Vacation Part i

SHHH: don’t tell anyone, but I know where Judge Sotomayor stayed this week: I saw her in the lobby of our hotel as I was on my way to get coffee. I hope she could sleep through the construction that began at 6 pm and ended at 6 am each day: the incredible noise kept waking me up once I was finally able to fall asleep! Hard to comprehend that road crews could repave an entire block of roadway each night: one direction the first night and the other direction the next night, complete with striping. Lots of work and even more noise. For being on the 8th floor, it was noisy enough to have been camping on the curb!

I’ve had a wonderful time so far, walking more miles than I thought possible during 4 full days of sightseeing. We actually had boots on the ground at the Air & Space Museum, where we saw a presentation on Black Holes; American History Museum; National Zoo; Botanical Gardens; cruise to and tour of Mt. Vernon; Congress; Library of Congress; the mall at Pentagon City; dinner at Hard Rock Café, the best HR I’ve ever been in; the WWII Memorial; the Lincoln Memorial; and past the Washington Spire several times, the tickets for which sell out soon after the kiosk opens. Yesterday, after getting up with my daughter for her 4 am jaunt to Union Station and unable to go back to sleep due to the construction noise, I pulled a cab over rather than taking one more step after seeing Abe in his chair. My only hope was that after walking from the Library of Congress the entire length of the Mall to see him that he had not decided NOT to wait around any longer and had taken off before I could arrive. Darn, but that is one long walk!!

G’son and I also went back to the shopping mall at Pentagon City stop as it’s quite enticing, with an entrance off the Metro stop, which makes it handy. He didn’t really want anything, but once you’re at that spot down the Mall looking at Monuments, it’s just as easy to zip over to the shopping mall for lunch, then back up to the Monument Mall to continue the walk. Uh huh, NOW you know why I was so tired: it was one long darned day!

By far our two favorite activities were the cruise and tour at Mt. Vernon and the time we spent at the Botanical Garden. The Museums are not as spectacular as one thinks, perhaps because they have so many old things that you look at, rather than living things and/or various activities to do. G’son was upset that he could not walk into the Library of Congress, which is the entire point of his putting it on his to-do list; however, my pick, the Botanic Gardens, saved the day for him as he loved it and wants to go back another trip in the future.

We did get lost today, driving out of DC and then finding our way to I-83 North, but we pulled off somewhere in the greater Baltimore area and I asked a well-dressed man in an expensive SUV (g’son thought it was cool: getting directions from the driver of a Navigator) where the heck we were. We were so far from where we should have been that he said, “Follow me to the Beltway and continue straight after I turn off. You cannot miss I-83.” We did; he was right; it was smooth sailing thereafter.

I also had to deal with a call from my alarm company: the garage alarm went off this morning at 4:45 CA time, an ungodly hour in anyone’s morning. I do have the 2 men working on the garage overhaul, but figured they wouldn’t be there that early, so told the dispatch to alert the police. Then I called one of the guys who went into panic because all his tools are in the garage. But he called me back about 5 minutes later to tell me that his friend, who is working with him, couldn’t sleep, and went up to start work early. He forgot about the alarm and opened the door to the patio, but did not hear the alarm going off. B called him, got the alarm off, and I hope dealt with the police, so all is well.

B told me that the transformation is astounding and he wishes he had taken a before/after photo. He and A have taken literally a ton of trash to the dump, repacked what I knew I wanted to save, as well as anything about which they had doubts. He said it was pretty obvious what needed to go, as well as what could stay, especially after they found the boxes the rats had been into, as well as the remnants of very dead termites (which could have been brought in from TX). They have patched the holes, made a new workbench, installed the gas dryer, changed out the watering system timer, replaced the light fixture above the washing machine, and reinstalled the towel bar in my bathroom. B assures me that I’ll be able to park both my car and the truck inside -- and have lots of new places to store my new accumulation of trash/treasures. Hurrah!