Heat Wave

I am currently anticipating the degree of difficulty that I will experience in law school to be directly proportional to the amount of fun that I'm having these few months before it starts.  So I'm pretty much screwed.  I am, however, hopeful that this heat wave will continue and inconvenience me so that school will maybe be a little easier later.  Yes, that's the way my mind works.

Yesterday I went into DC because my Dad was in town for a convention.  After reminding myself again on highway 295 why it was such a good thing I will be getting rid of my car, we met up at his hotel and metroed in to the city.  Our first stop was the campus, which he had not yet seen.  He requested that I stand for the obligatory picture, so I did.

Obligation fulfilled.

We then took a walk to the Mall area.  It was really hot so just walking that half mile had us sweating like we were in a sauna.  It was a very pretty day, though, so it wasn't so bad.  By the time we got to the Mall it was after six so I was planning on showing him the outsides of the museums (but not the insides since they all close at six).  This was sort of disappointing because he had never been in any of the Smithsonian museums and I knew that he would really like them especially the Air and Space Museum.  We walked up to that one to take a look through the glass at the various rockets and planes hanging from the ceiling and we noticed that there seemed to be a lot of people still inside.  A quick glance to the left revealed a sign that said "the museum is open til 7:30PM today."  Was that great luck or what?  I had completely forgotten that it was the day the final space shuttle touched down, and I'm assuming that's the reason this particular museum was open late.

Walking into the museum was worth it for the air conditioning alone, but I had also forgotten how amazing it was when not terribly crowded (which, lucky for us, it was not).  We spent some time looking at the Apollo 11 Command Module, which my Dad watched coverage of while it was orbiting the moon when he was eleven, and then looked through the whole Apollo exhibit.  Afterwards we went to the Wright Brothers Room, where I made Dad stand for the obligatory picture in front of the Wright Plane.

The placards around the plane were very adamant that this was the REAL plane which first flew that day in Kitty Hawk.  I realize that they could be lying and there's no way I would ever know the difference.

After the museum we went to Mexican for dinner.  Francesca came to join us and through a series of questioning I found, to my surprise and delight, that I had not completely made up everything that I wrote in my review of her show.  We all had a bite of a grasshopper taco.  I would rank it above lamb testicle pudding, above seahorse-on-a-stick, on par with walnut balls covered with ants, and slightly below haggis (at least the way Will made it).  A resounding endorsement, I know.

After dinner we had a couple of drinks at an Irish Pub.  It was beautifully decorated and I tried a Snakebite, which I had never had before but which is now up there among my favorite beer/cider-drinks.  There was a band which was playing every single song that literally everyone both knows and likes.  They went between things like Wonderwall, Walk Like an Egyptian, and Sweet Caroline (and that's just a small range of genres from the amazing set that they did- the singer had an excellent voice for almost every single cover, too).  Very good band and another successful trip to DC.  Going to try to take it easy for the weekend- do some light packing and cleaning.  It's going to be a very busy (and awesome) week next week, and I need to prepare.