Dateline Washington, DC

Most of the post below was written April 30, 2008, while I was in Washington, DC. Because of problems with internet connectivity, I'm just now getting around to posting it.

I’ve been in Washington, DC, since last Wednesday. I’m just now getting around to posting something, because my internet connectivity has been unreliable. It seems that the 1500+ conference attendees here at the Omni Shoreham have overwhelmed their wireless network. So instead of boring y’all to tears with a day-by-day travelogue, I’ll bore you to tears with a summary of my doings to date. But I’ll throw in some pictures to make it slightly more interesting. After all, who doesn’t love to see their friends’ vacation pictures? (yes, that was sarcasm)

I’m here for the Innovative Users Group (IUG) annual conference. I’m the IUG Secretary-Treasurer, so I have to come early to help get ready for the conference, and my workdays are pretty long while I’m here. But I get a free hotel room for the duration and lots of free meals, and everyone who knows me knows I’ll work for food. Since my hotel room is free, I decided to bring my family along. So the boys have roamed all over our nation’s capital while I’ve been… in the hotel… working. They took the DCDucks tour in World War II amphibious vehicles, while I worked the registration desk at the conference. They toured the Capitol building, while I worked the registration desk at the conference. And so on.

We came in a couple days before I had to start work, so I did get to play tourist for a little while. We spent Thursday roaming around the Capitol Mall. We went to the National Museum of Natural History and the National Air and Space Museum, then returned in the evening to view some monuments at night. Here are a few pictures from the Museum of Natural History. I’ll post the Air and Space pics as soon as I find time to upload them.

National Museum of Natural History:


Just inside the museum:


T-Rex and tasty snacks… um, I mean tourists:


Hope Diamond:


Friday we went back to Air and Space for a little while, but mostly we recovered from overdoing it the day before. Friday night I started work, and since then I’ve had very little time to do anything else. I did manage to walk up to the National Cathedral yesterday morning. I couldn’t stay very long, but at least I got to see it. I’ve included a few pics of the outside of the cathedral below. For pics of the surrounding gardens, see my post on Rainy Day Gardening.





The conference ends today. We don’t fly home till Friday morning, so I’ll have tomorrow to sightsee with the family. After that it’s a long day of air travel, then back to the old routine.