Do More 24 DC - Thursday, June 6

The United Way of the National Capital Area reached out to me to help spread the word about their Do More 24 fundraising event. It's a 24-hour give-athon starting at 12 a.m. on Thursday, June 6, and organizations like Wegmans are chipping in, donating 100,000 pounds of food to area foodbanks. And if you donate at least $24, Uber is matching that by giving out $24 vouchers to the first 1,000 existing customers and any new customer. There are a ton of events on Thursday too, see the whole list here. The dress-up-your-pet contest appeals to me, even though I don't have a pet as of yet. One of my best friend's first jobs was with the United Way, so I know they are doing great work in communities, and I wanted to give this a shout out.

Cherry Blossom Cocktails in D.C.

We're supposedly heading into peak cherry blossom blossoming. Or has it already happened? Seems like an inexact science.  Let's leave that to the tourists to decide. Earlier in the month,  I wrote a post for R29 with a few delicious cherry blossom-themed cocktails around Washington. I like the idea that the cherry blossoms, as gorgeous as they may be, are pretty much the same every year, but you can find so much variety and creativity with all of the different cherry-themed drinks and dishes for the festival.

Here's the Angelina, made with Don Ciccio & Figli fennel liquor, cherry shrub and cognac ​from Room 11 in Columbia Heights. I adore Room 11 — cozy space, interesting cocktails, good people! We celebrated Christine's birthday there last week and had a great time. We asked the bartender if he could make a special birthday cocktail for Christine. Turns out the last time someone asked this, he ended up in the City Paper's Cocktail Guess column. Sort of funny. Maybe it's not a common request? 

Weekend Notes: Pork Buns, Supper Clubs, and Beuchert's Saloon

The Mount Pleasant Farmer's Market opened for business this Saturday, and even though it's held on a piece of pavement about the size of the postage stamp, it really makes the neighborhood a special place.

Photo via Mount Pleasant Farmers' Market Facebook

Flash backward to the last day the market closed in fall 2012. Joe and I stood in line for the pork bun vendor. The pork buns are from the People's Bao and they are a pretty great market lunch. Joe is majorly obsessed with them, which makes what happened even sadder. The line was about 10 hipsters/yuppies deep, and we watched with bated breath as the pork supply dwindled. Sure enough, it was our turn and the guy said, "Whoops, ran out of meat." 

Now here it is, six months later, and we're back in line to try our luck again. Of course, the same ​thing happened and the pork runs out exactly when we're at the front of the line. It was a nice bookmark to close and open the pork bun season.

​Joe was silently fuming as we walked away. But there was nothing I could say to make up for the injustice of it all.

​We kept walking down the block and then an older lady in a wheelchair stopped us. "I hope you two are still holding hands 10 years from now," she said. "I hope so," Joe told her. I hope so too.

It was such a nice day that we walked to the zoo. A few of the animals were out, namely a pair of squabbling sea lions that I could've literally watched ​all day. They fought over control over the same rock, and it was quite exciting.

That night for dinner I went with my in-the-know friend Carolyn to her friend's Columbia Heights supper club for his catering business. I ate many courses of yummy Vietnamese food and chatted with amiable strangers. Unfortunately, I also drank wine and talked about 2 Chainz.  A lot.​ Sorry, amiable strangers.

The next day, we went to a fun dinner at the new Beuchert's Saloon in Capitol Hill with my friend Betsy and her husband. I told Joe where we were going over the phone. "A balloon?" he said. "No, a saloon!" It was appropriately old-timey, with a guy wearing a bow tie and two buffalo heads stuck on the wall. The food isn't inexpensive, but we definitely enjoyed it. I recommend the oxtail tagliatelle, any of the root vegetables, and the fries — you know you want to order them. Next time, I'm getting the burger with the fried egg to accompany. 

Weekend Notes: Le Grenier and a Practice Pup

Shameless self-promotion first: ​I compiled a long list of restaurants with special Easter menus, so check it out on Eater if you need Easter plans! There are so many delicious-sounding brunch items. I've been tasked with finding a restaurant for my family on Easter Sunday, but the caveat is that it needs to have dog-friendly patio seating. This twist surprises no one who knows my parents. I actually might have an answer: perhaps Art and Soul's puppy patio could fit the bill? I'm worried it will be too cold to eat outside though. This has been such a cold spring.

Speaking of Easter, have you seen this marketing tactic on H Street? It's for a leasing office, I think, and they've set out baby chicks in the window as a "live peep show." The chicks looked so anemic and helpless, it mainly made me sad. And I wondered what would happen ​to them after Easter is over. I don't think this is PETA-approved.

On Saturday, I went to our friend's charity chili cook-off, and in between all the crockpots of chili, there was a tiny, fuzzy puppy napping in the corner. I took a picture for posterity. Here is Alex, with a plastic spoon in his blazer pocket at the ready for chili sampling. It looked quite jaunty. Not pictured: a Miller Light in the other pocket.

Then we high-tailed it over to Le Grenier, the new French bistro on H Street. The Le Tigre menu is charming, oui? It's sort of obvious to use the adjective "charming" to describe this place, but it's definitely fitting. We sat at the bar and snacked on a little bowl of frites and an assortment of five cheeses, with chutney and a yummy pate. But the best part is the bartender kept serving us piping hot baguettes straight from the oven. Keep it coming, I say! 

​Joe is dog-sitting for a whole week, so we said it's a good way for him to experience a taste of the responsibility of dog ownership. This is his practice dog. She is very sweet! Meanwhile, I had lunch with my dad on Saturday. We had to eat outside, of course, because Dad brought the dog along. While we were eating, Rain the dog took her nose and knocked my dad's plate out of his hands, then proceeded to eat all the food that landed on the ground. It was diabolically clever, and I have to give Rain props for that one.

My Visit to Drybar Georgetown

Have you all tried Drybar yet? I've been reading about the only blowouts salon chain for so long, and ever since an outpost opened in Washington, I've been curious to experience the cult of blowouts. This is the longest my hair has EVER been, so now seemed like an ideal time to try it out before I chop it in the spring.

So this past Friday, I hoofed it to Glover Park/Burleith for an early morning appointment. Note: it may say Georgetown on the website, but that's a bit of a stretch. If you don't have a car, the location is inconvenient, but buses do run up Wisconsin every 10 to 15 minutes. Here's a rundown of my Drybar experience:

​The design is beautifully done. It looks appropriately posh, and makes that $40 a pop seem like a bargain. (Joe, you might want to stop reading here.) The place is huge too, there's a whole back room with styling stations near the shampoo room. I didn't wait at all for my appointment. I met my stylist, got my hair washed, and chose the Mai Tai from Drybar's "menu" of hairstyles, and drank some lemon-flavored water. No champagne as it was 8 a.m., but maybe I should've gone for it.

​​As seems appropriate in the girliest place ever, flat screen televisions played The Devil Wears Prada without the sound on. I caught the tail end of this, and then the first 5 minutes of Mean Girls. Again, of course they played those movies. 

Actually, I barely watched any of it because I took my glasses off and the screen turned into vaguely-Anne-Hathaway-shaped blurs. This is where my guide stops being a service to readers, because I can't see at all without my glasses and I have no idea how the stylist created my hairstyle.​

​But this is how it turned out:

​Ignore the overgrown bangs, please. I really liked the job she did, and enjoyed the overall experience as a girly treat, but I don't know if wavy done hair feels like me. I know that's more about my own issues and way beyond the purvey of Drybar, ha. My friend Alex said, couldn't you have done this yourself? Maybe if I really tried with the curling iron.

​No, looking at this picture I realize that there is no way I could do this myself. The back looked really pretty. It stayed this way pretty much all day, looking a little less "done" by the evening, then turned into very loose waves the next day and was pretty much gone the third day. But your milage may vary.

On the way to the salon, I read the Yelp reviews and some people were really unhappy. Women are just so picky about their hair.  And everyone's hair is different, so it seems even more difficult to fit everyone into a "Cosmo-Tai" or "Mai-Tai" or whatever. That's a lot of hurdles for drop-in blow-out places like Drybar to jump through. I feel like I have a level of trust with my own hairstylist that is difficult to replicate with a one-off appointment. I also wonder if the stylist positions here are a difficult job to fill in general, since your tips have a cap on them without cut or color? Do most people who love doing hair want to cut hair as well?

But I can see why these styles of salons are hitting it big. If you have a special occasion or maybe you want to get your hair did and feel pretty, this does the trick. I'll probably just stick to my normal hair appointments and try to get better at doing my own hair, but it's nice to know that it's in the neighborhood. Curious about trying Drybar DC for the first time? Want to tell me about your experience? Comment below!

Modern Apartment Door Numbers

A new management company took over an apartment down the street from me, and watching the renovations, I thought of something...

If an apartment building switches over to new numbers in a Helvetica font or similar, I bet you that they raise the rent. That's an amenity. Yuppie urban class-A apartment dwellers can't get enough of sans serif.