Artomatic

Location: Artomatic, Crystal City, Virginia, USA
Visited: June 2012

Though I'd heard of it numerous times in the past, this was my first time visiting Artomatic, which is arguably the biggest art show in the area. I say arguably because with 1500 artists you're bound to have a whole bunch of crap, but the awesome thing is that there is enough great stuff that it's totally worth visiting. I found it insanely inspiring, and while I didn't manage to join in on the sketchcrawl (which was the main reason I went, actually), I am so glad I went and I will definitely have to block off a few days next year to go again. There's simply no way to see it all in a single day, much less a single afternoon. On this page is only a very small sampling of the many amazing things I saw. If you're in the area, you simply must check it out.

St. Mary's County, MD

Location: Colton Point, California, Piney Point, St. Mary's City, and Scotland, Maryland, USA

Visited: May 2012 

This was one of those "pick a place and go" sort of days. I started at Colton Point to visit the St. Clement's Island Museum (but didn't visit the island itself, as it's only accessible by boat), then had a delightful guided tour of the Piney Point Lighthouse and Museum. After a brief detour through the Cecil's Mill historic district, I wandered down to Point Lookout Park where I saw the lighthouse and took a stroll through Fort Lincoln. Finally, I enjoyed an evening walking tour of St. Mary's City. I was completely exhausted and soaked with sweat by the end of it, but it was loads of fun.

International Spy Museum

Location: Washington, DC, USA

Visited: May 2012 

 When my in-laws visited a few weeks ago, we decided to visit the International Spy Museum for the first time. It was interesting but not worth the $20 admission fee. Still, it's nice to have done. Afterward we stopped by the American Art Museum where we visited the Art of Video Games exhibit and I finally found the DC Art-o-mat machine. Good times!

Washington, DC - and beyond!

Location: The embassies of Indonesia, Dominican Republic, Chad, Haiti, Peru, Bahamas, Australia, Kazakhstan, Guatemala, Trinidad & Tobago, and Japan in Washington, DC, USA

Visited: May 2012

When a friend invited me to the Around the World Embassy Tour, I knew I couldn't resist. The best one, in terms of scenery, was Indonesia, but the best in terms of free stuff was Kazakhstan. I learned a lot and had a really great time. Highly recommended, but don't expect to be able to visit every embassy in a single day - there's way too much to see. Maybe I'll check out the EU embassy tour next year.

White River Junction, VT

Location: White River Junction, Vermont, USA
Visited: April 2012

I love the Main Street Museum, so it gets its own page. Not that more space would come any closer to explaining it. It's really something that must be experienced first hand. We were there to see a truly terrible movie. So wonderful.

The rest of WRJ is a nifty town. I'd read White River Junctions by Dave Norman since the last time I'd visited, so there were a few places I wanted to see, such as the Hotel Coolidge and Vermont Salvage. So fun!

Quechee, VT

Location: Quechee, Vermont, USA
Visited: April 2012

After taking a gander at the beautiful Quechee Gorge, we stopped by the antique mall and toy museum at Quechee Gorge Village where we found just all sorts of treasures. Inside was also a Cabot Cheese dealer with loads of yummy samples and the surprisingly refreshing Maple Soda. It's hard to see, but I included the ingredients on the left: all that's in there is carbonated water and maple syrup. It's a lot milder than you'd expect.

VINS nature center is another favorite. They're primarily a raptor rescue, so the birds on display are only those unfit to re-enter the wild (mostly due to diminished flight capacity). So you know the many (many!) other birds that come and go are healed and set free. The snowy owl there at the top was probably my favorite of the day. She sat in the far corner of her cage and peered around at us, making cute little noises from time to time. I love owls, and crabby owls are somehow even cuter.

Norwich, VT

Location: Norwich, Vermont, USA
Visited: April 2012

We visited here on two separate days, once for an afternoon at the Montshire Museum of Science (so fun!) and once for dinner at the Norwich Inn. At the latter I had eggplant fries, which were just strips of eggplant deep-fried to perfection. So tasty! After dinner we stopped at Dan and Whit's General Store next door. The title does not mislead: it looked like a gas station quickie mart out front, but inside was groceries, hardware, clothing, and much more. I suggested that whenever my sister gets married she should do her gift registry there. :)

Cornish, NH

Location: Saint-Gaudens National Historic Site, Cornish, New Hampshire, USA
Visited: April 2012

When the guy at the visitor's center said the name of this place, I seriously thought he said "Saint Gardens" with a thick Boston-ish accent. But no, it's really Gaudens.

Alas, none of the buildings were open yet (apparently New England as a whole is closed until late May) but we saw some lovely sculptures. I bet it's even more gorgeous when the flowers are in bloom. The sculpture at the bottom was originally in Rock Creek Park down in my neck of the woods.

Windsor, VT

Location: Windsor, Vermont, USA
Visited: April 2012

Check out that fold-out page! It's a beauty! Look how the front is a current shot of The Old Constitution House, and when you open it up you get an olde timey shot of it! Sheer genius, that's what that is.

Ahem. Windsor was lovely. We started the excursion with a bite at Harpoon Brewery (their cider was pretty good, though none of us tried their beer). It was quite cozy. Then we drove down to Windsor proper for a bit of snarfing, where we also saw the Windsor House, the Windsor visitor's center, and a really nifty dam.

Upper Valley, VT/NH

Location: Vermont and New Hampshire, USA
Visited: April 2012

We took another trip to visit my sister up in the great white north (seriously, we drove through a snowstorm on our way there!). These are actually the last two pages in my gluebook, but I thought it was fitting to post them first, to give you a bit of a flavor of the trip. I drove over my very first covered bridge, we played with watercolor pencils, and we generally had tons of fun.

The second page here depicts the two art exhibits we visited: "New!" at the Main Street Museum and the opening of shows by Richard Allen, Dave Laro, and Julie Püttgen at AVA. Good times!

Washington, DC

Location: Washington, DC, USA
Visited: February 2012

My husband I enjoy going to plays, and when he stumbled upon this interesting retelling of the classic Peter Pan tale, we decided to head into the city and see "Peter Pan: The Boy Who Hated Mothers". And we really enjoyed it. My husband has a more thorough write-up. We'll definitely have to check out more productions by the No Rules Theatre Company.

Orange, VA

Location: Orange, Virginia, USA
Visited: February 2012

The Gilmore Cabin was unfortunately not open for the season yet, but it was really nifty looking. I am fascinated by old decrepit buildings and this one looks like it would have been no disappointment. I'll have to head down there again sometime.

Anyway, shortly after I took a gander at the city of Orange (California is not the only state with an Orange County, yo), which turned out to be more or less your standard Virginia city: Civil War-era curiosities jostling generic modern chains. But I kinda like that motif. I had a nice chat with the fellow in the visitors center, and also took a quick tour through the Montpelier Train Depot, fully restored to how it was in 1910. That is to say, segregated. I'm not sure which was more uncomfortable for me to enter: the door marked "white" or the door marked "colored".

Final note: very little in Orange was actually orange. Quite the missed opportunity, I say.

Orange, VA

Location: Montpelier, Orange, Virginia, USA
Visited: February 2012

If you have a thing for presidential homes, Virginia is the state for you. I don't have all that much interest in James Madison (or Jimbo Mad, as I like to call him), nor did visiting his home rekindle any passion I may or may not have had for the Constitution, but it was a lovely day to be out in the mountains. Montpelier has lovely grounds. The house tour was thorough but a little underwhelming, as the renovation is still only partially completed. The outside is done, but the inside has almost no furnishings.

Crazy things: they said that James read 700 books in a single winter while working on the Constitution (I call shenanigans) and Dolley's favorite ice cream flavor was oyster. Gross.

Alexandria, VA

Location: Mount Vernon, Alexandria, Virginia, USA
Visited: March 2012

This was my fourth visit to Mount Vernon, and quite possibly my last for quite a long time. Three friends and I met up for the day ostensibly to mop up the last of the historical markers left to snarf, but really it was more of an excuse to be out in the gorgeous weather and laugh at each other. A lot.

I tried not to reuse any of the images from my last visit, but it looks like I needn't have worried, as their brochure appears to have changed. Note the mansion time on the ticket. Yeah, we didn't make that. There were about eighty tour groups swarming the place so we skipped that line and took a leisurely stroll through the rest of the grounds. All in all a delightful day.

The little cards with the blue text are from the gift shop, freebies with more information about the various merchandise for sale. I didn't end up using nearly as much as I picked up, mostly because I have no interest in the sort of china old Georgie boy used.

One more thing: I drew a little X near the bottom left corner of the second page. That's where I lived when I first moved to Northern Virginia, meaning I was on what was once part of Washington's land. Now I live on what was once part of the Bull Run Battlefield. It's a good thing I kinda dig history. You can't escape it here.

Rockville, MD

Location: Rockville, Maryland, USA
Visited: January 2012

A friend invited me to this amazing 12-hour life drawing session at VisArts in Rockville, MD. There were six models, but I only got one of their cards. That's all right. I don't usually include my own art in my gluebooks, but since this was actually a drawing event, it seemed appropriate. This is one of my 5-minute sketches that turned out looking more human than alien (unlike most of the others). Looks like the white sketchpad paper against the yellowish journal page caused the scanner to freak out a bit and over-expose the former. Oh well. In the middle of the day my friend and I had lunch at Lebanese Taverna, which is absolutely delicious. I'm so spoiled living in a major metropolitan area: we have so much ethnic cuisine that we even have a chain of Lebanese places. Yum!

P.S. - A longer write-up and my better drawings from that day are here, but as all the models were nude, it's probably NSFW.

Washington, DC

Location: Washington, DC, USA
Visited: January 2012

I had expected the stuff from this particular night to take up more space on the page, but that's okay. This was from our journey into DC to see The Dreamscapes Project at the newly-opened Hamilton Live.

The Hamilton is quite lovely. The upstairs dinner portion is extremely posh, but the concert venue was comfortable with good sound and tasty (somewhat overpriced) vittles. Taylor Carson opened for TDP, and we liked him enough to purchase his CD. I also got a free hug later. He's a cutie.

TDP was, as always, excellent. They just keep raising the bar for themselves, and I am impressed anew every single time we see them play. They've been spreading out, musically, incorporating blues and Celtic and bluegrass and other styles into their set. At one point Keith (vocals), Gordon (drums), and Jeremy (bass) all shifted one to the right - and did one hell of a performance. I hadn't even know Keith and Gordon could play those instruments! Of course, I hadn't known Jeremy could play trumpet either, so I was just learning new TDP facts left and right.

They brought Ted from Ted Hovis and the Stolen Camaros up on stage for the last two songs. For a band already consisting of 12-string acoustic guitar, cello, electric bass, drums, and a whole range of percussion, I was pleasantly surprised at how much Ted's electric guitar added to the performance. He should join them again sometime. In short, it was an excellent night.

Chicago, IL

Location: Chicago, Illinois, USA
Visited: December 2011

I grew up in Central Illinois, so I am no stranger to Chicago, but I hadn't visited the Windy City in several years. After spending Christmas in Iowa with my family, we decided to spend a night in Chicago rather than making the cross-state commute at the crack of dawn to make our 9am flight out of O'Hare. My husband suggested we see a play, and we settled on La Cage Aux Folles at the Bank of America Theatre. We were both familiar with (and fond of) the movie The Birdcage, which is based on the same play, and we were certainly not disappointed. My husband suggested we do this any time we fly into Chicago, and I think it's a marvelous idea.

Oh yeah, before the play we dined at the Italian Village restaurants - specifically, La Cantina. So delicious! We were stuffed by the end of it and definitely satisfied. Hooray for real Chicago Italian food!

Fort Ward, VA

Location: Fort Ward, Alexandria, Virginia, USA

I've been to Fort Ward three times now, and I think I've finally finished snarfing the darned thing. It's a lovely park, don't get me wrong, but dang do those historical markers like to hide!

Alexandria, VA

Location: Alexandria, Virginia, USA
Visited: December 2011

Though I'm in Alexandria often, this was a special occasion. A couple friends and I went on the annual Historic Alexandria Candlelight Tour, where we got to actually enter several buildings we'd previously only seen from the outside: Gadsby's Tavern, Carlyle House, Stabler-Leadbeater Apothecary and Lee-Fendall House (for which I unfortunately did not pick up a brochure). My favorite was the apothecary; I wish we'd had more time to really look at it all. Everything was decked out to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the Civil War, but the costumed guides threw in plenty of tidbits from the rest of the buildings' histories. We didn't dally that long at any place (save about ten minutes of sitting with hot cider at Carlyle), and yet it took us the full three hours to see all four sites. They evidently do a different time period each year, so there's a decent chance this could become part of my holiday traditions.

New Page - Places Visited

Now that I'm all caught up on pages, I made a quick reference page of everywhere I've visited (and showcased here, that is). I just used tags, so several of the separate entries lead to the same page, since often I included multiple locations on a single spread. I only narrowed it down to the city level; if I went to individual attractions it'd get silly. Let me know if anything's broken.

In the meantime, here's a little bonus page: the first page of my Japan journal. This is one of the few times I used actual scrapbooking stickers, but I really liked these. The Totoro stamps were purchased at the Ghibli Museum.