On Saturday evening Jake and I went down to the Washington Monument to look at zombies. It was the second annual DC Zombie Lurch on the National Mall, a sort of flash mob of kids playing undead for the evening. I’d seen pictures of other lurches in cities like Toronto and Seattle on Flickr and I was hoping to see an army of terrifying zombies slowly coursing among the monuments and flags.

We ended up being underwhelmed by the straggly group of 20+ zombies (and an undead rabbit) that showed up for the lurch. As Jake said, looking over the motley crowd as they danced to Michael Jackson’s Thriller: “Well, DC certainly isn’t San Francisco.”


A zombie bride; she also held a sign reading “The Undead Rule.” Click to see the other pictures.

We did have to laugh at the various chants the zombie wrangler came up with for the undead crowd:

Call: “What do we want?”
Response: “BRAINS!”
C: “When do we want it?”
R: “BRAINS!!!”

C: "I don’t know but I’ve been told…"
R: "BRAINS!"

C: "Marco!"
R: "BRAINS!"

After years of talking about it, Drew and I finally made it to the Washington International Horse Show this weekend. It was quite a sight—a couple of streets around the Verizon Center were shut down and filled with temporary stalls. We went Friday night and saw the Charity Cup Classic, musical freestyle portion of the dressage invitational, Jack Russell terrier races, and mini-concert by none other than Jewel herself. The highlight, though, had to be the puissance, or high jump competition, with top competitors and former Olympians like McLain Ward and Margie Engle. McLain Ward won for (I believe) the third year in a row with a height of 6’8.25”.



You can see the rest of Drew’s pictures here.

Shots from a photowalk that Jake, Kevin and I went on this afternoon. Beautiful weather, though the late September angle of the sun made it tough to shoot the canal (the north side was very sunny, the south shaded side was very dark). I walked 5 1/2 miles (thanks, Google Maps!) including there and back.

According to an appropriately anonymous fellow book store shopper, he is:

“…[Cheney] picked up copies of the late David Halberstam’s new book, “The Coldest Winter: America and the Korean War,” and the companion book to Ken Burns’ PBS series “The War,” according to a person in the store who asked not to be identified.”

That Ken, always bringing people together.