President's Day Weekend

I'm glad I don't blog for a living. I'd make even less money than I already do. I've been away for a while. I blame winter. It's been cold, there's been an ice storm, we've been inside a lot, and I've fallen behind at work and at home.For the first time since Baltimore (just after Christmas) we finally got out of town today, down to George Washington's birthplace National Monument in Pope's Creek, Westmoreland County, in the Northern Neck of Virginia. It's here. An attractive place, where Pope's Creek enters the Potomac; the home in which Washington was born burned over 200 years ago, but there are some reconstructed buildings, farm animals, exhibits, and nesting bald eagles at the moment. We thought we saw the nest, and blowing up the pictures after we got home, there may even be an eagle in them. Sarah enjoyed it; most of all we got out of town on a nice day; temps probably in the 50s after ice last week. We needed this.

It's not news that we're a family that needs to get out of Dodge occasionally. I've been suffering from the doldrums lately: behind at work, behind at home, behind in trying to get The Estimate out of hiatus and back on its feet. We've been iced in even without the weather doing it. Today helped a great deal. The Martin Luther King holiday wasn't as productive, and colder weather is coming in for the rest of the weekend.

I'm uploading today's video though there's about two months worth that haven't gone up; in fact the last one up is the one of Sarah's pre-Christmas concert. It shows what dullards we've been, frozen in, wintering.

I hope today breaks the ice. More soon if it has succeeded. We haven't spent an overnight out of town in ages: not, I think, since Philadelphia. We did Baltimore with Kate and Brenda, and spent a day with museums and an evening at a Moroccan restaurant (Marrakesh, one of the oldest in these parts), when Tam's old friend Lauren and her two daughters passed through town a couple of weeks ago), but we tried to do too much, the kids got too tired, the parents tireder, and it didn't provide relief. Those interludes didn't really relieve the too-urban, too-cold environment of winter. Today did, at least a bit. At Marrakesh, though, Sarah got to see her first belly dancer ("awesome!"). Someday I hope she sees the real Marrakesh, since the Jamaa al-Fana', the great open space where evrything from musicians to food to snake charmers to fortune tellers, to well, just about everything, can be found, is unlike anyplace else I know, even in the Middle East. And I haven't been to the real Marrakesh in 25 years or so. Somewhere I have a photo of me in the Jamaa al-Fana' with a snake around my neck. Maybe I'll find it and post it here someday.

More soon. I feel a thaw coming on.