auld lang syne.

For New Year's, my friend Stephanie and I decided to take an impromptu road trip to Washington D.C. to visit Rachel and ring in the new year the right way. Odds are, if we hadn't taken this trip, we would have ended up sitting at home together with cheap drinks and champagne or in some lousy bar surrounded by drunk fools-in-love kissing at midnight. And that would not have been good for our psyches. At all.

So instead, we hopped in my car late Wednesday night and made the seven-hour drive down the East coast. We got there just in time to accidentally park illegally at 1am and get slammed with $125 in parking tickets, after my poor car was towed down the block (it was one of those movie moments where we're walking to the car that's no longer there, and slowly realize it's not anywhere on the street, and thinking, "Dude, where's my car?"). Needless to say, 2009 did not leave us quietly.
But we perked ourselves up anyway and, after Rachel skipped work for us (yay!) we visited the National Gallery of Art and, of course, Costco (the benefits of having a car in the city--opportunities for bulk-purchase spending).

Even though I'm a freak of nature and don't really enjoy museums all that much (okay--I HATE THEM and they bore me significantly), this one was actually really fun, and we had a good time.

Aren't they just too cute?

Oh yeah, we ate a lot, too. More clementines than I could count, Thai food, ginormous breakfasts, sugar cookies (made with a Connecticut-shaped cookie cutter, no less), and did I mention homemade peppermint bark Rachel had for us? Yes, please!

Later that night, we pretended we were in college again, taking gobs of amounts of time to get ready for our New Year's Eve outing, blasting music and drinking ridiculous amounts of wine. THAT is what I miss.

Of course, my DSLR had to make an appearance at the party, and we kind of got carried away (is it possible to get carried away with new cameras? I think it's just common sense. That baby was just asking to be used).

If we started a band together, this would be our album cover.

This photo brought to you by: Lack Of Boys. But really, who needs them anyways? Midnight treated us just fine, thank you.

Needless to say, New Year's Day was spent lounging in bed (studio apartments are perfect for such) and watching The Hangover. Twice.
And then the next night was round two, a much more mellow night. Hey, we had to milk all the time we had, right? Relaxing on couches in a hookah bar all night was fine with me.

And then, sadly, Saturday morning was time to drive home. Although, if I had to be stuck on a long car ride on a Saturday afternoon, I'm glad it was with Steph. We filled it with singing at the top of our lungs (we can now, proudly, sing almost every word to Empire State of Mind), laughing hysterically, irrationally overanalyzing every aspect of our lifes, and reminiscing about South Africa (so um, what we do everytime we see each other, basically). Despite the fact that it took us two hours longer than it needed to and traffic kicked our butts, we still had fun.

Leaving Rachel, though? Not so fun. We're already scheming of when we can go back. Sigh.