It’s easy to forget what your home town has to offer.  That’s particularly true in DC.  The traffic in this area can be so horrid that many of us hole up away from the city as much as we can.   I know it’s tough for me to work up the gumption and go back to the city after spending all day surrounded by the federales and lobbyists on K Street.  Thankfully, Scott and I remember to head in to town when folks come to visit.

This time around, Meg got us out of the suburbs.  Well, in to a different suburb, and then into the city proper.  The Uncle Earl show on Friday night was great.  At times, they are a bit too twee for me on CD–their second album, She Waits for Night, was so clean and pretty.  I’m not always a fan of pretty–I scuff things very quickly, and I offer bourbon to kittens–punk rock has stained me.  The Uncle Earl girls grit up well, though, and their tendency to group up around one mic and just play like mad won me over.  (No pictures at the Birchmere, so just believe me when I say that the musicians were lovely and charming and their stage presence is great and Kristen can still dance like a fiddle puppet and and and)  I fell down and ordered a bunch of music–just couldn’t help myself.  And and and—talk of Maryland Sheep and Wool and playing tunes and clogging is really heating up.  Woot. 

Sunday, we did what all visitors to DC must do: we ate excellent Ethiopian food.  DC has one of the largest Ethiopian communities outside of Ethiopia, so lots of Washingtonians have serious, incurable  Wat addictions.  When Meg mentioned that they were planning to go out for Ethiopian while she was in town, I’m pretty sure I bounced a bit.  I love the stuff, and the lone Ethiopian place in my neighborhood hasn’t met DC’s standards yet.  If you’ve never had Ethiopian food, um, why haven’t you had Ethiopian food?   Remedy that, please.  Right. Ethiopian food consists primarily of very flavorful stews eaten from a communal plate using pieces of a spongy, sourdough flatbread called Injera.  It’s great fun, and it’s a good place to bring people with a wide range of tastes: Injera is made from Tef, a grain few people are allergic to, and most Ethiopian restaurants serve huge amounts of very good vegetarian dishes (says an avowed carnivore who hates beans with the burning white intensity of a thousand suns).

Anyway, we had a great dinner, and Meg and I managed to talk very little about knitting while we were sharing a meal with three non-knitters.  We deserve a medal for that. 

And I’m temporarily knitting in secret . . . I’ll find something to photograph. 

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