Recap some more of last week:


Thursday evening, we went out to Dave & Busters - a great restaurant and arcade on the top floor of White Flint Mall. We had a great meal and then played in the arcade for over three hours. Wow! Patty collected enough tickets to get Eddie a nice mug and one for herself, and still has points remaining on her card for the next trip. My favorite game is the Hydro Blasters boat racing game - incredibly fun!


Friday I took the day off from work and Patty and I escorted Eddie around DC. We visited the dinosaurs in the National Museum of Natural History, then walked down to the National Gallery of Art (West Bldg) and spent another few hours in there, walking through the hushed labyrinth of rooms. Believe it or not, at the dinosaur museum we were treated to a full metal detector and bag search, with personal search if you couldn't get through the detector without it beeping, as one elderly gentleman found out. Likely a terrorist - 80 yr old caucasian. Stupid rules - can't be accused of profiling though! And all this to protect rocks and bones. And stuffed animals.

The real horror of the security in our nation's capitol was at the National Gallery of Art. Just a bag search. No metal detector, nothing else. If you have a purse or backpack, they look inside and make sure you aren't carrying anything nasty, then you just go in.

To my way of thinking, I would have the major security in front of the irreplaceable, unique art and culture in the Art museum, not in front of the bones and rocks. But that's just me.

By the way, the Dutch section is closed, so if you prefer the Dutch Masters, you are out of luck. ;(