More Whitehouse and Some Other Stuff

My second round at the White House was a little more enjoyable in that my co-volunteer was a little more talkative and the morning tends to be low-key.

 I asked what this new structure being built was, but I never really got a straight answer from Secret Service.  I've decided that the Obamas are adding a water park!  The flower arrangement on the entrance desk was very fresh

 

Book displays in the Visitor's Foyer.  The words were formed from folded pages!

 East Room

 

More East Room, with famous nativity scene

One of the tables commissioned by Teddy Roosevelt when he turned the State Dining Room into a very manly-man's room filled with wood paneling and taxidermy, also Secret Service talking about the Gingerbread White House

 Red Room, Green Room

 State ornaments in the Blue Room

 And that was it!  Maybe I'll be back next year....

 

After Christmas we decided to get outside into some fresh air.  After hitting a dive bar for some brunch and excellent bloody marys made with Old Bay we went for a two-hour hike in Rock Creek Park, doing a loop that covered the southern half of the park.

After New Years' we went to the GALA Hispanic Theater in Columbia Heights for some cheap dumb fun: Elvis' Birthday Fight Club, an event that started around four years ago and also one that has been giving sold-out shows since the beginning!  It was exactly what it sounds like: choreographed cage fights and burlesque on Elvis' birthday!

Round 1: Vladimir Putin vs Unicorn (Putin wins)

Round 2: Justin Bieber vs Saturday Night Beaver (Beaver Wins)

Round 3: King Kong vs King Ding Dong (King Kong Wins)

Round 4: Fox vs Le Hounde (Le Hounde Wins)

Round 5: Saturday Night Beaver vs Le Hounde (both died of cocaine overdose)

Round 6: Vladimir Putin vs King Kong (Putin wins, but was defeated by the Unicorn that had been brought back to life by the Obama Carebear)

 

Good times.

The People's House

 Last night I was a volunteer at the White House again.  This time I was assisting with the postcard station where people could pledge to do community service in honor of the military.  At the end of my shift I was allowed to do the tour but the crowds were still pretty heavy.  Therefore, I did not get as many pictures as I had wanted.  By the time I made it upstairs the lines were so slow that I mostly just wanted to get home.  I'll be back in a couple of weeks.

There were a couple of amusing moments.  A little girl who filled out a pledge postcard couldn't think of any community service that she wanted to do so instead she pledged to "wash the dishes".

Also, as a secret service member exited to the Jacqueline Kennedy Garden from the room I was in (the Garden Room), he broke the door.  I watched him fumble with his keys and attempt to latch the door over and over again.  After a while it seemed like he'd finally got it to work and then left.  Not so.  The door kept blowing open, which is BAD when you have hundreds of visitors flowing through the building in any given hour.  At one point I walked across the room and slammed the door, catching the eye of one of the guards, who came over to investigate.  There was quite a bit of commotion as various staff members and supervisors showed up to investigate and shake their heads.  As they inspected the lock a piece of metal fell off.  I can only assume that someone was sent over to do repairs later in the evening or first thing this morning.  

Other than that, it was exciting to see how the decorations turned out this year!

East Wing Entrance

 East Colonnade and a view of the sleigh and trees in the Jacqueline Kennedy Garden

Visitor's Foyer, with piles of books transforming into trees!

(the books are going to be donated to local schools after the holidays)

tree detail

Vermeil Room

 China Room and Library

 The East Room

 More East Room.  The nativity scene is made of wood and terra-cotta figurines from Italy.  

Some are over 300 years old.

 Green Room, Blue Room

(sorry I didn't get a lot of pics here, the crowds were kind of bad)

Red Room, State Dining Room and gingerbread White House with a real working fountain!

Front Hall

Exiting through the Front Portico!

Like I said, I'll be back in a few weeks.  Stay tuned!

Downtown Detour

It's been a while since we visited the museums downtown.  After parking near all the courthouses in Judiciary Square we had lunch in Chinatown, a few doors down from the former boarding house where John Wilkes Booth supposedly plotted the Lincoln assassination.

Since we hadn't fully explored the National Portrait Gallery, I decided we should go there first.  We started at the temporary exhibit Dancing the Dream.  I was very interested to read little tidbits about the likes of Balanchine, Baryshnikov, and Farrell, and now I feel I must find a book about American Ballet to read.

The round painting is a study of what was to be painted in the rotunda at the US Capitol building

 A landscape by Albert Bierstadt

 

 This portrait of a girl is a photo reproduction made by winding 

a single black thread around a grid of small nails

 A replica of the memorial in Rock Creek Park, for the wife of Henry Adams,

who committed suicide by drinking chemicals used in photography

Since it was a calm Sunday afternoon I asked if we could give the Natural History Museum another try since every other time we've been it's been the crowds have been unbearable.  This time we did the geology and gems exhibits.

Igneous rock crystals, the same that make up Devil's Tower in Wyoming

 Rocks that glow in the dark, rock exhibit made to look like a mine

(a small boy asked his mother "are we inside someone's stomach?")

 We decided to call it a day and walked past the seasonal ice rink in the sculpture garden on our way back to the car.