The non-smoggy rest of the weekend

I was so late getting to bed Friday night, Saturday I didn’t wake up until after 1. I made some bacon and scrambled eggs, then surfed for a while. We left around 5:30 for Maryland. First stop was Gaithersburg to take Illa’s crate back to Lezlie, the lady that runs CHAAMP. We’re not putting him in it anymore, and it could help out another foster family. Then we drove through the backroads to Columbia. It was approaching 8, so we decided to do dinner later, getting a snack (gumbo for Jill, a pretzel for me) at the mall to hold us over.

Jon Stewart was playing Merriweather Post Pavilion. Mike Birbiglia was doing his opening set as we came in, and he was pretty funny (we saw him open for Lewis Black in 2003). But we were waiting for Jon, and he did not disappoint. The fun thing about comedy vs. concerts is it was only a minute or two after Mike went off that Jon came on. The crowd went nuts, giving him a standing o (and from what I could see, it was close to a sellout). He started off with the red meat, going straight into politics. More rambling than the TV show, but still bitingly funny. He also went into diatribes on racism and eating sushi at Merriweather as well as finshing with the mystery of pets and garbage (side splitting stuff if you’re a pet owner).

Jill was surprised he did non-political stuff, but I wasn’t. I first heard of him when I saw him sometime in the early ’90s at the Warner Theatre (Chris, do you remember the year?). Headliner was Dennis Miller (formerly the thinking man’s comedian until he went further right than Pat Buchanan), before him David Spade, and Jon was first. Even then we knew that order was wrong. I watched his MTV show, and I was occasionally watching the Daily Show when he started hosting in 1999, although it didn’t become a must watch until a couple years went by. Now I try not to miss it.

Where was I? Ah, yes. After the show we walked back to the mall and went over to the outside restaurants. We’d decided on going to The Cheesecake Factory. I’d never been, and Jill hadn’t for quite a while. We thought by 10:30 there wouldn’t be a wait, but we were wrong. 30 minutes later, we were seated. My preconception that the non-dessert food wasn’t that great was blown away. Jill got the sliders, 4 mini burgers (with fries for a buck more), and I got the Buffalo Blast – chicken, cheese and buffalo sauce put inside a wrapper and fried. Both hit the spot, and were only appetizers, but nearly filled us up. Not too much, as we were still able to split a carrot cake cheescake (couldn’t leave wihtout their signature dish). We took the highway home and played with Illa for a bit before going to bed.

Sunday Jill had a certification to do at Reston, so she was off before I got up around 10:30. By the time she got back, I was eating eggs benedict. She hung out for a while, then went off to study with classmates. I watched Bill Maher and the end of “Fantastic Four” (decent enough) before putting a Roger Waters live show on and heading outside to catch up on newspapers. I took Illa out to play with his buddy Bear when Bear was outside with his owner, then headed in and watched SNL (had missed the Tom Hanks hosted show). I made a smoothie for us (Jill had called saying she was on her way home), then started watching the Skins game and making BLTs and spinach balls. The game didn’t go well and now the Skins are 0-2. Not even wearing my T-shirt (Jill’s other gift) helped. Oh well, time to face another week (and I’m feeling that throat tickling that could signal some annoying times ahead).