Memories at the Mall

Clouds in my while stopping for coffee

This Thursday I was blessed to be able to spend time with one of my dear friends from college. My dad, who loves to spoil his family's enjoyment of restaurant food, made fried catfish, and fried shrimp (battered in flour and old bay) the first night, and grilled Lamb and potatoes the second  (with a lovely tomato and mozzarella salad as a side). The excuse for this trip was the Smithsonian Museum.  After visiting it again on Thursday I can't help wondering how I ever walked through three museums with four children last year. To give you an idea of how exhausting this trip was, my friend and I arrived at L'Enfant station (a fairly close metro) at around nine-thirty, and boarded the smithsonian metro at around six or seven. That's ten hours of walking. We spent around three hours in both the Natural History Museum and the American History Museum. Each. This is not to mention the time we first spent wandering around the Castle and the Air and Space Museum (is their synonym for museum?). Despite this, we didn't see everything in any of the buildings, even though they were ever so much emptier than last year – a testament, I suppose, to the difference that a looming school year can make on people's calenders.

But there are many things which make a little effort worth while, and most of them were experinced on Thursday. Not only did my friend and I get a chance to catch up, laugh, and buy hotdogs from a street vendor, but the exhibts were delightful too. We saw the "Read My Pins" exhibt, about Former Secratary of State Madeleine Albright's use of jewerly in diplomacy; walked through the in depth display of mineral formations and precious gems; ooh-ed and aah-ed over the gorgeous (and sometimes outrageous) gowns of America's First Ladies; and generally reveled in the trivia that abounded.

Which makes me feel rather better about being unemployed

The trip was especially nice considering it was threatening to flood up until nine (hence the first picture), when it miraculously cleared to become the sunniest, muggiest day any Marylander could (mistakenly) hope for. Of course, the pretty outfits we had planned out had been abandoned by this point, so we tramped around the Mall a little more disheveled than we would have liked to have been: I in my heavy corduroy skirt, for blocking the damp, and she in her practical tennis shoes. Then, at the end of the day, just as we were purchasing tickets, the rain started up again.

Ah, Providence.

See? No need for that umbrella at all