It’s less than a week now until I take my business trip to Washington DC. This is significant for several reasons.

• I’ve never been to Washington. I’m really looking forward to it from a tourist perspective. Even though I think it’s a den of thieves, there’s some cool architecture and history, and some poignant monuments.
• It will be my longest time away from the kids in, um, ever.
• It will be Jennifer’s longest time solo with the kids, by a long shot.
• It will be a warm-up for a possible trip to Spain that I’m trying to work in before the end of the year. Don’t get all weepy for poor Jennifer, she’s already been to Singapore and is also trying to work a trip to Germany. Plus, we’re still working on getting a nanny¹.

Considering the uniqueness of this opportunity, I’ve been figuring out how much stuff I can pack into my seven days. The five days will be spent in class, and I got a kickass new laptop so that I can stay well connected during breaks so that I’ll have my evenings free for touristy stuff. Two weekend days will definitely be spent checking out museums and monuments. One weeknight I will be visiting the Insight Meditation Community of Washington, in hopes of getting my Zen on with Tara Brach². Since it’s a big city, I’m sure there will be a lot of good food to be had; I’ll have to try not to let my Nebraskan co-worker slow me down.

There’s also some big performance art event called Capital Fringe³ which goes on the entire time I’m there and offers a variety of performances every evening throughout the Penn Quarter. Further, it would be cool to just go out in a city and see and do stuff on my own schedule. My hotel is walking distance from where the class will be held, so I should be able to stay out late and roll out of bed at 8:45am in plenty of time for the class.

In any case, I’ll be bringing my snazzy duds, my kickass new 24-105 lens, and a pantload of aspirations for what to make of my time.

¹ Interview with Candidate 7 is still pending.

² Less icky than it sounds.

³ Either this is some play on words or performance artists aren’t up on their homonyms. Both are equally likely from the art crowd.