August 8

As my last week starts, I find myself incredibly antsy and wanting to just go home already... but nope, I have one last week to get through. Luckily, the actual "work" time is not that much this week, I don't think, what with events and meetings and leaving procedures. Surely, there will be lots of paperwork to fill out.

This morning, we had our big tour of the Library's dome. We walked out on two different levels of the dome and I snapped photos in every which way just to take advantage of the height. It was pretty neat. I've attached some of the photos I took...

This is a look down at the Library's Madison building, where I work. Just to give you an indication as to how high we were, that building has six floors.

The Capitol from our vantage point:


And beyond the Capitol, over the mall (that grassy area in the middle), to the Washington Monument, with the Lincoln Memorial barely visible behind that. All those buildings along the mall are the various Smithsonian buildings.


Beyond that, I processed CDs in the morning and was very excited to get the Black Eyed Peas "Elephunk" CD. I listened to that all morning. In the afternoon, I actually decided to start in on one last record label that isn't copyright complying... Dischord Records. So, hopefully, I will be able to finish that before the week ends. There's no reason why I shouldn't.

A couple of the interns in the Prints & Photographs division invited me for coffee in the afternoon so that was nice. I really like them. One of them, Audra, is deciding between UNC and SU for library school. I think I made her decision for her - and I feel slightly guilty that I didn't recruit someone to SU. Just as the day ended, we found out that we were going to have to present our "treasures" to Dr. Billington tomorrow. Apparently, this is like the only day this month that he will be here to see us so that was why we got the last minute notification. So, yeah, that will be fun.

August 6 & 7

Yes, it was my last weekend in DC. I still had quite a few things to do on my 'To Do' list so I tried to get some of them done. On Saturday, I drove around areas of Maryland because my time there has been pretty limited since I got here. I've mostly focused on checking out areas of Virginia, just because it's closer to where I'm staying. So I tried to drive around parts of Maryland, visiting Bethesda, Rockville, and College Park primarily. I also fit in some back-to-school shopping. On Sunday, I hit some more museums: the National Postal Museum, the National Gallery of Art, the National Archives and the National Museum of American History.

I really enjoyed the Postal Museum. It's not very big and wasn't very crowded (although, honestly, the whole mall/downtown area was not very crowded at all on Sunday, for some reason) but it had some very interesting exhibits about the history of the US postal system.

Here's an old postal truck on display at the Postal Museum:


The National Gallery of Art is amazing and has an unbelievable amount of artwork on display. It's nearly impossible to see everything in a few hours, but I'm not much of an art museum fan so I was fine. I'm more interested in cultural/societal museums than just regular art museums. Like, show me how artwork in a society fits in with general life in that era. Just seeing collections of art kind of bores me. Artifacts over artwork, I guess. Regardless, they have a very large collection, particularly of Degas statues. That's one thing that really stood out to me.

A Roy Lichtenstein piece at the National Gallery:


The National Archives was really interesting, too. It sort of is just an advertisement for the documents they have, but it's pretty fascinating, especially since I'm someone who has really looked into getting a job there. They have the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution and other types of original documents like that on display, but I found the general exhibits interesting too.

The front of the Archives building:


At the National Museum of American History, I really wanted to spend more time at the First Ladies exhibit because I was really fascinated by it the first time I went there but the museum was such a madhouse that it was hard to read everything.

So, anyway, pretty much the only museum I haven't gotten a chance to go to yet is the Holocaust Museum, which I hope to do Tuesday or Thursday as it is open late those two days.