Archive for May, 2006
05.28.06
Posted in Tee Hee at 11:45 am by Adriene
Story time!
(I always love telling a good story on a relative. It’s even better if it’s one of my parents.)
Back when my mom was about my age (before I came along), she came down with a really nasty cold right after Christmas. So bad, that she got some sort of infection with it, and had to go to the doctor. The doctor gave her some medicine, and told her to take it, then drink something warm to help her throat feel better, and then go to bed.
So, Mom went home and took the cold medicine. She didn’t feel immediately better, so she decided to go ahead and make some tea to drink. She even decided to “spice up” the tea a bit. Sitting on the kitchen counter was a brand new bottle of Seagram’s VO that my dad had gotten from a co-worker for Christmas. So, she added a splash or two to her tea and drank it.
After her hot toddy, mom decides to take a nice HOT shower to open up her sinuses. BAD IDEA. Cold medicine + Seagram’s VO + hot shower = you feeling like five kinds of crap. Her head started swimming, and she sat down at the kitchen table and put her head in her hands. All of a sudden, the idea came to her that she NEEDED TO READ THE BIBLE.
So, she grabs her Bible and sits back down at the kitchen table. During her reading, she comes across II Chronicles 29:5, which states:
“Listen to me, Levites! Consecrate yourselves now and consecrate the temple of the LORD, the God of your fathers. Remove all defilement from the sanctuary.”
Well, that apparently struck something inside her, because she looked up and saw that demon bottle of VO staring her in the face. The Bible was clearly telling her to remove the VO (the defilement) from her house (the sanctuary). So, she walks across the kitchen, grabs the bottle of VO, and upends it over the sink.
About that time, my dear father walks in from work. He sees his lovely bride pouring out his Christmas present. Very confused, he walks over to her, puts both of his hands on her shoulders, and turns her around, and says, rather calmly to her, “What in the name of God are you doing?” Mom proceeds to explain why, and Dad, still rather confused, grabbed the bottle to preserve what was left of the VO and puts it back on the counter.
(Actually, if you ask him, Dad will maintain that this is the closest he ever came to shaking my mom. Haha)
And that’s why we have to hide all of the Bibles in the house if my mom has been drinking.
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05.22.06
Posted in My Immaculate Taste in Music at 10:18 am by Adriene
Damien Rice isn’t opening for Fiona Apple when she’s here in Atlanta in August.
I am sad. 
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05.18.06
Posted in General, Ponderings at 10:09 am by Adriene
As part of our vacation in DC, Jeff and I paid a visit to the Vietnam Memorial on the National Mall. Part of the reason we went was because we naturally wanted to see it, but also because my uncle’s name is on the wall. Robert A. Brown, from Rose Hill, North Carolina, the eldest of seven children.
I never knew him. I’m not even entirely sure what year he died, other than it was sometime around the time my mom and dad got married (between 1970 and 1972, I guess - Mom and Dad got married in 1971). I know he was roughly a year older than my mom, but he failed a grade in elementary school, so they graduated from high school the same year.
The fall after they graduated, Mom was headed off to business school in Raleigh, and Uncle Robert was headed off to the Army. Mom says that she remembered being a bit irked that my grandmother cried more dropping Uncle Robert off than she did when they dropped Mom off. I guess, though, that irritation faded after my uncle died.
My uncle was on a construction crew with the Army, and he got deployed to Vietnam. I think he was over there for only a few months when the accident that killed him happened. A bulldozer was trying to climb a steep embankment and he was behind it. It fell over backwards and landed on him, crushing him. Somehow, he survived that and was transferred to a military hospital in Japan. I’m guessing that was a blessing, because it gave my grandfather time to fly over to Japan to see him one last time and to bring him home after he died.
He’s still a bit of a mystery to me - my family doesn’t speak of him too often, save for the occasional story of him getting into trouble growing up, and everyone laughs. I wish I had known him - my mom says he always reminded her of a miniature version of my grandfather, and Grandaddy was probably one of my favorite people ever.
So, this past Sunday, I stood at the wall and looked up at my uncle’s name, remembering what I’ve been told of him and wondering what it would have been like to know him. I guess that’s my way of mourning a man I never knew.
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Posted in General, Travels at 10:16 am by Adriene
Well, we’re back. In all, a very fun, but very exhausting trip. I guess one day Jeff and I will figure out that we should just spend a week somewhere instead of trying to cram everything into a long weekend. But what’s the fun in that?
We were up bright and early at 5:30am to head to the airport on Thursday. As I’ve mentioned before, I’m a bit of a nervous flyer. My condition was not helped by the fact that as soon as we were on the runway and the pilot fired up the engines, Jeff proceeded to compare the sound coming from the engines to the sound his weedeater makes when he’s working on the yard. He earned a punch on the arm for that one. Anyway, once we were in the air, it was a rather smooth flight.
After we arrived in DC, the rest of Thursday was spent at the Smithsonian Museum of American History. Probably the most memorable display was a temporary exhibition they had on Americans at war. It traced from the French and Indian war all the way through Iraq and Afghanistan. I teared up a little at the part regarding September 11 - they had a rather twisted and warped portion of a support beam from the WTC, as well as an airphone recovered from United 93 and a military ID found at the Pentagon. (I mentioned that some people just get really sad when they see stuff like that. It just made me very angry again, much like my initial reaction after the attacks).
Friday we were up bright and early for a tour through the Capitol by one of our Representative’s interns. It was pretty cool - we actually got to go down to the House floor and sit and he pointed out some stuff. We also saw the old Supreme Court chamber and the crypt where the had originally planned to bury George Washington. After that tour, we headed back down to the Smithsonian area to finish up at the American History museum since we had to rush through on Thursday. We stopped for lunch at the Old Post Office Pavilion, and walked down to the White House afterwards. We couldn’t get very close, due to the barriers they had erected around the perimeter, but we got close enough for a good camera shot or two.
Once we were done with the White House, we wandered back down to the Smithsonian to tour the Air and Space Museum. Being the geek that I am, I was really looking forward to this one. Jeff was also in geek heaven, snapping photo after photo of the aircraft and displays. At this point, we started to realize just how TIRED we were. My feet were aching, and my back had a knot in it. So, we decided to head back to the hotel for a nap.
We had dinner in Olde Town Alexandria that night, and an EXCELLENT French restaurant called Le Gaulois. Seriously - if I could eat there every night, I’d be a happy woman. A very FAT woman, but a happy woman. Haha. After dinner, we headed back downtown to tour the monuments at night (thanks Dave and Scott for that suggestion). Probably the coolest monument I hadn’t seen before was the Korean War monument - it’s the one with the statues of a platoon on patrol coming out of the trees - very neat. Jeff took some great pictures, and as soon as he has them up on his Flickr site, I’ll have them posted.
Saturday morning we got up and went to Arlington Cemetery - we had originally planned to do this on Thursday after we arrived, but since it was pouring, we decided to do it when the weather was more cooperative. I forget just how peaceful it is there, and just how awesome it is to watch the changing of the guard at the Tomb of the Unknowns. After the cemetery, we headed up to Baltimore for the rest of the day.
We got into downtown and parked and started to walk towards where we thought the Inner Harbor was. We were wrong - we realized about a mile into the walk that we were headed the wrong direction. At this point, neither one of us felt very good, so we stopped off at a coffee shop for some water and a map. Once we got our bearings again, we headed the right direction and had lunch at Tir Na Nog, a pretty cool Irish pub on the water. (A side trip was made to the mall at the harbor, due to the fact that I had a temporary lapse of sanity and didn’t pack enough shirts to wear during the trip).
After our little jaunt to the Inner Harbor, we headed over to Camden Yards to watch the Orioles play the Royals. It was, quite frankly, a bloodbath. (The Royals are apparently not very good. :lol:) But, the stadium was beautiful, and we had a good time.
Sunday was Mother’s Day, so Jeff and I made the obligatory calls to our moms to wish them a Happy Mother’s Day. (We realized just how awful we are as children. This is the second Mother’s Day in a row we’ve taken a trip out of town for - last year it was up to Chicago to see U2). We also drove out to Dulles airport to see the Air and Space museum’s display near there. It was REALLY cool. We got to se an SR-71, a couple of MiGs, the Enterprise (shuttle, not star ship. Haha), and the Concorde, as well as the Enola Gay. We also hit the monuments again that afternoon to catch a couple we missed on Friday night. We went to the Vietnam memorial, and I found my uncle’s name - it was too high up for me to get a rubbing, but Jeff took a picture. We also hit the FDR memorial and the Jefferson monument.
Monday morning, we finished packing and decided to try to hit another Smithsonian museum before our plane left that afternoon. We headed to the Museum of Natural History, because I figured looking at dinosaur bones and rocks would be fun. 
We had to kind of hurry through it, but we did get some cool pictures.
So, once that was over, we turned in our rental car and headed back down to Reagan to fly home. I was so exhausted that I actually slept during most of the flight home, so Jeff didn’t have to deal with Nervous Adriene again.
Yeah, we had fun. If I had to do it over again, I’d probably add another day or two on, because we still didn’t get to see everything I wanted to (Mount Vernon, the National Cathedral, etc.). Just something we’ll bear in mind if we go back sometime.
(Oh, and does anyone need $10 in Metro fare? We overpaid on our SmartCards. Haha).
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