Artsy Cedar Point

What's a photographer who doesn't really like to ride roller coasters to do for two days at Cedar Point ("America's Roller Coast")? Take pictures of the rides, of course!

**note: I actually did ride the ride below, the Power Tower. I was scared out of my mind**

Cedar Point snaps

Some snapshots from the super, awesome fun Cedar Point trip!

Brad on day 1, ready to take on the park! that is the super scary Top Thrill Dragster in the background that you saw in the video below

Brad is all smiles after his first ride of the day - on the new Maverick roller coaster

(no clue what all those other people are looking at!)
you can't really tell, but that's Brad in the third row, enjoying his ride on Millennium Force

Christina poses outside her first ride of the day - the non-scary, old and rickety,

Iron Dragon coaster

Brad's traditional Cedar Point snack of cheese fries...

ferris wheel!!! (much less scarier than the one in Chicago!)

ready to take on the park on day 2

riding the carousel

hey! who is this guy? Brad's brother Brian drove down from Detroit to hang out with us for the day on Sunday. this is them, ready to ride the Mean Streak

uhhhhh....

isn't he the sweetest thing?

smiling on the outside, but crying on the inside as we leave the park for the last time

Cedar Point fun!

Last weekend, I surprised Brad with a trip to Cedar Point Amusement Park. He has been wanting to go there the last few years, since he basically lived there as a child. An even bigger surprise was the fact that his brother drove down from Detroit to spend the day with us on Sunday! It was a fun weekend for everyone and I, not being a ride person, took loads of pictures. I'll post those later, but in the mean time, here is some fun video to tide you over.

This ride is called the rip cord. It is scary. It is something I would never do. However, Brad and his brother were fearless. They were hoisted up the 15-story launch tower and allowed to fly at an incredible 65mph! You must turn the audio up for this one. The screaming is Brad... the giggling is me :)

The very scary rip cord

This ride is called Top Thrill Dragster. It is scary. It is something I would never do. However, Brad was fearless. You are launched out of the station, reaching a speed of 120mph in less than 4 seconds. You climb 420 feet in the air, crest the bill, and spiral 270 degrees down 420 feet. It takes 17 seconds. No thank you!!

Top Thrills = Scary Chills

Fun weekend

I don't really have any pictures to show for it (sorry Megan!), but last weekend was really fun. It was our first weekend in three weeks without parents in town, so we knew it was going to be mega R&R. I just didn't anticipate the fun factor.

Friday night after work, we headed down to Artomatic, to tear down my display. Thanks to our cordless drill (which my father said I'd never get any use out of... HA!), that was a quick and painless process and we were soon on our way, art in hand and officially done with the show. We went home to change, before heading just down the street to a restaurant called Fireflies, that has live music on most evening's. That evening a singer names Celeste Starchild (apparently her actual name), who I had heard at Artomatic, was performing. So, we shared a whole wheat crust pizza and a salad, sipped a Magic Hat #9 (an awesome pale ale for those of you unfamiliar) and enjoyed her music.

Saturday was errands running day, with nice little pockets of fun tucked in. While Brad was at his morning spinning class, I walked up to the UPS Store to ship some art out to those who had purchased stuff from me through Artomatic and hit up the local coffee shop for an iced decaf and a chocolate croissant. In the afternoon, we had a lovely patio lunch and picked up some suits Brad had tailored. On the way home, we stopped by the Dairy Godmother for a little sorbet. I'm proud to say that I loved this neighborhood institution long before Obama made it fashionable!

Soon enough it was time to get ready for dinner and fireworks (yes fireworks, on the 11th of July. I shall explain...). Prior to heading to dinner, we stopped by a favorite local place, the Evening Star Cafe, to toast a friend's 30th birthday. Next door the wine store, Planet Wine, had this awesome advertisement in the window!We had dinner at one of our favorite French bistro's in Alexandria, Bastille, where they were running a "Celebrate the Revolutions" (that would be the American and French) three course price fixed special. I had some yummy steak frites and a to die for chocolate cake for dessert. After dinner, we walked down to the Alexandria waterfront and watched the fireworks. We are special in Alexandria and don't do fireworks on the 4th of July. Why would you when 1. there's no way you could compete with DC and 2. Alexandria's birthday is the week after! Since we didn't see fireworks on the 4th, we were pretty jazzed to see these. However, I only have one pathetic picture to show for it:

Next year, now that we've found a good place to watch them, I shall be prepared with tripod, good camera, remote, etc, etc!!

Sunday... hmmm... less exciting. BUT with a Saturday that good, can you really expect a great Sunday as well?

Five for Friday

1. It has been a pretty busy week! My Dad left town Monday and it has been go, go, go every since. Of course, I've also been battling a stomach virus, so that has pretty much made things five times as hard.

2. Artomatic is officially over. We are headed down to uninstall my space tonight. In a way, it makes me sad. Thank you so much to everyone who came down to my space! I hope y'all enjoyed yourselves and will come back next year.

3. Have you ever come across something that just makes you giggle in an immature way uncontrollably? Well, Cake Wrecks does that to me! It's basically a blog of pictures of horribly made, professionally decorated cakes. Yesterday's entry, on copyright infringement, is hilarious. Of course I can't get it show up here. But go to the web site. You'll love it.

4. Since my user generated content is falling short today - I'll blame it on still not feeling real well - so I'll leave you with this fantastic video:
http://www.collegehumor.com/video:1913584

the other Air and Space Museum

So out by Dulles Airport is the other Smithsonian Air and Space Museum. I bet you didn't know there were two, did you? The Air and Space Museum on the Mall is one of my favorites, so I had high hopes for the Stephen Udvar-Hazy Air and Space Museum when we visited a few weeks ago with my in-laws. It did not disappoint!

Space Shuttle Enterprise

rocket boosters!

the quarantine trailer that the first moon walking astronaut's, including Mr. Neil Armstrong, lived in when they returned to Earth... to ward off any "moon germs"

(that's a technical NASA term!)

SR-17 Blackbird

the place also had some super cool architecture

Peeps-o-matic

Every year, the Washington Post has an annual diarama contest every Easter, which challenges readers to make interesting diarama's using Peeps candy. It's an absolute hoot and I am always amazed at the creative things that people come up with.

This year, they displayed many of the diaramas at Artomatic, so you could check out the great work up close and personal. My absolute favorite was called "Please Peep to the Right." Probably only Washingtonians, or other mass transit riders will understand this, but when you ride the Metro here, there is an unwritten rule that if you're going to stand on the escalator, you stand to the right, so people can walk up or down on the left side. Since it's an unwritten rule, many tourists stand to the left, completely unaware that they're now blocking the way of hurried commuters who aren't too lazy to walk up 15 escalator stairs. The awesome diarama makers capitalized on this perfectly:

Look at that detail! From the Peep with its nose burried in the Metro map, to the fellow tourist Peep in the FBI shirt to the angry eyebrows on the other Peeps. That's probably my favorite part - the angry Peep eyebrows!

Check out some of the other fantastic displays:

Goodnight Peep - complete with bowl full of mush!"As Seen on Peep TV" - how many seen infomercial products can you count?

"Double Peep Strike" - complete with Captain Sully!

Five for... Monday?

Better late than never!!

1. I had last Thursday and Friday off of work. It was heaven. Whoever decided that we should work five days and get two days off was absolutely nuts!

2. Thursday was all around a great day. I hung around in the morning, watching SportsCenter and generally being lazy. In the afternoon, I went into Old Town and got a pedicure at my favorite place, did a little clearance section shopping at Ann Taylor Loft (bought my first yellow shirt!) and enjoyed a causal afternoon of strolling the brick streets. Once Brad got home from work, we went to our favorite neighborhood place for dinner, Monroe's. Afterward we were going to go for a neighborhood walk, but got a call that Dad, who was coming in for the weekend, got on an earlier flight, so we scrapped that idea. While we were killing time until we had to head to the airport, we decided to do some bowling. Yes, very random! The bowling center by us has "all you can bowl" from 9pm - midnight during the week, so we popped in for two games. We both did miserable :) After we picked Dad up from the airport, we popped by Hard Times Cafe so he could have dinner and I finished my day off with a brownie sundae. YUM!

3. So, yes, Dad was in town for the long weekend. It was a super fun, laid back, casual visit. And he cooked a whole bunch for us, which is always awesome!

4. Instead of going to see fireworks on Saturday night, we went to dinner and saw a movie. Somehow "dinner and a movie" feels just as American as fireworks, yet it was so much less crowded!

5. Last night, we went out to WolfTrap, this amazing outdoor amphitheater run by the National Parks Department, to see Glydis Knight in concert. We sat out on the big lawn and had watermelon and grooved to her beat. It was so much fun and the weather was perfect - an upper 60's, crisp, cool summer evening.

Five for Friday

1. What a tragic week it has been. We start Monday with the horrific Metro collision that killed nine people. Many thanks to all those who checked in to see if Brad and I were okay. We don't take the Red Line, we're Yellow Line-ers, but it's still scary none-the-less. I am glad to see that the train operator is being remembered in a positive light, since it appeared that she did everything in her power to stop the train. I really hope it turns out that she wasn't texting or on her phone, like too many of these sad stories often turn out to be. Riding the Metro is a bit weird these days, although I figure you statistically have a much better chance of something going on in a car, especially the way people drive around here! So I shall continue my Metro commute.

2. They always say that people die in threes, so I guess you got your trifecta with the deaths of Ed McMahon, Farrah Fawcette and Michael Jackson this week. I'm a little young to appreciate Ms Fawcette in her hay-day, but I do know that she put on an incredibly brave, and public, battle against cancer. My most fond Michael Jackson memory is probably way back in fifth grade when I was in an exchange program and went to France for three weeks. I clearly remember riding on a charter bus, with a bunch of French students, listening to the same Michael Jackson cassette over and over and over again. These kids barely knew a lick of English, but they certainly knew MJ's lyrics! I hope he is remember in the fond light of his time at the top, since things haven't been going so well for him the last few years.

3. On a happier note, tonight Christina Saull Photography is hosting its very own Meet the Artist Night at Artomatic! I'll be hanging out by my wall from 6-10pm, serving cookies, handing out coupons for free prints (one per hour!) and chatting it up with whoever stops by.

4. On another Artomatic note, I can't believe it's almost over! The show closes July 5th, after a great six week run. I've sold a few pieces, more than I expected to, and I've met some other great artists in the process. The whole thing has been a neat experience, one that I hope to repeat next year!

5. As if life weren't busy enough right now, my in-laws are driving into town as I write this. They're here until Monday and then my Dad arrives on Thursday! Two straight weeks of parents means that Brad and I will be in hibernation the weekend after :)

Have a pleasant weekend everyone!

Artomatic talent

Following Meet the Artist night on June 13th, Brad and I spent some time exploring three floors of Artomatic (to do all nine at once is insanity). For those who can't make it down to the show, I wanted to share some photos of the amazing art we saw!

Don't forget: Artomatic runs through Sunday, July 5!

fire dancers!

done by a 12-year old!

Five for Friday

1. On Monday evening, Brad and I went to see "An Evening with Ellis Marsalis" at the Kennedy Center. For those of you who are not familiar, Ellis Marsalis is a jazz pianist and the father of Wynton Marsalis, the trumpter and founder of the combo that performs on Jazz at Lincoln Center. It was a really neat concert, which featured Ellis, Wynton, his three musically inclined brothers, one of his non-musical brothers (who read a great poem - he's apparently very literary - they call him "The Oracle") and Harry Connick, Jr. The music was great and it finished with a NOLA-style parade through the audience, complete with Harry Connick, Jr. on cow bell and a large twirrling umbrella. I have certainly never been to a Kennedy Center performance that included dancing in the aisles by both the performers and the audience!

2. It has been a crazy long week at work.... but a good week - one that just ended on a great note. But I'm still glad it's Friday!

3. Thanks to everyone who came out at Artomatic's Meet the Artist night last Saturday! I was really nervous going into it, but so many lovely people stopped by and chatted it up. I sold a few pieces and have a few more sales pending. If you weren't able to make it down, I promise no hurt feelings since you'll have another opportunity on June 26th :)

4. I am having the urge to do something fun. Anyone have any suggestions? If it's summer-esque, you get bonus points!

5. Can't think of a number five, so I thought I'd just leave you with a photo - the one that is selling like hotcakes at Artomatic!

Five For Friday

1. Artomatic Meet the Artist night is tomorrow evening! From 7:00 - 9:00pm, artists of all kinds will be hanging out by their displays, ready to talk about their art, their inspirations and their life (myself included!). Oh, and an extra incentive to come: an awesome coworker of mine is baking 90 red velvet cake bites. For those of you unfamiliar, they're basically little balls of cake, frosted and on toothpicks. Mega yum :)

2. I've been going through some old pictures in my Flickr. I've been trying to go through the gazillion pictures I took on our honeymoon, edit them and organize them, since we still don't have an album. I found this one and it makes me miss Italy SO much!

3. Last Saturday, I worked my volunteer shift at Artomatic (all artists are required to work three, five hour shifts). It was pretty fun, I worked in the store. I managed to not break the cash register, which was great. While I was there, my aunt, uncle and cousin stopped by to see my display. They were in Maryland for a wedding and then were driving down to Virginia Beach for another wedding ('tis the season!). It was great to see them for the first time since our wedding, even if we were only able to catch up for a few minutes. A special shout out to my cousin Megan, who I know reads my blog :)

4. I just had a phone conversation with a recruiter for a job one of my best friends is applying for. It was the first time I've actually acted over the phone as a reference for someone. I love this girl, but it was hard! I felt like I was trying to convince the guy that she is awesome - a job interview about someone else. Definitely an interesting experience...

5. It has been a good week at work. But I am so ready for the weekend. What are your summer weekend plans?