Franklin Square

Our walking tour of Logan Circle actually started out in Franklin Square, but I thought those pictures deserved a post of their own. A few interesting tidbits about Franklin Square - it's the only park (or nearly only park, I can't remember) in DC that isn't bordered by a street named after a state and the statue below is not of anyone named Franklin, but instead some Irish admiral or something.

The Franklin School is what the square is actually named after, but it is no longer a school. It is currently a homeless shelter, but I believe it is getting phased out shortly, and will once again just sit empty.


I will be greatly indebted to anyone who can tell me why there is a period after the name. If the need to punctuate is that great, I would think it would deserve an exclamation point, myself.




This is the exterior of the Shriner's Temple on K Street. The entire block was redeveloped at one point (I don't remember when), but the facade of the Temple was either kept intact or redone. (I know, it would be helpful if I could actually remember some of this stuff, but it was like 5 months ago).

Logan Circle

So a long time ago, last summer to be exact, boyfriend and I went on a walking tour of my neighborhood, Logan Circle. It wasn't exactly thrilling, except I did learn a couple of interesting tidbits, such as back when the circle was in the boonies outside of Washington, during the Revolutionary war, it was where AWOL soldiers were executed, and in the '80s it was full of crackhouses and prostitutes used to walk around the circle to pick up their gentlemen. It's a bit different now, thankfully. So to while away the time on the tour that was comprised of 60-year-olds and us, I took lots of pictures.

I figured I should have at least one somewhat full picture of the circle itself, or at least the statue in the middle of it.

And yet another round of succulents...

While my camera has some cool settings, it is still just a point-and-shoot. Seeing as how I had stolen boyfriend's camera for the day, which is infinitely many times better, and I had already taken all the pictures I could of the Christmas exhibits at the Botanical Gardens, I wandered over to my favorite room, the succulents. They never fail to amuse me, no matter how many times I visit.

Playing with Color

When I first got my camera I liked to play with all the cool little settings. Apparently the novelty has now worn off and I no longer do such things, but some of them are quite cool. Like the color accent feature, for example.

The View From Above

As many times as I've flown in and out of Chicago, I've never seen as nice a view of the city as when I flew back to DC last week. Unfortunately, I couldn't dig my camera out from the depths of my bag quick enough, so the pictures aren't the best, but they still show a glimmer of what it looked like.

Christmas Extravaganza 2008!

So I'm rushing to get all my Christmas-related posts done before the year turns over and I'm not allowed to speak of Christmas until the day after Thanksgiving (self-imposed rule). When I was home I thought I would take some pictures of the adorable (if I may say so myself) clay Santas I made back in high school art class. I still have some Sculpey clay left over from my lampshade project....maybe I should dust off my sculpture skills a bit.



I also have to take the opportunity to showcase my Christmas decorations, even though I completely forgot to take pictures during my actual party. After having the parents haul my box of Christmas stuff all the way from Michigan when they visited me in September, I figured I should actually use them, and that led to me having a party, so people could actually see the decorations.

The lightbox got rigged up with christmas lights in lieu of actually get a real light inside of it.


Seeing as how I don't have a mantel, the bookshelf has to do for holding my stockings. My lion-headed bowls normally are odds and ends collectors, but they made great votive candle holders.


My red and white still-life - the basket was brought back from Rwanda by a friend and the pom-poms were made out of Target bags.


Last year's impulse Christmas tree buy was the feather tree and this year was the glitter tree. Good thing I have closet space - who knows how big next year's will be.


This plant has seen 7 Christmases with me, so I thought it should also get in the holiday spirit.

Even the pendant light got a bit of Christmas sparkle.

Some Things Just Don't Translate

So I was over at boyfriend's house a little while ago and I decided to flip through a book that was sitting on his coffee table. One of his roommates had just gotten back from a trip to China and she had bought the book there, which was all about uniquely Chinese products, or something. Lo and behold, I happen upon the split pants. I had never heard about this phenomena, and so it was definitely an eye-opening read. Apparently, they are somewhat on the way out, according to my google-search, but in many places, especially rural places, these are used instead of diapers. Apparently it's much more convient to just hold your child over the side of the road while he does his business instead of having to change the diaper. Personally, I feel that the dangers associated with missing a crucial tug on the shirt and ending up with poo all down your clothes isn't quite worth the convience. But to each his own.

(Photo courtesy of Flickr)

Underwater Wonderland

As I mentioned previously, I pretended to be a tourist on the Mall on my birthday. I had about 5 exhibits that I specifically wanted to see, and the new Sant Ocean Hall in the Natural History Museum was one. It opened either right before or right after I went to Africa, and I've been anxiously awaiting its opening for about a year now. I got to enjoy it in all its glory, Deep Ocean 3D Imax movie and all. Actually, I think the movie has been around for a while, but I just haven't gotten around to watching it. It was amazing. I think in another life I would have been a marine biologist. Of course, this is a life in which I would actually be good at the life sciences, unlike my current one. I think it's best for all involved if I stick with roads and bridges and such for the moment.

The life-size Right Whale model took 4 years to create.

I especially liked the fossils - there were many cool specimens.

But the thing I looked forward to most was the preserved giant squid. The first time I visited the museum in 2006, Jeff, my grad school buddy, told me there was a giant squid there and it got me much excited. Unfortunately, it had been removed sometime in the intervening time, and I never got to see it. So I was quite excited when I heard the new Ocean Hall would have one. It was much hyped up, but then when I got there, the glass it was under was fogged up by the body, so I really only got to see some tentacles. Not to mention the plaque that mentioned the fact that it was 36 feet long when living, but that it had shrunk quite a bit since being preserved. It was still cool though. The picture below is when it was first caught in 2005.

(Photo courtesy of Natural History Museum)

Wrapping up the Year

I know that Christmas has come and gone, but I ran across this poem on Decorno today and I really liked it, so here it is:

Christ Climbed Down, by Lawrence Ferlinghetti

Christ climbed down
from His bare Tree
this year
and ran away to where
there were no rootless Christmas trees
hung with candycanes and breakable stars

Christ climbed down
from His bare Tree
this year
and ran away to where
there were no gilded Christmas trees
and no tinsel Christmas trees
and no tinfoil Christmas trees
and no pink plastic Christmas trees
and no gold Christmas trees
and no black Christmas trees
and no powderblue Christmas trees
hung with electric candles
and encircled by tin electric trains
and clever cornball relatives

Christ climbed down
from His bare Tree
this year
and ran away to where
no intrepid Bible salesmen
covered the territory
in two-tone cadillacs
and where no Sears Roebuck creches
complete with plastic babe in manger
arrived by parcel post
the babe by special delivery
and where no televised Wise Men
praised the Lord Calvert Whiskey

Christ climbed down
from His bare Tree
this year
and ran away to where
no fat handshaking stranger
in a red flannel suit
and a fake white beard
went around passing himself off
as some sort of North Pole saint
crossing the desert to Bethlehem
Pennsylvania
in a Volkswagen sled
drawn by rollicking Adirondack reindeer
and German names
and bearing sacks of Humble Gifts
from Saks Fifth Avenue
for everybody's imagined Christ child

Christ climbed down
from His bare Tree
this year
and ran away to where
no Bing Crosby carollers
groaned of a tight Christmas
and where no Radio City angels
iceskated wingless
thru a winter wonderland
into a jinglebell heaven
daily at 8:30
with Midnight Mass matinees

Christ climbed down
from His bare Tree
this year
and softly stole away into
some anonymous Mary's womb again
where in the darkest night
of everybody's anonymous soul
He awaits again
an unimaginable
and impossibly
Immaculate Reconception
the very craziest of
Second Comings

The Metro Elephant is Back!

I'm really not sure about the history of the random animals that dot the DC landscape, but there are several in addition to the elephant and donkey at the Washington Post. One of my personal favorites is an elephant that is covered in Metro maps, which is located near Chinatown. He mysteriously disappeared a while ago, though, much to my dismay. When I was wandering around being a tourist on my birthday, I happened to wander by his corner, and I almost started jumping up and down when I saw he was back! Apparently he just needed some freshening up, as it appeared he had gotten a fresh paint job. It made me very happy, and so of course I ran over to him and took some pictures.

It's Not Just Little Boys That Like Trains

I do too! Especially when the surroundings are as cool as this. Last year the train display at the Botanical Gardens was outside, but they moved it inside and made it even more of a wonderland this year. I took way too many pictures, so you can see the rest of the train display and the minature Mall display on my Flickr site.

The National Mall - Made Out of Plants

Every year the Botanical Gardens puts up this amazing display during the holidays. In one of the rooms, they set up a minature version of the mall, done entirely out of plant pieces. In another room they have a train display, with wildly fantastic scenery for them to zoom around in. I took great pictures of it last year, but they all disappeared along with my computer, so this year I had to replace them. I put it off and off, and finally decided to take the day off of work on my birthday and go be a tourist. The funny thing is, I enjoyed pretending I was a tourist a lot when I first moved here 2 years ago, but now I just get really annoyed at the tourists and want to make sure they know that I'm a local. I guess I've truly become a Washingtonian. Anyways, these are a smattering of the Mall pictures.

The White House

The Jefferson Memorial

The Jefferson Memorial

The Smithsonian Castle

The Library of Congress Roof

The Capitol

The Capitol Roof

The Supreme Court