DC4

Then I think we walked back to the hotel, and conversed for a while. At 6:30 or so we went to the second reception; this one was at the Smithsonian Air and Space museum. See what I mean about lawyers not doing anything small; they needed a whole museum for a party. We took a cab to get there, and we didn’t set off any buzzers or anything going through the detector. It was nice to be able to walk through an airport-style metal detector without having to fold up my cane and put it on a conveyor belt.

I’ve been to Air and Space before, but it’s always cool to see space vessels, cruise missiles, and such. Unfortunately, Ahkmenrah’s tablet was gone, so none of the exhibits talked or moved. They had a jazz band or something playing for the whole night and that was a little annoying. We saw some of the sites, such as the lunar lander, various space vessels, a cruise missile, etc. Mark introduced us to more of his friends, and then he wandered off to go socialize. There was food all over the place, so I had some. Once I had something in a tortilla that mom claimed was an eggroll, but it wasn’t because when I had something that I knew was an eggroll, it tasted terrible.

The most annoying part of events like the reception is lack of tables. I don’t do so well balancing everything, but we were at least able to find flat surfaces when I was eating. Mark is way too tall, otherwise I would’ve used his head as a flat surface. I’m pretty sure I didn’t get anything on my dress clothes in the way of ice cream or other foods. After walking around for a bit, we made our way to the second floor and there were dessert tables up there. Yum

There was a WWII aviation room up there, which we walked around for a little. In general, I was better able to see the big things from this floor, such as the space capsules and missiles. I had some gelato that was pretty good and some brownies, and these snacks upstairs and downstairs constituted dinner. At a certain point we went back downstairs, and they dimmed the lights on us. This was probably a signal to get out.

We left and tonight we decided, since the weather was nice, to check out some of the monuments at night. We walked first to the WWII memorial, which is my favorite. All the water and fountains and everything are very cool and grand, as they should. It’s too bad my grandfather couldn’t have lived to see his memorial, but I think he’d approve of it. I can’t really see the inscriptions, but someone will read them to me.