What an insanely intense trip. Whenever peolpe have asked me about my DC excursion, I have told them that it was characterized by A LOT of work and A LOT of really good food.

We got into DC on Thursday night, around 6 DC time. We immediately got our bags and then went to a meeting with the property management company for some new buildings we got. We then went to the new property to inventory their hardware and their setup and then went and got dinner. We checked into the hotel and then went to the new and old office space to check out the setup and see what we were dealing with.

Friday morning is/was our busy day. We were in and out of the old office to the new office. It was our day of vendors. data t1 , voice t1 all being delivered. We needed to setup and configure their router and get everything in a basic running level.

We started the morning by getting our breakfast at this amazing bagel shop and then going to work. The crew was still finishing the build out. We carved out a corner and started working/configuring. We got the DSL up and running and started getting everything tested and in working order. This day, what started out alright, ended up becoming a horrible day. voice T1, the DID winback didn't work, data t1 wasn't properly labled and connected from the dmark to the impo of the building, let alone cross connected to the electrical room of our suite. (in english, we were ****ed) We debated trying to connect it ourself, we called someoen out, we had multiple tickets in with quest, verizon, bandwidth.com, nothing was going right. Long story short, come 7PM, there was nothing left for us. no voice t1, no data t1, with vauge promises of weekend delivery and monday what is essentially a city wide holiday in DC (MLK). We just grabbed a lunch in the area surrounding and decided for dinner we would check out a different place, we went to this mediteranean placed called moby dicks, which was pretty good. Friday night, we decided to do 100% of everything else and we worked until 5AM. We did a lot of good work and felt a large sense of accomplishment...

we should have met up

We should have, but someone 'had to' see his girlfriend...

So, Saturday we slept in very late, like 2-3 oclock and we got a late brunch at "To Amy's" our pizza place of choice in DC/Bethesda and then went to the office for an hour or so. We went to a coworkers house to watch some of the Redskins game, then went back to the room to get ready. We went out to dinner to a bomb Ethiopian place called Dukem and then to a coworker's boyfriends house for drinks. We ended up at 18th Street Lounge (ESL) as made popular by Thievery Corporation. They I guess own/run the bar and their label is named after it.

This is a great lounge. It feels like a house. There are couches, a wood burning fire place, a dance floor, some tables, but it is all very quaint and homey feeling. People on the 2nd level spin, on the 3rd level, they have live bands. It was overall very cool.

After we left ESL, around 3, we went to Avidan's friends place. He happens to live with someone from Thievery Corporation, roots, so we went there and met up with roots and some others, smoked with them, drank with them, and hung out. It was really nice. We got home mad late again, and then decided to sleep in the next day also.

Sunday we went 'shopping' for computer stuff and then we went to an argentianian bakery. It was awesome. No one spoke a dime of English, so we had to try and impart our order to our cute, but otherwise incommunicative waitress. We got a gang of empanadas and they are incredibly tasty.

We hit up the office after that, worked through the wee hours of the night and then took a break to go to Black Bar for dinner. It was by far the best bar food I ever had. We were going to have a LATE night of work, but decided we'd just go in on time on Monday.

Monday was a mixed bag. We were hoping to get our data T1 and Voice T1 active, but we only got 1 of those active. Charlie, the head of our DC office took us out to a NICE dinner on Monday night. We got drinks and played pool at this total red neck bar and then next door we went to this nice restraunt called Addy's. I got a great steak and an amazing dessert. We had some good wine and good conversations.

Tuesday things were stressed and ****ed. We were trying to finish up to makea 3 oclock flight, Verizon finally showed up for the data t1, but we were rushed. We decided we'd slow down and just fly out in the morning, it was a good call.

We went to a nice Thai restraunt and then decided we'd work all night. For better or worse, we did. We updated a lot of our things we couldn't do during the day and we did a lot of testing. We left the office at 5AM, made it to the airport 20 minutes before our flight and almost missed it. We got them to hold the door, made it on, and we both PASSED out.

It was a really turbulent flight, but I slept through most of it. We ended up having to do some work at the airport and then went home and passed out. I slept until 5, and then met up with some friends...

DC was overall a pretty good time. It was a ton of work, it was a lot of good food, and not enough sleep, but we had a good amount of fun and we met a lot of people and we did solid work. I got to touch the tip of the iceberg of a city, which was nice, and I got out of LA...