QOTD: "I don't make jokes. I just watch the government and report the facts." - Will Rogers
Reading: Michael Smith, Tom Crean: Unsung Hero
Listening to: the original cast recording of Allegro
Decluttering accomplishments: filed a bunch of papers, did financial odds and ends
Before I get to anything else, I wanted to pass along a recent news story that didn't get more than local attention. The Secret Service placed a call from the vice president's residence to animal control. It seems a deer had tried to jump over the barrier and impaled itself on two wrought-iron spears. Animal control put the deer out of its misery and hauled off the carcass. That's the official story. But the speculation is that this might have been a special secret deer, equipped with weapons of mass destruction, intent on defoliating the vice presidential manor. Sure they claim they just buried the carcass, but you know how these things get covered up. And, yes, I'm joking.
The week started out rather stressfully, with a surprising amount of last minute odds and ends coming up. It wasn't really a particularly high work load. But I'd been expecting a quiet week. And I had a lot of non-work stuff to do. I never did get around to vacuuming, which is all for the best as I'd only have needed to do it again after Robert left. He may be wonderful, but the gentleman with whom I'm conducting the world's longest running brief meaningless fling has a tragic flaw. He sheds.
Anyway, Robert had a couple of days here. I worried about whether the directions I gave him for meeting at the airport were clear enough, but it worked quite well. We took the opportunity to try out a restaurant in Herndon that had been well reviewed. Once we managed to find SBC Cafe, it was quite nice. Their conch chowder doesn't measure up to that at Rhumba in Boulder, but the peppered tuna steak was very tasty, as was the orange-kahlua creme brulee for dessert. Robert had curry-crusted rockfish, followed by white chocolate bread pudding, and seemed happy with that.
I took Friday off from work and we started out the day with lunch at Stacks, a kosher deli downtown. That is, after wrestling with bad ISP connections so we could both check our email. Anyway, the deli was okay, but it's not New York. There are bad signs from the start, like them asking you what kind of bread you want and offering to put lettuce and tomato on your sandwich. (Rye bread should be the default, but you should have the option of an onion roll if and only if you ask for it. The only thing that goes on a deli sandwich is mustard.) The tongue I ate was fine, but their cole slaw is terrible - among the worst cole slaw I've ever had. The pickles were decent, but not about to give any competition to the 2nd Avenue Deli or to Ben's. Oh, well, New York is just a few hours away.
Robert had never been to any of the Smithsonian museums, so I had to remedy that. We started at the Museum of Natural History and, more specifically, with their special exhibit on diamonds. I still find the Hope Diamond to be rather too gawdy. We went through the gems and minerals exhibits without getting a few key questions answered. The key issue that they never fully explain has to do with the relationship between cut facets and crystal planes. Once we'd had our fill of stones, I dragged Robert through the Pacific Cultures section in exchange for allowing myself to be dragged past a lot of bones. Dinosaur skeletons are fine, but I have limited interest in other fossils. We both agree that there's something not quite satisfactory about taxonomy. For example, why do they make such a big distinction between mammals with odd and even numbers of toes?
After a rest in the cafe, in which my iced mocha had too much ice and Robert's lemonade had too little, we moved on to the Museum of American History. This is pretty much the classic Smithsonian museum, and we focused on the pop culture stuff - ruby slippers and all. There were pretty good exhibits on Ella Fitzgerald and on Duke Ellington, as well as assorted cultural artifacts. The Star Trek phaser always amazes me for how cheap it looks. Then we went downstairs to look through some of the Science in American Life exhibits. But on the way, we were diverted by Julia Child's Kitchen. The actual kitchen is about what I expected. They were showing video clips of her shows and we were reasonably amused by them. As for the Science exhibit, the theme was that there are ups and downs in how science has been perceived by the American population at large. What surprised (and disappointed) me was how little they had on the space program as part of that. After all, the Air and Space Museum is still the most popular Smithsonian museum and, for people of my generation, it was the space program that got a lot of us interested in science.
After leaving the museum, we talked about what to do. Robert's energy level was flagging, so he vetoed any of the free music possibilities in the area. We ended up going over to Clarendon (a part of Arlington) and cooling off in the cafe at Barnes and Noble. We moved on to dinner at Queen Bee, a very good Vietnamese hole in the wall. Then back to my place where we talked and listened to music some before going to bed. One of his complaints is that people don't make novelty songs any more. I disagree, but we don't quite define novelty songs the same way.
Saturday morning, it was surprising we actually managed to get out of the house while it was still morning. We had an excellent breakfast at the Silver Diner (a local chain). It's not like french toast is hard to make, but I'm just way too lazy to do it myself. And anything that involves strawberries is good in my book. Then we drove out to Leesburg, where we went to the Loudon County Museum and strolled a bit around the historic district. This time, the museum managed to answer my major question. Namely, yes, all the Lees (Thomas, Richard Henry, "Lighthorse Harry", Robert E., etc.) were related and, yes, Leesburg is named after them. The museum is your basic small town history museum but is on the more professional side there and we were quite pleased with it. I was particularly interested in the textiles (samplers and quilts), of course, but the best exhibit was a complete surprise to me. They have a number of letters sent from freed slaves who'd gone to Liberia to their former masters. One of them commented on the number of monkeys in West Africa and asked, "whither shall I send you a pet monkey?" I found that completely charming. With the limited time we had, I read only a few letters. I'll have to go back and look at more another time.
Incidentally, on the way to the historic district, we'd stopped at the visitor center to ask about self-guided walking tours and the docent mentioned the town of Waterford. This is a well-preserved 19th century Quaker village. We were too time-constrained, but picked up a brochure for another time. This Sunday, the Post had an editorial about the threat to Waterford from a developer. The basic story is that one resident has sold a farm to somebody who wants to subdivide it and put up 14 luxury houses. The Waterford Foundation turned around and offered the developer a hefty instant profit - and was turned down. There's still hope, as the developer did come in with a counter offer, but it looks like sheer greed in action. What I don't understand is why the farmer didn't just sell to the Foundation. This looks like a good place for me to send some charity dollars.
We timed things just right and I got Robert to the airport in time. It was nice having him here, but I wish he'd been able to spend more time.
Copyright 2003 Miriam H. Nadel