A Cultura: Gafanhotas, Salsichas e Outras Coisas Portugeses

So let me tell you about last night...Well, on Thursday, Mark had mentioned that there was a free film playing at the Freer Gallery, which is part of the Smithsonian museums. It was part of their exhibit they have going on that shows Portugal's influence around the world. It was a Portuguese film, which sounded fun enough for me since I like Portuguese (I lived in Brazil for two years), foreign films, and I really like the Brazilian films I have seen. I thought that this would be fairly good; reading about it made it sound like a decent story line and all. So Mark, Annie and I went. I'll tell you this, I thought wrong. The movie was called "Non, ou a Va Gloria de Mandar (No, or the Vain Glory of Leading)."
Something told me that we were in for a long crazy movie when the opening scene was a shot of a tree that lasted for about five minutes. It went downhill from there. The Portuguese was tough to understand too, so I had to read the subtitles to have an idea of what was going on. There were long, poorly-acted battle scenes, and at one point I dozed off for about one minute and woke up to a bunch of sailors on an island with a bunch of Nymphs who happened to be without any articles, but also they had about twenty boys running around like Cupids, their little weiners hanging out and everything. It was then that I said to myself, "this is one of the weirdest movies ever." Shortly after, the queen of the nymphs is brought down by four robotic swans in a giant oyster shell, the soldiers eat oysters and grapes with the nymphs who are clothed by now (which makes me wonder why they were absent of any clothing in the first place) and that's the end of that scene.
So, for weird movies I have seen in the past month, "The Boy in the Plastic Bubble" comes in at weirdest, and this follows behind in a close second. Thanks Meg and Mark for these two gems.
After the movie, we went to get something to eat at Oyamel, a Mexican-style restaurant in the District. Mark and I treated ourselves to these tasty critters.
In case you can't tell, those are Grasshopper tacos. Definitely not something that I would order all of the time, they were fairly decent though. The were a little crunchy, but didn't have too weird of a taste, plus there was guacamole under them all, and that made quite the combo of tastes on my ever-so-cultured palate. Like I said Not bad, but not something I would order regularly, but not something I would never order again. Annie did suggest that we never take a girl on a date here and order those. So we had some other things plus some good cake and sorbet things for dessert. Then, we started heading to the Metro to go home.
How could the evening get better you ask? I'll tell you. This is how...
Yes friends, in case you can't tell (the picture is pretty dark), that is the Oscar Mayer Weinermobile, and it was driving down the street while we were walking back to the metro. All of these events transpired to make what I wouldn't call the perfect evening, but it my humble opinion, last night was pretty darned cool. At least it will provide stories for a few days.
Oh, and in case you may be wondering what the title says, it's Culture: Grasshoppers, Weiners and Other Portuguese Things.

That is all.

Emergency!!

Okay, so how's this for excitement. Last night my roommate went to play soccer with some people from our church at the church. He invited me, but it was about 100 degrees (okay maybe only 95) and threatening to rain (I don't have kleats and would have been sliding all over). Not to mention the fact that my soccer prowess would rival that of, well, probably anyone else who has only played one game of soccer in his nearly 26 year old life--maybe a little worse, but I digress. Because of the aformentioned reasons, and the fact that I could (and did) work out at the gym at my apartment, I chose not to go.

Anyway as soon as I got out of the shower after having used my gym, I hear my phone ringing. It was my roommate. He says, "Darin, what up? Hey man, you wanna take me to the hospital? I think I broke my wrist." He was playing goal keeper, and apparently a kid from Peru, Luis, who has probably been playing soccer since he was in diapers, and who last month broken a 2x4 kicking a ball into it, shot the ball, and this time, made a clean break through my roommate's ulna. So I, having been lent the car of another incapacitated friend (she did some damage to, but not quite broke her foot; she couldn't drive her manual transmission Saturn, Stanley, over the past week, and I could. The Dr. told her yesterday that she could drive now, so she's going home).

(On a side note here, there is a girl from my ward--I am sure most who will ever see this are mormon like me, and will know what a ward is, but in case you don't it is the Mormon term for your local church group--who left yesterday to Alaska for eight whole weeks. Since she is totally cool and realized that I am totally lame and don't have a car (in this state at least), she asked if I wanted to use her vehicle while she is up guiding tours, and of course I said yes. It's a Corolla and the license plates say IDHO GRL, but for free wheels, I'll be Idaho Girl for eight weeks.)

So, we go to the emergency room, which was pretty busy, and the folks waiting there seemed nonetoohappy to be there--can't imagine why, but it kinda bummed me out. Mark, the injured roommate, whose arm had a noticeable, swollen lump in the middle of it by this point said, "if your just gonna put me in a splint, give me a pill and charge me $900, I'll just go to a Dr. tomorrow." We leave, and long story short, we end up going to the urgent care facility in Fairfax propper in Idaho Girl.

That was quite an adventure, in the waiting room, there was a man who had cut his finger with a utility knife, a dude who looked like death, but just had a bad case of strep, and shortly after we showed up, a drunken 25 year old who had supposedly broken his ankle while trying to use his Heely's (who knew they made them for grown-ups?) after having quite a few "harder drinks than normal." I am not even sure that he broke it, but he was complaining A LOT about it.

So 3.5 hrs. later Mark emerged with a wrap on what was confirmed to be his broken arm, and a copy of the x-ray. Both of us were hungry by this point, so we went to I-HOP, I knew I was going to be tired for work and figured that one more hour wouldn't make that much difference.

So here I am now (or at least when I typed it this morning), at work running on just under 3 hours of sleep, and on the caffeine provided from a Diet Pepsi.
In my humble opinion, Hospitals stink, and worse than that, urgent care centers with only one Dr. are horrible, but can provide for some entertainment if you enjoy watching injured people. The End.

Hooray Summer!!

I used to hate summer. Probably because my mom always complained about the heat. True in Utah it does get hot, but nothing like here in Virginee. Today it was 94 degrees+ and it was super humid. It was about like walking into a sauna when I left my office for lunch and to go home. But, I figure that today is about as bad as I remember it getting, and it was bearable.

I guess another reason why I didn't appreciate (let's say) summer is because my family is super boring, and we never did anything fun. Our most exciting trip would be our annual trek here. Sure I liked Lava Hot Springs, well once we got there. It was always a mess to try to get there. My mom would load up an entire house to go to our completely furnished condo. It would really piss me and my dad off, but I digress. It was fun when I was a kid, and I still would enjoy going for a day, but to look back, they were pretty lame "vacations" we had.

Now that I am a grown-up, I can go on my own vacation, like what I did two weeks ago for Memorial Day weekend. I went with some friends, and a huge flock of other Mormons to the Outer Banks of North Carolina. And I must say that I heart the Outer Banks.

We packed up Megan's Carolla, Olive, and left on Friday at about two in the afternoon. Other than a bit of traffic about 45 minutes out, it was smooth sailing and we made it to our weekend house in about five hours, which really is great time.

The picture shows just how close we really were to the beach. Sure our house wasn't a freaking mansion like many of the other people stayed in, but it was cheaper and it meant that we crossed the street and we were at the beach.

So Saturday was mostly spent at the beach from morning through mid-afternoon. After that, we took off to do some sight seeing. We first thought to go to the Wright Brother's memorial but it was closing, and we couldn't get in. This didn't break my heart, cause they were going to charge us, and I had seen it last summer while there. So we decided to drive further south, and about 1 1/2 hours(and about five packs of bubble yum later), we got to the Cape Hatteras light house.

Later, we went to dinner and only waited for an hour to be seated instead of waiting at Dirty Dick's crab house for at least two.

Sunday included beach-going, and a riviting game of Beyond Balderdash, which, coincidentally, I won.

Monday meant some more fun at the beach and was my official introduction into skim-boarding, which is really fun (even though I can't really do it). In trying to learn it, I got a couple of battle wounds on each leg.

I have to say that the Memorial Day weekend was awesome. I don't think the enjoyment of the impromptu funeral service for Aunt Mary's cremated ashes in Grouse Creek two years ago can even compare to this one--close but not quite. It was a sad day when we had to once agian load up Olive and return to the real world. In my humble opinion, the beach is amazing, and having a holiday weekend to enjoy it is even better.