Thank you Major L'Enfant
Saturday morning I woke up ready to try to get the truck inspected. There is only one location to get your car
inspected in Washington. I had called last week and asked what was the best time to get there: "We open at 7 am, I would get here by 6 if I were you." So when I woke up at 5:45 I knew I had blown it. Dummy me, I thought "Brenna always get's to North Capital St./New York Ave. fast, I bet I can shave some time going that way." I found North Cap and it quickly dead ended. As I was driving I quickly started to feel like I was in a twilight zone episode. I would be driving and notice that the street numbers were increasing. Since I was trying to get back on North Capital street I knew that was wrong. So I turned around, ended up on another street and soon realized the street numbers were increasing again. Rinse. Repeat...
a brief rant about streets in D.C. or If you know D.C. you don't have to read this
For those of you who may be reading this but have never experiened the joys of driving in
Our Nation's Capital. Number streets = North/South, Letter streets = East/West, State Streets (and I think Presidents) = Diagonal and there are some other streets thrown in for good measure that I have no clue which way they go. The city is laid out like a grid with 4 quandrants that all point to the Capital building. North, South, East and West Capital streets all go to the Capital and the street Names/Letters go up from there. So there are actually effectively 4 of any number/letter street. i.e. First Street NW, is different from First Street, SW, which is different from First Street, SE... Ajoining Quadrant streets
May link up and turn into each other but there are no guarentees about that.
Every so often to make life interesting they throw in a large traffic circle, end a street for a block or two before starting it again, or make the street one way for a few blocks. Then there are the streets that are one way one direction during morning rush hour, the other way during evening rush hour, and all other times have two way traffic.
Mom says that you aren't driving with me unless you've made at least one U-Turn.
Back to our story
Finally I ended up at Rock Creek Parkway, which is the way I should have gone in the first place! I got to Half Street, turned the wrong direction on the street and low and behold...was at the wrong D.C. government building. A nice guy took pity on me and led me to the right place. There I found that even though it was only 7 am the line was 3/4 of the way around the block. I got in line and finally made it to the inspection station about 9:45. Then I got to get out and wait for them to actually move my truck through the line. It occurred to me that smart people buy new vehicles every two years so they don't have to go through this. Once done, I was able to get my registration at the inspection building at which time I found out that the lady who had said "oh you don't have to pay for inspection if you are a D.C. resident" LIED!!! $65 registration fee and $25 inspection fee later, I'm finally headed out. I could not resist going back and laughing at all the people still in line...which is when I found the line only half way around the block. I give up, I'm moving to Virginia before I have to do this again.
The rest of the day I was a useless slug, napping, playing with Alan's cats, and watching t.v.
Did you know you could burn Hard Candy Molds?
Sunday Morning...make that afternoon, (well A Knight's Tale was on) I went to my friend's house to make royal frosting, color flow, hard candy, and marzipan. I also needed to bottle Sakanjabin for the kingdom baskets. Mental note: Contact Countess about getting the bottles to her.
Step one: Stop by Grocery store to purchase lunch fixings and 9 volt battery for new food scale (thanks Tirzah for telling me where to get a good scale).
Step two: Make Royal frosting, start to make Color flow icing and realize that I need but can't find plastic wrap. Try to save melted hard candy and realize need to give up and make more.
Step three: Run to grocery store, buy plastic wrap, a clip for my hair, some extra cooling racks food color, 5 pounds of sugar, and a steak for dinner (mismarked and $1.50).
Step four: Make Color flow icing, realize put more than double the amount of water you were supposed to in the recipe. Curse. Redo Color flow icing. Start hard candy, start marzipan making
Step five: Realize can't find any PAM cooking spray. Decide to try using veggie oil instead. Pour first set of hard candy. Finish first batch of marzipan and put in fridge.
Step six: Decide to bottle Sakanjabin, while doing that start next batch of candy.
Step seven: Re oil candy molds to make up for the parts that didn't come out cleanly during the last batch
Step eight: Realize that the green hard candy is not going to come out of molds no matter what I do
Step nine: Try melting candy in microwave. Smell something burning, realize burnt sugar and notice that mold is now warped and melted.
Step ten: Try boiling rest of molds in water to get out candy.
Step eleven: Decide to give up for night after succesfully getting candy out of molds, clean up, dump remains of boiling water over my hand, clean up some more and leave
Step twelve: Go to Mom & Dad's make it in time for 5 minutes in pool, eat dinner and get ready for Monday night class
Step thirteen: Drive back to friend's house to pick up frostings I left there and need for class, on the way there get phone call from best friend saying she got a cell phone (YAY).
Step fourteen: Go back to Alan's house and collapse after feeding the brat children (cats), and putting out trash.
