almost there...

Welcome to the official 99th post! We're making history as we know it! You're probably waiting for the 100th to come and go so I can stop making a big fanfare over it. But the truth is, I'm going to make a big deal about the halfway point and the 365th (uh oh). So here's the deal. Tomorrow we will be back in the ATL and I won't get to tell you about my adventures. However, then we can get back to me analyzing my somewhat vapid life. Love it or hate it. It's inevitable. Now. Today was a rather long day, so let me start at the beginning. First ... (that sounds a little boring, hang on). To commence my busy and efficient day, I started with some English muffins. But there was no butter so we had to wait awhile and my muffins were cold by the time the butter came. Oh well. After that affair we rushed down to the east wing at the National Gallery to see some of the modern art (yes!) and some of the exhibitions. There was a Venice one, but all of them look the same, and there was a Paul Gaugin one. Amazing! In case you are just not au courant with the art world - or general culture - he's a great little French painter. He mainly paints Tahitian (? spelling) women, because he went there for a while. And the most famous of them all, well one of the most famous - The Brooding Woman - came from none other than the Worcester Art Museum! After Gaugin we saw some Howard Hodgkin (I saw his exhibit in Oxford this summer), a little Matisse, some Kandinsky, and even The Walking Man. After a brief snack lunch we went back to the hotel to drive to Baltimore (think Tracy Turnblad from Hairspray!) to see Loyola University Maryland and to see my great aunts (my maternal grandma's sisters). Families can get confusing. So we got to see Loyola for 2 hours and we even got our own tour guide. That's never happened ever in our college touring experiences, and we've become experts at the science. It was a really nice college. They had some real nice study abroads (no Oxford though...), really nice dorm rooms, and great food. Everybody was really nice too - it's helpful to see the types of people you are living with. However, Georgetown still holds first place for me, even though Loyola was really nice (can you tel by the number of times I have said "really nice"?). Then we went down to downtown Baltimore and we got to see the house my dad lived in when he was in the JVC (Jesuit Volunteer Corps). Half of the neighborhood was boarded up. People sat with blankets on their front steps. All of the houses were dilapidated and some looked like they would fall down if you blew on them. The most surprising thing was that this wasn't in central Africa or south Asia. It was in the United States, one of the top 10 nations in the country. And if you go down even four blocks, there are really affluent neighborhoods. Then we finished the night with a visit to my mom's aunt's house for dinner - Uno pizzas which were actually a lot better than you think - and dessert. It was a really fun way to end the night. I even gave them the blog website - perhaps I'll expand my audience to more than 2! Well, that's all for now. Try not to lose your marbles waiting for the 100th post!