Fwd: Day 1 in DC

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: "Jason Evans" <jevansfp@gmail.com>
Date: Mar 23, 2015 8:38 AM
Subject: Day 1 in DC
To: "Susan Hardage" <grammy1124@msn.com>, "Sheila & Gary Evans" <garyandsheila@cableone.net>, "Mark Evans" <mevans@chkenergy.com>, "Becky Evans" <radrebecca@gmail.com>
Cc:

We left the hotel after breakfast and got our train passes and took the Metro to the closest station to the Washington National Zoo. The highlights there were a kiwi bird (Aaron's current favorite animal) and their new baby panda Bao Bao.   The Zoo is nice.  Not the best we've seen.  It is on a huge hill, so after hiking half a mile there from the closest Metro station and tackling the Zoo's hill, we realized we didn't want to we didn't to wear our feet too early in the trip, so we took a taxi (Uber, actually - called a driver from an app on my phone) to drive us a mile over to the US National Cathedral.  It was the first time I used that app and so it gave me a promo code for a discount that gave us the ride for free. 

The National Cathedral is immense. Amazing architecture.  Lots of beautiful stained glass windows.  Gargoyles all over the outside, including one that looks like Darth Vader.  There is a stained glass window that commemorates our exploration of space that has an actual moon rock set into it.  Becky and the boys are related to former WWII Secretary of State Cordell Hull who later founded the UN.  We found his tomb in the crypt.  We found his birthplace 2 Spring Breaks ago in Tennessee.  We stayed for the 4p Evensong choral performance in the main Cathedral nave.  With the high ceilings and organ it sounded heavenly in there.  Even Alex was impressed.  Aaron thought it was very peaceful and relaxing as the day caught up to him and he napped on my arm.

Our guidebook suggested a Tex Mex restaurant nearby, the Cactus Cantina, so we walked there for dinner.  Dinner was delicious, topped off by sopapillas (Becky), rainbow sherbet (Aaron), and tres leches cake (Alex and I).  During dinner, I knew I recognized someone sitting at the table next to us.  I got Becky to look and she did too, so we knew that it was either a celebrity or someone from Toledo.  Becky thought at first it was someone I knew from the medical field.  I knew that wasn't it, but she was close.  She recognized her and her husband sitting with her from the 2013 Survivor season.   Drs. Candice and John Cody.  Candice was actually on a total of 3 seasons of Survivor and we had seen them all.  I tweeted that we had seen them and they tweeted back that we should've said hi (we didn't want to bother them). After they left, I recognized the man that sat in her seat.  Becky thought I was pulling her leg when I said "Dick Cheney is in that seat now".  She finally turned around and her eyes got wide.  I took a picture of her and Aaron with him in a hat over Aaron's left shoulder.  Fun meal with 3 celebrity sightings!

We figured out the bus system well enough to get back to the train station to get to our hotel in Arlington.  We relaxed and played games until bedtime.  On Monday's agenda: US Botanic Gardens and the Library of Congress near Capitol Hill.

Jason 

The blog that Facebook killed

It is hard to believe that I haven't posted here in over 3 years.  A tragedy in my family cut me hard and made it hard to post regularly about the joys of raising our children with my wife.  The boys are fine.  I am getting better.  I got out of habit.  I started posting family photos on Facebook, which gave that sharing a wider audience.  People didn't have to check my blog, they could just log onto Facebook and check out my postings and those of all of their other friends.  I am back because it is a little easier to incorporate blogging into my day.  I have an iPad mini with a keyboard and just found the ?new blogger app that I am testing out right now.  Posts will definitely be less frequent.  I'll occasionally use twitter for random thoughts, Facebook for "Status updates" and save blog postings for more long form content.

A cool treat before a cool show

The gang enjoying snowcones (snowcups?) before last Wednesday's Weird Al concert at the Toledo Zoo.
Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

Safe-T City Grad

Today Aaron graduated from 7 days of a children's safety course sponsored by the Toledo Police Department called Safe-T City. There he learned about street safety, fire safety, stranger safety, bus safety and dental safety. One of his teachers was Mrs. Reed from his school. On graduation day, he received his diploma from Police Chief Navarre.



-- Post From My iPod

Sandpiper Cruise

Tonight we met each other after a busy week of work, summer school classes, and Scout Day Camp downtown at the Promenade Park's Jefferson Street dock. Becky had called in an order of our favorite sandwiches from Panera and had picked them up for our dinner cruise.



Mark & Leslie got us a gift certificate to the Friday Sandpiper river cruise for Christmas last year, and tonight we finally cashed it in. We boarded right @ 5:45pm under threat of being left on the dock if we were late. Capt. Tony was our river boat pilot and Mary was our tour guide. The Sandpiper is a long flat boat with benches along the edges and up the middle.



Mary entertained us along the way with funny stories and pointing out sights along the river, like these clouds...




...and this heron.




A couple of times during the trip, the boys and I




-- Post From My iPod

Our Garden

Memorial Day weekend we put together a container garden made from 2 x 10's and some brackets. We filled with soil, threw in some seeds and sprouted plants and vowed to water it regularly.




I even built a rain barrel from a trash can and some spigots. We have herbs (including lots of basil), cucumbers, tomatoes, green beans, red & yellow peppers, carrots, and squash. The top layer of soil was Miracle Grow garden soil and it has really helped these plants take off.





-- Post From My iPod

Blogging from my iPod

Finally I found an iPod app that I can use to post blog posts whenever I can get a WiFi connection. It is called BlogPress. It also allows me to type in landscape mode with a wider keyboard. I'll try to do it with pictures next.


-- Post From My iPod

Picking Our Own Rubies

Today Becky treated the rest of us to a favorite childhood memory of hers. She found a pick-your-own strawberry field in nearby Holland, OH. We got a couple of flats and spent a hour or so bending, squatting and kneeling in a field.


As our prize for these efforts, we got to bring home several pounds of the cutest, but most delicious strawberries we'd ever had.


Strawberries from California are bred for sturdiness to survive shipping them across the country. These would not have survived that trip as they were delicate and packed with flavor.


The possibilities are making me drool. I'm going to pause now and eat some more.


-- Post From My iPod

Camping on the Field

Last night we went to watch the Mudhens beat the Rochester Redwings on a gorgeous night for baseball.





Before the game Becky and Alex put on their Scout uniforms and led off a parade through the infield.





Afterwards we watched a great fireworks display over the outfield wall. Then, after the non-Scout families left the stadium, we came back in with our camping gear. We watched the Detroit Redwings lose the Stanley Cup on the big screen, then they played the Disney movie "Bolt".





We had popcorn and hot chocolate during the movie woth another Scout from Alex's den and a long walk to the bathroom from our prime centerfield campsite.





They finally turned out the lights at 1AM, but played country songs to wake us up at 6:30.





We hauled our gear to the van and our tired backsides to a waffle house, where Aaron learned the joys of having bacon bits cooked into your waffle. As you might expect, we spent the rest of day resting up from our adventure - and planning next year's sleepover.


-- Post From My iPod

Biker Boys

Both boys have really started riding their bikes a lot lately.  Alex is going on a class camping trip at the end of May at a State Park at nearby South Bass Island.  They will be getting around the island on bikes, so he really needed to learn.  He had been reluctant to do so out of a fear of falling.  This trip however, made the fear of falling while learning to ride seem small in comparison to how he'd feel if he couldn't keep up with his friends on the trip.  Aaron's bike has training wheels still, but he loves riding his just as much.


I wanted to get a better picture of Alex, but he wouldn't sit still long enough, so I settled for this action shot.  We took advantage of the fact that many stores were closed on Easter to use their parking lot for biking practice.  We had been using small patches of pavement at our local park.  These patches weren't big enough to let them pick up some speed (which makes balancing easier) or to really practice steering.  A big empty parking lot was just the ticket, and soon they were cruising all over the lot.  There are some bigger parks within a short driving distance that'll be good for more practice, without having to wait for a major holiday.

October 2008 Blog Posts

I have no excuse.  I have several reasons, but no excuses for not keeping up to date with my blogging.  I finally completed October of last year and I plan to add more current content soon, while back-filling the dates I'm behind on.  Blogging used to be my only hobby, but I've picked up 3 new ones and left this one to dwindle and twist in the wind.  Catch up on all of October here, then stay tuned for more current posts.

Aaron on the Waterslide

Aaron loved the kid-sized waterslide and with his new swimming skills, he didn't need a parent at the bottom to catch him. We stood at the exit (where I'm taking this video from) and watch as he made circuit after circuit down the waterslide, out the exit, then back up the stairs to the slide again. He even met a little girl there that he slid with several times while holding hands.

Alex's Holiday TV Appearance

Alex is in the 3rd-6th grade choir this year and they went to a local TV station and were recorded singing a song that aired after a newscast. They had been practicing with a piano, but found out when they got there that they had no piano in the studio.  They sang it a capella for the first time and did pretty well.  The TV station has made it available online at

http://abclocal.go.com/wtvg/video?id=6516614

if you want to check it out.  Look for him in the lower left of the screen at 37 seconds into the clip.

Catch Up On September's Blog Posts

In a post-NaNoWriMo writing frenzy I'm caught up on September's blog posts.  Pardon my tardiness.  Please catch up here. We did a lot in October.  You wouldn't know it from the dearth of posts.  I will fix that soon as well.

Fall 2008 Swim Meet

Today the boys participated in their first joint swim meet.  Aaron is not on the swim team yet, but had progressed in his private lessons to the point where he could swim the entire 25m pool with both a freestyle stroke and the back stroke.  There was another little girl there his age and so they swam the heats together.  Aaron came in second and earned his first 2 swim meet ribbons for finishing second in both heats.  Alex swam in 7 events and earned ribbons for each of them.  Since there are kids of different ages and skill levels on the swim team, everyone who swims in the heat gets a a ribbon.  The top three finishers get 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place in "Division I", the next three get their respective ribbons in "Division II", and so forth.  Alex's best finish was 3rd place in Division I in the individual 100m medley where he had to do one length of the pool with each stroke (freestyle, backstroke, butterfly, and breast stroke) one after the other.  They got pizza afterwards which all the kids loved.  Way to go guys!

NaNoWriMo Fail

I'm writing this about 4 hours before the deadline is up, but I know what's coming.  I'm more than 18,300 words into a novel and I am loving the mental exercise.  I had hoped to reach 50,000 words by midnight tonight to meet the NaNoWriMo challenge, but I realized a couple of weeks ago that wasn't going to happen.  I found out a few things though. Trying to write 50,000 words in a month takes up all your free time.  I felt like I was neglecting time with my family, which I seem to get very little time with as it is anymore.  I missed watching TV, one of my guilty pleasures.  I got behind on several other projects that vied for my free time.  The biggest problem though, was that the pace was too much for my creative process.  Writing that fast got the words out of my head, but I wasn't always satisfied with what came out.  I found myself editing as I went.  I wanted my first draft to be well thought out, though by its very nature a first draft isn't supposed to be a final draft.  I realized that most of what I write, letters to other doctors, blog posts, etc., is already in final draft form.  That made the NaNoWriMo experience unsatisfying.  I am however, grateful that they got me started on what is shaping up to be a very bleak, but cathartic novel.  I don't want to give to much away about it yet, but I do want all of your opinions after I come up with a draft that I am satisfied with.  I decided to post an excerpt here.

He reflexively snapped his biosensor bracelet back on and waited for the gray surface to change to green. He didn't like the idea of the bracelet at first, but he'd come to accept it as a necessary part of life now. They all had. He didn't even register the faint prick of the sampling needles. They were so small, he had trouble finding them in the housing when had taken one apart. He probably wouldn't have if he hadn't inadvertently laid out the pieces on some black cloth that Ruby was using to make him a suit for her sister's wedding. Clothing from Mexico and China was so cheap nowadays that he thought it was quaint that she made so many of their clothes. Nevertheless, she was unhappy to find a bracelet disassembled on that cloth on her table. He was fascinated by how things worked and frequently wrecked them to find out. Reassembly is always much harder. The sensor chip in the bracelet was truly amazing. On a chip one centimeter square were thousands of DNA or RNA sequences of as many diseases, mostly infectious, a few cancerous. The bracelet sampled body fluid from the skin on the wrist at intervals set by the wearer. John's and the kids' bracelets sampled twice an hour. He had tried to get Ruby to do the same, but she hated the whole idea. She had compromised and agreed to sample once a day, in the middle of the night. He often found himself laying awake at 3AM, and more than once had not been able to help himself from watching as her bracelet tested her. There was no way he could even think about going to back to sleep until it glowed green.

August Blog Posts Completed

During some downtime at Alex's school while we were waiting on him to get back from his field trip, I was able to finish out August's blog posts.  Please see this post from earlier this month to get caught up on the Montana trip. To catch up on the entire month, including back to school festivities and some cool shot from the pool, please come check it out here.

For those of you following along, I've got over 18,000 words completed on my novel.  While this is amazing, I know now that it won't be completed by the end of the month.  I've got major plot points outlined, and I plan to complete it, but it is great to have some of my free time back.  I'm thankful to NaNoWriMo for getting me started.  It will be interesting to see how far I take this.  If I like it, I may try to get it published.  Mainly because I think a little bit of rejection now and again will keep me humble.

Aaron Qualifies for the Swim Meet

I just found out that Aaron has qualified for the swim team's swim meet coming up in a couple of weeks.  He's been getting private lessons but has not been practicing with the swim team like Alex has.  He qualified by swimming the length of the pool (25m) doing the freestyle and then back the other way using the backstroke.  He'll compete against the othe beginning swimmers in those 2 events in 2 weeks. Congratulations Aaron!

Montana Blog Posts completed

Now that I found out I can crank out prose at an accelerated rate (I'm at Chapter 10 with 17,277 words under my belt), I decided to complete the last two Montana bog posts this morning. I decided not to write a post about the pain in the backside we experienced trying to get back from Montana on United and Alex's assertion that Chicago O'Hare Int'l Airport is "not that big" as we hauled ourselves through 4 different concourses to get on a plane bound for Detroit. If you've missed any and want to read about our adventures in order, here they are:

Montana Vacation - Day 1 - No Bags, No Rental Car, Beautiful Scenery

Montana Vacation - Day 2 - Yellowstone National Park

Montana Vacation - Day 3 - Moose Baby and Scenic Lift

Montana Vacation - Day 4 - Gallatin River and Soccer

Montana Vacation - Day 5 - Nature Hike and Craft Day

Montana Vacation - Day 6 - Heading to Big Sky Resort

Montana Vacation - Day 7 - Swimming, BBQ, and Wolves

Montana Vacation - Day 8 - Junior Yellowstone Rangers

Montana Vacation - Day 9 - Wilderness Survival & Jeopardy

NaNoWriMo

November is National Novel Writing Month and I've decided to tackle writing my first book this month.  The goal is to complete 50,000 words of a novel by the end of the month.  I'm behind on my pace, at just over 8,000 words, but I'm going to keep at it.  As such, I am going to drop further behind in my blogging.  I will catch up.  I plan to make my novel available to anyone who wants to read it. If I think it any good, I may try to get it published.  But for now, don't expect to see much here until December.  Until then, wish me luck.  If you want to check out the web site that started it all, go to nanowrimo.org.