National Cathedral

After TRB ended I met up with Kate. Thursday afternoon we went and took a tour of the National Cathedral. Neither of us had been there before. It was a fun filled afternoon, and rather educational.

It was really cool. We took a tour, and it was just Kate and I and the docent. It was fun to essentially have a personal tour.

I learned a lot, including

- construction was not completed until fairly recently.

- the cathedral is the 2nd largest in the US and the 6th largest in the world

- constructed of Indiana limestone

- seat of the episcopal diocese of Baltimore

- Woodrow Wilson and Helen Keller are buried there

- the space window is awesome

- all of the windows are amazing

- so are the flying buttresses and the gargoyles

There was tons more, but i don't feel like writing it down. Here are some pics.

The space window. It actually has a moon rock in it!

The Creation Window.

A way cool pic of light filtering in through one of the rose windows.

Kate in the Children's chapel - gives you an idea of scale if she is too big!

Flying buttresses. I just like to say that. Tee Hee. How old am i?

http://www.nationalcathedral.org/main.html

Survival of the fittest, or something

I did the presentation thing. It was all good. And somehow I didn't seem to screw up too badly.

DC, here I am, finally.

Made it safely to DC. It was a struggle. We made the 9:30 flight out of Jxn. It left about 20 minutes late due to our plane arriving late. Well, when we got to ATL I hopped off the plane and went up to the gate agent to ask her to hold our flight as we had 17 minutes to get from D28 to A05, and there were like a dozen of us on the plane trying to make that connection. She wouldn't call ahead - so we litteraly ran through the Atlanta airport - to no avail. So, I got in two hours later than planned, and got a workout in. If you don't beleive me, try running with 10 lbs of laptop and stuff on your back :-) Here is my fantabulous room.

Also, check out my new purse. Love it. Totally on major sale when I bought it too.

cabinetry

Getting there with the sanding thing.

Sandy Madison

I used to say that Madison was like a nice carmel cheese cake with a chocolate swirl on top. Now I look at her and see a piece of wood that needs sanding. haha

Progress, finally

i've been working away at the cabinetry. it is slow going to say the least. however, check out all the doors and drawers i've stripped, sanded, and am about to stain. tonight i got the first coat of stain on the fronts. i know that the color looks sort of similar to the existing color, but really, it is better. and not mucked up with 30 years of scum. if it turns out as well as it might, i'll be way too impressed with myself. there are still a couple more doors to finish, and the cabinets themselves. however, today was a big step in the right direction.

most of the doors, pre sanding


the drawers pre-sanding


the doors, after a coat of colonial maple . they definitely need another coat or two pre-polyurethene

the drawers after a coat of maple on the fronts and sides. still need to re-paper the insides though. also note my cool bike.

Sanding away my Friday

I've been sanding the cabinet doors. They will look good. My hands feel like vibrating away though.