Day Three: today, we decided to visit the other monuments in the Mall, and to spend some time at the Air & Space Museum (this was really my only mandatory activity for the whole trip–i wasn't about to visit D.C. without going to the Air & Space Museum).

we set out from the probably somewhere in the range of 10:30 to 11:00, and proceeded to the Mall. we made it back to the Washington Monument, then made our way towards the construction zone, avoiding touring school-children, gaggles of the elderly, and middle-aged couples walking hand in hand discussing whatever it is that middle-aged hand-in-hand type couples discuss.

one end of the lawn was boarded, roped, fenced, and otherwise closed off, but there were gateways through the fencing at the crosswalks to let onto the sidewalks that lead along the reflecting pool at the foot of the Lincoln Memorial. now, if you've not been to D.C., or if you've been but have never seen the reflecting pool, let me just prepare you… it is a green festering dirty filthy mess. not nearly so "beautiful" as we may've been led to believe by the movies, photographs, and other images. that shit looks nasty, and, while i didn't walk directly along the edge of the pool, i imagine it probably stunk. it looked like it would stink. much like our society and especially our government, it looks pretty nice from far away, but once you get right up close, you can see that it's unkempt, rundown, dirty, and ugly. "reflecting" indeed.

anyway… before we made it to the Lincoln Memorial, i noticed the Korean War Veterans Memorial off to the side as we approached, so i detoured our contingent to go get a peek. i remembered ben and geoff talking about it at some point in the past, and remembered the images i'd seen from it, so i wanted to go get a real look at it. it was pretty cool, but i think this was really the point in the trip where i started wishing that i could visit these places without hundreds of other people. i couldn't "connect" with the memorial, or any of the memorials we visited, because i couldn't "disconnect" from all the people milling about.

next we went on to the Lincoln Memorial. it is huge. it was cool.

after that, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. my companions were all visibly moved by it, once we reached the other side, but once again, somehow i managed not to take it in or be effected by it. i have no immediate personal connection to that conflict, at least not through a familial loss, because though most of the male members of my extended family (who were of age) did serve in that war, they all returned.

after the Vietnam Memorial, we left the Mall and headed for the nearest Metro stop (10 blocks away or some crazy shit like that) and headed back around to the Air & Space Museum.

you've doubtless heard the old analogy of the kid in the candy store, right? well, that certainly could've been applied to me. rockets and manned space capsules and jets and… just all kinds of really cool shit.

probably my favorite of the exhibits was the Apollo moon shot exhibit, followed closely by the history of aviation exhibit. they also had the crazy ass space flight simulators or airplane simulators or whatever they were–the ones with the pneumatic chambers that shake, move, twist, and turn the little cabin that you're sitting in. i really wanted to do that, but the wait was over an hour, and we were only planning on spending 4 or so there.

the freakiest thing of the whole trip though, was when we decided to get some lunch after walking through a couple exhibits. there was a food court area in a sectioned off area of the building, and the restaurant was a combined McDonald's (ick), Boston Market, and Donato's Pizzeria. i can hardly describe the level of freakishness that this fast-food place has managed to achieve… think of a drive-through restaurant for race-car drivers, only there're no cars… think of cattle lining up to be slaughtered, and each being able to pick which particular shape of knife gets to be drawn across its throat… think of being shoved in a bright, metal & glass elevator car, going up at ridiculous speeds and having grease, meat, bread and french fries squeezed through a strainer in the ceiling above you.

ok, now think of something just a touch less freakish.

yeah. fucking packed… PACKED with people—scads, scores, gobs of people—in long lines where you first place your order with a disinterested person sitting in a bright metal chair, and then are told to go to the next person who will collect your money. then, after paying, you have to step up to the "counter" to pick up your "meal." each successive person looking like they give even less of a shit than the last, and the food you're handed, if hot, is only just barely so. hell, i'm freaking out right now just thinking about it.

so anyway, we ate the crappy food at the freaky food court, then went on back out to get some more exhibits under our belts before meeting ben & mary (who'd been sitting on a bench or in the planet-arium for most of the day).

after the Museum, we were dog tired (and still freaked out about the food court), so we went back to the hotel and crashed for a few hours, before going back out on the town for dinner.

this evening we kind of jazzed it up a bit. we walked out to this place that ben had found (we tended to leave the dining decisions to ben & mary it seemed, so we ended up eating at much more high-class establishments than i can imagine i would've picked) and checked in at the front table. there were actually two separate restaurants in the same… er… restaurant–one for the lower upper middle class, the other for the lower upper class. ben picked the one he thought was the former, and we proceeded downstairs to a nice big round table with all the accoutrements including the cloth napkins all folded and placed decoratively on the plate. we opened the fancy menus in the nice leather-bound folders, and stared aghast at the $15 asking price for a house salad. needless to say, we stared even more aghast at the $40 – $60 dollar entrees, then promptly told the waiter that there'd been a mistake and we needed to go back upstairs to the "cheap seats".

somehow, at this point, $5 for a Beam & Coke, and $15 for an entree didn't seem all that bad.

the food was good (thank god, or someone would've lost an eye or limb) and we were satisfied with our last day & night in D.C.

well, almost. sara & i decided to go back to the White House, as there was some issue of film not advancing properly in her camera the night before, and she wanted to make sure she got some night shots of the White House. we did, and we had a nice leisurely stroll through the streets of D.C., just the two of us hand-in-hand, talking about whatever it is that young hand-in-hand type couples talk about on their last night on their first vacation together.

we went back to the hotel and prepared for our early morning departure, and a day of potential chaos.

Day Two: for the first half of the 2nd day, we were wandering about the halls of the Pentagon, knocking on the doors of the Joint Chiefs, and getting chummy with famous newsanchors. now, we're pretty proud of the fact that we got into the Pentagon… perhaps you're not aware, but the only people allowed (generally) to tour the pentagon are school groups and members of the military. the one exception to that rule would be–you gotta know somebody. as it turns out, ben had interviewed a guy a while back who offered to "take him around" if he should "ever come to Washington." good thing ben remembers stuff like that, and good thing he's not afraid to bring it up again.

we ended up getting the five hour personalized tour, and after it was over, we were all ready to call it quits. but, rather than doing that, we decided we might as well head on over to Arlington (practically just next door, by Metro) and enjoy that while we were already out and about. We did, it was nice, it was hilly, our feet were killing us, we were tired, we went back to the hotel & took naps after.

after napping not quite sufficiently, we got up for our night-time walk through the Mall and to the White House. and walk we did.

now, i haven't mentioned yet, but our hotel was in a fairly favorable position in the greater scheme of things. two blocks from a Metro stop, four or five blocks from the white house, five or six blocks from the washington monument. nevertheless, after the pentagon and arlington visits earlier in the day, our feet weren't much more than little gobs of goo we'd stuffed in our shoes before going out again.

we found and photographed the White House (seemed smaller than i was expecting), trekked over to the washington monument, then we were going to go to the Lincoln Memorial, but decided we'd rather see Jefferson at night.

oops.

the Jefferson Memorial is a hellaciously long way from the Mall on gobs of goo.

still, we did finally make it there, and enjoyed several minutes resting on the handy benches. our day was done—it was now back towards the hotel and to bed.

well, the washington trip was a huge success, despite the fact that we were all really insanely tired most of the time. it seemed like we did so much walking… i'm not sure if the distances we covered were all that great, but we were on our feet and moving for what had to have been 15 or 16 hours a day.

yeah, so maybe that's an exaggeration.

anyway, we all had a great time, and we got to see a large portion of the things we'd set out to.

Day One: we get up bright and early, but not as bright or early as ben & mary, who got to the airport before six (i think) in order to check in two hours before our flight. any way you slice it, six something is way too early to be up and moving in the morning.

we did manage to get to the plane on time, and had no trouble on the flight over. we also managed to figure out how and where to catch the Amtrack that was going to take us from Baltimore to D.C.

then, trouble.

as it turns out, it's fairly easy to get distracted at 10 something in the morning, especially when you only got 3 hours sleep the night before and have a new toy in your hands. so easy, in fact, that one might be susceptible to such an unlikely thing as losing one's luggage.

once i explained the situation to the conductor (or whatever he was) he told me that it'd already been picked up and would be on its way with one of the next trains.

after waiting for a few "next trains", and with the help of several friendly Amtrack employees, we managed to track down the guy i'd spoken to, and through him, the woman who'd picked up my bag at the train station… of course, my bag had never made it onto that "next train."

more arrangements were made, and this time enough to my satisfaction that we felt comfortable leaving the glorious confines of Union Station. we proceeded on to the hotel but couldn't check in yet as we were still early, so we checked our baggage with the concierge, and started walking towards the Capitol and our scheduled appointment with a Congressman's intern.

our tour of the capitol was conducted by a two-week-old intern, who seemed to have a pretty good grasp of things anyway. after the tour, we got to go with another intern to a subcommittee hearing.

after the capitol, sara & I parted from ben & mary, and proceeded back to Union Station to retrieve my newly arrived bag. considering the events of the day, and our still fresh "vacation legs", about all we did after that was have a little dinner at the restaurant/bar off our hotel's lobby. There was some kind of company party going on, and at some point, and extremely inebriated woman comes over to ask us for a light, then proceeds to tell us all about how she likes to fuck young men, but not get involved with them. she also took it upon herself to recommend mary ditching ben and finding herself someone "better." … a here i thought we'd find no-one with any class in D.C.

alright, well, i was gonna throw this all into one big post, but it was becoming a really big post, so i'm gonna break it up. don't worry it was only a four day trip, and only three of those were really spent in D.C…. so there's only two more to go. whiny little bastards.

my major project the last several days has been getting my php based gallery scripts that i've been using on lucifigousprick.com and old-man.net adapted for ye olde bipolar. eventually i'll have these scripts worked to such a fine polish, that only minor modifications will be necessary for moving them to new digs… if i do it right, anyway.

well, without further ado, i give you the Washington D.C. photo gallery.

sara & I, and a couple of her friends, are taking a little four day vacation to Washington, D.C. this weekend. i have been to D.C. before, but only when i was a kid, probably somewhere in between 7th, 8th, or 9th grades. pretty much the only thing i'm interested in site-seeing-wise is a visit to the Air & Space Museum. i do believe i went there before, but like i said, it was a long time ago. no matter what we do end up doing, i'm sure we're going to have a great time. and, i'm going to try to take an assload of photos with the hope of putting them up online here sometime after my return.

you'll notice that row of pictures over there on the right… well, it's all thanks to my lovely girlfriend who got me an early birthday and christmas present.—that's right, a brand spankin new fancy-ass digital camera . so, now i'm trying to get back into the habit of carrying a camera around with me everywhere and taking pictures whenever i see something good. we'll see how that works out, but rest assured, this weblog isn't going to devolve into *just* a fotolog.

a good friend is getting married this weekend (and like a dumbass, i forgot this fact until after we'd bought the plane tickets to D.C.), so we're going to have to fly back early early on Sunday to get to the wedding on time. especially imperative since i'm in the damn thing. would be in bad form for one of the "men of honor" to be late. hopefully the tux will fit, 'cause i won't get to pick it up until 12:00PM on Sunday. talk about cutting it close…

and to top all that fun stuff off with some really excellent news, lucifigous prick has been invited to play at the mom's music festival this year! so, we'll be taking the stage at some point on the 26th or 27th of July, along with about 140 other bands. it should be an awesome time, as we don't expect to fit in with the other bands, or even necessarily the crowd at all, so we're going to try to have as much fun as we can with it. there was even some talk of jim wearing a mini-skirt, though i think his wife put the kibbosh on that idea. nevertheless, it's going to fucking rock.

and speaking of fucking rocking, we've got another show lined up two weeks later with three other bands, all of whom have one or more members who work at Ear-X-tacy. we don't know for sure if the owner is going to let us use the store's name while promoting the show, but that was our original plan. promote it as some kind of Ear-X-tacy employee's show. Check the site for more info on the other bands playing, though i'm sure i'll post a link to the flyer once that's been put together.

g'damn. i think that's about it for today. i wanted to make sure i got a new post up before i took off for four days. i'll post more crap and probably go on about how great the trip was, once i return. so, you've got something to look forward to now, right? right.

well well well. can anyone here say "old habits die hard"? i sure can.

the biggest news since the last "real newsworthy" post is that sharon finally got herself hitched up. the ever-lovely sara and i went down to Princeton for another visit with my family and to go to the wedding. the visit with the family was very nice and laid back, as all good visits to family should be.

saturday evening was the wedding, and sara & i drove down to LBL, specifically Patti's 1880's Settlement, where the ceremony was to take place.

I'd never been to Patti's before, but heard about it quite a bit growing up (though even then the references were vague, as everyone pretty much assumed i'd know what they were talking about… it's the way of things in a rural community.) As you might imagine, Patti's is an approximation of a (significantly romanticized) old-time settlement… bunch of log cabins, flowers growing everywhere, streams flowing, waterfalls falling; pigs, chickens, and turkeys (all in pens, of course); and lots and lots of "antique" crafts and similar merchandise.

the ceremony itself took place in a large gazebo in the center of the "settlement", very elaborately decorated, very beautiful. unfortunately for some, the gazebo was not quite large enough for the assembled guests. i suppose though, that this was probably just a good indicator of how well sharon was loved by the people of the town. sometimes i feel i'll be lucky to get more than 50 (family & friends) at my eventual betrothal.

of course, as some of us know, i'm a complete and total sap, so it should come as no surprise that a couple times during the ceremony i came very near tears. it was very touching, and considering the past, i think i could hardly be happier for anyone than i was for sharon. of course, the most difficult moment was when, while attempting to recite her vows, her voice broke and you could literally hear the weight of her emotions in her voice. that was nearly the end of me. thankfully, sara was there and she managed to hush me up without resorting to pinching, hitting, or dragging me out by my ear.

after the ceremony, we waited for a chance to personally greet & congratulate the bride & groom, and the look of surprise (and happiness) on sharon's face when she finally saw me standing there was very gratifying. it was a very happy moment, to see her again, and to get to introduce her and sara. unfortunately, there were many guests for them to greet still, so we made our way to the back and out. on the way out, we stopped to say hello to the parents, and i have to say… the look of utter surprise on sharon's mother's face was quite entertaining. not only had she not seen me in years, but i'm sure i'm one of, if not the last person she expected to see there that day.

as i said though, the ceremony was lovely, and i'm incredibly glad i got to be there.

afterwards, the reception was held at the KY Dam Village Convention Center. it was an enjoyable time, highlighted by: a 15 minute (or so) slide presentation of sharon and grant growing up and meeting each other; and some crazy dance performed by the groom himself. we had a great time, and managed to get a least a few pictures that i'll hopefully be able to get online here soon.

the rest of the weekend was a bit compressed, as we had to get back to Louisville early in the afternoon on Sunday to get my sister to the airport for her trip back to France. as always it was good to get to see my sister, and to finally get to spend more than just a day with her before she headed back. especially considering that this may've been my only chance to meet the nephew (or niece) before s/he's born. nevertheless, on a least a couple of occasions, the baby gave me a hearty kick of greeting, perhaps to thank me before-hand for all the spoiling it's going to get under my generous uncleship.

this is too long. more later.