I travelled for work this week and thought briefly about bringing the camera and ended up telling myself "It's work, what do you need the camera for?" and thus left it home. Actually it would be neat to have some work pictures but people would think it weird and .... well I do try to embrace my dorkiness but I guess I'm not ready to reveal that much on the job just yet. But back to my post.... I regretted not bringing the camera as on both days I had time to myself and wished I could have taken some pictures that I could share here.
On Thursday I went to Washington, DC for the National Association of Realtors mid year meetings. I had two to attend. The first one let out at 11 am and the next one did not start until 1:00 so I had time to kill. I grabbed a quick lunch and went for a walk. It was a very warm and blustery day! I saw a man running with his dog. Not all that unusual. I see a lot of people who combine their running with walking their dogs. Typically the dog will be a few paces ahead of the human running behind. This man, though, was running backwards and his dog was running facing him. I wanted to shout to the man, "When will you teach the dog to run backwards so you can run forwards?". I didn't because the man had an ipod or some such device with earbuds in. So if I had tried to shout he would have had to stop to take them out so I could repeat what I said and that didn't seem worth the trouble. I didn't want to interrupt his running. Which brings me to one of my "It's a shame" items.
The invention of earbuds I suppose was designed so that people could listne privately to their music or whatever but this invention has taken away some socialization. People don't talk. They put in their plugs and zone out in their own little world. Central air is another social dud. With popularity of central air people do not sit on their porches or go out for walks and meet their neighbors. It's a shame.
I also saw another runner with a shirt that said "Kiss me, I'm left-handed". That's a new one to me.
Today (Friday) I went to Harrisburg for a half day conference. Dave had to be in Harrisburg this weekend for the Lions State Convention so we drove out together and I took the train home. I had two hours to spend between the end of the conference and the train. I had planned to wander over to City Island and walk around. However, one of the staff members from the conference was plannign to take another attendee who was here from South Carolina on a tour of the Capitol. She invited me to join them although she said I probably had seen it all as I grew up in PA. However, as I told her, I had never been to the capitol. I must have missed that grade school field trip. So Sue and Annemarie (from South Carolina) went to the Capitol. We had a great time. When we arrived there was a tour just starting and the lady at the desk said we could join them. Turns out it was a group of 4th graders from Blue Ball, PA. So I managed to have a grade school field trip tour of the Capitol anyway.
The legislators are all home right now (primary election day is next Tuesday) so we were able to wander pretty much all over without being stopped. I never knew what a beautiful building it was. We really enjoyed the tour. Annemarie commented that she couldn't wait to tell folks back home that she had been there. She said since PA is where it all started... Declaration of Independence, Constitution etc.... that this was the Capitol of all Capitols. Interesting.
Sue then took us over to the Forum which is an arts center. The building houses the state Library (I didn't know we had one) and a very large music hall. The woman at the library was very proud of it. She must have invited at least half a dozen times to walk around and visit. There were three balcony levels above the main floor and three floors below the main floor. All filled with books and reading material. When we approaced the door to the music hall there was a sign that said "No visitors". But it was kind of off to the side so I tried the door and it opened and we went in anyway. The back wall of this room is a gigantic map of the world. One Foot equals 400 miles was the legend. It also had commentary all around it about history. It was very interesting.
But as I said, I forgot the camera.
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