I took these shots a long time ago with my film SLR but only recently got them developed.  I was curious to see how they turned out because I think the film I used was about as old as I am.  Despite the discolorations, there really is something about film that I love.

Aren’t you glad somebody‘s using your money this summer for nice little vacation?  Since so many are downsizing our lives and watching our budgets, isn’t it nice to know when we pool all our money that Michelle can have a grand time on it?

“I don’t begrudge anyone rest and relaxation when they work hard. We all need downtime – the First Family included. It’s the extravagance of Michelle Obama’s trip and glitzy destination contrasted with President Obama’s demonization of the rich that smacks of hypocrisy and perpetuates a disconnect between the country and its leaders.”   ~Andrea Tantaros

“In January, President Obama insisted that ‘everybody in the country is going to have to sacrifice something, accept change for the greater good. Everybody is going to have to give. Everybody is going to have to have some skin in the game.’”  ~Andrea Tantaros

Consider it done, Mr. President.

The Obamas and their party are staying at the Villa Padierna in Marbella, which is rated as one of the top hotels in the world.  Mrs Obama arrived by plane at Malaga airport on Wednesday morning and was driven in a 14-car convoy to the five star Hotel Villa Padierna, where her entourage has reserved 60 of the 129 rooms.

Tantaros wrote: ‘To be clear, what the Obamas do with their money is one thing; what they do with ours is another. Transporting and housing the estimated 70 Secret Service agents who will flank the material girl will cost the taxpayers a pretty penny.’

Well, well, well,  amazing but true, Andrew and I both managed to get TEN DAYS of packing into two 9″ X 14″ X 22″ suitcases.  That is a small amount of space!  We even smashed in a few baby gifts.

When we went through the x-ray process, Andrew, of course, sailed through while I was stopped and questioned, “Do you have a sharp object??”  “uhh, no,”  And I’m thinking, “Good heavens, I reduced my toiletries to a quart size Ziploc bag with no item over three ounces and you think I’d take the bother to try and smuggle a sharp object like a nail file on board!?”

“Well, we need to paw through your stuff and leave it a total mess to find that sharp object that we know all 5’3″ old white women are packing on planes these days.”

So the lady takes my bag all jumbled and my bra hanging out, back to the scanner and hurrah, hats go up all over the kingdom as she corageously pulls out….  my hairbrush.

“The handle is sharp,” she accuses.

The handle is gel-filled and rounded at the tip.

Like usual, Andrew, all 220 pounds, 6’6″ scary bit of him is waiting for me beyond the checkpoint having sailed through once again while I tuck my underwear back into my suitcase and zip it back up to head to the plane.

So the guys get a little tape to cover up but nothing for the women, hmmm

Is it just me or is this kinda creepily intrusive?  The photos seem obscene and yet this is your body at the airport.

Remember long ago when no one even cared if your name on your paper ticket matched anything?  No I.D. was necessary, nope, all anyone cared about was you being on time for your flight.  Then it became necessary to show some sort of I.D.  Later well, please if you don’t mind and it is entirely optional, remove your shoes then removing shoes, belts, jewelry, barrettes, watches… became mandatory.  And since I have always looked like a terrorist, I was always shuffled off for the once over while Andrew sailed on through because frisking a middle aged white gal was keeping this world safe!

And don’t you even think about complaining because if you say or do anything that ticks the TSA off you will end up in the frisking line for sure and  could end up in jail for life.

So now we get to be stripped naked before some very qualified agent.  But not to worry the agents will all be guffawing and gawking off in a private room.  Yes, that is supposed to bring you some comfort; they won’t be staring at your naked body right in front of you, they will be staring at you in the privacy of their little room.  Happy thought that.  And don’t even believe they destroy the photos as promised; ’cause I’m wondering, if they destroy all the photos immediately, why the heck-o is it so easy to pull a few off the world wide web??  “The Transportation Security Administration has promised not to store or transmit nude images of airline passengers made by whole-body scanners, but when it asked manufacturers to submit bids for such machines, it required that the scanners have exactly those capabilities, according to agency documents obtained in a lawsuit.

So… to visit my new grandson, I have to mentally gear up for this kind of treatment for the privilege of getting on a plane.  Andrew has been listening to me for a full week ranting on about this country being soooo stupid that we have let this sort of thing happen.

And our response?  Well, if it keeps us safe.  Like sheep to the slaughter.  Baaaa.

A couple weeks ago Tim had a job down in Miami Beach so I flew down there Thanksgiving day for about a week to hang out too.  It was a relaxing, wonderful escape from the rain and cold of DC.  With it’s backdrop of art-deco architecture, Miami has really fashioned itself as a design capitol and has a thriving art scene where empty warehouses used to be.  And did I mention $$$?  I was amazed (once again) by flagrant display of wealth– Bentley’s line the sidewalks in Miami like BMW’s do in DC.

As I was taking one last peruse of the Michelangelo exhibit at the Seattle Art Museum, Matthias was off in a room building a tower of blocks to reach to heaven.

There in a corner of the room where the window runs floor to ceiling sitting on a chair absolutely absorbed with the city life right below her was Taite.  When I asked what she was doing she just kept staring and said, “There is so much going on out there it is hard to keep up with it all.”  Right across the street was a flashing neon pink sign that read, “Lusty Ladies” and she commented, “And I have seen a lot of women going in there.”

There is something about the city that apart from the ‘Lusty Ladies’ is so appealing to me.  The shops in a city that are so specific, like a shop that sells nothing but costume jewelry I mean, how many people are needing to purchase a piece of costume jewelry on a daily basis? or cupcakes and they can manage to be snooty about it, like, ‘you cheapskate you are taking that on a napkin instead of paying the extra for our super fancy box-to-go’ or a store that sells rubber stamps, that’s it rubber stamps and they manage to sell enough to pay the rent and pay the staff!

There is so much commerce going on that people can really hone a skill and succeed and even be all in your face about a flippin’ cupcake if they want.  I actually love the city for that, the whole attitude thing.

You can just see Taite off of Matthias's shoulder just staring away below her.

Who knew this place even existed?  I had read about Dumbarten Oaks and have wanted to go there since I discovered the gardens are free to tour in the fall and winter.  Finally, this past Saturday we actually went and I was amazed that such a place could hide, tucked back in the Georgetown neighborhood.  The estate consists of hundreds of acres which, in the middle of DC, makes it a novelty alone.  Walking around the “Byzantine” gardens with their fountains, swimming pool, terraced levels, and gazing out into the distance without a single building cluttering up the landscape, a person can feel miles away from the city– a little bit like Alice in Wonderland.  But walk out the front gate, leave the garden walls, and there’s Georgetown, crowded and bustling as always.  The pictures are stock ones as I didn’t expect to be so impressed and forgot my camera at home.  I plan to take a friend’s family photos here though, so I should be able to post more soon.

A lovely lady I work with was nice enough to give me this Filipino recipe using a bean I had never run across before, mung beans.  Apparently they are a great source of protein and eating them with rice provides all the essential amino acids, for those of you who care about that sort of thing.  Finding these elusive little beans required an adventure to Uwajimaya, the Asian market in the International District, where I also was inspired to make fresh spring rolls as a side.  This was a verbally relayed recipe (I had to ask her to repeat it to me about 5 times before I remembered it, and she patiently did) and so the amounts of ingredients are very much up to your imagination and tastes.  But definitely be generous with the garlic and ginger.  

• About a cup of Mung Beans, soaked in a bowl of water for 8 or so hours
• 3/4 cup brown rice
• Garlic (lots), roughly chopped
• Olive oil
• one large onion
• About a pound of prawns (or pork, but who wants pork instead of prawns?)
• Generous portion fresh ginger root
• Salt and pepper to taste
• Fresh spinach

Boil the beans for about 20 min til tender.  Cook the rice (per instruction, I always wing it with rice and generally get it somewhere close to right).  Set aside.  In a large pan heat the olive oil til the garlic sizzles when you put it in.  brown the garlic lightly then throw in the onions and cook lightly, keeping the pan nice and hot.  Throw in the prawns/pork and fry quickly at high heat until cooked through.  While the protein is cooking, put in a lot of fresh grated ginger, salt and pepper.  Throw in the cooked mung beans and rice and add a little water or chicken broth if it looks a little dry.  Right before you are ready to eat throw in the spinach and let it cook just a little bit before serving.  Serve alongside fresh spring rolls with a plum sauce and sweet chile sauce.

Oh, and for anyone who knows the answer to the title of this post, please let me know.  It really doesn’t make sense.

For the long weekend in September Tim and I decided on a whim to go down to Ocracoke, North Carolina.  We left at 2am to avoid traffic and by the time we arrived at the ferry 7 1/2 hours later, I was falling asleep and very glad I wasn’t driving.  We spent three days camping, fishing, riding our bikes all over it, eating seafood, laying on the beach, and spending a good deal of time at our favorite little coffee shop on the island.  It rained the night before we left and our tent and bedding was pretty soaked, but other than that the trip went off without a hitch.  I read “Cheaper by the Dozen” out-loud to pass the time on the ride home since Tim has never read it.  It was a wonderful get-away.

Albert Einstein wrote a letter to Franklin D. Roosevelt encouraging him to speed up the experimental work in nuclear chain reactions to construct bombs- extremely powerful bombs, and it couldn’t be uranium; it was too heavy and in poor supply in the United States.  A reactor was necessary to produce plutonium necessary for the atomic bomb.  World War II was raging and Einstein had a solution the president needed to hear about.

Thus began the construction of the B Reactor, built in secret and in a hurry. A secret on a monumental scale, 51,000 employees worked on the project in the middle of nowhere north of Richland, Washington.

It was just amazing that a secret of that magnitude could remain a secret.  The logistics of keeping all those employees fed and housed in the middle of nowhere was astounding; eight mess halls the size of football fields served daily, 120 tons of potatoes daily, 9,600 pounds of onions, 8,000 pounds of coffee, 250,000 pounds of meat were used in one week, 7,200 pies for one meal.

With amazing speed, especially for government work, the world’s first large-scale nuclear reactor was completed on September 26, 1944 in just eleven months with the blueprints showing up for the project after it began operating!

The B Reactor caused America to emerge from World War II as a nuclear power and a world leader and changed the global balance of power for all time.  The reactor produced the plutonium necessary for Fat Man, the bomb dropped on Nagasaki and the Trinity bomb detonated in Alamogordo, New Mexico and arguably played a key role in ending World War II

Just one year ago the B Reactor was designated as a National Historic Landmark, the highest designation in the United States for historic properties.

The tours of the reactor are free but they are overwhelmingly popular filling within minutes of being available and you must be 18 or older to go on the tour.  The drive out and back to the site plus the tour takes about 4 hours.  This amazing bit of history is right here in my backyard!