake. Phew! It was lovely - she just seemed really relaxed and happy to enjoy her friends and party while not having to worry about her apartment.

Max - looking unfeasibly handsome in his Lucky Brand jeans and t-shirt underneath the shirt he got at Banana Republic the other day - was a hit as ever and spearheaded a small dancing effort towards the end of the evening, which is most unlike him.

Unfortunately we got stuck with just Hugh's boring old friends by the end of the party, around 1.30am, who just sat around going, 'do you remember when MTV started?' and other things which anyone under 40 was unable to relate to. Snooore. Eventually they got the hint as Max and I went into the weird turbo cleanup drive that overcomes us at the end of parties and they all left.

Click HERE for more photos of the night. There were many more people here than are in the pictures, but I didn't know any of them, so these are mostly of Anne, Hugh, Megan, Jonathan, Max and me.

LAUNDRY, BAKING & DRESSES

FAVOURITE NEW PASTIME: webchats with my friends. I had another one this afternoon, with my friend Emma, and it was so lovely to see her - I could stay here for ages as long as my nearest and dearest have webcams!

I found another good tennis partner last night and finally got to play on the courts right opposite our house, rather than having to cycle to farflung corners of the city. Her name is Alexis and - like Caroline - her sister is moving to the UK after getting married. Also like Caroline, she's really really good. There's no way I'll be able to keep up with her in a few weeks, but last night was the first time she's played since last year, so we had a good knockabout. She's about 30 and works in something to do with pharmaceutical development in developing countries or something and is really friendly. Max was swimming while we were playing, but popped by on his way home and was a very effective (if static) ballboy, while reading his book.

It was the second time I'd seen him that day, because we'd had a slight misunderstanding over email in the morning and I got a bit sad, but was being silly, so didn't make a big thing of it. I just sat on the sofa feeling sorry for myself. But then who should walk through the door not 15 mins later, but Maxy! He'd detected that I was blue and had rushed home for home dinners! He's amazing. We had lunch together and then I walked him back to the office and everything was lovely again. *grin*

Today I've lived the life of a 50s housewife. I did lots of laundry, then baked some brownies (a triumph - the baking mojo is back!) and, while Max was out with Oliver from the Guardian, I went to Alison and Emily's house (with said brownies) for a dress-buying party!

Their apartment is right by Eastern Market, which is a bit like Spitalfields, and Alison had come across a dress stall a while ago where she liked eeeeverything. So she got chatting to the lady running the stall and found out that she does home visits, where she brings a selection of dresses to your home and you have people over to buy them and get a mini-commission.

So there were 8-10 girls dashing up and downstairs, trying on these dresses and having to make do with the M&Ms and cheese that Alison had dished up for supper, because the stallowner said people don't buy stuff if you lay on too much food and drink.

It was quite fun and I met some more nice friends of Alison's, most of whom seem to be in the process of buying foreclosure houses from banks. It was the first real sign of the famed credit crunch that I've experienced here. Leanna was there, which was great and she and Patrick find out tomorrow whether their offer has been accepted on a house in Virginia. Pregnant and house-buying - it's all go for them! (Leanna's due on 12 Feb.)

I bought two pretty dresses, one of which I was sure Max wouldn't like and the other of which is kiiiind of identical to a strapless black tea-dress I already own, but is more structured and better made, so I managed to justify it to myself. Plus, they were really really cheap and I *have* been working recently, so it's not toooo naughty.

Emily's friend Katie gave me a ride home, which I was really grateful for because they live on the other side of town from us and it was the most humid I've ever known it to be when we emerged from the party. Seriously, it was like walking out of the house into a big hot blanket at 9.30pm. Katie's really nice - I've seen her at a couple of parties, but never really talked to her. Unfortunately she's moving to Denver forever in two weeks, so I can't get attached. Such is the transience of DC. *sigh*

Max was humorously tipsy after his night with Oliver when I got home and surprised me by saying he liked both dresses when I did a little fashion show for him. Though it might've been the drink talking...

STRIKE OUT

MY NEW OBJECTIVE FOR THIS YEAR: to join America's official rock paper scissors league, which held its championship tournament in Vegas this week.

As promised, I hit Lucky Brand like a whirlwind yesterday, determined to buy many half price pairs of dreamy jeans. In the end, I only managed to get two, but for a ridiculous £20 each. Nice. What wasn't so nice is that I couldn't fit into my usual size. Fie on deliciously enormous American servings! (erm, and our pathological eating out.)

While I was in the shop, another motorcade sped by - the same size as the one we saw last week - and the shop assistant explained that it must be Cheney. Apparently when it's Bush, they shut the entire block off and he has way more vehicles with him, including a van which drives directly behind his car, filming the journey. Apparently this was introduced after JFK's assassination and is in case POTUS gets shot and they need to examine footage of how it happened. I think that's kind of bleak.

Last night, we went for dinner with Cindy and her actor husband Jim, at Jaleo - a tapas restaurant near Chinatown which had been recommended to me by loads of people. It was really nice to see Cindy again (she's the lady I had lunch with in Georgetown yonks ago) and funny to meet Jim, having seen him in that terrible play last week. He's really nice and we had a really good time with them. Cindy barely got a word in edgeways, as Jim did all the talking but, except for his earnest theatre chat, made for good conversation. Especially when he told us how he's the world record holder for the longest game of frisbee ever! He and some stoner friends of his at college just threw a frisbee between them constantly for something like two months.

Conversation obviously became somewhat awkward when it turned to Jim's play. I'd emailed Cindy shortly after seeing it to say that we'd thought Jim was great but hadn't really cared too much for the play, because we really did hate it that much, that I couldn't bear having to gush about it when we met again.

I think I just about got away with it - no thanks to Max, who suddenly lost his tongue - and was interested to hear Jim kind of agree with some of my garbled reservations, explaining that the writer was very involved and the cast only really knew what was going on because the writer explained the motivations and backstories of the characters. Jim reckons a company who doesn't work so closely with the playwright will have a real problem, which is a major weakness of the play.

This afternoon, I went up town to play tennis with criminal lawyer Sarah in what is becoming an almost weekly daytime arrangement, which is nice because I like playing tennis and Sarah is kind of fun, but would be nicer if our games were slightly more exciting.

Weirdly, there was a queue for the court, so I locked my bike up and Sarah drove us to a court in deepest darkest Bethesda, even further uptown, where the really really fancy suburban neighbourhoods are (she lives just round the corner). We played on a court surrounded by woodland and I kept expecting squirrels to scamper across the court. Unfortunately Sarah then had to drive me back to my bike, as we were miles away, and I sweated all over her car seat. Whoops. Hey, but she and her husband have three cars. It's so gross. Her husband has a car, she has the SUV she drove me around in then they have a third, bigger car that's like a big people carrier for when she does the school run. Eugh.

I was knackered by the time I got home, but had to almost turn straight round again to brave my second ever softball game. I figured that the disaster of my first attempt was inevitable of a beginner and that only if I continued to be rubbish on my second game would it be worth considering abandoning the whole endeavour.

I decided to cycle all the way to West Potomac Park, after mine and Max's odyssey last time that got us lost in the FDR memorial. But it was a long and treacherous ride at rush hour and I couldn't help notice, as I weaved in an out of static traffic, that there weren't any other cyclists at all on the road. This became less of a mystery to me as the number of times I nearly died reached double figures.

Fortunately I made it in one piece and it was really nice to see Patrick again. But you'll NEVER guess who else rocked up to play on his team? The guy from tennis and jazz!! I should disclose at this stage that said chap is really very hot, and I swear I detected a flicker of stalker-fear on his face as he saw me for the third time, but hey - he should be so lucky! It was such a freaky coincidence, though. He works for Patrick's firm (but they don't know each other) and I found out today that his name is Micah (last name, Brill!), which will help when we next bump into each other.

I had been a little nervous to go to softball without my cheerleader (Max had to work late), but there was a really friendly atmosphere tonight and I felt very welcomed (perhaps because only about two of the team were there last time I played, so everyone else was blissfully unaware of what mookery lay ahead...). I even managed to remember everyone's names, which was an achievement and helped me feel more team-y.

Great chortles went up when we discovered we were playing the AARP - America's equivalent of SAGA - and I felt that my chances of doing well against a team of over-50s were pretty good.

Oh how very wrong I was. It's not that they were really good - we totally dominated the game and eventually won. It's that I was just so BAD! Much, much worse than last time. Once again, I was put out in the right field, where no-one can hit. But as soon as it became obvious that I was the weakest link in the team, even the white haired old lady started targeting me and hitting balls in my direction! The one that actually came near me, I fumbled and threw wildly wide of the mark, while Patrick and Mika were managing to get the entire opposition out between them with their glue hands catches and deft throwing.

But it was the batting that was the real disaster. At least last time I made contact with the ball, even if I did get out through not knowing the rules. This time - every time - I swung wildly at the ball and never once managed to hit it. It was miserable. I was miserable. And matters were made worse by a really confusing ump, who didn't say 'out' - he just assumed I'd know if he said some numbers, that they added up to me being out. So I was regularly left stranded on the batting spot like a lemon, not knowing what was going on.

Once again, the team were very kind, but it felt worse for me this time, because last time there were a few token girls who never once made contact with the ball and were just a little lame. But this time I was those girls and everyone else on the team was better, so I felt like I was letting everyone down. I was wearing a McSweeney's t-shirt that says, 'It was awkward at first', which the captain quoted to make me feel better, until I pointed out that it is apparently also awkward at second.

I didn't stick around for post-game training. My softball career is over.

Patrick and I mooched back to the metro together on what became a humorously eventful journey. First of all, we came across a whole mini-field of fireflies zipping about. We stood there for ages, just watching masses and masses of little glowy flies and a bemused squirrel in the middle of them. Fireflies are so cool. When they're not glowing they just look like regular flies.

Then, as we walked by the tidal basin, there was the most lovely sunset just starting over the Jefferson monument. There was a black helicopter buzzing across the water and Patrick said it was probably some senator being whisked somewhere. But then when we got across into the city, there was a massive noisy motorcade that I noticed wasn't escorting anything - it was just lots of police and ambulances in a row, with the helicopter overhead. Patrick said that we'd only have to worry if there was a SWAT truck, because that either means a bomb or a hostage situation. I'll leave you to guess what drove by at that moment... Eeek!

We had great trouble finding the lift (for my bike) when we got to the metro, but Patrick eventually found a door opening onto a lift at the base of a building. This isn't what they usually look like - the metro lifts are usually in a big black column, but we went inside anyways and the lift started going up. Again, this was unusual, because the metro is underground. But somehow we just accepted it, until we got out of the lift and found ourselves in the Department of Agriculture. Whoops.

When we emerged back on the street, the big black metro lift column across the road loomed large and we couldn't believe we'd ever missed it, so hopped on the metro. When we had to change trains, we took a lift from the platform up to the concourse, to get to the next platform we needed to go from. This time the lift was a glass one and Patrick pretended to crush the heads of the teeny people below us. One lady looked up and saw him and he got embarrassed until I pointed out that he'll never see her again. Until we realised we'd come up on the wrong platform and had to get the same glass lift down to the place where the lady was, walk right past her and everyone else Patrick was crushing between his fingers and get another lift up onto the opposite platform. Awkwaaard.

I finally got to Dupont Circle, and picked up a message from Maxy (who'd been working late) that he was on his way to the El Salvadorian restaurant down the road from our flat, so I met him there for supper and consolation. I'm not going anywhere without my cheerleader again.

CULTURE VULTURES

WEIRDEST DOG I'VE SEEN IN A CITY OF MANY DOGS: this weirdy fox dog. I think maybe it's a fox on a lead.

I would like more Sundays to be like this - today has been great.

Maxy met me from church and we headed to Lucky Brand just down the road, because it's got a huge sale on at the moment and it's our favourite favourite place to get jeans. Once again, Max was in a purchasing mood, which was very pleasing (I don't shop on Sundays, so was just stroking jeans longingly, giving evil looks at anyone who dared deplete the stocks til I can get back there tomorrow). We spent aaaages in there and Max emerged with a pair of jeans, some shorts and 3 t-shirts for the price of not very much.

With Maxy decked out in his sharp new threads, we sauntered a little further down the road for lunch at Sette Osteria, where we were able to sit outside eating tasty bread and cold meats and olives. It was all very civilised and we're determined to go on holiday to Italy when we get back to the UK.

It was only a two block walk from there to the Phillips Collection, a gallery just by Dupont Circle, which many people rave about. I can't believe we've been here - the city of countless museums and galleries - for nearly 3 months without managing to go to one museum or gallery.

The Phillips is great. It was extended in 2006, so there's a big, three storey wing of mostly 20th century art, then you walk through a corridor to a three storey house, where Phillips himself lived - much like the Frick in New York.

the residential bit of the Phillips Collection

There's a really weird array of art in the collection - kind of a 'greatest hits' of art, with little to unite the paintings, other than they're by very famous artists. So there's some Klee, Picasso, Rothko, Turner, Mondrian, Constable, El Greco, Delacroix, Degas, Whistler, Hopper, Van Gogh, Cezanne, O'Keefe and Renoir's 'Luncheon of the Boating Party' (the jewel of the collection). I really really liked the Delacroix we saw. I'd never heard of him before Coldplay used a painting of his as the cover of their new album, but am now quite the fan.

It was really nice to have absolutely no time constraints on our visit and be able to wander around and take our time. I'm far from a ponderous gallery visitor - if a piece doesn't interest me, I'll skip on to the next, but usually we always have somewhere else to be, or the gallery's so enormous you have to rush to see everything. So we really enjoyed just pootling around this great gallery just down the road from our flat.

There are three exhibitions on at the moment at the Phillips. There's a big exhibit of paintings by Richard Diebenkorn, which I really didn't care for and a collection of nature photographs by Brett Weston which didn't really interest me either, except his pictures of the Oceano dunes in California - they look amaaaazing and I'd love to visit them.

However, the third exhibition was just sensational. It's called 'The Great American Epic: Jacob Lawrence's Migration Series' and is a series of 60 paintings by an African American artist called Jacob Lawrence, depicting the exodus of blacks from the rural south to the industrial north of America during WWI.

It turns out that Jacob Lawrence - who I'd never heard of before - is one of the most important African American painters and is to art what Duke Ellington was to jazz, in his innovation and impact. He was the first African American painter to be represented by a major New York commercial gallery and died in 2000, at the age of 82.

The 60 panels that tell the story are all painted with poster paints and he painted them simultaneously, to ensure consistency across the whole series. So he did all the green across all 60 paintings, then all the red, all the blue and so on, so that panel 3 didn't look markedly different to panel 58, or whatever.

His paintings are really simple. There's real economy of line and colour and, while I know NOTHING about art WHATSOEVER - there's real power in the sparseness of his images and the short captions he wrote for each painting.

The exhibition was really well curated, with lots of interesting information, original letters from Lawrence to Phillips (the Phillips Collection owns half his migration series), as well as his original application for a grant to support his work on the project in the first place. There was a short interview film of him a couple of weeks before his death and some really interesting photos from when he was younger, reinforcing just what a big deal it was that he was a successful black man in a very white world.

I was interested to read that he served on the first multiracial warship in WWII and that an exhibition of his art did a tour of US galleries during the war. I found it strange that important art was moving around the country during the war, when mobility was so restricted, until Max pointed out that of course there were no air raids or attacks on the US, so it was probably very easy to move about. Dur (dur added by me, I hasten to add - Max was characteristically patient with me).

Tonight we had the sad job of bidding farewell to Erik Love, who's going back to California forever this week. He gave a party at his house in the North East of DC, in an area far more like what we'd been warned the NE is like than where Alison and Emily live. But in a freakishly swanky flat, considering the outside makes it look a lot like a crack house.

We were the first to arrive and Max immediately made a bee-line for Erik Love's baby grand piano. Remembering Erik Love's booze-fuelled ambush of our iTunes during our housewarming, in desperate search of something by Usher, Max launched into a piano rendition of 'Yeah!' (a very beepy r'n'b song), which was hilarious and led Erik Love to utter the immortal words to a friend on the phone, "get here quick - there's a British guy playing Usher on the piano".

Emily and some people I recognised from her party but didn't know came along, as did a few other friends of Erik Love's and it was a very low key, sitting-around-chatting affair (again with a lack of interpretive dance). I spent most of my time talking to Alison and Brewster, who were looking way more together and cosy than at Alison and Emily's party last week. They were very sweet and it was nice to get to know Brewster a little better. He's obviously besotted with Alison, but what's nice is that she seems to be getting more and more into him as time goes by. He's still not the most thrilling person I've ever met, but a very nice and solid chap.

I also chatted to Emily quite a bit and she and Alison invited me to join them on their girls' trip to Peru in November, to celebrate Alison's 30th (there's a group of about 6 of them going). It was really nice to be included, but I think we'd rather have a typical American thanksgiving and the two would clash, so I said no.

Someone mentioned at some point that Erik Love does an excellent karaoke version of Boyz II Men's 'End of the Road' and somehow this innocent comment turned into a maelstrom of insistence from all the guests that he treat us to a performance, by way of a going away present. I have to say, he really didn't need much convincing and before we knew it, we were sitting around this drawing room, listening to a singing performance - much like in a salon scene in a Jane Austen novel. Except we were in NE DC and Erik Love was singing whiney r'n'b. It was hilarious. And he was curiously good, which made me suspect this was not the first time he'd done something like this...

Erik Love rises on the key change. He really means it...

...and the crowd (Alison & Brewster) goes wild

I'll miss Erik Love - he's fun.

RATTY RAT

MOST UNLIKELY STATEMENT FROM ME TODAY: I prefer DC to New York! But ONLY when it comes to a city to wander around. The streets and houses are nicer and walks are always pretty.

Happy birthday, Dan and Jilly!

After a lazy morning of 'The West Wing' and mooching around the flat, we walked into Georgetown in blistering hot sunshine to do some shopping and grab a movie and dinner. I love that we can do that from our flat.

The walk was really pretty, around the 'backstreets' of Georgetown (I hasten to add that these aren't backstreets like the mean streets of Philly or anything - they're pretty, tree-lined avenues of nice houses where people like JFK and Jackie lived).

The first shop we came across was Gap, and I had that nice feeling going in that I would definitely be emerging with some purchases. But unfortunately everything I tried on looked horrible! This did not bode well for the rest of the afternoon and I kind of gave up looking for nice things after visits to various places including Banana Republic (Maxy got some nice stuff), Zara (so confusing!), Reiss (so expensive!), Bandolino (such pretty shoes!), Diesel (I swear no-one is skinny enough to fit into their clothes), Urban Outfitters (you know something's wrong when I can't find anything there) and H&M (admittedly I did get a few things there, but not the strappy sundress I so desperately need).

Max managed to get some really nice shirts, so all was not lost as we headed down to the cinema to see 'Get Smart'. We both really really liked the movie - it was funneeee. Steve Carrell is great and who knew that The Rock could be funny?!

Despite it constituting two visits in as many days, I took Maxy to Leopold's for supper, because I wanted him to try their Wienerschnitzel - his very favourite food of all time. He assures me it wasn't as nice as his Mum's or the ones I make him, but we had a really tasty supper nonetheless.

On our way home, we were walking along a really narrow pavement near Dupont Circle, when I became aware of a commotion in the small group of people ahead of us. When I looked down, I saw a massive rat running towards the bear toes of mine and Max's flipflopped feet!

All dexterity and coordination abandoned me as I leapt onto Max, clamping myself to him like a koala! Unfortunately Maxy, who was carrying our shopping bags and I don't think had seen the rat, wasn't prepared for this incoming hefty missile and tumbled flailing to the ground, pleading, "what are you trying to do to me?!". It was hilaaarious. Or so the group of people ahead of us thought as we lay in a crumpled heap across the pavement, with the rat long-gone.

Unfortunately in breaking my weighty fall, Max hurt his big toe. I worry that he'll forever have a reminder of Rat Gate and in years to come, when it twinges as he bends down to pick something up, he'll remember my far-from-finest hour.

STELLAR FRIDAY

Anne and I convened early (well, 9.30am) for our exciting morning on the river, both of us assembling a bag of things we wouldn't mind losing/ruining were we to capsize, which we both felt was an inevitability (the logic of this was flawless, until we noticed that, alongside our worst sunglasses, makeshift wallets and most dispensable bags were our mobile phones, which we couldn't really substitute for less good versions).

We cycled to Georgetown, where we left the road and cycled into the Chesapeake & Ohio Canal National Historical Park. With trees all around, the Potomac on our left and a canal on our right, it felt like cycling through the countryside or at times reminded me of the wooded path from Barnes Bridge to Hammersmith Bridge in London.

A heady 3.5 miles later, we got to the kayak place and boarded our vessels to head out into the wild blue yonder for a couple of hours. It's been a really hot, sunny, calm day and the water was like glass. It became increasingly obvious that we were really in no danger of capsizing as we glided along the really wide river lined with trees. It was amazingly quiet and serene and there was something really nice about being so low down in the water, moving with very little effort (which after our bike ride was a welcome relief!).

We managed to spend most of our first hour on the water just floating and chatting, mostly about Anne and her boyfriend Hugh. I'm increasingly wondering if he's good news - he sounds a little bit useless. He's about 14 years older than Anne and doesn't sound like a massively supportive or with-it kind of a guy. They broke up last year and then got back together, since when Anne has been really into him, so I guess it's a case of different strokes for different folks (strokes - geddit? Kayaking? Hmm). Although she does think that Max is awesome, so I don't think the strokes she's after are that different to me.

Anyways, it was really nice to float about and chat in these amazing surroundings but eventually we thought we should probably make some progress, so paddled down to Georgetown, under a really high bridge where we waved to people on top. It was funny to see Georgetown from the water, and amazing to see the Washington Monument in the distance on our approach. It was getting so hot that I welcomed the odd splash that came when I flipped my paddles over.

On the way back along the opposite side of the river, we saw lots of wildlife - herons and ducks and geese and just kept pinching ourselves when we thought about how we've spent so many other Friday mornings of our lives, stuck at desks indoors. And I guess that's where everyone else was, as we had the river to ourselves. I guess we *were* those people you see larking about when you're going to work, wondering who on earth they are that they're not in an office somewhere.

communing with nature on the other side of the river

Anne and a blue heron

another heron

your intrepid correspondent

Just as we were admiring a massive flock of geese, we realised that we only had 5 minutes before our rental time expired, so all serene floaty chats were over and we powered back to the boathouse. Turns out kayaking is quite the workout and I was so achy when we got back onto dry land (not very gracefully - standing in a kayak is tricky) that I was relieved to get back on my bike and use different muscles for a while.

We cycled back to Georgetown along the wooded pathway, feeling like characters from an Enid Blyton book or 'Swallows & Amazons', and hit Leopold's for lunch, the same place as I met Cindy ages ago. We rapidly undid all the good exercise work we'd done on the water by scoffing lots of tasty food, polished off by sharing a delicious pear and pistachio cake from the spectacular array of fancy tarts, cakes and desserts.

Despite refuelling, we had hardly any energy to cycle back to our building, calculating that we'd cycled a total of 7 miles and kayaked a total of 3 miles today! Not bad going! But it definitely made the hill to our house that bit more brutal.

As Anne bravely went off to meet a friend for coffee, I headed round the corner from our house to get my legs waxed on a whim. After the waxing disaster I had before our Montauk trip, I tried a different local place which was a third of the price and had been really busy when we popped in on Saturday for a price list, so I figured it must be good. And indeed it was better than the other place, in that the guy took *most* of my hair off. But he did so with the most scaldingly hot wax in all the world. Ouch. The search for a good place continues...

I was good for nothing other than collapsing exhausted when I got home, but soon had to jump in the shower to scrape off all the grody kayak/cycle muck with which I was plastered and head out to meet Maxy for Jazz in the Garden at the Sculpture Garden of the National Gallery.

Every Friday over the summer, there's Jazz in the Garden and tonight it was Brazilian jazz, so we got a gang of people together, including Alison, Emily, Erik Love, Patrick and Leanna, to go along and sit on the grass listening to live music as the sun went down.

It was absolutely packed with many white middle class people quaffing wine on fancy rugs when we arrived and we weren't helped in our efforts to find Alison by the fact that the sculpture she used as a landmark in her directions was no longer there. But we eventually found her and I went to pick up a picnic hamper that we'd pre-ordered.

Unfortunately the picnic was kind of gross - the strawberries and grapes were really really manky and the cheese had a best-before date of October 2007. Thinking I was going mad, I had to get confirmation that we were in 2008, then Max manfully headed back to the cafe to exchange it (I say manfully because it was bedlam in there - queues upon queues of people clamouring for white wine and fancy eats).

Max had been gone so long that I had to go find him and on our way back (with some different cheese and a complimentary bottle of wine - score! If only I was drinking again...), who should we bump into but one of the guys that I was chatting to at tennis last night! Quel coincidence. He told me about a terrible row that had broken out between someone in the queue and someone who'd been on the courts longer than the hour maximum you're allowed when there are people waiting. I had to stop myself from pointing out that a signup sheet would solve such conflicts, for fear of being accused of being bad again.

Back at our camp, the jazz was unfortunately terrible. It sounded like a long line of musical interstitials from 'Seinfeld' - lots of awful wiggly slap bass. If that's really the sound of Rio, they can keep it. Meanwhile, Erik Love got pooed on by a bird, which was pretty funny, and I guessed correctly that Leanna is pregnant! She and Patrick have been trying and are also in the process of buying a house, so this is exciting news indeed. Inna and Dimitri also turned up, with Kai (who was asleep AGAIN!). [those two people in the bottom right of this photo aren't the Russians - they're friends of Alison's]

Leanna and Patrick told me an amazing story about Patrick's best friend, who's in jail for attempted murder, torture and imprisonment of his girlfriend (now obviously his ex) while high on crystal meth. It was most extraordinary - Patrick and Leanna are the straightest, most devout Russian orthodox (not sure why - they're from California) people ever, so the thought of Patrick's best friend being a homicidal meth fiend is tricky to figure. Anyway, the amazing thing is that he's not allowed coloured pencils or felt tips in prison, but loves to paint. So he rubs the colouring off peanut M&Ms and makes it into paint, with which he apparently creates these incredible paintings! Isn't that crazy? The power of the human spirit and all that, I guess. Ooorr they've spun me a very elaborate lie. But they're just not tricksy like that, so I really think it's true.

Oh, so I completely forgot to mention that Jackie - the friend of the same friend who introduced us to Alison who we went for a painful supper with a few weeks ago and really didn't seem to like us too much and didn't respond to my 'nice to meet you, let's do it again some time' email the following day - suddenly got in touch last week, super-keen to meet up again, gushing about how much she and David would like to see us. So weird. So I invited her to Jazz in the Garden (safety in numbers), but they had some office party out of town to go to first, then they were going to meet us afterwards. Things seemed to be winding up at the jazz by the time Jackie texted, so we arranged for her to call when they got back into town and we'd go for drinks somewhere near our houses (she lives down the road from us).

So everyone slowly left the sculpture garden and because we hadn't heard from Jackie yet, we walked Inna, Dimitri and Kai to their car with Leanna and Patrick. Dimitri woke Kai up so we could see him and he's just adorable - all blonde curly hair - and he did that thing that sleepy kids do of just clamping himself to his mum. Inna let go of him at one point and Kai was still clinging to her, like a koala bear. Aaawwwww.

Wandering back to the metro with Leanna and Patrick, we passed the Hirshorn Museum (modern and contemporary art) where there was some cool-looking after hours event happening with cool lanterns in the trees and many beautiful people filing in. I've since found out it was this and am sad we didn't know about it, because i really enjoyed nights like that at the V&A back home.

Ooh, and we saw our first ever fireflies!! Man, it was amazing. These little darting things that glowed on and off, just buzzing around a bush near the Mall. Magical.

With still no word from Jackie, we headed back to our neighbourhood. It was so weird - she was meant to have been in touch about 2 hours earlier. It was nearly 11pm by the time we were approaching our house, so I texted Jackie to suggest it was too late to meet up tonight and perhaps we could do it another time. I soon got a mortified reply, explaining that they'd both fallen asleep as soon as they stepped through their door and my text woke them up! Huh - I've cycled and kayaked 10 miles today - what's their excuse for being so snoozy?!

TENNIS'S LITTLEST HOBO

MOST EXCITING PROSPECT OF THE WEEK: I'm kayaking down the Potomac river tomorrow! Anne suggested it on Tuesday and I can think of no better way to spend a Friday morning.

This week has been pretty uneventful so far. I've been doing more TV work for the London company, which went really badly on Monday - back to my old ways of finding it really difficult to get down to it. But things have been easier today.

The rest of the time, I've been running errands in the sunny sunshine, meeting Max for lunch in the kitchen of the BBC bureau (it's WAY too hot to sit outside) and even managed to go swimming for the first time on Tuesday. Unfortunately it wasn't very nice and I gave up after 5 lengths, because the pool was really busy and the lanes super-skinny, so I was perpetually bashing people. Also, I think part of the reason the YMCA gym membership is so cheap is because it's kind of grotty.

On the way home from swimming we decided to cheer me up with supper at a local restaurant we haven't eaten at before but often passed. Rosemary's Thyme is a bistro a few blocks down from our flat on 18th and serves pretty much anything you might want, from pasta and salads to pide and fajitas. The service was just teeeeerrible - I think the waiter might've transferred from Ruby Tuesday - but the food was nice enough and it beat cooking.

Yesterday, I met Alison for lunch because she was working in town again. She was excited by my offer to make her a packed lunch but, in my efforts to make her a super-deluxe bagel, I didn't realise that people don't 'do' cream cheese with meat and she was a little bit disgusted by my pastrami, ham, cream cheese and pickles supreme. Whoops. Things are still going well with her and Brewster, though she's finding the slow smooching pace a little tricky to cope with!

I went straight from there to play tennis with criminal lawyer Sarah, which was ok, but she abandoned the game we were playing halfway through because it was kind of boring. Which it was - neither of us was taking any risks and the only exercise we were really getting was from running to pick balls up. But tonight, I played the best game of tennis of my life! It was SO cool.

So having gone miles uptown on my bike and metro to play Sarah yesterday, I cycled up to Howard University, about 10 mins' cycle away along U St, this evening, to play a new person called Caroline from the tennis website. I'm really enjoying discovering new parts of town through my tennis games and the area around Howard University is really different to the other areas I've been. It's a bit more rundown and predominantly black (the majority of Howard's students are African American) and the most pleasing find was a massive swimming pool that is apparently open at the weekends and rarely busy. Woo!

The 8 courts there are really nice and have recently been resurfaced. As ever, there was a queue for courts, but Caroline was running late anyway. I got chatting to a couple of guys who joined the queue after me and moaned about the turn-up-and-wait system at the DC courts. They tried convincing me that it's good - democracy in action - but I maintained that an equally democratic system would be signup sheets. But then they somehow took from that that I'm a fascist and that it's a small step from signup sheets to only letting the 'right kind of people' sign up. I was a bit relieved when Caroline turned up.

Caroline is a 30-year old real estate developer from Chicago whose sister is moving to Horsham next year after marrying an Englishman. Caroline is also by far the best player I've met through the website and we had just the best game ever. She hits really hard, so if I just put my racket in the way, then I hit a hard shot back at her. I was managing to run all over the court and even when we played an actual game, I was volleying and taking all sorts of risks I wouldn't usually take (and certainly didn't with Sarah yesterday). It was absolutely fantastic. It was the first time Caroline's played all year, so I know once she gets her eye in properly she'll be miles out of my league, but in the meantime, I was just really enjoying being 'in the zone'.

And when I got back to the flat, Max had whipped up grilled halloumi and couscous - what a lucky girl I am!

NEW THEATRE

It was always going to be hard for whatever activity followed our tour of the West Wing, but the play we went to tonight was really, really awful.

It didn't help that it was at a university arts centre all the way out in Fairfax, Virginia - at the end of the metro line. So it took aaaages to get there and then we found out that buses don't run from the metro station after 5pm on a Sunday, so we had to get a taxi for the remaining 20 mins of our journey.

One consolation was that we shared the taxi with a chap who was going in the same direction as us (though luckily for him, not to the same play). In keeping with our year-so-far of great encounters with random people, this chap had just come back from climbing Mount Kilimanjaro and was in town for a conference before heading back to the Congo, where he's a teacher! So on Friday morning, he'd watched the sun come up from the top of Mt Kilimanjaro and now he was in a taxi in Virginia! Far out.

Suffice to say, it's apparently amazing to get to the top of the mountain and see the sun came up. And it's also probably redundant to say that it's exceedingly cold. He met a girl on the way up who hadn't been able to go any further, so asked him to take her camera to the top and get a photo for her. Once at the top, the chap took off his gloves just long enough to click the camera button and his hands froze. Aye carumba!

Unfortunately we didn't have any longer to chat before we got to the theatre, which seemed to be completely deserted. The play we went to see was 'Two Bit Taj Mahal', a new play based on the true story of an ongoing FBI investigation into the murder in a small Missouri town of the local bully. The reason we went is because the bully is played by Jim - the husband of Cindy, who I had lunch with in Georgetown ages ago and who works at National Geographic TV.

The theatre was really small and reminded me of the one at Edinburgh. The set was pretty cool, with real corn in a kind of field at the back of the stage and lots of bric-a-brac everywhere. There were only 5 people in the cast and it was all very serious, but I just haaated it. It's quite difficult to explain without going into the plot, which is kind of boring, but it was just everything I don't like about new theatre, if that conjurs any universals which will give you some idea of what it was like. I was excited to see that the actor we liked the most has been in 'The Wire', though didn't recognise him. And one of the ladies looked like Marg Helgenberger from 'CSI', which was mildly diverting. But there was a girl behind us with THE loudest laugh which made an already unpleasant experience twice as annoying.

And it didn't help that we then had to get back from the middle of nowhere late on a Sunday night. We got a taxi (the same driver who'd dropped us off), then the metro, but the metro was all snarled up when we got back into the city. So we decided to brave the buses, which we've yet to do. We tried to decipher a map and walked to the place where we were pretty sure a bus going in our direction would go from, but the information at that bus stop was even more confusing and there were no buses in sight. For a city arranged in a grid, DC has a stupifyingly and unnecessarily confusing bus system.

Loathe to get our third taxi of the night, we walked for ages, then eventually gave up and got a cab home. If only the play had been worth the odyssey!

PHOTOS: THE WEST WING

Click HERE to see pictures of our visit to the West Wing (we were only allowed to take photos outside and in the press briefing room. boo.)

THE WEST WING

COOLEST THING I SAW TODAY: eeeeeeverythiiiiing!

I make no apologies for this being even longer than usual - today was the day we went on a private tour of the West Wing, courtesy of Alison's flatmate Emily. It was awesome and it's out of the question that anything we do this year will top it.

What wasn't awesome was having to adhere to the strict dress code on what must be the hottest day so far - closed-toe shoes, no t-shirts or vests and respectable skirts or trousers. I was dripping by the time Max and I convened after I'd been to church and he'd had breakfast with friends of his folks who were in town for the weekend.

Much to my chagrin, we were to be joined on our tour by 4 other people, but I guess it's kind of a big deal to get inside the White House, so I rapidly learned to share. As you might expect, we had our ID checked several times, had our bags scanned and then got visitor passes like the ones people wear in 'The West Wing'. Ours were red because we're foreigners.

Emily was a very good tour guide, skipping the history and factoids to give us an insiders' view of life in the White House. She's been working there for a couple of years now. First she was an admin assistant, working in the Situation Room a lot, making sure paperwork was in place for briefings and stuff, then she got promoted to the Africa desk of the National Security Council. Her office is opposite the West Wing, in the OEOB (for all you 'West Wing' fans out there).

One of the most interesting things Emily told us was from her time as an admin person, when she had to read the transcripts of all the president's phone calls. Apparently Bush's calls with Blair really stood out because, whereas Bush was always extremely formal and protocol-y with all the other world leaders he'd speak to, with Blair he was incredibly relaxed and informal and it was apparently obvious that there was a genuine friendship there - one which will last beyond either of their terms in power. Hmph.

The most striking thing once we went inside the West Wing was the number of photos up on the wall. POTUS has 5 official photographers with him most of the time and the many many framed pictures on the walls of the West Wing get changed regularly to reflect something that's going on either in the president's world at the time. So the pictures today all reflected Father's Day - lots of photos of Bush Sr and Bush Jr and some of Cheney and presumably his grandchildren.

There were also lots of photos of Bush Jr (insiders refer to them as '41' and '43', for to distinguish between father and son because W is the 43rd president and George Bush Sr was the 41st) at his ranch in Texas, which made so much more sense to me than the ones of him in the White House, which just made me sad that he's the leader of the Free World.

At first, I thought the photos of him hacking away at the forest were him mucking in with environmental workers doing necessary pruning. But it turns out he's actually clearing a mountain bike path that he can ride along. Emily told us that there are four chainsaws available and members of senior staff know that they're in W's goodbooks if they are one of the four who gets to use one. Apparently the president is a super-speedy mountain biker and his staff struggle to keep up with him. If anyone lags too far behind, they suffer the indignity of being scooped up by a secret service van to catch up with the group.

We saw the Mess, where only senior staff, military people and invited guests are allowed to eat. And we saw the door to the Situation Room. I was quite overwhelmed by the idea that we were standing in a corridor where for years, men would've walked with hugely serious decisions on their mind. We were standing where presidents have walked on their way to commit troops to wars and stuff.

On our way to the Rose Garden, we walked along a corridor with three excellent Norman Rockwell cartoons on the wall, entitled, 'So You Want To See The President!'. These are the best reproductions I can find online, which don't really do them justice. Rockwell spent I think a month observing the areas of the West Wing where people - from journalists to military chiefs to the winner of Miss America - wait to see the president.

Next stop was the Rose Garden, named not after the flowers growing there, but after Rose Kennedy. Fact. It's just like in 'The West Wing', with all the columns and covered walkways. Emily showed us where Marine 1 - the president's helicopter - lands and explained that whenever POTUS travels in a helicopter, there are three helicopters in total and just as the one carrying the president is about to land, the two decoys peel off.

On our way back to the Rose Garden, we passed a wall of photos of Bush with fairly obscure world leaders and Maxy acquitted himself very well in attempting to name them. He certainly knew more than Emily.

We were offered a loo break and I figured it'd be foolish to pass up the opportunity to use the West Wing's facilities (my aunty Merry taught me that you get the best measure of a place by assessing its loos). I kind of wish I hadn't though, because I had the distinct impression I was being watched during my time in the surprisingly pokey washroom! Those wily secret service agents...

Next stop was the Oval Office, which really blew my mind. I'm so sad we weren't allowed to take photos (but the guard didn't look too alert - I way could've got away with it). The Oval Office is much smaller than I imagined and it's really light. Each president is allowed to decorate how ever they (or, more often, their wife) wants and W apparently wanted somewhere light and inspiring (he needs all the help he can get!). So the walls are all cream and the carpet - which in 'The West Wing' is dark blue - is light yellow, with sun rays radiating out from the middle. Like in 'The West Wing', there are two sofas and two chairs and the big desk of the president.

The desk was hewn from the timbers of the HMS Resolute, which got frozen in the Arctic and, after it thawed, went back to service and then eventually got decommissioned, was broken up and made into two desks, one of which was given to the USA by Queen Victoria, the other stayed in Buckingham Palace. Emily pointed out to us a line about 2 inches from the desk's base and explained that shortly after Reagan got into office, his assistant asked how he was getting on in the Oval Office, to which Regan answered, 'fine, but I keep hitting my knees on the desk' (he was 6'1"). The next day, the desk had been raised by a couple of inches. Classy.

I was disappointed to learn that there is not a door directly linking the Oval Office to the Chief of Staff's office, like in 'The West Wing'. Instead, there's one that leads to an office of five executive secretaries and one to a private bathroom that may or may not also have a dining room in it - Emily couldn't remember. Sounds odd.

I was very excited to see that W has the same bucking horse statue as is in Bartlet's Oval in 'The West Wing' (apparently it's a Remington statue and has been there through many administrations. That photo is of a replica in some museum somewhere). I can't remember if the president has the pick of all the art galleries in the US, or if there's a big repository of art for the White House, but I know he gets to choose from a huge range of fine art busts, statues and paintings when he moves in.

Did you know that the president isn't allowed to use a computer? Apparently everything he writes has to be handwritten, so that it can be suitably destroyed and completely unhackable. He also has nothing on his desk except that which

It was when I was looking into the Oval Office that it dawned on me that this wasn't just George Bush's West Wing - it's where lots of presidents have gone before him. This was an unfortunate time for such a realisation, because my mind immediately skipped to what Clinton and Monica Lewinsky got up to behind that hallowed desk but still, once I'd managed to banish those thoughts, it was a thrill to think of who's been in that office. Hey, and get your money on Obama now - I swear I had a vision of him sitting in the chair behind the desk.

We saw the Roosevelt Room, which I was excited to recognise from 'The West Wing' and the room where the cabinet meets. On the back of each chair is a little plaque for every cabinet position that person has held. Cheney has the most. Bleurgh. And the back of the president's chair is about a foot higher than all the rest. Double bleurgh.

There are really strict rules about the president receiving gifts. I'm a bit confused, but think it's that he can only accept gifts under a very low amount. Anything over that amount has to either be bought back by the president himself, be re-gifted to someone else or bequeathed to the White House. So Clinton wasn't allowed to take with him a Norman Rockwell painting that Steven Spielberg gave him - it was part of White House history. I'm a little sketchy on the rules, but the point is, Bush was given some really fancy pedigree dog by Scandinavian royalty, or something, and when he was told it cost $7000, he elected not to buy it back. But all presidential presents have to go to a warehouse for a couple of weeks, until they're processed. Obviously a dog couldn't sit in a warehouse until the paperwork was done, so it lived in the Situation Room for two weeks! And the secret service agents had to wait until dark to take it out for walks, in case the press got photos of a fancypants dog coming out of the Sit Room.

The final stop on the tour was the press briefing room - CJ's stomping ground in 'The West Wing'. Unfortunately it has recently been refurbished and the podium is now super hi-tech, so we weren't allowed to go behind it and have photos taken. But we did get to take photos anywhere else in the room. It looked just like in 'The West Wing', if a little lighter. It was built over the site of a swimming pool that FDR had built. I hoped the floor could slide back to reveal the water, like in 'It's A Wonderful Life', but alas no. Turns out the Situation Room was the site of Truman's bowling alley, too! Nixon had another one built elsewhere, but we didn't get to see that.

I was interested to see that each chair in the press briefing room has a plaque declaring which media outlet sits there. The BBC doesn't have a seat. And at the back, there's a bank of monitors and tripods for cameras. After extensive mucking around at being CJ and pretending to take questions from the press, our tour came to a sad end. We wandered outside to take a look at the outside of the West Wing and residence. There's another press area just outside, where reporters stand if they want the White House in the background (again, the BBC don't have one - they make do with a green screen back in the Bureau). It was nice to be on the other side of the gates from all the tourists taking photos from the outside, like we had done back in April.

I was very sad to leave and wanted to see lots more, but unfortunately even the private tours of the West Wing are limited to a very specific route. It was such an amazing experience, and one that very few Americans get to have, let alone Johnny foreigners like us, so we felt it was a big privilege.

To cap it off, we were spared a swealtering trip home on the metro by Emily running us back in her wicked jeep. I'm finding it hard to believe she's a republican, because she seems really fun and likes 'Arrested Development' and Ryan Adams and Wilco. This is not the behaviour of a republican. But I guess views on personal freedom, the economy and education define someone's political stance more than the TV they watch and bands they like. Ho hum.

FRIENDS WHO LUNCH

REALLY?? R Kelly is completely innocent of all underage sex charges brought against him, based on a video of him - err - having sex with an underage girl? Really?

So I've been doing more work this week for the company I was working for when we left London and it's going much better than my previous attempts at work. Far less procrastination and associated blueness, which is a relief.

We went to see 'What Happens In Vegas' in Chinatown on Thursday. We were hoping to grab a meal at one of what we assumed would be many chinese restaurants there, but were a little bemused to find that there aren't so many chinese places in Chinatown - mostly lots of chains like Subway and Starbucks with chinese signs.

Turns out 'What Happens In Vegas' could've happily waited till my next trip on a plane, but it was alright. Cameron Diaz is looking ooooold, in that too-much-booze-not-enough-sunblock way but Ashton Kutcher is kind of astonishingly handsome. I realise I'm coming very late to the party, but seriously, he is hot. Fortunately so is Max, so I wasn't sad to not be taking Ashton home after the movie.

I was a little relieved when criminal lawyer Sarah cancelled our game of tennis yesterday afternoon. It's really hot and I had a much nicer day with our new friends. Max and I met Alison, Emily and Erik Love for lunch because Alison was working at the downtown branch of her company (as opposed to the one way out in Virginia). It was really nice to have a gang of friends to hook up with and we had tasty sushi while planning a strategy to ensure Erik Love came to Alison and Emily's 'seersucker and sundresses' party tonight, despite having a prior engagement.

While the others scuttled back to work, I went for frozen yoghurt with Alison and chatted about the famous Brewster, who she's still going out with since their first date a few weeks ago and who's hardcore, hardcore religious when it comes to dating, which is presenting Alison with some intriguing challenges!

When I got home, Anne popped round to give us a spare key for her and Megan's flat and we got chatting for ages. Then we nipped over to her flat to look at some photos she was talking about, then she came back over to ours and we sat chatting and chatting over cans of Dr Pepper. What a lovely way to spend an afternoon!

Anne is really great. We have crazily similar personalities and freaked each other out on several occasions yesterday, talking about things we've done or how we feel about stuff and realising we are exactly the same. It's lovely for me, because we've kind of skipped the first few stages of getting-to-know-you friendship and seem to have jumped straight to a strong bond that enables to lots of long chats about things you rarely discuss with anyone other than your closest friends. The divviest similarity is that we're already getting sad about not living across the hall from each other, despite that being a long 10 months away!

Today was a classic Saturday in DevoLand. We mooched around this morning reading magazines, watched a bit of 'The West Wing', then did some chores and made cookies for Alison and Emily's party tonight (another baking disaster. I blame it on the Australian cookbook I was using that called for vegetable oil rather than butter. In COOKIES).

It started tipping it down with rain as we made our way to a mediterranean restaurant for dinner with friends of my friend Annabel. We saw our first ever motorcade on our way - it was enormous. There were 8 motorbikes, many black cars with blacked-out windows, an ambulance, lots of police cars and a jeep carrying men in black with big machine guns, looking mean.

I doubt they had the difficulties we did when we got to Dupont Circle and found it jammed with people lining the streets for Gay Pride, which we'd completely forgotten was happening today. Slipping and sliding in our flipflops in the torrential rain, we had to play chicken with a big truck carrying a drag queen as we dashed across the road to the restaurant.

Annabel's friends Neil and Val were really nice. Neil is British and Val is his American wife and they have two children and live in the Virginia suburbs. We had a really nice meal, though our waitress seemed a little annoyed to be serving us. Neil, Val and their kids have just come back from Alaska, which sounds terrific. I only wish we'd got them to take a photo of a numberplate while they were there - I can't imagine how else we're going to complete our collection!

After dinner, we headed to Alison and Emily's sundresses and seersucker party, which was a kind of odd affair. All the lights were on in their flat, there was no music and everyone was just kind of sitting around very politely. I worry that my interpretive dancing at our dimly-lit housewarming party must have shocked our American guests, if Alison and Emily's party is typical of DC fiestas.

I'm still not drinking and the lack of atmosphere didn't really help fill the gap in getting me into the party mood. Max held court very successfully in the kitchen all night, which was funny to occasionally pop in and see. It's fun being the celebrity guests here, with the unusual accents.

I met a nice girl from Alison and Emily's church called Becky who put my entire life to shame. She works with babies and toddlers at the world's only deaf university here in DC. She taught me how to sign 'you look nice' to Max (which he did), but he unfortunately thought I was trying to tell him he had dandruff when I tested my new skills. Whoops. Anyway, when Becky isn't helping deaf babies and their families, she spends her summers working at an orphanage in Nairobi. Yeah, I really need to get on with that whole plan of spending time here volunteering...

Erik Love never did make it to the party, which was a crying shame, and Patrick and Leanna didn't come, either. So I had a load of conversations with people I wasn't that interested in speaking to (while marveling at fake-Gavin's entirely seersucker suit) and trying to perfect my exit strategy for such situations.

I did enjoy meeting the famed Brewster, who seems really Nice (note capital N). He looks quite a lot like a Richie Cunningham-era Ron Howard and just seems a thoroughly good chap, if not necessarily one to set the world alight. He took an instant liking to Max when Maxy referenced 'Chariots of Fire' while taunting Emily about working on Sundays. The reference was lost on a mildly offended Emily, but Brewster was in ecstasy, as it's his favourite movie ever and he behaved like it was the tiniest, most obscure film that no-one else has seen. I think he'll be Max's friend for life now.

I was very ready to leave when Max left his kitchen audience begging for more. As we were going, so were Alison's Russian friends who've just moved here from San Francisco. Max had had great football chats with Dimitri who has a funny face - like a cartoon Russian drunk man - and seems very fun. His wife, Inna, is whippet thin and I can't imagine where she fit a child, but sure enough they have a little boy called Kai who was sleeping upstairs through the party and looked sooooo sweet, wrapped around Dimitri when they left. I demand to babysit, which I gather would be quite welcome, as Inna's mother only lived a couple of blocks away in SF and they're feeling a little stranded here in DC.