Sunday

Happy New Year! Today was a great day; the kind of day I imagined when I was looking forward to living in DC. We started by catching the erratic free shuttle to the metro, and going to Chinatown to celebrate the Year of the Pig. We arrived after the parade, just when the mayor was beginning to speech. The street was blocked-off, and sidewalk vendors were selling crepe dragons on lit batons. We wandered around some before taking the metro on to Dupont Circle, where we ascended into driving snow. I think of the Circle as our District neighborhood since it's near Sunshine's previous apartment. We spent a lot of time here two years ago. Despite dense snowfall, Dupont Circle was wheeling with seagulls. We walked in the snow for a while, reacquainting ourselves with what was where, and then ate good sushi fusion at Raku.* I enjoyed peppery sake in a greenhouse panorama of whirling flurries. Then we window shopped in the snow until we got tired of being outside and cold and caught the red line to Silver Springs, Maryland, where the American Film Institute* runs the Silver Theater.* Here we bought tickets to Remember the Night* (femme fatale Barbara Stanwyck prowls the edges of Preston Sturges's romantic comedy like a bemused animal, a lighthearted redemption tale making good use of her dangereuse iconography) and 2001, a Space Odyssey* (Stanly Kubrick's visionary 1968 avant-garde sci-fi is a show-don't-tell masterpiece of verisimilitude and realistic futurism, even if the gravitas drags and the profundity's a little shallow). Four hours later we raced to the metro, just catching the first of two last-minute closing-time trains: we managed to barely make it home without resorting to an expensive cab. The ten-minute walk from the stop was even mostly scraped tonight. [Cavin]