Do 43 things i've never done before!

41. Visit the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum: Udvar-Hazy Center.
This is the new building out by Dulles airport. I’d been to the one on the mall a few times, but they opened this big airplane hangar since the very nature of planes limits the display capabilities of the downtown museum.
It was pretty amazing! Some of the most famous planes are still downtown (Spirit of St. Louis etc.) but they had tons of interesting things. I was very moved seeing the Enola Gay.
The impetus for this visit was that I was hosting my nephew Noah’s Flat Stanley, and I thought 6-year-olds would like seeing planes and space ships etc. In the picture you can see Stanley with a WW2 fighter plane.

Our friend Mary Etta brought over a delicious homemade quince paste to our poker night last weekend. She sliced it and added it atop sliced Monterey Jack cheese served on a cracker. The flavor combo was delicous.

I bought a house plan. MY HOUSE plan. It was fun receiving and unwrapping it. Very emotional.

Friends hosted a Beatles Rockband party (complete with “Gouda Day Sunshine sandwiches”!) on Sunday evening. It was such a fun game with great animations and sound clips between songs. We weren’t able to play for as long as we would have liked, but we got through a lot of songs, and I made a lot of progress with my drumming, even scoring a 99% on “Get Back.” Fittingly enough, I’ve got blisters on my fingers from my mad drumming skills.

Joel McHale has been at the tops of my celebrity crush list for quite awhile now so being in the same room with him took my breath away! Our seats were pretty good, about half-way back and to the right. We weren’t close enough to make eye contact or be included in any jokes, but we were close enough to pick out all the glorious little details of his clothes, hair, etc.

I’ve seen very little stand-up comedy in my day, but I thought both Joel and his opener were great. I was laughing the entire time, especially when Joel joked about his sons who just happen to be the same ages as Audrey and Clara. The show was sold-out to a varied audience. It was Parent’s Weekend at the local college so there was quite a mix of college kids and their 50-something folks. I was hoping he’d do a signing, and I’d have the chance for a close encounter, but I was out of luck.

I have a feeling Joel McHale might be getting more and more famous now that he has a sitcom and has started working in movies so who knows, this may have been my only chance to see him do his stand-up. I’m glad I was there.

Don’t have a horse, but I have a friend who’s an equine chiropractor, so we went over to visit with her since it’s near our house.

I fell in love with Wicked when the soundtrack first came out, and have wanted to see it ever since. Wicked has been touring for some time now, and, unfortunately, as soon as I heard that it was coming to my town in the next year, it was announced that we were moving. Sure enough, there was a set of performances near where we were moving to, and as soon as the tickets became available, we bought tickets for a performance that was last week. I took a two hour car trip to Des Moines and saw the show I’d been waiting to see for upwards of two years. It was definitely worth it.

While driving me home from school, my dad told me to keep a lookout for the mailman, because if we saw him, my father could forego his trip to the post office in favor of giving the packages he had to ship to the mailman. We saw the mailman pull into a parking lot near the end of our street, and we pulled in after him. By the time we had caught up to him, he was already out of the car and going into the restaurant in the parking lot. My father and I waited, while discussing the likelihood of him returning to his car anytime soon, seeing as he was on duty. Soon enough, he came out of the bar and we handed him the packages as he explained that he had gone in to use the restroom. Anyway, there’s one thing off my list.

This week, Eric and I took the girls to our county’s first H1N1 clinic. We debated the decision for quite awhile, but we finally decided we’d feel safer having the girls vaccinated. The clinic was run in our sale barn and was surprisingly well-organized and efficient considering they vaccinated over 2000 people that day. We were in and out in less than an hour with very little fuss from the girls. Luckily, they’ve shown no side effects so far, and I feel much better about the decision now that it’s been made.

Visited colleague’s new house and met her husband for a while.
Nice little house. Nice funny husband. :)