The Blog Formerly Known as An Orange County Sitcom

Reflect

For Wordless Wednesday .

In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit

Thing 1 documented the last night on our trip.  Her self-portrait reminded me of a hobbit hole:

Thing 2 watched TV...

GWH read the paper:

And I blogged. :)

We've been home for 2 weeks, so it's about time to wrap up the DC pix.  :)  I think I'll have one more tomorrow for Wordless Wednesday.

International Man of Mystery

We visited the International Spy Museum on our trip to Washington where we learned all about, well, International Spies. Afterward we headed for some afternoon refreshment at a nearby Starbucks.  Suddenly Thing 1 whispered, "There's a spy!"  Sure enough, we looked out the window and saw a suspicious looking fellow wearing a hat and trenchcoat.  (never mind that every businessman in DC on our trip was wearing a trenchcoat, and about 10% of them had hats...)  This fellow had an inconspicuous-looking briefcase/computer bag which looked perfect for handing off to his contact.  Obviously his contact would surreptitiously hand him the identical bag filled with money, while the spy hands off state secrets.

Thing 1 decided to snap a photo of him for evidence at the trial.  Her first attempt was through the window.

Oops.  Hard to see who else is coming.
So she slipped outside with the camera to get a better picture, although with greater risk of discovery.
Here's her SOOC shot:

She did quite a bit of work on Photoshop.  She cropped, increased saturation, used hard light with opacity at 72%, reduced noise.  If you understand all that, you know more than I do.  Here's her final pic:

I think it's a very dramatic art-deco sort of look.  I have no idea exactly what art-deco means, but I know it when I see it.  Ditto for beaux-art.  Every building we saw in DC was beaux-art, ha ha.  It drove my family nuts.

Things that make you say Hmmm.

GWH travels for business and collects hotel points and air miles, which means a lot of our travel is free or discounted.  Yay!  And we get to stay in nice places that offer benefits like this:

I did notice, however, that the toilet seat didn't have one of those Sanitized For Your Protection banners.

What did those banners mean, anyway?  Couldn't housekeeping have not-quite-sanitized the toilet and still wrapped one of the banners around the seat?   

Did I mention it was cold?

We spent a couple of days visiting museums and touring the White House, etc., but finally had to brave the elements to see what tens of thousands of our fellow tourists are here to see this week, the Cherry Blossoms.

We hiked around to the Jefferson Memorial.  At that point I was so cold I would have paid any amount to get a cab back to civilization, but none were to be had.  We trudged back to the Mall, and by then the clouds had dissipated so GWH could get this picture:

This was only 90 minutes or so later than the last pic!  Gorgeous blue sky - but still cold. We found another warm museum to duck into.

PS - Don't ask why Thing 2 is wearing shorts.  I don't know.  And yes, the Things did wear the same sweatshirts almost every day of the trip.   So next time I go on vacation, I'll know not to pack 5 (yes, FIVE) suitcases full of clothes.  Because we only wore about half of them.  We took fewer clothes on a 3 week trip to Europe! 

National Treasure

Despite the cold weather, we were still stickin' to our schedule on day 3.  We started off at Manassas Battlefield Park.  The wind chill was about minus 5.  Well, not really, but it sure was cold.  We viewed the indoor exhibits and tried walking around one of the fields but it was too cold. We gave up and hopped in the car.  And drove to Mt. Vernon where it was even colder.  But it was beautiful and worth the visit:

See all those people lined up to the left of the building?  They're queued up to tour the inside.  What you can't see are the hundreds of other people waiting. We spent 55 minute in that line, exposed to the bitter elements.  (guess I've been in California too long; who knew I was such a cold weather pansy?)

Here's how the kids entertained themselves during the wait:

Coming tomorrow:  Another cold day.

That's what you call ironic

On day two of our East Coast extravaganza we visited the historic Jamestown and Yorktown sites.   What's fascinating about these is that the British American experience began in Jamestown in 1607 with the first permanent English settlement in America.  Then it ended only a few short miles away in Yorktown when the British army suffered a crushing defeat in 1781.  "That's what you call ironic." (points for you if you can correctly identify that quote without a search!)

Did you see yesterday's pix?  We were all looking pretty warm, weren't we?  Well, that was the first day of our trip; and the first, last, and only warm day.  For the last week we've frozen our toes off in the fickle Jamestown & Potomac weather.  Here's how Thing 1 stays warm:

(yes, I realize she's in dire need of a new pair of blue jeans).

In case you don't recognize the historic site we're visiting - it's Yorktown battlefield.  We drove around to the important spots (Redoubts 9 and 10 were especially fascinating!) and took pix of Thing 2 pretending to be a cannoneer.

I went to Williamsburg and all you got was these pictures

We started off our historical Williamsburg/DC trip last week at Colonial Williamsburg.  Here's a pic of Thing 1 in a costume that she sewed before our trip:

GWH was taking pix of Thing 1 in this gift shop because we thought the decor matched her dress really well!  The shop lady was watching us very strangely, however. 

Here's Thing 2 in a colonial-era jail cell (he was a bad boy):

After a while we got a little bored waiting for the tour of the Governor's Mansion to start.

So the Things started goofing off.

GWH wanted in on it, too.

I was on the trip too - here's a later picture of a tired family!

But the day wasn't over until Benedict Arnold rode into town with the British Army to tell us it wasn't too late to declare our loyalty to the King.  I hate that guy:

I uploaded lots more pix from our trip - will post more later.

In the cockpit

For Wordless Wednesday.

Who are these people?

For Wordless Wednesday