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I suspect that Ares and Artemis are rebel spies looking for weaknesses in this Star Destroyer. Sadly, I don’t think they’ll have too much trouble.
Making Star Destroyers is hard. (Read the “hard” with the appropriate whine.) The basic structure was easy enough, but I’ve tried twice to make the bottom panel work right, and it just won’t go. The Emperor wouldn’t tolerate me for long, that’s for sure.
We have a platform in our bedroom — a shelf, really, that cuts across an odd corner in the room. The cats LOVE this thing. Here’s Duncan with his head over the side.
I finally caught up with some of my photo albums:
Andrew and I took the bikes out this morning, despite the heat and humidity. I wanted to see more of the W & OD trail, so we packed up the bikes and drove out to Andrew’s office in Herndon. The trail passes really close to his office, and we’d biked past it once before this summer, but that was near the end of our trip. I quite like taking the trail from Herdon because there are fewer road crossings to contend with. The area, while not completely rural, is at least not completely built up yet. There were also a lot of flowers out this morning — way more than I’d seen on my last trek on my bike.
  
Total miles: 17.2 miles (my longest so far…we might just make my goal of 20 miles by the end of the season!)
Here’s Artemis contemplating the paper I’ve been working through over at Galaxy Girl. Sometimes I wonder if she’s got a better handle on it than I do.
And here are the boys — carefree, and without a thought in their heads about physics or astronomy:
Andrew and I decided to take the bikes out to Alexandria today. This has typically been one of our favorite rides, since it takes us along the Potomac and then down into Alexandria for a yummy lunch and fun shops. And, we did enjoy the scenery, mostly enjoyed lunch (though our waiter at Bertucci’s did not bring us rolls, even after Andrew asked), and went a little nuts at A Likely Story because they were having a “Christmas in July” sale with 20% off all books and 30% off non-books. However, there were a lot of @sshole cyclists on the trail today, for some reason, and the bike trip make me pretty cranky. (Hoping to post a rant soon.)
Just as we got to the river, we saw this kayak with a very happy puppy:
We stopped at the Navy and Marine Memorial along the trail, and I took these two pictures:
Total miles: 11.3 miles
Andrew and I might be insane, but we decided to say “screw it” to the 90% humidity today and hopped on our bikes. We ended up riding on the W & OD trail south from Vienna to the Custis Trail and then off to Ballston in Arlington. It turned out to only be about 10 miles, so this might be a trip we could do round-trip next time, with a movie at the mall as a rest-stop. This time, though, we took the Metro back to Vienna from Ballston. It was a fun ride — of course it’s generally fun to go someplace we haven’t been before, and this time the ride wasn’t too strenuous (thankfully, since it was hot and humid…mostly humid).
Pretty red flowers on the trail in Falls Church:
And there were raspberries everywhere — almost ripe:
Total distance: 11 miles (my odometer said 10.89 miles, but I forgot to put my computer on for about the first 0.1 miles, so I’m rounding a bit)
Andrew and I finally got back on the bikes today. We’d been away for the past two weeks with, first, my Dad’s visit, and second, a nasty cold. It was good to get back on the trail! We biked from downtown Vienna up to Reston to catch the 11 AM showing of War of the Worlds. We also stumbled upon the Reston Festival, with arts and crafts booths set up in Reston Town Center, along with bands and food. Also there, was this huge McGruff the Crime-Dog® balloon:
Total miles: 14.2 miles
My co-worker’s, Lorna’s, daughter got married today in a lovely wedding in Lorna’s back yard. I’m sure Lorna was panicking yesterday as we got the leftover rains from Hurricane Cindy, but it dried up fairly well for today, and was a beautiful day (if just a bit hot and humid).
The cake was really cool — a castle for their “fairy-tale” wedding…complete with dragon:
We spend much of the wedding hanging out with JD, Laurie, and Connor. Here’s JD and Connor saying “hi” to a very stressed out mother-of-the-bride.
And the happy couple just before their first dance (Jenny was passing off her flowers for the dance).
We wish Jenny and Jeremy the very best!
While Dad was in town, Andrew and I decided to take him to the Frank Lloyd Wright house near DC. Dad has always admired FLW’s designs, but has never seen one of the houses up close. The Pope-Leighey house is one of FLW’s Usonian houses — “modestly scaled”, affordable, and well-designed houses.
It was interesting to go there with Dad, who has been a carpenter his entire life — over 40 years. I’ve heard him lament many times about architects. The problem, it seems, is that while architects may be able to design buildings that look good, they frequently aren’t in touch with the more practical aspects of home building. It seems that FLW wasn’t much different. As we walked around the outside, there were several things that Dad pointed out as being impractical or just not a great idea. For example, the outside walls when down on top of the foundation. While it looked kind of cool, Dad mentioned that this is a good way to get water into the house, unless it’s sealed in some way (i.e. caulking), which had not been done on this house.
But overall, Dad really liked the house — he likes the way the FLW designed houses for their lot, and tried to use whatever was in the lot (like a hill or trees) to compliment his design with help of Eventscape.
Here’s a picture Dad by the side of the house, and one of the window by the children’s room. There weren’t many full-sized windows around, but the small row of windows seen in this picture ringed the entire house. From the outside, I wondered how there could possibly be enough light in the house, and yet this ring of small windows were more than sufficient.
Afterwards touring the Pope-Leighey house, we toured the Woodlawn Plantation. This was a plantation on land that George Washington gave to Martha’s granddaughter, Eleanor “Nelly” Custis Lewis, and her husband Major Lawrence. It was still a nice tour, with a knowledgeable tour guide and period furniture in the house (some of it original). As with the Pope-Leighey house, pictures were not allowed inside, but here are a couple of the house and grounds:
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