after i had dinner with the president of umbc, and visited the united nations and shook hands with the secretary general, i jokingly said to my boss “so, i wonder when obama is going to invite me to the white house?”

well…

i saw on thursday that the white house was going to do a tweetup as part of the arrival ceremony for the president of korea, so i applied (thinking that i wouldn’t get in – i mean, how many people would i be competing against?), and that night around 7 i got an email from the executive office of the president saying how i was accepted. i had to rsvp by 10:30 the next morning for myself and for an optional guest. i posted on twitter and facebook to see if any ladies i knew wanted to be my +1 (though i didn’t mention what i needed a guest for, only that i needed a guest for the morning of october 13), and since festive was the only person i heard from she gets to be my lucky guest to visit the white house.

i had also applied for another NASA tweetup that same day, so who knows if i’ll be accepted to that as well. the NASA one isn’t until the afternoon, and it’s at NASA’s headquarters in dc (so it’s easy to get to, at least). that one is to meet two of the astronauts from the final shuttle mission, so it’ll be hilarious if i’m accepted to that one as well… meet with two presidents in the morning, then two astronauts in the afternoon.

went to the last orioles game of the year with stueypark last wednesday. it was my second game of the year, and both games had rain delays. we ended up leaving after we had been in the rain delay for about an hour, but it was all good because just as i got in the car to drive back home from the light rail station they were just about to resume play, and i made it home in time to watch the orioles do a fantastic end to the season by beating the red sox.

thursday i tried this thing called “topgolf” for the first time. i had heard about topgolf earlier in the summer but didn’t have a chance to visit. basically, topgolf : golf :: cosmic bowling : bowling. they have microchips inserted in the golf balls and these video screens at each driving range “lane” can show you how far each of your shots go. there are also different games you can play by aiming for different targets, too.

well, i follow their twitter account and they posted on thursday afternoon that they were giving away free games, and i replied back that i had been wanting to check out topgolf for some time, so they credited me for a 30-day membership + 1 free game (basically, you have to get a membership card in order to play games, and those are either $5 for a 30-day membership, or $40 for a membership that lasts forever). went there thursday night, tried it out, and i’ll definitely be back sometime. i’ll need to bring my set of golf clubs that pap-pap compiled for me from home.

friday night bruno_boy and spelchec and festive and i went to truckeroo, the food truck festival in dc. i saw a guy standing near us and said to dave, “jon pertwee to the left”, so he took a photo of me with the guy in the background… see for yourself and see whether or not that looks like the 3rd doctor.

saturday i planned to go home to visit and run some errands at some point, but i ended up lazing around for much of the day. i was in the middle of watching “casablanca” when mom and dad surprised me by calling me up since they were at the national shrine and were in my neighborhood, so they stopped by to visit and we went out to eat at colonel brooks’ tavern near my place.

i finished up my movie after that, took a disco nap, then went out to the velvet lounge since the first saturday of each month is their “big bad city” soul and r&b dance night dj’d by soul call paul. i had seen soul call paul dj at a brightest young things event at the newseum several months ago and his music selection was just what i like, so i think i might take up residence at these dance events on first saturdays. it also helps that there’s no cover for it, and the velvet lounge is divey enough for my taste (they had “the neverending story” playing on a tv behind the bar, haha). it kind of reminds me of bad decisions, a bar run by one of my fraternity brothers up in baltimore. it was a good time just dancing and not caring, though this one girl i thought looked cute ended up coming back in after she left to ask some other guy for his number. 😛 i was in no mood to ask anyone out, though. the mile-and-a-half walk home from the metro afterwards (there was no estimate for the next bus going my way) also soured my mood a little. it was still a good night’s worth of dancing though.

today i ended up going home to annapolis since there were some packages i ordered that were delivered on friday: a portable bicycle pump, and the book “cooking for geeks”. the bicycle pump now means i don’t have any excuse for not taking my current bike out for rides, so any not-riding is pure laziness on my part.

as for the “cooking for geeks” book, i had thought it was going to be more of a cookbook, but it’s actually pretty light on the recipes. lighter than i expected, anyway. it actually is more of a how-to manual, explaining how different things should be selected, or stored, or how you can do things like calibrate your oven through experimentation so you know if it’s really showing a true temperature, etc. basically, by reading this book, you can read cookbooks and know what to do, and it helps give you the confidence needed to experiment and learn why certain things happen the way they do when you cook. i’m only up to page 50 or so but i’ve already several times seen variations of “don’t worry if you burn dinner, you at least learned something about how to cook (or not to cook), and you can always call out for pizza if you have to”.

this week i’m going to be going back to annapolis so often: going back on tuesday for dad’s birthday, then again on wednesday so i can spend the night for thursday’s early-morning dentist appointment, and then again on saturday for my car’s service appointment.