Music nerd folks! Check out In C Remixed. If you're familiar with the Official Classic Piece "In C" (aka, the song where each instrument is given a bar or two to play over and over, at whatever tempo and durations you feel like), you, like me, will find this a much pleasanter sounding way to ingest the random beauty of the thing. If you're not familiar with it, the remixes are still pretty gorgeous. Make sure to snag the free download of "Zinc" by Zoe Keating. I like it so much that I nosed around to find her album, and put it on my wishlist.

In other news, Tom left for his trip to North Carolina to visit his dad and grandma this morning. We ran through a checklist before he left: phone, phone charger, laptop, laptop charger, shower stuff, deodorant, clothes. I gave him a stack of change for tolls, an ice-cold bottle of water, and some... well, they're rice cakes, only not-rice cakes. Kamut, stuck together with agave nectar. (Yes, I habitually buy even-healthier versions of health food. But these are freaking delicious.)

Fifteen minutes later, there's a frantic pounding on my front door.

"Give me keys to my car! - I locked my keys in the car when I went to get gas - someone was nice enough to give me a ride back - but I didn't have your phone number because my phone was in the car too - I need keys."

Laughing, I disentangled my set of car keys from my ring, and gave to him. He sped back out again. I posted this on twitter, and continued my morning internetting.

Ten minutes later, I hear the back screen door swing open, and speedwalking clunking footsteps. "NOW what'd you forget???" "Shut up! Headphones! ... ... ...stop laughing at me!"

I'm still giggling, an hour later - though I do really hope he's actually on his way now. ;) He's always such an insane control freak about traveling (as noted in a previous post about hotel reservations), and I'm always the spazz who suddenly remembers things as soon as we pull out. This is such a lovely little bit of "HA! YOU DO IT TOO!" bwahaha.

Labels: music, product whoring, silliness, storytime, travel

 
Posts have been scarce, I know. I've been on Twitter a looot, since most things are just fleeting little thoughts. But in other news, there has been:
- A walk through town (where I bought an old book on the Johnstown flood! woo!).
- Lots of cooking (macaroni salad = awesome, potato salad still kind of a fail, no idea why).
- Paper Factory picnic, where everyone brought food, Tom kicked total ass at croquet, and a good time was had by all despite drizzy weather
- Lots of banners and invitations and things (some headaches, some awesome).
- Saw Iron Man 2 - though the highlight of that trip was probably DJ's usual insanity as we (Tom, me, DJ and his gf) had burgers at Red Robin afterwards.
- Mom's graduation from MCC up in Rochester - we made a day of it, tried out the Ethiopian place, finally made it to Niblack where I got spices, hung out with family. I worked on a pretty blue doily all through the usual ceremony speeches.
- Dad and Mel came down for a visit on the fourth, we wandered around town, I introduced them to Campi's pizza (which is amazing), hit up a farm stand, and ate whoopie pies in the town commons.

Finished a few crochet things - I have a new shirt, a new pull-over tank top, and several new doilies. Making a giant insane doily for Tom's grandma, who he'll visit soon. Worried about finishing a mobius wrap (in yummy bamboo yarn) because I'm not sure I have enough yarn left, aaand I was sent the wrong yarn twice before I got that one. Yarn! I won free yarn from Phat Fiber! I have no idea what I'm going to do with it yet, and since it's 99% wool I hardly want to even touch it right now, pretty as it is.

My coworkers are all having Tupperware parties - I was stuck working for the first two, but the third I get to go to, that'll be this Tuesday at Sam's. Sam's making food plans and I suspect it is going to be a very fun evening, despite Tom's comments. A coworker is also an Avon lady now, I just placed my first order through her last night. I love Avon's stuff, and I'm glad to help Ashley out while getting stuff I want. ;) (Plus, catalogs mean I can at least sort of trust color swatches, and better define exactly what shade of pale my skin is.)

I'm trying to do more art, because I feel twitchy when I don't, and depression sneaks up on me. (I had a very, very rough night earlier this week. Rationality never can overcome 1am insomniac insecurities.) I did some actual physical sketches last week while enjoying the summer sun... and wound up with a pretty little flower sketch I really like, as well as a ridiculous sunburn on my legs. ;p

It has been insaaaaanely hot this past week. 90s most days, and I live in a brick oven that does noooot cool down. Heat finally broke today, it's been raining and was supposed to only hit 77. (10am in the bedroom? still something like 88. blehhhh.) Humidity makes a cranky Melissa. And there have been far more migraines than I've had in awhile. Heat has also thrown a serious monkeywrench into my newly-attempted exercise routine.

My plants keep dying and I don't know why. (This was before the heat wave.) Some kind of little gnat-like bug got into them, and when I took my mint outside to attempt some resuscitation, I found there were little cobwebs all around the stem! booo. My passion flower and sugar plant are still doing amazing though, and what I assume is a forget-me-not (it's a very different flower from the one I'd expected, but still similar) is blooming away happily.

Tom has all kinds of vacation time he needs to take asap, so he'll be off for nearly two weeks starting... sometime next week. He's planning on some serious immersion-time in his 3D modeling... and I'm hoping he sticks with it, because if he paws at me for attention all morning every morning before I go in to work, I am never going to get anything done.

Counting down the days 'til our trip to Florida for the Star Wars convention! woo! (Though this also means Tom has been on my back for a week and a half about making ABSOLUTELY OH GOD CERTAIN that our hotel reservations are, in fact, reservations, even though they haven't charged me any money yet. They have my credit card number on hold as a deposit, if I cancel I will be charged $70-something. The actual bill is paid at the end of your hotel stay. I know this. Tom is not reassured because he's convinced that, because I'm a scatterbrain about a lot of things, I'm a scatterbrain about EVERYTHING. Sooo, I have sent emails to three places now, trying to get 100% confirmation that will satisfy even Mr. Travelling Paranoid.)

...I did not mean for that to be a mini-rant, but, really, it feels damn good to get that off my chest. ha.

Next post: new wallpaper!

Labels: being social, cooking, crochet, drawing, family, friends, griping, life in general, navelgaze, plants, travel, work

 
Tom and I went up to the Buffalo & Erie County Botanical Gardens yesterday. It was absolutely gorgeous, we had the perfect day for it, and it was a much bigger place than we'd expected. And flowers always make me happy.







I took like 80 pictures in the, what, hour, maybe two, we were there. They all came out freaking gorgeous. So we're giving flickr a shot again, and I'm posting everything there. Go look! So much pretty!

Flickr set of everything





It was a lovely day, it really was.

And I have THE best shot of Tom:



Title: "Surrounded by the enemy"

mwaaaahahahaha. His expression is absolutely amazing.


Afterwards, we went to Borders (where I GOT BUNNICULA!!! A lovely hardcover compilation of three of the books...which are shorter than I remember them being, but holy crap I still giggled the whole way through them). Burgers at Fuddrucker's for lunch/dinner, then over to Teavana to get some new tea, yay. Lovely, lovely day.

Labels: art, life in general, photos, plants, travel

 
KEEPING THIS SHORT, I swear, I'd like to get some writing done at least before I conk out tonight.

Today was the Paper Factory trip to Dave & Buster's, which was freaking amazing. Ann and Bruce decided to treat the entire Halloween crew, which was absolutely incredible of them. So after the store closed up at 4 today, we all gathered in the parking lot, and piled into the balloon delivery van and A&B's SUV. Those of us that had worked today were struggling to stay awake on the drive up, but I managed to get some work done on a rush crochet project.

Most of us had never been to Dave & Buster's, but, it was pretty darn awesome. Even more awesome, because Bruce was ridiculously generous. We had a whole little party room for just us, they gave us surprisingly yummy food (chips and dip, chicken fingers, these amazing mini-pizzas, that sort of thing). Bruce specifically told us that anyone legal could have whatever drink they wanted - poor Sam, who's newly 21, begged me and Ashley (the only other two "kids" who are legal) to sit with her at the young'ins table so she wouldn't feel so awkward. I had no idea what to ask for, since I'm not big on beer, but Sam saved me with the suggestion of a rum and coke, which Tom and I have found we really like.

Through most of dinner, the grown-ups involved in the costume-theft bust told a very dramatic (and hysterical) version of the story, which was awesome. As one of the other girls pointed out to me, Halloween stories are so much better outside of the store, and after the fact. (Not quite so kosher to be THAT blunt about your customers when you're in the store. ;)

And theeeen, there were the games. HOLY CRAP. I haven't been in a place with that many games...probably since Chuck E. Cheese. Sam and I were totally psyched to go find DDR... but it was awhile before we spotted it. And then! It wasn't DDR, but... crap I've forgotten already. I have a hunch it was a version of "Pump it Up" (the thing looked pretty much like this), because the arrows? WERE ALL ON THE CORNERS. Diagonal arrows. I was confused as hell, I've neeever played one of those before! The first few tries were pretty atrocious - but I was still better than poor Sam. ;) I played a few more solo rounds, determined to get my head wrapped around it, and after a few songs, I had it down fairly well. Managed an A on a 5. :) 6s were iffy, and one 7 that I really liked the song to, I think I managed to pass. Played again later with one of the new boys, and he actually did pretty well.

But Mac took pictures of me playing. I am freaking terrified. I had a whole little crowd of onlookers, the grown-ups were all totally bewildered by my ability to play this thing.

I did have one of the Guitar Hero obsessed kids run me through a game of that - and once I got the hang of hitting the strum-button at the same time as the fret-buttons, it was actually pretty fun. The way the sound in the game is manipulated, getting *so* much louder and fuller when you're playing correctly, is absurdly rewarding and goes a long way toward making it addictive I think. (The theory, though, is DDR, only without flailing like an idiot. I understand why it's as big as it is.)

Lots of Skee-ball, some other random games... lots of the silly "stop the light at the number to win buttloads of tickets!1!!" games, which I always fail at. Ashley and I played a round of an alien-shooting game - and were glad that a) we could tell our gamer boyfriends we played something they would find fun, and b) that said boys were NOT there to witness the atrocity of us playing. It was freaking bad.

BUT, while everybody else was playing those silly games where you drop a coin in, and hope the moving metal shelves push coins down into the basin to get you tickets (which they were MASSIVELY addicted to, though watching, I couldn't quite see why)... I found the retro games. ^_______^ Sadly, not the original arcade boxes, but a re-release of them, bundling 2-3 games in each case. But! I GOT TO PLAY SPACE INVADERS. On an arcade machine. It was AWESOME. (And seriously freaking difficult!!! I tried like six times, and the closest I got to beating the FIRST level was like, four aliens left on the screen.) Also played some Pac-Man, which I was totally rocking.

When I mentioned to the grown-ups later that I'd found these, they all flipped out and were upset that they hadn't seen them (we'd all cashed in our tickets and were on the way out at this point). Chad used to play Centipede obsessively, and Ann was addicted to PacMan. Ann! I would never have guessed.

...so, end of the evening, everyone was piling up their tickets. They give out these oversized paper cups to carry your tickets in, and everybody's was overflowing. One girl had two cups, both overflowing. (Bruce... had been more than generous in buying all of us game cards with a looot of credits on them. And then gave out second ones! Absolutely amazing of him.)

Everyone else had totals in the thousands (each ticket was 2 points) to spend. I think the evening's record was 18,000, by Eric, who was massively determined to amass tickets. Me? I had 102. lmfao. It was ridiculous. But the DDR game and retro games didn't give out tickets! And the games where you have this iiiitty bitty chance of scoring big just don't interest me, I so rarely win. What I did win, for the first time in yeeeears, was the crane game. So while all I could afford in the ticket redemption area were two tiny pieces of candy, I have myself the most adorable little frog plush. (It's definitely supposed to be a baby toy, but I refuse to care. He has overalls and he's adorable.)

We all played the name game the whole way home (me giving "Micky Dolenz" was followed by a grown-up giving "Davy Jones", which so made my night). And then a few of us girls swung by Burger King, where they currently have BIRTHDAY CAKE SUNDAE MILKSHAKES which are freaking amazing. On the drive from there to my apartment, Sam cranked up "Mmmbop", and we both sang along at the top of our lungs, which was totally the perfect end to the evening. (The one bizarre part though.. also in the car was one of the new girls. The song started playing, and she wasn't sure she knew it. "Oh, you've definitely heard it before... though you might have only been like four," I told her. Once we reached the chorus, she answered, "Oh yeah, I've heard this... but I really do think I was about four." OH GOD feeling so old.)


So, it was a veeeeery good day, but I am tired as hell. I don't think I'll write much today - my whole getting-ahead of schedule was intended to cover me yesterday (when I had to go to sleep early) and today. But I might try to write a little bit of my scene with the semi-crazy psychic. :)

Labels: being social, ddr, life in general, product whoring, silliness, travel, work

 
Today was an awesome, awesome day.

The Droid, the phone with the Google software, came out...today or yesterday? So since I wasn't working, and Tom didn't go in until 4, he decided it would be a good day to go get one. He has been dyyyying for this phone to come out. It's like the iPhone, except Google instead of Apple, so it's not locked down within an inch of its life. Tom's actually been toying around with writing an application for it for the past week or two.

Nearest Verizon store is in Jamestown. Sooo, we make the half hour drive down there, through all of its crazy streets that make no sense, and enter the Verizon store. Staff was all super-friendly, though we did have to wait maybe ten minutes or so before a sales rep was free to talk to us. Tom decided he wanted the more elaborate model (with a pull-out keyboard, which I can actually type fairly reasonably on), and, THANK GOD, there was an unlimited data plan available.

Now, going back in time a couple of years, shortly after 9/11, Tom's name got on the no-fly list. He happens to share a name with a mass murderer from Connecticut or somewhere. First name, last name, and maybe middle initial? Not *remotely* a birthday, and certainly not a social security number. But now and again, his ss number won't register. He actually can't use paypal normally because of this. He *has* the ss card, with his name, and his number, but when he punches it in to paypal, it says it's wrong.

Neither Tom nor I has ever had an account with a real phone company. I have barely any credit history, and I'm pretty sure he has none, or close enough to none. The friendly saleswoman entered his information, and it spat out his social security number. Tried it again, and no-go. She had to fax a copy of his license AND social security card, off to God knows where, and wait for the higher-ups to approve it.

This did not make Tom a happy camper. Every time he's tried to fix this issue, whatever office he calls refers him someplace else, nobody will actually try to fix it.

So, since the woman told us to come back in like fifteen minutes, we decided to run Melissa's errand of the day: BUY SWEDISH FOOD!!!!!1!


Every year, my grandparents trek down to Jamestown to buy 1) korv (sausage) and 2) Bond-Ost (pronounced something like "boond-ust") cheese. Traditional Christmas-ish food by this point. I found Bond-Ost ONCE, but it was plain, without the caraway seeds. It's pretty wimpy without the caraway seeds. So! Since we were actually in Jamestown for once, I called my grandma.

"Oh, Peterson's! Peterson's Market. It's a little ways outside of Jamestown, it's not in the city itself, it's on Fluvanna Road... oh, as you come into Jamestown, the road is off to the right, it's about a mile outside of the city..."

Tom, who could hear every word of this from the other side of the car (I hadn't talked to Grandma on the phone in awhile...I forgot about the volume issue), was cracking up. Eventually, Grandma found something with the street name but not the address, though it did have a phone number, which I scrawled onto our Dunkin' Donuts bag with one of the (at least two, probably 3+) Sharpies Tom leaves laying around in his car.

So, I called the phone number. The nice lady on the other end started giving me directions... "I'm... not very familiar with Jamestown, but I actually have a GPS. Can you give me the number of the street address?" "Sure, uh.. hold on a minute." And I hear her call out to somebody across the store. Then she gives me the number. "Thanks... and how do you spell Fluvanna? I have a guess, but..." "Yeah, it's F-L-U-V... hold on." And she calls out to someone again. "Okay, V-A-N-N-A."

And then the GPS tells us this place is literally like five minutes away, on a road parallel to the one we were on.

But! We get there, and it's a farmer's market style little barn of a place. Brief moment of panic as we tried to figure out if they'd take credit cards (since nobody in my generation, least of all Tom and I, ever have cash on hand). I spotted a credit card machine, and then a woman came up to the desk. "Can I help you with anything?" "Yeah, do you take credit cards?" "Yes we do." "Oh good. Do you have Bond-Ost cheese?" "Yep, it's in the dairy case, right over there..." "Yes! I'm so glad, I've been dying for some for like a year!"

I made a bee-line. And found both plain and caraway! So I snagged and rejoiced. And then started poking around. There was an awful lot of pickled herring (which I'm sure I'll try someday, but...), but then I found more goodies. All kinds of rye bread, and cookies, and mixes, and... Tom watched me for a minute as I bounced around spazzing at everything. "..you want *everything*, don't you?" "Uh-huh!!!"

What I ended up with: Bond-Ost with caraway, lingonberry jelly, rye flour (Heidi has a recipe for Swedish Rye Cookies that I've been dying to try - and Mom just bought me large-grain sugar, too!), rye crispbread (super-crunchy dry cracker things that I adore), some maple sugar candy just because, aaaaand! A spice mix for glögg! Which I was always "too young" to drink at Lucia every year, but which always smelled amazing. Just holding the little ziploc bag, you can smell the spices: cloves and cinnamon and cardamom and orange peel... it smells amazing. The packet included a recipe for glögg: spice mix, quart of water, 2 cups sugar, 2 quarts port wine, and a quart of vodka. Mix and heat.

I see now why I was never allowed to drink it, but that sounds AMAZING. Mom pointed out that I will need to have a party if I'm going to make a full batch, which is true.

I've been bouncing all day thanks to my Swedish food. And! First Saturday in December, they do a Swedish food expo, where they make all the foods and you can eat it. (Plus, I forgot to look for korv, which Mom suspects is seasonal, since the grandparents always called ahead to ask for.) I'm thinking we're going to need to go back for that one. (Plus, I found out via both parents, that there is a Swedish bakery like right up the street from there. That makes fresh donuts!!! And Swedish breads!)


So, after a super-successful bit of shopping, we went back to the Verizon store, where it turns out, why yes, they were willing to take Tom's money! However, most likely due to the lack of credit history, it was going to be A LOT of money - a $400 freaking deposit that we had not at *all* anticipated, which they hold until you've paid your bills on time for a year. But, after some discussion, we decided we were going to run into that with pretty much any first-time phone... Tom had enough money to do it... and, as the woman so intelligently pointed out, the 3% interest on that deposit when it's returned is more than a bank's savings account gives you. Thankfully, Tom is super-attentive about paying bills on time, so no worries about that.

It was with a rather sorrowful wallet that Tom walked out of the store. Buuut, ten minutes later, as he was driving and I was playing with the phone, he perked right back up. We installed the Pandora app and cranked up some Jpop, and I linked up his Google account - which automatically added all his contacts from Gmail into the phone, so the only delay in calling his dad was...uh, to be honest, finding the "phone" button. We took some video, watched some youtube, looked at some websites... the thing is SERIOUSLY fast. The screen is *unbelievably* sharp, website text was tiny but *so* freaking crystal-clear I had no trouble reading it. The screen is huuuuge. We had internet all the way home, and 3G for probably 10, 20 miles around Fredonia.

Unfortunately, when we got home... 1) It was 3:30, and Tom had to work at 4. 2) We discovered that, while we had the plug for the charger...THERE WAS NO WIRE to connect the charger to the phone. Thankfully, all it is is a usb on one end, and mini-usb on the other - something Tom can pick up at WalMart - but... really people? I know it was launch day and you had bags of stuff everywhere, but... really?

Tom's going to a LAN party at his buddy DJ's after work tonight, and he's so psyched to get to show off his phone. I have a strong hunch he probably forgot to eat on his dinner break, and just played with the phone. The funniest thing was watching him be good and listen as the sales rep walked him through the basic interface on the phone while we were in the store. It was soooo tempting to point out that he's been RUNNING AN EMULATOR OF THE PHONE on his computer for like, two weeks. WRITING SOFTWARE for it. I think he can figure out how to scroll on a touchscreen. But Tom was very good and patient and attentive, and I kept my mouth shut. Probably not the best thing to tell the sales rep that you're going to find every software loophole the thing contains the minute you get it home...


When Tom left for work, I left for campus. The first meet-up of Fredonia NaNoWriMo'ers was tonight, and I met three of my fellow novelists. More details on the NaNo blog, but to summarize: what an awesome feeling it is to meet people you have things in common with. It was a very nice little writing session, I had a very yummy chai to drink, aaaand I managed to crank out basically 2000 words in a bit under three hours, with lots of chatting. *Awesome*.

Tomorrow, I work 1-9, and at 9 I'm heading over to Tim Horton's. Most people are meeting in the afternoon, but it sounds like I'll have a buddy or two there in the evening. Tom works until 1, so I may even get ahead on my writing! Though it's going super-duper well right now, I know toward the middle of the month I'll be banging my head against the wall trying to think of ideas, and something will come up to keep me from writing one or two days, or I'll get sick... so I'm determined to work up to being at least a day ahead, while the inertia of the beginning of the month lasts!

Labels: being social, cooking, life in general, nanowrimo, product whoring, technology, travel

 
I've finally buckled down and started tackling my vacation pictures.

edit: I was GOING to upload the whole big lot of them somewhere, but 1) flickr's megabyte limit is way in hell too small, 2) photobucket is sucking royally and conks out, 3) picasa keeps crapping out too. I'll post another day with a link to the whole mega-gallery.

I've started keeping little text files in the folders with my photos, notes on what the pictures are of, where they were taken, that sort of thing. While doing this for the vacation pictures...I realized I was basically writing a full-blown journal entry for those days. So, I'm just going to copy over those, and then fill in for you all the time periods where I didn't take 4738290234 pictures. :)

///WARNING - I have written like the biggest post ever. It is mainly a memory-aid for myself. No-one should feel guilty for just skimming to find the pictures. ^^;; ///

Travel plan:
Saturday evening - drive to Tom's dad's on Long Island
Sunday - recuperate, hang out in Huntington
Monday - make an early drive to DC, hit up museums, and go eat fresh crabs in Maryland
Tuesday - finish up in DC, and drive to North Carolina
Wednesday and Thursday - spend in North Carolina with Tom's grandma
Friday - drive back to Long Island
Saturday - aquarium on Long Island with penguins
Sunday - drive back to Fredonia


After work Saturday evening, we made the eight(ish) hour drive to Long Island. (It was made a longer drive by the fact that we were both tired from a day of work already, and then driving in the dark, and then hitting some pretty bad fog somewhere around the Poconos I think.) Having a GPS made the whole New York City bit *much* less terrifying... and really, helped out a ton through the whole trip (when Tom's dad wasn't rebelling against it, already knowing a better way to get somewhere). We stayed at his father's in Huntington for a day recovering, mostly just hanging around the house. We did pick up gyros at a local Greek place for lunch - while Tom and his dad went in to order, I popped in to the small music store two doors down. At long last, I have a physical copy of "No Line on the Horizon". <333 I was happy to see the cat toys I'd made for Christmas laying around the house - and even happier to see the cats absolutely flip out playing with them. To the point where they'd start batting at the things even *without* a human to wiggle it at them. :) The guys played their usual games of pool, and we took turns playing some ping-pong (Tom is always amazed that I'm as not-awful at it as I am, hee). When I went to bed that night, there was a cat at the foot of my bed, and it made me rather happy.

We left Huntington at about five, five-thirty in the morning, so as to avoid the worst of the New York City traffic. (I slept through a lot of that one.) For breakfast, everyone had one of the granola bars I'd made for the trip (per a combination of two of Heidi Swanson's recipes, natch) - and everyone LOVED, they were AWESOME. Totally making those again, Tom was flipping out, yay.

Got in to DC around 9 I think, and found a parking spot miraculously near to where we wanted to be. We weren't entirely sure it was legal for us to be parked there, but, there was no ticket when we returned. ^^;

We had a general plan, but first order of business was to find a bathroom. We walked by the Capitol building - and decided the Library of Congress would be a good bet for an uncrowded bathroom, then we'd move on.

A few steps inside, and it was clear we were going to have to stay for a bit. The interior is one of the most stunning things I have ever seen (yes, taking Italy into account - this was totally on par). Every inch was painted or sculpted or arched or marble or...



(I realized my Phistos' surroundings have been seriously lacking, if things like this exist, especially in a young country like ours.)

I could not get over the Art Noveau frescoes. Absolutely gorgeous, and EVERYWHERE. I could've spent days in that main room alone.

A Gutenburg Bible was sitting in a case, and I stared at that a good long while. Nearby was a digital version of it - you could flip through any number of pages, and see it more closely, and get more information. All through the Library were small computer touchscreens, chock full of zoom-able images and information. Along with a map of the place, they had small paper "passports" with barcodes on the back - these could be popped into a slot on the touchscreens, and it looked like you could save information and images to an account (presumably to pull up at home later). It was all very sleek and intuitive, a fantastic setup for wandering around on your own.

We took in an exhibit of native culture as it was when Columbus turned up on the continent. I'm still not a fan of the meso-American style of art, but the stuff was still fascinating to look at. There were a few letters and scraps of diaries from important figures at the time, as well as a page from... was it Washington's diary? He'd used the margins and blank pages at the end of an almanac to keep his diary.

There were also maps of the world from around that time, and some books filled with drawings of the native flora and fauna. God I love detailed drawing like that.

When we made it back outside, probably like an hour later, the sun had come out - so I snagged a few more shots of the Capitol. We were all excited that the cherry trees were all in bloom, we weren't sure if they would be yet or not. (Caught the tail end of the magnolias, too.) There were groves of the cherry trees absolutely everywhere.



We walked down around the side of the Capitol, taking a curving path down a hill. We'd decided to tackle the National Arboretum (largely for me), the National Air and Space Museum (Tom and his dad's main thing), and the Museum of Natural History or maybe an art museum if we had time. The Arboretum was closest, so that was our next stop.

Orchids EVERYWHERE - they had a whole room filled with them, all in bloom, and the main entry area had quite a lot of them as well. The arrangements in the main entry and other places were absolutely fantastic, the mix of colors and forms was just perfect.

The orchid room was one of the first we were in - and unfortunately, there was a swarm of spazzy highschoolers there at the same time. The girls had pounced on this one cascade of white orchids (pretty, but, obvious), and were all having the exact picture of each of them taken next to it. I think I pissed them off, standing right behind them and leaning in to get a shot of another flower.



I kept an eye out for things I might want to have reference pictures of - flowers I knew turned up in my stories, that sort of thing, but I didn't have much luck. There was one type of amaranth, but not the kind I was after (though I took a picture anyway). Acanthus was an exception to this - I recognized the name, though I couldn't recall what it symbolized...and half the plants in the place were some variety of it.

One of these days, I need a camera that I can set the focus on myself. Mine's generally pretty good, and it's great to not have to worry about fiddling when I'm taking mass quantities of shots in a short period of time, but every now and again it's just a hair off and it drives me bonkers - it'll be just close enough that it looks perfect on the camera screen, and I don't see the blur until I get it up on the computer.

There were cacti blooming, which made me happy. There was a room designed as an approximation of the environment dinosaurs hung out in, which was pretty cool. We looped back around, and took another look around the main entryway - where I spotted the closest thing to an alien life form I have ever seen. Apparently the fruit of a Manila Hemp - it was HUGE, probably a good couple of feet long, and hung incredibly ominously like fifteen feet over our heads.



The center tropical area had two levels. Tom was nervous about the metal catwalk that ran twenty feet or so above the floor, pointing out that while the railing was at the right height to prevent normal people from falling, it really wouldn't catch him at the right spot relative to his center of gravity. And he would fall. Far.

It's a little hard to take especially good photos when you're surrounded by so much all at once. There's a few I really focused on though, and I'm quite happy with them.

We left and headed out toward the back of the building, where we found a whole outdoor garden section. Even though not much was up yet, somehow it was still really pretty, and we took our time walking through it.

It was something like lunchtime, and inside the Air and Space Museum, we found the biggest, most efficiently-designed McDonald's EVER. It seriously looked like a space station.

Recharged, we tackled the muesum. The main walkway had all sorts of huge interesting things scattered along it - missles and rockets standing on the floor, airplaces and satellites hanging from the ceiling... it took us a bit to settle down and focus on something.

The one thing I found odd, was that a good handful of the things in the museum hadn't actually been the things that, say, went to the moon. The moon lander, and a good bit of the other space things, were prototypes, or test models, or back-up models. Identical in most cases to what actually went out there, but not the exact one that was actually used. I was a little disappointed by this, and made a point of finding the things that had actually touched air that wasn't on this planet.

We all had kind of a mix of amusement and amazement at the fact that, say, the moon lander, looked like a third grader's science project, made of tin foil and construction paper. (What looks like tin foil turned out to be a type of insanely thin plastic, with some metal in it, to deal with extreme temperatures.)

There was actually a really good mix of both U.S. and U.S.S.R. things from the space race, and all kinds of information on the story of it all. The Russians have never actually landed on the moon - only the U.S. They had actually planned to try at one point, but they didn't have a strong enough rocket engine, apparently, and gave up once we beat them there.



What might well have been my favorite thing there, was the capsule from a U.S.S.R. rocket. Actual thing that went into space - it's covered in scorch marks from the atmosphere. Burn marks from *going through the atmosphere*, metal that has been in space. That is seriously awesome. That... and on the side that had been burned mostly black, the returning astronauts had written their names in chalk. The lighting and plexiglass kept me from getting the shots I really wanted, but... I did manage to get some closer shots of the metal on a U.S. capsule, though it too was all in plexiglass. Boo for reflections.

The actual Spirit of Saint Louis was hanging from the ceiling - and right next to it, the first successful commercial venture into space. (The X-1 contest? I forget the name, but it was partly sponsered by Google just a few years ago. Individuals, companies, privately-owned things, *not* giant governments, making things to go into space.)



I spent awhile looking at one of the early planes that handled Air Mail - something around 1910s, 1920s. Good God those people had guts. Flimsy wood and bits of metal and canvas wings. And open cockpits omfg.

The Wright Brothers' actual first plane was there - the canvas had been repaired, and the original propeller had been swapped out for another one that had been laying around in their shop... but it was still pretty cool.

We looked at a bunch of the planes, but it was the space stuff we were really there for. There was a whole exhibit for space flight - all the things the astronauts took with them into space (hunting knives - apparently the first flights had no idea if they'd land on land or in water on the trip back, or how long it would take to have someone come and get them), bits of space food, various tools, flight manuals. There was also a single GIANT engine from one of the rockets...so big that I couldn't possibly get it to fit in a shot. So I stuck with the texture of the scorched metal, which is what really interested me anyway.

By about three o'clock, we realized there was no freaking way we were going to see everything we wanted to see that day. All the museums closed at 5:30, and we were only three-quarters of the way through the space museum. We decided we could do the monuments the next morning, and skim through the Natural History museum then as well, then head for North Carolina around noon. We were already pretty darn exhausted, tired from getting up so early, and beat from walking and seeing so much. There was a show about black holes in the small planaterium - Tom loves black holes, and we were psyched about sitting down for a bit.

The seats were low, and leaned back, and insanely comfortable.

Ten minutes in, I was drifting in and out of sleep. I looked over at Tom toward the end, and he was totally conked out.

The show was pretty dumbed-down, lots of pretty graphics but not anything we didn't already know about black holes, so we didn't miss much. It was worth the ticket price for the rest-time anyway.

Price! That was the most awesome thing - all the museums were FREE to get into. I hadn't known that. It was freaking awesome.

We took a long, leisurely stroll along the parkway back toward the Capitol. It had warmed up quite a bit during the afternoon, and the sunlight was really pretty.



From there, we checked in to our hotel, dragging our suitcases in so we wouldn't have to worry about it later. Everyone else resisted the temptation to lay down for a bit, but I'd gotten a headache sometime in the museum, and I was worried it was turning into a migraine. Even though I wasn't planning on smashing and gutting crabs myself, I still wanted to go along for dinner, for the experience of it anyway.

I really should have taken a "before" picture of the crabs, but didn't think of it until it was far too late. I had a crabcake sandwich, which was delicious, and Tom and his dad split a dozen fresh Maryland crabs. It was a pretty impressive pile. The wooden mallets made me rather uneasy. But I did find that I could manage chomping on crab legs, and Tom and his dad both threw me bits of crab meat every now and again, and I will admit it was delicious. It really is an insane amount of work for a tiny bit of reward though, it must've taken Tom close on ten minutes to get all the way through a crab.

The one mistake I made, was wearing my favorite scarf when we went into the crab place. It is made of wool. Wool likes to hang on to smells. When we went back to our hotel, we actually dodged getting into an elevator with other people, because we smelled like FISH. Took a few days before I could wear the scarf again. ^^;;


Next morning, we let ourselves sleep in a tiny bit, since none of the museums opened until 9am or 10am anyway. It was a gorgeous, clear, sunny morning, and we started out with walking along The Mall.

The Washington monument itself, we didn't go right up to - we figured we'd gotten the general idea.

The WWII monument was up first - and I was really struck by the design, it was really beautiful, but in a very different style from everything else. Very open, very elegant, almost minimalistic but prettier than that. Tom's dad and I strolled around taking pictures, taking in the fountains and things...and Tom stood still, not leaving the large patch of gold stars over a pool, until he had calculated out exactly how many there were.



The long, shallow Reflecting Pool was a gorgeous thing to walk along in the quiet, early morning.

I fell pretty much in love with the Lincoln Memorial. Marble! There was so much marble, and it was so smooth and beautiful. The columns were huge - the whole construction was just massive, but elegant at the same time. Very elegant, that's probably why I like it so much, it's comparatively small, but each element was very carefully considered. I was rather surprised to see the paintings at the top of the walls, in the alcoves off to either side - I wasn't expecting frescoes, and certainly not angels! (Still need to look into the significance of those.)



All the area around the Mall was very, very pretty, well-kept grounds and lots of green. I was happily surprised by the amount of respect apparently every visitor shows - I didn't see any trace of litter, no muddy footprints off the side of the path, nothing.

The Vietnam Memorial was really very solemn (despite the somewhat airheaded girls walking behind us as we approached it). The wall starts out very small on the edges, and the names begin in a slow trickle - just a few names in each column at first, but the names grow more numerous and the wall grows and grows, until you reach the center...

I was sorely tempted to go scamper off into a particularly picturesque grove of cherry trees I spotted near the Washington Monument, but, we were pretty sure we hadn't parked the car legally (again), and I didn't want to put off our already-delayed return to it any further.



Amazingly enough, there was no ticket on the windshield - though the meter had expired like an hour before. (25 cents for TEN MINUTES, seriously??) It took us a bit to get to the Natural History Museum - DC's streets are pretty much the most confusing I've ever seen. All sorts of one-ways, and no left turn, and weird curves and merges and splits and roundabouts and omfg it was crazy. Our poor lil GPS got confused as hell. We wound up very nearly getting our car searched, as we took a wrong turn and found ourselves in front of a guard station, where uniformed men were making sure there were no bombs strapped to undercarriages. (They were very understanding and pointed us to a side exit.)

We weren't going to have a whole lot of time at the Museum of Natural History, and it was made worse by the fact that the layout was (to me anyway) a bit odd. The general layout was fine, but within each exhibit area, there was no clear set path to follow, but like ten different little side loops and things plunked all over the place. Fantastic for crowd-control I'm sure, but not so efficient for a quick viewing.

Here, too, were orchids! A whole room absolutely filled with blooming orchids - part of a thing on Darwin, an anniversary related to something of his is near.

Taxidermy everywhere. It stopped creeping me out *quite* so much after a little while, but, it's still creepy.

We looked at bunches of animals, and then realized we were nearly out of time. I'd kind of wanted to go look at the rocks - I like rocks - but general consensus went to dinosaurs. Here too was the same thing I'd run into at the Air and Space Museum - not all the bones were real. I mean obviously the bones aren't actual bones anymore anyway, but an awful lot of the dinos on display were casts and replicas - I tried to focus on the ones that weren't. I lucked out on one thing, at least - the... oh god, I don't even remember which dinosaur it was. In kindergarten I'd have said it was a brontosaurus, but that wouldn't be the right name anymore anyway, and this was something similar but not the same. There was a sign near it saying that the display was soon going to be replaced - partly to correct the critter's stance, which they now think is wrong, but also to replace the petrified bones with a cast, so the real ones can be kept in a more protective environment.

I looked at the actual dino bones for a good, long time. (I 100% understand the need for preservation, but... seeing a photo of Michaelangelo's David is *not* "seeing" the David.)

Around noon, we dragged ourselves away. We'd checked out of the hotel that morning, so we headed straight for North Carolina - which was another eight hours or so away. I think it was about here that we started listening to audiobooks. I'd brought along the first Discworld book (since Tom and his dad were both interested in the series), and Tom's dad had a sci-fi book, "Protector", which was really good. Plenty of real science for them, and interesting characters for me.

We actually managed to keep pretty well away from fast food on the trip, which was a happy surprise for me. Still not exactly healthy eating, but at least not 100% grease. My travel stash was greatly appreciated - I was told, I think complimentary, that I was "just like a mom", pulling out packets of tissues when Tom was desperate in the middle of a museum, that sort of thing. *g* I'd bought a word-based game to bring along, that we could play in the car, just reading the questions off the card. I had cookies and granola bars, every kind of medicine we could conceivably need on the trip (Tom had a cold most of the time) - I was so on top of things, it was awesome. XD

Got in to Tom's grandmother's around 9:30, and though we were all beat, we wound up staying up talking until about midnight. It was a nice couple of days down there, though it rained an awful lot. We did manage to get in a semi-soggy game or two of croquet (where I was slaughtered), but otherwise it was a looooot of card games. Which actually wasn't so bad, once I had the rules for basically everything explained to me. I won a lot, which was weird. Somehow, Tom's grandma had heard that I like playing Scrabble, and insisted we play. Tom's dad HATES Scrabble - I found out later that he hadn't played a game in literally 20 years...but agreed to play this once. I won, which is actually unusual, as Tom almost always beats me despite his inability to spell - but I had an awesome word with a Q that put me over.

I got soooo much crocheting done on the trip, it was great. When we weren't playing cards, I was crocheting. In the car, when I wasn't sleeping, I was crocheting. I had like five half-finished projects with me, and pretty much finished like three, and got a good chunk done of two others.

The night before we left, we were all sitting around the living room. Tom and his dad had been passing my laptop back and forth, since I had the original-original version of Tetris on it. Eventually, though, we wound up getting into this huge philosophical conversation, that I don't even remember where all it wandered. Tom's grandma is absolutely brilliant - she's currently listening to a lecture series on the genome project - and Tom is incredible at philosophical discussions. I broke in now and again (mainly to defend art as having a purpose, or pointing out that the troubles in Africa are more than just resentment over the old colonialism), but, I get out-logic'd pretty easily.

...it's funny though, Tom and I were talking about how she's so incredibly brilliant, but, after 2-3 hours of explanation, she still barely grasps how to work her VCR. "Best example of a generational gap I've ever seen," was Tom's conclusion. I pointed out that it might not be so much that, as "just the difference in the way minds work. Like, I could *totally* see myself completely unable to get something technical like that---" At which point Tom looked absolutely terror-striken by the life ahead of him, and walked away.

A twelve-hour drive back to Long Island pretty much killed Friday, I think we picked up a pizza for dinner and watched some tv and called it a night.

Saturday morning, we stopped at Tom's old breakfast haunt. Approximately 50% of his high school breakfasts consisted of a hot sandwich of two eggs ham cheese salt and pepper. Drove about an hour over to Riverhead, where we went to Atlantis Marine World. Tom's dad suggested this stop specifically for me, pretty much because of the penguins. :) It was actually a pretty amazing place - much bigger than it looked at first glance, and with the coolest interior design I've seen in a museum-type place *ever*. The amount of detailwork was insane - the stair railings were twisted as if from old age, there were Grecian-style frescoes around the wall, the walkway around the shark tank was made to look like a cave, with sculptures set into little nooks everywhere.

The penguins were African penguins, and they had actually been rescued from a smuggler who'd brought them to the States to sell as pets. It was a cloudy day, with strong gusts of very chilly wind - and the penguins were shivering! The poor things are used to a much warmer climate, they were hardly in the water at all, and some barely left their little cubbies in the wall. They were too adorable. We hung out and watched them for quite awhile, as they got fed, and waddled around, and shivered, and I wanted to hug one.



There was a huge coral reef setup. I kept trying (and failing) to get good shots - I think there was a hefty dose of ultraviolet light mixed in on the interior, given that the bright fish really looked like they were glowing, and it messed with my camera an awful lot. I'll have to see what I can do in Photoshop with a few. All along the window, there was a massive list of the fish inside, with a picture of each by its name. Tom and his dad spent ages trying to see how many they could spot and identify - I just looked for prettily-colored fish and tried to get a clear shot. (I was not helped by the other fish - there's one shot of a clown fish getting right in front of my camera, blocking the pretty little neon fish I was trying to get. It cracks me up, I had to keep it.) I've realized that I really, really like coral.



There was a freestanding tank of a whole slew of seahorses - but holy cow do the buggers never stop moving! Couldn't get a clear shot for the life of me. I had not expected pirahnas to be covered in what looked like gold glitter. They were so pretty! Only with evil red eyes. And they BARELY moved at all. A fin fluttered now and again, and that was basically it. They stayed almost entirely still, just, LOOMING. It was creepy. The lionfish (aka the kind Picard keeps in his ready room) were in a nifty little shipwreck tank, but they too didn't stay still very well for me.



Stepping into a short hallway of reptiles, we all backed away a bit when we turned to see a dinosaur standing up and STARING at us like six inches away. The glare didn't let me get a clear shot, but, it was just standing in the water, hardly moving, staring right ahead at us. It was a freaking dinosaur. It was a little creepy.



We went back to the coral tank several times, as well as the octopus. The light in its tank was far too low for a photo, but we stood and watched it for a good long while. Mostly, it sat still and just lurked, but at one point while we were watching, it began to unfurl its legs from under itself, and move across the tank. Its tentacles did not end. They were huge. And pretty terrifying.

We braved the chilly wind and saw the seal show, and while it was generally the standard, somewhat cheesy fare, we were cracking up as the seal danced to... I think it was "Footloose". It was pretty awesome.


By this point in the trip, Tom had cemented his decision to get a laptop. I had mine with me, his dad had his, and Tom - did not have a laptop. At all. It was driving him bonkers. So, he'd requested a trip to Best Buy - and I requested a trip to a craft store. What do you know, in one plaza, we had lunch, aaaand found a Michael's like two doors down from the Best Buy.

I'd really been after the supplies to finish a purse I was done crocheting - but Michael's had NO purse handles. At all. I was not happy. But! They did have yarn, and one touch of Bernat's bamboo yarn and I haaad to get. It's the softest stuff *ever*. I kept my browsing brief, as Tom got antsy after about five minutes.

He verynearly bought a netbook at Best Buy, but then thought better of it, knowing he could get something he liked better online. (Which he did. It is TINY! Smaller than a spiral notebook. Runs Linux. Solid state harddrive. I'm a lil jealous.)

Back in Huntington, we went out in the garage to play some pinball. (His dad has an old, 1970s pinball machine. He and a friend used to play it like every day at a local arcade - so much so, that when the owner went to get rid of the machine, he was able to get it. It's the coolest thing. It needs reprogrammed like every time it's turned on now, and he had to do some re-wiring to get the score displays working this time around, but it still works - and he's got a whole book of the assembly language for programming it that he worked out. Best toy ever for an engineer.) While we were taking turns playing, Tom poked around at some of the other boxes stacked around the garage.

He spotted the box for a TI-99.

His dad said yeah, the machine was still in there - should still work, even.

Tom pounced. The thing's similar to an Atari, except I think older, more of a computer anyway. Its number pad is a separate attachment. There were at least a dozen game cartridges (including Dig Dug!). Tom and I were drooling over the retro goodness, while his dad was telling us how he'd basically made it into a primitive laptop decades ago, by hooking it up to giant batteries he kept in a Tupperware container. No memory on the thing - once you turned off the power, you lost the information.

...we couldn't find the power cable. Tom and his dad looked all over, racking their brains for a way to rig up a substitute, but the only things they could come up with were too unsafe, even for them (which is saying something).

A day or so after Tom and I were back in Fredonia, he had an email from his dad. There were pictures. Of crazy old-school graphics. Up on a widescreen plasma screen. Freaking awesome.


That night, we went out for dinner. Deciding where to eat in Huntington is the complete opposite of deciding where to eat in Fredonia. Here, there are maybe four options, and Tom and I have their menus memorized. There, omfg, there are literally a dozen nationalities of food within a block. And they're all *great* restaurants. In the end, we went to this tiny Thai place, which was swamped when we got there but holy cow was the food *AMAZING*. I had a curry, which was really sweet, very subtle and sooo good. Tom and his dad had chicken with a peanut sauce - and it was a *light* peanut sauce, it was amazing. I had ginger ice cream over fried bananas for dessert, and I might very well have a new fav ice cream. <333 They also had sake! Tom ordered a bottle to share with his father...and we quickly ordered a second and third bottle. (They're very little bottles. Promise.) It was pretty much the most delicious sake Tom and I have had. And it complimented the food fantastically.

Our drive back was pretty uneventful, and felt much shorter than the drive out. We spent that evening and all the next day being as lazy as humanly possible.


...and if anyone made it through that whole post, I congratulate you with all my heart. I really don't summarize well - and anyway, I want to get things written down before they fall out of my sieve of a memory.

Labels: dc, family, long island, north carolina, photos, travel