I'm Conor Glassey ... And I Approve This Message

Sorry I haven’t posted in a while—but I have a good excuse. I’ve been up in Washington DC for the past few days with my family. That’s probably why nobody’s complained around here—I’m with 3/5 of my readers! Anyway, for you other two, here’s a recap…

The reason I came up to DC was because my dad was coming out here for an annual business trip. When I got the internship, his trip turned into a family get-together, as DC is just a few hours north of Durham. I took off from work a little early on Wednesday to drive up here. Most people told me the drive would take about three to three and a half hours but, even without traffic, it took a little more than four. I ended up parking at the southern-most Metro station at about 7 and then took the train into Arlington, Virginia, where my parents had a room at the Hilton.


The Metro stations have some of the longest escalators I've ever seen!

Cheryl was flying standby and got shut out on Wednesday, which was a real bummer. When I got to the hotel, dad was out, so I went to dinner with mom. We just hung out that night, but got up early on Thursday morning, hopped on the Metro and got our tourist on. We got off on the wrong metro stop and ended up walking a ways, but we saw the Washington Monument, got a nice view of the Capitol Building and saw the Lincoln Memorial and the Vietnam Memorial. After that, we took a cab out to Georgetown where I found a great BBQ joint called Rocklands. If you’re ever in DC, hit it up and try the corn pudding. So good! After lunch, I got a call from Cheryl and she made it onto the first flight Thursday morning, which was such a great relief!


Cheryl in front of the Capitol Building on Saturday afternoon.

So, after lunch, mom and I hopped on a bus and got back to the Metro line, where we went home and kicked up our feet for a while before I headed out to the airport to meet Cheryl. She got in at about 4:30, we got back to the hotel and had plans to head out to the Nationals game. But, it was raining pretty hard and was scheduled to rain even harder. So, we didn’t want to go all the way down there, find tickets and then sit in the rain while the game got cancelled. Instead, we went out to dinner with some of the guys out here for my dad’s conference. I felt relieved when the game was cancelled, because I would have been a little bummed if they ended up playing it.

Friday morning we all slept in a little more and then headed out for more sightseeing. We went to the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History and the National Art Gallery. That took up pretty much the whole day and wiped us out, so we headed home after that and then ordered some pizzas from a place called Piero and took it easy that night, watching the presidential debate on TV.




Cheryl is funny!

It was a big day on Saturday. I was really looking forward to heading back to the National Mall for the Library of Congress Book Festival. I was excited for this because Judith Viorst was scheduled to be there. For those that don’t know, Viorst is the author of “Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day”—my favorite children’s book and the inspiration for my first tattoo.



I got in line with Cheryl to show Ms. Viorst my tattoo and she was floored. She asked me if it was permanent, which was cute, and then told me that her son Alexander has a tattoo of a bicycle in the same place, because he loves bicycles. It was the first Alexander tattoo she had ever seen, which I thought was awesome.



After that, Cheryl, mom and I went to a Jim Henson art exhibit, which was really neat and then Cheryl and I went over to the Holocaust Memorial Museum. We headed back to the hotel for a little bit before embarking on a Monuments at Night tour, which was a little long, but a lot of fun. We got to see all the stuff Cheryl missed on Thursday morning, plus got a great view of the White House, Arlington National Cemetery, the FDR Memorial, the Thomas Jefferson Memorial and the Iwo Jima Memorial, among other things.




I told you Cheryl is funny!


At the Vietnam Memorial, a man noticed that I was wearing a Seahawks hat and asked if I was a football fan. I said that I was and he told me a story about Bob Kalsu. Kalsu was drafted out of Oklahoma and played for the Buffalo Bills in 1968. He was voted the team’s top rookie that year, but ended the season with a minor knee injury. After the season, he was drafted. The Bills apparently offered to exaggerate the severity of Kalsu’s knee injury, but he wanted to serve his country. At just 25 years old, Kalsu died in action just two days before his wife gave birth to their son. It was a very sad story that personalized an extremely moving memorial. It’s chilling to see how many names are on those walls. There was one Glassey…

This morning we all woke up, went to IHOP for breakfast and then headed out to the Washington National Cathedral. We missed the services being offered, but it was fine because we still got to walk around the breathtakingly-beautiful building that took nearly 90 years to build. There are all kinds of gargoyles throughout the building, including Darth Vader. After that, mom and dad headed back to the hotel and Cheryl and I headed downtown to continue exploring. We went back to the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History because a new exhibit had just opened and then went up to the National Portrait Gallery, where there were portraits of many Presidents, some great political cartoons by longtime Washington Post cartoonist Herbert Block, an exhibit with all kinds of old movie, music and political posters and an exhibit featuring hip-hop and graffiti photography.



It was a blast!