Three Beautiful Things 02/05/16: Outing Plans, Friday Party, Wheaton Regional Park

1. The Deke told me this morning that she'd like to pay a visit to a historical house in or around Washington, D. C. on Saturday, so I poked around on the World Wide Web and looked at three possibilities:  the Frederick Douglass House (in Anacostia, SE D. C.,  sold out), the Clara Barton National Historic Site (in Glen Echo, MD), and the Lincoln Cottage (near Petworth in NW D.C.). We decided to venture into Washington, D. C. and we'll be touring the site where Abraham Lincoln retreated to compose speeches, letters, and policies.

2. As we enjoy doing on Friday when the Deke's work week ends, we buzzed up to the Old Line Bistro. One of our favorite servers, Marcus, saw us arrive and asked Laura, who was the evening's hostess, to seat us at one of his tables.  Marcus was eager to update us on the month long artist's residency he served in Estonia. It was fascinating -- he painted, mounted a show, and survived the brutality of the Estonian cold in January. I very much enjoyed that Troeg's Nugget Nectar release time had arrived and enjoyed the explosion of fresh hopped pine and citrus -- and remembered back to about a year ago when I enjoyed a pint of this beer at the Church Key. Next I slowly made my way to the bottom of a snifter of a power house triple IPA from Brooklyn, the Six Point High Res IIIPA, and, after eating my half of the Game of Thrones burger we split, along with House Parmesan Truffle Fries and the house homemade potato chips, I finished off the evening with a half pint of a sour ale -- I love sour ales for dessert -- a collaborative effort between Union Brewing of Baltimore and Austin Beerworks of Texas called Union Craft Bolo. It had a little bit of everything going on -- funk, peach notes, biscuit, and what some call hay notes -- ha! -- I like those hay notes.  This was definitely a great party.

3. Earlier in the day, I drove much of the length of University Boulevard (MD 193) all the way to Georgia St. (MD 97) and made my way to the Wheaton Regional Park. I'd last been there in August and the sunlight was brutal so I didn't take pictures that day of the Japanese Tea House.  Today, that's what I wanted to do.  The tea house sits about half over land and half over a pond and I had no idea when I arrived today that the pond would still be frozen -- in fact, I had no idea so much snow would still be on the ground in the park.  So I walked nearly 5000 steps and took about eighty-five pictures of paths, shadows, leaves, people walking, bridges, benches, and, as planned, the tea house.  Would you like to see all eighty-five pictures? Keep in mind, when I post my pictures to flickr, I put every picture in my albums because what might seem like a crappy picture today might look much better to me on down the road.  All eighty-five pictures are here.  Here is a sampling of the pictures I took: