This weekend was designated a Christmas-y weekend — for Amy and me to do Christmas-y stuff together before I leave for the Philippines. We dropped by the Postal Museum to get stamps at the Stamp Shop (which was closed, so we just ended up getting stamps from the post office vending machine). We viewed paintings from the Halff Collection in An Impressionist Sensibility at the American Art Museum (I especially liked the suggestions of incipient urban-feminism in William McGregor Paxton’s The Morning Paper). Over at Zenith, we checked out Altered States, the paintings of Drew Ernst. We also bought a table and a lamp from a neighbor and got a few extra pasalubong tins of peppermint bark.

After a Third Sunday of Advent worship service (featuring a lovely choral offertory piece, Paul Manz’s E’en So, yours truly among the baritones), we had green curry and drunken noodles at Bua. I bought the last few items on a mile-long list of padala at Ballston Common, and Amy got cocktail sauce and a bag of shrimp at Trader Joe’s. We then went over to the National Gallery to stand near the middle of an extra-long line and get good seats for a free performance by Nordic Voices of classical and modern Norwegian Christmas music (didgeridoo-like twanging voice effects from a new 2006 piece), followed by a quick trip to the 2006 Capitol Christmas Tree, before going home for a hearty dinner of shrimp cocktail, fish fillets, italian toast and brie, and sparkling pomegranate juice. Sadly there was no time to watch It’s a Wonderful Life, which I have yet to see in its entirety. Maybe tomorrow, I guess.