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!!!

Did March come out like a lamb?

Hi everyone! I just wanted to say that I love you and the posts are coming. Things have been very busy in the last few days... as in I have been taking lots of pictures and notes and excursions to important must-see-before-you-leave tourist attractions, and just haven’t had the time to put together full wordy posts about my experiences yet.

Here’s an attempt to collect my thoughts and update you on what’s coming up in the blog as soon as I get the time.

Some of the places I’ve been and will write about SOON:
Jefferson Memorial (cherry blossoms are coming out, and I REALLY need to take some pictures!)
The Senate Gallery (“where tired travelers and sightseers can come in and rest their feet for a few minutes...”)
The House of Representatives Gallery
The National Museum of the American Indian
National Postal Museum
Lansburgh Theater

Some of ye olde places where I’ve been and which I STILL need to write about:
The Supreme Court
Harper’s Ferry and Gettysburg
Philadelphia and Valley Forge

Places where I want to go in the next few days and WILL write about:
Ford’s Theater/House Where Lincoln Died
National Zoo
National Museum of Crime and Punishment (it’s not cheap, but I hear it’s worth it)
Arlington Cemetery
Old Town Alexandria
Newseum (possibly...)
National Building Museum
All the Smithsonians AGAIN! (I need closure...)
Phillips Gallery (NMWA’s rival!)

Happy Birthday to all and to all a good night...

It’s after midnight, so I’ll only write a little bit here before going to bed. Today was a fabulous day, both at work and at home, despite my accomplishing very little besides turning in the three papers I had already written and working a little bit on the fourth one, due next week. I really want to get it done earlier, though, so I can concentrate on the research paper next week and the week after. It’s hard to believe that the semester is really drawing to an end. I’ll definitely miss Washington D.C., but I’m also really excited about going home and seeing the family. And I can’t believe how wonderful it is to have such a light workload. Only one twenty-page paper and then I’m practically done!!!! Amazing, right?

Anyway, the main reason why today turned out so well was that it was my supervisor’s birthday at work. Ergo, at least half the day was spent in partying: We had TWO cakes AND, for the first time, I went out with my supervisors to lunch! We walked to Chinatown and find a nice Chinese restaurant, where I ordered something relatively safe-sounding with noodles and vegetables, which turned out to be 1) very large 2) hot, 3) difficult to eat, 4) not what I had been wanting, and 5) all of one taste. But I managed to eat it and like it anyway. Someday I’ll get the knack of ordering Chinese food, I promise! Until then, though, a picture menu would be really nice...

It rained today, also, which was kind of nice since it gave me the first real opportunity to use that sturdy umbrella sent to me by my loving family. I used it on the way to work, and then just enjoyed getting wet on the way home—it makes my hair a little curly and just feels lovely and refreshing! Rain, glorious rain—I’ve really missed it in Utah!

I stayed at work a few minutes late to finish some stuff, and then walked home just in time for the Kennedy Center concert at 6. Only it wasn’t a concert—it was some high school group performing “The Taming of the Shrew” in one act, and an original skit called “Variations on a Scene,” wherein maybe 10 couples acted out different versions of the same story. It got a little boring after couple number 7, but I stuck around until about 6:55, and I was sitting in one of the very back seats where I had to strain to even hear them, so that says something.

After the performance, I got some oatmeal at Safeway (can you believe I’ve run out of both the oatmeal packets from home!?! The end really IS coming!) and went home. I packed a bag—Valerie’s bag, since I didn’t have one of my own—for our Philadelphia trip tomorrow, and am excited to be going to Valley Forge and Independence Hall. I will try to take pictures and post them more diligently over the weekend, but please be patient with me. The pictures from the Capitol turned out pretty rotten, and I do not know yet how cooperative my camera will be. Fortunately, we’re still planning to have a picture party at the end of the semester, wherein I will hopefully be able to acquire a lot of better-quality pictures of the places we’ve been.

As for the birthday thing mentioned in the title, I found out when I got home that it was Jamie’s birthday (have I mentioned Jamie on this blog before...? Yes, yes, I have), and that she had run into someone on the Metro whose birthday was also today, AND it was Valerie’s dad’s birthday (so she called him on the phone and we all sang to him...sorry Dad, I wasn’t quick-thinking enough to have them do the same for you on Valentine’s Day)! And I seem to recall it being Julie Hughes’ birthday a day or so ago..........sooooooo Happy belated birthday to you, Julie!

The Obama Mystery Solved! (P.s. Except for the "Michelle" part)

I knew it! I knew it I knew it I knew it I knew it!
See the following: http://voices.washingtonpost.com/44/2009/03/25/potus_events_40.html?wprss=44 and http://voices.washingtonpost.com/44/2009/03/25/obama_headlining_two_fundraise.html?wprss=44

I have only two reactions at the moment: First, why did I stay at home all day when I could have schemed to be there to take advantage of the most fantastic opportunity ever for an intern!?? (Duh. The Secret Service would have shot me dead, that's why.)



Second, $30,400 a COUPLE!?! The Kennedy Center suddenly seems a lot cheaper...

"Not a bad day..." (yup, I finally succumbed to the peer pressure and watched "The Office")

While at work on Monday and Tuesday, I kept receiving interesting emails about such topics as, oh, the Secret Service would be roaming around our floors and checking things out, and we had to be out of the building no later than 5:30 p.m., and on Wednesday would not be able to stay in the building after 2:00 p.m. Then it was changed to 1:30 p.m. Something was up, but nobody I worked with could tell me (either that, or they just didn’t know. Probably some of both). I heard someone mention the name “Michelle Obama,” which could either be 1) a garbled-up pronouncement of “This mail’s for Mama,” 2) one of the 1,000,000,000,000,000 normal, non-note-worthy mentionings of Michelle Obama that take place regularly in a workplace, D.C., or America, ooooor 3) crucial evidence proving that Michelle Obama herself was going to be at NMWA today! I won’t know until tomorrow. I’m too excited to sleep.

Just kidding. Ha. I probably won’t even remember it by tomorrow.

But anyway, since we all had to leave at 1:30 anyway, my supervisor gave me the day off, and, as a result, I had one of the best Wednesdays in my entire life (by the way, for those of you who don’t know me, Wednesday is my LEAST FAVORITE day of the week). Spent almost entirely at the Barlow Center from beginning to end. And it went by waaaaay tooooo fassssst, lemmetellya.

But here’s how I spent it anyway:

-Slept in. Glory, glory, Hallelujah!

-Made my bed, straightened up all of my stuff at my desk, cleaned the microwave, my desk, and—this probably took the most time of anything—the bathroom, washed ALL of my laundry and all the bathroom laundry (Mom—you are right, laundry takes forever!), finished some internship forms, and watched Nicholas Nickleby, the first Charles Dickens movie I’ve seen where the protagonist actually does exactly what I want him to do in every situation, and the outcome is exactly what I hope it will be. It was really great, but by the end I was feeling kind of perplexed, wondering why I was feeling sorry for the villain, and a little annoyed/suspicious with the hero for being able to take charge of his life and make it so perfect so quickly, and not entirely convinced that there weren’t still some loose ends or secondary villains somewhere that needed to be dealt with. But anyway, it was still a good movie. It made me laugh and it made me cry...although the same can be said for the horrific South Pacific, which both Valerie and I recently suffered through (to be honest, I couldn’t endure all of it) only by making numerous jokes and groaning noises through the ridiculous strand of cheesy love scenes/boring love songs. And the plot was...let me put it this way: stupid, stupid, stupid.

-Ate breakfast and lunch. Not at the same time, of course. But this was the first time I made myself macaroni and cheese for lunch—what a delicious surprise!

-Chatted with Valerie when she got back from her work. Yeah, the day went by waaaaaaaaaaaay too fast.

-Exercised downstairs while watching some more of Hidalgo. I’d already started it and could probably have finished it today if I didn’t have to watch all my favorite scenes again and then all my favorite moments in the favorite scenes. My particular favorite is the opening scene where Frank Hopkins passes the stuck-up rich guy and gives four wonderfully striking/oh-so-cheesy lines: “Why did you then?” “C’mon little brother,” “Let ‘er buck,” and—my favorite—“Yeeeee-haww!”

-Took a shower, rushed to Institute class (a little late but at least not stinky and sweaty!)

And that was my Wednesday—lazy and lovely and not-long-enough. It was wonderful to have a break in the middle of the week just to clean up everything in our dorm room and not stress about going out and doing touristy things in the city. And, as a bonus, now I feel extremely refreshed and excited to go to work and begin my Thursday! Seriously, let ‘er buck.