Retrospective Burn

Does a day in D.C. ever go the way it's planned?  No.  For one thing, it didn't snow in D.C. today.  My lovely brother came to the Mid-Atlantic region last night.  I discovered his plans via facebook.  We're tight like that.  The original plan was brunch with Alex, then meeting up with Brother, and if I was lucky, to watch him shoot (music video, not heroin, or people).  That then turned to lunch (Guatemalan) with Alex and Brother.  Followed by coffee with Marie.  The coffee part remained true.  And it was great that Marie understood the unpredictability of family (we did, after all, dash out of brunch to go see her brother's girlfriend's new puppy).  But in the end, after many arrangements and rearrangements and waiting on the vagaries of artists, I had lunch with Alex (Potbelly's, quite the opposite of Guatemalan), followed by coffee and dessert with Marie, during which I caved and got the 300+ calorie shortbread I had resisted earlier in the morning ("The 380 count was for shortbread that was half dipped in chocolate, but this doesn't have chocolate.  I bet that frosting had 300 calories, and the cookie was only 80."  "Plus, you're eating it after lunch, calories are always lighter after lunch."-- public health in action).  Then I met up with Brother but didn't get to see him work.  The plan went from ramen to Peruvian chicken to Chilean grill to finally, Vietnamese.  So yes, I have been eating all day.  The food hasn't been particularly great, but the company has been wonderful.  As much as I like to ogle at menus and obsess about where to eat, none of that actually matters when I'm with people I like.  In retrospect, that's probably why it was always important that MC TChu, Ranwei, and I ate at good restaurants whenever we hung out.