I turnified 50 a few weeks ago. Much to Helen's dismay, I managed to keep my 50th a low key event. 'Big round number birthdays' are a bigger deal in Helen's thinking. I'm thinking 100 would be something worth celebrating, so we made a party date for that.
To avoid the Bruce 50th birthday paparazzi, we snuck off to the lake for a long weekend. We met up with Aya for a few days. Here she is chauffeuring me around the lake:
Helen's parents live there full time, so they know how to handle the wildlife. This bear for example:
Lots of rain there this summer, so mushroom hunting resulted in a bountiful harvest:
We stayed a few days beyond the weekend, so I did the tele-commuting thing from there. I didn't bring my nice headset, so Helen hooked me up with this hands free unit:
Thank you me Mom and Dad for the birthday shirts and snorkle gear! I'm taking the mask with us when we go back to NH month to see what secretes are the bottom of the lake hold. Testing it out here:
Last weekend we had a trip to DC. Helen attended a conference whilst I ran about and saw all the sites. Yep, ALL of them. On Sunday, for 9+ hours I walked/ran to many awe inspiring sites around 'the mall'. I was testing my tourism endurance, a marathoner with a camera. I'll spare you most of the photos, but must prove I was there with a few, like this one, where I was measuring the size of the capital building:
I spent the most time at the Air and Space museum. They have ALL of the most historic flying things there. Here I found Lindbergh's plane trying to catch up to SpaceShip 1:
I could show photos of all kinds of other amazing things, like the Wright Brother's plane, or me touching rocks from the Moon and Mars (Mars?? yep, they had a slice of one of those metorites from Mars), but instead, I choose a photo of a toilet. People, for maybe obvious reasons, have an interest in toilets, so here is one the Soviets used in their space stations (this was the male version):
The last day we freed up Helen for a few hours. A scene from Ms Smith goes to Washington:
We spent a few hours in the Art Museum. We saw lots of good stuff, and a few not-so-good. Her Helen is trying hard not o look at a painting of what I would best describe as the inside of a marshmallow:
I'm off to Rochester next week for a week to say hi to Z and work buddies.
Bruce
