Wet San Diego – II

I went out this morning to take a few pictures around the Town & Country Resort, where the AAS was held this week. I especially wanted to get “after the flood” pictures of the stream behind the resort. Here’s a comparison of the stream from Tuesday, when Pat and I braved the flood to go to Old Town, and today:
Looking West:

Tuesday

Friday

Looking East:

Tuesday

Friday

Tags: trip report

Wet San Diego

Apparently every time the American Astronomical Society is in San Diego, it rains. This time it has been raining for over a month, and this is a part of the country that usually gets only 10 days of rain per year.

Behind the Town & Country Resort, there is a small creek with a foot bridge which leads to the trolley, San Diego’s Mass Transit Train. When Pat and I went out this afternoon to catch the trolley to Old Town, this is what we saw:

That golf cart was provided by the resort so we could get to the bridge. However, on the other side of the bridge, the road we needed to cross was flooded as well.

Pat and I found a path around the flooding by walking up a block and then crossing. The sidewalk we were on only had about an inch of water. However, when we came back from Old Town, there was more water on the sidewalk — we had wet feet while manning the booths for the cocktail hour tonight.

Tags: trip report

More Smithsonian Museums!

To cap off a very good year, Andrew and I visited two Smithsonian museums that neither of us had visited before: the National Museum of the American Indian and the Postal Museum.

We started at the American Indian museum. It just opened a few months ago, and it’s still very busy. We had to line up to get in, but the line moved fairly quickly. The crowd inside, however, kept growing the entire time we were there. There was a dancing demonstration at about 1PM, when we were leaving, so that might explain the crowds, or it could just be that the museum is so new.

Unfortunately, my impressions of the permanent exhibits was not very positive. Our Lives aimed to show where and how modern Native Americans live, was overcrowded with both people and information. The second I walked in, I felt overhelmed by the number of panels to read, and there was no clear feeling of where to go first. Andrew and I merely made a circle of the exhibit and walked out a few minutes after walking in.

The exhibit I wanted to enjoy was Our Universes, which dealt with the different ways that different tribes describe the universe and their place in it. There were about 10 different viewpoints covered in the exhibit, each with a separate small room, sometimes mimicking the tribe’s meeting place or “religious” house. However, each room was so small that the presence of just three people made it all but impossible to see and read the materials, and made me clausterphobic. We only made it through 4 or 5 of the alcoves before I needed to leave this exhibit as well.

I think the only exhibit we both thoroughly enjoyed was Native Moderism featuring the art of two modern Native American Artists: Allan Houser and George Morrison. That’s one of Houser’s sculptures pictured below.

From the American Indian museum, we trekked up to Union Station for lunch. There was a huge toy train running that we could see from our balcony seat at America (a restaurant featuring dishes from across the US).

The Postal Museum is just across the street from Union Station, so rather than trekking back to the Mall, we made a quick decision to change plans (we were already a bit tired from all the walking). Neither of us was expecting much from the Postal Museum, frankly, but it was rather enjoyable.

The main exhibit starts in the woods of early America. The earliest postmen walked through the woods, notching trees with an axe so that following postmen could follow. The exhibit follows the history of the postal service, from letters delivered to a central post, like a pub or general store, in town, to rural home delivery. At the end of this main exhibit, there was a fun exhibit on direct mail which I had to spend a lot of time at (much to Andrew’s chagrin) — but, hey, I learned that to ship an overcoat in the early days, it was often cut in half and sent in two packages because sending one that was that heave was more expensive. And early mail-order catalogs were used for text books in some rural communities, and as, um, toilet paper sometimes.

The travelling exhibit was on the first postage stamp — if I was a collector, I would probably have quite enjoyed this. However, I’m not a collector, so I found it a bit boring.

This picture is from a collection of fun mail boxes — the Muffler Man:

State Trees and African Art Museum

I had today off, so Andrew took it off as well, and we trekked downtown.

A few years ago Mushi and Jeff had stopped for a day on their way up to New York to see his family for the holidays, and we went down to see the White House Christmas tree. None of us had known about the “state trees”, though. These are smaller evergreen trees decorated with ornaments sent in by representatives of each state. I have pictures of the trees on Flickr. The pictures are roughly in alphabetical order by state, but I changed around some of the pictures to make the lay-out work better (some trees have two pictures, while others have just one — I wanted the trees with two pics to be side-by-side rather than on different lines).

The most interesting trees had ornaments that were hand-made. Some were obviously done by children, others by adults, but these were infinitely more interesting than obvious store-bought ornaments. States that submit ornaments that contain little scenes, or that are paper/ornaments arranged inside the big plastic holders should glue the scenes/papers in place — these ornaments are on the trees in the cold for a long time, and get jostled around. On some trees it was hard to imagine what the ornaments started out as. Also, to the parties submitting ornaments, I found that the trees that had bows added to the big plastic balls protecting the ornaments looked prettier. Those big plastic balls are kind of ugly and distracting, but by adding bows, they looked more like part of the tree instead of a necessary evil.

After warming up by the old Yule Log, we walked to the American History Museum for lunch, and the went quickly through the Castle, where there was a replica of the Arts & Industries Building made out of gingerbread.

Then we made our way to the African Art Museum. Neither of us had been there before, so we wanted to finally visit. They were between travelling exhibits, so we only got to see the permanent collections, but those were impressive. I quite liked the masks and the Art of the Personal Object. The architecture of the building itself was impressive. It is built into the ground, rather than upwards, so you descend to view the collections. There is a lovely fountain at the bottom in an atrium that is open all the way to the roof, with a sky light. We’ll likely visit again when they bring in new exhibits.

Christmas Tumbleweed!

I was looking through my old photo albums this afternoon, and stumbled across a picture of the original Christmas Tumbleweed©.

If you’re thinking, Hey, that’s a cool idea, then chances are you are either from the midwest, east or some country other than the US where you don’t regularly see tumbleweeds. Or, you could be a child from a Southwestern state. Melissa and I are midwesterners.

If you’re thinking, Hey, I had one of those when I was a kid, then you are probably from the Southwest, and dragged a tumbleweed into the house and decorated it while your parents protested.

Of course, you might think, What an idiotic thing to do, in which case you are probably a grown-up. Screw you.

Melissa and searched long and hard for this tumbleweed. There were two problems: first, tumbleweeds are really a Spring thing (we didn’t know this), becasue that’s when the wind really picks up and blows them around; second, we needed a small one to fit in the room. We were so proud when we found this one. As we were walking back, we made up a song. (Sorry Mush, hope you’re not embarrased)

O Tumbleweed
(to the tune of O Christmas Tree)

O tumbleweed, O tumbleweed,
How rounded are your banches.
O tumbleweed, O tumbleweed,
We looked so hard to find you.

We searched all day,
We searched all night,
We’ll put on you
Some blinking lights.

O tumbleweed, O tumbleweed,
How rounded are your branches.

The next two years that I was in New Mexico, we were able to get a larger tumbleweed, because we were renting rooms from the very understanding, very easy-going Bob.

Here’s the 1996 Christmas Tumbleweed (from which you can see that Ares started his obsession with lying under Christmas foliage at a very young age):

And the 1997 Christmas Tumbleweed (the only time we had a non-homemade ornament on the ‘weed):

Summer 1998 I moved across the country to Maryland, where I had to settle for a Chrstmastree.

I can’t help it…he’s too cute

I’ll stop posting pictures of the kids when they stop being cute.

Holiday Vaudeville

I dragged Andrew to the Kennedy Center this evening for the free Millenium Stage Holiday Vaudeville performance.

Upon arriving, we were given a small paper bag containing a kazoo and wrapped mint. We were told that everything would be used during the show, so we weren’t to get rid of any of it (like tossing the mint’s wrapper).

There were four performers/groups during the one-hour show. The host/emcee was Sean Grissom, a cajun cellist. He performed a few songs between the other acts, including a piece off of his “Celtic Cello” CD which Andrew bought.
Grissom called up Artis the Spoonman first. The Spoonman plays, as you might suspect, spoons. Ordinary spoons.

Next Grissom led the audience in an unforgettable rendition of “The Little Drummer Boy” (or, as he called it, “The Little Cellist Boy”). Here is where we used our candy wrappers, creating the rhythm. However, I must say that we sucked. I had lots of trouble keeping the rhythm, and usually I’m not too bad at that. You can imagine the rest of the audience.

Then Grissom brought up AJ Silver, who does trick roping and whips. Next Grissom lead the audience in “Jingle Bells” on our kazoos. I got the hang of it about halfway through.

Finally the Alexandria Kleztet. The big finale was “Auld Lang Syne” with the audience on kazoos again. At the end we did a mock New Years Eve with a count down, and the audience popping the paper bags at zero.

A very fun show! Almost all of the performances at the Millenium Stage are simulcast on the Internet and archived, so you can watch it if you dare.

Afterwards, we walked out on the terrace overlooking the Potomac.

Human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together – mass hysteria.

Well, dogs and cats snuggling, at least…

Chirstmas Shopping

We ventured out to the mall today to finish off our Christmas shopping for each other. We had already finished all of our shopping for family and friends, since those all had to be shipped across the country (and a couple up into Canada). So, all we had left was each other. We split up, with Andrew heading off to the other end of the mall to start his shopping.

My first purchase? A Christmas outfit for Felicia, of course.

We were actually out of the mall by about 2 PM, just when it seemed to be getting really busy. Yay us!

Christmas Baking II

After a quick trip to the grocery store, first up today was the English Toffee. I still don’t have it right, though. When I was only heating it to “hard ball” stage (265 F), it was chewy. I saw a few recipes on the web that said to heat it to “hard crack” (300 F), but now it’s grainy. It tastes fine, but I can feel the grains of the brown sugar. Sigh. Maybe next year.

Finally, I got around to decorating the Sugar Cookies.
This was just a cool picture:

And here’s the finished tin of cookies: