Ski Liberty

Christina and I went skiing on Monday at Liberty. We had a good time and were happily skiing one of the blue (intermediate) slopes by day's end. We did have some...interesting experiences on the chairlift, which I related in this discussion topic on the DCSki web site.

Family Dollar

In case you're wondering, this Family Dollar is 3 miles from my house. Weird.

Mandala

The talk at the National Gallery was good, and the lunch at Jaleo was delicious. The endive with orange and goat cheese was particularly good. But more about those later.

We ended the excursion by watching the closing ceremony for today's portion of a creation of a sand painting. Tibetan monks are working to create a mandala -- a sand sculpture -- to aid in healing in the aftermath of September 11th. We got to see them working on it -- I hate to say this, but the pictures hardly do it justice. Then they held a chant -- an end of the day meditation. An interesting day -- when else am I going to get a chance to see Tibetan Buddhist meditation? I think that's a good way to get myself out of bed when I don't feel like getting up -- who knows what I'll see today? Maybe Tibetan Buddhist monks meditating after creating an intricate sand sculpture. You can read more about the mandala here.

Happy Birthday to Me

Hey, it's my birthday today. I'm in the second year of a tradition of taking the day off and going into DC as a tourist. Today the plans are to head to the National Gallery of Art and hear a talk, have lunch at Jaleo, and then head somewhere else. I haven't decided yet, but then it's my birthday, so it's my decision, eh?