Halloween at the Pops

The fruit of all my costume-making labor came to fruition this evening at the Marvin’s Halloween Monster Mash concert at the Kennedy Center. Our picture was snapped by someone from WASH-FM, a local radio station, but we haven’t seen the gallery up on their web page yet. There were lots of kids there, many of them in costume. A few adults were in costume, too, though not a huge number. Our costumes, in my humble opinion, were among the best there tonight.

The concert hall was decorated up for the occasion. All the doors into the Hall were decked with spider webs. The stage had a pile of carved pumpkins, a couple enormous bats and spiders. There was also a skeleton choir. The decorations set a great mood for the concert.

The opening piece was a spooky-sounding string quartet, during which the other musicians paraded through the audience and made their way up to their seats. This was a great chance for us to check out their costumes. The musicians’ costumes were all top-notch. There were the normal suspects: pirates, witches, a punker, a Nat’s player (or fan), etc. Of note, there was a mad scientist, a sumo wrestler, a old, fat Elvis, an Indiana Jones, and a Raggedy Ann with a knife in her belly. There was, however, one witch that looked exactly like the Wicked Witch from The Wizard of Oz (or Elphaba from Wicked). The best costume was the “balloon guy” – he was dressed as a headless guy (i.e. with a jacket that went up over his head), and then in place of a head, he had an enormous, helium-filled, round orange balloon decorated like a jack o’ lantern. Oh, and the best part of the balloon guy’s costume was that he could make the balloon rise or lower, so for a while it was hovering well above the rest of the symphony.

The entire concert was great. Here are a few notes:

• There were a few movie pieces, from King Kong, Psycho, and Harry Potter.
• They performed a couple of numbers from Wicked: The Wizard and I and For Good. The soprano who sang the part of Elphaba in the Wicked pieces was fantastic. Sadly, I didn’t really like the other soprano who sang the part of Glinda in For Good – she didn’t sound as natural in the part, singing almost too deliberately for a Broadway song.
• They played a tango from The Addams Family, after which a girl dressed as Wednesday Addams came out and chided Hamlisch for vilifying ghosts and goblins, her friends. She then sang a sappy love song, which I can’t remember the name of (and isn’t in the program). While the girl did a great job with the song, I couldn’t believe that Wednesday Addams would sing such a song. She’s all about being morbid, and the song didn’t ring true.
• The finale was two numbers from Phantom of the Opera. The singers did a great job with these numbers, but I’m not sure I’m a fan of Phantom. Maybe I should actually see it one of these days.

Overall, this was a great concert. Andrew and I are going to have to look more closely at the Pops schedule and see if there are other concerts we would like to see.

Tags: halloween, music

Jo

Anyone who’s read this blog for a while knows about Felicia, my “PhD bear”. I got Felicia at Build a Bear the night of my PhD proposal defense. She’s working on her PhD in astronomy, just like me, and has accompanied me to grad-student type places over the past three years (such as AAS meetings and talks I’ve given).

So, when we went to Build a Bear last weekend for my birthday party, I knew I needed to pick another friend that somehow meshed with my personality. Jo was born. She’s more of an arty type than Felicia. In fact, Jo is currently writing a novel, though she won’t tell any of us what its about. I’m still getting to know her, but the part of her personality that has been emerging is quite different from Felicia. She’s much girlier, picking an outfit with fairies on it. Her chosen Halloween costume is a Tinkerbell outfit; her reason was that she really liked the wings and the cute little ballerina-type slippers.

Oh, and notice the sweater she’s wearing in the picture – Sweetie knitted that for her along with a matching scarf.

Anyway, I just wanted to introduce Jo, since she might be showing up here from time to time, just like Felicia.

Tags: build-a-bear

Party!

The big 3-5!

Sweetie flew in last night, so she and I headed off this morning to pick up balloons and ice. (I bribed her my noting that there was a Starbucks next to the party store – this got her going without too much cajolling this morning.) When we got back to the house, Crash and Mushi had arrived (a 4-6 hour drive for them, which they did this morning…yikes!). We used the tall boys to help us decorate for the second phase of the party; though, some things were better left to us girls.

Next we took off for lunch and a quick stop at the Hello Kitty porn store (as Mushi calls it), since Mushi wanted to see what new stuff they had. From there, we headed off to Tysons Corner for phase one of the party.

The girls convened at Build a Bear Workshop, while the guys went off and did whatever. Our party leader was great with our bunch of crazy, fun-loving, more-kid-than-adult adults. Oddly enough, none of us actually picked out a bear at Build a BEAR – there were four bunnies, two puppies, and a giraffe. We all danced while we stuffed our “bears”:
     

Read more…

Tags: birthday, build-a-bear, friends

Cat velcro

Ares and Artemis have been very clingy since my busy, busy two weeks has wound down. Today I was trying to write in my thesis, and they had to “help”.

Tags: pets

Two years!

That’s right, Andrew has put up with me as my husband for two years now. I can hardly believe it. This has been a great year for us, and hard to believe that our wedding was already two years ago. I still remember it as though it were yesterday.

I love you, Andrew, and look forward to growing together in the coming years.

Tags: my man

Dressing up

Let’s just say I don’t dress up. At least not often, and usually when I “dress up”, it’s not business dress-up, but a more casual skirt and top or slacks and top. Today, for our visits on the hill, I dressed up in business clothes, complete with nylons and dress shoes.

I have to say that it’s amazing the difference in my attitude when I’m wearing professional clothes. I felt important, like I had something to say, something to contribute. And the “clump” of my shoes added to my feelings.

Having said that, I must point out that nylons are made of pure evil. To get them on in the first place, much grunting, hopping and dancing must occur. Then, of course, they have to come off part-way at times during the day as I…um…relieved my bladder. But they never go on the same way they did when I was at home. No, of course not. They are slightly twisted, or the crotch is lower than it should be.

In addition to nylons, I wore a body-constricting undergarment to make me smoother under the dress. I was smart this time (unlike last time), and wore the undergarment over the nylons. However, I discovered new adventures with the undergarment. It has snaps in the crotch to make going to the bathroom easy. I don’t actually use them, but today they came undone in the middle of the day. While I was standing in the hall. Waiting for a meeting. To make matters worse, shortly after the snaps came undone, the bottom edges of the garment started to creep up, eventually forming a constricting belt at my waist. And there was nothing I could do about it except keep my face neutral, go into the next meeting, and wait until I could get into the ladies’ room.

Oh, and don’t get me started on the shoes

Tags: rant

A Day on The Hill

Our group met in the cafeteria of the Rayburn representative office building. Let’s just say it’s a far cry from the Goddard cafeteria. We went over our strategy again before our first visit, and worried about the couple of people who did show up (one turned up in front of the office of our first visit, the other turned up later in the day).

The day was mostly low-key with mere moments of action puctuated with hours of waiting. I made 5 visits &#150 4 representative’s offices and 1 senator. Members of our group make a total of 8 visits, but when the schedule between visits was tight (30 minutes), we split the group to make both.

Each meeting went very well. The basic structure of each meeting was: introductions, a few talking points, a few anecdotes relating the NSF to our home institutions or institutions in the congress-person’s district, thank yous and a quick exit. Since the National Science Foundation (NSF) budget has already been through the full House and the Senate appropriations committee, we were basically sending a message of thanks to the congressional offices we visited. In fact, the NSF budget has seen a 7.5% increase in the House, and nearly that in the Senate. The one thing we were requesting was that congress keep the increase through the conference or omnibus bill.

Each meeting went very well. Since most of the VA legislators were in favor of increasing the NSF funding, we were mostly preaching to the choir. In fact, one of our visits was to the chair of the House’s science appropriations committe, in which case we were preaching to the preacher.

I ended up leading our first meeting of the day. It went very well, though I didn’t bring up a few of the points I would have liked to – so much for 20/20 hindsight. As the day wore on, though, our group started to get a good rhythm going, and were able to pick up slack in the conversation when things lagged.

Having said that, there was one member of our group who really brought things down. He was from my district, and was originally supposed to lead the meeting for my representative. Thank FSM he got caught in traffic. He didn’t show up to the orientation last night, so he didn’t know how these meetings were supposed to go. One thing about the meetings is to make a quick exit. So, when things were winding down and we had the staffer on our side, someone would ask what we as scientists could do to help in the future – this was our cue that we were going to cut and run after the answer. This guy, though, just didn’t get that. In at least two meetings that I was in with him, after we had asked the “what can we do for you” question, he would bring up something completely unrelated to what we were talking about and certainly not in the spirit of getting out of there quickly. Ah well. We survived despite this guy.

One thing several people have asked me is whether or not this sort of thing really helps. I have to say that I wondered the same thing going into this project. The answer came when we asked the staffers what we could do for them in the future. Every single one of them said to keep up what we’re doing – contact our congress people, visit our congress people, and have these kinds of lobby days. In fact, the staffer in the House science appropriations committee chair made the point that up until just a few years ago, the math and science lobby seemed to disappear. It took the US’s competitiveness crisis (i.e. that we are not turning out the numbers of scientists and technical graduates that we’re going to need to compete in the global market) for the math and science lobby to return. So, we really need to lobby through letters and visits and make ourselves available as experts on these topics, and we really need to look at this as a long-haul thing, not just something to do until the crisis has passed.

And just one more note: I mentioned that much of the day was waiting. Well, while one of the team members and I were waiting for our final visit, getting a cup of coffee (him) and chai (me) in the Senate coffee shop we saw Jenna Elfman. Who’d ‘a’ thunk?

Tags: politics

Help! quick!

Did I mention Congress?

I’m going to Congress on Wednesday this week as part of an army of scientists being brought in to lobby on behalf of science funding. I’ve already figured out what I’m wearing to Congress on Wednesday (I bought a new outfit &#150 see it here).

However, there is an orientation and reception Tuesday night for the members of the lobbying team. Presumably, I could dress for this as though I were coming straight from work, but the problem is that I wear shorts or jeans to work. So, I need your opinion on what to wear. Here are three options from my wardrobe (click on the images for a full-sized view and keep in mind that the outfit may not be completely ironed and I’m not wearing the body-constricting undergarments that I’ll be wearing Tuesday).

Let me know in the comments ASAP which outfit you think I should wear.

Option 1	Option 2	Option3

Another 30 miles…oof

  

For the second time this summer, we’ve done a 30 mile ride! Yay us!

This time we drove the bikes out to Ashburn, where the W&OD trail crosses Belmont Ridge Road. I thought this was the location of the convenience store that we’ve often biked to from Herndon, but turned out to be the next crossing out. Good thing, though, because our goal was the end of the trail, in Purcellville, and back, and I’m not sure I would have made it even the extra couple miles.

Today was very, very humid, but the temperature wasn’t too bad. On the stretches of trail with lots of tree-cover, the ride was very pleasant. However, on the few stretches without any shade, it got to be opressive – especially on the ride back when I was already reaching seat-intolerance.

  

It was a lot of fun to get back out to Purcellville again, though. We stopped in at Final Draft Books, browsed for a little while and picked up some well-earned drinks and snacks. Then we walked down the street to the cool toy store we discovered on our Honeymoon. There, I found an awesome toy for my brother’s birthday (can’t say what it is, just in case he stumbles upon this entry). All-in-all we spent about an hour in Purcellville before bopping back on the bikes and returning.

I have to say that 30 miles, after several weeks of too-hot biking conditions, being on travel, and pathetic rides, was perhaps a bit too much. I mean, yes, I made it, but a muscle in my right leg started hurting around mile 20 and I reached seat-intolerance at about mile 25. As long as I didn’t do any real damage, though, it does feel good to push myself.

Trip miles: 31.0 miles
Season miles: 273.5 miles

Tags: bike

Friday Kitten Check

Yup, it’s that time again. Telecommuting on a Friday means that I have to fend off the cuteness of our three fuzzy residents. Ares spent much of the morning following me around, and finally settled near the window in my office, so he was easy to find:

Artemis was on our bed, with the “Vegas chick” toy (a feather and pom-pom toy that reminds me of the hideous head-wear worn by some Vegas showgirls):

And Duncan was watching out the front window:

Tags: pets