The Thanksgiving trip, from which we got back last night, involved getting to DC,
cooking and eating Thanksgiving dinner for three (me, Rudder, and my uncle),
monuments and museums, a cathedral, more museums, meeting up with friends,
visiting Mt. Vernon, walking around in Alexandria, and getting home again.
Respectively, things were ok, good, interesting, amazing as usual, good, great,
interesting, cold, and kind of sucky. On balance, I think it was a
success.
My uncle is the easiest of my relatives to stay with and
hang out with. This is partly because he goes to interesting places and does
interesting things and thus has interesting things to talk about, but more because
he has a condo in a neighborhood described by this month's issue of In
Style magazine as "edgy" (they had a blurb on a salon just across the street)
which boasts two bathrooms. And no denizens with IBD, which makes it a far better
place to stay than, say, the house in which I grew up. He's a pretty good DC
tourguide, too, except for tendencies to get distracted and start telling stories
when he's giving driving directions ("I remember bringing your grandfather down
this road..." "Um, excuse me, but do I need to get in the left lane now?" "My
friend Susan used to live in that building..." "That's nice but should I turn
here??") and to chatter on when you want to be experiencing a cathedral in
silence.
The Air and Space Museum wasn't quite as much fun as usual
because of huge day-after-Thanksgiving Day crowds. (And why on Earth are there
always, always Amish families in there? I don't get it.) It and the other
href="http://www.si.edu">Smithsonian museums now all have guards at the doors
checking bags, so we actually had to wait in line to get in. On the other hand,
there was no wait and few people, at the Ripley gallery, which had a good exhibit
of portraits of famous women. The Building
Museum has a spectacular atrium (you can sometimes see it televised when
Christmas concerts are held there) and a few good exhibits on public
infrastructures and the history of Do-It-Yourselfing, but the best part of it is
really the shop, if you like museum shops. The
href="http://www.cathedral.org/cathedral/shop/index.shtml">National Cathedral
is always stunning and always worth seeing, unless you're my mother, whose
attitude toward it is, "Aren't there any nice synagogues around
here?"
We saw a wild turkey at Mount Vernon on Sunday -- I guess it
feels safe now.
Saturday night we had one of the highlights of the
trip, an evening at a brewpub with friends. Rudder's college friend IE came out,
and (drumroll) I had a chance to meet
href="http://batten.diaryland.com">Jenn, who arrived with a friend, K, whom I
keep thinking of as Laura. She looked like a Laura. It was an interesting group:
two rowers, two passionate sailors, my uncle, who loves travel and food and is
wont to reminisce about meals he had in June of 1972 in Paris, or late 1983 in New
York, and IE, who informed us that he can't wait until retirement so he can play
golf, every day and all day. I was very excited to meet Jenn, and enjoyed it
thoroughly. It's always interesting to see how someone is different live than
online -- Jenn is a bit softer-spoken than I had expected, though just as
passionate about her boats, and she somehow had never gotten around to mentioning
the vague resemblance to Nicole Kidman. (She looks like Nicole when she's just
being Nicole, in an interview or whatever, as opposed to when she's decked out as
the Glamorous Movie Star or costumed as a consumptive stripper.) That may explain
all the marriage proposals, anyhow. I think Laura had a good time, though she was
a bit quiet -- it must be odd to spend an evening with your friend's cyberfriends
and several others you know nothing about. What with the obsessions ranging from
competitive watersports to competitive eating, we had no shortage of general
discussion topics at least, especially as Rudder knows enough about sailing to ask
good questions.
The worst part of the trip was getting home: there
was a snowstorm in Chicago that resulted in our flying into Phoenix at 11PM,
instead of 5:30 as originally planned. Bleah, but better than it could have
been.
Today I am thankful for: being back home.
Posted by dichroic at December 3, 2002 04:59 PM