Day 11: Washington D.C.

I love Washington D.C.

The day started out at Arlington Cemetery. Did you know Arlington Cemetery was once the property of Robert E. Lee's family? The Lee mansion is still on the property. It was conceived as a punishment for Robert E. Lee for not commanding the Union Army, and, instead, commanding the Confederate Army during the Civil War.

We got on a tram at the visitors' center, and it stopped at the first site, which was the graves of John F. Kennedy, Robert Kennedy, and Ted Kennedy. It was stopping at the last grave that prevented us from catching our tram to the next location, the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. I convinced my mom that it would be quicker for us to walk to it than to wait for the tram (which it was).

We got there just in time to watch the changing of the guard, which happens every half hour in the summertime. Here is a picture of the monument. Apparently, I did not get any pictures of the changing of the guard. I did get video, at the insistence of my mom. I'm pretty sure no one is going to want to watch it.

We narrowly missed another tram, which, as it turns out, was headed to Robert E. Lee's house. We did not make it there on foot. Instead, we saw these:

After that, we drove around and saw the White House:

The Capitol Building:

And Ford's Theater.

Then we got back on the bus and went back to our hotel room in Alexandria. We decided to venture into Old Town for lunch, after hopping a shuttle and the Metro. We were pretty proud of ourselves when we stepped off the Metro at King Street.

After lunch, we took a cab back to our hotel, where I narrowly avoided what is hopefully the last crisis of my academic career. However, once it was resolved, I didn't think too much about it, since we still had a lot of our day left.

We had a large break during the day, so we also had dinner at the worst Chinese buffet on the planet.

There were several handwritten signs posted behind the counter in both English and Spanish which conveyed the following guidelines:

• No checks or American Express cards.


• Do not even THINK about wasting food because you will be charged for it.


• Do NOT sit in the dining room if you are not eating dinner.

I took small portions of everything, which was smart because everything was bad. Even the desserts were bad. Maybe they wouldn't have these problems with people wasting food or not eating dinner if the food were better.

In the evening, we went back to look at the various monuments around the Mall.

Here are some of the ones we saw that I had never seen before:

Jefferson

The Korean War

This picture doesn't show it, but it's pretty eerie at night.

Franklin Roosevelt

Does anyone know the name of FDR's beloved pet dog? It was a question we were given before we got off the bus.

It was night, and it began to get dark, so we didn't notice the ominous clouds gathering overhead until we were headed back to the bus to make our way over to the World War II monument.

When we got to the place where we were supposed to meet the bus, it began dumping rain on us. We stood under the overhang of one of those information booths for about ten minutes before the bus showed up. They had just gotten a ticket somewhere along the way.

All in all, it was quite a day. I saw more of Washington D.C. in one day than I have in all my other trips combined.

Day 10: Gettysburg

We got up early this morning to head to Gettysburg. I had never been to Gettysburg before, so it was kind of exciting to get to see it.

Our little tour group descended on Gettysburg at the exact same time as a large group of bikers. What I did not take a picture of was the booth selling Gettysburg-themed motorcycle clothing.

The town of Gettysburg is small, and quite a tourist town. Pictured below is a motel around the border of which is the Gettysburg Address, which I tried to memorize during the trip. I'm pretty close.

I took lots of pictures at Gettysburg, mostly for my dad, who is a big Civil War buff. However, I can't remember much about any of the

This is the Eternal Light Peace Memorial on Oak Hill.

Here is a shot of me in front of one of the cannons at Big Round Top.

Here are some of the graves at Gettysburg.

After Gettysburg, we headed to the Washington D.C. Temple. It was built in 1974. As you can see, it has an awesome reflecting pool near the visitors' center.

Of the 133 temples that are in operation, Washington D.C. is number 16, chronologically. For many years, it was the only temple east of the Mississippi.

The day finished in our hotel room in Alexandria, which, I have to say, is easily the worst place I have stayed in all my trips to D.C. I finally got out my pants with the orange juice on them from Tuesday. They smelled like yeast and feet. They are now soaking in the bathtub, and I am less than optimistic about whether or not I will be able to get the stains out. My mom has graciously offered to help.

Day 6: Nauvoo

Our day started out without any orange juice mishaps. We bought milk at Wal-Mart the night before, so we had that with two cinnamon rolls for breakfast.

We drove to Nauvoo in the morning and stayed there all day. First, we saw the buildings owned by the RLDS Church, which includes the home Joseph and Emma Smith lived in when they first moved to Nauvoo,

the Mansion House, which they built later,

and the Nauvoo House, which was built as a hotel, but in which Emma lived after Joseph died.

We also saw the graves of Joseph, Emma, and his brother, Hyrum Smith.

Our tour guide was named Kevin. Thus far, he has been the best tour guide we have had. He has been working as a tour guide for four years, and he was very knowledgeable and very smooth.

We also saw the Red Brick Store, which Joseph ran for a few months, until he began to lose large amounts of money due to his tendency to give away his inventory when people couldn't pay. While someone else took over the store portion of the building, the upstairs was used for church meetings, and as an office where Joseph worked. It is the site where the Relief Society was organized.

In Nauvoo, much of what you see is a reconstruction of the buildings that were originally there. However, some of them have remained largely intact over the years.

After the tour finished, we went to the LDS Visitors' Center where we watched the Joseph Smith movie that was made a few years ago. We ventured out into the garden, where the Women's Monuments are. There are several statues depicting women in various roles. My mom made me pose next to this one:

If I were not such a good daughter, I would have had her pose next to this one:

After that, we had lunch in town (the part of town that is not historical sites). There were only a handful of places to choose from, so Mom and I opted to get pulled pork sandwiches from the local grocery store, which we ate on a bench outside.

After lunch, we headed back to Old Nauvoo, to the buildings the LDS Church owns. That's when it sort of becomes a blur.

We first toured the John Browning home. For those of you who hunt and fish, this is gun/fishing pole maker. I didn't realize he was one of the early members of the LDS Church, but he was.

We also toured the John Taylor home, the general store/post office, the tinsmith, Wilford Woodruff's home, and the brickyard. In between, we would get back on the bus so that we could rest in a cool place.

For dinner, we found this little restaurant on the main street in town that sold sandwiches and sub-zero ice cream. We each got a Porter Rockwell, which is turkey, ham, and three kinds of cheese, drizzled with barbecue sauce and grilled in a panini press.

After dinner, we located the store in town that sold fudge. If you think we were able to go in without buying anything, you obviously don't know me or my mom that well.

We headed back to Old Nauvoo one last time to watch a production called "Rendezvous in Old Nauvoo," which was a short play about the LDS Church in Nauvoo prior to, and immediately following the death of Joseph Smith. What made this play terrific was

a) It only lasted an hour.

b) All of the actors were the same senior missionary couples who had led the tours earlier that day.

Let me pause to say that, seeing all of the senior missionary couples throughout the day reminded me of the dream I once had to spend a week in Nauvoo and a week in Palmyra studying the relationship dynamics of LDS senior missionary couples as a follow-up to my thesis. Sigh. Maybe some day.

Anyway, I was pretty impressed by the singing, dancing, and acting ability of the senior couples. I don't think any of them were ever on Broadway, but they were all at least as good as the actors in the LDS Beauty and the Beast movie we watched on the bus the day before.

Here is a picture of one of the couples whose storyline provided comic relief. Sorry it's so bad.

My favorite part of the play was when the elder who was playing him broke down and started laughing. It was reminiscent of that Chris Farley SNL sketch where he is playing Matt Foley, and David Spade has to cover his face because he is laughing. Except that it wasn't on national television. Their entire audience was only about 50 people.

The night ended with another trip to Wal-Mart. When traveling with my parents, it is always good to be in close proximity of places where you can get junk food and comfortable clothing.

Day 1: The Albuquerque Airport

With my dissertation successfully defended, I will embark on a two-week tour of LDS Church history and U.S. History sites across the country, beginning on Monday.

Today, however, I am in Albuquerque, laid over on my way to Las Vegas to spend a couple of days with my family before the tour starts. As I did when I went to Japan, I will do my best to document this trip as it happens, so that those of you who follow this sort of thing can experience it as it happens.

So, right now, I am in the airport. And, thus far, here are the things I have noticed:

• A man on the other side of the aisle from me reading Hold Me Tight, by Sue Johnson. Middle-aged, married. Some kind of businessman.
• An older woman wearing a blue duster, giant rhinestone earrings, and a huge bun on the top of her head, who was on my flight from Lubbock. I don't believe in taking pictures of strangers for the purpose of mocking them, but I was tempted.
• The Albuquerque airport itself provides many clues as to why Texans have a general disregard for the state of New Mexico. That's all I will say.
• While, in general, I think we as a society have found all kinds of ways to distance ourselves from one another, occasionally, I still hear people who don't know one another talking on airplanes and in airports, and it gives me hope that we might make it as a society after all. As I type this on my laptop with my headphones shoved in my ears.

Pumpkin Patch Cupcakes and San Francisco

I think I need a new strategy with this blog. I feel like the five of you who read/follow my blog need to know that I am still baking the cupcakes. In fact, I have made a lot of cupcakes over the last few weeks. However, after baking them, decorating them, and giving them away, I seem to lack the energy/motivation to blog about them. But I don't want you to give up on me, so I am going to post this one about my most recent cupcakes/adventures in San Francisco and work my way backward. Stay tuned.

A few months ago, in an effort to connect to my Japanese American heritage, I decided to attend the National Council on Family Relations annual conference in San Francisco. Before the conference started, they had an event in which they screened a documentary called Children of the Camps, and toured Japantown, which is the Japanese district of San Francisco. The documentary features six people who were interred as children during World War II, who come together at a retreat to process their experiences related to the camps and the war.

When I told my mom I was going to San Francisco, she immediately wanted to go with me. It turns out, if you are fortunate enough to live in Las Vegas, you can fly to San Francisco and back for less than $100. If you live in Lubbock, it can cost you four times as much. When my parents decided to come along, I suggested my dad attend the pre-conference event with me. He thought it was a great idea.

The documentary was awesome. I now own a copy of it on DVD, if you would ever like to borrow it. It stimulated a lot of good conversation between me and my dad on the bus ride to downtown San Francisco where we first stopped to have lunch. We were offered 12 choices of lunch combos or bento, and were limited to chicken, beef, pork, ramen, or tempura, with a side dish of unagi or sashimi. That's right: Dad had to explain to miscellaneous family scientists from across the country that, with their lunch of chicken, they could choose between barbecued eel or an array of raw fish slabs.

Here I am outside the restaurant, posing next to the plastic food display.

After lunch, we were taken on a tour by a representative from the Japanese American Historical Society. Here she is in front of a monument to three generations of Japanese Americans.

One side represents issei, or the first generation, which would have been my great-grandparents. They were shown as immigrants settling in San Francisco. Another side showed nisei, which would have been my grandparents, and were represented by people in internment camps. Our tour guide, whose name I have already forgotten, is standing in front of the side representing sansei and beyond, meaning my dad's generation, my generation, and future generations. Interestingly, it is this panel that depicts people dressed in Japanese-style clothing, participating in obon. Apparently, in the 1980's, there was a cultural emphasis on reconnecting with one's roots, inspired, in part, by the book/miniseries Roots. Buildings in Japantown that reflect Japanese architecture were built during this period.

Here is a shot of my dad in front of the Peace Pagoda. It was given to San Francisco by the people of Osaka, Japan.

After the tour, we spent some time shopping. We hit the 100-yen store, where I bought a tie for Danny that appears to be a collection of letters that almost spell English words, but not quite. If I were to compare it to my other experiences of shopping for Japanese stuff, I would have to say that Japantown in San Francisco is better than Little Tokyo in LA, but still not very much like actual Japan.

The next day, we took the BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) to San Francisco, where we took a cable car down to Fisherman's Wharf. Here are some helpful things we learned about travelling in San Francisco:

• Public transportation is expensive.
• Cable cars are not efficient.

We had clam chowder in sourdough bread bowls and fish 'n chips at a little stand, which we ate while standing up against a counter behind the stand.

Here is a shot of my parents near the beach. It was a pretty chilly day, and we saw no reason to get any closer to the water than that.

We did some shopping in Ghirardelli Square, which is named after the chocolate. However, we did not buy any chocolate. Instead, we bought a cupcake.

Here is a picture of the pretty box it came in.

It was Meyer lemon, which I have a recipe for in my Martha cookbook. It was beautiful and tasted great. In true Mom fashion, she had me go back into the store and buy a second cupcake. It was coconut, and it was also fantastic.

We took a walk along one of the piers and watched people poaching for crabs.

Then we took a cable car back toward the city, where we explored Bloomingdale's and saw Wicked. It was a great day!

The next day, we took a trip up the coast, shopped around in a little resort town called Half Moon Bay, and had some great seafood at a place called Sam's Chowder House. I bought another cupcake, but it was not as good. I have no pictures from my camera on this day, so I will have to get the ones my parents took.

I headed back to Lubbock and life on Friday, and on Saturday night, I made pumpkin patch cupcakes.

Because Martha is Martha, she couldn't possibly include a recipe for just plain pumpkin cupcakes. She had to add some degree of difficulty, so this recipe called for marzipan pumpkins. Marzipan is a sweet paste made out of almonds. It is malleable like fondant, and, according to Lorelei Gilmore, "it is a unique substance unto itself, like Velveeta or plutonium."

Here is my attempt at marzipan pumpkins. I dyed the marzipan orange with gel food color, and shaped it with my fingers. After I made about 16 of them, I sort of lost interest. I do not feel they added much to the overall taste of the cupcakes, and I didn't feel anyone at my ward Mix and Munch would miss not having them.

In all other aspects, they are just regular pumpkin cupcakes.

The recipe calls for cake flour, so they are very light and moist. They are perfect with cream cheese frosting.

They also have only brown sugar in them, which also makes them seem very rustic and fall-like.

Here they are, with and without the marizpan. What do you think, do they add to the cupcakes, or are they just unnecessary fluff?

Austin for the weekend

Here's the background on the Austin trip:

Background fact 1: About a month ago, Stephanie decided it would be fun to get a group of people to go float down some river in New Braunfels, which is between Austin and San Antonio. After sending out a mass e-mail, the only takers were me and Layne.

Background fact 2: Since I moved here, Layne has been touting Austin as the greatest city in the world. He spent two years there while he attended the University of Texas, and he loved it. I believe, at the time, I had just moved to Lubbock and was complaining about Texas in general, and he began his campaign to get me to go to Austin. We actually had an argument a couple of months ago over which was the better city, Austin or Seattle. I think the fact that he has never been to Seattle makes him biased. Having visited Austin before and lived in Seattle for a couple of months, I felt I was the more qualified judge. I said Seattle was better. No heated words were exchanged, but things were awkward and tense between us for the rest of the night.

Background fact 3: We almost went to Austin back in May. Then, we didn't.

So, as you can see, there was a lot riding on this trip. Not only was I trying not to die while tubing a river, I was also-for the sake of my friendship with Layne-trying to like Austin as much as possible.

It turned out neither one of those things was very hard.

We left Friday night and arrived in Austin around 11:00. As soon as we hit the city limits, Layne was like a small child at Christmas. We had dinner at Trudy's, a Tex-Mex restaurant a few blocks from where Layne lived during his college days. Then, we made a pilgrimage to Darrell K. Royal Memorial Stadium, where the Longhorns play, so he could see what renovations were being done.

The next morning, we drove to the river to go tubing. I have no pictures of this because they were very adamant that you not bring anything with you on the river that you cared very much about. So Stephanie brought a waterproof disposable camera, and these are her pictures.

Me getting into the slow-moving river.

There's a shot of me floating by. I don't know what the guy behind me is doing. I didn't even realize he was there until Stephanie showed me the picture.





After 3 hours of floating lazily down the river-Mom's fears about me drowning turned out to be slightly ridiculous as I was never in water that was too deep for me to touch the bottom, and the current was never very strong-we got cleaned up and hit the Austin nightlife.


We had dinner at Stubb's Barbecue, which is famous for some reason, probably the food, which was excellent. Billy Bob Thornton (the actor/director) was performing there with his band, but we decided that, rather than paying $12 to see them, we were going to see the bats.



Apart from being the Texas state capitol, a great place for live music, and the home of the Longhorns, Austin is also known for being the home of the largest urban bat colony in North America. Here is some information courtesty of http://austin.about.com/cs/bats/p/bats.htm

• Every year, approximately 750,000 female bats fly to Austin from Mexico where they lodge in the Congress Avenue Bridge and give birth to baby bats.
  
• Each female has one bat pup, bringing the total number of bats around this time of year to 1.5 million.
  
• It is estimated that the bats consume between 10,000 to 30,000 pounds of insects.
  

A video of the Austin bats. Probably less impressive than in person.

For some reason, most of the pictures I took in Austin were while we were waiting for the bats.

Here's a shot of Layne and I before the bats came out:

Here's one of Stephanie and Layne oohing and ahhing over the bats:

After the bats, Layne took us on a tour of downtown Austin, and then to a place which I concluded must have been the University of Texas equivalent of Squaw Peak. Let's just say we saw couples. We finished the night off with ice cream, the traditional Mormon reward when people around you are making out.

This has been a long post. We spent a little more time in Austin the next day before heading back to Lubbock. It's hard to believe we were only gone two days.

Here's a shot of me on our way home. Apparently, Mills County, TX is the meat goat capitol of the world (as opposed to the dairy goat capitol, I guess). Obviously, we hit the UT bookstore while we were there. I think it's a little excessive to own two shirts from a school I will never attend, but it's pretty hard to go into that bookstore and not buy anything. I thought the BYU Bookstore went overboard with apparel and weird items with BYU stamped on them that flauted rules of common sense and taste. I saw University of Texas garden gnomes-male and female. And as for the apparel, Layne scoffed at the pitiful amount of clothing the BYU Bookstore carried while he had a struggle over whether or not to buy UT cowboy boots. Clearly, it's a whole different world here.

Returning from Oz, Dorothy finds herself in Kansas once again.