1/9: travel day to DC

First stop: Washington, DC. 

Bethany (my Executive Director) and I flew down for the mid-year Planning Committee meeting for Alpha Kappa Delta (http://alphakappadelta.org/) the honor society for which I serve as Secretary. The Planning Committee is a small subset of members (about 8) of the larger AKD Council (17 mostly faculty from around the country) and we go to DC periodically and meet at the offices of the American Sociological Association (https://www.asanet.org/). This helps improve our visibility and strengthens connections with the main organization for the discipline. 

Bethany handles all of the logistics including booking rooms. For the last couple of visits, she had us staying at a cute boutique hotel near ASA called the Henley Park.


This is the lobby.


A sitting room off to the side.


The registration desk on the other side. Oddly, most of the decoration that looked like stonework was plastic.


Straight ahead is the bar.


And beyond is the dining area where we have breakfast.



It is a small hotel and it has probably the smallest fitness center in the world.


The mirrors make it look bigger but there are basically two treadmills and one spin bike. There's not enough room to do anything on the floor without getting stepped on.

She also arranges meals withing walking distance of the hotel and we returned to a place called RPM (http://rpmrestaurants.com/rpmitalian/dc/). It is a very trendy upscale place and there were at least a few tables with couples on dates (or at least that's what some of the younger people in our group thought). Even though there was almost nothing on the menu that was vegan, the kitchen and waitstaff worked to make me something off the menu.

Here's a nice salad of zucchini on a bed of celery and apples.


Here was my entree of handmade vegan pasta (no eggs), a vegan tomato sauce with a nice kick and a side of broccolini sauteed in olive oil and garlic with red pepper. That's Bethany's salmon in the background.


 Here's a picture of chocolate sorbet (vegan) that was surprisingly satisfying.


I couldn't resist a bite of some of the non-vegan desserts.

This was basically an ice cream ball with a chocolate shell.


And this was their chocolate torte. I split this with a couple of people last year so either I wasn't vegan yet or I fell off the wagon for dessert.


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