SIGHTSEEING WHIRLWIND

WHAT THE FUNK???: I'm genuinely outraged that the winner of 'X-Factor' will record a cover of the sublime 'Hallelujah' and can't bring myself to even contemplate such horror.

Yikes! What a busy few days! We've dashed all over the city, showing Kate a good time and relieved that DC has been putting on a very good show for her, including three parties in two nights, a real-life Father Christmas and twinkly snow falling on a brass band playing carols.

Kate had to 'do a Dan' while I worked on Friday, taking herself off to the monuments, National Archives and Folger Library, all of which she loved. I realise now that DC is a very Kate-centric city, as she's really interested in history and politics and literature, so is in her element, which is lovely.

I, meanwhile, was so utterly bored and dispirited by my work that I *actually* repierced my ears, by way of procrastination!! Ouch.

I didn't get anywhere with work, but was THRILLED to get a lovely email from Oliver, thanking us for our ace Christmas card. All the effort was worthwhile!

We made the mistake of watching 'The Ten' on Friday night, based on the logic that 'Role Models' was awesome, so a film written and directed by the same guy, also starring Paul Rudd AND a bunch of other good people, must be good. It is not. It's so bad that we stopped it halfway through to watch 'The Soup' and didn't go back to it.

Yesterday, the three of us met up with Anne to go to a Richard Avedon exhibition at the Corcoran Gallery, which was great. Although I felt really ill halfway round, which was not great. But it was amazing to see a photo essay he'd done for the New Yorker in 2004, profiling politicians and political supporters, because it rather presciently culminated in a portrait of Obama.

We whisked Kate up the Post Office tower for views of the city, as it was a beautiful day, but unfortunately were once more subjected to terrible live 'jazz' as we ate lunch downstairs afterwards. We seem to be being followed around by awful live music!

We spent the afternoon in Alexandria, which again, Kate really liked (and I wasn't too sad to pay another visit to the Gap outlet store!). The town looked beautiful and twinkly in the wintry darkness, with every tree festooned with fairy lights. It even snowed, which was most satisfying.

The waterfront was like a traditional Christmas wonderland, with a brass band playing carols, a big tree and some bell-ringers, too. We'd gone to Alexandria for the Festival of Lights, in which boats cover themselves in twinkly lights and parade past the waterfront.

Unfortunately that was a bit of a damp squib, as there were only about four boats in the parade and it took them forever to drift past us. So we bailed on the 'festival' and headed back home, catching the trolley back to the metro. And who should be on said trolley, but Father Christmas himself!! I'm serious! He was really jolly and had a real white beard that was really long, and white hair, and was wearing just normal clothes. It was Father Christmas on his day off! I was so excited.

when did you last share a bus with Father Christmas?!

I was not, however, excited to get home only to reluctantly turn around and go straight back out again, to a Christmas party held by Max's favourite colleague, Katie.

She lives just down the road, near Dupont, so we decided to walk, but it was soooo cold, that when we couldn't find her flat, the whole thing became a real hassle. But we finally made it and her place is lovely. There were only a few people there and it wasn't a laugh riot of a fiesta, but it was perfectly pleasant and we stayed as long as was polite, before dashing back home to collapse exhausted.

Today was just as freezing, but beautifully blue and crisp - I love days like that. Maxy took Kate off to Eastern Market while I went to church and they had a great time, especially on discovering an excellent second-hand bookshop. I met up with them after church and, after wandering around for ages, finding somewhere to eat, we went for lunch in a really nice French bistro.

This afternoon, we went to the Museum of American Art, which is in the same building as the National Portrait Gallery. Again, it's somewhere Max and I haven't been before, much to our shame of having been in DC for months. But we knew we'd get round to all these sightseeing staples once visitors started coming to stay...

There was a fantastic exhibition of posters in the Portrait Gallery, looking at posters as a form of modern portraiture and a great exhibition combining for the first time work by Georgia O'Keefe and Ansell Adams, both of whom painted/photographed New Mexico a lot. I can't wait to go there - New Mexico looks amazing. There was also a good exhibition called 'Women of our Time', which was twentieth century photographs of women that was really interesting.

The American history geeks spent ages meandering through the gallery of portraits of every American president and we spent what felt like forever, trying to find the room with an exhibition of Lincoln's inauguration ball in it, only succeeding once we'd trapsed around both galleries! The one advantage to this wild goose chase was getting to walk through the amazing Kogod courtyard, which joins the two galleries in a Norman Foster-designed atrium-type space, a bit like at the British Museum. It looks like an awesome space for parties and probably really nice for just sitting and reading.

There was no rest for the wicked (which, incidentally, I used to think was 'wicket', assuming it was some allusion to cricket...) when we got back from our busy day, as we had to turn around and go back out to no fewer than TWO parties! Kate's certainly getting a slightly distorted sense of our social life here in DC...

First stop was Anne's tree-trimming party in her new apartment, which is looking very nice. Megan and her sister were there, as were Sarah and Derek, who are friends of Anne that we met at the party we threw for her ages ago and are really nice and there were also two very quiet cousins of Anne's there.

Frustratingly, considering we could only spend a couple of hours at the party, we all spent about an hour and a half putting together food with Anne, so only had a short time of sitting around chatting before we hurriedly each put something on the tree and then headed off to fiesta number 2... (on a Sunday night!!)

Because the party didn't really get going at Anne's for ages, we were late leaving. Which meant we were late getting to a surprise birthday party being thrown for Brewster just down the road from our flat, at Chris's (of 'Lost Sparrow') apartment. We always knew we'd miss the jumping-out-from-behind-the-sofa moment, but were dismayed to see a stream of people leaving Chris's apartment as we arrived, only to get upstairs and discover only Alison, Brewster and Chris left at the party! And Alison and Brewster had their coats on and were saying their goodbyes. Whoops!

We stood around, indulging in some awkward conversation for a while, then left with the birthday boy himself, who seemed less than impressed by our tardiness. Well, timekeeping's tough when you're such party animals! Whose party finishes at 9.30pm, anyway?!

REVOLVING DOORS AT DEVO TOWERS

FAVOURITE NEWS STORY OF THE DAY: perhaps mindful of the phone hoax that Sarah Palin fell foul of, a Republican congresswoman hung up on Obama twice when he rang to congratulate her on her re-election. I particularly love that the way she was persuaded to believe it was really Obama calling was by one of her cronies proving his identity to her by means of in-jokes they share about members of the House.

Dan left this afternoon, but not before having to listen to me leave the following message on countless answerphones in the Pennsylvania, Maryland and New York areas: "hello, I was just wondering if you perform the casting out of evil spirits from possessed members of your congregation and, if so, whether you would be interested in participating in a documentary we are making". What a job!

Turns out that the priestess I found is too 'far out' for the programme, so I have to keep looking. In no way do I perceive conflict between needing to find a) someone who's possessed but isn't mentally ill or on drugs and b) an exorcist who's interesting to watch, willing to take part in a documentary, but isn't 'far out'. Hmph.

Dan also very nearly didn't leave at all, because the SuperShuttle I booked for him never arrived! I felt particularly bad, because I'd taken the mickey out of how early he wanted to get to the airport and how cautious a traveller he is. Turns out he's very sensible, as there was time enough for me to call SuperShuttle, establish that I'd booked the van for tomorrow, not today (I think because I called after midnight last night and asked for a bus 'tomorrow'), and get another one sent over sharpish.

I'm really sad that Dan's gone, because I didn't get to spend enough time with him and it was really fun to have him here a bit like a flatmate. What stinky timing.

I arranged to only work half a day today, so I could go and meet Kate from her NYC train at Union Station. Yippeee! And on my way there, I posted all our Christmas cards - wooohooooo!!!

It was so wonderful to see Kate and within about 5 minutes, it felt totally natural that she should be here. We hung out this afternoon and then went to supper at Madam's Organ, up the road, where we were unfortunately treated to some of the most terrible live music I've ever heard. Still, it was fun to be with Kate and the onion rings were lishy.

DAN, CARDS & EXORCISTS

The past couple of days have pretty much been the same: hanging with Dan, doing this ridiculous work I've been given and stressing over the Christmas cards (left!).

Dan arrived just after we woke up yesterday and actually it was really great to see him. It was really nice of him to come this way and I'm only sad I've had to work the whole time, as I'd love to've been able to hang out with him all the time.

Fortunately Dan is a fan of doing day-to-day things when he's in a new city, so the mundane trip to the post office was actually fun for him, which is just as well! I then put him on a tourist bus that goes all over the city, as I figured that'd be the best way for him to find his way around without me.

Then I got down to this hideous exorcism work, which proved really difficult - how do you sell someone on the idea of doing an exorcism to order on telly while someone - who is possessed and yet in no way mental - is injected with radioactive serum?!

In the first instance, it's been quite hard finding any pentecostal ministers who actually do exorcisms and those that I've spoken to have really freaked me out and worried me that I'm committing some terrible act of blasphemy while indulging the notion of casting out bad spirits. Or at least that they can put some kind of curse on me over the phone if they detect I think they're loony.

Poor Dan - I felt terrible because after a day of wandering the city by himself, he came home to the Christmas card factory! He just sat on the sofa watching telly (which he professed to be very happy doing), while Max and I struggled with the nightmare of sticky spindly snowflakes.

Today was the same again - Dan went on his bus, I left a bajillion messages for exorcists and then we continued working on the Christmas cards tonight.

We were meant to go to the Dr Dog gig at the 9.30 Club that we got tickets for ages ago tonight, but Emily didn't get tickets in the end and we've really got to get the cards finished in time to make it worth sending them.

I got rid of the tickets in my first ever forray onto Craigs List. We lost quite a bit of money on them and I had to send Max to meet a random man who bought them off us, but at least we got a bit of the money back.

And I had a breakthrough with both work and the cards! I managed to find a priestess who's very keen to be involved in the exorcism doc and is a big character, like what the company are looking for, so hopefully I'll be able to set something up with her. And I've found a cunning way of getting the goo off the spindly snowflakes without taking hours over each card! Huzzah.

BAD DAY

Ugh. I had a hideous day today.

I missed yoga this morning because I was on the phone and online, trying to re-mortgage our flat, now that our initial two year fixed rate period is coming to an end. It's all so confusing and really makes me not like being a grown-up.

During this woeful few hours, I got a call from an indie back home who want me to do a week's work for them, which would be great, were it not for the fact that our friend Kate arrives for a week this Thursday. The other thing that makes the work less than great is that the assignment is to find an exorcist who would perform an exorcism on someone on camera, while that person is injected with radioactive fluid to monitor brain activity. Oh, and that person must have no history of mental illness or substance abuse. And it all has to happen at the University of Pennsylvania next Wednesday. Greeaaat!!

I obviously took the job, because I need the money, but I'm not looking forward to those calls I'll have to make tomorrow...

Meanwhile my friend Dan, who's been in LA for a week and who we didn't manage to meet up with while we were there, got in touch to say he's found cheap flights to DC and can he come and stay with us. Tomorrow! As lovely as it is that he's coming all this way, he's due to leave a couple of hours before Kate arrives, and all the while I have to find exorcists... Eeek!

I thought a quick trip to Ikea with Anne this afternoon would help cheer me up and clear my head of the day's woes, but unfortunately that was awful, too! Anne was getting supplies for her new flat and I needed to pick up a couple of things, but Anne took aaaaages and was really resistant to actually buying anything, taking ages to decide. And then it took us forever to get back into DC in her car, because it was rush hour and she steadfastly stayed in the slow lane of every road we were on, sitting behind buses that were stopping and starting, letting people pull out in front of her and missing opportunities to get back remotely quickly.

I totally freaked out. I know I'm a control freak and a bad passenger, but getting stuck in traffic when a) we didn't need to be, b) I could do nothing about it and c) had masses to do at home drove me crazy and I had to shut my eyes and take deep breaths just to get through it!

Things didn't improve when I got home and Max and I moved on to the next phase of the Christmas card saga. We were sticking spindly snowflakes onto the cards, using one of the magic toys I got from PaperSource, which is a machine that you can feed things through to make them adhesive - so they come out like a sticker at the other end. So I thought it'd be really easy to stick 4-5 snowflakes onto each card using this machine, without all the mess and fuss of Pritt stick.

Unfortunately the magic machine o' joy created this halo of stickiness around the spindly snowflake, which I then had to rub off each one once it was stuck down, but the stickiness wouldn't come off, and then joined up with other stickiness and each card was taking me about 15 minutes and making me want to cry.

Once more, fie on you, PaperSource!

GETTING CHRISTMASSY

We went to our second roller derby yesterday, but unfortunately it was not as fun as the first. It was absolutely packed - which was weird, as there had been hardly anyone there the first time we went - so the atmosphere was good, but we discovered that the fun of the bout depends entirely on the quality of the MC.

Without a fast-talking, funny person on the microphone, keeping things exciting and whipping the crowd into a frenzy, the roller derby is a kind of lame spectacle of girls whizzing around a track on roller skates.

There were small mercies for which to be grateful for, though - this time we didn't see David and boring Jackie. But we did have to move seats because a kid was having great fun kicking my back incessantly. Aaahh.

There were two bouts - one with a visiting team from Philadelphia(?) - but we left halfway through the second one, in time to see 'Four Christmasses' in Chinatown. We'd been really looking forward to the movie - Witherspoon! Vaughn! Favreau! Chenoweth! - but unfortunately it was a little disappointing. Put it this way - it ain't no 'Role Models'. I wonder if anything ever could be...

I helped out at Sunday School this morning and was then grumpy to find that the church service marking the beginning of Advent was in the Taizé style. I don't much enjoy kooky ways of worshipping, but this ended up being a revelation. The mode of worship takes its name from a region of France where the tradition first started and is the most beautiful combination of stunningly simple chants and silence that is very moving and conducive to reflection. The form of worship evolved in WWII, as a way of bridging the divides between faiths and uniting religious people with a simple, lowest-common-denomiator kind of approach. It was a really amazing service.

I spent most of this afternoon toiling away on our Christmas cards, suddenly feeling an affinity with small children forced to do fiddly manual labour that is seemingly endless. Fie on you, PaperSource!

The memory of 'Four Christmasses' was roundly dispelled this evening, when we watched the wonderful 'Sabrina', which I've never seen before but absolutely loved. I'd never 'got' Humphrey Bogart before, having only seen him in 'Casablanca', but he was so great in this movie! And obviously Audrey Hepburn is incredible. It's a very close-run race for my favourite director ever: Frank Capra or Billy Wilder...

PHOTOS: THANKSGIVING

Click HERE for photos of our week in LA

THANKSGIVING

I'm not really sure we're meant to celebrate Thanksgiving - aren't people giving thanks for finally escaping from tyrannical British rule, back in the day?

Ah well, as a big fan of all things American, the offer to experience a proper family Thanksgiving was too good to pass up, so after I made some sticky parsnips this morning and then locked Tom's keys in the boot of his car, along with the many other dishes and gifts Bambi has been slaving over (whoops), we headed to Orange County - the OC! - to spend the day with the husband of Bambi's deceased aunt.

Turns out - and to be fair, I had been warned - that Orange County is nothing like the fancypants paradise depicted in 'The OC' on TV. The area we went to was kind of weird and suburban and we got lost in a maze of streets for quite some time.

Eventually we found the house and were very warmly welcomed by the masses of Bam's relatives who were there. Bambi had warned us that most people there would be pretty right wing and that we'd probably be better off avoiding politics as a subject and she wasn't wrong!

Most of the people were very conservative and Bam's uncle-by-marriage converted to Mormonism after the death of his wife and his family are very religious, with one of his daughters heading off to be a missionary in Florida for two years.

There were a couple of cute kids running around and a bunch of old people I didn't really talk to. It was nice to see Bambi's family and to chat to her Dad and brother and her Mum even joined me, jumping up and down on the huge trampoline we spotted in the back garden!

Everyone was terribly friendly and we felt very welcome as we worked our way down the seemingly endless line of dishes of meat, yams (yeay!), creamed corn (euch) and other Thanksgiving staples. Conversation did meander into politics over lunch, which revealed some interesting points of view, but it was all very amicable.

I didn't much warm to the husband of Bam's cousin, who repossesses cars for a living and likes it, or the husband of another of her cousins who asked us what we're going to do about the Muslim problem in London, referred to DC as 'a very dark city' and proudly talked about his love of guns and cars. But hey, it was all part of the experience!

Max and I had a nice time - probably more in an anthropological way than anything else - but I think Bam and Tom were relieved to leave. We watched the awesome 'Johnny Guitar' (top of their list of movies we should see) when we got home and then watched another film, too, but I fell asleep, as befits one who's gorged themselves on festive food all day.

This morning, we cruised down the PCH (Pacific Coast Highway) to a lovely beach called Paradise Cove, stopping off at Malibu Pier on the way. It was far too cold to lounge about at the beach, so we wandered up and down for a while and then had a deliciously enormous lunch that would keep Max and me going on the flight home. *sniff*

One consolation for leaving our fun friends/family was that 'Wall-E' was shown on the plane, once more managing to reduce Max and me to tears, despite being on one of those tiny communal screens (it's SO good!). And we also watched 'Journey To The Centre Of The Earth' which was in no way good, though we did chuckle when Brendan Fraser said, "Ladies and gentlemen [there are only two other people with him], I give you... the centre of the earth".

It was really late by the time we landed and the SuperShuttle ride home took FOREVER, adding insult to the injury of our fun (but cold) holiday being over.