Posted by barb on Nov 25, 2004 in
Around DC,
Pictures Several years ago, I discovered that the best day of the year to visit the Smithsonian Museums is on Thanksgiving Day. Yup, they are open. In fact, the only day they are closed is Christmas Day. And, since everyone else is travelling or spending the day at Grandma’s house, the museums are relatively empty. No pushing, no shoving, minimal children running around unattended, and a great chance to see the exhibits.
This year we decided to go out to the Udvar-Hazy Center, an extension of the National Air and Space Museum near the Dulles Airport in Virginia. The Center is still somewhat under construction — there was a nice display of helicopters with no explanatory text for any of them. They opened the McDonnell Space Wing just a few weeks ago, so my Aunt and Uncle missed it (they went when they came up for the wedding in September).
A few pictures:
| Outside the museum — a sculpture and “wall of honor” |
Lockheed Blackbird (Andrew’s favorite) |
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| The model used for the Close Encounters of the Third Kind mother ship. This picture turned out really well — it’s actually not very well lit, especially considering the plaque invites visitors to look for the fun objects the makers put in, like an R2-D2, VW Beetle and submarie. |
Me by the space shuttle Enterprise. This one was not actually flown in space, but designed to be tested in the upper atmosphere. It doesn’t have the heat tiles that the space-bound shuttles have, but still impressive. |
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Posted by barb on Oct 9, 2004 in
Around DC,
Books,
Pictures Andrew and I went downtown for the National Book Festival organized by the Library of Congress.
This event has been happening annually for the past three years (this is the fourth festival), and each year more authors and a greater variety of genres are added to the schedule. This is the first year that there has been a Science Fiction & Fantasy Pavilion, with eight featured authors. This might explain why this is the first year Andrew and I have gone.
We started the day by buying copies of Frederik Pohl’s newest book (not even available on Amazon last weekend), and then made our way to the Teens & Children Pavilion, where E. L. Konigsburg was giving a reading.
I remember reading Konigsburg’s Jennifer, Hecate, Macbeth, William McKinley, and Me, Elizabeth when I was in grade school, and I absolutely loved it! I re-read it last year before releasing another copy through Bookcrossing on Halloween. She read from her latest book, The Outcast of 19 Schuyler Place. From the two excerpts she read, I’m very much looking forward to reading it! She also relayed a touching account of having lost both her editor of thirty years and her husband of fouty-five years within a year of each other, both from pancreatic cancer. This is the first book that she’s published that neither of them saw the finished copy.
We left Konigsburg’s Q&A session a bit early to line up for her signing. That was an affair! She was scheduled to sign from 11 AM – Noon. We were in line at about 10:45 AM. My book was signed at about 12:10 PM. Andrew left a bit early to catch Frederik Pohl’s reading. (I was bummed to miss part of it, but I’d been in line so long, it was becoming a moral imperative to get my book signed.)
I missed out on Pohl’s reading, but Andrew said that it was a bit stilted. However, I did make it for most of his Q&A session, which was quite good. At 84 he’s a lively guest, if not entirely optimistic about the future of the human race.
Next, Neil Gaiman read from a work-in-progress, Anansi Boys. I don’t know if I’m a Gaiman fan or not, but Andrew is, so we stayed for the reading. The only thing I’ve read by Gaiman was Good Omens, written with Terry Pratchett. I hated, hated, hated that book, but it’s hard to know if it was because of either of the authors or if I just didn’t like the way they worked together. I’ve since read more of Pratchett and have enjoyed some of it. But, Gaiman’s reading was quite fun, and Anansi Boys is comedic, at least the portions he read (not his normal style, according to Andrew), and sounded like something I might want to read. We’ll see.
I left while Gaiman was reading a second excerpt so that I could line up for Frederik Pohl’s signing. This line went faster than Konigsburg’s line, though I’m not sure why — perhaps there was less chit-chat, and there certainly seemed to be fewer people slowing down the line with pictures. I had Andrew snap one while Pohl was signing my books.
Posted by barb on Sep 11, 2004 in
Around DC,
Pictures We took our last panda hunting trip today. We had just two pandas left — the one at the Anacostia Museum (were we’d tried to go a couple weeks ago, but failed miserably due to DC’s Escher-like road lay-out), and the one at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel. The Mandarin Oriental Hotel is at 1330 Maryland Ave, SE — an address that according to both Yahoo! Maps and Mapquest does not exist. Fortunately, as we got close, there were green signs directing us to the hotel.
There is acutally one more panda, but it was stolen early in the Pandamania installation. Sigh.
One other note: the pandas are going to be gathered up over the next couple weeks and moved to one of two locations to prepare for the auction (the Mariott Wardman Park Hotel and American University — check out the Pandamania gallery page for more). They will be on display during daylight hours, so it’s a great way to see a bunch of the pandas without as much effort and Andrew and I have put forth over the summer.
As usual, I have pictures posted on Flickr.
| Panda Tales |
Emperor P’ing |
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| Me with the last panda! |
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Posted by barb on Sep 5, 2004 in
Around DC,
Pictures We are sooooo close to seeing all of the pandas around town. After today’s trip, we have seen 147 of the original 150 pandas. Sadly, one of them was stolen, so we only have two pandas left to see (one of those we tried to see today, but couldn’t figure out where it was).
As usual, I have pictures posted on Flickr.
Here are a few of my favorites from today’s adventures:
| Ocean Snack |
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| PANDAbandana |
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| Panorama Panda |
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Posted by barb on Sep 4, 2004 in
Biking,
Books,
Pictures We biked up to Hole in the Wall Books again today. We didn’t have very much time last Thursday, since we needed to get back to the car before it got too dark, so we decided to head out again today and take our time at the bookstore.
The ride feels shorter and shorter each time that we do it. Today, like Thursday, I actually made it up the big hill going east just after the Beltway. But today, unlike Thursday, I also made it up that same hill going the other way. Whoo Hoo!
Our destination:
After we got back, Groom Bear, in the back seat of the car, felt the need to be protected from my driving:
Posted by barb on Sep 2, 2004 in
Biking,
Pictures We’ve had little opportunity to bike on the weekends, with the panda-hunting trips and wedding errands, so we went out after work tonight. Sadly, it will soon get too dark too early to ride after work.
Tonight we took the W&OD trail from Vienna towards Falls Church. We made a little side trip to Hole in the Wall Books on Broad Street (aka Route 7). It’s just a block or so off of the W&OD trail, and the road has sidewalks, so it’s an easy ride. There I picked up a few books on the 100 Most Challenged Books of 1990-2000 list. Banned Books Week is Sept 24 – Oct 1 this year, and I want to release books like I did last year.
On our way back, I took a couple pictures:
The road behind
and the road ahead:
Total miles: 10.4
Posted by barb on Aug 29, 2004 in
Around DC,
Pictures Today’s panda-hunting trip did not find Andrew nor me at our best. This trip was meant to catch the pandas that aren’t easily accessible by Metro, and I had carefully plotted out driving directions to several of the pandas. As usual when using driving directions to navigate DC, we found the directions lacking, and had to scramble to figure out an alternate route. Andrew did a great job navigating, and did get us to 7 of the pandas. Sadly, we ended up missing 5 of them due to…um…road weirdness beyond our control.
As usual, I have pictures posted on Flickr.
Here’s my favorite from today’s trip:
Posted by barb on Aug 22, 2004 in
Around DC,
Pictures One of the reasons for our trip to the National Zoo was to see the Pandamania Panda’s there and near the Woodley Park Metro. There were seven in all — we have just 22 pandas left to see after today (including the one that was stolen…we may never get to see that one).
As usual, I have pictures posted on Flickr.
My favorite one on todays trip is Will You Miss Us?, a panda depicting several endangered species:
  
Sadly, this one shows some vandalism — those white spots look like someone “keyed” it or something.
Posted by barb on Aug 22, 2004 in
Around DC,
Pictures We got up early this morning to go down to the National Zoo and see the new tiger cubs. The cubs are only out in the habitat from 7:30 – 9:30 AM, so we had to be up by 6:30AM to get there and watch them for a while. It was well worth it. I have an album up for our trip, but here are a few of my favorite shots:
| Tiger Cub Tangle |
Cubs and Mamma |
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| Tiger Cub |
Keepers Getting the Cubs Inside |
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| Lounging Lions |
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| Hidden Hippo |
Panda Tumbly |
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Oh! One other thing. I’ve been to the zoo a couple times now, and I’ve been to the gift shop near the big cats and the one near the pandas. This was the first time I went to the one in the Visitor’s Center. Wow! This was a higher class of gift shop. It might not be the best one for the kids, but for the adults who want something a bit classier from their trip to the zoo, I strongly recommend visiting this gift shop above the others. They do still have most of the same kids-oriented toys, but in addition, there were two displays of lovely jewelry, a display of arty ceramic animals, and a large book section. I spent way too much there.
Posted by barb on Aug 19, 2004 in
Biking,
Pictures I’ve started feeling a bit restless and couped-up, so I dragged Andrew and me out on our bikes tonight. It was 93 degrees with 70% humidity and a 40% chance of severe scattered showers (though the sky looked clear). I didn’t care…I needed to get out.
We loaded the bikes on his car and drove up to the W&OD trail in Vienna and headed off toward the southeast. Considering neither of us has been biking for aobut a month, I think we did fairly well. We made it up the hill just past where the trail crosses the Beltway (though I did have to walk up about a quarter of the hill…on the other hand, that’s further up the hill than I’ve ever made it on the bike).
I made us stop on the Beltway bridge on the way back. My hope was to get a picture of a car or two passing under us, but only managed blank street. The traffic wasn’t dense enough, I guess. But I still think the picture looked kind of cool:
Total miles: 6.7