Tuesday, October 07, 2003

Post-Convention Recovery Time

The trouble with going away is that things always back up in the office. Beyond the regular post-show pile of mail and e-mail there's a nice dustup for the French edition (which I though I finished last Monday) and the start of production for my regular magazine. Fun.

The weekend was spent mostly just relaxing and catching up on laundry. On Sunday, we went down to the National Gallery of Art to pick up some posters that Evelin's mom wanted, but the gallery didn't open until 11:00 a.m. (we'd headed there for 10:00 a.m.), which gave us a chance to check out the new National Archives Experience. Basically, Archives has been reworked so that people enter through a new security area with a bigger gift shop on the way out. I don't know whose idea it was to call it the "National Archives Experience," but it sounds pretty dumb in a Las Vegas showman sort of way. It's the Constitution, the Declaration of Independence and other documents from U.S. history. You're standing in line and walking through the rotunda to read/look at them. The "experience” tag just seems silly: These documents are exciting enough on their own; plus, to call something an "experience" shouldn't a laser lightshow be involved?

After we got the posters, it was up to Takoma Park for the farmers market. Parking was a bear because the town was having it's annual street fair, which was fun to walk through. Nothing too exciting, but Victor Kinza did have some of his prints there. Evelin met him at a show at her university a year or two ago and got a neat turtle print from him.

In the afternoon, I had to watch the pandas; nothing exciting to report there. That morning, Robert De Niro was at the zoo with his children and they met Tian and Mei, but that was long before I got there, so no stories to tell. The second observer on the watch (there are two ethograms we track on each shift, so there is always an observer 1 and observer 2; I usually am covering the observer 1 ethogram) had stopped at a Russian Orthodox Church fair on her way to the zoo, so she brought in some yummy Russian pastries.

Yesterday was back to work, with all the associated troubles (see first paragraph in this blog entry), but the evening ended up well for the Nation ... Red Sox Nation that is. I was biting my nails from about 11:00 p.m. to 11:30 p.m. or so, but Derek Lowe pulled it out nicely, it looks like Johnny Damon is okay, and I take back anything and everything bad I may have ever said about Manny Ramírez. Now ... the hated Yankees.

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