Diamonds, of course! While we were in DC, the Natural History Museum had a gemstones exhibit. There I found the following gems: Click on the pictures to see a larger image.
The Hope Diamond. Sorry it’s blurry, but as you can imagine there were tons of people gathered around trying to see it and get a good picture.
The Tiffany Diamond:
Can you read the carats in this stone?!
(It’s 22,892 in case you can’t!)
So here are the promised pictures from my DC trip!
This picture is the inspiration for the title of this post. This is the Vietnam War Memorial. This wall has pictures of people who served in the war etched into it. Especially in the dark, the images fade into view and fade out. The gray-white color of the etchings makes these images all the more ghostly. Click on the pictures to see a larger image.
The Memorial also consists of slightly larger-than-life statues of soldiers representing all those who fought in the war. Each of the soldiers is a different ethnicity, representing the countries that were a part. In the dark, the expressions on their faces are truly haunting.
When we back to the Memorial the next day, I took some more pictures. They’re not as ghostly, but they are still very moving.
This little girl was having a great time at the Memorial. She was very interested in this duck. Ben managed to catch this adorable picture.
Here’s some of my pictures from the Lincoln Memorial.
We then took a stroll up the Mall.
We then investigated the WWII Memorial.
Note: This is a post started a while back. It’s posted with today’s date because I am updating my blog and finally clearing out my draft folder.
So it’s been quite a while since I managed to post. That’s probably because things have been very well for me.
I have been meaning to get caught up with posting for quite some time now, but while I was sitting having my first taste of scotch at a little restaurant/bar called Bourbon in Washington DC, I came up with the title for this post. I was in DC Aug. 31 - Sept. 2 visiting Meg (Ben’s sister, you’ll recall). I was down in Virginia for the week for work, and her mom was going to bring the cats down to her. Since she had to drive practically past our front door, she asked if we would like to come as well. Since I had to drive past on my way home, I drove to Meg’s and Ben came down with his Mom. So I drove up from my hotel in Richmond Friday after work. Meg took me out with some of her friends that night.
Her friends were all very nice and I enjoyed myself. It was them that inspired the title for this post. DC is an amazingly international city. I felt a little like I was interacting with the world while I was there. It’s nothing to be walking down the street and hear several different languages spoken along the way. DC also give you a much wider view of your own world. I had always thought that I was a pretty intelligent person. Granted, I don’t usually watch the news outside of The Daily Show (I know, that doesn’t count), and politics usually bore me to death. But sitting with this group of people, I realized how small my little reality bubble is. They were talking about politics and national policies and other things. I couldn’t join in their conversations. If one of them tried to involve me by trying to find some common ground, I couldn’t speak enough about any one topic to keep their interest. I felt like I was a shallow, uneducated person and far beneath them.
So I had a bit of an identity crisis. It’s hard to explain what I was feeling. It was like an unexpected look at something about me I didn’t like. I realized that I wasn’t as worldly as I had previously thought. I felt very stupid and like a hick just crawled out of the haybale.
I talked to Ben about it. He started asking me about what interested me and what was I “smart” at. I couldn’t come up with an answer. I feel like most of my interests are superficial. He suggested that I just start reading. He thought that I should start reading some blogs and start following links. If I felt uneducated, then I should educate myself.
What Ben had said didn’t really hit home until several conversations with Liesle. In about a year, Ben and I are hoping to buy a house. Liesle and Chris are looking for a house. Buying a house now seems like a sketchy process because of the recent fiasco with the sub-prime mortages. Ben often talks about the situation, so I know that the housing market is a scary place. I’ve also talked with my Mom and Ben’s Mom about buying houses. I feel like I’ve tried to warn Liesle about the situation. I’m afraid that they are going to fall victim to a very bad situation. I’ve tried to talk to Liesle about it, but she just shuts me down. She doesn’t want to know anything about it. I think she is closing herself off to the world, and I see how it could severly impact her life.
That really sparked me into action. I still have a long way to go, but I’m changing my habits. Almost the only radio station on the car now it NPR. I know Ben listens to it to, so in the evenings we’ll have conversations about what they had on that day. I catch the news when I can. I’m still not a big newspaper reader, but I’ll work on that. I didn’t like feeling cut off and ignorant, so I’m going to change that.
Ben carpooled with his Mom and got down around noon on Saturday. We went to lunch, then spent the day at the Museum of Natural History. Ben’s mom left that evening. Meg took them back to her house and Ben and I stayed in the city and walked around the city. When we were done, we called Meg. She came and picked us up, and took us to a great Ethiopian restaurant for dinner. Afterwards, we went back to the city and visited the Korean War Memorial and the Lincoln Memorial.
On Sunday we went back to the Memorials to see them in the daylight, then headed back to the Natural History Museum to see an exhibit we missed. After that, we headed back home. Look for pictures of the trip in my next post.
Well, speaking of work, I finally got out of that God-awful store. I actually think I’ve died and gone to heaven. Ben found a posting at Wawa corporate for a trainer. I posted for the job and got an interview. I don’t know if I had written about it, but my boss’ boss at the store had been threatening my job, so I really wasn’t expecting to get the new position. But small miracles do occur, and I was offered the job. So now I’m traveling around to many Wawa stores (there’s actually about 8-10 trainers total) training them on the new inventory system Wawa is converting to. I absolutely love this job!!! Plus, I have weekends and holidays off, and I’m working 8a - 4p. Anything beats 3rd shift! And of course, I’m making almost twice what I was making at the store.
