Party at the Freer

Tonight was the annual welcome reception for associates who joined the firm during the past year.  All the new associates are flown in from our various offices around the world, and we throw a fancy party for them and a selected group of older lawyers -- mostly the senior "important" people and younger people with personality.  Since apparently I fall into that latter category, I always get invited.  Plus, I'm on the New Associate Integration Committee, so technically I was one of the hosts. 

 

I finished up work around 6pm, took a nap on the floor of my office (so as to be refreshed for the party), threw on a bow-tie, and headed out to the party.

 

Because people want to meet people who wear hot pink bow-ties. 
(I'm not kidding - they walk across the room and introduce themselves)

 

This year's party was held at the Freer Gallery (part of the Smithsonian Institution) with a significant collection of Asian (and Asian-themed) art.  It's a small gallery that wraps around a lovely courtyard.

 

 

The jewel of the collection is the Peacock Room, which was designed by Whistler for some rich guy's dining room in England.  The room was later bought by Mr. Freer, dismantled and brought to the US, and, ultimately, donated to the Smithsonian.  We had a dedicated docent on hand tonight, so after a few minutes of small-talk, I made a bee-line for the Peacock Room for a private tutorial on the history of the room, the collection of pottery it houses, and the legal constraints on the gift that make it kind of an annoying collection from a curatorial point of view.  It's a neat room.

 

 

 

After the Peacock Room, I rejoined the land of the eating.  Sure, there were passed hors d'oeuvres, and a buffet with tasty meats and salads, but the best part was the chocolate tasting station at the end of the hall.  They had five pots of hot chocolate -- each with a different degree of darkness -- which they served in tiny shot-glasses.  Naturally, the darkest chocolate was my favorite.

 

72% cacao is always the way to go.

 

I had fun.  I loved the art; it was great to see work friends in a quasi-nonwork environment; I enjoyed meeting new people; and I appreciated the feeling that they enjoyed meeting me.  Like anyone, I have occasional ups and downs in terms of how I feel about myself and how my life is going.  Earlier this week I had felt like I was headed into a "down" moment -- I felt tired and lonely and worried that I wasn't the sort of person that other people would actually want to be around.  So this party, where I felt like I could let my personality shine a little (and, really, I'm very good at these sorts of parties) and connect in a positive way with other people around me, was a great pick-me-up at the start of my birthday weekend.

 

 

 

 

 

Sculpt

I may have found a cure (or at least a partial cure) for hating the cold and darkness of winter:  It's called Sculpt, and it's a studio that offers yoga and spinning (i.e., indoor cycling) classes a couple of blocks from my office.  It opened only a month or so ago, and one of my friends at the firm suggested that we give it a try.  I purchased an introductory membership last week and have gone to as many classes as possible since then -- including a couple of spinning/yoga double-headers that completely torched my legs and abs.  It's kind of awesome. 

 

The yoga classes are intense (every day I sweat so much it looks like someone poured a bottle of water on my yoga mat) and challenging (I'm learning new things and getting better at the old things), and I feel like they're already making a difference in the "sculpting" department:  My normal regimen of cycling and weightlifting doesn't work my core muscles as much as I would like -- but these yoga classes are pretty much nothing but core work.  Who knows how these classes rank in the overall world of yoga (it's commercial enough that true yoga snobs might get sniffy), but they're the best yoga classes I've had since leaving New York.

 

The spinning classes have also been good, though I admit that my outdoor cycling this summer has somewhat spoiled me for indoor spinning.  It helps that the classes I've been to don't try to replicate outdoor riding -- they incorporate weights and have crazy music and lights that make it feel like a dance club, which is fun.  They'll also be offering a class that is purportedly designed for serious roadies, so I'm going to try that out next week -- I'm hoping it will be a plausible training alternative to riding outside during these cold and dark winter months.

 

I also like how the studio has basically nothing in common with a traditional gym.  In fact, I'd describe the ambiance as more like the lobby of a W Hotel than a gym (but then, I also don't go to a fancy gym).  Something tells me they've got their target demographic pretty well figured out...

 

Entrance is through a basic street-facing shop front;
everything else is downstairs.

No separate locker rooms, just a big landing area and
individual restrooms for changing.



Lounge area equipped with Wi-Fi and magazines.



 

The biggest downside so far is the schedule:  For some reason they think that people should actually be available to work out at 5:30 or 6:30 in the afternoon.  This means that only a small number of classes offered are, in fact, late enough for me to realistically attend.  I've even taken the approach, on days when it has been possible, of going to a yoga class and then heading back to the office to keep working.  I've already told the owner that she should schedule more classes later in the evening if she wants to get more of the law-firm folks as members.  Assuming I can make the scheduling work, I'm planning to keep my membership after this trial period is over at the end of the month.  Woot!

Election Day

Election day today!  After three-and-a-half hours standing in line outside in the cold (temps in the mid-30s), I'm happy to report that I have fulfilled my civic responsibility and participated in this democratic experiment.  I missed a half-day of work, but with Virginia being a key battle-ground state, I think it was well worth it -- every vote here counts.  Now we wait to see how it all shakes out.

View of the line after one hour of waiting

The blessing of voting at a public library:  They entertain you with carts of books.

News coverage (I think she was reporting in Arabic)

At long last!

I would have had to wait for another 20 minutes or so for an electronic booth or a paper booth
with a privacy screen, but then the lady said I could just fill out a paper ballot against the wall without a
privacy screen.  Praised be!

Ballet boy

Today I pulled a Billy Elliot and went to ballet class.   

I didn't go alone -- it was my friend Amy's idea.  Amy and I have had a subscription to the modern dance season at the Kennedy Center for the past few years (remember Mark Morris, Alvin Ailey, and Keigwin + Company?), and we've also been watching a lot of dance-related television lately (think Dance Academy, Ballerina, and So You Think You Can Dance).  When she discovered that the Joy of Motion Dance Center offered drop-in beginner classes for adults, she proposed an excursion.  We checked our schedules and picked today's beginning ballet class.

We arrived a few minutes early to register, and as we got to the top of the stairs, we found ourselves in a sea of pink-tutued girls all under the age of 8.  With some trepidation, Amy turned back and said, "We did sign up for an adult class, right?"  Thankfully, yes -- our studio was full of grown women (and only women, I may have been the only dude in the building other than the dads who were picking up their daughters). 

Now, keep in mind that, before today, I had never danced a day in my life.  I felt extremely conspicuous and totally awkward, but I expected that some motherly dance teacher would come in, walk me through the different positions, and then let us run freely around in the middle of the room to let out extra energy -- I mean, that's how it worked when I watched my 3-yr-old neice's dance class!  But no.  This instructor (who was nice but not motherly) came in, rattled off an unintelligible string of instructions (lots of numbers and mispronounced French words), and then hit play on the music.  !!!  I had no clue what I was doing!  Apparently most of the other gals did, because they started trucking right along as if nothing was the matter.  I just stood there and looked around, wishing I'd gone to the 3-yr-olds' class instead. 

But the longer I watched, the more I realized that I wasn't the only one without a clue.  The girls may have fancied themselves dancers (one went so far as to come in pointe), but by no means was this The Juilliard School.  I began to relax.  Then I started paying more attention to the instructions.  Turns out, once you deciphered the butchered French, they actually made sense.  So I started following along:  rond de jambe, en l'air, battement, tendu, écarté, plié, chassé, penché -- it all made sense! 

In fact, that last one provoked my favorite conversation of the class: 

Teacher:  Promenade, arabesque, penché . . .

Student:  What did you say?  Plongé?

Teacher:  Yes, penché [Note that these women are both making almost the same sound] 

Student:  Great.  What does that mean?  

Teacher:  Umm, it means you should pencher.  Like this. [demonstrates] 

Student:  Huh.  Maybe "dive"?  Are we DIVING forward?  [She clearly knows what her vocabulary word means; she's less adept at observing how the teacher is not demonstrating a diving motion]

Teacher:  No, it isn't diving, per se.  Not sure how else to say it . . .

Me [muttering in the background, trying not to be the obnoxious new kid who's fluent in French and clueless about everything else]:  Bend.  That's the word you're looking for.  Bend down.  "Pencher" means "bend down."  And "plonger" means dive, which clearly is not what we're doing.

The teacher and student didn't hear me, but a girl next to me did, and she looked at me with properly admiring eyes:  "You speak French!"  So that ended well.

And so did the class.  The barre stuff was bewildering and hard.  The floor-work was better, because we relied more on the teacher's demonstrations than on a list of commands.  I was passable (by the standards of the class) at the arabesques and other balancing combos we did in the middle of class (thank heavens for yoga!).  Spins were a disaster (spotting is SO HARD), but I think I managed to redeem myself with the pirouettes and the chassé/sauté combinations.  By the end of class I could tell that I'd had a workout -- and now that I'm sitting here writing, I can tell that it worked muscles I didn't know I had (so much leg lifting!).  

The teacher was very nice afterwards, pretending to be surprised when we said it was our first time ever ("You have such great body awareness!").  She did, however, suggest taking a six-week "Intro to Ballet" class so that we could learn all the stuff that we should have known for Beginning Ballet.  Naturally, Amy and I instantly signed up -- give us six weeks, and we'll be back to fumble through a barre routine with the best of them! 

Les Miserables, or Here we go again

In case you haven’t heard, the musical Les Misérables is coming to a movie theatre near you.  We’re essentially T minus however many days there are between now and December 25. 

[Cue cheering from musical theatre geeks and anyone who just wants to hear Hugh Jackman sing “Bring Him Home.”]

As any self-respecting French-major would do, I’ve decided that I’m going to read the novel before the movie comes out.  That means 1,800 pages of 19th-Century French prose.  Plus end notes. 

Look at those two volumes.
They've been waiting for this moment for ten years!

Can I do it?  Probably not.  It would be a tall order under the best of circumstances -- and this is Victor Hugo, so it’s anything but the best of circumstances.  You see, this isn’t the first time Victor and I have tangled.  I started reading his chef d’oeuvre ten years ago and made it about three-quarters of the way through before breaking it off.  We’ve been in marriage counseling ever since. 

“But what?!,” you may splutter.  “This is VICTOR HUGO!  It’s LES MIZ!  So many IMPORTANT SOCIAL MESSAGES!  Why do you hate poor people and overwrought emotional love triangles?”

[Sigh.]  Okay.  Fine.  I get it.  I’ll give the book another go.  But first I want to point out three things that jumped out at me during the first five minutes after opening Brick Volume 1 on the metro this morning: 

I.

The first two sentences of the first chapter of the entire novel introduce the Bishop of Digne.  Here is the third sentence: 

“Quoique ce détail ne touche en aucune manière au fond même de ce que nous avons à raconter, il n’est peut-être pas inutile, ne fût-ce que pour être exact en tout, d’indiquer ici les bruits et les propos qui avaiet couru sur son compte au moment où il était arrivé dans le diocèse.”

The basic gist of this sentence is this:  “As I introduce the Bishop of Digne (who, btw, is only a secondary character) I’m going to tell you a bunch of details about his life that are completely irrelevant to this story -- because it might not be a waste of time to be exact about everything, including people who I just made up.”  Victor then goes on for three pages to tell us those details and more (he just can’t keep himself from throwing in a few more extraneous sidebars, such as how the word for “paroles” in the “energetic tongue of the south” is “palabres,” which is pure pedantry).  Honestly, Victor, if you have to convince us that “it might not be a waste of time” to talk about something, IT PROBABLY IS.   Just get to the point.

II.

Then there’s this description of the Bishop’s spinster roommate:

“Mademoiselle Baptistine était une personne longue, pâle, mince, douce; elle réalisait l’idéal de ce qu’exprime le mot “respectable”; car il semble qu’il soit nécessaire qu’une femme soit mère pour être vénérable.”

Now here’s a gem.  If you’re a virtuous old woman who has devoted your life to God but never had children, you may be respectable -- but since you failed in your fundamental duty of having babies, there’s no way you can be venerable.  Nope.  Gotta have kids for that. 

The fun continues in the very next sentence:

“Elle n’avait jamais été jolie; toute sa vie, qui n’avait été qu’une suite de saintes oeuvres, avait fini par mettre sur elle une sort de blancheur et de clarté; et, en vieillissant, elle avait gagné ce qu’on pourrait appeler la beauté de la bonté.”

In other words, she’s not even pretty, bless her heart.  But she’s got a sweet spirit!

“Ce qui avait été de la maigreur dans sa jeunesse était devenu, dans sa maturité, de la transparence: et cette diaphanéité laissait voir l’ange.  C’était une âme encore plus que ce n’était une vierge.  Sa personne semblait faite d’ombre; à peine assez de corps pour qu’il y eût là un sexe . . . .”

Which basically says, “Oh, and she’s really, really skinny.  Normally we’d find that unattractive, but since she’s old, we’re going to say it shows her spirituality.  In fact, she’s more of a soul than a virgin -- she’s so skinny you can’t even tell she’s got a vagina there!”  Gosh, Victor, you really hit that nail on the head with that one.  What woman of faith doesn’t yearn to hear these words:  You’re so ugly and righteous I can’t even tell you’re a woman! 

III.

We’ll wrap up with this description of the Bishop’s and Mlle Baptistine’s maid:

“Madame Magloire était une petite vieille, blanche, grasse, replète, affairée, toujours haletante, à cause de son activité d’abord, ensuite à cause d’un asthme.”

Poor Mme Magloire.  She’s little, old, fat and always out of breath (partly because she’s always bustling about, but also because she’s got asthma).  Period.  That’s all we learn about her; the obvious take-away point being that if you’re a diaphanous and aristocratic ugly old maid (à la Mlle Baptistina), you get to be “more of a soul than a virgin”; but if you’re a little old maidservant with curves, then we just focus on your weight and respiratory troubles without any inquiry into the state of your soul.  Because, while 19th-Century misogynists might be interested in reading three pages of irrelevant details about a fictional aristocratic male bishop, and may forgive a description of some holy skeletal creature that may or may not be female (fingers crossed that she’s not), they don’t actually care about you, Mme Magloire. 

*             *             *

One chapter down, a million to go.  This is going to be a long haul, Victor.  I hope you're worth it!

Happy Halloween

I'm not much of a dresser upper lately.  This year's pre-Halloween costume parties were canceled due to the hurricane, and the law firm is way too Serious and Important for workplace costumes.  But that doesn't mean I can't use the holiday as an excuse to wear awesome socks.

Okay, fine, I admit they aren't exclusively Halloween socks: I wear them whenever I want, but they're my best alternative to going as a ring-tailed lemur and/or Lawrence of Arabia.

Winding down the storm

As predicted, the storm is now on its way out.  The strong winds are gone; rain continues, though significantly lighter than before.  Public transit is scheduled to resume sometime this afternoon. 

Thankfully, my area seems to have come through relatively unscathed -- I never lost power (though we had frequent flickers), nor did any of my friends that I've checked with, and I haven't heard of any significant flooding (certainly nothing like what happened in New York and New Jersey).

I'll be sticking close to home again today.  I've got everything I need to work from my living room, so there's no need to brave the debris-strewn roads.  I suspect I'll be a little stir-crazy by the end of the day, but until then let's see if I can't focus and get some work done!

Goodnight, storm

It's late.  I should go to bed.  But I hate the idea of going to bed and having the storm be mostly gone by the time I wake up!  If the earlier stages of the storm were like Christmas Eve (plus the apocalypse), this part of the storm is like the night of Christmas Day (plus the apocalypse):  I just don't want it to end.

So what better way to put off the inevitable than to blog about it? 

First, here's another snapshot of the storm's progression.  I'm still in the thick of things, but on the southern end of them.  Looks like the northern tentacles are finally reaching my sister near the New York/Canada border.  For Ashley's sake, I hope they get a good wallop (and that she sends me some weather reporter footage that I can post, hint, hint).

Second, my nostalgia may be a tad premature.  A brief visit to my balcony confirms that the wind and rain haven't lessened at all; maybe not the same boisterous gusts, but still nothing to sniff at. 

It also reveals a slice of storm life, as I look into the apartments across the way:  Everyone is home with their lights on (yay, no power outages!) and I can see what they're up to.  Families playing board games; twenty-somethings having an impromptu dance party, a bunch of guys sitting around drinking beer, lots of movie watching (thank heavens for streaming Netflix!).  It's kind of endearing.  Makes me feel like part of the neighborhood. 

Frankenstorm!

Okay, folks, it's getting fun now!

Around 5:30pm I decided to take a walk around the neighborhood to get a feel for the storm.  It'll still be an hour or so before Sandy actually makes landfall (probably just north of here, in the DE/NJ region), but the wind has really picked up and I wanted to see it before night fell.  It's a good thing I'd prepped my camera before stepping outside becuase I was instantly pummeled with intense wind and rain!

Sorry about the sound.  Tturns out the iPhone camera doesn't come equipped with hurricane-proof microphone -- I've covered all the key points in my intro above.  Here's a better segment from a few minutes later:

By the time I got back to my apartment my fingers were so cold I could barely move them, and I was as wet as if I'd gone wading in the river.  I literally poured the water out of my shoes and into the bathtub!  I didn't even bother taking off my clothes before turning on the hot shower.

For a sense of how this fits into the overall storm, here's another satellite view:

I'm roughly where the pink pin is.

According to the forecasts (and as you can tell by the satellite shot), it's only going to get worse overnight.  By morning, though, the worst of the wind should be gone; we'll just have trailing rain and flooding.

Frankenstorm update

First, some background:



Midnight

4:30 a.m.

8:30 a.m.

Noon

Now this local weather report:

The non-Elijah fish waiting out the storm

Elevator notice from the Management
(with helpful proofreading marks from my fellow tenants)

Waiting for the storm

I'm getting conflicting messages.  At 7:00pm, I received the following notice from WMATA:

Two hours later, this one came in from the firm:



Because I'm a lawyer, only the highlighted part applies to me; the rest is all for non-lawyer staff.


For a firm that prides itself on its attention to detail, this is pretty embarrassing.  I mean, seriously, who doesn't think to check the status of public transit before sending an email like this?  Even if you still decide to keep the office open, at least acknowledge the lack of transit in your email -- otherwise you just sound out of touch (or, worse, insensitive to the predicament of support staff who don't have the luxury that we lawyers have of being connected everywhere all the time).

Not that the storm has gotten bad enough yet to make the decision to shut down metro an obvious one.  It's only been cloudy and breezy all day; raining lightly since around 6pm.  In fact, it's been kind of boring. 

So, here's a recap of a few non-Frankenstorm highlights from this weekend:

Shopping.  A friend of mine asked me to go shopping with him yesterday.  He wanted to get some new clothes but wasn't confident that he would pick out good outfits.  At first I limited myself to nixing things that were obviously too big or unflattering.  Then I got bored just standing outside the dressing room, so I started putting outfits together (fun at the best of times, even better when it's not my money).  My first proposal was met with skepticism:  "That's not my style."  Just humor me.  "Mmmkay, but I'm not sure abou . . . . woah, this is great!"  Yep.  "From now on I'm just going to let you do all the picking."  Yay!  To be honest, at first I felt a little trepidatious because there had been less pressure when my suggestions were unsollicited.  Then I scored again with an awesome outfit that included bright red pants.  I may be good at this.

Karaoke.  After shopping, Tim (the same friend) suggested that we go to a karaoke bar.  Mmmkay, but I'm not sure abou . . . "Just humor me."  I did, and although my attempt at Adele's "Rollin' in the Deep" was pretty much an unmitigated disaster, it was good for me to get out of my comfort zone and try something new.  (I've now resolved to learn a few songs to have in my back pocket -- that way the next time someone spontaneouly suggests karaoke I'll have something to "spontaneously" draw on.)  

New calling.  I recently got called to be the Assistant Executive Secretary in the ward (for those of you not familiar, this means I handle all the scheduling for the two counselors to the bishop).  I think it'll be a good calling, because the guys in the bishopric are all really great and it'll help me get to know more people.  Still, I've inherited some records that are in serious need of updating, and the process of updating them is quickly taking on a cat-herding quality.  I've decided to take it as an opportunity to learn how to be effective without being totally in control and/or totally perfectionistic.  (We'll see how that plays out.)

Turnips are one of my favorite smells, especially when they're simmering in a stew-pot along with onions, potatoes, carrots, cabbage and rice.  So earthy and delicious.  Plus, they remind me of a storybook that we had when I was little about a giant turnip that was made into stew.  At the time I'd never eaten or seen a turnip, so it was as fanciful as any other creature in a fairy tale; now I eat them and feel a like a fairy-tale peasant (which, short of being a fairy-tale prince, is a pretty good gig).

*   *   *
Oh, and look what just came in from the firm.  Better.

Needless to say, I'll be at home tomorrow, noshing on turnip stew while drafting contracts and hoping that the storm turns out to be a whopper (that doesn't actually hurt anyone or cut the power for too long). 

Storms-a-cummin!

Hurricane Sandy is on her way -- apparently she has a play-date with a nor'easter in our backyard.

Virginia and Maryland have both declared states of emergency; DC's in a state of blind panic.  The radio stations are all reporting about "the upcoming power outages," having long ago realized that with utilities like Pepco in the region, there's no need to include the word "potential" in front of that phrase.  And my fellow Arlingtonians, apparently operating on the theory that freezers and microwave ovens work when the power is out, are lined up at the Harris Teeter with carts full of frozen pizza.  (Judging by the quantities of toilet paper nestled among the pizzas, they also must anticipate an exponential increase in their use of the facilities during the next four days.)

Needless to say, I love all of this.  The forecasts are at once dire (using words like "unprecedented," "double-freak," and "beyond strange") and obvious (the storm will either hit us or it won't!) -- I can't wait to reprise my role of intrepid weather reporter. 

Of course, being the good Mormon and/or Boy Scout that I am, I couldn't let a potential natural (non)disaster pass me by without practicing my emergency-preparedness skills.  So I left work a little early to top off my gas tank and replenish key elements of my food storage:

• Perrier?  Check.
• Dark chocolate-covered almonds?  Check.
• Cornichons?  Check. 
• Ingredients for hermit's stew?  Check.
• Nutella and bread?  Check.
• Fresh flowers?  Check.

Just the essentials

Okay, I'm set.  Bring it on, Sandy!

Conference of the Birds

Tonight I met up with my friend Melanie and saw the Folger Theatre's production of The Conference of the Birds. 

The play is based on a 12th century Persian poem.  The overarching narrative follows a group of birds in their search for their king, but there are numerous stories nested within.  Stories of other kings, slaves and princesses, a hermit obsessed with an eggplant and his beard.  Of course, they're not really "about" any of those things.  At its core, the play is a meditation on our search for the divine and for self-understanding -- that paradoxical notion that to discover the divine you must overcome the self, but in discovering the divine you encounter your true self.  The message is never stated directly; it's conveyed through the juxtaposition of stories: it's up to the audience to interpret them.  Late in the play a bird says there's nothing more powerful than "something that is neither clear nor unclear."  He could have been describing the play itself. 

My understanding is that the ideas in the poem reflect the mystical tradition within Islam called Sufism.  Watching the play, I was struck again (as I have been before by thoughtful presentations of Islamic thought and art -- e.g., here and here) by the elegance of the ideas and the aesthetic, and their concordance with many of my own beliefs and tastes.  In many ways, The Conference of the Birds seemed to be a more subtle and interesting version of Lehi's vision of the Tree of Life (minus the Christianity part, of course).

It has been years -- maybe ten? -- since the last time I attended a play at the Folger.  I'd forgotten what a fun place it is.  The theater is just a small part of a larger library devoted to Shakespeare.  The ambiance is wonderfully bookish and Elizabethan -- lots of dark wooden paneling with rows upon rows of leather-bound tomes; a bibliophile's paradise. 

 

The plasterwork on the ceiling is wonderful



The main hallway had a particularly interesting exhibit this time.  I especially enjoyed seeing an actual book of magic ("grimoire") with spells and instructions to call upon the spirits and supernatural powers.  I've read about those sorts of books (think Harry Potter) but don't recall having seen one before tonight.

The library/theater is two blocks from the U.S. Capitol building, just behind the Supreme Court and the Library of Congress.

Elijah Fish

Remember these guys? 



Rainbow, Goldie and Ralph (so named by my nieces and nephew in Boise) have been my faithful companions these six months.  Being the talented goldfish they are, they have performed their piscine duties of being pretty and not dying with remarkable diligence -- even when I abandoned them to the negligent care of a middle-aged Guatemalan woman for two weeks while I went traipsing across northern Africa on camels.

Imagine, therefore, my astonishment upon discovering this morning that Rainbow has disappeared.  Not only that, but Goldie and Ralph are acting like everything is perfectly okay!  Which can only mean that one of two things has happened to Rainbow:

Either he was rescued by a merry band of misfits and a crazy pellican so he could go back to his family in the Great Barrier Reef . . .



or he was taken up into heaven in a fiery chariot like a kick-ass Hebrew prophet-fish.

We all know that Rainbow came from PetsMart, not Australia, so it must have been the chariot of fire.  Incredible.  It's a shame I slept through it. 

Fall colors on Old Rag mountain

Old Rag is a mountain in the Shenandoah National Park that is famous for its unobstructed 360-degree vistas.  At this time of year, with the colors peaking and the weather literally perfect, crowds of hikers flock from cities, villages and farmland alike to soak up the natural beauty of autumnal Virginia.  Amy, Julie and I set out early on Saturday morning fully expecting a lovely hike; what we discovered exceeded all of our expectations.  It was the sort of hike where at every bend in the trail you just have to stop and laugh because you didn't think that anything could be more beautiful than what you just saw, and yet . . . . 

My iPhone's camera was woefully inadequate for the task, but here are some shots that give at least a sense of the colors.  (Additional photos are available here.)


We couldn't even wait to get to the trailhead before we started taking pictures -- we
passed this driveway to an old farm and literally did a u-turn to come back and gawk.



While we photographed random lanes, half the population of the mid-Atlantic states
beat us to the parking lot.  Thank heavens an enterprising indigena opened
up a neighboring pasture for overflow parking



Once parked, we followed the disappearing crowds up the road to the trailhead.





The trail went over, through, and beneath these rocks. 
It made for quite the scramble and a major bottleneck with all the hikers.
It took us nearly two hours just to do that little stretch of trail.



At the top.







Note the scale.  This section of trail felt like a cathedral.


Ten miles of wildnerness is grounds for a healthy appetite.  We spied a charming little pizzeria in the village of Sperryville and decided to stop in and give it a try.  We devoured the pizza with great enthusiasm.

And since an entire pizza apparently wasn't enough, we stopped in Warrenton to get some treats.  Amy and Julie got some sort of ice cream or milkshake -- I went for the funnel cake.



Because fried dough is never wrong.