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<< Previous: Back from the Future | Next: Coining phrases >>

Happy July Fourth
Tuesday, 2008 August 5 - 10:41 pm
Er, August. Fifth.

Geez, I'm officially a month behind on blog posting. Now, granted, I spent a good deal of July out of town. But I feel like I should have at least micro-blogged or something. (The kids, they're all twittering these days.) So much has been happening, and letting it all just pile up has made it seem that much more overwhelming.

Anyway, I'll try to catch up.

We took a family vacation to Washington D.C. for the Fourth of July. I'll spare you all the ordinary tourist vacation photos (we have hundreds of them). But just in case you haven't been to D.C. lately, here's a few tips.

The National Aquarium is a total ripoff. They might as well have called it "Bill's Dark Room of Three Fish". Here are the fish:



If you go to the National Archives to see the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, and the security guard tells you explicitly that there is NO FORMAL LINE FOR VIEWING THE DOCUMENTS and YOU ARE FREE TO ROAM ABOUT THE ROTUNDA AS YOU WISH, be prepared to fight to uphold the security guard's honesty.

The story here: When we were let into the rotunda, about a dozen of us went straight over to the Declaration of Independence, eschewing the various other exhibits. When we got there, two fat forty-something-year-old guys insisted on blocking the exhibit and preventing a thirteen-year-old-girl from snapping a picture of it, saying "they had waited in line for fifteen minutes to see it, so everyone else should too". I said to them, "The security guard said, repeatedly, there's no line system... you don't HAVE to wait in line." Their response: "Yeah? And we don't HAVE to let her in to see it." I said, "No, you don't. You could choose to be nice to a little girl. Or you could choose to be an ass." (The choice? ASS.) All of this for a stupid picture of an illegible 200-year-old document. Which I took anyway. Without standing in line. Nyaaah.



The escalator at the Rosslyn subway station is very long, though it's not the longest one in D.C.



D.C. is full of famous people! Who happen to all hang out at a, um, wax museum to pose for pictures.













(The word "FAIL" wasn't actually present there, of course, but in retrospect, I should have made a sign and stuck it on him.)

One of my favorite paintings in the whole world is hanging in the Smithsonian:



I'm supposed to figure out a way to put this piece of jewelry on a ring for Amy to wear:



This one's for my dad, who always made us pose to match pictures and statues when we were kids:



Watching the fireworks go off behind the Washington Monument is very, very cool.





Coming next: our trip to the future... I mean, New Zealand... the magical land of the hobbits...
Permalink  2 Comment   Bookmark and Share
Posted by Ken in: lifetravel

Comments

Comment #1 from Jenn (Guest)
2008 Aug 6 - 6:59 am : #
My parents used to have a saltwater tank and had fish exactly like those, who knew they could have called it a national aquarium?
Comment #2 from Noelle (Guest)
2008 Aug 8 - 8:32 am : #
I could have told you that about the aquarium, it's one of the biggest locals jokes in town. That and directing tourists to J street. Please tell me on the metro escalators you stood right so the locals could walk left. LOVE the wax museum photos!

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