![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Today A had two birthday meals!! Breakfast was bacon and eggs, to general delight (except mine). As a vegetarian, I cannot understand my children's obsession with bacon. I personally gag at the smell of frying bacon (well, I dislike the smell of all frying meat, chicken and mince as well. I am fine with grilled/barbecued (in both senses) meat, though), but this is possibly a learned response due to my parents' dislike of it. They don't keep kosher and are quite happy to eat shellfish, but draw the line at pig products. Anyway, breakfast with bacon is a highlight of staying at hotels and B&Bs for them, and there was bacon in the freezer for some reason, that needed to be used.
On a relatively tight schedule as ADC had to get to a Pink Floyd meet-up, we set off for the farmer's market, making at detour for a final visit to House of Musical Traditions. ADC bought a pig (intending to use it during Animals, but unfortunately he was in such a hurry that he forgot to take it with him) and a gong (for use when we get home), and also two books for S's ukulele. Everything will be packed and sent, as the ukulele is not coming to the West Coast with us. By the time we finished there, I decided to go home and start getting lunch ready while the others went onto the market.
When ADC went to the meet-up, he dropped the rest of us at the metro station and we went to visit the National Archives. The security screening was the most severe I've seen here outside the airport (admittedly, I haven't visited the White House or Congress). We started on the entrance floor, where we saw one of the four extant 1297 copies of Magna Carta. We then went upstairs to the rotunda where the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights are displayed. We stood in line for just over half an hour (possibly the longest queue I've been in here; it felt like visiting the Sistine Chapel, because the rotunda has such a high and decorated ceiling), and spent less than 15 minutes actually inside, since we only wanted to look at the actual documents, not at the informational material alongside it. We finished our visit at the Public Vaults exhibition, which we agreed was the most interesting: each case held examples of the kinds of materials kept in the National Archives, ranging from treaties and laws to letters to the President from the public. Those were particularly moving, with a GI in 1944 asking Eleanor Roosevelt to be his child's godmother, one young boy asking President Nixon for funding as his mother had declared his bedroom a disaster zone, and another informing President Ford that he was half right and half wrong. They reminded me of the letters to Yitzhak Rabin that I used to answer as part of my job at the Prime Minister's Office from January 1992 to November 1995.
The fourth and final birthday meal was supper at DCNoodles, one of the first places we had eaten in Washington (before going to hear Ian Anderson at the Lincoln Theater back in October). A had asked for a Thai meal, and it was excellent. He had the same thing as he had the previous time, pad see eew with broccoli, while ADC had pad thai, S had drunken noodles (delicious but a bit too spicy, he said) and I had an excellent noodle soup, very similar to the bastard toom yum that we would make at home. After all that spicy food, we looked for an ice cream place and found Menchie's, one of growing number of self-serve frozen yogurt places. You begin by choosing up to four flavours of frozen yogurt, then there were a selection of of sweet crunchy things (like M&M's) to add, then a selection of fruit pies, and finally fudge/marshmallow/Reese's/Nutella topping. I tried to be as restrained as possible, but S really went to town. The price is by weight and his cup was more expensive than anyone else's. He did eat less of his main course than the rest of us, and he did finish it, so I can't really complain.
On a relatively tight schedule as ADC had to get to a Pink Floyd meet-up, we set off for the farmer's market, making at detour for a final visit to House of Musical Traditions. ADC bought a pig (intending to use it during Animals, but unfortunately he was in such a hurry that he forgot to take it with him) and a gong (for use when we get home), and also two books for S's ukulele. Everything will be packed and sent, as the ukulele is not coming to the West Coast with us. By the time we finished there, I decided to go home and start getting lunch ready while the others went onto the market.
When ADC went to the meet-up, he dropped the rest of us at the metro station and we went to visit the National Archives. The security screening was the most severe I've seen here outside the airport (admittedly, I haven't visited the White House or Congress). We started on the entrance floor, where we saw one of the four extant 1297 copies of Magna Carta. We then went upstairs to the rotunda where the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights are displayed. We stood in line for just over half an hour (possibly the longest queue I've been in here; it felt like visiting the Sistine Chapel, because the rotunda has such a high and decorated ceiling), and spent less than 15 minutes actually inside, since we only wanted to look at the actual documents, not at the informational material alongside it. We finished our visit at the Public Vaults exhibition, which we agreed was the most interesting: each case held examples of the kinds of materials kept in the National Archives, ranging from treaties and laws to letters to the President from the public. Those were particularly moving, with a GI in 1944 asking Eleanor Roosevelt to be his child's godmother, one young boy asking President Nixon for funding as his mother had declared his bedroom a disaster zone, and another informing President Ford that he was half right and half wrong. They reminded me of the letters to Yitzhak Rabin that I used to answer as part of my job at the Prime Minister's Office from January 1992 to November 1995.
The fourth and final birthday meal was supper at DCNoodles, one of the first places we had eaten in Washington (before going to hear Ian Anderson at the Lincoln Theater back in October). A had asked for a Thai meal, and it was excellent. He had the same thing as he had the previous time, pad see eew with broccoli, while ADC had pad thai, S had drunken noodles (delicious but a bit too spicy, he said) and I had an excellent noodle soup, very similar to the bastard toom yum that we would make at home. After all that spicy food, we looked for an ice cream place and found Menchie's, one of growing number of self-serve frozen yogurt places. You begin by choosing up to four flavours of frozen yogurt, then there were a selection of of sweet crunchy things (like M&M's) to add, then a selection of fruit pies, and finally fudge/marshmallow/Reese's/Nutella topping. I tried to be as restrained as possible, but S really went to town. The price is by weight and his cup was more expensive than anyone else's. He did eat less of his main course than the rest of us, and he did finish it, so I can't really complain.
