Day: July 2, 2009

Three sentence movie reviews–Away We Go


I can’t remember the last time I laughed so hard in a movie. At times, I had trouble catching my breath. Maya Rudolph was fantastic and John Krasinski’s character Burt Farlander reminded me of of a certain other resident at The Orange Door.

Bechdel score. Two women: nope.

poster from: http://www.impawards.com/2009/away_we_go.html

1 July. Five pictures from my Washington DC trip.

Man, keeping today to five photos is brutal. Brutal! But I did it.

Today was the switchover day; I moved from Jenna’s place to Sara and Shawn’s place. (You might know them from their very cool blog Pike Schemes) Before I left Jenna’s place, I wandered down to the C & O Canal. That canal is pretty small. I’ve always felt that the canal got the short shift in transportation history. It seemed like by the time they got them built, we had moved on to a better method of transport.

At any rate, walking down to the canal gave me more chances to take pictures of Georgetown houses. I loved this group of houses, because each house had different ornamentation. Each of these doors was very different from its neighbor.


Gaslights! These were an unexpected find.
Today was the day of our personal tour of the Library of Congress. This was incredible, and something I will never forget. Sara had an “in” with Tori, who has worked at the Library of Congress for 31 years. She took us all over the Library, places that normal tourists aren’t allowed to go. I was thrilled to see things I’d heard about when I was growing up. I love libraries, and getting to go behind the scenes at the A-1 library in the US was indescribable.

The dome in the main reading room.


Tori explains something to Sara and Shawn. She was incredibly enthusiastic about her building. She showed us where her first desk in her first job was, and told us how, during the great renovation, the librarians would wait until the construction workers left for the day, and then at 3:01 they would run down to see what had been uncovered. Most of the library, when she first started working there, was horrible 60s drop ceilings and linoleum floors.

At some point in my past, I watched a filmstrip or an educational film about the Library of Congress. I can clearly recall seeing footage of their “modern” book moving system. It isn’t so modern any more, but I was thrilled to see it in person, then to get to go downstairs and see it from below. Other things we saw: the stacks, the old card catalogs and all four galleries, even the ones that aren’t open to the public.
Have I mentioned that this was the coolest day ever? If you want more pictures, you can see Sara’s post about the day. She didn’t limit herself to five pictures, and she is a good photographer.

After the Library of Congress, we took the secret tunnel into the Capitol Visitors Center where we wandered around looking at the exhibits. Then dinner at the Old Ebbitt Grill.

1 July 2008. A picture from the Hungary/Romania trip.

The Open Air Museum! I loved this place. I could have spent three days here. What is an open air museum? We wondered that too. Eventually the appropriate translation was made. “Sort of like Colonial Williamsburg” was the consensus. Indeed. This museum recreated several regions of Hungary. And by “Hungary” they mean “the vast Hungarian Empire which we would like to have back, but which has been carved into many pieces leaving us with little of our original land.” Long memories, there. Not that I blame them.

So you can wander through all different kinds of villages in the style of, oh say, “Upper Market Town,” “Great Plains,” “Southern Transdaunbia,” etc. In each village is a church and few houses and barns, etc. They have people demonstrating how to make traditional food and do other traditional things. You can ride in a horse and buggy, which I loved, let me tell you. Each area tells you a little about the kind of family which might live in a particular style house and what might be going on. I looked in on one house of a grape grower and they were preparing for a baby christening, and had all the christening finery out on display.

They also have traditional Hungarian livestock. Above is a picture of the Hungarian Grey Cow. “White” one of us would usually correct upon seeing it. “No, Grey” we were told. Okay, they are sort of grey.

I include this picture not only so you can see the Hungarian Grey Cow yourself, but also because of Dana’s great picture of it. Later, after this day was over, on a day with a very long bus ride, Dana and I were looking at the pictures we had taken to pass the time. Not having laptops along with us, we were viewing our pictures on our cameras, which doesn’t necessarily make for the best viewing, the screens being so small and all. As we scrolled though her pictures of the Open Air Museum I wondered aloud if she had gotten a photo of the Grey Cow. “I did!” she said proudly. But when she scrolled to it, we both broke out into laughter because her picture of the gray cow only included the feet. How she managed to take that picture and not notice she was missing three-quarters of the cow I’m not sure, but it inspired much mirth on a very long, hot bus ride.

Also on our list of things to do today. A visit to Visegrad Fortress (which hadn’t changed much since I saw it in 2005. Click on that Visegrad link. It’s pretty cool.) A visit to Szentendre, where I bought a lovely painting of Fishermen’s Bastion, a boat ride down the Danube River to Budapest and a delicious dinner at a Greek restaurant where Barnabas and his mother noticed a famous TV actress sitting behind us.