Among my various eccentricities, I subscribe to the Green Bag, an entertaining journal of law (I read about equally for entertainment and for interesting knowledge) which occasionally produces extra gifts, such as Supreme Court justice bobbleheads, for its subscribers. If the Green Bag sends you a certificate, you might (they qualify to the hilt any possibility you might get anything other than the subscription) be able to go to George Mason University just outside Washington, D.C. and exchange it for some number of bobbleheads. (Or have a proxy do it, but that has its own problems.)

A few months ago the Green Bag sent me a certificate potentially good for bobbleheads. I live on the west coast, so how was I to redeem it? I’m not crazy enough to fly across the country just for bobbleheads (even Supreme Court bobbleheads!). But if I planned it right, I could combine a trip with one to visit family for Easter, economizing the number of long-distance flights I’d take doing both trips. It was enough justification for me to visit D.C. from April 15 to April 19.

I’m not much of a tourist, so I didn’t visit museums or do much traditional exploration in D.C. (I also planned to work most of Friday and Monday while visiting, a plan mostly-successfully executed from a couple Starbucks.) I caught up with a couple friends (Mozillians may remember Joey Minta of calendar, Thunderbird, and kill-rdf fame, now working at a D.C. law firm) and attempted to catch a game of ultimate on the National Mall that got foreclosed by rain. I also tried to sample area cuisine: Five Guys (NB: they’re in Sunnyvale now!), Founding Farmers, Potbellys (not especially local to D.C., but I’d never seen them before), and Momiji Restaurant (the Asian pear martini was quite tasty).

But most specially, I went to a sitting of the Supreme Court and watched two oral arguments. More on that over the next several days, starting with which cases to attend and when to arrive.