How could we resist a tour of this?

This one is a quickie because we have to get ready to go to work. Well, first we have to stop at the post office (stamps for a mailing for our next show) and then off to the train station (dropping Artie off so that she can get back to Saratoga for work).
On Monday and Tuesday we took a bunch of tours in D.C. All thanks to our local congressman. We went into the Capital Building, The Supreme Court, The Library of Congress, and The Kennedy Center. Usually we spend our time in D.C. at some part of the Smithsonian it was nice to branch out and see other sites.
Here are some quickie photos of our day:



And I've got to add this one just to let you know that we know how to have a good time.How could we resist a tour of this?

What do you think?

"it occurred to her in the moment that gravity took over that only her reaction to events made a difference"

This past weekend we were at the Sugarloaf Arts and Craft Festival in Gaithersburg, MD. What would have been an OK weekend for us turned into a very good weekend thanks to our new benefactor Helen. Helen is a jeweler and sculptor from Tennessee. She was in the booth across from us.
Here's the funny thing...
On Thursday we leave in the morning for our usual 9 hour drive to Gaithersburg for our set up. We hit traffic and construction on the way and we arrive at the fairgrounds (where the show is) 10 minutes before the show office is closing. Thankfully we get checked in and now it is 8pm. We decide to set up our 10 x 10 outdoor tent (we have an outdoor space at this show) and unload the car into it. We do that and we button up the hatches and we drive away knowing that we have to do what we really don't like to do...get up really early the next morning and set up our booth before the show starts at 10am.
We get up too early the next morning. We are all pissy and tired. We arrive at the fairgrounds to find that the high winds during the early morning have totally torqued and broken our trusty tent. Michael took one look at it and commented on how it must be our turn. Over the years we have seen this sort of thing happen many times to others.
Now we have to figure out what to do. Rent a tent? Go buy a new tent? Thankfully all of our inventory was still in the bins. If we had set up the night before we would have been in a real pickle (basically we would have been screwed!). We find out how much it is to rent a tent...ouch. We look for a BJ's or Costco. We finally find out that we can move locations and set up in a barn and we won't need a tent. So at 9:30am we are frantically loading up the car to move our stuff to a different location and then we have to unload the car all before "5 minutes ago" because our car has to get off the fairgrounds because the show is about to open.
We are working like clockwork. We are laughing and moving at the speed of TERRA. We unload the car, get it moved off the grounds, and then we are left to set up our space. We were hustling. We were open for business with lights on and cash box ready at around 1pm. We went back to our old space and left a sign letting all our customers from our mailing know where we were. A big sigh of relief, pats on the back, running into all sorts of other vendors who have to comment on the fact "oh, that was you" and we are standing around twiddling our thumbs because there aren't very many customers walking around. All of our neighbors are talking about how well we handled the situation and in what good spirits we are in. Well sure, shit happens and just like our good friend Lance has advised us we duck and roll.
If we hadn't hit traffic and construction, if our tent hadn't mangled itself into a twisted piece of art, if someone hadn't have moved out of the barn to somewhere else making their old space open we wouldn't have ended up across from Helen. She 'made' our show financially and emotionally.
Is it all coincidence or is it fate?
What do you think?