Art Galore!

We spent much of the day at the Museum of Fine Arts. Andrew had read that they have the largest collection of Monets outside of Europe. So, even though Andrew is not a huge fan of Impressionism, he took me there. Fear not, there was plenty there for Andrew, too.

The museum had a large collection of Egyptian, Greek and Roman art. (Sweetie, I took the hedgehog picture for you. It’s an Egyptian vessel of some sort.)

They also had a great collection of antique instruments (plan little bit ahead for this one &150; the instrument room opens an hour after the museum, and closes about an hour before). In addition to some impressive harpsichords and pianos, they had some highly decorated harps and stringed instruments. Of course, I homed in on the case with a saxophone, which is pictured to the right. The other instrument in that picture is actually clarinet.

Of course, my favorite part was the Impressionism room. There were two of Monet’s Waterlilies and a slew of others. In the next room were a few Asian-inspired European pieces, including Monet’s La Japonaise, which I’m not sure I’ve seen before (in books or online, that is, since of course I haven ‘t seen it in person before). That’s the on pictured to the left.

After we left the Museum of Fine Arts, we poked around Boston Common for a while, seeking out some of the Cow Parade” cows.

Our final stop, for a busy, busy day, was a the Museum of Science for Body Worlds. Body Worlds is an exhibit of plastinized bodies. The exibition is touted as “educational”, though I might argue with that assessment. Certainly there was an educational aspect to the exhibit – there were rows of cases containing plastinized organs organized by the system they’re associated with (such as locmotion or digestion). These cases also showed some unhealthy examples of organs, such heart that had gone through a heart attack. And these cases were certainly educational.

However, the crux of the exhibit were the full bodies that were on display. They started innocently enough with just a full body, then one with a man leaning back with his hands behind his head, and one with his arm extended for a handshake. But then they started getting weird. There was a woman in a diving position, but her front and back had been split with her organs standing up in the middle. But that was mild compared to what was to come. In the next room, there was “drawer man”, with random squares cut from his body and then pulled forward or pushed back to expose his insides. The most disturbing one, to me, was “ring man” who was displayed holding onto altheletic rings. He had rings of skin removed from his body and extremities.

I wasn’t creeped out by the exhibit, as I thought I might be (which might be surprising, since it was completely my idea to go, while Andrew wasn’t sure about it). I would quibble with calling it a primarily educational exhibit, though. In fact, I’d call art, albeit with a questionable medium.

Tags: trip report

Play time!

The meeting ended today, and so-as not to waste my free ticket to Boston, Andrew came up today so we could play this weekend. We had made reservations at the Hotel@MIT. Yup, I went from Harvard to MIT. I must be smart.

I have to say that any crappy hotel would have been welcome after the Harvard dorms (no offense to Harvard or my suite-mate, but I just hate dorms), but this was no crappy hotel. The Hotel@MIT was beautiful and geeky all rolled into one. What more could a geek like me want?

There are patent pages behind the front desk, robots in cases in the lobby, and classic pictures of MIT around the whole hotel. Just outside each room, there are sconces that look like circuit boards. The best part? The throw blanket on the bed is full of equations (see picture at the right – click to see a larger view)! Oh, and in the hotel information booklet in the room, the first tab is connectivity! Finally, a hotel that understands what is most important!

Tags: trip report

A visit to Lexington

One of the guys helping with the meeting I’m attending lives in Lexington and volunteered to give us a tour. Most of the meeting participants (18 out of 25) signed up to go along on the tour. We met at Lexington Green, the site of a skirmish between the British and Rebels. (Though, Bruce, our native guide, was quick to point out that everyone was British at that time.)

After Bruce gave us a great telling of the history, we walked around the square for about 45 minutes. Sara and I went to see Buckman Tavern and then walked the couple of blocks to the Hancock-Clarke house, where John Hancock and John Adams were sleeping when Paul Revere rode into town to warn them of the coming British troups.

We capped the evening with dinner at Not Your Average Joe’s. Good food, and I sat at the fun table, so a good time. (Except for the “bug incident” – one of the women at our table had a salad, and pulled something out of her mouth when it tasted oddly spicy. It was a shield bug. Eeew! But, the manager made things right, and we didn’t have any complaints…well the soman with the bug might have, but she seemed to take it well with a little humor.)

Tags: trip report

Having fun in Boston

I don’t have time for a detailed entry right now, but thought I’d drop a quick note. First of all, I’ve posted some of my pictures from our adventures yesterday to Harvard’s historic scientific instruments collection: check them out on my Flickr stream. We also took a tour of the Great Refractor, and I have just a couple pictures on Flickr.

Wondering what else I’ve been up to? Check out the pics below:

More later.

Tags: trip report

No-gas books

We finally got out on the bikes again today. Yesterday it looked like rain in the morning, so we decided to scrap our biking plans, catch the farmer’s market in Vienna and finally see Superman Returns. It was wet outside this morning, but the sun was out, and despite weather.com’s report that we had 80% humidity, we decided to brave it. As it turned out, it wasn’t that bad for biking. The temperature wasn’t too high and there was a bit of a breeze which helped with that humidity. The clouds returned for a while and we felt a few drops, but all in all not bad weather for biking.

And Andrew finally got to try out his new biking outfit we bought him over a week ago. I’d been raving about how much I loved my biking clothes – the padded shorts, the water-wicking material, and of course, the fashion statement it makes.

Our destination was Hole in the Wall Books. We’ve biked there several times, but usually we drive the bikes up to Vienna and bike from there. Today we just biked from home. That adds about 6 miles to the round trip total, and, actually, without that the ride has become almost too short for us now.

When we got to Falls Church, we biked up Broad Street a bit to a statue Andrew had seen on his last trip to the doctor. He had thought it was a man with a bunch of dogs. What was it really? A disturbing statue of a farmer feeding slop to a bunch of pigs. WTF? The statue is outside Don Beyer’s Volvo, and apparently Don Beyer Sr. was the one who commissioned the statue. Just weird.

Trip miles: 17.2 miles (or so &#150 my bike computer keeps resetting itself at random, even while I’m in the middle of biking)
Weekend miles: 17.2 miles
Season miles: 236.3 miles

Tags: bike

Too Hot to Bike

This weekend was just too hot and too humid to bike. Friday night we went to a movie (The Devil Wears Prada, if you’re wondering), and I felt like I was having trouble breathing just walking into the theatre. Gotta love 80% humidity with >90° temps.

So, we took the opportunity to knock off a couple items off of our summer “to-see” list.

One item on the list was a small exhibit at the Freer Gallery called Pretty Women. It was an enjoyable exhibit. I didn’t snap any pictures, but did get one by one of the same artists featured in the Pretty Women exhibit.

Next on the list were the Muppets at the American History Museum. The museum has a display of Muppets voiced by Jim Henson, and some later Muppets from The Dark Crystal (the latter ones are not near the 3rd floor display of the other Muppets – you’ll need to search a bit, but I think they were on 1st floor, if I remember correctly). The display is only up until September, when they’re closing the museum for renovations. Here are a few of my pictures (I’m posting thumbnail sizes to fit more pics in this entry – click an image for a larger view at Flickr):

After lunch, we walked down to the Air & Space Museum to see Magnificent Desolation, and IMAX movie about the moon landings. The movie was really cool, and probably the closest I’ll ever get to walking on the moon. We still want to see the Roving Mars IMAX movie (also at the Air & Space), and Aliens of the Deep (at the Natural History Museum) – looks like we’ll have to make another trip down to the Smithsonian this summer.

Tags: museums

Well, we don’t have to bike anymore this summer!

Why? Because we made our summer’s goal! Today’s ride? 32.6 miles. Yay us!

We decided to take the Mount Vernon Trail to…well, Mount Vernon, of course. We metroed to Rossyln, and hopped the trial from there, went through Alexandria, down to Mount Vernon, and back to Alexandria. We’ve done the trail from Rossyln to Alexandria several times before this, but it was the first time we ventured further south.

Getting out of Alexandria and under the Wilson Bridge (read: construction), was a bit nerve-wracking, but the rest of the trail was beautiful. I worried on the trail south about the return trip – we seemed to be going down several small hills, but it seemed that there weren’t so many uphills, which, of course, would translate to downhills on the return trip. The last hill up to Mount Vernon did defeat me, and we walked the last 0.2 miles to the top (it was a long hill!).

Fortunately, the ride back to Alexandria was hardly as bad as it seemed it might be. In fact, except for one bad, long, hill, it turned out toe be reasonably easy. And, 30 miles, to boot! Yay us, again!

Trip miles: 32.6
Weekend miles: 32.6
Season miles: 219.1 (yikes, over 200!!)

Tags: bike

King Tut in Chicago

We actually made it to Chicago and the Field Museum just in time for our 10-10:30AM entry tickets to the King Tut exhibition. We drove to Madison last night, and then left this morning around 6:30 AM to get to Chicago in time. In fact, we should have had plenty of time, but breakfast took almost an hour. At a truck stop. Normally breakfast is very fast at truck stops, so we weren’t sure what was going on there. We didn’t get to check in at our hotel before hitting the museum as a result, but at least we made it.

The exhibit was wonderful! Way too crowded, but great to see none-the-less. We weren’t allowed to take pictures in the exhibit (not surprising), so all I have are a book of postcards. My favorite thing in the exhibit was a cartouche-shaped box with Tutankhamun’s name in it and an elaborate necklace/pectoral.

After the King Tut exhibit and lunch, we poked around the rest of the museum, though we only took in a few of the exhibits. We were still rather tired from our drive and early start this morning. Of course, we had plenty of time to spend money in the gift shops. After dropping a few bucks, we went to check into our hotel and take a bit of a rest.

After resting, we ventured out of our hotel to find dinner. Just a couple blocks down Michigan Ave. was the Hilton and Kitty O’Shea’s – an Irish pub which had great veggie burgers.

The Taste of Chicago is also this weekend, just across from our hotel. So, we decided to check it out. Of course, as soon as we got very close, we started to get overwhelmed by the crowds. We didn’t actually taste Chicago, but I did get to snap a few pictures of the cheesy midway carousel.

Finally we went back to the hotel and crashed. Lots packed into one very tiring day!

Tags: trip report

Off in Minnesota

I flew to Minnesota this morning. Mom was supposed to be home alone next week on vacation – the original plan was for her to go visit Dad in Colorado over the 4^th, then Dad’s job got put off until he wouldn’t be able to take that week off, so Mom was going to be alone at home with a week’s vacation. Finally, the job’s been postponed again, so Dad will be in , but Dad’s job in Colorado has gotten postponed so that he won’t be there next week. Anyway, when we thought Mom was going to be alone for that week, I decided to come out and visit. Mom made a plan for us to drive to Chicago to see the King Tut exhibit at the Field Museum. Even though Dad was still home, we decided to go forward with our girls’ weekend.

So, here I am in Minnesota for a couple days before Mom, Gram and I drive off to Chicago. I’ve spent most of the day going through Dad’s pictures from the last twelve years. Dad has this bad habit of taking pictures, developing them, and then…well…nothing. They sit. For a long time, they sat in paper bags, completely unsorted. Dad organized them a bit when I told him I wanted to go through the pictures of the time we went to that Canadian fishing lodge. My real goal is to grab pictures of Allie and Sammy – our cats who recently died. Allie died earlier this year; she was 18 years old. Sammy died last year, and she was 16 years old. They were our first cats. And I want to put together a little scrapbook for Mom (in fact, I’m using the mini-book I made at the scrapbook convention last week).

This evening, Dave and Jen came over with Kira and Sofia. Since Sofia’s birthday is next month, I brought my presents for her so i could watch her open them. What fun! She’s so cute with her presents. She even loved the outfit I gave her, hugging it to herself right after opening it. Kira helped her little sister with her presents, and showed her how to make the little cat stuffed toy “meow”.

Then we all went out to dinner at Macaroni Grill, meeting Kevin and Brock and Amy, Halley, and Eric there. We had a great time, and Kevin even brought me one of the button candy strips from the 40th Birthday Retro Candy Box I sent out for his birthday earlier this month.

Tags: trip report

Cool Shirt!

I’ve mentioned here previosly that sometimes I have trouble looking at myself as a *real* cyclist and my insecurities as a “fat” cyclist. I hate to admit it, but I also sometimes have trouble seeing myself as a worthwhile person in general, just because I’m larger than I should be (actually, more likely because I can’t seem to change that fact). On one level I know that’s stupid, but our culture has been set up to make fat people feel like lesser human beings. Never mind that I’m an astrophysicist contracting at NASA – I’m fat, so I can’t be as much of a person as the thin supermodels on the cover of Cosmo.

I don’t usually dwell on this much, or, rather, I try to bury it as soon as the thoughts pop into my head. Today, while biking, a group of cyclists passed me and Andrew, and one of the women said, “Cool shirt” as she passed me. I was wearing the cute “lava green” shirt I had bought for myself last summer the first time I made a 20-mile ride. I’m certain that this woman didn’t know the impact of her words.

Read more…

Tags: bike