Fall weekend in DC...

One of these days, I will have a camera again, and I will post pictures of life here. But for now, I'm waiting on the U.S. Postal Service. They're not the fastest people in the world. =) This weekend, David didn't have to work! I was soo excited that I just wanted to do everything together, from getting him some new jeans (practical) to flying to Tahiti for a getaway (impossible). =) Too much to do, not enough time to do it in. We ended up having a lot of DC fun, and some of it was very specifically "DC fun." The nature of my husband's job means that we get to do some unique things and meet some unique people. I'm enjoying the once in a lifetime experiences that we're having right now. On Friday afternoon, the judge that David clerked for on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit had his portrait unveiling. When a federal appeals court judge has been on the bench for 20 years, his former clerks all chip in and purchase an oil portrait of him to go on the wall in the courtroom. We went to the unveiling, a reception afterward at the courthouse, and a dinner after that at a private club in Dupont Circle. Several of the Supreme Court justices that had worked with him on the DC bench before they were promoted to the Supreme Court came, including Justices Thomas, Ginsburg, Scalia, Roberts, and Breyer. David's former judge was thoroughly roasted by some very intelligent people, including the current chief justice of the DC Court of Appeals. The dinner provided a chance to meet more of the judge's former clerks and find out about all the fascinating things that they're doing these days. Many are teaching law at various law schools around the country, many work for the government, many are in private practice. I am getting more and more comfortable with meeting people and learning about them in this kind of world. It's nice not to feel as intimidated as a did when we first arrived back in DC. We got to have some neat conversations about politics and law, and it was nice to be included in those. I think I may enjoy them almost as much as David does. I thought about going to law school myself before David and I decided to get married, so all of this does interest me a good deal. We walked back to the Metro in the rain, and it was plenty nippy, but we spotted a Krispy Kreme right by the Metro entrance, so we popped in to get warm and have a couple of hot, fresh doughnuts. There isn't anything much better than sharing a doughnut with your husband after a really enjoyable DC evening. On Saturday, we slept late, talked a lot, and ran errands until time for a pumpkin carving party at a friend's house. We headed out to Fairfax and had a great time enjoying Chuck and Christine's gracious hospitality. They had plenty of food, a roaring fire in the fireplace, and lots of pumpkin carving tools in their backyard. I have never carved a pumpkin before; we always painted ours and entered them in the fair. So this was a totally new experience for me. It was great! David and I tried to brainstorm for awhile, and we came up with a cat face. I drew it, and David carved it. Then I got to make cool holes with different sized drill bits all around the pumpkin. This masterpiece is now sitting on our dining room table. Hopefully, I'll get a picture of it before it rots. On Sunday afternoon, we drove out to Midland, VA after church to go to a harvest festival on a farm out there. Midland is over an hour from DC, and it was a really beautiful drive. There were cattle farms everywhere. Well, when we got to the farm, the festival looked a little dinky to us for the price they were charging, so we decided to just keep driving down that road and see where it took us. Not far past the farm, we noticed a sign for "John Marshall's Birthplace Park." I told David, and he said, "THE John Marshall?" For those of you who aren't nerdy enough to know who John Marshall is, he was an early chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court and the author of the landmark case, Marbury v. Madison, which established the Supreme Court's right of judicial review. There, now you know. Sure enough, this little park, which literally had 4 parking spaces for all the masses of visitors, was THE John Marshall's birthplace. David and I thought this was really funny, and we had a good, muddy 1/2 mile hike to the stone monument marking the spot of his birth. The great thing about this park, unlike parks in DC, is that there was no one there. I loved it. Growing up on 20 acres, I got used to being able to go in the woods and know that there was literally no one around for about a mile. I enjoy people a lot, but I also really enjoy this kind of solitude. This was the first time in a long time that I'd felt that, and it was great. We hung out at John Marshall's monument for a long time, and nobody came to disturb our solitude. Then we drove back to DC, promptly got caught in a huge traffic jam resulting from the Marine Corps Marathon at the Pentagon, and couldn't exit to go home because they'd blocked off our exit. This meant we had to take a detour through DC around the Jefferson Memorial. Oh, well. =) You win some... But the day ended on a better note with our friend's Seth and Catherine coming over to make gingerbread men. Mmmm. I love gingerbread men! I still have another batch to do today. I promise that I won't always write about our weekend. But I did think it was interesting and kind of representative of the variety of experiences we have had here.