Biking and Bookcrossing

Andrew and I decided to go out for a bike ride this morning. We haven’t been out since a particularly nice day in February. It seems that the nice weekends of late have been taken up with wedding stuff, so our bikes have languished in the shed for the last two months.

We drove up with the bikes to the Washington & Old Dominion trail (W&OD) in Vienna, and headed off to the south/east (for the first part of the trip, it’s mostly a gradual uphill — the benefit of going this way first is that on the way back, when we’re already getting tired, the way is mostly downhill). My original goal was to go at least 8 miles — that’s how far we went in February. We ended up going a total of 10 miles round-trip! This is a definite improvement over last year.

When we got back to our car, I bookcrossed one of my books at the caboose along the trail.
   

My first cicada

There’s been a lot of buzz in the area about the 17-year cicadas, but I hadn’t seen one yet. Until this morning.

I went out to get the paper, when something bounced off my head and onto the front stoop. It was a cicada. I have no idea where it came from, perhaps the door jam. Let me just say that it was ugly, and I’m not looking forward to the full infestation.

Ford Dealership

Andrew got this puzzle for me for Christmas. It’s an old-time Ford dealership, and there is a Model-T in the lower left corner. Have I mentioned my Model-T yet? I don’t think so…I’ll need to do an entry on that.

Planetarium Visit

We vistited the Arlington Planetarium this evening with our wedding coordinator. We hadn’t seen the planetarium since Andrew and I visited last October to scout it out as a possible wedding site. This time we wanted to see the lighting and layout to figure out what we need to do to make the wedding work.

A few notes:

• For the majority of stars to be visible we will need to have the planetarium quite dark — so dark that we will not be seen. To overcome this, Devri suggested using candles. Jonathan, the planetarium director, actually had a candle, so he lit one for us to see how it looked. It looked good — very romantic — but using too many will drown out the stars just as sure as the dome lights will.
• We thought that maybe we should choreograph the ceremony so that the lights will come up and down at various places. We would then probably save total darkness for a special reading.
• I’m nervous about getting the officiant to go along with this. They tend not to like flash photography, so I’m wondering how they will deal with darkness. We will probably be able to get a lighted lecturn, so maybe he’ll go along with us, but … We meet with one next week, so we’ll have to see if he’s willing to work with us on this point.

Overall the visit went well. I quite liked Jonathan — prior to tonight we had only talked on the phone. He said that he has a background in production and broadcast, which makes sense, but he seemed much like a scientist to me.

Tonight was the first time that the wedding felt real…concrete. We’ve been making plans and writing checks and talking with vendors, but it’s all seemed kind of unreal. Tonight, though, standing in the planetarium, talking about where I would be walking in, it finally hit me that this is real. I’m sooo looking forward to it!

A few pictures:

Great Outdoors puzzle

Another puzzle finished. This was one of those where all the pieces are shaped the same (except the edge pieces, but all the edge pieces were shaped the same), and there’s no picture on the cover of the puzzle box. You have to assemble 60 mini-scenes using 9 pieces each, and then figure out how they go together using clues in the scenes. It was actually quite fun.

Why I Marched

Melissa, her mom and her sister came out the weekend for the March for Women’s Lives.

I never used to worry about Roe V. Wade. I thought it was safe — written in stone. But with the current administration, I’m worried. An article on Salon, Marching for their Lives, was an eye-opener for me.

I’m certain that my family would be surprised, shocked, and disappointed that I would participate in such a march. However, I believe that the issue of abortion is strongly tied to our right to the freedom of religion. It is a religous question of when life begins, and for our government to legistate which religion is correct on that point is tantamount to chosing a state religion. I can’t support that.

There are also so many other women’s health and family planning issues at stake in this next election. One big one is access to birth control both here and abroad. Bush signed into law the so called gag-order which prohibits federal funds to go to any clinic overseas that even discusses the possibility of abortion, even if the US funds are never used for such a purpose. This has severely crippled such clinics overseas in their ability to teach family planning to third world people.

What most fundamentalists don’t understand is that abortion is never the first option. Organizations like Planned Parenthood are committed to the overall reproductive health of women. They would prefer to teach men and women to use birth control and how to have a planned family than to use abortion as the first or only option.

Planned Parenthood was there for me when I was a student in need of regular check-ups and birth control. My health insurance didn’t provide birth control, so I was left on my own. Planned Parenthood offered reduced-price services for me. Sadly, during one of my visits I found out that they could no longer offer free services for those most in-need. They still maintained a sliding scale, but the lowest end was no longer free. These are the people most in need of birth control.

What the fundamentalists also don’t seem to understand is that the number of abortions did not change after Roe v. Wade. (Sadly I can’t remember my reference for that — I did a report long, long ago and found that statistic in my research.) What it did was change the number of women dying from back-street abortions, clothes hangers and broken glass douches.

Bush’s solution is to teach abstinence. Hello? Abstinence isn’t enough. According to one of the speakers on Sunday, nine out of ten people have had sex before marriage. Nine out of ten. I wonder how many of those have had real sex education in school. I wonder how many of them know how pregnancy happens and how to prevent it. Not enough. Salon had an eye-opening article about the abstinence programs: Bush’s Sex Fantasy.

Salon also had a good short story, Miscarriage of Justice, that might be of interest.

Ares Helping

I was trying to update my book journal. (The paper version, where I write more than my on-line version. sometimes I even give away the ending in my paper journal. For shame!)

Ares decided to help.

Sweetie & Mushi II

I poked the girls out of bed around 10AM (though the clocks still said 9 — I should have changed them last night). We went to Anita’s for breakfast…er…brunch. Anita’s is a New Mexican restaurant in town, that even has green chile (my favorite, and hard to come by anywhere in the States besides the Southwest). Mushi lived in NM, too, so I’m going to try to take her to Anita’s every time she’s in town.

After that, Mushi headed home. She had a 6-hour drive in front of her, and work early tomorrow morning. At least we accomplished our mission.

Sweetie, Andrew and I went down to the Mall to see the cherry blossoms. Even though we were a few days past peak and it’s been windy and rainy the past few days, the blossoms were still quite lovely.

Unfortunately, the batteries in my camera only lasted long enough for these two pictures. The spare batteries were also drained (oops! I need to be better about recharging my batteries!). So, we walked back to the Mall, Andrew bought a cheesy one-time-use camera (not Kodak, but in a yellow box just the same…though it did have Kodak film).

After Sweetie got more pictures of the blossoms, we walked to the American History Museum where I was in search of a good Washington DC book for kids. Sweetie also needed to see the Ruby Slippers. We also stopped in the Chasing Venus exhibit — and exhibit covering the transits of Venus from 1631 to now. There will be another one in June this year.

Finally we returned home, exhausted from being out in the wind all day. A bit of Chinese delivery, a couple episodes of Coupling, and we were more than ready for bed.

Bridesmaid Dresses!

Mushi and Sweetie (my bridesmaids) came up this weekend so that we could either find dresses or patterns and fabric for their dresses. I’m not a picky bride — I wanted them to wear something navy, but that was my only real stipulation. I wanted them to wear something they’d be comfortable in, and frankly didn’t care if they had the same dress or not.

I got them out of bed around 10AM so we could get out of the house by 11 and on our way. The original plan had been for them to make dresses, but we decided to go to the mall and see if we could find something off the rack. Barring that, we could at least get some ideas as to what styles we liked, what looked good on them, and what was hideous while disguised as fashionable.

We started at Bloomingdale’s, because it was the closest entrance to the car. They didn’t have anything. Next was Nordstrom’s, which had a dress to try on, but in the wrong color. Plus, they didn’t have Mushi’s size, so it was irrelevant.

By then we were ready for lunch. I took us to Luciano’s, since it was on the way to the next anchor store, and their food is really good. (Plus, Andrew proposed to me in the Luciano’s in Oakton, so it seemed appropriate).

Lord & Taylor was next. They had a dress that both Mushi and Sweetie liked. Sweetie looked great in the dress, but unfortunately, Mushi’s dress was just a smidgen too small. We didn’t see one in a larger size on the rack. Sweetie could just get the dress, and we could keep looking for a matching navy for Mushi. Instead, we asked the sales clerk if perhaps they would have one in a larger size. “No,” she said, “but they might have other formal dresses downstairs.” But not this dress? “No, not this dress.”

We decided to have her hold the dress, so that we could at least get it if we didn’t find something better downstairs. We trudged to the escalator, disappointed that we were so close to a dress, but not for both girls. We started browsing the section the sales clerk upstairs had indicated, but at first found no formal dresses. Then, way in the back, there were two racks. And what did we behold? The very dress we’d been looking at upstairs. In a larger size. That fit Mushi. That looked fabulous on Mushi.

That was it. We had two matching dresses that both Mushi and Sweetie liked. Off the rack. In less than 4 hours. They even claimed they would wear them again.

I’m not holding my breath 🙂

Lesson 03/10/2004

I tried out a couple new horns on Sunday — a Yamaha YAS475 and a Jupiter 869SG — but I confess that I couldn’t tell much difference between the two. Part of that is certainly because they both feel a lot different from my old Buescher sax from the 1920s. The old horns had the keys all in a line, where the new ones are made to be a bit more ergonomic. The keys are basically all in the same place, but just different enough to be confusing (kind of like using a natural keyboard after learning to type on a standard one).

Tonight I played a couple duets with Fred on the Jupiter sax, and liked it quite a bit, despite occasional slip ups because the keys weren’t where I was expecting them. I decided on the Jupiter because, since I couldn’t tell a difference by playing the two of them, it was the one I liked the looks of better (and it was a couple hundred less than the Yamaha). I bought it on my way out of the store! Yay!