Spring Break and DC recap

Today I'm posting from my couch... at home... at 12:30 in the afternoon. And I'm not even sick! How is this possible??, you may be asking yourself. No, I'm not off on account of St. Patrick's Day (though I do wish you a day full of green beer, if that's your thing), and I haven't even called in sick (or pretending to be sick - so what, I know you do it, too).

Nope. I'm off for spring break. I'm almost 27 and I'm off for spring break. How great. Obviously it would be more great if they would jack up my salary in lieu of spring break, but beggars can't be choosers and so here I am, on my couch in the middle of the afternoon.

Plans for the rest of the afternoon include shopping for a bridal shower gift, trying to score a non-crap sewing machine for less than $50, and burning off the 3 pounds I put on this weekend. Oh, I didn't tell you? My sister and her boyfriend are also on spring break this week, so they came down for a visit! We all (ok, just me and Ryan) ate like animals and had a fabulous time - thus the +3lbs. But this post isn't really about what I ate (birthday cupcakes for Steph, BBQ, tacos, a hot dog at the Smithsonian, etc), it's actually about my attempt at photography.

This weekend I also got to fiddle around with my camera and play with the settings. I'm dying for a SLR, but am afraid I won't be able to use it properly, so I've been trying to take as many pictures as possible without using the auto feature on my point-and-shoot - and I think I got some good ones in DC yesterday! Ryan had been saying for a while that he really wanted to go to the holocaust museum, but I'm basically an emotional trainwreck and I knew I couldn't handle it (I cried for 3 days after seeing the movie Phenomenon. I am not normal.), so when Steph and Adam said they were coming to visit and wanted to go to DC, I figured I could pawn the museum trip off on them. So yesterday morning, we go up bright and early to jump on the metro. It was kind of bizarro kissing Ryan goodbye and watching him walk away with Steph and Adam and suddenly being very alone in the middle of The National Mall, but it was better than sobbing my way through the museum.

I wandered around for 3 hours with my camera taking pictures of everything. For a while, I felt like an imposter, pretending to know what I was doing. I felt like a jerk, but figured everyone has to learn somehow, right?

I think I ended up with some good shots! Here's one from right outside the metro station:

It was super overcast and kind of chilly. I love the naked trees and how the Washington Monument peaks out a little bit. After that, I walked down to the Mall and got a pretty good one of the Capitol buidling: This next one is the Smithsonian Castle entrance:

The sky had cleared a little. Thankfully, it didn't rain all morning! Here's another shot of the castle and gardens. The magnolia trees were in full bloom and were beautiful.

I had to climb on a bench (and got gawked at by the few people in the garden) to get this next picture, but I think it was totally worth it:

I totally had a blast wandering around the Mall taking pictures... I won't bore you a ton more, but here's one for the road:

My sister and her boyfriend. How cute are these two??? I also love that you can just barely see the Washington monument. All of these pictures were taken with my Sony Cyber-Shot and tweaked with Picnik.... I'm probably not ready to upgrade to the Canon Rebel just yet, so be prepared for tons of practice shots!