Things, places

(Side note to myself: Things that need to stop: stressing myself out about stupid stuff. Or about nothing at all. Vague, unplaced feelings of stress = not productive. Also, answer people's emails because not doing so is mean.)

There now, where were we? James planned a lovely weekend for us in Charlottesville. He wins! I shall now provide a comprehensive report on the historical sites in the greater Charlottesville area.

Before we even got into town, we stopped along the way at the battlefield at Manassas, which was really interesting, even though the windiest day of the year was maybe not the best time to visit (funny enough, battlefields are often large, treeless hilltop areas, which means you might blow away). Of course, I was slightly amazed that there was no open exhibition on the second battle of Manassas because the exhibition building was insufficiently insulated to be opened up on a 55-degree day (?). But we heard about the first battle and how everyone thought it would be jolly good fun until everyone died. Here witness James in the spot where Stonewall Jackson captured the Union canons (I instructed him to get in character, but I must say his performance was weak):


Later that day, we took the historical tour at UVA, and the next day was more Jefferson-mania at Monticello, which was just as good as you've heard it is, so hop in your car (but not before pre-booking tickets) and get on your way.

Hey, TJ!


I must say I was always partial to James Madison (such an underrated founding father, despite also being a proponent of pernicious agrarianism!), due to my fifth-grade report on his life. Therefore I was saddened to find that his house was not so interesting. But hey, I did get to pal around with Jimmy Boy and D-Dawg (Dolley) in the not-quite-flesh:


Plus, I quite liked the anachronistic walled gardens installed by the subsequent owners, the richer-than-God Dupont family:


All in all, a lovely time. And in case you wondered if we ate (do you need to wonder?), the C&O Restaurant in downtown Charlottesville is all kinds of amazing and pulls out marvelous flavor combinations and has lovely and charming vaguely-hipstery waitresses to boot.

Comments on things I do

This morning I managed to get honey up my nose. Don't ask how. Sometimes it's amazing that the American people don't demand a return to a monarchical system of government so they can crown me queen. Because I outclass QEII by a factor of ten. So classy we spell it with a K. Klassy.

Speaking of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, we spent this weekend in Charlottesville, which is a city that is designed around the worship of Thomas Jefferson (or since he seems to have designed all the historic sites of note, designed for him by him?). More pictures and details to come on that.

In my defense, I was eating ciabatta with ricotta cheese, raspberries, and honey for breakfast this morning. Can't some snarfing be justified?

This bounty was due to a stop at Wegman's on the way back into town yesterday. Loath to waste an opportunity to load a whole lot of crap into our rental car, we pulled into the lot with visions of bounty in our heads. Never mind the pouring rain--we were not to be deterred.

So everyone talks about Wegman's like it's the promised land, and maybe it is, except we badly need to add St. Peter at the automatic doors to keep some people out, because the place was a mob scene. And it's huge--but people were seriously pouring out of every nook and cranny. I half expected to open the refrigerator cases and have someone pop out at me.

Since there is nothing I enjoy more than being wrong (oh wait, that must be the other Katie), I will say that this disproved my theory that it's only the metro-accessible supermarkets in the greater Washington area that are insane. Apparently the suburbs are also full of irritable people ready to shiv you for half a pound of roast beef and a dozen organic eggs. They just tend to be older, causing you to believe erroneously (bonus points to Chinese for having a verb that means "to believe erroneously") that they know better.

Museum bliss

Today James and I visited an AWESOME museum. Seriously. I find my favorite museums tend to be "collector" museums--places like the Isabella Stewart Gardner in Boston or the Frick in New York that are basically just rich people's mansions housing their amazingly fabulous collections of stuff.

Hillwood in Washington, DC is no exception. But James and I enjoyed it even more because it houses the largest collection of Russian art outside of Russia. Marjorie Merriweather Post, the Post cereal heiress, married four times, and one of her (many) husbands was the U.S. Ambassador to the Soviet Union in the 30s. Since the Soviet government decided right about then to get rid of all the remnants of Imperial Russia, the country was pretty much the most amazing flea market ever, if flea markets contained priceless treasures belonging to royalty.

Marriage crown of Alexandra, Nicholas II's wife? Imperial Faberge eggs? Catherine the Great's china? Check, check, and check. It's pretty amazing stuff.

Plus, right now they are having a fun exhibition of photographs of the Soviet Union taken by Mrs. Post's step-daughter, the Ambassador's daughter. Great fun and definitely hearkens back to an earlier era of diplomacy.

Highly recommended, my friends.

And the next adventure...

So in the last week we learned that this city is looking to be our future home:


Kyiv, Ukraine!

This has caused great confusion amongst friends and family, who are all like, wait a sec, aren't you going to Beijing? Haven't you been slogging through Mandarin training toward that end?

Yes, we are still going to Beijing. Because James got preference in the Foreign Service hiring process for knowing Russian, he's obligated to serve somewhere Russian speaking for one of his first two assignments. And he has to bid on jobs every cycle until he's assigned to something (which in his case, didn't take long--he got an assignment the first time he bid).

And what about me, you may ask? I am not assigned to anything. But the hope is that I will also find a position in Kyiv (though I don't bid for another year-and-a-half!). The State Department tries to keep tandem couples together (if that is the couple's priority, and it is for us), and so there is still a chance James's assignment could possibly change if I can't find anything in the same place.

But I sure hope it doesn't, because Kyiv is EXACTLY where we want to be next tour. James and I are both huge Slav-ophiles, so the whole region gets us excited. Ukraine is right next door to Poland, so I can finally go back! And the whole border area is steeped with family history--my Polish grandmother's birthplace is actually now over the border in Ukraine. Plus, Kyiv is still relatively inexpensive (in contrast with another contender, Moscow), with a significant hardship differential to boot. And having direct flights to Paris, London, and Rome never hurts...

So here's hoping to Kyiv 2014!

Round-up

Rainy, rainy Saturday... trying to decide if I can get myself relatively dryly into the metro to go to the mall (on the other end, you can get straight into the mall from the metro). Meanwhile, am digesting the chocolate hazelnut pancakes and mustering the energy to shower (much needed as I actually went to the gym this morning--no, would not have happened if the gym were not in my building).

The other day my friends were asking me about neighborhoods in Warsaw before filling out their housing survey, and it made me so nostalgic. Now I am sitting here staring at the map of Warsaw, retracing routes I used to take, and clicking on the random overly-music-laden websites of restaurants and bars I used to go to. The most famous lines of all Polish poetry are about yearning for the fatherland--though unfortunately, the lines are addressed to Lithuania:

Litwo! Ojczyzno moja! ty jesteś jak zdrowie.
Ile cię trzeba cenić, ten tylko się dowie,
Kto cię stracił. Dziś piękność twą w całej ozdobie
Widzę i opisuję, bo tęsknię po tobie.

(Lithuania! My fatherland! You are like health.
Only he who has lost you knows
your true value. Your beauty in all its adornments
I see and describe, because I long for you.)

Anyway, as long as we're on the literary front, I gave myself permission to take a short break from The Ambassadors, see some other people, yada yada. Therefore I have also started Richard Yates's Revolutionary Road, which is much less painful.

Otherwise, I finally saw Inception (fun, until I got sort of bored toward the end), and Animal Kingdom (Australian, violence and evil people). And watched the pilots of Parks and Recreation (like The Office all over again with a female Michael Scott) and 30 Rock (yessssssssssssssss).

You can tell from all the reading and watching that I've had a quiet week--did try American Ice Company, the new bar near U Street, and was a massive fan of the beer in mason jars and BBQ concept. Of course, a week may have been necessary to recover from James's birthday last weekend at Russia House--we were not short on vodka and Baltika. My favorite photo of the night:


It was fun to gather a group of FOJs (Friends of James!)--good times.