We were actually up before the alarm clock went off and took advantage of that as you might expect. It also meant that we had enough time for a real breakfast, so went over to 29 Diner. This is pretty much the opposite of the eating scale from our feast of the previous evening, but there is something to be said for the old-fashioned sort of diner straight out of Edward Hopper's "Nighthawks." The food is decent for what it is and it's cheap and filling.
Then we headed west to Sterling. We were way early so killed half an hour browsing in a Goodwill thrift store. I found a copy of Seth Mnookin's Feeding the Monster. The sign said "look at the better books at our information center," but as I said to Robert, "what could be better than a book about the Red Sox?" (The monster of the title is Fenway's green one.)
What were doing in Sterling on a Saturday morning? The MIT Club of Washington had arranged a tour of the technical center for Discovery Communications, which runs the Discovery Channel, as well as some 20 or so other cable channels. They don't produce programming there, but they put it together off the tapes and files and send it up to the satellite from there. They had a presentation on their operations, then broke us off into three groups and took us around the facility. The master control room feels bustling, even at a time when they have relatively few operators on. The computer rooms were less so, but I'm used to walking through large facilities with racks and racks of equipment. The library was surprisingly impressive, with huge shelves of tapes - programming on one side, commercials and promotions on the other. They also have robotic tape drives for archiving and associated shelves of digital tape. All in all, an impressive and interesting tour.
Since we were already in the general vicinity, I suggested we needed to go to the Wegman's in Sterling, which is the only local source I know of for chinotto, a bitter Italian soft drink that I like and nobody else I know does. Even the Wegman's in Fairfax doesn't carry it. We got the chinotto, a Sunday Washington Post, and a tray of cookies. Robert was very impressed with all the prepared foods on offer and decided he had to try their crabcake, so I got a snack as well. After eating what amounted to a light lunch there, we came back to my place. I looked at Robert's photos from his recent lecture tour in China, then tried to nap. (He fell asleep, but I couldn't so got up and read part of the newspaper.)
For dinner, we went to Temel, a nearby Turkish restaurant. Robert liked their lentil soup and I thought the baba ghanouj was good, with a decidedly smoky flavor. For the main course, Robert got salmon, while got seafood skewers. They were good, but not fabulous, and the accompanying potatoes were dreadful - bland and mushy. The Turkish coffee was fine and Robert seemed to like the rice pudding he ordered. Overall, it was okay, but I don't feel like it lived up to its reviews, and there are other local places I like better.
Then we went over to Ralph and Margaret's for a story swap. It was a small crowd, which was disappointing since Robert hadn't ever been to one of these things before. I told "M.D., Ph.D., G.R.E.A.T" which I haven't told in years, but we'd been talking about family vacations earlier over dinner. Ralph and Margaret brought out their annual rendition of "A Child's Christmas in Wales," by Dylan Thomas. I'm impressed by their abilities to memorize. I've been trying to memorize Vikram Seth's version of "The Tortoise and the Hare" and given up on it several times. It was an enjoyable enough evening, but I don't think Robert will necessarily be eager to go to more of the same.
Copyright 2006 Miriam H. Nadel