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I love it when it's this quiet in the office.
Some Christmas recaps:
We drove down to DC to spend the holidays with my folks. Nice, quiet Christmas. I'd been getting hints of a cold for a week or two, but I didn't really start coughing until we got down there. Ended up going to see Sweeney Todd with my brother and mom. I was pleased - there were some changes I wasn't thrilled about (the lack of "Kiss Me", or pretty much any character development for poor Joanna), but for the most part, I understood why they changed it and I liked the end result.
We wandered some random museums the next day. I was indeed impressed with the food court at the Indian Museum. Best museum food court ever. They had a really nifty train display outside the National Conservatory. Inside, they had models of all the major monuments and buildings on the mall...made out of natural materials. Abe Lincoln's head was an acorn with a hat of some kind of bark, the top of the Jefferson Memorial was a gourd, and so on. It was really awesome.
On Christmas Eve morning, we went down to Mount Vernon. On one hand, it's a nicely restored building and all. On the other...the hero worship is waaaay out of hand. They have the whole house, and assorted other buildings, and the grounds, and the wharf and the orchard and so on, plus a museum, plus an interpretive center. But they weren't content to just use these as "this is how people did stuff in the 18th century". No, George had to be included in everything, and in a heroic role. Usually with out-of-context quotes, and never with anything negative.
So the signs next to the outhouse proclaim that the fact that they used the waste as fertilizer demonstrates that George Washington understood the importance of centralized sanitation. (Well, him and every other farmer with vague pretensions of civilization, thanks.) The orchard has a sign with a quote declaring that he can think of nothing more important than natural fences of hedges. (Presumably, this made sense in context, as in, "out of all the farming tasks I want my overseer to work on this winter, reinforcing the hedges is the most important", not "I fought several bloody wars and guided the start of a new country with a revolutionary form of government, but I think hedges are more important than that".)
The museums were worse. There were signs about how modest he and his wife were, next to their extravagent jewels (with no context about what other people were wearing at the time). The museum had a piece of wood that may have been part of a fort in some relatively minor battle George fought in during the French and Indian War. Woo hoo. (My mom dubbed it the "piece of the True Cross-beam".) There were six or seven different movies, about how George Washington invented this, that and the other thing. A million bits of worshipful trivia, but major things were downplayed. Like the fact that he was sterile because he'd had mumps. Or that freeing his slaves on his death was kind of hypocritical. (I think it was great that he was progressive enough to do that. But it's still pretty selfish - he can't live without his slaves, but it's perfectly ok to make his step-grandchildren deal with abruptly losing their labor force?) Near the end of the exhibit was a section on his dentures. It was given its own alcove, like it was a major important part of his life, and the actual dentures were displayed on black velvet the way the Smithsonian displays the Hope Diamond. And all around the wall of the room was George Washington's dental history. Good grief.
By the end, we were exclaiming that George Washington had invented farming. And writing. And helicopters. And then we started subbing George Washington into Chuck Norris jokes, and it all went downhill from there.
Parts of Christmas are lost to unconciousness due to trying to sleep off being sick.
We did a wine tasting dinner for my dad for his Christmas present. It went over really well, I think. We made some elaborate heavy hors d'oeuvres that were delicious with the four Shirazs (from four different continents - I got ones from Chile, Washington, South Africa, and of course Australia). Chuckro and I liked the South African one best - very fruity, relatively low tannin.
And I discovered something critical - when I was drinking, my throat stopped hurting. Which then later led to the discovery that bourbon, which I'm not ordinarily a huge fan of, is wonderful for a sore throat when combined with lemon, honey, and hot water.
Good Christmas. Good to be home, though, and the cold seems to be slowly receding. Stupid cold.
Some Christmas recaps:
We drove down to DC to spend the holidays with my folks. Nice, quiet Christmas. I'd been getting hints of a cold for a week or two, but I didn't really start coughing until we got down there. Ended up going to see Sweeney Todd with my brother and mom. I was pleased - there were some changes I wasn't thrilled about (the lack of "Kiss Me", or pretty much any character development for poor Joanna), but for the most part, I understood why they changed it and I liked the end result.
We wandered some random museums the next day. I was indeed impressed with the food court at the Indian Museum. Best museum food court ever. They had a really nifty train display outside the National Conservatory. Inside, they had models of all the major monuments and buildings on the mall...made out of natural materials. Abe Lincoln's head was an acorn with a hat of some kind of bark, the top of the Jefferson Memorial was a gourd, and so on. It was really awesome.
On Christmas Eve morning, we went down to Mount Vernon. On one hand, it's a nicely restored building and all. On the other...the hero worship is waaaay out of hand. They have the whole house, and assorted other buildings, and the grounds, and the wharf and the orchard and so on, plus a museum, plus an interpretive center. But they weren't content to just use these as "this is how people did stuff in the 18th century". No, George had to be included in everything, and in a heroic role. Usually with out-of-context quotes, and never with anything negative.
So the signs next to the outhouse proclaim that the fact that they used the waste as fertilizer demonstrates that George Washington understood the importance of centralized sanitation. (Well, him and every other farmer with vague pretensions of civilization, thanks.) The orchard has a sign with a quote declaring that he can think of nothing more important than natural fences of hedges. (Presumably, this made sense in context, as in, "out of all the farming tasks I want my overseer to work on this winter, reinforcing the hedges is the most important", not "I fought several bloody wars and guided the start of a new country with a revolutionary form of government, but I think hedges are more important than that".)
The museums were worse. There were signs about how modest he and his wife were, next to their extravagent jewels (with no context about what other people were wearing at the time). The museum had a piece of wood that may have been part of a fort in some relatively minor battle George fought in during the French and Indian War. Woo hoo. (My mom dubbed it the "piece of the True Cross-beam".) There were six or seven different movies, about how George Washington invented this, that and the other thing. A million bits of worshipful trivia, but major things were downplayed. Like the fact that he was sterile because he'd had mumps. Or that freeing his slaves on his death was kind of hypocritical. (I think it was great that he was progressive enough to do that. But it's still pretty selfish - he can't live without his slaves, but it's perfectly ok to make his step-grandchildren deal with abruptly losing their labor force?) Near the end of the exhibit was a section on his dentures. It was given its own alcove, like it was a major important part of his life, and the actual dentures were displayed on black velvet the way the Smithsonian displays the Hope Diamond. And all around the wall of the room was George Washington's dental history. Good grief.
By the end, we were exclaiming that George Washington had invented farming. And writing. And helicopters. And then we started subbing George Washington into Chuck Norris jokes, and it all went downhill from there.
Parts of Christmas are lost to unconciousness due to trying to sleep off being sick.
We did a wine tasting dinner for my dad for his Christmas present. It went over really well, I think. We made some elaborate heavy hors d'oeuvres that were delicious with the four Shirazs (from four different continents - I got ones from Chile, Washington, South Africa, and of course Australia). Chuckro and I liked the South African one best - very fruity, relatively low tannin.
And I discovered something critical - when I was drinking, my throat stopped hurting. Which then later led to the discovery that bourbon, which I'm not ordinarily a huge fan of, is wonderful for a sore throat when combined with lemon, honey, and hot water.
Good Christmas. Good to be home, though, and the cold seems to be slowly receding. Stupid cold.
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no subject
Date: 2007-12-27 03:45 pm (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2007-12-27 04:50 pm (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2007-12-28 02:29 am (UTC)From:Adam R's wedding was at Mount Vernon. We didn't explore the grounds quite as thoroughly, but our tour guide for the 'candlelit tour' was every bit as ludicrous. It seemed to me that he was trying to fill the holes caused by his lack of actual knowledge about George Washington with abject fawning. "Can you believe GEORGE WASHINGTON sat in this very chair?! Can you just IMAGINE him sitting here, thinking about the United States?" We were all giggling and making George Washington jokes by the end too.
no subject
Date: 2007-12-28 04:10 pm (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2007-12-27 07:12 pm (UTC)From:"He's got a wig for a wig and a brain for his heart. He'll kick you apart. He'll kick you apart!!"
no subject
Date: 2007-12-27 08:30 pm (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2007-12-27 08:52 pm (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2007-12-28 02:18 am (UTC)From: