radical tuesdays

yesterday was a weird day. it started with mary beth (aka 'mary boose') and i planning to ride our bikes to work. only to come to the realization that it was 'iowa cold' here in washington, d.c. and layers of ice and snow covered the sidewalks and much of the streets. so mb says, 'hey, alyssa, guess what?! i'm going to treat us to a cab.' perfect, right? well, we thought so. but so did everyone else in washington, d.c., so after 10 minutes of hailing cabs on the corner, we decide to start walking to work (a good 2 miles from mb's apartment). no cabbies thought we were hot enough to dump their 'crecians' out and pick us up....so we ended up walking 2 miles, in the iowa cold, to work. luckily, on our way, we passed a 30-something man with a thinsulate fistful of snow, that he happened to be eating, happily.

now, we're at work.

it's slow in the store and not many washingtonians are willing to brave the cold (mostly because it's not native to this area, so anything colder than 30-degrees is equated with hell). our day consists of helping a few people try on some luon (stretchy pants) and an older woman who claimed that a pair of our pants (and given the nature of tight, stretchy pants) were too 'anatomically correct.' oh boy. we colored for our march window, played with chalk markers and added very significant birthdays to our calendar at the store, all in a hard day's work. then mb came up with a brilliant idea: pentagon city mall, off of the blue line. forever XXI awaited us.

so we walk over the bridge, to the metro and we imagine that we're in l.a., walking over the ocean*, me, with an afro, mb, with a hippie headband on, covered in bangles, maxi dresses and coral pedicures. but we snapped back to reality really quickly when the wind was so harsh we couldn't feel our faces. we got on a train full of unhappy commuters, that included a priest and a woman wearing 2 pair of glasses to read a book on the metro. mb decided we were probably the happiest people on the train, until i looked at the priest, who had his eyes closed accompanied with a silly grin on his face.

we decided to eat at the mall, because that's what you do - every mall has a fancy applebee's-like restaurant, so, of course, you go. in our case, it was harry's taproom, otherwise known as harry's idiot room because they claimed that malbec was fruity and berry-like. we ordered some very classy leese-fitch cab and baked brie. we were served by a small, sad young guy, who happened to think that we were miserable people, but it could have been because the 'cute' cook was staring and smiling at us and not him. the wine was decent, but the brie...resembled old garbage. literally.

mb rampaged forever XXI...then headed for another just as trashy, more expensive store next door. a guy, who happened to be there with his girlfriend, stared at us the whole time...then asked mb if we were models because we looked like some that were in his agency. weird, yes. at this point, i think it was safe to say our time at the mall was up. and it was, so we headed back to the city.

but the evening wasn't complete without a little rap about jesus, by the up-and-coming artist, b.m. eural. this artist's inspiration comes from her surroundings - really, everywhere, but most specifically from these:

the jesus pant, by lululemon athletica.
yep, i said it...the JESUS pant. it inspires rhymes like lululemon and heaven, lycra and psych-ya. sheer brilliance, i tell you.

*i don't even know if you can walk on a bridge over the ocean in l.a., but we were imagining, okay?