Hey. It's been a while since I last wrote in this thing - that tends to happen with me and journals.
Anyhow.
As you may or may not know, I graduated this last semester from the University of Utah. Major in mathematics, minor in computer science. I'm now working for a financial company in Boise for a year, after which I'd like to be back in graduate school. Maybe I can convince the company to pay for my graduate schooling, and I won't have to do something like slave myself out as a teaching assistant to pay tuition.
Now, what's really cool (besides a piece of paper that I spent thousands and thousands of dollars to earn), my father is treating me a an all-expenses paid trip to Washington D.C., New York, and Virginia. "Is" being very liberally applied here, since I'm currently on said trip. We've just spent three days running around Washington, seeing lots of things.
Now, I've been to D.C. once before. It was early September 2001, actually, just before 9/11. We came to Washington because my paternal grandmother died. She was a Navy nurse and a P.O.W. in the Phillippines during World War II, so she got a very nice funeral in Arlington. We don't get out to the east coast much, so even though it was a somber occasion, we couldn't pass up seeing most of the Smithsonian museums. Natural History, Air and Space (including a tour of the Garber facility), Gallery of Art, etc. A lot of the exhibits in these museums don't change, so this time around we planned to just peek in to Air and Space to see anything new, then hop along to see the stuff we'd missed the first time.
Fast forward past some travel. It's all get-on-a-plane-go-to-sleep-get-off-get-on-another-plane and so on. Boring.
The first day in D.C., we started with a trip to the Hirshhorn, a gallery of modern art. They had some really neat pieces. One of my favorite was a video of a gigantic Ruth Goldberg machine by Alex Calder. Actually, all of Calder's stuff was very cool. He's known for his mobiles, but his other work is also brilliant. There was a great piece (I can't recall the artist) in the basement that was a large web of knotted threads. Oh! They also had a few pieces from a young artist who did these great cinematic, also apocolytic scenes printed on copies of the Financial Times. I wanted prints, but couldn't find any.
Next we stopped by Air and Space. My father, always the air enthusiat, pointed out the X-Prize winning ... plane? Whatever it is, technically speaking. We also went and saw their exhibit of unnamed airplanes.
We didn't stop at the Native American museum. It's new, but I'm not so much of a history buff. Those who know the layout of the mall can guess the next in the lineup - the Botanical Gardens. I really like plants, and though my father was less than enthusiastic (he sat someplace cool and rested his feet), I spent some times walking through the jungle and desert and medicinal exhibits. The jungle is especially awesome - there are several levels of walkways above the ground, and so you can go up into the canopy. I'm not sure the fake frog noises really added a lot, but the exotic plants make up for it.
We closed off the day with a visit to the International Spy Museum. Not part of the Smithsonian, but it's pretty awesome nonetheless. You have to be to survive in D.C.. It was a little bit juvenile, but kind of fun. I wish they did something more interactive, especially since they bothered to make me memorize that false identity at the beginning. Also, it would be cool if they had more on cryptography, something I personally enjoy.
--- I'll continue this later. We're at the end of the third day of exploring, but I want to wander off and do other things. razz
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Congrats!! heart