Another winning week

I had originally started a post about how I was feeling a little apocalyptic and preparing myself to trek west, but then last week I had one of the best weeks I've had in a long time, and I figured I would lighten the mood by sharing a few highlights.

Sunday: Joyce Street hosted a lasagnaoff. Over the past few months we have been holding a series of offs. The first off in the series was a granolaoff between Ryan Bessey and I. Some of you who have known me for a long time know that my mom makes great granola. In fact she sometimes ships it to me in D.C. However, I lost to Ryan Bessey, he won the trophy, the glory and the bragging rights with a recipe he got out of a missionary cook book. My pride was hurt and I set the next off, a pina coladaoff out, then I decided to reenter this time in the lasagnaoff. Once again, I was overconfident, and I took third place out of four. Nonetheless the evening was filled with laughs, good food, celebrity judges, foul play, corry's cronies, apple crisp and more which more than made up for the loss.

Monday: Columbus Day I was supposed to have work off, but I opted to work from home to take a day off later in the week. This was my first experience working at home. I was surprisingly productive, it was a beautiful fall day and in between spurts of work throughout the day I managed to also squeeze in a bike ride, a run and two games of tennis.

Tuesday - Thursday: My little brother Brian and his friends Danny, Jason and Bradley were in town to see D.C. and this was such a treat. I love this city and love showing people the places that I love. We visited the national cathedral, the temple, amsterdam falafal, the white house, the monuments at night, the capitol, library of congress and eastern market. We cooked Moroccan food for my roommates, rode bikes to old town, stayed up late telling ghost stories and had impromptu dance parties. Although at times I felt totally uncool as I realized how out of college scene I was when they discussed the latest indie bands and took a break from touring to shop at Urban Outfitters and my roommate commented on how they use more hair product than any of us do.

See what I mean. These are the kind of boys that take pictures like this. I just can't hang with that. I can't be that cool I am "aunt jenny" for sure.What Corry siblings do when they're together, built massive forts from pillows and blankets and make ethnic food. Chicken Tajines with prunes, please.
J.C. and the boys enjoying Middle Eastern "Tacos" that's the best way you can describe a falafal.

Friday - Saturday: Dutch-Bike-Dutch
This is one of my favorite traditions on the east coast. I've already written posts on this event, so I won't say much, except that once again it was awesome. And this year we even had a sponsor, my old roommate (sniff sniff) Stephanie is a peanut butter heiress. And this comes with a lot of a perks, not the least of which is an unlimited supply of delicious all natural peanut butter.
This year was bigger and better than ever. The weather was perfect and it was just me and seventy of my closest friends traipsing through amish country and then having to endure jokes from a bunch of twenty something virgins when we decided to go visit intercourse, pennsylvania.
Part of the pack. This gives you an idea, but at times we were literally riding in a group of about 30, even though we were divided between four different rides.
Sarah, Amber, Will, Ben and I enjoying the sun and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches the jeanette and company provided.
Me with Lisa and Tyler. DBD vets from Spring '08 reunited.

So an OFF, four fun visitors and a road trip to bike in Pennsylvania truly makes for a spectacular week.