As I sit and think over the events of the past couple weeks, I'm just speechless. I have learned, felt, understood, discovered, experienced, worked, developed, driven :-p, seen, and said so much.

Last night, I drove down to College Park for an evening of fun with new and old friends. After quite the dinner adventure, we headed to downtown DC (H street) to the Palace of Wonders, a recently opened bar whose decor features many real and not so real oddities. There were pictures/posters about a sword swallowing woman, a two headed sheep, a two headed bull, a turtle playing an accordion, an alien's skull, and other such oddities. But the real reason we went there was to see my fellow math girl's roomie spin fire. Yep, you heard me right. Fire. There was fire poi, a fire umbrella, fire hula hoop, fire fans, and someone even ate fire. It was incredible, and rather warm. It was a whole act. There were 5 performers and they each did 4 pieces each, music, dancing, and fire. A few of them did some things with a black light and UV stuff (a glowing hula hoop, glowing spheres inside amazingly stretchy elastic, so it looked like a two ended sock... clearly not easy to describe). It was pretty incredible to see what they could do while spinning fire around themselves. I couldn't stop saying, "Wow." I also got to see Chinatown for the first time, and drove past the Capitol building.

I've discovered a walking path that begins behind our house that leads to a path around a lake. It's a very nice way to escape from roads and cars and walk through the trees and around the lake. It's a nice blend of shade and sunshine along the path. One evening, while I was walking, I saw 4 deer, 3 rabbits, a kind of bird I've never seen before (a wading bird that was a dark grey with a white streak and a white plume), ducks, geese, and heard the crickets and geese and frogs calling to each other :). I'm definitely looking forward to spending lots of time on that path this summer.

Today I will not be in a car. I have been in the car far too much, in traffic, on highways, running errands, etc. I just need to slow down. And so I will.