Update Central

Today started the our second SSEAT Academy, this one about Biodiversity. It has been interesting so far. We spent the day at the Natural History Museum, got a behind the scenes tour of the bird area (with approx 65,000 specimens, apparently). We checked out some of the owls, all stacked in several drawers on top of each other. I never quite realized (or thought about, really) all the different types of birds, and what makes each bird unique. We also did some stuff with the mammals, which was a lot cooler to walk through without about 300 children running around, like the first time I checked it out. The teachers did a lab IDing feathers and also with bird calls (the highlight of this was my boss, David, with a blindfold on, and his eye glasses over the blindfold. Somewhere there is a picture, I'll see if I can get my hands on it sometime soon). We got a talk from the director of the museum, who was actually relatively young, and seemed to make the teachers think that they could suggest things and he would actually listen. What seemed strange to me was that the teachers were making suggestions about how the museum should reach out to more teachers, but didn't seem to have any concept of how much this outreach might cost, especially at the level they were suggesting. Oh well. Anyway, before this week, I never really did the update after the last conference. Kiyomi arrived on Saturday morning, bright and early, and we immediately took naps. This was a good call on our parts, and made the rest of the day much more enjoyable. We then did the normal "what you do when you visit Deb" routine. Well, actually, first, we went to the movies. Yup, all the way to DC, and we go to the movies. Don't worry, we went shoe shopping as well. Then we became the tourists you know we are (and there are no pictures to prove this, since we decided early on that it was too humid and we were both looking and feeling gross, so no pictures would record this). We did Alexandria, road the boat back, walked to the Lincoln Memoral, then down the reflective pool, taking in Vietnam and Korea memorials, the WWII memorial (which is new since I was here 9 years ago, and has George W's name inscribed right into the front of it...lovely), and then up to the White House and to my favorite hotel restaurant that looks right over the white house grounds. Had a late dinner, then back to bed...or at least that was the plan, until I found this great show on the Food Network, about thsi Haagen Dazs contest to make a new flavor. It was the world premier of the show, so eventually, at 1:30am, we checked the wesbite, found out who won, and then passed out, never really watching the end of the show. In case you are wondering, the new flavor is Sticky Toffee Pudding (or something to that effect), and it is damn good (of course we specifically looked up the closest scoop shop and checked it out the next day). We went into downtown DC on Sunday, and then went to Old Navy and Targey, and just had a nice girly afternoon. We met Kiyomi's friend Carly and her coworker Jay for dinner (had my first and probably last Ruby Tuesday experience in DC... Joy, I know you are proud). And then we went home, and hit the bed, so Kiyomi's 5am pickup wouldn't be too painful for either of us. The rest of the week was pretty much normal, nothing exciting, just work and home and the gym (sometimes). Yea, nothing else to report. This weekend I am going away for four days to the mountains, to have a fun road trip and see some of the sights of small town east coast. There will be plenty of nice pictures from this trip, so get ready...!

SSEAT Energy and Motion Academy

Alright, so I know I am very much behind on updating this thing, and
that I have a ton of pictures and stories that were going to be so fun
to write about. However, now that I am so behind, this task is
becoming less fun and more daunting. So, I figured I better start now,
or it would never happen. I think I left off right before the first
SSEAT Academy last week, on Energy and Motion. So, Sunday night, all
the teachers arrive, and we have a nice reception for them in the
hotel, with wine and such, and some good food, which we promptly ran
out of. My boss was not happy, and hotel manager heard about it
quickly. We ended up with more food, but it was so random, like
chicken fingers random, instead of crab cakes and something wrapped in
bacon, as we had started the evening with. Anyway, so then Monday we
started the conference. Now, while I am not going to go into too many
details about all the stuff we did, I will include the highlights.
Really, the main highlight was that several of the teachers were
basically acting like high school students, and blatantly flirting
with each other, as well as with the photographer (big moron who like
philosophy…some of you might know I don't do well with this kind of
person, since they tend to be full of themselves…he didn't
disappoint). Anyway, so we spent the week trying to keep up on the
drama, and I, of course, positioned myself nicely at meals to get the
updates on who went out with who to what bar each night. It made for
some entertaining conversations with coworkers during the BORING
presentations. So, we did content sessions in the morning (boring) and
then went to different places around DC in the afternoon. Monday we
went over the American History Museum, which I am now a local at.
Steve and I did some work with the Ben Franklin stuff, including the
'ring of fire' (everyone holds hands and send the electricity around.
It is as fun, if not more fun, to shock teachers as it used to be to
shock students. Oh, and for any Astrocamp staff out there, the
Smithsonian has decided it is ok to make a chain and shock people, so
maybe we could have continued with that…oh well. Tuesday we went out
to NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. We saw this cool globe thing in
the morning, where the world was projected onto a 3D spehere and you
could look at it from any angle as it hung in the middle of the room.
I took no pictures, but I imagine even if I had, they would not have
done it justice. Then we heard a presentation from this woman who has
her PhD in Aerospace Engineering (first Howard woman to get her PhD in
that field, ever, apparently). She was cool, very down to earth, and
get this: She ALSO failed Calculus 1B twice before passing it the
third time…;-)




In the afternoon we took a tour of some of the
facilities. We got to see (I am going to not remember all the names of
things, but here is the general idea) the big room where they test the
ability of things to stand up to sound waves by blasting these huge
speakers, the place where they test G-force by spinning things like
SUVs around in a huge room, and the big clean room (note the cute
little workers in their clean outfits). Our tourguide, DJ, was insane,
as can be illustrated in this candid picture I took of him. He was
really energetic though, and knew a ton about what he was talking
about, so it was fun.














Um, let's see, Oh, Wednesday we went out to
Udvar Hazy, which is an extension of the Air and Space Museum, and
might actually be my favorite museum this far.



It was filled with all
these old airplanes, and some really cool more recent stuff, like:














The
Concord









The space shuttle Enterprise















and the fastest airplane ever flown


Also, the thing I found the coolest was the actual plane that dropped the first A bomb in Japan. Just sitting there, on its bright yellow platform, for all to see.



Our tourguide, Captain NIck, was hilarious, he told us all sorts of funny and interesting stories about the planes and wartime.



We were supposed to see an IMAX movie, but as it was starting and
I was settling in for a nice nap, the power went out due to a really
nasty storm in the area. We then ended up standing outside, under some
useless cover, waiting for it to stop raining and for our dumb bus to
arrive. The bus was 45 minutes late, and alas, we were stuck in rush
hour traffic until 6:30. I then hung out at the hotel for a while with
one of the teachers (in the hotel bar no less), listened to her tell
me about New Orleans and buy me a beer until it stopped raining. When
it didn't stop raining, one of the other teachers gave me this really
old purple umbrella he stole from a student, and I braved the storm to
catch the bus. Made it home in time to pass out from exhaustion.
Thursday we spent the morning at the Air and Space Museum getting some
tours of plane wings and watching a Physics workshop they put on for
kids. It was interesting, but at this point in the week, I was just
tired. We then had some down time, so I went over to the Natural
History Museum and did the necessary touristy stuff, like seeing the
Hope Diamond and the insect zoo. 45 minutes later, I was done with
that, and headed back to the Air and Space Museum to redeem my free
Imax ticket to see a 3D movie about the moon landings, which was
actually really fun and interesting. Did you know one of the
Astronauts left a picture of his family on the moon? I thought that
was interesting. The afternoon was spent listening to Dane (think Mr.
Decker for those of you from way back when) drone on and on about fan
cars and solar panels. I am not his biggest fan, so by Thursday, I
wanted to hurl him through a window. Luckily, we were in an enclosed
room with no windows, so he was safe.




So, at 4 o'clock, we broke for a few hours, and
I helped move stuff to the National Academy of Sciences for our fancy
dinner (moving in heels is always exciting). The hall was beautiful,
with so much detail, and a lot of history. There was a picture of JFK
getting an award where we were eating. The artwork was amazing, and
the ceiling had all these science symbols and artwork made out of
tiles. It was like a small wedding reception, with the wine flowing
and at least three forks. I started out the evening sitting with some
teachers and such, and then Sally, our director, asked me to take her
seat, so that I could between David Evans, who is the undersecretary
of science for the Smithsonian and David Lopez, the director of the
Air and Space Museum. Yea, fancy. So, David didn't show up, but Donald
did, and he was hilarious. He was our speaker, so it was interesting
to hear him talk about his life (he is 87, I think). He was a pilot
and flew all these really cool old planes, and so he would just tell
us all these stories about getting himself in trouble when he was
younger and flying. That was a cool experience. And then, Friday,
there was a lot of whining to get out of a bed, and some advil to help
with the headache (which obviously had nothing to do with the
bottomless glass of wine from the evening before). We just did some
content sessions, ate lunch, and then kicked out the teachers. I did
meet some cool people though, and so one of the teachers, Katy, and
Steve and I went to get some drinks at this cool Mexican restaurant in
the Dupont Circle area. We have decided to make this a weekly
tradition this summer, and explore the best happy hours DC has to
offer. I will keep you updated.

Short and sweet...

I know I haven't written in a while, this week at work we did our first summer Academy on Energy and Motion. I will post highlights and pictures sometime soon, possibly later tonight. Kiyomi is coming this weekend, so the posts will be sparse until next week. =)

Weekend o' relaxation

I have been looking forward to this weekend all week, really just so I could catch up on some badly needed some sleep. So far, it has lived up to all its expectations, and more. Friday I skipped the gym to instead sit on my couch all evening and think about what I was going to have for dinner all evening, to end up never really eating, except for some cheese and crackers. I eventually just went to bed, which was by far the best choice I could have made. 10 hours later, I felt well rested for the first time since my wonderful nap on Monday afternoon. I took the morning off, some of you might have noticed that this is the trend on Saturdays when I don't have visitors (the trend when I do have visitors, apparently, is to get up with the sun like any other morning, since flights from CA get in at around 6am over here in DC). So I hung out, and the took off on my day's adventure. This time, not so much for the sight seeing, but more for the good old fashioned shopping. Destination: Old Navy (and then, as an added bonus, in the same shopping center, Target). Two buses and two metro (well, ok, four, there was little mix up) trains later, I was at the Pentagon and then the strip mall with everything you could ever want (except a Trader Joes, which brings me to my next point). I had this amazing idea today: someone needs to start a website where you can type in the stores you want to go to, and the website will tell you where the closest place is that has that combination of stores (this would be most helpful for those us using public transportation who don't have the luxury of just driving the three miles between places). Anyway, so while I was imagining how rich I will become once I have launched this website and gotten it sponsored (mostly by Old Navy and Trader Joes, since that would be my choice of stores to type in), I did some nice shopping, picked up some new shirts for work, and some tank tops for the hot weekends. Then I decided to see a movie. Seeing a movie by yourself is very liberating. You don't have to share the arm rest, you don't have to talk about how the movie made you feel afterwards, and you can eat rolos without having to share them. So, I saw Click and Cars, both good movies, although by the end of Cars I was done with movie seeing, as I had been there for four hours. Double feature on one matinee ticket...can't go wrong with that. Now I am home, enjoying the quiet of my house (except for the fireworks the neighbors seem to be trying, unseuccessfully, to launch above the trees. i think if they go for too much longer, the tree outside wil catch fire). Tomorrow, I might leave the house in the morning, I might not. I do have to attend a reception for work tomorrow night, so at some point I will have to get showered and dressed. The reception is not until 6pm though, so I think it will be a slow relaxed Sunday.

Weekend o' relaxation

I have been looking forward to this weekend all week, really just so I could catch up on some badly needed some sleep. So far, it has lived up to all its expectations, and more. Friday I skipped the gym to instead sit on my couch all evening and think about what I was going to have for dinner all evening, to end up never really eating, except for some cheese and crackers. I eventually just went to bed, which was by far the best choice I could have made. 10 hours later, I felt well rested for the first time since my wonderful nap on Monday afternoon. I took the morning off, some of you might have noticed that this is the trend on Saturdays when I don't have visitors (the trend when I do have visitors, apparently, is to get up with the sun like any other morning, since flights from CA get in at around 6am over here in DC). So I hung out, and the took off on my day's adventure. This time, not so much for the sight seeing, but more for the good old fashioned shopping. Destination: Old Navy (and then, as an added bonus, in the same shopping center, Target). Two buses and two metro (well, ok, four, there was little mix up) trains later, I was at the Pentagon and then the strip mall with everything you could ever want (except a Trader Joes, which brings me to my next point). I had this amazing idea today: someone needs to start a website where you can type in the stores you want to go to, and the website will tell you where the closest place is that has that combination of stores (this would be most helpful for those us using public transportation who don't have the luxury of just driving the three miles between places). Anyway, so while I was imagining how rich I will become once I have launched this website and gotten it sponsored (mostly by Old Navy and Trader Joes, since that would be my choice of stores to type in), I did some nice shopping, picked up some new shirts for work, and some tank tops for the hot weekends. Then I decided to see a movie. Seeing a movie by yourself is very liberating. You don't have to share the arm rest, you don't have to talk about how the movie made you feel afterwards, and you can eat rolos without having to share them. So, I saw Click and Cars, both good movies, although by the end of Cars I was done with movie seeing, as I had been there for four hours. Double feature on one matinee ticket...can't go wrong with that. Now I am home, enjoying the quiet of my house (except for the fireworks the neighbors seem to be trying, unseuccessfully, to launch above the trees. i think if they go for too much longer, the tree outside wil catch fire). Tomorrow, I might leave the house in the morning, I might not. I do have to attend a reception for work tomorrow night, so at some point I will have to get showered and dressed. The reception is not until 6pm though, so I think it will be a slow relaxed Sunday.

Happy Fourth of July!

So, long weekend of fun. Joy arrived Saturday morning at 6am, got to my house around 8, we had Starbucks and Mimi's muffins on my front porch (yup, she brought muffins all the way from California...that's commitment!). We then left the house and headed for Georgetown. We walked around Georgetown for a while and ate at this cute fire oven pizza place, the first of many delicious meals in DC. We then walked down to the canal and then down to Washington Harbor. Checked out the scene, then walked over to the Kennedy Center, where we took a much need break in the air conditioning on their fancy black leather couches. Joy almost took a nap, but I convinced her it might not be the classiest thing ever. We did see other nap takers later, and realized it might not have been that out of place. We then headed across the Potomac to Arlington Cemetary. That was the hottest part of the walk, no shade relief on the bridges, just hot asphault.
Arlington was cool, we saw the eternal flame for JFK, watched the changing of the guard at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, and checked out the Lee Memorial (really, just to use the bathrooms, and to get directions). We ended up walking all over the cemetary, it was quite the workout. We opted to take metro back, if for nothing more than to get some time in the a/c. We then walked back from the metro to Washington Harbor and had dinner at this fancy Mexican Restaurant (which had nothing on the Alamo).
Then back to the Kennedy Center to take in some theater (and some coffee, since Joy was running on Thursday night's sleep and I was running on the five hours from the night before). We saw Little Women, which just opened and was actually done really well. The Kennedy Center has a student deal for cheap tickets, and they ended up being great seats, right in the middle on the Orchestra level. The view from the Kennedy Center is amazing, right down the Potomac, and intermission fell right after sunset, making for some nice pictures. After the show we headed home, making it back to the house about 1am and falling into bed. We were both exhausted, and slept well into the next morning.
Sunday morning was slow, and we made it to Starbucks around 11 for some coffee. We finished the last of the Mimi's muffins and jumped on the bus to the metro station. Joy loved the buses, I think they were her favorite part of the trip (or maybe it was just the fact that we had no options, so she had to love the bus, just like I have learned to love the bus). Another walk in the hot sun got us to the National Cathedral, which was pretty amazing. Basically, this prepared us nicely for our trip to Europe, getting to walk througha very fancy old historical church. The Cathedral was beautiful, despite the construction we came upon when we first arrived. Also, it was air conditioned, which helped us enjoy the experience that much more.

We checked out the individual rooms and the gift store, even the random bathrooms tucked in everywhere, and the continued on our way. We got on a bus and back on metro, and then took the train down to Alexandria, where I was two weeks ago. This time we explored the food and shopping a little bit more. We ate at this place called The Fish Market, which was great seafood (I actually just had a tuna sandwich, but this was lunch, there was Pop's Old Fashioned Ice Cream next door, so we didn't want to fill up too much). Apparently they had a good deal on crab legs, but neither of us were willing to spend $38 for all you can eat crab legs. So, we did the seafood, we did the amazing sundaes next door (of course), and then walked around until it started to pour rain. We went into a book store, hung out there, eventually decided to each buy a book, went across the street to a really cute cafe, and sat and drank coffee and read our books. This is vacation, nothing needed other than coffee and a book...life was good. Eventually the rain subsided and we took the boat tour back to Georgetown. There was lightening sort of following behind us, but it never caught up and we made it safely without getting struck by the lightening. I like this boat tour, it is nice to be out on the river, always much cooler than on land, with the breeze and such, and the scenery is always beautiful and everchanging.


After arriving at the Washington Harbor, we then walked back down Pennsylvania Avenue, past the White House to Hotel Washington. Now, this is a place that a guy from work recommended. Up at the top of the hotel is a cafe that is a covered outdoor restaurant. It overlooks the White House grounds and you can see the monuments from your seats. We sat right on the edge and had a nice view of everything below. It was amazing, one of the coolest views from a restaurant I have ever seen:

(Ok, so you can't see the view necessarily, but it was cool) (and yea turn your head left for the last one, I am not sure why it displays sideways, but such is life).

So, after a late dinner and a LONG wait for the bus, we made it again, this time a little earlier (like 12:30am), and fell into bed again. The painful part of this was the alarm that went off at 7am the next morning so I could get to work. Yup, me and the four others who worked the 3rd of July sort of rolled into work right around 9am. It was lovely, expecially when we found the heat to be on in our offices (heat? why heat? why would the heat ever be on this time of year?). Joy spent the morning checking out the monuments while I hung out and sweated at work for a while. I then met her and we had lunch and then headed home. The heat outside was getting to be unbearable for a third straight day, so we decided to spent some time in the a/c, I promptly fell asleep and woke up two hours later.
Monday night we met up with our friend Heidi from high school, who lives in Maryland now. Neither of us had seen her since JOy's wedding a year ago, so it was a nice reunion. We dropped some money and a gift card at the Cheesecake Factory and then got the tour of Heidi's life, past and present, c/o Heidi's boyfriend, Josh. It was really nice to just hang out, no pressure, we even had a car, which I have come to greatly appreciate since I have arrived in DC. We spent some time catching up at Heidi's house, and even checked up on some old HS friends via MySpace, despite none of us having a MySpace account. You really can find out a lot just by typing in names. Here are come pictures from the evening:




So then came the big day, the whole point of being in DC in the summer: The Fourth of July. We sort of slept in, got up and hung out for a while, just chatting. Then we made our way up to Silver Spring. We had lunch at Panera, my favorite sandwich place in Sacramento, so it reminded me of home. We then decided to escape the afternoon heat by seeing a movie. We checked out The Devil Wears Prada, which was actually pretty good, although not as good as the book. The plan was to then go into Cars and check that out, but somehow we exited the theater accidentally, and our double feature plans were ruined. We walked around the mall for a while, and of course, the sky opening up while were inside and the rain started to come down...hard. We originally tried to brave the rain, but gave up and sat in Starbucks until it let up. The we got onto metro and went into downtown DC. After walking around for a while decideing where to eat dinner (does it sound like all we do it eat? Really we do more, but apparently the food is important or something...). We finally decided in this cool Irish pub, again in prep for our Europe trip this Christmas. It was really fun inside, and the food was amazing, probably our favorite restaurant of the weekend:


So, after dinner we headed down the mall. I was expecting chaos, but actually was surprised at how calm it was. I mean, there were definitely a lot of people on the mall, and security was there, but the lines were minimal and the back pack check was quick, totally could have gotten wine in. Anyway, we walked toward the Capitol and found a spot right in front of the gate in front of the pond. We were behind the big concert stage, this was out view of the Capitol and the Monument:


We were right behind the place where the Marines had set up their cannons to fire off (which, incidently, gave us all heart attacks when it happened). So, there was a concert that featured Jason Alexander (didn't know he could sing eh? He can't really, but it was interesting), Elmo, Vanessa Williams, JoDee Messina, Michael Bolton (I think) and Stevie Wonder. Stevie played as the fireworks started, that was really cool. And the fireworks were amazing, right behind the Washington Monument. Like nothing I have ever seen. And the chaos afterwards was minimized by a quick trip for dessert. So, at the risk of cutting this blog short, I will leave you with some pictures from the big night, and update more later in the week.
Happy Fourth everyone!