Washington D.C.

On my way to DC

Brianne Bilyeu, , 739 Comments

Who has two thumbs and is blogging at 30,000 feet?

Laptop selfie of moi with a "thumbs at me" pose

I needed one hand free to click the “shutter” for the laptop selfie, so you’ll just have to trust me on the whole “two thumbs” claim.

Everyone at my workplace has Monday off for Labor Day. I was feeling wanderlusty (heh – that should be a real word) and had three days with not much planned that couldn’t be put off. I browsed airfare to see if I could get anywhere close to Red Rock country; I’ve been wanting to get back to Arches or one of the other big parks in the southwest. Moab, Utah would have been good, but flights were in the $700-$900 range, which was more than I wanted to spend for a spur of the moment get-away.

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On my way to DC
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6 O’Clock BS – Protests

Brianne Bilyeu, , , , , , , , 1,042 Comments

I am constantly doing photo clean-up. I snap a couple to hundreds of photos every day, and so I’m always sorting, editing, filing and archiving. Which means every once in a while I run across some neat photos that have fallen through the cracks.

When the Hubby and I were in Washington D.C. for the Reason Rally we took a few extra days to sight-see. During our meandering we ran across a number of protests. Here are some photos of those protests:

Occupy D.C.

Occupy D.C. had two different encampments that we found: One was in Freedom Square, the other was in McPherson Square. This is the website for the Occupy D.C. movement (note – it only lists McPherson as their location – I’m not sure if the Freedom Square group is affiliated with the Occupy DC group).

Continue reading “6 O’Clock BS – Protests” →

6 O’Clock BS – Protests

6 O'Clock BS – Protests

Brianne Bilyeu, , , , , , , , 1,691 Comments

I am constantly doing photo clean-up. I snap a couple to hundreds of photos every day, and so I’m always sorting, editing, filing and archiving. Which means every once in a while I run across some neat photos that have fallen through the cracks.

When the Hubby and I were in Washington D.C. for the Reason Rally we took a few extra days to sight-see. During our meandering we ran across a number of protests. Here are some photos of those protests:

Occupy D.C.

Occupy D.C. had two different encampments that we found: One was in Freedom Square, the other was in McPherson Square. This is the website for the Occupy D.C. movement (note – it only lists McPherson as their location – I’m not sure if the Freedom Square group is affiliated with the Occupy DC group).

Continue reading “6 O'Clock BS – Protests” →

6 O'Clock BS – Protests

Washington D.C. Day 4 – Trolley Zoo Chinatown

Brianne Bilyeu, , , , , , 2,614 Comments

The goal on Day 4 was to hit the National Zoo. I like zoos. No two zoos are the same and I love to see the animals, learn about them, see how many species we’ve managed to kill off or endanger since I visited last (*sigh*). Instead of taking the Metro up to northern D.C. we decided to buy Old Town Trolley tickets because they go all through the main part of the mall/downtown and have a line that swings up to the zoo, the National Cathedral and through Georgetown. Also, you miss seeing the city when you’re traveling underground :/

Oh the places you’ll go on Old Town Trolley!

We jumped on the trolley by the Freer and Sackler museums, which is fairly early on in the orange line. We rode around the Tidal Basin and by some of the national monuments and museums again. I snapped a few decent shots: Continue reading “Washington D.C. Day 4 – Trolley Zoo Chinatown” →

Washington D.C. Day 4 – Trolley Zoo Chinatown

Washington D.C Day 3 – Downtown Penn & Night Tour

Brianne Bilyeu, 458 Comments

Note: We went to Washington over the second-to-last weekend of March, but I am really far behind on my travel blogging because I keep traveling and going to new events! I’m hoping to wrap these D.C. posts up in the next couple of days.

Day 3 was our “niche museum” day. There were a few private museums that we wanted to hit that were outside of the main Smithsonian collection. We took the Metro to the Judiciary Square stop and walked over to the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial. Walking along the wall and seeing all of the names carved onto each stone in such small letters had the same chilling effect that walking by the Vietnam War Memorial has on me. And I had a nasty jolt when I realized that we had only walked along one half of the memorial – a wall identical in construction and also filled with names was located on the other side of the park.

One half of the memorial. There are over 19,000 names recorded on these two walls.

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Washington D.C Day 3 – Downtown Penn & Night Tour

Washington D.C. Day 2 – Reason Rally

Brianne Bilyeu, , , 3,765 Comments

Day 2 of our Washington D.C. vacation was completely devoted to the Reason Rally. Heck, we even went to bed early and sober on Friday night so we’d be well rested for a LONG day of walking around the mall, meeting lots of people and spending a good deal of time standing in the rain.

We woke up to a rain-free morning – gray and overcast, but rain-free for the moment. We made sure we had our ponchos, some extra bags to sit on or use to cover the backpack, a collapsable umbrella, and our “lunch” – two bags of trail mix, cliff bars, apples we had grabbed from the hotel continental breakfast and a bottle of water.

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Washington D.C. Day 2 – Reason Rally

Washington D.C. Day 1 – Tidal Basin

Brianne Bilyeu, , , , , , , , , 857 Comments

Blog material has been light over the past week because I’ve been having awesome touristy times in Washington D.C. I would have liked to do my travel blogging during vacation, but we wore ourselves out right good every day, and we fell into bed every night almost immediately after getting back to the hotel. So travel blogging starts now! I also expect to start following current events again so we’ll be returning to our regularly scheduled “Holy crap, look at the freaking awesomeness and dinkusness that’s going on in the world today!!!1!” posts.

Washington D.C Day 1 – Tidal Basin

Our vacation started at 5:45am last Friday morning. We arrived in Washington DC and made our way to the hotel. On the drive over we saw this bus – the Hubby and I wondered if like us they were going to the Reason Rally on Saturday. Continue reading “Washington D.C. Day 1 – Tidal Basin” →

Washington D.C. Day 1 – Tidal Basin

Snippets

Brianne Bilyeu, , , , , , , 509 Comments

You know how when you’re doing data analysis, you sometimes get sucked right in? You’re working with the raw data, getting it all organized and pretty so you can drop the whole chunk into a statistics program and watch the Passing-Bablocks and Pearsons fly forth onto the computer screen? But it takes a while to do all the organization, data point exclusions (with valid justifications), reprocessing, manually checking the lines and watching the SD and CV calculations to make sure there are no cut/paste errors, double-checking formulae, making sure no single reps in set of mostly double reps are mucking up the whole scheme, but finally! – you’re ready to define the final data set, you click the analyze button and BAM! SLOPE OF 1.01, R=1.00 BEETCHEZ!

*ahem* So, work went well last night. How about you?

Anyway, after getting home from work and the grocery store at 10:30pm I lazed out on the google reader and blog writing. But here are a few things that I’ve been mulling over.

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Snippets