Ah yes, of course. I leave Columbia Heights and a “British” pub that sells Strongbow on draft opens a few blocks from my former house. Nevertheless, still happy as hell to be out of that neighborhood.

But if you do live there and enjoy Strongbow you can order it by the US or UK pint at CommonWealth. I went there over Inauguration weekend and had lunch with my mom, Cheryl, and Annie. The food was good, but much like The Heights, is pretty overpriced. Sixteen bucks for fish and effin’ chips? Wow.

Also, a reader informed me that you can now drink Strongbow at Ben’s Next Door, the new restaurant started by the family behind Ben’s Chili Bowl. Strongbow + Ben’s chili half smoke = heaven?

Updated list:
- Fado Irish Pub in Chinatown (draft)
- Elephant & Castle Pub (draft)
- Finn macCool’s Irish Publick House (draft)
- 51st State Tavern (draft)
- Chevy Chase Wine & Spirits (500 mL cans)
- Circle Liquors (500 mL cans)
- Whole Foods Market on P Street (500 mL cans)
- Sherry’s Wine & Liquor (500 mL cans)
- Brickskeller (500 mL cans)
- Rocket Bar (500 mL cans)
- RFD (500 mL cans) (reader submitted)
- The Red Derby (500 mL cans) (reader submitted)
- Big Hunt (draft) (reader submitted)
- D’Vines (500 mL cans)
- CommonWealth Gastropub (draft)
- Mackey’s Public House(draft) (reader submitted)
- Rock N Roll Hotel (500 mL cans) (reader submitted)
- Ben’s Next Door (500 mL cans) (reader submitted)
Just outside DC:
- Flanagan’s Harp & Fiddle (Bethesda) (draft) (reader submitted)
- Lost Dog Cafe (Arlington) (500 mL cans) (reader submitted)

We took Tucker to Lake Frank yesterday. He enjoyed chasing after sticks and doing other dog things.

He would only go a few feet into the lake. When the stick we threw in the water was too far out for his liking, he would bark at it in the hopes that it would come closer to shore. It never did.

Mmmm…water with a hint of leftover caramel frappacino.

Iraq is officially welcoming tourists:

Well, here she was in the lobby of a Baghdad hotel, ending a 17-day tour around one of the world’s ultimate danger destinations.

“It had always been on my list,” said Ms. Gilbert, wearing a sweatshirt emblazoned with a cartoon cat and the phrase “Life Is Good.” “If it opened up, I wanted to go.”

Whether Iraq can be described as open is debatable. But Ms. Gilbert is a member of a group, mostly middle-aged and older, that has the honor of being on the first officially sanctioned tour of Westerners in Iraq since 2003 (outside of the much safer enclave of Kurdistan).

Well, WTF. If a 79 year old is hanging out in Baghdad, then I don’t see why I shouldn’t as well.
Just kidding. My mom would KILL me. And much respect for Ms. Gilbert. I hope I am still traveling when I am her age.

Because I obviously have way too much time on my hands, I was perusing my investment portfolio so I could see which companies are receiving a portion of my paycheck and will be sooooo successful that I can someday retire (yeah, right). Anyways, listed right above OAO Gazprom (YES!!!!) was the North Korea Debt Corporation. I Googled it, but didn’t come up with anything that actually explained what it is, so I am going to take a wild guess and assume that I’m paying for Kim Jong-Il’s massive collection of Hennessey as well as the new pizzeria in Pyongyang.

I made a bunch of new banners because I’ve had the same ones for, like, two years or something. They’ll show up eventually, you’ll just have to keep refreshing or whatev.

I would probably say “dude” more often, though.

Paradise? To a first-time visitor, North Korea seemed to be providing its people the basic necessities of life. But there was little sign of opulence and I never saw anyone cutting loose and having a really good time. Even on the May Day holiday, people seemed to be working – as actors, posing as merrymakers and subway passengers for the benefit of foreign visitors. A group of little boys in the uniform of the children’s corps sat cross-legged in a circle on the ground in a park, playing a game. A couple of hours later they still sat in the same position, playing the same game, confounding the collective wisdom of the outside world regarding the attention spans of unsupervised eight-year-olds.

In the deeply dug, sparkling-clean Pyongyang Metro, with its glittering chandeliers and its imposing murals honoring Kim Il-sung, I saw “passengers” exit the station via the escalator and then turn around and go back in for another ride – their repetitive all day assignment, I supposed. Trains composed of only two cars each stopped for several minutes at each station, and the tracks showed enough rust to suggest that impressing visitors was a more important consideration than transporting people in a city where buses could glide quickly through nearly empty streets.

From Bradley K. Martin’s Under the Loving Care of the Fatherly Leader: North Korea and the Kim Dynasty

About 100 pages in. Great book so far.

The Black Angus Steakhouse in Rancho Mirage is closing. Not that I’m really torn up about it, as I have not been there in probably ten years or so, but we used to go there a lot when I was a kid. I think my grandma really liked that place. Anyways, during one of our family excursions to Black Angus, the waiter asked me (at the time I was probably in kindergarten or thereabouts) what I wanted for dinner.

Well, I wanted one of my favorite meals, and something I always ordered at Black Angus.
“Bones!” I replied.
The waiter, of course, was absolutely puzzled. “Bones?”
“I want bones!”

Finally, my mom interpreted my order for the poor guy: “She’ll have the baby back ribs.”

BONES

And yes, I still get teased about that.

In an effort to improve my Russian (aka no longer sound like an illiterate peasant) I have signed up for yet another Russian class. The last time I took a formal Russian class was in 2005 while at the LSE. Since then, I have basically forgotten everything, except how to order borscht and tell the taxi driver to take you to the military museum (but really, what else do you need to know?)

Anyways, I can’t wait to start conjugating verbs again and participating in those fun role play scenarios (“No, officer, there is no contraband in my luggage. May I pay you a ‘fine’?”). Good times.

I have never been on a cruise and I have absolutely no desire to go on one. I imagine a huge boat filled with drunk people gorging themselves on boring food, playing slot machines, laying by a pool, and occasionally getting off the boat to visit random bars in some port city. Aside from the drinking, that sounds incredibly dull. I think I’d rather be dropped off the coast of Somali, in a rowboat, with a bottle of vodka.

Antarctica, though, is one place that I wouldn’t mind going to on a cruise ship because that’s pretty much the only way to get there. If I’m going, though, I have to do it in true Lindsay style and hop aboard the Kapitan Khlebnikov, a Russian icebreaker:

Perched high on the ship’s bridge (open to passengers most of the time) you’ll marvel at the ease with which the Khlebnikov crushes a swath through meter-thick ice pans. Where other ships must turn around, the Khlebnikov plows forward through ice-choked waters, taking up to 108 passengers to remote fjords, channels and shores where precious few, if any, people have ever visited. And, with its on-board helicopters and fleet of Zodiacs, the range of possible destinations to explore is expanded even further. Helicopters are used for ice navigation, scouting landing sites, “flightseeing” and to land passengers in out-of-the-way places. Zodiacs whisk passengers ashore to observe wildlife and explore and archaeological and historical sites.

Helicopters! The ship has freakin’ helicopters!

The downside of cruising around Antarctica on this awesome ship is the price, which, depending on the length of the trip, ranges from $13,890 to $22,490 for a spot in a triple cabin. So, basically, the only way I can afford this trip is if I win the lottery (which I don’t actually play) or start saving enough money so I can eventually go when I’m, like, 80 years old. Awesome.