BRRRR

SECOND EVER LA CELEB SPOT: I saw 'Simpsons' creator Matt Groening waiting to cross the road this afternoon!

It's soooo cooold in LA at the moment. And today, it rained! I packed entirely inappropriately for such a climate and am wearing the warmest outfit I have, which is unfortunately shorts and a t-shirt. Brrrr. Unfortunate for me, because I'm not warm, unfortunate for those around me because I've been wearing the same thing for days.

It's awesome, hanging out with Tom and Bambi - they're both excellent company and it's a real treat for me to hang with them and Maxy all together.

Tom had to work yesterday, at the frame-making workshop, so Bam kindly drove Max and I around the area. Again, we did lots that I did when I was here in the summer, but I didn't mind at all, because I really like LA now and it was nice to show familiar things to Max. So we hit Venice pier and Abbott Kinney, the cool street of shops that's like a fancy Chiswick High Street.

We swung by Tom's workshop to see where he worked and meet his crazy colleague who's covered in tattoos of monkeys. I made the mistake of making a 'get the monkey off your back' joke, only to have him say that he did that few years ago, when he got clean from heroin. Whoops.

We whisked Tom off for lunch at a nearby Chinese, before dropping him back at work and heading to the lovely Landmark cinema (with ushers! and sofas!) to see 'Slumdog Millionaire', to escape the pouring rain.

I really loved the movie. It was a great story and the child actors were adorable. And I thought Danny Boyle did a great job, making Mumbai larger-than-life, such that I could almost feel the heat and smell the smells of the streets and slums the camera was dashing through. The soundtrack was awesome, too.

Max and I were a bit on edge throughout, because the actor playing the lead - Dev Patel - is easily the worst and most wooden thing in 'Skins' - a Channel 4 series - and we weren't looking forward to watching him carry a film. But fortunately he didn't have much to do, so didn't spoil it for us. The guy playing the host of 'Who Wants To Be A Millionaire' was hilarious - who wants to be... a millinaaaire?!

Last night, Tom and Bam treated us to Mexican at El Cholo - a restaurant they took me to in the summer and whose prawn fajitas I'd been dreaming about ever since. Mmmmm, SO good!

Over dinner, Tom and Bam compiled a list for us of cool old movies featuring women with moxie, that they think we'd enjoy. It was really fun, hearing all the crazy plots and watching them debate which films were worth putting on the list and I can't wait to start ordering them from NetFlix.

The whole conversation got me to thinking - the gift of knowledge really shouldn't be underestimated - that list that Tom and Bam have given us is going to last much longer than any Christmas present they could give us. I wonder if I could persuade my family that we should just give each other the gift of knowledge this year...!

Tom took today off work and the four of us spent this morning on a hazardous adventure, into the Projects of Watts, to see the Watts Towers. Bambi was not on board with this whole endeavour from the outset: she's lived here her whole life and there's a reason that she's never been to that part of town.

Tom resisted the temptation to put the roof of his car down and blast out gangsta rap, but we were very excited to see real life crack whores and 'street hoppers' on the corner of one street, just like in 'The Wire'! We also saw a huge funeral parade crawling down the other side of the road, and a man zooming along the street in a wheelchair, which Bam said was most probably because he'd been shot.

I thought the Watts Towers were going to be gigantic, and perhaps two big tower blocks in the middle of an estate that were now considered cool, like the Trellick Tower in London. But they're kind of small (and once was in scaffolding). They were built over 33 years by a crazy guy, who decorated them with 'found objects' like bits of bottles and plates. There are all sorts of sad stories surrouding them, like neighbours vandalising them, the local authorities trying to tear them down and someone pay $3 or something for them. But now they're officially a National Historical Landmark.

As such, if Watts is really that bad, the bad people are really missing a trick by not hanging out nearby to steal nice cameras from tourists! Perhaps they're out when the weather's nicer, because it was really bleak and wet this morning.

Bam was very happy when we finally beat a hasty retreat out of the 'hood and the four of us went our separate ways this afternoon: Bambi and I sat in static traffic to get to the Valley to go for lunch with Bam's best friend Julia and her little girl Zola, while Tom and Maxy went record shopping at Amoeba.

On our way back to the flat, Bambi needed to pick up a pie for Thanksgiving tomorrow, so swung by the bakery she'd put an order in with, only to find a huge queue stretching all the way around the block! So we sped off and got an apple pie from the supermarket instead!

For supper, we met another friend of Bambi's - Patty - for deliiiicious Korean barbecue. Mmm, it was a feast of meat! Patty is Korean, so ordered us all the best stuff and I was stuffed by the time we left. I hope I have room for some yams and turkey tomorrow!

JOSHUA TREE

Turns out some people have jobs to do, and Tom is one of those people, so he wasn't around during the day today and Nina left for Thanksgiving with her Mum first thing this morning, so Max and I took ourselves off to the desert for an adventure.

Nina very generously lent us her sweet sweet ride, and we drove off in the sunny sunshine to the Joshua Tree National Park, about two hours' drive from Tom and Nina's home.

It was lovely weather this morning and Nina's car has the facility for playing an ipod through the speakers, so we put the top down, put the Beach Boys on the stereo and headed off on our adventure.

It felt really good to be doing something proper with our day, rather than mooching about the streets of West Hollywood, or whatever, and I'm so pleased we made the effort.

En route, we passed a gigantic wind farm. My Dad hates energy windmills and is campaigning against them popping up all over Dorset, but I think there's something quite cool and beautiful about lots of them in a big open space. Perhaps it's just the landscape of the future and something we have to get used to.

As well as the cool cacti there, Joshua Tree is famous for being the place that Gram Parsons (one of my all-time favourite singer/songwriters) would go and get very high, eventually dying of an overdose in room 8 of the Joshua Tree Inn, aged 26. Unfortunately, we whizzed past the motel before really registering what it was, which is a shame.

Also a shame was our inability to resist the cliche of playing U2's album 'Joshua Tree' as we entered the park. I can only apologise.

The park is so cool. It's vast, with one road going through it, passing quite distinct phases. The first phase was of cool, spindly cacti, a bit like something from Dr Seuss:

The second phase was of cool yellow rocks that had been weathered and kind of rounded by centuries of erosion:

The aptly named 'Skull Rock'

We would get out of the car from time to time, to wander around and clamber over rocks. We encountered a couple of families at Arch Rock, where the two Dads were taking the very young children up onto the huge stone arch.

Harking back to my days on walks in Dorset, trying to keep up with Tom and his impetuous rock-climbing ways, I decided to clamber up onto the arch, figuring if 6-year olds could do it, it could surely be no match for me.

Oh. My. Goodness. It was freakin' terrifying. I really very nearly had a panic attack when I got up there, because it was higher than any photo could really relate and really narrow, too. Plus, it didn't help that there was a gale-force wind/slight breeze (probably the latter) threatening to blow me off onto the unforgiving rocks below. Hddrdrdrdrr.

As much as I would've liked to've hung out up there, contemplating my navel, maybe doing a bit of yoga, I waited long enough for Maxy to take a photo, then gingerly climbed back down, mostly on my ass.

We went exploring for some caves nearby, but didn't find them and frankly I'd spent all my adventurousness chips and wanted to get back in the car and hit the road!

The final phase of the park was full of cholla cacti, which apparently hop! Though I didn't see that happen:

We left the park with plenty of time before we had to be back in town for tonight's bowling extravaganza and handover to Tom and Bambi, so we decided to take the long way back and check out Palm Springs.

Big mistake.

Firstly, it was much further away than we thought and, still reeling from my New Hampshire speeding ticket and encounter with the Angriest State Trooper Ever, I wasn't too keen to whizz along the freeway in a way that I might've done in the days before my $250 fine. So it took ages to get there and I was getting really stressed about not being back in LA in time for this evening's arrangements. Plus, the weather had really clouded over, so the roof was back up on the car and the Beach Boys were no longer on the stereo.

But worst of all, Palm Springs is just a real hole. We thought it'd be a cool, art deco kind of 50s playtown for wealthy and old people, but - certainly along the main drag - it was just a weird, soulless linear town with no defining or pleasant features at all.

Fortunately we made it back in time to meet Tom and head off to a bowling alley near Tom and Bambi's flat, where we busied ourselves shooting both aliens and hoops in the arcade bit, until Tom and Bam arrived and we had a fun evening of bowling. I love to bowl. It was really sad that Nina wasn't there and I think everyone was pretty pooped after a long day at work/in the desert, but it was fun to all hang out together and I threw a few rocks before Tom officially handed Max and me off to Tom and Bambi and we adjourned to Mar Vista for the second half of our LA visit.

GUITAR HERO WIDOW

FIRST EVER LA CELEB SPOT: Adam Levine, lead singer of Maroon 5 (and a bit of a tool), was mooching around the same supermarket where we bought dinner on Saturday night!

We're in LA! We flew in on Saturday (on the very pleasant Alaskan Air) and go home on Friday. We spent the weekend with Tommy and Nina and, as ever, it was wonderful to see them, as natural as if we hang out all the time, rather than only see each other once or twice a year, and lots of fun.

Our arrival in LA was somewhat marred by Max leaving my phone on the plane (ok, I guess I'm not allowed to be cross, if I wasn't prepared to look after it myself), so I had to dash back through security and all over LAX back to the gate, to pick it up. At least it was there!

It was quite important that I get my phone back (apart from for obvious reasons), because I was a little unclear as to whether Tom and Nina were picking us up or not. They offered but, because they live on the other side of LA from the airport, I insisted we take the SuperShuttle and just meet them at their house.

Tom's kindness is only matched by the strength of his will, and I've never known him to back down in a situation like this. So although we left it that we would get the bus, I kind of expected to see them at the airport and, when we didn't, had to call him to check he wasn't on his way or whatever.

Even when I was reunited with my phone, I couldn't reach Tom, so we got the SuperShuttle anyway, keeping an eye out for his car, in case we passed him coming into the airport. But we didn't. Instead, we found both Tom and Nina happily at home, waiting for us.

Maxy wasn't with me when I visited in the summer, so it was really nice for him to see Tom and Nina and their gorgeous home, and nice for me to be able to share the fun with Max. We headed straight out to get some lunch, then took Maxy up to the Griffith Observatory, which is one of the few things he hasn't done in LA but wanted to. Despite having been there on my last visit, I was so happy to go again, as we saw the most gorgeous sunset over the city:

We were all pretty snoozy by the time we left the observatory, so just headed to the supermarket, bought some food and then Maxy and I made Tom and Nina supper before we settled down to watch a movie, which I fell asleep in front of.

This morning, Tom and Nina made the terrible mistake of introducing Maxy to Guitar Hero on their PlayStation. He's utterly hooked! One of the many things about Max for which I am grateful is that he's not into computer games at all, so I don't have to contend with a zombified husband frantically pressing buttons for hours at a time and leaving me to go to bed while he tries to get to the next level of some game.

I also thought he was safe from the gigantic Guitar Hero craze, because he can actually play guitar, so surely pressing buttons instead of sliding fingers up and down strings would be really unsatisfying? Mais non. He loves it! And he's pretty good at it too. Tom is AMAZING at it, and is discovering all these rock bands whose songs are on the game. I stumbled my way through Pat Benatar's 'Hit Me With Your Best Shot', but wasn't too sad when it was time to go to brunch. I'm fairly sure Max was, though...

We went back to Cliff's Edge, where we had brunch last time I visited, and which I really really like. Even more so since Tom and Nina saw none other than Veronica Mars herself - Kristen Bell - there a few weeks ago! Unfortunately we did not, but the food was still very tasty.

Afterwards, we went in search of the tar pits, which are right in the middle of LA and which I thought would be vast and cool, but actually consist of a little pool of tar with a fake mammoth next to it. It's still pretty cool to think of that whole area that's now so built up and populated, once being sprawling masses of tar, where mammoths roamed.

Leaving the tar pits a little underwhelmed, we spent this afternoon cruising around the city, which is one of my favourite things to do there, especially in Nina's sweet convertible. We went along Hollywood Blvd, up into Laurel Canyon and the Hollywood Hills and to the Hollywood sign overlooking the reservoir.

I should perhaps have put the top up on the car before we pulled up at the House of Blues - legendary live music venue - to investigate who on earth was playing that had attracted such a gigantic, round-several-blocks queue. On discovering that it was the Jonas Brothers, I did my best tween impression by squealing, 'aargh! It's the Jonas Brothers'! Only to be set upon by grumpy fans and having to speed off, for fear of being glittered to within an inch of my life.

As we were cruising down Sunset, you'll never guess what we saw - an Idaho numberplate!! In fact, two of them, parked next to each other! I squealed louder than a tween coming face to face with a Jo Bro, screeched over to the side of the road and took a photo, thereby finally completing our set. Oh, happy day!

And what better way to cap off such a kickass day, than watching a kickass movie on a gigantic screen? We were all very excited to go and see 'Quantum of Solace' at the ArcLight - a humungous cinema screen. But unfortunatley the movie really sucks. It's kind of offensively bad. I had no idea what was going on half the time and the director - Marc Forster - seemed to have no sense of montage, so that shots were put together in a way that didn't make sense. It was so disappointing, because I LOVE 'Casino Royale' and had high hopes for the second Daniel Craig Bond movie. It did look very good, though - the production design was excellent - and I thought Olga Kurylenko was good, too.

GIGS & JAZZ HANDS

ONLY BUMMER ABOUT OUR IMPENDING TRIP TO LA: we're missing a Vampire Weekend gig AND They Might Be Giants, performing the whole of 'Flood'!!

We haven't been to a proper gig since we got to DC, which is unusual for us, because we see quite a lot of live music in London. So I was really pleased when Emily emailed to suggest we go and see Dr Dog at the 9.30 Club, which is meant to be the best live music venue in town.

I don't know Dr Dog at all, but Emily said their harmonies are like the Beatles and Max has heard them compared to The Band, so I checked them out on You Tube and got us some tickets - I'm really looking forward to it!

After the excitement of the card-making class at PaperSource last month, I now have to put my money where my mouth is and get down to the serious business of making 60 handmade Christmas cards with all the gear I bought while high from the course. So much of this week has been spent painstakingly cutting out angels from cardboard. I'm not sure my sanity is going to make it - I've been way over-ambitious!

As a prize for doing so well during the election and working so hard these past few months, I got Maxy a massage at our gym, which he went for yesterday and said was looooovely. When he was in the shower afterwards, a foot came into his cubicle from the shower next door and tapped a couple of times! Max recognised this signal from the story of Larry Craig from last year, so kept his feet to himself!

While Maxy was getting cruised, I went to my first ever jazz funk class! It was pretty fun and there were bits of it that reminded me of ballet from when I was little - like prancing diagonally across the room - which was nice, but other bits reminded me why I don't like dance classes, when I couldn't grasp the really straightforward choreography and my body wouldn't work in the right way.

The instructor was a really fun little lady who was a ball of energy and talked at a rate of a million words a second and told us all about how she's just broken up with her boyfriend and how the metro was crazy and how she's annoyed that her class has been bumped from the bigger room (I was the only person in the class for the first 5 mins and only about 5 more people turned up, so I kind of get that decision by the gym).

It was quite fun and I could see how I could get fit from it, but I think I might stick to butts, guts and guns for now...

Today was a sad day, as I helped Anne move out of the flat next door. By the time we come back from LA next week, she'll be gone! She's found a flat up near Columbia Road, kind of north of Adams Morgan, so it's only about a 15 minute walk, but it's up a hill and - as already noted with a heavy heart - I have to wear shoes to go there.

It was great to see Megan, though - I haven't seen her since before we went to Costa Rica, as while we were away, she was headhunted to write speeches for Michelle Obama and moved to Chicago for the rest of the election.

It sounds like it was a really tough experience for her and not a wholly enjoyable one, beyond getting to be in the middle of everything: her boss sounds like a horrid nightmare and she didn't really get close to Michelle, so felt a bit at sea a lot of the time. Jonathan sounds adorable in his efforts to support her from here in DC, though - he would skype her on the webcam and read her 'Anne of Green Gables' (her favourite book) to calm her down!

We're going to LA for a week tomorrow, to see Tom and Nina and spend Thanksgiving with Tom and Bambi, so of COURSE I had to go and get a manicure, pedicure and legwax this evening, in preparation! I am now sunshine-ready...

SMELLY SNOW

FREAKIEST COINCIDENCE OF THE DAY: as I was cycling home this afternoon, it started snowing! From absolutely nowhere! The dude from Mount Vernon was completely right - it's the weirdest thing!

It's been unbelievably freezing here for a while now, so Max finally decided to get a winter coat and I met him in Macy's at lunchtime to consult. He found a really gorgeous cashmere one that was on sale and then the assistant told him a way of getting yet more money off, so he paid well under £100 for an amazing cashmere overcoat! And got a nice cashmere scarf and hat, to boot.

I'm desperate to follow suit, but all the ladies' winter coats have got belts and/or are short. I want a really nice black military-style cashmere overcoat with big buttons and a high collar, but it seems I'm not in step with this year's fashion, so have to make do with my weedy anorak.

Mark's speech went really well this morning, so tonight we went out to celebrate with him and his friend, once again basking in the cheap beer and awesome jukebox (I was able to listen to a Liz Phair song I haven't heard for yeeeears) at the Toledo Lounge.

Unfortunately I can't tell you what Mark's friend is called, because I only know him as the Orc. Mark made the mistake of mentioning to us that his friend is from the Orkney Isles and I latched onto this, gave the poor fellow a new moniker and am incapable of remembering his actual name.

Anyway, he was really fun and I hope he becomes a new DC friend, because it'd be good to hang out with him more. He works for the Treasury, I think, or maybe the Bank of England, so is based at the Embassy.

We had a heated discussion trying to name the five funniest films of all time and had real difficulty. I was at a particular disadvantage (and was shouted at a lot for it) because I automatically have to discount all those stupid 80s comedies like Airplane, because I don't find them very funny. And when those out-and-out comedies are out of the mix, there are very few true comedies left.

We all love the 'Zoolander's, 'Anchorman's and 'Old School's of this world, but together they make one really funny movie; none by itself qualifies for the top five.

We all like stuff like Ferris Beuller, Lebowski and Withnail, but those aren't pure comedies. When I sincerely put forward 'Role Models', Mark simply said he felt sorry for me. But it IS one of the top five comedies I've ever seen! It's brilliant! The only other definite contender for my top five was 'Monty Python & The Holy Grail', but the rest was a real struggle and I never managed five.

DEVO TOWERS

BIGGEST MISSED OPPORTUNITY OF THE WEEK: people in DC are letting their flats out for upwards of $1000 a night for the Inauguration! As sorely tempting as it is, we're quite sure it'd flout many BBC regulations to make money off an apartment they're paying for. *sigh*

Mum and Dad came to stay last week!

Their four day visit here was sandwiched between a 24-hr stay in New York and a 4-day visit to LA, so they're doing quite the whistlestop tour of the States!

It was so wonderful to see them, as I've never gone as long as 7+ months without seeing them. Unfortunately they brought the British weather with them and it was dreary and rainy for most of their stay, but we had a lovely time regardless (hopefully they did, too).

I went to meet them at Dulles airport on Thursday, which was quite the mission - Dulles is a nightmare to get to on public transport and if you ever come into DC on an internal flight, PLEASE fly to Reagan National Airport! I think it took longer for me, on foot, metro and bus to get to the airport than it did for them to fly down from NYC. And it didn't help that it was pouring with rain.

Anyway, I was (almost) too excited to notice, and met them with a big 'welcome to DC' sign, which they both managed to miss as they came out of the door, so I was reduced to yelling at them across the airport!

I won't blog too much about their visit, because I suspect that Mum and Dad account for at least 50% of the readers of this blog and the other 50% will've already heard about their visit from them or not be so interested.

it's Mum and Dad in DC!

Suffice to say, it was brilliant showing them our DC world and I even got to do some things I haven't done in the city before. For example, on their first night here, I took them to the National Cathedral for choral evensong, which was beautiful.

I hadn't been in the cathedral before and was amazed by how European it looks (though the lady on the information desk was at pains to tell us that it isn't based on any existing cathedral) - like a mix between Salisbury and Notre Dame.

Mum found it really moving that someone had built such a spectacular building to God so recently (it was finished in the early 90s) and I was moved too, but kind of thought - a bit like with the Lincoln Memorial appropriating a Grecian architectural style - that there's something a bit funny, almost fake, about transposing architectural styles from centuries ago to a different era. Hmm, I don't know. Still, the cathedral was amazing and the evensong was really beautiful - I'd like to go there for it more often.

While on a walk around the neighbourhood with Dad, I saw another Alaska numberplate but yet again didn't have my camera! Aaarrgghh.

On Friday, we 'did' the monuments (never before have I seen the top of the Washington Monument shrouded in mist!), then crawled around the National Gallery (actually I lurched from the sofa in one room to the sofa in the next, while Mum studied the paintings in close detail) before meeting up with Alison, Brewster, Patrick, Leanna and Emily for drinks, so that Mum and Dad could put faces to the names they hear often. They're all extremely parent-friendly and Mum came away with quite the crush on Brewster, while Dad was very impressed by how brainy our friends are. Well they're clever enough to be friends with us, so what do you expect?! Anne came over for dinner that night, which again was nice, to introduce Mum and Dad to someone who's a big part of our life here.

breakfast with Mum and Dad! Yeay!

It was beautifully sunny on Saturday so, because Mum was having trouble with her knee and couldn't walk too far, we put her in a taxi to go have a manicure in Georgetown, then Max and I took Dad to Georgetown the scenic route, through Dumbarton Oaks Park, which was lovely, if crazy-hot.

Our timing was perfect, and we met up with Mum just as she emerged from the beauty salon I got my manicure at that first time in Georgetown back in April, then pootled around Georgetown before having lunch at the trusty Nathans just as the heavens opened and it started pouring with rain.

I tried packing too much in yesterday, so it was a little stressful, especially with Mum's reluctance to walk very much. We were trying to get to Mount Vernon which, like Dulles airport, is quite tricky on public transport. However, it turned out to be a blessing when we missed our bus, because we nipped down to Alexandria instead, whizzed down the main street in a trolley, showed Mum and Dad the waterfront and then hopped back up the trolley, back to the metro just in time for the bus to Mount Vernon, a couple of stops along the metro line.

Mount Vernon was George Washington's home and is presented in the state it would've been in when he lived there. Unfortunately you can't just wander around the main house at your own pace - you have to queue up for a guided tour of each room. It was FREEZING in the queue, there was a really bitter wind, and the man in front of us even said he could smell snow - that he reckoned it'd snow on Tuesday (tomorrow), but I think that's a bit extreme.

When we finally got inside, the tour was really interesting and it was quite eery to see the bed where Washington died and stuff. It was also quite odd hearing an African American guide make frequent references to Washington's slaves.

We didn't spend too long wandering around the grounds, but it was quite cool to see the outhouses set up as they would've been back in the day.

Mum and Dad at Washington's pile

After a lishy but mildly fraught (air con and loud music issues) supper at Local 16, we went to the White House for a tour of the West Wing that Emily really kindly arranged, despite me saying she really didn't have to. It was Max's third visit! And the fourth tour Emily had done that night, so she was pooped, but it was fun to see it all again.

Mum and Dad at Obama's pile-to-be

Mum and Dad left early this morning to get to LA and it was so sad to see them go, because it felt so natural having them here and hanging out with them that I wish they could've stayed for longer. *sniff*

However, I didn't have the luxury of moping too much, as I had bedding to wash in time for our next visitor who arrived this evening! Our friend Mark is in town from New York, for a conference he's speaking at tomorrow, so he's staying for a couple of nights, which I thought might be a bit stressful, straight off the back of Mum and Dad's visit, but actually it's really nice to see him, especially as he expects nothing more of us than eating food and chilling out on the sofa!

NEW FRIENDS

CURRENT NETFLIX OBSESSION: 'Pushing Daisies'. We love it! Anna Friel wears pretty dresses, our West Wing pal, Kristen Chenoweth, is brilliant as the excellently-named Olive Snook, and it's really funny. I'm only sad it's been cancelled after two seasons.

While I toiled away at this blasted Lib Dem project, yesterday, Maxy got a herogram from the head of BBC World News! It was an email just to Maxy, with the head of Online cc-ed in, thanking Max for all his excellent work surrounding the election and signing off with the line, "You thoroughly justified our decision to give you the job"!! Yippeeeeee!

And while Maxy was excelling at work, I was enjoying my own bit of success on the domestic front, by having the carpets cleaned. Our sitting room and bedroom have a ridiculously pale cream carpet throughout and, I guess because this place is a rental, no-one appears to have been very bothered about spilling stuff on it. So it's an embarrassing and grody mess of red wine, sauce stains and messes that I don't want to give too much thought to what might have caused them.

It was particularly gauling to have Max's predecessor-but-one identify at our housewarming party back in May which stains his children were responsible for!

It just really grosses me out and it doesn't help that our hoover doesn't work, so I've been badgering Max for ages to get the BBC to agree to sort out a carpet cleaner and today he came! And it was AMAZING!! Some of the stains were really really dark and looked like they wouldn't go anywhere, but after an afternoon spent steaming and spraying and scraping, the magician that was the lovely carpet cleaner man got them all out and the carpet looks awesome! It was my very own transformation like in home improvement shows!

Unfortunately I somewhat hilariously hadn't factored in that the carpet would need to dry for some time when I invited Oliver over for dinner last night:

clean carpet - yeay!
Pre-dinner chats squished into the corner of an empty room - boo.

dinner in the entrance hall. Nice.

Today I ploughed on with Lib Dem man's stuff and then this evening, we went for drinks with a couple called Joe and Molly, who our friends Matt and Jilly met in Belize this summer. When Matt and Jilly heard that Joe and Molly were from DC, they put them in touch with us and it turns out they live literally just up the road!

So we met them in a really cool dive-bar on 18th St called the Toledo Lounge. It looks really scuzzy, but the beer's super-cheap and the jukebox is amazing. We purposefully planned to haveh supper at home, to give us an excuse to leave if we didn't hit it off with Joe and Molly, but it turned out we needn't have bothered - they are SO nice!

Joe's an architect and Molly's a middle school teacher who works in this really interesting experimental school in DC that puts a lot of emphasis on vocational and kind of 'real world' teaching, as much as the academic stuff.

They got married in the summer (Belize was their honeymoon) and are a really nice couple. We chatted nonstop for about 3 hours and then they mentioned in passing that they'd been in West Virginia at the weekend. I said the first thing that came into my head when I thought of West Virginia, which was had they been there on a retreat? Much to our mutual surprise, they both said yes. So I asked - expecting a bemused 'no' - whether they'd gone with Grace church and they said yes - becoming increasingly freaked out - and then Max and I were able to blow their minds, by reeling off all the people we know from Grace - that's the church that Alison, Emily, Brewster et al go to!!

Turns out Joe used to be in a study group with Brewster and Molly sat next to Emily at breakfast on Sunday and they all know the same people we know! It was really fun to freak them out, because it was such a crazy coincidence that we know all those folks and yet were introduced to Joe and Molly by our UK friends on holiday in Belize!

So, having rather reluctantly met up, with an escape strategy of needing to go home for supper, we left Joe and Molly at about 10.30pm, starving hungry but with two lovely new friends!

Joel McHale was on the 'Countdown with Keith Olbermann' repeat when we got home, inexplicably holding his baby boy during the interview!