Brandi has been several times, but I finally made my first visit to Austin.
Our second time in DC included a trip to the top of the Washington Monument.
And of course…Luna, our best girl.
I made a post last January 1 that noted a handful of goals for the year. Mission accomplished on these:
Steps: 2,000,000
Short stories read: 52
Books read: 40
As for the rest…well, I fell short on the rest. What can I say? The world has been on fire, and reaching any goals is a pretty significant accomplishment. Here’s to a better year all around in 2026.
In the first part of October, Brandi and I took a long weekend trip to Washington, DC, with our friends Spencer and Chris. I feel like a lot of people end up there at some point early in their lives, but somehow neither Brandi nor I had ever been there. Chris, on the other hand, grew up in the area and still has family there, so it was nice having a built-in tour guide.
Our first outing was to the Library of Congress.
I’m a library nerd, so the one thing I knew I definitely wanted to try to do while we were in DC was visit the Library of Congress. And it turns out that they host a happy hour every Thursday evening! It also turns out that this happy hour is quite popular—the line for drinks was quite long. (Full disclosure: I used my phone’s “magic eraser” function to remove bystanders from a couple of the photos above.) A lot of people, in fact, were getting drinks and then immediately getting back in line for their next one. We just went through once, and then took the opportunity to wander around and see the place, which is stunning. Being in the main reading room was something I’ll never forget.
The next day, Friday, was a heavy walking day. We started at our hotel (Motto, in Chinatown), grabbed some Starbucks along the way, and hit the National Mall (and then some): the Washington Monument, the World War II Memorial, the Reflecting Pool, the Lincoln Memorial, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, the Korean War Memorial, and the MLK Memorial. We also popped into the National Museum of American History to see the original Star-Spangled Banner and checked out a couple of exhibits at the National Museum of Natural History.
That evening we went to the U Street Corridor/Logan Circle for dinner. We started at Izakaya, a restaurant specializing in Japanese small plates that Spencer and Chris have visited several times, and it was amazing. From there we procured cocktails from Left Door (amazing), the Crown & Crow (meh), Aslin Beer Company (very cool vibe; befriended a dog), and the Alchemist (my personal favorite) before calling it a night.
Saturday was not a particularly touristy day; we spent most of it with Chris’s parents, and his sister and her boyfriend. But this included dinner at Mission, and so we got to see Nationals Park (sadly, the regular baseball season had just ended, so we couldn’t go inside) and visit a few places in the Navy Yard area. At the Dacha Beer Garden, as you’ll see below, our waiter asked if I wanted my beer “tall or short” without specifying what that meant, so I ordered “tall” and got an enormous glass boot full of beer.
We ended Saturday with a nightcap at our hotel’s rooftop bar, which is where I captured the image above.
Sunday was our last day, but we did sneak in a bit more sightseeing. First up was the White House! Just the outside, unfortunately—Chris contacted our representative to request a tour, but that was at a time when it seemed like the government was going to shut down, and he never got a response. But seeing it from outside was still very cool, and honestly, for our first trip to DC, it was enough. Our last stop was the National Portrait Gallery for the presidential portraits. Then we had a quick lunch at Cava before making the long drive back to Ohio.
Being in DC for the first time was kind of surreal, especially at first. Even though I had never seen these places before in person, they were all so familiar…it felt like stepping into a TV show. It was amazing to be surrounded by so much history and culture, and I know this is a place I will want to revisit again and again. I already have a short list of things I’d like to do (a White House tour; seeing Congress in session; a ballgame at Nats Park; so many museums), and I have a feeling that it would take several visits before that list would start to shrink instead of grow.
And it occurred to me after we got home that we didn’t take any pictures of the Metro. Brandi and I were totally enamored; it made getting around so easy. From the time we got into town on Thursday afternoon through when we left on Sunday, we walked and/or rode the Metro everywhere we went. Loved it. Time to step up your public transportation game, Columbus.
A standard complement of cat photos, featuring my favorite and most constant subject.
No major trips this month, but Brandi did have a nice night out at Hyde Park in Columbus, followed by jazz at Ginger Rabbit. I also managed to get home to Troy for a big football game and a quick visit with family.
A little light on photos this month. Highlights include downtown Columbus, where we met up with some friends for a baseball game and some cocktails. A trip to Toledo for work gave me an opportunity for a short visit to Bowling Green. We spent a couple of days in Brandi’s hometown of Clyde, and I made a quick trip to my own hometown of Troy for a football game.
My 46th birthday month (cake pictured above) was a pretty good one! One of the highlights was a tour of Columbus’s rooftop bars—I didn’t take enough photos, but the views were great and so were the cocktails, for the most part. I also had an out-of-town work trip where I randomly ran into two of Brandi’s oldest and dearest friends.
July 20 – 22 I was in Cincinnati. Brandi was there for a conference with her coworkers, so I took Thursday off and went to an afternoon baseball game. I took entirely too much sun and heat, but hey, I was at the ballpark instead of working, and the Reds beat the Giants 5-1.
Brandi’s conference finished up the next day, so we stuck around for the Friday night fireworks game., which saw the Reds beat the Diamondbacks 9-6.
On June 10, Brandi and I went to a Columbus Clippers (Triple A affiliate of the Cleveland Guardians) game–we love the Clip Show, but, as fans of the Cincinnati Reds, we went primarily to see future Hall of Famer Joey Votto as he worked his way back to the big leagues after an injury (as well as to see some of the wealth of upcoming Reds prospects like Christian Encarnacion-Strand).
We finished the month with our fourth trip to Put in Bay on Lake Erie. We went for the first time in 2020 as kind of an easy getaway as pandemic restrictions were easing (prematurely, as it turned out, but hey), and we’ve turned in into an annual trip for an easy way to celebrate our wedding anniversary (June 3 – 17 years this year) and both of our birthdays (hers June 22; mine July 4).
One of the highlights from Put in Bay was our trip to the top of Perry’s Victory and International Peace Memorial commemorating the Battle of Lake Erie from the War of 1812. Despite poor air quality and a heavy haze (which you can see in the photos) from the Canadian wildfires, its 352-foot height provided quite a view of the island. I’m already looking forward to going up again on our next trip, when (hopefully) clearer air will mean an even more majestic view.
This month, Brandi and I took a more-or-less spur-of-the-moment trip to Chicago to see my favorite band, the National, on the third night of their tour to promote their new album, First Two Pages of Frankenstein. It was a whirlwind weekend. We only had a few hours in the city before the concert, but the city was glorious, and the show itself (opened by Soccer Mommy, a band I was unfamiliar with but am now happily exploring) was euphoric.
A handful of cat photos, as per usual…but the highlight of the month was a trip to New Orleans! It’s a place we had never been before and always wanted to check out. It’s known for it’s food, music, and haunted history, and we found all of the above to be outstanding. Definitely one of my favorite vacations.
The Commaphile 