On Saturday, it was raining cats and dogs until mid-afternoon, so I didn’t make it to the National Gallery film screening. However, the rain stopped in time for the astronomy lecture that evening, so I ventured out to the Air and Space Museum for that. The topic was constellations, focusing on the zodiac. Pretty interesting. I can’t remember the last time I’d been to a planetarium, so that in itself was an experience. One gets to see the sky in simulated perfect conditions away from inclement weather and bright, city lights, with the ability to control so many variables, not the least of which is time. At one point, our lecturer cycled the star projections back thousands of years to show how variation in the earth’s rotation has subtly, but over time dramatically, shifted our position relative to the stars.
After the lecture I’m eager to find some of the constellations in the night sky. (If only the weather would cooperate.) Up until now the only one I can recognize with any reliability is Orion. Or maybe I can just get some kind of star projection thing for my ceiling. That would be cool.
Wine spoken here. The next day I met up with Tina at the International Wine & Food Festival, held in the D.C. Convention Center. Wow. So much wine. It was basically a huge trade fair, with dozens of booths representing wineries from all over the world. We received our standard-issue wine glasses, and were off and running, tasting all sorts of wines. I admit to often judging a wine by its label: one of the more interesting wines we found is from Australia, called Bear Crossing, which has a koala bear roadsign as its logo.
As the afternoon wore on, I began to see the merit of spitting and cleansing one’s palette at wine tastings. The idea is to taste and evaluate, not get drunk. After several samples of varying quantities, I had a good buzz going. By now, the winery reps sounded like, “Blah blah grapes blah, vintage blah blah…” So we took a break at the Pellegrino stand where I had some sparkling water, and moved on to one of the stage areas for a cooking demonstration. Dude, this was the place to be. After each demo, we were served samples of dishes prepared by top local chefs. (I felt like I was in the Oprah studio audience. They always seem to get lots of culinary goodies.) We didn’t move for a couple of hours, taking in at least three cooking sessions and corresponding dishes, including coq au vin and boudin blanc — both spectacular, but neither quick, do-it-yourself projects. Let’s just say the latter involves a meat grinder and sausage casings, but in the end I was suprised at how light and creamy it was.
All in all, a fantastic time out. I made away with a pair of the commemorative wine glasses — there were so many around, I’m sure they won’t miss an extra one — so now at my apartment I don’t have to serve wine in, say, a coffee mug.
Watching and wading. Most of the snow from the recent storm has melted away, but I can definitely relate to this: the Morning News’ Non-Expert on how to avoid that enemy of the wintertime pedestrian, slush.
On such a winter’s day. The Post‘s travel section had a series of articles on nonstop-flight winter escapes from D.C. to the Caribbean. Mmm, I’m quite tempted.