first, here’s a funny funny link. erica sent this to me last week, but now a reader sent it to me again. it seems that it does more things than the one erica sent me, but i’m sure it’s just because i’ve scrolled around on it more.
it’s interactive and very funny and be sure to click on everything, including under the couch cushion. and the light switch (kevin just found that one; i just sent him the link even though i’m in the living room and he’s in the office. that way nobody had to actually get up and go look at the other person’s computer. not that we’re INCREDIBLY LAZY this morning or anything).
first in DC there was the wedding. well, first there was the plane ride and the shuttle bus to the metro and the walk to the hotel. it took a while, but it was kind of nice being on public transportation. we then took the free shuttle from the hotel to kevin’s brother’s house for the night-before-the-wedding dinner. at the crowne plaza in silver sprig they’ll take you anywhere you want to go within a three-mile radius, which was nice of them. except the driver didn’t know how to get to the house and printed off a map and got quite lost. i had the detailed directions that nik and pickle (the bride and yes her name is pickle) sent us, and so we finally helped the guy get us to the dinner.
nik had made ALL THE FOOD for the dinner. apparently he did this on thursday night. delicious lasagne, incredibly delicious seafood lasagne, spaghetti, homemade macaroni and cheese and SIX PIES. yes, six. pumpkin, apple, rhubarb-strawberry.
that started the trip out on a very good note. plus nik and pickle were quite nice; i’d never met them before. pickle’s name is actually phyllis but her mom started calling her pickle when pickle was 12 because her mom always loved the name. of pickle. her siblings aren’t called gherkin or kosher dill or bread-n-butter. there’s just plain pickle. oh, and her sister bambi, although bambi didn’t look like any thoughts you might have of a woman named bambi. bambi was busily sewing pillows for the ring bearers late into the night on friday. i hoped that she’d be done sewing in time for the wedding.
saturday morning, another incredibly delicious meal, this time at a place we found near the hotel called EGGSCEPTIONAL or EGGSILERATING or something like that. mmm good. not that i needed any food at all after all the stuff the night before.
we thought we had plenty of time to take the metro to the church for the wedding. except it doesn’t run os much on weekend, so we sat around at the station for about 15 minutes. we finally boarded the train and got the the wedding stop at 1:59. the wedding started at 2. we had to walk a few blocks but weren’t sure how far it would be so we had to walk fast.
we got there 10 minutes late, as pickle looking lovely in a long white wedding dress was standing there with her father waiting to go in.
so we weren’t so late. it was an episcopalian wedding. which meant it was VERY VERY LONG. lots of sermonizing and standing up and singing hymns and sitting down and more sermonizing and more standing and praying and stuff like that. somewhere in there the minister did have a nice little talk about marriage and nik and pickle so that was good. but mostly it was VERY VERY LONG.
afterwards there was cake in the lobby. here is pickle’s grandmother, who is 89, giving pickle some sage advice.
it’s neat that pickle’s grandmother was there. i had talked to her the night before, and she was a hoot.
here’s nik and pickle about to cut the first piece of cake, although it really looks like pickle is brandishing that huge knife, doesn’t it? she didn’t hurt nik at all, luckily, a good way to start out the marriage, with no blood or injuries.
we went back to nik and pickle’s house for the reception and nik and pickle gave us a ride. i thought this was very nice of them. you’d have thought maybe they’d have wanted some time alone together since they JUST GOT MARRIED. but they’ve been living together for TWENTY FIVE YEARS, so maybe it was all no big deal. but i did notice that pickle had all the standard wedding stuff including white dress and veil and two ring bearers (although one of them refused to carry a ring pillow at the last minute) and lots of…wedding stuff.
they had the reception catered which was a good idea because i don’t know when nik would have had time to do any more cooking.
i got to meet kevin’s other sibling, his sister christia. here’s kevin with nik and christia.
christia was quite nice but i didn’t get to see her much because she drove in from north carolina on saturday morning and drove away a couple hours after the wedding. they all look so alike, don’t they?
after the reception my friends kelly and rob drove to the house and picked us up. they were lending us one of their cars, which was really good of them. the four of us drove to an irish pub. i wish i’d taken a picture of kelly and rob but somehow i didn’t manage to take many pictures during the whole trip.
sunday, yet another wedding event, more food, and then kevin and i and my friend thad went to the antietam battlefield where there was a huge huge fight, with 23,000 soldiers killed or wounded. a ranger gave us a detailed and interesting description of the battle, which was good because otherwise it would have just looked like some lovely rolling countryside. why have i no photos of all of that? i can’t say.
monday thad took the day off work and we went to the spy museum, which i’d been to before and really liked a lot. here’s a photo that proves we were actually both there in our nation’s capital.
we took the metro into DC and thad had us get out at a stop that was past the smithsonian stop and we walked and walked and then finally a guy asked us where we were going and we told him and he said YOU HAVE A REALLY LONG WALK TO GET THERE. it ended up not being such a terrible walk, but i realized that thad has no sense of direction at all. it’s better to know this kind of thing upfront so you don’t have to spend a lot of time wandering aimlessly.
the spy museum was great, though, and kevin really liked it. they have all kinds of historical spying stuff from all over the world, and lots and lots of information that i never knew about. for example, did you know that before normandy in WW11, they got the germans to belive that the troops were actually going to land in calais? there are photos and a video of these soldiers with blowup tanks and boats, staging all of this so it looked like there were lots of troops amassing.
fascinating, it’s a fascinating museum.
on tuesday kevin and i ventured out by ourselves. he just told me on monday that he’d never seen ANY of the smithsonian museums except air & space. how had i not known this? had he never told me? did i just not listen to him?
we went to the sackler and the freer galleries and saw some cool indian paintings, a special exhibit called
Garden and Cosmos: The Royal Paintings of Jodhpur
October 11, 2008 – January 4, 2009
1st Level, Main Gallery
This groundbreaking exhibition of recently rediscovered Indian paintings from the royal court collection of Marwar-Jodhpur (in the modern state of Rajasthan) has three sections devoted to the garden and cosmos leitmotifs, with an introductory gallery about the kingdom of Marwar-Jodhpur and the origins of its court painting traditions in the 17th century. Produced for the private enjoyment of the Marwar-Jodhpur maharajas, virtually none of the 60 works on view have ever been published or seen by scholars since their creation centuries ago. Strikingly innovative in their large scale, subject matter, and styles, they reveal both the conceptual sophistication of the royal atelier and the kingdom’s engagement with the changing political landscapes of early modern India.
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i wish i’d bought the catalog of the exhibit, but i didn’t. on the other hand, wouldn’t it just sit around here collecting dust?
we walked down to the washington monument and it was VERY VERY WINDY. here’s an example of that.
and here’s kevin, out of the wind.
we couldn’t go up in the monument because all the tickets had been given out, but we saw a sign for the post office tower, with also a great view. so we walked over to that and the old post office is a very cool building and i heartily recommend it. inside there are a few little restaurants and a BEN N JERRY’S ice cream parlor and some tourist shops. you take the elevator up to the top of the tower, and here are some photos of the view. it’s open-air and there are protective cables all around it so you don’t jump or fall off.
this is a cool rooftop garden on top of one of the office buildings acros the street. it’d be a great place to hang out, on a warmer and less windy day.
and here’s the white house. i don’t know why i’ve never walked over to the white house, but at least i have this photo.
maybe i haven’t walked over there because there hasn’t been anybody inside worth seeing.
YET.
all in all, a good trip. it was nice to meet all of kevin’s siblings, and to see his mom who i like a lot, and it was great to see my friends.
but it was very nice to get home.
somehow we need to convince THEM to come visit US.
i’ve been sitting here frittering away the morning and i have MANY MANY MANY halloween things to do today.
ok then,
busy in a minute saturday grace.