cia, nsa, wtf, stfu!

On Saturday, we woke up earlyish and headed out with Erik and Juliet to Eastern Market. I interrupt this narrative right now to tell you:
Eastern Market rocked the face right OFF my face.
We got delicious coffees at Port City Java and then wandered through the stalls, running our hands over fruit and peaking into the display cases inside. We had a delicious breakfast at Bread and Chocolate after deeming Montmartre a little lush for our wallets, and then Erik and Juliet went off on their errands while Stuart and I wandered around the insanely awesome Capitol Hill Books, the flea market, and the fruit stalls.
We bought a few delicious Asian pears and two cups of steaming hot cider for the Metro journey and then took the Metro to Gallery Place/Chinatown only to find that at 3:20, we could only go into the Spy Museum at 5PM. So we bought our tickets ($15 each!) and wandered around the area until 5, whereupon we were unceremoniously directed to a 30 minute line to take the elevator upstairs. We were, at this point, seriously rueing our decision, but all told I really enjoyed the museum – I just didn’t like the feeling of being fleeced and herded.
I’m taking a brief pause to wonder if this has to do with the difference between a private museum and the more publicly-minded ones, like the Smiths and the Met. We couldn’t take pictures? What, so we could buy exhibition books in the bookstore? I understand why you can’t take flash pictures in some museums (damages the artwork) and why you can’t photograph priceless artifacts, but most of this stuff was either replicas or cleverly-designed information stations. Why, exactly, couldn’t I photograph it?
Also, there were an enormous amount of very interesting interactive aspects to the museum, mostly touch-screens that you could learn how to “train” to spy and stuff, and half of them in any given room were frozen. WTF?
But it was interesting, and informative, and cool. Then we went to Columbia Heights, to Juliet’s place, where she cooked us (and our exhausted tired bodies) some awesome dinner – and then she and Erik were both very nice about the fact that Stuart and I pansily bailed on going out to a bar, preferring to drag ourselves back to Erik’s place in Capitol Hill and pass out at, like, 10PM. We still, at this point, had not stooped to taking a cab, prefering to spend our money on pears and museums and wine, so we took the metro to the D6 at Union Station (which I really liked, by the way) and tiredly rode home.
So that was Saturday. Tomorrow, there will be some talk of monuments and a lot of opinions about public transit in our great nation’s capitol, so DC-ites, consider yourselves warned. Also consider yourselves warned about the whole set of boring generic tourist photos, and be thankful that there are only 40, people.
Tomorrow, also, is a certain someone’s birthday. Wee cake and gifts and things!