Recovered from yesterday. Went barhopping a little tonight. Good time. Can’t remember the name of the bar, but it was pretty good. Had yummy fries there. Went to some other bar and had dessert. Spent a ridiculous amount of time arguing back and forth between Carin, Joe and myself whether a person could in fact be cut in half by an errant cable. The cable in question is an arresting cable from an aircraft carrier. The consensus between Carin and myself from the physics point of view is that such a cable, being of high mass, and under tension, when imparted with a very large amount of energy by an aircraft traveling at full speed, could indeed render a human body into two distinct segments by causing both trauma and acceleration to the lower torso. While the term “cut” is highly mutable in this scenario, the general upshot is that the forces involved are completely beyond human scale, and that despite the relative toughness of the human body (as attested to by Joe, the Johns Hopkins medical student (way to go, Joe, you rock)) it simply couldn’t withstand such an event. It was also agreed that timing and position would play a large role in determining the extent of damage.

DC Fireworks very pretty. Got pics. Falafel yummy. Got fitshaced drunk. The Black Squirrel is a kick-ass bar.So yeah. That’s what I wrote while still bleary-eyed drunk. The day was overcast and dreary, but we found a great place on the Mall to wait for the fireworks. After the rain set in, we moved under a nice tree, and shared a couple of beers and some conversation with a couple of folks whose names now escape me. He’s an Iraq war veteran (2 tours, if memory serves), and they were kind enough to share their beer while Carin and I waited for Joe and Kelly and my mom to show up. Fireworks were flippin’ awesome, and I’ll have to remember to post the pics and videos when I get back to civilization broadband.

After that, we walked through the rain, and the insanely crowded crowd back to the hotel and then hoofed it to the metro out to Adams-Morgan, where we proceeded to meet the rudest bartender in the world. Seriously, she was so rude to another guy at the bar, that I took back the tip I’d already laid on the bar. After that, we moved down the street to The Black Squirrel, which was a kick-ass beer bar. I don’t remember the chap’s name, but our waiter was incredibly cool. Not only did he offer up a whole bunch of excellent beer suggestions, but since they were no longer serving food, he let us go next door to the falafel place (which was fuh-hreakin awesome) and bring our bounty back with us to The Black Squirrel. Several beers and falafels later, I was as drunk as I’ve ever been in public, and having a great time. Once we were done there, we accosted a taxi driver and convinced him to take us back to the hotel in exchange for some green pieces of paper with little pictures of dead white guys on them. Seemed like a good deal to us.

Rather than wake my poor mom up an hour and a half before she had to go to some sort of meeting, we wandered around down town and ended up eating a truly awful breakfast at this place called McDonald’s. Seriously, I can’t recommend this place at all. Food sucked, bathrooms were squalid, and the decor might as well have been constructed from cardboard.

We arrived back at the hotel just about in time to wish my mom a good day, and we all piled into the beds for sleep.

Oh yeah. At some point during the evening’s wanderings, I performed my world-famous Tarzan impression for a pretty much deserted downtown. That was sweet.

Open Top bus tour sucked. Bastards left us at the National Cathedral for almost 2 hours. Saw Love Guru (which sucked), washed laundry.