Exceedingly Mundane

Whew, I’ve been working the last 3 days on all of our pictures from our trip to Washington DC, here in the Photos section of Hambones. It takes quite a while to go through them and add a “caption” at the bottom, which describes what the picture is. Whew – I’m so glad to finally be finished!

Now, the next task is to edit them on my local PC, and then decide which ones I want to have printed. Then to upload them somewhere and get some or all of them printed. I want to *try* to get back into my scrapbooking, and this seems like a good place to start.

Whether I get them scrapped or not, I would like to go ahead and get them printed. I’m so behind on printing digital pictures. At least 2 1/2 years behind, maybe more!!! I haven’t even printed out the pictures from our two vacations last year (to Texas and Gatlinburg), much less holidays or everyday pictures. So, I have a lot to do! That’s the thing about having a digital camera – I sure seem to be a lot less diligent about printing them!

Greetings Mr President:

Happy Birthday! We hope you had a great day today. We heard that you had a slight accident on your mountain bike today in Scotland. Hope you and the guy you collided with are both fine. Hope the G8 summit is going well. 😆

We certainly are sorry that we missed you Sunday afternoon at the White House. We saw Marine One flying back towards the South Lawn, bringing you back from Camp David. We had hoped you might have time to pop down from the residence and see us while we were in the West Wing. But we understand and appreciate how busy you are. Tim is almost over it now, he doesn’t talk and cry about it nearly as much as he did the first couple of days.

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We actually arrived back home last night from our trip to DC, but we still had today off, so we consider this a vacation day too! Tim doesn’t have to go back into the office till Thursday, so we had today to play too. Fun!

We slept late (8 AM), then got up and went walking. After we got back, we started working outside. Our grass is withered and has tons of brown spots. We watered for over 2 1/2 hours and it is still dry and brown in places, but better than it was! We asked one of the neighbors this evening, and he said we didn’t get a single drop of rain the whole week we were gone! Tropical Storm Cindy blew into the coast this morning, but we didn’t get any rain from her, it all went east of us.

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Well, we’re back home safe and sound, after a very busy vacation. We got up at 4 AM Central Time, 5 AM Eastern, got ready and hit the road by 6 AM (Eastern). Arrived home about 7 PM Central Time (Yes, Tim drives REALLY fast! 🙂 ) Had a very uneventful trip home, except for the persistent problem with the flooding of the rear floorboard in the car due to a clogged AC line somewhere. Tim seems determined to buy me a new car soon!

We still have to unload and unpack and there will be lots of laundry and catching up tomorrow. I will have to go get groceries – we have nothing in the house, no bread, no milk, nothing. 😀

I’m also very saddened to report that apparently we didn’t get much, if any, rain while we were gone and most of my flowers are dead. The grass is very dry but hopefully will bounce back with the sprinklers on them tomorrow. The new maple tree that we planted in April is looking withered, but hopefully will also bounce back. The lorapetalums we relocated appear not to have survived either. I hope after several hours of watering in the morning that some things do try to come back. I imagine I’ll spend Saturday morning at Lowe’s, picking out new plants to replant all my deck and fence planters with. 🙁

I’m looking forward to a good nights sleep in my own bed. Will try to write an update tomorrow about our final day in DC, which was yesterday, Monday (July 4th). Check back later!

Well, we’re up and almost ready to go out on our last full day in Washington DC. It’s Independence Day and we’re hoping it’s a great final day.

We’re headed out soon to the International Spy Museum, where we plan to spend most of the day. We’re thinking we’ll head back over on the subway to our hotel late afternoon, to rest, clean up and maybe do some packing and loading stuff in the car. Then, we’ll head back over for the fireworks, which is going to be very crowded. We’ve heard stuff on the news about how bad it will be, and we’ve known since the first day that the Smithsonian metro stop will be closed today. They are supposed to be adding extra trains, so hopefully that will help out.

This will be our last entry from Virginia. We’re going to try to get up and leave really early in the morning to drive back, so I won’t get the laptop out to get online and blog. We’ll talk to everyone when we get back, after we’ve had a really good, long night’s sleep!

We have tried some new foods on this trip. As Tim loves to say “I’ll try anything once. If I don’t like it, I won’t eat it again!” So, in the spirit of that, we tried several new things and places while on our trip. So far….

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Wow, I’ve blogged quite a bit today, and I am still not caught up. We’ve seen so much on our trip and we want to remember it all. After our West Wing tour today, we went back to the hotel to change, I uploaded some pictures, blogged (partially) about our White House tour, rested a bit, then we headed back out. We took the Metro to the Archives stop, and went to the National Archives to view the “Charters of Freedom” – the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. We had originally planned to do this on Monday, as I had seen on the website that they would have a reading of the Declaration on July 4th at 10 AM. However, we thought we could go ahead and go (before the crowds, hahaha), and that would give us more time on Monday to spend at the Spy Museum. Well, were we ever wrong! We turned the corner going to the Archives and saw the line. It was wound all the way back to the main steps. We waited outside for nearly an hour, then finally made it in the door, and waited to be scanned and checked. After that, we thought we were home free.

WRONG.

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We just got back to the hotel after our private tour of the White House West Wing, and all I can say is…. WOW!

We had a great time and were so in awe of where we were and what we saw. We weren’t allowed to take pictures inside most of the White House, but I took what I could, where I could, and I just loaded them into the Photo Gallery on Hambones.

Kirk setup a tour with his friend Lucas, who works in Vice President Cheney’s office. We stopped at two checkpoints and got cleared through Secret Service and got our “A” badges, for temporary access (visitor pass, I guess). Lucas met us at the final gate and got us scanned in, then we walked toward the Old Executive Office building, and the entrance to the West Wing, and then entered the White House. There were lots of great photos on the wall, enlarged, from recent events such as Nelson Mandela visiting the White House, some other dignitaries, and then a lot of photos from Sept 11, and the president’s subsequent visit to Ground Zero.

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We got up early this morning and took a very uncrowded subway train out to Arlington Cemetery. We had to change trains at the Rosslyn station and we just barely missed our connecting train out to the cemetery and then had to wait 18 minutes on the next train. Argh, that’s the most we’ve had to wait so far!

We took a Tourmobile through the cemetery, with stops at the Kennedy gravesite (saw the eternal flame and graves of John Fitzgerald and Jackelyn Bouvier), and also the gravesite of his brother Bobby. Our tour guide told us that Bobby’s simple white cross was stated in his will, and it’s the only cross like that in the entire cemetery. One of the reasons that Kennedy is buried where he is, right below Arlington House (the Custis-Lee mansion), is that he stood up there 11 days before his assassination and was heard to remark “I could stay here forever”. We next stopped at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. When we first arrived, we watched in silence at the lone guard standing his post, going back and forth along a rubberized mat in silence, in front of the white marble tomb. Then we watched the changing of the guard. It was very precise, very somber, very respectful, and Tim and I thought, incredibly moving. I think it’s the highlight of our trip so far. I think it’s extraordinary that these guards stand out there, in wool suits and full dress uniform, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year, and have continuously, never missing a minute, dating back to 1937. They stand there in hurricanes, blizzards, blazing July summers, watching their post and guarding the tomb. Extraordinary.

We got back on the Tourmobile for the last stop, Arlington house, which is the pre-Civil War home of Robert E Lee and his wife Mary Custis Lee, who is the great granddaughter of Martha Washington. We could take pictures inside this house, unlike the interior of Mount Vernon, so I snapped some pics of the antebellum furnishings.

We’ve just gotten back to the hotel after our cemetery trip, and are going to shower and change into dress clothes for our White House tour. Kirk and Nichole will be here soon to pick us up, so I’d better go get ready. Check back later for more!

Another busy day today, as we saw the three Smithsonian museums that were on our list to see — The Air and Space Museum, The American History Museum and the Natural History Museum. Kirk and Nichole came and met us while we were eating lunch at the Air & Space, and then hung out with us for a while. We went on to the American History museum while they went to catch a movie. We walked an awful lot today, but probably not nearly as much as yesterday. I wore my pedometer today and logged 29,306 steps. 🙂 Plus, it helped that today was a bit cooler, but mostly that we were inside air-conditioned museums all day!

Gotta try to get some sleep, as we are getting up early in the morning to head out to Arlington National Cemetery. We’ll meet up with Kirk and Nichole later, and all go to tour the White House.

More next time!

Busy busy day today! Kirk setup a private tour for us at the Capitol, through Congresswoman Jo Ann Emerson’s (of Missouri) office. We had a nice intern named Ben who took us through the underground tunnels under the 3 office buildings (Cannon, Longworth and Rayburn) and over into the Capitol. We saw parts of the old capitol, a room where the Supreme Court met for about 50 years in the 1800’s, the old House of Rep. Room, the Capitol Rotunda, the Cox Corridor and finally, to the viewing gallery. We sat in some of the upstairs visitors seats and looked at where the representatives vote, and where Bush gives his State of the Union address. Way cool.

After the tour, we went to the Library of Congress. We saw the Great Hall, one of the original Gutenburg bibles and also another old bible called the Mainz bible. We didn’t want to wait on a tour, so we didn’t get to go into the Reading Room. We left the Library and walked down to the Supreme Court. We took pics outside and noticed a bank of cameras, as well as several groups of protestors (we heard later on about Sandra Day O’Connor). Then, we hiked further down to Union Station and had lunch at the first place where we could find an open table! In this case, it was Johnny Rockets. Tim had a burger and I had a patty melt and we split an order of fries and onion rings. I know, very healthy on this trip!

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We had a great time hanging out tonight with Kirk and Nichole. More to follow… I can already tell that I am going to have a hard time keeping up with the blogging and writing things down, everything I want to journal and remember. We’re getting up so early in the AM, having really full busy days, and then busy nights. Yeah, I know, wah wah!

More later, it’s 11:30 PM here and we’re still refining our plan of attack for tomorrow. Kirk got us a private tour of the Capitol at 10 AM, so we are going to rework things around that.

Check back later!

We’re here!

I’ll try to post a longer update later, but here’s the quick and dirty so far today.

We slept in a little bit this morning, then got up and went down for the free continental breakfast at the hotel in Harrisonburg. We got loaded up (after Tim again bailed water out of the front and back passenger seats, oh my; it was a LOT of water!) and got on the road about 9 AM local time. We drove to Mount Vernon (south of Alexandria) and toured there. We both thoroughly enjoyed Mt Vernon (more on that later) and spent several hours there. We had a late lunch at the Mount Vernon Inn on site, very colonial and picturesque. We both had the turkey “pot pye” (yes, that’s the way it was spelled on the menu) and Tim had bread pudding for dessert and I had cherry pie (in honor of ole George and the cherry trees). Kirk called while we were eating, to see where we were, and let us know he had gotten us a private tour on Friday at the Capitol. Woo-hoo Kirk! We left Mt Vernon, with me navigating, and although we thought we were taking Hwy 1 and going to Arlington National Cemetery, somewhere we took a wrong turn, went across one of the bridges, and ended up smack dab in the middle of Washington DC. We drove by the Jefferson Memorial and the Washington Memorial (SLOWLY, in late afternoon traffic) and eventually, through trial and error, found a way back over the Potomac River into Arlington, then drove around for a while till we stumbled upon our hotel. Well – Please Note: Tim says he knew where he was going and got us here and I totally agree. I was totally lost, couldn’t find things on the map and was an overall horrible navigator. Good thing he was here and driving, or I would have been somewhere completely lost by now. 🙂

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Currently blogging from a Comfort Inn in Harrisonburg Virginia! We arrived safe and sound tonight around 8:15 local time (7:15 central) and checked in (they had no queens or kings and we’re stuck in a double, icko). We were glad to get a room though – the guy at the front desk said they only had 3 rooms left for tonight.

We had a long day of driving, leaving home at 6:25 AM and driving pretty much straight-through. We stopped once for food, at a Checkers in Cleveland Tennessee, and twice for gas. We also stopped at the Virginia Visitors Center upon entering Virginia on I-81. Picked up some maps, info booklets and coupon booklets.

We had another small problem with the car. Background: When we went to Gatlinburg last October, we noticed on the way back that the right rear floorboard was wet. At first, we thought this was because a thing of bottled water had leaked, but then we realized the bottles were not down any water! Then, we thought it must have come from the road because we drove home in a lot of rain. Tim actually took the car apart for nearly 10 days before Christmas (finally putting it back together the day before Christmas Eve –his idea of how to keep me from shopping and spending money, hahaha), but he never could find a leak. So, we decided it was a fluke and we haven’t noticed a drop of water since. WRONG! Our right rear floorboard is completely flooded and Tim has bailed water twice today. The front floorboard is damp too. We’ve decided it must be a problem with the AC, it’s either a clogged line or a leak, because we did run the AC in the car all day. More fuel for the “get rid of this car and get a new one soon” fire.

Ok, some other small tidbit:s

We really lucked out in the traffic department and didn’t hit any major traffic.

We added a new “sign” to our collection – we take pictures of state signs as we enter new states, something we started doing when we were first married and going places together. Neither Tim nor I have ever been to the state of Virginia before today, so this is new for us, and we have a picture of the sign to prove it!

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OK, the unthinkable happened! We actually set the alarm early and got up! heheeh, rarely happens around here. Especially considering that we were up after 11 PM, packing, going over the atlas, looking for a place to stop tonight, etc.

We got up at 5 AM and are about ready to leave, in maybe 20 minutes or so. So, pretty close to our goal of leaving at 6 AM. We’re going to drive as far as Tim feels like today. We looked at the atlas last night and are considering stopping someplace like Christiansburg, Roanoke or Lexington Virginia. If the hotel has internet access, I’ll get on and post another update. Although, don’t get all excited, today is all about driving, so we won’t have much of anything to report.

Have a great day everyone, and say a prayer for us to have a safe trip!