I think it must be Francis of Assisi Day today or something, because people were encouraged to bring their pets to church. One funny dog woofed at just the right moment in the sermon and it was funny.
When I got home, we had a nice webcam chat with Greg, Jane and baby Isaac, though emerged wildly depressed about the state of the economy. As if all the doom and gloom in the press isn't enough, Greg works for the Bank of England and was bandying around words like, 'depression' rather than recession, 'grave situation' and even 'rise of fascism'!! Oy vey.
It's all a bit bleak and I'm getting rather down about it, but trying to keep things in perspective. As my wise Dad says, we've all got used to having too much stuff these days and really all that we need to be happy is food in our tummies, a roof over our head and ideally someone to share it all with. And I have that, so am going to try to zen out.
While I was at church, Max got an email from his boss asking him to go to Maine this week, to write a piece about how Maine's electoral college is unusual - it has four electoral votes, but doesn't operate on a winner-takes-all basis - each of the four votes counts individually. Or something. Anyways, the point is that the state is really split, between a solidly democratic south and a moose-hunting, shooting and fishing north that might swing for McCain (or, to put it more accurately, Palin).
The slight complicating factor in all of this is that we're due to go to New England next weekend for our 6 year anniversary of being together and have already bought our flights. We also weren't sure where Max was going to have to go in Maine, so looked into getting me a flight too, so I could play chauffeur again. This would work perfectly, because then we could spend our anniversary driving down from Maine to Boston for our weekend away.
However, when we contacted Max's boss with a price of all of this, he said it was way too high, so we had to abandon the idea of me joining Max and spent hours and hours trying to work out a way that Max could go to Maine, then meet me in Boston on Friday without having to schlep all the way back here in between, overlooking how on earth he was going to get around once he got to Maine.
It was all proving such a headache and was such a beautiful afternoon outside that we decided to take a break from our flight-booking hell, and walk to the Old Post Office building, which has a big tower you can climb for free and look out over all of DC.
Thomas Circle, en route to the Old Post Office building
It was a really nice walk and lovely to not have anywhere to get to in a hurry. Especially as this allowed us to pop into CVS (the Boots of DC), where we discovered a new and surely the greatest flavour of our favourite sweeties - Mike & Ikes (called Mikey Ikeys in DevoLand and frequently consumed in large quantities whilst watching TV) - lemonade flavour! Mmmmm.
We got to the Post Office with about 45mins to spare before it closed, according to both our guidebook and the sign outside the building. However, when we tried to get inside, a security guard told us it had closed 15mins ago! When we pointed out the sign that said it should still be open, she just kind of shrugged. Grrr.
Unable to accept such illogical information, we tried to get in via another door and, although we were fortunate enough to come across an amusingly punning segue company (Segs & the City. Fnar), we were once more vanquished and had to accept that our Post Office tower dreams weren't going to be realised today.
Fortunately, just round the corner, we came across a Turkish Bazaar (must be the weekend for bazaars), so all was not lost and we wandered around that for a while. But the spectre of still having to book Max's Maine trip was hanging heavy over our heads, so we cut our Turkish fun short and went home.
We finally booked some flights that are acceptable to Max's boss, though will make Al Gore cry yet more cold salty tears as Max single-handedly destroys the planet in the name of saving the BBC money. He's flying to Maine on Wednesday, back to DC on Thursday and then out to Boston again on Friday. Yikes!
By way of comfort viewing after our trying day, we watched 'Monsters Inc' this evening, which Max had never seen before and which we'd started watching when we were babysitting for Richard and Megan before Costa Rica. It's so ace - I really really like it. I'd forgotten that amazing scene when they're chasing the bad dude along all the flying doors - it's just awesome. I heart Pixar.
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