Doll House Museum

I found out about the Washington Dolls’ House and Toy Museum at the miniatures show I went to in April, and I thought that Maggie would be the perfect person to take. (I wasn’t so sure that Andrew would enjoy it.) Wow! The museum takes up 7 large rooms in what seems to be an old house in Chevy Chase MD (just across the border into DC). But this represents only half of the Flora Gill Jacobs’ collection.

Our plan was to grab lunch and head off to the International Spy Museum after the doll house museum. However, on our way to lunch, I pointed out to Maggie that there was a secret option #2. “What is secret option #2?” Maggie asked. “We could go home.” I replied. I could see Maggie’s face light up a bit. While I think we could have made it through the museum, I’m not so sure either of us would have gotten much out of it.

So, instead we went home after lunch at The Cheesecake Factory (we split a sandwich so we could each have a slice of cheesecake, of course). We spent the evening finishing tiling our mosaics.

Baltimore

Wow! We did a lot today, and I can barely move!

We started in Fells Point Baltimore , where we had lunch at a cool Egyptian restaurant.

We did not have enough time in Fells Point — I think next time we’ll dedicate at least half a day to the area.

From there, we headed a bit north to the American Dime Museum . I’d been there with Andrew earlier this year, but I thought Maggie would enjoy it. It’s a bit weird, and not everyone I know would “get it”. (In fact, a couple people, possibly a mother and son, came in after us, and had disappeared before we had even completed one room.)

Finally, we went to the National Aquarium . I’d been waffling on whether to bring Maggie there or not. It wasn’t that I thought she might not enjoy it, but I’ve already been three times in the last couple years, and it’s expensive! But then I thought that it might just be the highlight of her trip. As it turned out, it was the highlight — especially the sea horses exhibit as a whole and the sea dragons in particular.

(Mental note: Arrive at the Aquarium after 3PM. You avoid all of the school and daycare groups, and have a much more manageable child-to-adult ratio. Plus there are just fewer people there.)

Oh! And, we also saw the While You Were Out truck in Baltimore — right across from the Aquarium. Looks like someone in the Baltimore area might be in for a surprise soon! Sigh. I didn’t see Andrew Dan-Jumbo, though.

All in all, a very tiring day. But loads of fun!

Annapolis

Maggie needed to see water, so we went to Annapolis. While we were there, we shopped up and down Main street. I took just a couple pictures:

I think my best find of the day was a “Mad Scientist Tigger”. I didn’t even know they had made one, but apparently it was available at the Disney Store (where I rarely shop). I found it in a toy-collectable store.

Air & Space and Natural History Museum

Since several of the other museums I wanted to take Maggie to are not open Mondays and Tuesdays, I decided that we would start with a trip to the National Air & Space Museum . This is probably Maggie’s favorite Smithsonian museum (though the Natural History Museum would be a very close second).

I really wanted to show her the Explore the Universe exhibit, which is the first I’ve ever seen that features some aspects of high energy astrophysics (like a flight spare model from the EGRET telescope on the Compton Gamma-Ray Observatory, and a piece from one of the detectors on the ROSAT X-ray telescope). These artifacts were also featured in a cool “Museum Roadshow” interactive display, where they parody “Antiques Roadshow” to tell you a bit about each artifact.

We also stopped by the Natural History Museum, so Maggie could see the dinosaurs and the big blue whale. Unfortunately, they are renovating the room where the whale used to be, so no more whale. We, of course, went through the gift shops, too, and there Maggie accidentally dropped the lid of a box between the shelves and store-front window. <Giggle> We were going to tell the clerk, but she was looking frazzled and cranky, so we just slipped out instead.

Maggie’s in town! — Today, Alexandria Shops and Ghost Walk

Maggie flew in today from Georgia. After stopping at home for lunch and to drop off her luggage, we headed down to Alexandria. We each found a few used books, but for the most part we were all just window shopping. We had dinner at the Thai restaurant across from the Market Square — this was where Andrew and I ate the first time I was in Alexandria.

After dinner, we took the Alexandria Ghosts & Graveyard Tour. There were actually two “ghost” walks leaving form the same location — one was led by a member of the parapsychology department of the University of Virginia, and would tell about how to spot a ghost, how to photograph and record a ghost, etc. The other tour, the one we took, was a telling of the folklore that had collected between the revolution and civil wars. Our guide was in costume, and led us by lantern light (though it wasn’t actually dark enough out for us to need a lantern). She was a fairly animated story teller, though at times it grated on my nerves a bit. All in all, though, I quite enjoyed the tour we took, though I think it would be interesting some other time to take the other one, too.

Fun Day

I wanted to see Spellbound, so as a reward for working so hard yesterday with such spectacular results (see yesterday’s entry), Andrew took me up to Bethesda to see it. He also took me to lunch (yummy portabella fajitas at the Austin Grill) afterwards.

One of our favorite used bookstores is in that area of Bethesda, too, so we poked around there for a while. I found a pop-up book of the Universe (cool!) and an oversized book on celestial maps. Unfortunately I did not find Beyond the Blue Event Horizon, the second in Frederik Pohl’s Heechee series. Of course, the state of the sci-fi section was such that if you weren’t very motivated, you would never find a single book (lots of books on far too little shelf space).

Overall a very good day, making yesterday all the more worthwhile.

Viva Vienna Festival

This was my first time going along Church Street in Vienna — I had no idea there were any cute shops in Vienna! (Other than the antiques shops along Main Street.) While looking at the booths setup for the festival along Church Street, I found Once Upon a Time, a toy shop in an old General Store building. The toy shop has all the toys that I wanted as a kid, including Bryer horses (I’ll probably go back and get myself one sometime). They also had a huge room full of doll houses and accessories! I finally have a close resource for my doll house!

Up the road a bit was a New Age-y type store, but I decided not to go in this time. There was also a house wares/garden shop, which I did go into. They had a lot of fun things, but most of it was out of my price range.

The festival itself was also fun. I mainly went to see what crafters were there, and to get a big bag of kettle corn. The Usborne book people where there, and I picked up a nicely illustrated astronomy book for my nephew.

Miniatures Show

I got a doll house from Santa when I was in 3rd grade (or so). It was one of those kits that your Dad has to put together. Unfortunately, my Dad didn’t get around to finishing it for several years. By that time I was less interested in the doll house, so it stayed in the basement.

Sometime when I was in junior high, I decided to pull it out again and think about decorating and furnishing it. However, by then I was expected to pay for much of the decorations and furniture myself, but I wasn’t very good at saving money. I didn’t get much further than wallpapering the kitchen and getting stuff for the bathroom (toilet, tub and sink).

I’ve decided that it’s time to resurrect the doll house. I have a real job, so $20 here and there for wallpaper and carpet or a dining room set isn’t much of a set back. Dad has agreed to fix it up structurally, and I’ll start getting things for decorating.

To that end, I went to a doll house and miniature show in Tyson’s Corner this weekend. It was just a couple meeting rooms at a local hotel, but it was a lot of fun to see what’s out there for doll houses now. Several vendors had “out door” things — shrubbery, pool stuff, loungers, etc. I don’t think I’ll need any of that, but it was all very well designed. Another vendor only did miniature flower arrangements. Holy crap! They started at about $65 and went up. The family in my house isn’t that fancy 🙂

I did find several things to buy. I got some wallpaper for the girl’s room, and some carpet (though I’m not sure if the carpet will look good with the wallpaper — still deciding on that — but no matter, I’ll just use the carpet in the living room if I don’t like it in the girl’s room). I also got a few things for the attic playroom — a toy box, kids’ table and an assortment of toys. I decided that I can’t really buy furniture without getting the room dimensions from Dad — it would be way too easy to buy too much.

Oh, I need to remember to ask Dad if he thinks we can put electric lights in the house.

Cherry Blossoms

We got up relatively early today to head into the District for the Cherry Blossom Parade. It started at 9:30 AM, so we wanted to be down there at least a half hour early, requiring us to leave the house by 8:00 AM. (Okay, so that’s not that early, but it’s a Saturday, so give me a break.) It was a miserable morning — cold (40s) and spittling — which might sound bad, but I think it kept some of the crowds away. We were able to get a plot of sidewalk right next to the street for a pretty good view.

There were marching bands from all over: Maine, Georgia, Indiana. The Navy band was near the front of the parade, and sounded pretty cool. They got a huge round of applause, too, as did all of the armed forces and police. That’s quite a switch from just a few years ago.

They also had some of the big balloons. Not as big as the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day balloons, I imagine, but still it was the first time I’d seen them in a parade. I mused with my mother about why we didn’t have them in Minneapolis, and she reminded me that they would have to navigate the downtown’s skyway system. That’s okay, the Minneapolis Aquatennial parade usually has a lawnmower brigade, and the Hollidazzle parade usually has a snowblower brigade — not many big cities can say that. (Can they?)

I don’t want to sound un-American, but does 9-11 have to be brought up at every big event from now until the end of eternity? I’m not saying that we should forget it — we absolutely can not. But there has to come a time when we can celebrate without throwing the pall of 9-11 over it. I bring this up because there was an old fire engine (very cool) in the parade that was blasting the Proud to be an American song sprinkled with speeches about “We’re going to get these terrorists”, etc. It would have been fine without the speeches sprinkled in — it might have evoked a feeling of patriotism, but as it was it seemed to be a cheap, sentimental trick.

Enough ranting.

After the parade, we went to the National Air & Space Museum for lunch and a bit of shopping. I also took my parents through the relatively new Explore the Universe exhibit. I was impressed with this exhibit because they include a bit on high energy astrophysics — they have a spare module from the EGRET instrument on the Compton Gamma-Ray Observatory; they also feature the Chandra and ROSAT X-ray missions. This is the first time I’ve seen much of anything on high energy astronomy in any museum.

(One rant about the exhibit, though. They had an astrophysicist design a stained glass window depicting the electromagnetic spectrum. However, he included cosmic rays!! Ugh. Cosmic rays are not light! They are particles and are completely separate from the electromagnetic spectrum. They are likely made in high energy parts of the Universe, like supernovae or supernovae remnants, but that does not make them light.)

Finally, we walked down to the tidal basin to see the cherry blossoms. Wow! They were at their peak bloom, and they were quite lovely. Hopefully some of my pictures turned out. It was very crowded, but worth it.

National Aquarium in Baltimore

The last time my parents visited in 1999 (?…I need to double-check that), they did many of the Smithsonian Museums and drove down the Maryland coast looking at lighthouses. This time, I decided that they needed to see a bit of Baltimore. The National Aquarium seemed like a good choice. Andrew also joined us, even though we’ve already been to the aquarium — we both enjoyed it the first time, so looked forward to our second visit.

The aquarium was much as we remembered, but the last time we went, it was on a federal holiday (i.e. schools were closed). It was probably just as busy as the last time, but today there were lots of school groups, so the adult-to-child ratio was much, much lower. It’s hard to pick a favorite thing at the aquarium — we enjoyed the dolphin show (and the little ones have grown quite a bit since the last time Andrew and I had gone), we also watched the sting rays for a long time, and I was creeped out (in a good way) by the sharks. Perhaps, though, the highlight was still the sea horses. My favorite was the leafy sea dragon, near the end of the exhibit.

I rediscovered the types of people I hate:

• Stupid people with cameras. There was one guy who would not look at any of the exhibits except through his camera. He was quite rude about it, too. One time he shoved the camera right between my mother and I.

  The other type of “stupid people with camera” are the clueless ones with digital cameras. I have nothing against digital cameras, mind you; in fact, I’m thinking about getting one myself. However, there was one group crowded around one of the small tanks who waited several minutes to take “just the right picture”. Then, as if oblivious that they are not the center of the universe, they sat in front of the tank checking out all of the pictures they had taken that day. I started to shove the girl in the group, and they finally got a clue.

• Clueless parents. Ugh. We got behind one mother and daughter walking down the stairs in the rain forest exhibit at the top of the main building. We just needed to get down about ten steps, but that took forever because the mother was letting her 2-year-old daughter walk down the stairs with her hand-in-hand. This meant that the entire width of the stairs was taken up by the pair, and we were going at a snails pace. Come on lady…pick up your daughter. She can practice going down stairs in a place where there aren’t already ten people behind you.

After the aquarium and lunch at The Cheesecake Factory (yum), we went to the USS Constitution, since Dad really wanted to go through the ship. They are still restoring the lowest deck, but there is still plenty to see and learn. After we had finished the audio tour, one of the “sailors” was giving a talk on food on a ship in the American Civil War. It was a good talk — featuring hard tack, salted junk, coffee and ale. I, however, started to get seasick during the talk, and had to run out as soon as he had finished. As a result, I don’t think I really heard the last half of the talk. My parents and Andrew claimed that they couldn’t feel the ship moving much, since it was docked, but I assured them that it was, indeed, moving.

We parted ways with my parents at that point. They were staying at a bed and breakfast in the Federal Hill area of Baltimore, while Andrew and I needed to head home so we could get to work tomorrow. Before going back to the car, though, we did stop at the big Barnes & Noble near the Hard Rock.