Long hours

I haven't posted for awhile. Again. This time, I think I have a reasonable excuse - I've been working pretty long days at work. Last night I got home at almost 2am. And I was back at the office this morning by 10am. We're almost ready for the conference, which is good since the first people check in on Friday!!

Cherry Blossoms, part two!

I had a little time this weekend to walk around and see some of the cherry blossoms. We are just shy of peak bloom, apparently. Some of the later blooming trees are not yet out, just budding, and some of the earlier bloomers are in full flower. Regardless, it's pretty impressive. The amount of people walking around is also impressive. Just a few pictures:

Oh look, the Washington Monument from across the Tidal Basin. If you could look to the right, you would see the Thomas Jefferson Memorial and thousands of people.

 

This is at the George Mason Memorial. I didn't learn much about him in school, but he is evidently the reason the Bill of Rights was added to the Constitution. So, he was pretty important.

At the National Arboretum, looking at one of the cherry tree collections. The Arboretum is primarily a research facility, but if you don't know that it's basically just a huge area with lots of beautiful plants. Some of the azaleas were starting to bloom too, plus forsythia, daffodils, andromeda and the early magnolias. Very nice day, the forecast suggested that it would be snowy/sleety and low 30s. Instead is was mid-40s and sunny. Go figure.

I can't put my finger on exactly why, but this was my favorite cherry tree at the Arboretum. Probably something to do with how incredibly beautiful it is.

Cherry Blossoms!

The Cherry Blossoms are starting to bloom in DC. This is very exciting, and a little earlier than years past. The Cherry Blossom Festival (which occurs every year and is a big tourist attraction), is scheduled for March 26 - April 10 and there may not be many blossoms left by then! There are trees in full bloom around the Capitol and I saw trees along the Potomac a couple days ago that were just about to pop into bloom. So, it looks like we're coming up on peak blooming. There is more rain in the forecast, which apparently speeds up the blooming process. I plan to take as many pictures as possible and post some here, stay tuned!

NYC and beyond

Last weekend I trekked to New York City for the long weekend (thank you Presidents). It was an interesting couple days and seeing New York again for the first time in many years good to gain a little more current perspective on the place. My first impression upon arriving was that I don't want to live there. The sheer weight of human impact on the land is almost palpable (I was in Manhattan). And in between all the very tall buildings, there was very little open, green space. Not exactly my idea of home. Plus it felt dirty, which I suppose goes hand in hand with the high population density. This is not to say I didn't enjoy the place. Dinner the first night at Ilili was delicious. The Frick Collection was also really enjoyable, you can even tour it yourself with Google's fun tool Art Project, which let's you virtually walk through several museums around the world. Very cool. Probably not the same feel as actually being there though. Part of what I found so appealing about the Frick was that it used to be a private home, which limited the size and made it feel more approachable to me. I've been to some of the largest and best-known museums in the world and I often leave them feeling exhausted and a little disappointed. There's just no possible way to see everything, and usually I don't have the luxury of returning multiple times to these places so prioritizing exhibits is key. I felt pretty good about seeing everything there was at the Frick. I could probably spent several more hours there, but I also have the fortune of not being an art historian, critic or painter myself. So for me good art is something that is visually stunning and I don't need to deconstruct it to enjoy the experience.
My trip to NYC also involved a trip to Katz's Deli, which was apparently a defining moment in my life. I guess that's true, because as a vegetarian I can definitively now say that I don't need to return. If I ate meat I would probably have found the experience much more engaging, since they cut the meat for your sandwich right there in front of you. Now, is that worth the line to get inside and then the line to get to the counter to order once you are inside? I'm not sure. It was great people-watching though, and in that respect if reminded me very much of the Minnesota State Fair.
The 6th annual Coffee and Tea Festival NYC coincided with my visit. I swear this was a coincidence and nothing more. Naturally, we had to go. And I have to say, maybe we missed the good coffee by going on Sunday rather than Saturday, but I was a little disappointed at the lack of coffee samples available. That being said, there was a wide selection of pretty incredible teas so it wasn't a total bust.

Directions, please?

Apparently, DC is a confusing city to drive around in. Or maybe my experience with lost drivers is abnormal, I don't really know since I no longer own a car and find the city actually very easy to navigate via public transportation and good, old-fashioned foot travel. I have, however, been a frequent source of driving directions for lost motorists recently. It isn't clear why this phenomenon is occurring. Maybe I look like a local (potentially because I am walking with confidence from known point to known point, i.e. the Metro stops)? Or possibly I appear to be non-threatening? I really don't know, but the fact remains that a startling number of cars have pulled over near me and asked for directions to wherever their destination is. Even more startling, to me anyway, is that I actually know where to send them.

In other news, I made my first (hopefully of many) visits to the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts last night. The impetus for this visit was the Mariinsky Ballet production of Giselle. I am absolutely positive that I missed a lot of the nuances of performance due to my ignorance of dance. That said, I really did enjoy it a lot, it was captivating. The people watching during the intermission between acts was also fun, particularly this very cute, old couple who was very clearly enjoying their night out at the ballet. I don't really know what you talk about after 50 years of marriage, but I probably should have asked them, since they were chatting away. Also, I had the entertaining experience of seeing an usher yell at a patron for taking pictures (FYI, you are not allowed to take photos of the performances apparently, good to know). That guy might be blacklisted at the Kennedy Center now, since they collect some pertinent information when you buy a ticket.

Philately

Yesterday I went to the National Postal Museum, which I was admittedly a little dubious about prior to going. On the other hand, I didn't know a lot about stamps or the postal service before yesterday so I was bound to learn something! My knowledge was limited to waiting in line at the lost post office behind several people with extraordinarily complex postal arrangements.

Parenthetically, this is something that has always been a little baffling to me. I don't generally mind waiting in a queue, it's generally the respectful, orderly thing to do, but it becomes more aggravating than necessary when the people ahead of you aren't quite as organized as it seems like they could be, thereby slowing everything down. I might be missing something, and I don't mean to offend, but the postal service has always seemed relatively straight-forward to me: bring something to mail, decide on the amount of time you want it to spend trekking to its destination, pay appropriate postage (and insurance, if necessary). Maybe my postage needs are just of the very basic variety and there are a whole host of other services of which I am not aware? I don’t know.

Anyway, back to the museum. It was really cool, I thought. It quickly became evident that I have taken the U.S. Postal Service for granted. Really stop and think about how brilliant a system it is: you put a sticker on an envelope, put it in the mailbox and magically it shows up at someone else’s house/business a couple days later. A couple DAYS later! Seriously, the only way it could get there faster is if you physically hand delivered the letter and who has time to do that. Moreover, if you were going to hand deliver the letter, wouldn’t that undermine the whole idea? Why not just talk to the person instead of handing them a letter and walking away if you travelled all that way? Okay, so that was one thing I gained an appreciation for. Another is the bigger-picture concept that a highly functional postal service really helped develop our country. Up until very recently, mail was how long distance business was done (and a lot of local business as well). Also, did you know that the postal service was largely responsible for the advent of commercial airlines? I didn’t. Think about it though, if you have scheduled planes flying mail from place to place, it’s only a matter of time before someone wants to ride along instead of just sending mail.

Okay, and then there were the stamps. I admit that I never really gave stamps all that much thought before, other than maybe pausing to admire a particularly nice work of stamp art or note how a foreign stamp differs from a U.S. one.  Well, I learned there is so much more to stamps than just being pretty stickers. I could go into detail here, but that would ruin the surprise for when you go see the exhibits yourself. I could probably spend hours in the stamp collection though, they have stamps from literally everywhere in the world. And a lot of them are less boring than most of the U.S. ones.

DC Snowmageddon/Snowcalypse 2011

In all fairness to what you are about to read, in the last 36 hours I have seen types of precipitation that were altogether new to me (i.e. what I am calling sleet-hail, which is a baffling combination of the two, but somehow more like having someone dump a bucket of slush on you from an advanced height).

So, yesterday morning I wore some nice leather dress shoes to work, which along with the suit I was wearing, made me a little over-dressed for my office. On the other hand, I felt like it was appropriate for having breakfast and having my picture taken with Sen. Franken (which was very cool). Well it turns out that was the least appropriate footwear for the day that I could have chosen. I should have realized that morning, when it was raining, that perhaps leather shoes would not be the most practical, but I could not be bothered. I'm from Minnesota, after all, home of winter weather.

It continued to precipitate, more or less constantly, throughout the day with the temperature dropping all the while. By the time I left work things had turned a little messy. The rain/sleet/snow transition had occurred - which equated to DC's streets turning into parking lots full of tired, aggravated people all trying to get home. One of my friends told me about a co-worker whose 45min commute turned into an 8 hour commute last night. Ridiculous! Work was delayed two hours this morning on account of all the snow.

Now, I don't particularly mean to be judgmental, but it happens from time to time. Seriously though. This is the Capitol of the country and it snows pretty much every winter here (not a lot, but you know, at least once). You'd think people would react with some amount of practicality and levelheadedness to what is a fairly routine fact of nature. Not so. People lost their flipping minds. Maybe this is just my Minnesotan wintry elitism, but people, it was approximately four inches of snow. Tops. A wet, gross snow, to be fair. But it's not like you literally couldn't drive, that's just user error.

A bunch of people lost power too, which is somewhat understandable given the nature/moisture content of the snow. But my friend who I had drinks with this evening said the power company told him they hoped to have power back up to everyone by the 30th. Let us pause. The 30th??!?!?!! It's now the 27th. Yes, by all means that seems totally reasonable...what? By way of explanation, the power company said there were some repair delays caused by no being able to get their trucks down some of the roads. Okay, that might be plausible if there were say...2 feet of snow. But four inches (again, I'm being generous)? Here's my solution: just go ahead and drive down that snowy road. Unless the repair truck also happens to be a fancy European sports car, it seems like the clearance is more than equal to the task. But that's just me.

Interesting ads and customer service

Okay, it's been a few days. I still need to develop this as a habit, I think. In recognition of the brief hiatus, I'm posting about two completely separate and random thoughts.

So it's possible that this is a ubiquitous thing and I've only noticed it since moving to DC and using public transit all the time, but I've taken to noticing some of the big money advertisements more. For instance:

 This is a Monsanto ad on a banner at my Metro stop. Now, I'm not making any value judgments here (that will come in approximately one or two sentences), I just find it amusing that Monsanto is positioning itself as the defender of family farming. Now I'm not saying farming doesn't have a huge impact on the country, but because this advertisement asks you to buy into the sentimentality of farming - that this one guy (and people just like him) are pure good of America. I happen to agree, actually, that farmers do drive the country to some extent. Which is to say we are all dependent on the agricultural production of our arable land, but that doesn't mean there aren't a lot of hard questions we need to be asking regarding fertilizer and pesticide use, GMOs, irrigation techniques, water usage and the impact of field drainage systems on surface and ground water (to name a few). I'm all for farming, I like to eat food at much or more than the next guy, but let's not pretend the family farmer is the easy answer to anything. But hey, go ahead and draw your own conclusions, the website is right there on the banner if you want an unbiased view (oh, actually that address takes you straight to monsanto.com, though there are some very nice pictures of farming families on their company website).

This one is also great. So, you may have heard of this small tragedy that occurred in the Gulf of Mexico about a year ago, which then continued for several months with massive international coverage and scrutiny? Right, well this seems to be an effort by the oil industry to re-frame their product. See, oil and natural gas are really, really good things, they help make medicines. And the nice woman holding that Erlenmeyer flask is saving lives! Well this is part of a larger campaign to influence public perception. This is actually least direct one that I've seen. The rest quote some figure and emphasize some aspect of American life that impacted by oil. Fine, whatever.

I also just wrote a long-winded (and I thought very amusing) story involving my coffee mug, customer service, the basic goodness of some people and my own ridiculousness, but somehow I erased it and cannot get it back. Very frustrating. Maybe I'll take another go at writing it later.

The Metro

I feel a bit provincial writing about the Metro. Maybe I'm coming a little late to the game, like "wow, light bulbs are pretty great, right?" But not having lived in a city with a well-planned subway system before, maybe I am coming a little late to the game. In any case, I feel I'm entitled to my own impression, so here it is:
I love the Metro.
Sure, the system here is a little old and worn. More worn at some stops than others. But it's great. The sheer novelty of taking an escalator into the earth in one area of the city and emerging in another just 10 minutes later (supposing, of course, that you've timed trains exceedingly well) is just great. Now, I live just a short couple block walk away from the nearest stop, so that certainly makes it feel more convenient. Also that my nearest stop is serviced by four separate lines, that helps too. Nevertheless, it really is wonderful.

Oh. And work is starting to pick up a little bit. Tomorrow I have my first real meeting scheduled, so that's good.

On the job

Well, first day on the job today. Nothing really momentous to report, it was a pretty slow day. I met most of the other folks working on putting this thing together and worked on getting up to speed on what's been done so far. Working on the operations/logistics side of things means that I'll have my hands very full and my fingers in most aspects of the conference, but the reality at this point is that not all those different moving pieces have been identified. So I worked today on trying to identify as many of the areas of responsibility that we will have, specifics will have to wait. I wish there was more to say here, but the day was pretty anticlimactic - still though, it's exciting to be part of something so big.

MLK Day

So, I tried to find a service project to do in my new community, but was unsuccessful. I am also going to try to get tickets for a celebration performance at the Kennedy Center: Info here. In the meantime, I visited the Lincoln Memorial and stood in the spot where Dr. King gave his "I Have a Dream" speech, looking out over the reflecting pool. There is an engraving in the stone to mark the event.

Day One

Welcome to my little blog. This jump from snowy Minnesota to Washington D.C. has been in the planning/wishful thinking stage for a while. Luckily (and rather suddenly) I have been given the opportunity to make this a reality. And what better way to chronicle my experience here than an online journal? I'm not sure how often I'll update or what shape the content will take, but here it is...

So here I am, in our national Capitol. Travelling went remarkably smoothly, with only minor challenges along the way. First...I misjudged the weight limits on checked baggage, which resulted in a little panicked, last-minute repacking (after also repacking prior to leaving for the airport because I has GROSSLY underestimated the weight of my suitcase...by about 30lbs, who really needs shoes anyway?). No worries. My suitcase and backpack ended up weighing in at 50lbs and 49lbs, respectively. I was only delayed for a short time in ATL on the way to DC because some other plane was parked at our gate when we arrived. The only other mishap was truly minor - my shuttle driver inputted my address wrong into his GPS (NW instead of SW). End result: a slightly longer ride and the opportunity to see the Capitol and Washington Monument glowing against the night sky. I'll take it.

I fell into what seems to be a pretty great temporary housing arrangement. I am renting a bedroom in a townhouse, with my own bathroom, hardwood floors and wood-burning fireplace (I don't know why I'm so excited about this, I may never use it). I am easy walking distance to a grocery store and three Metro stops. Oh, and the National Mall - more on this in a second. I even have four big north facing windows. All in all, I am pretty happy with this arrangement so far.

A quick word on DC: I have been here a handful of times before. I remember a family vacation, when I was much younger, that involved DC. The memory from that visit that stuck with me most was walking around the National Air & Space Museum. It was very cool, especially since I had plans to be an astronaut (who doesn't, at some point?). I was also here in high school for National History Day, my group did pretty well in the state competition and got a trip to DC to compete at the national level. Well that was fine, but I was more interested in the time we got to spend in the city, touring museums, seeing the Capitol, etc. I've been fascinated with this city for years, and now I am finally here.

I had big plans for today, my first day in DC: obtain my SmarTrip Metro card and unpack. Success! My thought was to head to Metro Center to buy my pass because it would give me the opportunity to walk around a bit and get my bearings. I got side-tracked. I ended up on the National Mall (which is a very easy walk from my new home), sitting on a bench about halfway between the Capitol and the Washington Monument, reading the newspaper and sipping coffee. That didn't last very long because it was a little chilly and windy. I've found it is a little difficult to read the newspaper when it's blowing around and you can't really feel your fingers. Oh well, it's the thought that counts. After I gave up on the bench-sitting, I again headed toward Metro Center. Only to be distracted by the National Museum of American History. I stayed strong and just walked straight through it, but came back immediately after procuring my Metro pass. I happily spent the next several hours wandering around various exhibits and learning - Science & Innovation, the Presidency, Abraham Lincoln just to name a few. 

Plan for tomorrow: running on the Mall.