You won't find them on a shortbread tin, but our ancestors live on so long as we keep telling their stories. Scots, Yanks, Canucks and the Auld Enemy. Newest posts are the ancestors, but scroll for the living.
This time we stayed much closer to home, including my first trip to the top of the Washington Monument since it reopened earlier this decade, a quick “thaw” trip to the Natural History Museum, and a jog around the sites on the National Mall.
Collin’s got a great eye, and you can check out his pictures of our tour on Flickr.
For Collin’s birthday in August, the family chipped in together and got him a gently used Canon 10d, and he has been taking at least one photograph a day ever since.
We started our two day shooting event on Saturday by heading west, hitting Great Falls and a drive by of the North District of the Shenandoah National Park.
Explore the Photo Set:
Great Falls National Park, Virginia
He was originally supposed to come last March for the Washington DC Regional of the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament (for those of you paying attention, that was the tourny where hometown-heros George Mason knocked off Connecticut). My sister-in-law went into labor about a month early, and so he missed possibly the two best days of basketball in recent memory.
After the first attempt didn’t work out so well, we tried to get together this fall for a couple of sporting events (a DC United and a Washingtion Nationals game) but he managed to herniate a disk in his back, and was on his butt for a couple of months.
Finally, this weekend, with only weeks left before his Southwest ticket expired, we got him down here for a Wizards game and a couple of days of R&R.
On a personal note, I had a great time in Vegas … even ignoring the drunken debauchery. It’s nice to have post-employment validation that I worked with an exceptional group of people, and we had a pretty excellent run.
Ah, closure.
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Inside the Casinos, Las Vegas, Nevada
First of all, I haven’t pulled an all nighter since College. Second, I have never had any plans to go to Vegas (don’t gamble). Third, if I were to be in Vegas and were to have pulled an all-nighter, I absolutely would not get up the next morning at 9 am and wander around the south-end of the Las Vegas strip.
Turns out I was wrong on all three counts.
So, it’s a bit of a long story … but once upon a time, I worked for a progressive web consulting firm called the Carol | Trevelyan Strategy Group. We were a mission-driven organization, with nary a business degree among us. The type of company where people willing worked obscene hours for “the cause,” and where management was willing to go without a pay check in the lean months.
Started in the early 1990s, CTSG created the first campaign web site (one of the California Senators) and by the end we had worked with just about every major progressive organization, cause and politician in U.S.
Unfortunately, our luck started to run out when the non-profit technology industry started to consolidate in 2004. By the 17th of March 2005, we had been gobbled up by a soul-less, publically traded corporation called Kintera.
Ironically, it turns out that our non-profit clients just weren’t willing to subsidize the cost of our doing business progressively … and we should all be honest that non-profits are just about the most ardent capitalists around when it comes to minimizing their budgetary spending.
Anyway, we were in the planning stages of a company retreat when the St. Patricks Day massacre occured. For many, the purchse turned out to be little more than an excerize in pink-slip avoidance, so it was of little shock that something as expensive and touchy-feel as a staff retreat was cancelled.
While the 2005 retreat was “lost,” a group of us are getting together in Vegas this weekend to make up for lost time and retreats. First step was meeting by the Bellagio fountains at midnight. How very “Ocean’s Eleven” of us.
Not too long after the trip to Arizona, Emily (the Cat) started having pretty severe problems with her stomach. Turns out that everything is okay, but she has been on twice daily medication which has put some limits on travel and extra-curricular activities.
I had never been to Texas hill country before, so driving out to Wimberly and back was really quite something. My life has been so East Coast-centric, that just about any new biome impresses the heck out of me.
![[Carter's Country Shooting Range, Houston, Texas]](https://theparkerfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2006/11/307347005_986629eb59.jpg)
Aloe |
Bordeaux |
Paprika |
Peacock |
Dark Red |
Aubergine |
So, dear reader, I am starting to get perilously out of my element, so please give me a wide berth as we discuss things … well, female.
With most of the major decisions done (church, reception) or pending (rehearsal dinner) or at least started (wedding dress, band, photographer) The Lady Sparkler and her bridesmaids have turned attention to the bridesmaids’ dresses.
My one request in this wedding journey was for bridesmaids’ dresses with large, taffeta “rear-end” bows. You know the ones that you see in the 80s wedding movies, where the bow sits right on the rump, and takes up the whole small of the back.
Not surprisingly, the ideas was not warmly received. I believe that visionaries are never truly appreciated in their lifetimes.
The Lady Sparkler and “the maids” have pretty much settled on Aria Bridesmaids as the place to get the dresses. Even my “groomsmaid” is on board … While I was pushing to put Chrissy the groomsmaid in a tuxedo, everybody else thought it would be more “traditional” for her to wear a dress.
*Sigh.*
The store they are looking at is online, let’s you pick a color, mails you a sample dress to try-on, and then makes all of the wedding’s dresses out of the same bolt of fabric so they match. All styles of dresses are in play (because they all use the same fabric) so everybody can buy the cut and style of dress that best suits them.
Lots of the dresses have sashes, but no “rump” bows.
The main focus (right now) is on color, because the color of the dresses is the next step to deciding the color of the flowers … which is the last, big, un-started project. The finalists are shown above. No word yet, but my money is on the Peacock or the Aubergine. Fabric swatches will be exchanged over Thanksgiving, so more info next month.
the spindler sisters were decidedly the only women there under 300 lbs — and watching the crowd as they moved through is as close as i’ll ever get to witnessing supermodels navigate the paparazzi on fifth avenue.
i didn’t shoot myself — not sure anybody was ready to a the long-haired hippie with anything approximating a loaded weapon — but watching everybody else watching the spindler sisters squeeze off a few rounds was totally worth all those awkward “who let him in here” stares i recieved.