I hope that our surprise trip to D.C. in March will be worth the last three hours I just spent on the computer and phone canceling plane reservations to San Jose, making plane reservations from San Jose, to D.C., to Seattle, canceling hotel reservations in Berkeley, extending hotel reservations in Sunnyvale, and trying to make hotel reservations in Washington, D.C., for the week that thousands of people are descending on the city for parents' weekend at George Washington University. (We finally found a hotel with rooms left in Maryland, on the Metro line to D.C.)
Now, for the fun of packing a suitcase, half with casual clothes for San Jose's temperate climate, and half with business and evening dress for what will probably be a late-season blizzard in D.C. (Alarmist? Not hardly. I grew up there, and remember the year that the cherry trees froze in March — oh, wait, they did that again in 2010.)
Why are we going to D.C.? The Italian embassy is opening an art exhibit featuring Italian prints from Tom's late grandmother's collection. Unfortunately, the opening comes right on the heels of our trip to Sunnyvale for Potlatch. Flying back to Seattle for 20 hours just didn't make sense.