The Godspeed

The Godspeed, a Jamestown Settlement ship, has been docked in Old Town for the past few days (unfortunately all of them rainy). According to the brochure we received, the Godspeed is a recreation of one "of the three ships that brought America's first permanent English colonists to Virginia in 1607." It will be sailing back to Jamestown tomorrow morning, and so we won't get a chance to see it in full sail in person (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godspeed_(ship) shows a picture in full sail, the Jamestown Settlement website http://historyisfun.org/Jamestown-Ships.htm does not).

McCain has left the building

I may have mentioned this before, but when the media talks about McCain's headquarters in Virginia, that means Ken's office building. Here is a picture from a recent sighting, complete with Rudy Giuliani. This picture was taken by Ken's boss.

State College Connections

In State College, we frequented a pizza place named Faccia Luna with friends who, at the time, lived just doors away from the restaurant. Once we moved to Alexandria, we found out that Faccia Luna was started by Penn State alums and that there are four Faccia Luna locations: Scranton, PA; State College, PA; Arlington, VA; and Alexandria, VA--just blocks away from our apartment. We have been there twice with the same friends who now live in Maryland, near my work. The story of Faccia Luna's history can be found here: http://www.faccialuna.com/misc/history.htm. Unfortunately, the Alexandria location does not have our favorite pizza, the salamini suprema, but it will do. After our visit there on Sunday, we spent some time at a really nice playground in Old Town so that the little man could use up the energy from eating half of his dad's slice of chocolate noir cake.

Happy Trails

Since last Saturday was so nice, Ken and I decided to walk along the Mount Vernon Trail. We walked from our apartment to Rosslyn Metro Station, which was about ten miles. For a nice map, see: http://www.nps.gov/archive/gwmp/mvtmap.html (Rosslyn is north of where the trail ends on the map.)Along the way we passed McCain's plane parked at Reagan National Airport, planes taking off right in front (and then above) us at Gravelly Point, and monuments from different perspectives near Rosslyn.

Awareness Seminars

On September 18th, I attended the Department of Treasury sponsored seminars for National Hispanic Heritage Month and Dispute Prevention Week. Both seminars were held at Treasury buildings in the District, the first in the Cash Room of Main Treasury Building, and the second in the main lobby of IRS Headquarters (a much nicer area than "main lobby" would lead one to imagine).

The Hispanic Heritage keynote speaker was John Quinones from Primetime Live and 20/20. One of my co-workers pointed out that the lady who introduced the keynote speaker signs our money.

The Dispute Prevention Week seminar focused on domestic violence prevention. The keynote speaker was Yvette Cade, who survived her ex-husband setting her on fire at her workplace. Other speakers included a detective from the Alexandria Police Department, the executive director of the National Center for Children and Families, and the public policy manager of the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence, who all gave good advice for helping victims of domestic violence.

Mid-thirties

I have entered my mid-thirties (in that I am now 31). Ken and I celebrated my 31st (and golden) birthday by wandering around the mall collecting virtual caches until we reached #100 with Einstein.








Another cache required us to go to the Canadian Embassy. It was then that it struck me that in just over a month, we were at the US Embassy in Canada and at the Canadian Embassy in the US. Pretty cool.