The Final Day

Well, here I am at the end of my final full day in Washington DC! The time has certainly gone by far more quickly than I expected, and I am only just aware of what an awesome and wonderfully comprehensive experience this semester has been. Needless to say, there is no WAY that I am done writing about the Washington Seminar, and since I have plenty of pictures and stories still to post, you may continue to look forward to the updates as often as I have time when I return to life in Utah. After all, the longest journey is comprised of many journeys, is it not? And it would be a shame to overlook so many of the fantastic experiences that I've been too busy having here to write about them.

But since this IS the last post from DC, I want to officially thank everyone who read and supported me and sent thank you notes and commented on my blog up to this point - in a strange sort of way, I felt even more connected to y'all despite the increased distance! I hope you'll continue to keep in touch even when I'm back in (boring) Utah. Ok, ok, just kidding about the last part. Utah's not boring - or at least, it won't be once I get back ;)

Today was one of the fastest days I've seen go by. We had class at 9 am, and it was probably the shortest class we've ever had. There was nothing to do except go over what we had already been given instructions on at least three times in emails and previous class periods, and we took many group photos, and we clapped for our professor in the traditional BYU custom. Then we scattered to our rooms to clean. I had already done most of my packing, but decided to wait on the cleaning until the evening so I could do some sight-seeing.

I first walked to the Mall via the Lincoln Memorial and Washington Monument, then visited the National Museum of American History to take another look at the Presidents' Exhibit (my favorite one). I wanted to see Abe Lincoln's hat, but about 100 other people had the same idea, and there were a lot of other places I wanted to visit too, so I skipped that, arguing to myself that seeing AL's coat at Ford's Theater was just as good. Then I went to the Smithsonian Castle and saw all the displays for the contest to design the soon-to-come African-American History Museum. I took pictures of my favorites, and the winning one. Stay tuned... or just Google it. Whatever. I went to the Freer Gallery next to get another look at Whistler's Peacock Room and try to take another photo, since I didn't like how my first one turned out. Turns out that when I got there, a lady was standing in front of the room to ensure that no one took any photos inside. Whups! Oh well - the room was still neat to see.

After this, I wandered for a bit through the Freer and Sackler museums, trying to find the best possible exit, and eventually made my way to the National Museum of Natural History, where I saw the Hope Diamond (and got pictures!) and wandered through some random exhibits. After all this, I walked home via Virginia Avenue, passing a sculpture in front of the Ellipse that I had wondered at for some time but never had approached until today. Turns out it's a WWI memorial. Pretty cool-looking. I'll post pictures later.

So I walked home, had noodles for dinner (and pancakes, courtesy of my Barlow roommates), and watched/listened to movies on my laptop while I cleaned my room. Valerie was gone by then - she's staying with her grandmother-in-law tonight, and will be back tomorrow morning to help me clean out the group freezer, and check out of our room at 9:00 am. I'm going to go to bed now (hopefully...although as you can probably tell, I'm WAY TOO EXCITED TO SLEEP), wake up early enough tomorrow to fold up my sheets and pack all the last-minute items, clean out the freezer, check out of the room, catch my SuperShuttle, and catch my flights. I can't WAIT to see my family again! Do you hear that, guys? I love you, I love you, I love you!

Ruthena

Happy Birthday to Thomas Jefferson!

This picture is a reminder that the cherry blossoms can, will, and do fade very quickly. I do apologize for not getting down there early enough to take some more attractive pictures. It’s only two hours before midnight here, and I thought about going down to the Jefferson Memorial at midnight to see if there would be any Libertarians trying to dance to their ipods in his honor or something... but, well, being more fond of Hamilton and Adams myself, decided against it in the end.

Yesterday we visited the Albert Einstein and World War I Memorials as a group, and learned some cool things about how they were built and how Washington DC was designed and what the term “architecture” means and... But I exaggerate. Our wonderful Institute leader, Taylor, led us on the tour, and she did a really fantastic job. It was a little nippy outside, even I had to confess (although I also proudly state that I enjoyed it, enough so that I stayed out two hours longer than most people, and eventually got to where I didn’t even feel cold at all), and we held our little Easter devotional at the World War I memorial, in a place secluded from the sun and with no “sitting” spots readily available. This left most of the group standing and shivering in an awkward-looking line. I sat down to lean against an oddly-carved pillar (imagine many concave scoops out of a solid pillar), and tried to pay attention while enjoying the breeze and shade.

I learned a few new things from the trip:

The floor of the Albert Einstein Memorial is designed to show the planets and stars, and if you stand in the middle of it and face the statue, you can talk and hear your voice echoed, as if the statue were answering you.

He doesn't look very happy, does he? Kind of tired and old and ugly...which oddly enough, makes me like him even more.

The World War I Memorial only has the names of the soldiers killed in battle from the District of Columbia. No wonder it’s so much smaller and lesser known than the other memorials!

They're all doing the Wizard of Oz thing. Aw, how cute! Snort.


In this picture, you will note how cold everyone except for me looks, and how snotty and stuck-up I look, standing in the middle of the memorial alone as if I'm too good for the rest of the group. Which, of course, I am (smirk).

After a short Easterish devotional at the WWI memorial, a few members of our group irreverently decided to sing “Popcorn Popping on the Apricot Tree” beneath the dome. It didn’t reverberate as well as the Albert Einstein memorial echo, and I was disappointed at the lack of maturity demonstrated on the part of, well, whoever had the idea (I have a pretty good idea who, but I’m not going to post his or her name).

After that, we played a game where we try to jump on each other’s feet. That game stopped in about 20 seconds, after tall Andrew jumped on my left foot with a loud “crunch.” My foot was okay, but I limped for a little bit, and was so sulky about the whole situation that I immediately departed from the rest of the group for the rest of the night.

I spent two hours perusing the Franklin Roosevelt and Jefferson Memorials and the Potomac River, talking and complaining on the phone with my wonderful, loving family (whom I miss SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO much!!!!), and finding a good stick to probe interesting rocks with and use as a crutch. I actually started walking home with it before I realized that the stick wouldn’t fit in very well with the city once I got past Constitution Avenue, so I had to throw away that little guy. Sniff!

When I got home, a group was watching “Mulan” on the 3rd floor with popcorn. The Blanchards had made us a huge Easter lunch/dinner at 4 pm, so I didn’t really feel like having any dinner. Grapes and popcorn ended up being my dinner—delicious.

Today was a fun day. I went to work, sorted through the masses of email that had accumulated over the weekend, wrote up the daily art news (by the way, there were a lot of articles about my museum over the weekend! The Washington Post did a whole article on the Hungarian exhibit on Friday! Check it out!), aaaaand took a nice long lunch break to the Old Post Office, where I rode the glass elevator up to the “almost top,” walked up 97 steps to get to the “as far as you can get” spot, and took some pictures. Not quite as high or as exciting as the Washington Monument, but still very impressive! And I’m glad I got to see the inside of the Old Post Office—it’s cute and quaint and old-fashioned...like a small, old version of Union Station.

Me at the top of the Old Post Office. This was the "South" facing window, which I believe is appropriate.

After lunch, I went back to work, and, since it was the Intern coordinator’s last day for that week, I got a picture with her and turned in my last personal evaluation form.

After work, I walked home, ate dinner (“Hearty” potato soup, bread, grapes) and attended FHE. We did a talent show, with most of the main acts being musical numbers, as expected. I could have pulled something together, but decided not to, as such things always make me feel rather awkward and uncomfortable, not to mention childish. I suppose I could have astonished them with my knowledge of Redwall lore or held the Eagle yoga pose for a minute or wowed the crowd with a full split...but I didn’t want to, and we had plenty of people making an exhibition of themselves as it was, so it worked out just fine. I took a few pictures and a few videos, but my camera was running out of space, so I didn’t get as much as I wanted to. Hopefully some other people got videos of the more interesting parts—I saw a lot of cameras in the room!

After the talent show, we had “German” pancakes—um, the egg-like quality and the square shape makes them German? Yummy with maple syrup, but I would have preferred yogurt and strawberries myself. Anyway, time to stop blabbing away and get this post posted.

I hope to get to writing about the National Zoo and the National Museum of Crime and Punishment next, but we’ll have to see how much time I have. There’s definitely a lot to get done this week, and time is soon to be very precious!

AT LAST!

I’ve seen it several times in the semester, but today was the first time that I had my camera with me AND saw the signs—policemen walking around, blocking traffic, whistling at people—early enough to get into position. Enjoy the exclusive Ruthena production of the presidential motorcade procession down Pennsylvania Avenue:






It almost makes up for my not seeing any of the Easter-egg rolling events (they were on the front lawn, apparently, while I always walk through the back lawn on my way to work). Not that I could have gotten very close, anyway—you had to have a 10 year old kid with ya to do that!



Also, if you listen until the very end, you can hear this little kid shouting "Barack Obama!" I wish I had filmed him shouting it, cause he was so cute and he did it several times after the line of cars had passed.

On that last post...

I have no idea what's wrong with the font. I've tried normalizing it several ways, and it only got worse. Perhaps my blog is playing an April Fool's trick on me? Anyway, I hope you can still read it!

ONE MORE WEEK!

I am sitting inside my room alone with the window open, enjoying the lovely sound of rain falling on the roof. Ahhhhh. Valerie spent last night at her father-in-law’s, in order to go hiking at Shenandoah today. I wonder if it’s raining there.... Hmm.

Well, after spending the last two days exhausting myself in single-all-day adventures, I decided to take today easy, catching up on my blog writing, exercising indoors, probably walking to the Mall or the Jefferson Memorial later to see some of the remaining cherry blossoms, maybe going to Barnes & Noble in Georgetown to browse some books...etc.

I’ve had a nice week, and I’m really excited to think that in just one week, I’ll be on a plane flying home! The time really went by way too fast. But on the other hand, I can’t wait to see everyone, I’m super excited for the spring and summer in Utah, and I—yup, I’m gonna say it—am SO ready to move on from this internship! Don’t get me wrong, it’s been great, my supervisors are awesome, I really like the museum—BUT I am DONE with phone duty, with doing the same thing every day, with sitting in the same chair all day, and with trying to come up with new things to do now that my real tasks are done!!!!!

My goals for this upcoming week include – celebrating Easter (the Blanchards are throwing a party—which they do with practically EVERY occasion), going to Arlington Cemetery and seeing the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, going to Old Town Alexandria, going to the Phillips Gallery (I’ve been thwarted in my first two attempts to go there, and I’m not going today because they FORCE you to pay the special exhibition admission price on the weekends), going to the Old Post Office (Marie went and said it was pretty neat), going to the Museum of African Art and looking at the designs for the new African-American museum in the Smithsonian Castle, going to..............as many of the Smithsonians on the Mall as I can......trying again to get inside Ford’s Theater, and walking around in Georgetown (just to say I did it, y’know). Sounds like it’ll be a fun week!

Oh, yeah. I also have to clean my room and whatever part of the Barlow Center falls under my jurisdiction, do all my laundry, clean out all my stuff and re-pack it, figure out how to mail my big box (it’s still here in my room, so I’m hoping to use it again!), get my supervisor’s evaluation turned in, go to the Library of Congress to look up info for my research paper, and finish all the last-minute internship stuff I have to do at work, including my VERY LAST phone duty assignment. Whoopee! Though I must admit, last Tuesday was the slowest phone duty day I’ve ever had. I only got maybe three calls in the entire hour, and only one of them was mildly frustrating/awkward/embarrassing.

Ok. Time to get on to the meat of this entry. I’m sorry for not writing about the past two days, because they’ve been really great. But also really busy.

On Thursday, I went to work and left early, presumably so that I could go to the Phillips Art Collection. However, since my workplace is close to the National Museum of Crime and Punishment and I had been wanting to go there for a long time, I figured I could check it out first, and then still make it to the Phillips before they closed at 8:30 p.m. that night. Wrrrrong!

I spent $15 to get admitted to the museum (which made me determined to get the most out of my trip by missing NOTHING), and THAT was a student discount from the regular $19. Then I spent 6 1/2 hours walking through the museum. It looked small from the outside, but looks can be deceiving—that museum was HUGE! The twisty winding walkways went on FOREVER! Twice I walked my way to what I thought was “the end” of the museum, to gage how much time I could spend browsing up to that point, only to discover when I got to what I thought was “the end,” that the exhibits merely turned a corner or went down a flight of stairs!

There were three floors overall. The first one, the one where I spent most of my time (since I thought it was “the end”), and the most interesting in my opinion, was about the history of crime from medieval times to the modern era. The second floor was a hands-on CSI “Investigate the Crime” sort of deal. It was mildly sort-of interesting, but I was too tired to really get into tracing the 100 steps that must be taken to determine how this hair sample and that knife-wound and this blood sample can be used to catch a crook. The third floor was about the show America’s Most Wanted, which I knew next to nothing about, but luckily, the floor was a little less “dense” than the first two, and full of video clips rather than small print text, which made it easier to get through. I was completely exhausted by the end of the trip, but also happy that I had gone, and not at all disappointed with the museum. It was interesting, it was interactive, it was big, and, despite going by myself, there were plenty of friendly people around who were happy to take pictures of me in the “obligatory poses.” You’ll see what I mean when I post the pictures ;)

Also, before I wrap up the post, I just have to say that the April Fool's tricks between Valerie and me are going on splendidly! Really, it's so much fun I think I might establish April Fool's Month as a tradition in my own family... She recently put a lot of round paper circles (such as one would acquire from a hole-puncher) in my rolled up bathrobe sleeve. I put some Easter eggs from our last FHE in her shoes. Then she put them in my shoes and bathrobe pockets. Then I used them accordingly:

I can't wait to hear what she has to say when she gets back. Oh, I also taped her closet door shut. Don't feel too bad - she turned one of my shirts inside out before leaving yesterday!

Another Random Picture Post!

I was not sure what to make of this contraption outside the Hirshhorn Museum. It's big and red, but IS IT ART!?

These are my two supervisors, Vivian (Publications, on the left) and Michelle (Communications and Marketing). We celebrated Michelle's birthday with cake, lots of chatting and socializing (something unheard of while I was living on the 4th floor!), and a trip to Chinatown for yummy Chinese food.


I came across this walking down Pennsylvania Avenue one day. It seemed kind of dumb when I saw it - seems like the last thing we need is another monument for FDR after the humongous conglomeration of statues and waterfalls and walls created in his memory down by the Tidal Basin - but after reading the enscription, I decided I rather liked it after all. What do you think?

After Conference on Sunday, a group of us went walking down by the waterfront in Georgetown. It was a very nice day, and the walk was very lovely. Here's a view of the Kennedy Center across the Potomac River. Pretty!

It's like a cross between the beach and the city! That's the Watergate Hotel in the far off right.

Someone got an official picture of us smiling and standing together in front of the river, but I decided to go for the natural, un-posed look.



I walked past Ford's Theater and the House where Lincoln Died, but there were such long lines to get into both of them that I decided to bypass them for today. Maybe another day... or maybe not. The House wasn't THAT impressive when I went in it, and Ford's Theater...I can always watch National Treasure 2. Ok, ok, maybe I will see that one. Anyway, in the meantime, I took pictures of the outside of both buildings.

I went to the National Gallery of Art today, and couldn't help taking pictures of this gorgeous main room, even though I think I've already taken two other pictures of it on two separate occasions. It's just begging to have its picture taken, really.

I think we have a winner for the biggest calf muscles ever seen on a female sculpture!

Cute baby sculpture! Eddieflooskers reaching for a pine needle...

There was one room with four huge pictures - Thomas Cole's "The Journey of Life." Cole is one of my favorite paintings, not only for the beautiful colors and details in his paintings, but for the themes and deliberate planning he puts into his paintings. I love his series about the growth and decline of the world as an empire, and this one is just as beautiful and symbolic. I took pictures of all the paintings, but some turned out blurry. This one is my favorite - it's the first one, and represents the beauty and innocence of childhood.

A memorial to Robert Shaw and his troops during the Civil War. I remember having to put this one down in a powerpoint slide for the Humanities 262 class, but I thought it seemed pretty boring at the time. Seeing it in life is MUCH more impressive, I must say. It's huge and very shiny, almost golden. And it brought back memories of Gettysburg (the most touching of all the historical sites I've seen) and of the "Glory" movie Joseph and I watched together for AHtg 100. So I really liked this piece. When I'm a teacher, it's going on the test!

James Whistler's Symphony in White. It's a little larger than life-size, and they had it hung up pretty high - it was easier for me to meet eyes with the bear than the girl.

This is what I spent the last half of my afternoon doing....

Just kidding! Things are starting to wind down at work, however, as you can probably tell from the fact that I spent a good two hours at the National Gallery of Art (on “lunch” break) and had time to give my professor an hour-long tour of my museum today!

The rest of the day was pretty quiet. I walked home, went shopping, and went to Institute. It was supposed to be on the presidents of the Church and the United States, but since we had just had General Conference, we talked about our favorite talks instead. Elder Jeffrey R. Holland’s was the first one mentioned, as I expected. If you haven’t listened to it yet, go to this link (http://lds.org/conference/sessions/display/0,5239,23-1-1032,00.html) and scroll down to the Sunday Morning session. It’s a wonderful talk for anyone wanting to know how Latter-day Saints feel about Jesus Christ and the Atonement!

Well, that’s it for tonight! Thanks for keeping in touch and supporting me, through the comments, phone calls, Gmail chats (well, to Daniel, anyway!), and everything else. I’ll try to do and write more tomorrow!

P.s. By the way, it looks like the last three paragraphs ended with exclamation points—that ought to tell you something about my state of mind right now ;)

Saturday and Sunday Recap!

Yesterday was a fun day. It began around 7:30 when I woke up and took a shower, then went with Valerie, Mike Bean, and Andy to Eastern Market to get their “famous” blueberry pancakes for breakfast. Unfortunately, after visiting the HUGE Food Market in Philadelphia, I was not too impressed, either with the food or the place itself (outdoors, there were a number of stalls with oriental—y’know, EASTERNish—merchandise for sale). I mean, sure, the pancakes were good, but $6 for 3 regular blueberry pancakes with a spoonful of butter and regular maple syrup on them? C’mon. The pancake place—named the “Lunch Market,” I believe—was the only busy place at the market, and we had to sit outside on a table—or rather, the frame of a table. I was the only one who didn’t grab a tray to eat my meal on, but I was lucky that the plate was a little too big to fall through the cracks. We also didn’t get any complimentary cups or water, and, against my better judgment, I didn’t bring my water bottle, so... yeah. Andy and Valerie ordered bacon (3 pieces each for a full serving—whoopee!) and shared it with Mike and me. It was windy outside and I had syrup on my hair afterwards from the wind blowing my hair into my mouth while I was trying to take a bite. And I WOULD have had my hair in a ponytail but I had just taken a shower, and it’s a little difficult to put up my wet hair. I’m not really complaining, since the pancakes were at least satisfying and it was a perfectly nice sunny day and I really do like wind...but at the time I was feeling thirsty, sticky, and a little stingy.

After our breakfast, we walked to the Mall to see the parade. We stopped somewhere in the middle of the Mall, where it looked like groups from the parade were standing around, and then found a nice shady place by the curb to stand or sit and watch. We stayed there for a little over an hour, taking pictures, videos, cheering, and eventually shivering as the wind got more boisterous. My hair was a lost cause by the time we left—it took me about 20 min. to brush and comb the tangles out!
The British are coming! Actually, they told us they were American soldiers... but the accents were a little fishy.

Some random old guy in a car led the parade. I mean, whoa! Wow! Yikes! Hey----it's ALEX TREBEK!!!!!!!!!! OMG OMG OMG!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! He didn't shake hands with any of us, but he waved and smiled and leaned in for lots of pictures.

Some clowns and a fire truck. Is this a parade or a circus?

One of the Maryland Rough Riders! They didn't do much rough riding, but the prancing was still pretty fancy. And I much prefer watching horses to cars in a parade, anyway.

I think this float was Miss America and two finalists, although I was not sure at the time which is which.

After seeing the parade, we walked to the Smithsonian Metro stop, stopping at Valerie’s workplace on the way just for fun. She works below the Ripley Center building, next to but not exactly in the Smithsonian Castle. I took a picture of her standing in front of her locked office – I think she thought I was kind of a dork for taking a picture of her in the dark room in front of her dark office, but oh well. I had one picture left on that camera and I was NOT gonna go home without taking one.

We got home just in time to see the start of the first session of General Conference. It was set up in the Barlow Center Great Room, but unfortunately, it was dubbed in Spanish. Yikes! Drew tried to translate for us at first, but then we heard that the basement TV was playing it in English, and most of us took off to watch it there. I got a nice comfy couch chair up in front :)

For those who don’t know, General Conference is a twice yearly meeting held for the leaders (including the Prophet—or President—and all twelve of the Church’s apostles) to address members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints around the world. The conferences are held in Salt Lake City, Utah in the Conference Center, and broadcast to churches and buildings throughout the world. There are five sessions over the weekend, four for the general church and one for the men and boys who hold the priesthood. Check out http://www.mormon.org/ or http://www.lds.org/ if you want to know more!

I loove Conference. When I was little, the experience of going to church together, playing at the playground, spending all day together, and eating special food probably had a lot to do with it. I listened to the talks and took notes, but also drew a lot of pictures and enjoyed doodling and playing games during the “boring” parts. But now I just love listening and basking in the Spirit that attends every session. The music is beautiful and the talks are just so....TRUE! Every time it gets better and better. I can’t imagine spending a more productive afternoon than listening to the wonderful, inspired words of men and women called by God to lead His church.

This Saturday, the talks were absolutely fantastic. Each one felt applicable to me in some way, and some of them (Elder Robert D. Hales and Elder M. Russell Ballard, in particular) seemed to have been written just for me. I definitely have a greater resolve to live the gospel and serve the Lord after listening to the testimonies born by these wonderful prophets of God. The music and every other aspect of conference was equally inspiring. I had forgotten that there would be a new apostle this year, due to the death of Joseph B. Wirthlin, but was excited to learn that it was Neil L. Andersen—he spoke once at a stake conference in Utah that I attended, and he seems like a very wise and humble man.

It’s Sunday now, and I finished listening to the 5th and final session of conference. It’s always a little sad...but the talks were fantastic, and I have a lot to think about and get to work on now! My favorite talks from the last two sessions were also the first speakers—President Uchtdorf and Elder Oaks. A coincidence? A miracle? I have to add, though, that Jeffrey R. Holland’s talk was one of the most emotional and powerful addresses I’ve ever heard. It was absolutely beautiful, and I absolutely cried like a little girl. Please, PLEASE read it or better, listen to his recording if you missed the session somehow.

In between the Sunday sessions, we celebrated March and April birthdays with cake, lasagna, salad, and rolls provided by the Blanchards. It’s not the traditional Conference fare we have at home, but, well, it was still pretty yummy! It was interesting to see how Conference was done at the Barlow Center—most people wore Sunday clothes, but some didn’t, and some (aka me) did both. I wore Sunday clothes for the 4th session, when I was in the Great Room with everyone else, but after dealing with the problems of people whispering and laughing and making jokes around me, I decided to watch the 5th session on the TV downstairs. I did NOT regret the decision—I was the only one downstairs, with a couch all to myself and absolute silence for the talks! It was HEAVEN! And I changed into more casual clothes, too.

In fact, I would have watched the 4th session of conference downstairs, too, except that when I went down, one of the guys was there watching a movie.

After conference today, some of us went on a walk to the harbor by Georgetown. It was a nice sunny, windyish day, and the waterfront was bustling with activity. In fact, it was so crowded I thought there must be an event going on (there’s a lot of events taking place with the Cherry Blossom Festival), but nope, it was just people out enjoying the view, drinking, eating, walking their dogs (soooo many dogs!), and boating. It reminded me a bit of the oceanside houses in North Carolina, but with the types of crowds at the Florida beach, and all around a river that looked kind of like Boone Lake in Tennessee... very cool!

That’s all I have for tonight – have a great week everyone, and keep commenting! I love to read ‘em!

P.s. Forgot to mention that for “Girl’s Night Out,” we all ate chocolate downstairs and watched “27 Dresses.” Blech. I much preferred my weekly viewings of “Lawrence of Arabia” and “3:10 to Yuma.”

P.p.s. Enjoy my short little video of the Scottish band at the Cherry Blossom Festival!

Random Picture Post

I got tired of not posting any pictures just because I don't have time to write about all my adventures in as much detail as I want to, so I'm going to break with tradition here and just post some of my favorite pictures from the past three months.

The incredible cupcake mosaic at the National Portrait Gallery, made in honor of Abe Lincoln's 200th birthday. I'm sorry for the weird angle and the missing cupcakes - I wasn't quick enough to get to a good spot before the cupcakes were divvied out, and I had to turn the camera upside down.

Taking a bite of Obama.
In the "Big" exhibit at the National Archives, one of the items on display was a size 22 shoe of Shaquille O'Neal's, given to George W. Bush. Suddenly my feet don't seem all that big!
Here's an interesting item on display at the National Archives. Save your documents for when I become a famous author, Charles Miller!

I revisited the National Portrait Gallery and got a picture of my candidate for the most handsome general in the Civil War. Any guesses as to his identity?

This banner in the National Portrait Gallery really makes me think of Unc. I have two questions: First, does anyone else feel the same way? Second, does anyone know who this is?

Adorable sculpture of a baby at the National Portrait Gallery. It reminded me of little Eddiefloofsters, so I had to take a picture.
And this one, next to it, would be Kirsti, naturally. Can you see the resemblance?

Me in Christ's Church in Philadelphia. This is where several founding fathers, including Benjamin Franklin and George Washington, went to church.

Mike Bean trying to distract me from the historic moment. *Rooooll eyes* I'm sitting in George Washington's family pew, by the way!

It seems like such a long time since I was afraid to walk by myself to the Lincoln Memorial. Now I go there every Sunday.
Did you know they have to mow the lawn at the White House? Well, they DO!

Me in one of the interactive mail trucks at the National Postal Museum. I really like how I look in this picture, particularly since you can't see how I look. Note the beautiful red, white, and blue colors in the composition. I can't decide - should I be a photographer or a mail(wo)man?

Did you like the random picture post? Should I do more, or just wait until I get the time and energy to write a real post?

Happy April Fool’s! A day late—what a brilliant trick!

I woke up yesterday knowing it was April Fool’s, and then promptly forgot about it all day as I went to work, spent the day in a very boring manner (wrote a paper and did some miscellaneous work-related stuff at work...), and came home.

Valerie came home with an equally boring story to tell, and it wasn’t until that evening when I was ready to go to bed that the shenanigans began

First trick goes to Val – she remade my bed so that the tag was at the top (that’s when I realized something was not right...) and the sheet didn’t come down to the end of the bed. It took me a little while to figure out that it was a trick, and then I laughed at it for about five minutes. Definitely worth the time that it took to remake my bed, and a terrific trick for a neat-freak such as myself! I firmly believe that I could have messed up her bed and neither of us would have been able to tell the difference...

Naturally, I had to get her back. My talents were somewhat limited by the lateness of the hour and the fact that she was in the room for almost the entire rest of the evening, but I did manage to

a. turn her pajamas inside-out

b. give our mirror a make-over

c. rearrange the cards Noelle and I made her for her birthday

After Valerie discovered all the tricks and had a good laugh, I thought the festivities were over, but it was not so.

This morning, before making myself some oatmeal for breakfast:

This afternoon, after coming home from work:

So far I’ve managed to change her bookmarks in her scriptures, hide her pajama pants in her pillow, and re-hide the “face” on her computer screen. It’s 11:25 p.m. now and she has two of the three tricks left to discover, so this may well turn into a month-long event. I sort of hope it does—nothing like roommate tomfoolery to reliven things around here!

By the way, every time now something seems a little bit out of place - such as my pajama shirt being turned inside out this evening, or Val's phone charger making its way into her makeup bag, or my own bookmark being put in another spot - we give each other suspicious glances. Both of us deny any involvement in these three specific cases, but they really are too quirkily appropriate to be coincidental. A magical elf, perhaps?

How was your April Fool’s Day? Any good tricks?

Shamless Plug

Want to see my latest publication? Check out the description I put together for our web site on the Louise Dahl-Wolfe exhibition! I even chose the picture!!!