Champagne Glasses of Fire

I'd heard that there might be some street performers down at the pier in Alexandria, but nothing could have prepared me for this guy. Absolutely amazing. This guy deserves a medal, a trophy or maybe two dollars. Don't miss the second half of the video when I get to play the bass cup!

Library of Awesomeness

The long awaited moment is here. I know you've all been sitting on the edge of your seat for this one. Well. At least for the last three sentences or so. I'm very proud to announce the prestigious Most-Awesome-Building-In-DC-In-Jake's-Opinion Award. Yep. This is the place. This is the time. Drum roll please. Cue Zarathustra track. Grand prize winner gets a lame post! Yeah!

And the winner is...Library of Congress!

Yes...I may be uh...a little biased here. But really, look at the photo. Can anything out there compete? The architecture is astonishing. I can't think of a better place to spend the money than on the nation's home for books.

Ms. Bowen Goes to Washington

The much anticipated weekend finally arrived...and passed much too quickly.

Thursday night Kim flew in from Salt Lake. From the moment she landed, we were running around DC. In retrospect, our planning was much too optimistic - we didn't see nearly as much as we planned - but we did get to all of the monuments, the Capitol building, the botanical gardens, several snazzy restaurants, a few art galleries and a handful of museums.

This photo was taken at the Newseum, which opened a little over a year ago. Hands down, this is the best museum I've been to while in DC. The six floors detail the history of news/journalism. There you'll find everything from segments of the Berlin Wall to the antenna from the top of the World Trade Center to the Unibomber's shed.

On the third floor they have an exhibit where you can do a newscast in front of a green screen. It's free to get on stage, but five bucks to get a copy of the video and photo. I already paid the fee, so you can access it at no cost for then next two weeks. You'll need to go to www.newseum.org/batvr and enter the code kceuqmblhguriu to see the 30 second clip. The quality is better if you download it to your computer. I think we're naturals, no?

Fire in Consulate Apartments

No Mom. I'm not hurt.

I arrived home from my Palmyra trip to discover that there had been a minor fire in my apartment building. On the floor above mine in the elevator lobby, one of the lights had sparked. The fire was quickly put out by the sprinkler system. All of the water however, flooded the third and second floors. This phot shows the cleanup crew punching a hole in our bathroom ceiling to release the water.

While it was somewhat exciting, the cleanup process got old pretty fast. For a few days we had obnoxious fans up and down the halls and in our rooms going 24-7 to prevent mold. Thankfully, it's all cleaned up now.

Stone Box Found Under Rock on Hill Cumorah

All I have to say is that it's not nearly as easy as Joseph makes it look in the video.

Sacred Grove

When one of the other interns invited me to travel to Palmyra to see the Hill Cumorah Pageant a few weeks ago, I jumped at the opportunity. It meant that I would spend 16 hours in a car over a 36 hour period of time, but I'm very glad I went. While we were there, we stopped by several of the historical sites, one of which was the Sacred Grove.

Simply put, the Church is true. One can't help but walk through this grove without sensing the lingering whispers of deity.

Got Protestors?

Yep. They're at the Hill Cumorah Pageant too.