colors and colors and colors and colors

These are some pictures from last weekend's visit to the Hirshhorn with our lovely friends Emily and Ben, in town for the weekend from NYC. We enjoy their company so much that we decided to trade places and go stay with them in NYC this weekend. I like that we are only a bus ride and $18 away from that wonderful place—especially when you've been working till 8:30 every night lately and need a weekend away.

money shot

Space Shuttle Discovery took a joyride over the Mall today on its way to its final resting place at Udvar-Hazy, and we got to see it. Pretty incredible, if I do say so myself.

My humble brag is that my silly iPhone picture made it to the Capital Weather Gang blog—ahhh! Nerding out a little.

a night at the museum

Before I regale you with stories of darkened halls of skeletons and creepy spiders, I wanted to tell you guys that I really appreciated everyone's comments on my last post. It reminds me that there are lots of people with good hearts in the world... and that I have lots of friends that I want to be more like in that way. So, thanks for that.

Now...

Robbie and I spent some time working at the Natural History Museum on Saturday night for a Smithsonian Sleepover. Apparently sleeping over at museums is a thing that people do. For work I help with public programs that are put on in different Smithsonian museums, and I think the sleepover is one of the coolest programs that we plan—kids from all over the place come and do an elaborate scavenger hunt in the exhibits, and then they sleep over in the ocean hall at the end. I volunteered Robbie to come with me and he actually had a really good time (despite previous grumblings of "Do I have to go to all of your events that you work at?"). I was in charge of face-painting in the insect zoo (to be camouflaged like the bugs, of course) and Robbie helped people make amulets in the mummy hall. We had a lot of downtime and we spent some time exploring the exhibits near our stations. My favorite was checking out Bone Hall in the dark with just our flashlights... it was really creepy! I'd recommend trying that out sometime.

Robbie really has the best stories of the night, though. He is much more of a conversationalist than I am (shocking, I know) and he was finding out all kinds of things about the families coming through. Apparently one of the families that came in has a show pig whose talent is barking like a dog. Robbie can confirm this—they showed him a video of their pig running around in a circle and barking. I am grateful that there are families out there that have room in their lives for barking show pigs. Bless them.

going postal

(My favorite picture from the weekend, probably. Theo kept pointing to the baby in the statue woman's arms and saying "That's baby Jesus!")

(Robbie with Owney the dog, the Postal Service's mascot. A dead, stuffed dog.)

While I am really grateful for the rain that has cooled off this scorching summer, it was really poorly timed this weekend when my family was supposed to come into DC on Saturday. I need a better list of things to do when it's raining, since we can't crowd a group of people and energetic kids in it. Luckily, my lovely friend Sarah has carefully documented the fun things that she has done with her family in the city and even has categorized lists of all the things you can do in the city. I went to the lists to figure out what we could do that was indoors and kid-friendly and I remembered the National Postal Museum! It's small, not ever crowded, and full of things that kids can touch and/or climb on. Robbie and I had been before, but I just hadn't thought of the museum as a place to bring kids. Genius, really. Thanks for the reminder, Sarah.

We closed the evening with burgers and shakes at Good Stuff. The two following pictures, taken during dinner, are pretty accurate depictions of what Lars' life has been like for the past two months.

But he seems fine with the attention.

bp/nypl

(one time I wore this skirt to work and someone asked me if I was a folk dancer... seriously??)

I am a little ignorant when it comes to landmarks in other cities. On Saturday, when we were trying to figure out what we wanted to do (we spent the bulk of Friday shopping), I suggested we go to the New York Public Library to check out the lions. You know, because that's something people like to see.

Well, apparently there's a lot more to see than the lions. First of all, the library sits on Bryant Park (where they used to host NY Fashion Week), which was nice and pretty to sit in for a bit. Second, you can go IN the library. I mean, duh, it's a public library. But it was so calm and gorgeous inside. Plus, there is a really great exhibit there right now celebrating their centennial and exhibiting highlights of their collection. We saw a letter from John Keats to Fanny Brawne (which was cool because we watched Bright Star on our bus trip up [which Robbie actually really liked even after I tricked him at first into thinking it wasn't a chick flick, don't tell him I told you]), a copy of the Declaration of Independence, a copy of Audobon's Birds of America, plus hundreds of other really, really cool things. Needless to say, the library was one of the unexpected highlights of the trip. You should probably go see it and the exhibit if you can.

By the way, please note that Robbie was really nice and carried my bag for me all day. He does not normally carry a gold sequined murse.

nice to met you

(Just showing you that there were actually people on this trip.)

(This is not the Met [obvi], but the view from the steps of the Met. Wouldn't it be awesome to live on 5th Avenue?)

One of the other big reasons for this trip was to go to the Met. Well, it wasn't a big reason for Robbie, but I was going to kick myself if I missed "Savage Beauty" before it closes next month. The combination of Alexander McQueen and a museum exhibit is a union of two of my loves in life. It was a really fabulous exhibit, even though we did have to wait in line for almost two hours to see it. It was totally worth the wait. Luckily, we were able to trade spots in line and check out the rest of the museum during the wait. It's ridiculously huge! I need to go back like ten more times just to visit the parts of the museum I didn't see.

Anyway, McQueen probably deserves a whole post for himself (I'd say he deserves to be another one of my dead gay celebrity crushes), but I am sure you are not interested in that. If you are, go check out the online exhibit (which is really awesome and comprehensive if you don't have the chance to see the show in person) and then watch this video that was in the exhibit. Totally entranced by it.

a birthdate

Robbie's birthday was pretty low-key. We wanted to do something nearby and something Robbie hasn't done before, so I took him to the National Gallery of Art down on the Mall. I'm actually more familiar with the museum's East Wing (modern and contemporary art) so we spent some time in the West Wing (13th c. to 19th c. art) checking out the old stuff. It's a gorgeous building and I hadn't been down there in a while. It feels like a European museum, which is kind of fun. We checked our bags and pretended we were tourists and enjoyed darting around the exhibits and stroking our chins knowingly about the art we really didn't know much about (like Paul from Midnight in Paris). We probably only saw like 10% of the building in the end. But we saw "Watson and the Shark," which was probably the most important item on our agenda.

It was really hot outside so we found a cool, shady spot for a picnic, where we partook of the fruity loaf that once was a sad cake. We also had to defend our spot from a squirrel invasion—the squirrels on the Mall LOVE people because there are so many people trying to feed them and hold them (seriously, it's weird, it's like they've never seen squirrels before), and this particular squirrel was freaking me out because it was practically sitting on our blanket. We made it out unscathed in the end and we didn't share a single morsel of the fruity loaf with him. Maybe next time, squirrel.