Going Home Again
Is it inevitable that the hometown we once found tedious and banal turns into a fascinating cultural crossroads and storehouse of buried youthful memories?
Superb times were had in Annandale, VA while DC required too much energy and would have limited my wine drinking significantly. On this visit, I was floored by the traffic around my parental homebase and also fascinated by the proliferation of Asian-oriented malls, restaurants and services. There's a cool discount store called Samurai near where we saw "Sideways" (easily the best movie of 2004 in case you were wondering.) We took my parents out for Korean food, though my bro and I actually thought it was a Japanese restaurant that we had visited three years ago. Whatever, it kicked everyone's ass. I can't remember the name of the place, (Sambo, 6669 Little River Turnpike) but it was amazing and will surely become a go-to spot for entertaining visitors to the NoVa. There is also lots of Pho in the area, including a new place that is decorated in bright yellow inside and features little flat-screen TVs for each booth. The new face of Pho, I suppose.

I'm finally straightening out my Annandale history here, which I've mainly mined for Revolutionary War ghost stories over the years.