Everybody's working for the weekend

This weekend was probably the best of my summer, seeing as I finally got away from my house and McLean and made it down to Williamsburg for some quality time with my sister. My best friend was heading down to visit her roommate from school and gave me a ride down and back. Traffic on the way down was horrendous - it took us 4.5 hours to take the trip. Whie sitting in the sea of stop-and-go, we listened to the numerous mix cds that she had brought with her, sometimes talking, sometimes silent. When the monotony of sitting and listening got to be too much, she asked one question that allowed us to kill time with our imaginations. "What's your ideal wedding?" She went first in answering since she had thought about it recently when a family friend got married.
When we got to Williamsburg and finally got out of the car in the parking lot at my sister's apartment, the humidity hit us like a wave. It was the most humidity I had felt in a while, thanks to the mild weather we've been having in McLean. My sister helped me with the Ikea bag that gave me the nasty cut on my arm (that seems to have resisted the healing powers of neosporin) and we quickly were inside her apartment, which is awaiting furnishing provided by our lovely parents as a birthday gift. It was about 8:30 by then and neither of us had eaten dinner, so we made a fast decision to go to Uno, where our waitress (Alina - she wrote it on a napkin in red sharpie) brought us pizza and we went home full and maybe a little food coma-y. After looking through her shelves of dvds I decided on Sleeping Beauty, which, coincidentally, almost put the two of us to sleep. Don't get me wrong, the songs are pretty, but in general pretty boring.
Saturday morning we woke up to attend to our plans for the day. First, breakfast. We went to the pancake house down the street from my sister's apartment building - an easy choice though there is no shortage of options when it comes to eating pancakes in Williamsburg. After filling ourselves with delicious breakfast foods (and some completely unsatisfying "apple" juice) we drove to the outlet mall. I've missed shopping with my sister, something we used to do more frequently when she was home. I ended up with a dress from Banana Republic and accessories from the Gap, all less expensive than usual. After we had finished shopping (and run into my best friend and her roommate) we headed off in search of some sort of frozen treat. My sister believed there to be a Haagen-Dazs in Williamsburg - attached to a Nathan's (some sort of combination ice cream-hot dog haven, apparently) but we never saw it. Instead we decided on Baskin-Robbins but then got further waylaid and ended up at a place called Retro's where I had a rootbeer float with frozen custard and she just had a cone of the stuff. And it was completely satisfying and wonderful. Afterward, we wandered around the shops a little, stopping in the Scottish shop where a year ago she and my mother had both purchased kilts. I spotted one of the same tartan as the kilt I currently possess - a hand me down from my sister that my dad purchased in the UK quite a bit of time ago. Then we went back to my sister's apartment and lazed around for a little while before dinner. While dinner was delicious, it was nothing compared to the main attraction for the night - seeing Harry Potter, which probably deserves a separate post in itself. When we got back to the apartment, we watched Mamma Mia on HBO, where we realized just how ridiculous that film is and that the woman who plays Mrs. Weasley is one of the supporting cast members.
This morning, before I was picked up at 12:30, my sister and I went to Dunkin' Donuts for breakfast and I had a large muffin and an even larger iced coffee which in no way should have been described as "small." I said goodbye to my sister, happy that I had been able to spend part of the weekend with her. About three hours after we ledt Williamsburg, we were back in McLean after a far more tolerable car ride.