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Hargrove Annual Report 2003: CharlesAndAmy | ||||||||||||
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Charles and Amy thought they'd have a nice visit to New Orleans, some French Quarter action, good food, and a chance to find a ghost in the Andrew Jackson Hotel, which is famously haunted. Linda learned of the plan and invited Jim and herself to join the party. Charles noted that there were no more rooms at the hotel. "No," Linda replied. "Jim found one on the Internet." "Oh," Charles said.
As Memorial Day approached, though, we got the news that the hotel had declared bankruptcy and closed. (It seemed really strange for them to close before getting the trade from the holiday weekend, but that's what happened.) So we booked alternative accomodations in a B&B near the French Quarter and had a great time.
Linda is fond of trips over long weekends. We took advantage of Labor Day for a quick trip to Annapolis. The weather was a bit hot for outdoor activities, but we didn't let that stop us. A bird walk with the local Audubon society turned into a bufferfly walk instead. That proved to be great fun; we learned a lot about the local Lepidoptera. We sampled some of the local gustatory offerings, particularly crabs, and ate at The Wild Orchid for the first time. We also managed a trip into the district to see Charles's office at the Carnegie Insistitution of Science, where he is busy archiving some letters sent between a ship captain and his long-suffering wife in the early 20th century. The captain was commanding a long voyage mapping the earth's magnetic field in a ship constructed completely without using iron. Here is a picture of model of the ship. Later that evening, we met up with old friends, Mary and Leonard Gallagher, and Tiffany Hamm, a sort-of relative, for an evening of Ethiopian food.
We never visit the DC area without a trip to some museum on the Mall. This trip, we took in the National Conservatory and the National Gallery.
We spent Christmas in Annapolis for the first time. The weather cooperated beautifully, given that it was December and that the weather in the area had been generally miserable most of the year. We had clear skies and cold but not freezing days. Claire managed to wheedle some days off and joined us for part of the holiday. Besides the usual Christmas doings, we took in the final part of The Lord of the Rings trilogy, which Jim, Charles and Amy found satisfying, Linda hated, and Claire found simply confusing. We worked in another trip to the museums along the mall, spending most of the time in the Museum of Natural History after a brief visit to the Freer Gallery. Jim thought he was about to lose his beloved Swiss Army knife when we had to pass through the screening at the Natural History museum. However, when he got to the front of the queue he handed his metallic objects to the guard, walked through the detectors, and got the objects back from the guard, knife included. We're not sure what this all implies.