I spent the weekend in Maryland for my sister’s birthday. My father, my brother-in-law, and I went to the International Spy Museum while my sister and mother went shopping — something of a birthday tradition. Not the Spy Museum, but the splitting up to do something else while the womenfolk shop.
The Spy Museum was interesting, if very crowded. They have a new big exhibit on James Bond villains, which was interesting having only just recently watched all of the Bond movies in quick succession. I’m not sure the museum’s worth a trip from anywhere, especially since it’s one of the few museums in D.C. that you actually have to pay to get into. But it’s interesting.
After that, we had a nice dinner at a tapas restaurant in Gaithersburg.
My parents are on a road trip after this down south, to see family and to see the sights, so I came by my lonesome on the train. They were actually going to stay on another night in Maryland, but I think my father was shocked by the idea of how bad D.C.-bound traffic was going to be on Monday morning — if you don’t leave by six, my brother-in-law said, you probably don’t want to leave until after 8. From my trip down there this fall to UMD, I can say that’s pretty accurate. Traffic down there is terrible.
So my sister and brother-in-law drove me to the train station in Baltimore, and my parents checked out of the hotel and added another stop in a different city to their route. (I spoke with them earlier, and they’d been to a really nice Civil War museum, so apparently the added trip was a smart move.) I hate to wait an hour for my train, but at least it wasn’t delayed like a lot of the trains before it. I made really good time, getting into New York Penn Station around 3:45 and catching a 3:51 train to my home station.
I was home in plenty of time to completely ignore the Super Bowl.
I do mean ignore it, and I do mean completely. I kept seeing updates about in on my Twitter feed, which made me wish I’d at least seen Beyonce’s half-time show, but instead I spent the evening watching and enjoying The Music Man. I don’t have work tomorrow — I’m picking up the dog from the kennel — so I’m thinking about watching another movie or something.
And that was my weekend, more or less.
