A great weekend

Had a really wonderful weekend despite absurdly escalating temperatures. Saturday morning found me at Hillwood with my friend Jeffrey and others from MEETin. Formerly the estate of Marjorie Merriweather Post (and still owned privately by the family), Hillwood is made up of the main house, now a lovely museum of (mostly) Russian antiques, various outlying buildings with artistic displays, and gorgeous landscaped gardens. I guess Margie liked her flowers. The scent of roses in the air was almost enough to make one dizzy. The best part, though, I have to say, was my visit with the "Bug Lady" who had, among other things, a giant millipede, huge grasshoppers, silk moths, and enormous cockroaches. Thank goodness I didn't see any spiders in the collection, else I would have had to beat a hasty and doubtlessly ungraceful retreat from the entire neighborhood. As it was, well, you see the smile on my face.


AB and the freaky millipede from Africa

That night, despite running myself ragged trying to score tickets beforehand and ultimately collapsing in despair, some kind soul (thank you, Jada) offered me an extra ticket to the free Shakespeare performance at the Carter Barron ampitheater. They were putting on "A Midsummer Night's Dream." I'm not sure exactly what I expected - I just liked the idea of the words "free" and "Shakespeare" in the same sentence - but wow, what a great evening. It was amazingly funny and the costumes and sets were terrific for a show with only 10 performances. Best of all, the director had to play Puck - something I was aprehensive about (replace Puck with an amateur actor?), but I was delighted with his performance. Actually the experience was probably enhanced knowing that he was just thrown into the role at the last minute. I appreciated it more.

Sunday was the AEI annual picnic, and one of the hottest days of all time. Man, DC is getting too hot. Where did spring go? Oh, by the by I managed to worm my way onto the dessert-judging panel (mostly by telling Ruth I wanted to be on it), but the dessert I chose ended up coming in second. The chocophiles beat out the strawberry-rhubarb pie I liked with their silly votes for some brownie concoction (which was actually good, I admit, but still). I think chocolate-lovers are nuts. I mean, I like chocolate, but to let it rule your every decision in such a make-or-break fashion? It just seems far too controlling.