My parents said that all the pics in the previous post had been ‘taken by Dad.’ Well, maybe so, and maybe I maligned him unfairly, but these few below were definitely NOT taken by Mom, and so this is how I knew he’d taken them.
I have to wonder if this is a still frame from his video camera.This was taken while he was up on the steps to Lincoln and we were all milling around at the base. Very fuzzy.
So maybe it was a camera fault and not Dad’s skill as a photographer. You don’t see any pictures taken by me (for a change) because I’d purchased an Instax Mini 8, hoping to make photo albums for each of the families who attended. So I took a lot of instant photos and 95% of them were garbage. I have since sent off the camera to Diane to see if she can coax anything better out of it.
You know, I wasn’t even sure whether I should blog about this or not. Everyone who reads the blog was on the vacation! (Except possibly Ant.)
So, we got the parents together with us and the Young Master for some hopefully quality time in Washington DC and Tysons. Ha ha. I can always find quality time at Tysons. Anyway, temperatures were pretty blistering hot, so we didn’t get to do as much as we’d planned (e.g., the zoo, although I’m not even sure if the zoo opens on the really hot days for the sake of the animals).
We had a Kennedy Center brunch, one museum day, a private tour of DC and monuments one evening, a dinner cruise on the Spirit of Washington’s Odyssey. These are the things we managed while staying in Georgetown. I also bought a pair of Fluevog Givers, but ended up returning them because there was a long blue ink mark on them!
We kept calling this “Alex’s Thing” because he was intrigued by it but we didn’t know what else to call it. Maybe someone else found out. I still don’t know what it is.
WWII Monument. This was the first time I’d seen this one. Very elegant and moving. Despite my attraction to organic forms in my own art, the stern regularity of this monument impressed me a lot.MLK after dark. You would not believe how many bus tours were swarming around him. There must have been 200 people milling around at the base of the statue.I’m amazed we got him to pose (even though it’s an “I’m not happy” pose). He really doesn’t like having his picture taken!
Thanks to Mom and Dad for emailing all those pictures. Unfortunately all the ones Dad sent are crazy-blurry, so I am unable to use them.
After the DC portion of the trip, we moved out to Tysons for a week. Most of our activity during this time was (a) mall trips and (b) looking at apartments. We needed to stay cool! We looked at Adaire (nice but the feeling was very cold, clinical, Scandinavian, which is not our style), and The Lofts at Park Crest (which was my #1 choice as far as atmosphere), and BLVD Reston (ultimately won because of location near a metro). However, we are sternly debating whether we want to live in that area again because of the summer heat. Right now we are investigating New England.
Thanks to everyone who went, and I hope you all enjoyed it!
The US Picks 