I have not posted since Monday. Lots of things have been going on here. On Tuesday, I finished my review of tenure documents and started getting things organized for data analysis. In the afternoon, I went to Reagan to pick up Mike and Chris for a two day visit. Since Chris always looks forward to homecooking when he comes home from Colorado, I made chicken parmesan. I noticed that his appetite is bigger but he is thinner. He is training for the Derby Marathon and is at the peak of his training. Next week he will have his 20 mile run and then start scaling down toward the marathon. We walked around Alexandria and showed him the places of interest.
Wednesday I took the day off from work and we got an early start. We went to the Supreme Court and got in line about 8:30 in hopes of being admitted to hear the justices hear two arguments that morning. They let in a group of people and that left us standing about 15th in line. Around 9:45 they let us in. Only about 6 people behind us got in. We were far in the back but it was still a great experience. The building is beautiful. Even prettier than the new COP! But in a more sedate way. The first thing I noticed is all the wasted space in the building. They could put lots of offices, labs and classrooms in that space. Sadly, a sign of the times is the two security checkpoints you have to pass through, the need to put jackets, cell phones, basically everything but pen and paper in a locker and the security guys circling the courtroom throughout the proceedings.
Fortunately, Chris looked up the cases we were going to hear and I read the summaries. Otherwise, I would have been lost. In the transport case, we couldn't tell who was winning. In the habeus corpus case, we were pretty sure the state of Alabama was going to win. We will be interested in the outcome of the cases. Watching the judges question the lawyers was interesting.
We walked around a bit and took the Metro back to Alexandria. We had lunch at Five Guys, one of Chris's favorites. It is ironic since he didn't even eat hamburger 4 years ago. Then we got in the car and went to see the Air Force Memorial over by Arlington Cemetery and the Pentagon. I think Chris enjoyed that quite a bit. He knew a lot about several of the people listed on the memorial.
Then it was naptime since we had gotten an early start and done a lot of walking. In the evening Chris and I got back on the Metro and went to the Capitols-Penguins hockey game. I am not much of a hockey fan but the Caps have Alex Ovechkin, the leading scorer in the NHL and a reputed "bad boy." The Penguins have Sidney Crosby, the boy wonder of the NHL. The game was pretty interesting. We were almost the only people not in red or wearing a Caps jersey. Chris said he would really like to see a shootout. Guess what happened? The Caps were down with a few minutes to play and scored to tie it. The game went to a 5 minute overtime and we were rooting for no goals to be scored. The overtime ended without a score and the shootout began. There are three shooters for each time. The first two Penguins scored and the Caps needed both of their remaining shooters to score. They did and the game went to sudden death. The Caps scored and the crowd went wild! We had great seats and made a quick exit to the Metro. I was amazed how quickly we got home to Alexandria.
Sadly, I will be taking Mike and Chris to the airport this morning. Then it is back to work to start looking at my data. I hope there is something interesting to report! Tonight I will be watching the UK-Cornell game. Chris has been reading that the UK players are tired of hearing about how this will be the game between the smart guys and the dumb jocks that will make millions in the NBA. I hope that gives them lots of motivation. GO CATS!
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