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Carina sent me an email this afternoon saying that she'd pick twins up from latchkey. Normally, that's my job, since Carina drops them off in the mornings. Pleased with the unexpected windfall, I stayed a little late at work to tidy up a few loose ends. When I got home, around 10 after six, no one was home. I heated up some left overs from the fridge and began to eat them. Carina and the twins walked in some minutes later: Carina had come home and fallen asleep before going to get the kids, making her late to collect them. Carina expressed a strong desire for Mexican food. Having just eaten I politely declined. Tyler was chomping at the bit to go to her friends' house around the corner. So Tayler and Carina went out to dinner, Tyler went off to play after agreeing to come home within the hour to eat dinner, and I set out to the back yard to mow the lawn.

It took me a lot longer to mow than I expected. When I came in, I was surprised at how late it was. I was concerned by the fact that no one was in the house. I assumed that Tyler had lost track of time and forgot to come home. That's when I saw that the answering machine was blinking, indicating new messages. The messages were from Tyler's friends' mother, asking us to call her as soon as possible. That's never a good thing. She didn't sound frantic, though, so I couldn't discern the severity of her call. Was Tyler acting out? Had she done something inappropriate? Was there an injury? Was Tyler being asked to stay for dinner?

Unable to contact me at home, she finally called Carina, who in turn called the house and left a message. Tyler had, indeed, hurt herself. When I finally spoke to the friends' father, he informed me that Tyler had fallen and "split her knee". He described it as not too bad, but it would probably need stitches. Thankfully, they cleaned and dressed the wound before Carina got there. At this point, Tayler burst into the house. Carina had sent her home to tell me what was happening.

I told Carina to take Tyler to the hospital, and I would stay at home with Tayler. There was little sense in all of us sitting in the waiting room, and Tayler doesn't handle trauma situations very well. In hindsight, I realized I should have driven Carina there, so that she wouldn't need to unload Tyler all by herself. Tayler and I played an uneasy game of Scrabble together, waiting for a status report. About 30 minutes later, Tyler called me using Carina's cell phone, and asked me to come wait with her so that Carina could come home. Unfortunately, I am unable to sign medical forms for the kids, so this would not have worked. Thankfully, my dad was home and agreed to watch Tayler while I went to the E.R. Tayler was less than thrilled with this arrangement.

E.R. waiting rooms are always fascinating places, even though I've been in them far too often these last couple of years. The people you see, and the stuff they do, could fill volumes. We waited. And waited. And waited. After what felt like an eternity, I suggested that one of us go home to relieve my dad. Carina confirmed with the front desk that all the paperwork was done, so she was free to leave me with Tyler. She left, and we waited. And waited. Some time after 10:30 we were escorted from the waiting room to the examination room. X-Rays were taken, and then more waiting followed. Tyler was in good spirits throughout most of this. She was alert, witty, and extremely patient. Around 11:30 she started to get really tired and cranky. The stitches were administered right around midnight.

Tyler, a very tough kid, does not handle stitches well. Even though this was her second set, she got really agitated. I comforted her as best I could, wrapping her in my arms and speaking soft words of encouragement to her. After every stitch Tyler said "Inspection?" She would then lean forward and review the stitch. She had no trouble staring at the gaping wound, or the work-in-progress repairs, but she simply could not handle the actual movement of the nylon thread through her skin.

This set of stitches is just below Tyler's right knee. Her previous stitches are just abover her left ankle. Six hours and ten stitches later, we came home. The trip was not without utility, though: we learned some very valuable information. First, Mondays are the E.R.'s busy night. So if you're ever going to need to visit the E.R., wait until Tuesday. Second, the E.R. wing to which we were assigned was the "fast wing". Never, ever allow yourself to be assigned to one of the slower wings.

We ran into Duffy while eating ice cream one afternoon prior to our trip. We told him of our plans, and the major sites we hoped to see. Duffy, ever the comedian, said "Don't forget the Mint! You can ask for free samples!" The twins laughed very hard at this, and the Mint became fixed in Tyler's mind as a mandatory component of our trip.

Tuesday morning I woke extra early in order to get in line for the Bureau of Engraving and Printing to obtain tickets for admission to the tour. When the alarm went off at 5:30 AM Tyler, lying in the bed next to me, exclaimed "Stupid!" She was clearly dreaming, but I took her outburst as prophetic: who would really get in line by 6 AM for this thing? I snoozed for a bit, before finally showering and then riding the metro. On my way across the Mall I saw that the line for tickets to the Washington Monument was already staggeringly long. I arrived at the Bureau right around 7 AM. I stopped counting the people in line when I reached 100. I simply took my position at the end, and hunkered down to wait.

By 7:45, there were probably three hundred people in line. The Bureau only dispenses about 600 tickets per day, and most of the folks in line were collecting tickets for their families, just like me. Around ten till someone came out to tally up how many tickets each person wanted. About twenty people behind me he announced "Okay, that's it. No more tickets left. The rest of you need to come back tomorrow." The line suddenly truncated, and a large crowd slowly dispersed. For the next 40 minutes, people continued to trickle toward the line, only to be turned away.

I got tickets for the 10:15 tour, and then immediately felt a bit lost. I had nothing to do until the tour started! It would have been foolish to spend the time and the $1.35 to take the metro back to the hotel. None of the Smithsonian buildings were open. I wandered about, got coffee and a bagel from a cafe nowhere close to the Mall, and then strolled back. I still had another 40 minutes to waste, so I simply sat and waited at the entrance to the Bureau. Carina and the twins finally arrived, and we went in to the tour.

Having worked in a commercial printing facility for a number of years, the operation that I saw wasn't entirely fascinating. Nor did I see anything that really justified the strict prohibition against any photography inside the building. The process of Intaglio printing was new to me, but the other aspects of printing the currency was largely just offset printing. Tyler, however, was engrossed in the process. The tour was very obviously one of the high points of the trip for her, and I'm glad we made the time to do it. Tayler, too, enjoyed the tour. She's often asked questions like "what's the largest bill ever made?" The tour guide cheerfully announced that bills larger than $100 are no longer printed, and haven't been in circulation in decades. The only way to acquire them now is through collectors.

After that, we stuffed ourselves into the van and headed home. Without a doubt, this was the best family trip we've ever taken. The kids were positively delightful: very little fighting or bickering, only a little bit of whining, and they were genuinely interested in the sites we saw. Tyler purchased a book of famous speeches at Arlington National Cemetery in order to learn more about both John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King. Tayler asked a lot of thoughtful questions that merit better explanations than I was able to extemporaneously provide, and I'm looking forward to doing some research with her to help us both get answers.

The drive home was blissfully uneventful.

We spent the day at the Smithsonian museums today. We took a quick walk through the castle before moving on to Air and Space. The girls were impressed by the size of the rockets, and showed polite interest as I explained the lunar landings, the Apollo-Soyuz coupling, and the Viking Mars lander. We looked inside Skylab, learned that the surface temperature of Venus is 900 degrees Fahrenheit, the Spirit of Saint Louis completed its trans-Atlantic flight in 30 hours, and that the first balloon trip around the world reached speeds over 150 miles per hour. We skipped past most of the military exhibits, and only glossed over the displays on telescopes and deep space exploration; but we still spent quite a lot of time here.

Next we stopped by the National Archives, as I hoped to show the kids the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence. The line was too long, and the wind too blustery, so we moved on to Natural History. The girls really enjoyed looking at the fossils, and the taxidermy displays, though they quickly lost interest as their tummies started growling. We saw maybe 1/5 of everything Natural History has to offer before calling it a day.

Of particular disappointment to all of us was the absence of Uncle Beasley. As a young boy, my parents read to me The Enormous Egg before we went to D.C. for the first time. On the lawn outside of the Natural History museum was a large statue of a Triceratops, on which kids could climb. This triceratops was named Uncle Beasley. Sliding down Uncle Beasley's tail was always one of the highlights of any trip to D.C.

I read The Enormous Egg to the twins some years ago, and have been telling them about my experiences with Uncle Beasley ever since. We were all really hoping to see the famous triceratops. Last I knew, the statue had been moved indoors and climbing had long been forbidden. Alas, he's been decommissioned (or moved to the zoo, according to one report). All that's available for viewing are triceratops skeletons, or the large skull outside at the Constitution Ave. entrance. Needless to say we were all extremely disappointed: the kids because the hype of my story didn't meet reality, and me because a favorite childhood memory will forever be just that, a memory.

Update: I checked with the information desk at the zoo, and they confirmed that the old Uncle Beasley statue is indeed on their premises, but it is unfortunately not open for public viewing. I seriously considered offering a bribe just to be able to take a single photo, but ultimately opted against this. Explaining the concept of bribery, or why I chose to engage in it, was not something I wanted to do on this vacation.

For spring break, Carina and I took the twins to Washington, D.C. We thought it would be a good opportunity to help the kids learn a bit about the enormity of the U.S. government (they both sometimes still mistakenly think that "the government" is one person!). The drive to D.C. was easy, and was without a doubt one of the best road trips we've had with the twins to date: no fighting, no whining, no bickering. We made good time, and checked into our hotel around 7:30 PM. The first real problem of the trip greeted us when we got into our room: only a single king-sized bed. It turns out that the hotel was overbooked, and were unable to give us a room with two twin beds. We could either move to a different hotel, or roll in a collapsible bed. We opted for the latter.

Saturday morning we connected with my friend Chris, who has lived in D.C. for the last 13 years. The five of us set out to see the major sites, with Chris acting as tour guide. The weather fluctuated between "not too bad" and "downright cold", but we made the best of it. We started with the White House, the Washington Monument, the Lincoln Memorial and then the Vietnam Wall. Chris pointed out to me that The Onion was offering a printed newspaper in D.C.:

We had lunch at Zorba's Cafe>:

and dinner at Taj Mahal, where Carina and I ordered extremely spicy vindaloo.

The kids handled the day fairly well. They each felt worn down and out of energy at least once, and started to whine and fuss. Thankfully, these moments passed pretty quickly. I must say that this is the best start to any trip we've ever had. We've all enjoyed seeing the buildings, and Chris' explanations of the history of the city have been wonderful. We stopped for a photo in front of the building in which Chris works:

When I came to D.C. as a young boy with my family many years ago, we took one of the bus tours of the city. As we approached the Capitol Building, the announcer told us about the statue atop the dome of the building. The speaker was the usual poor quality for these types of tours, and dad and I could not understand much of what was said. We heard the statue introduced as "Lady Frieda", and we both thought it was a little odd that the statue would have a proper name.


The statue is actually "Lady Freedom". We didn't learn this until we asked someone -- possibly the tour guide -- for more information about Lady Freida. Everyone within earshot laughed pretty hard, and dad and I laugh to this day about the story.

Last night we celebrated Passover with Carina's folks, and her uncle Tim. This was my first Seder, and it was a very interesting experience. Tim did a great job explaining everything, and answering all of my questions. I've never really done much with respect to Jewish holidays, so it was a very educational evening.

On the way home, Tayler started asking me about Habari. Both of the girls have heard me speaking of it to Carina in weeks past, but neither showed much interest. Saturday, though, Tayler learned I was working on my April Fool's Joke, and became very curious about Habari; so her questions last night didn't really take me by surprise.

Tayler was interested to know why I was working on Habari. I explained that when I first started using WordPress, there was a very vibrant community of people working together to solve problems. It was an exciting time, and there was a lot of creativity being shared and encouraged. I really liked that. As time went on, I explained, the guy in charge of WordPress started a company, and he became less and less interested in other people's ideas. He only seemed to like the ideas he came up with. So, Chris, Rich, Owen and I all agreed to start working on Habari, so that we could get back to that spirit of collaboration and openness.

Tayler then asked "Is Habari better than WordPress?" I answered honestly: not yet, because it's so new, and WordPress has been around for a couple of years. But I'm confident that Habari will get better for several reasons. First, the way we're making Habari is -- we think -- more flexible than the way WordPress was built. Time will tell whether we're right. Second, we think we're much more accommodating of other people's ideas: we want people to participate and share their ideas, and we know that we're not the only ones with good ideas.

At this point, Tayler interrupted to say "I don't think the guy in charge of WordPress is very creative." This is such a typical example of the twins' thought process: she was really asking a question, but stated it in a declarative manner. I gently rebuked her: No, I don't think that at all. I don't know enough about the guy to know whether he's creative or not. He has some good ideas, but I just don't agree with the way he operates.

I continued to explain that WordPress, because it's being partly driven by a company now, is less open to new participants and their potential contributions. With Habari, we genuinely want people to share their ideas with us, and we ultimately want to allow those people to add their new ideas on their own, without requiring us to do it for them. I detailed briefly the way in which our committer base has grown in the last couple of months, because people with good ideas have been invited to help us work directly on the code. Tyler joined in the conversation at this point, and exclaimed that she wanted to help with Habari! After a moment's pause she hung her head and said sadly "But I'm too little." I had to stifle a giggle: she was so cute. "It's not that you're too little, Tyler. It's just that you don't know how to program in PHP!"

The discussion continued on for quite some time, reaching the ultimate conclusion that both the girls want to use Habari instead of WordPress. I'm delighted that they're so interested in my hobby, and it really reinvigorates me to have a couple of people close to me really supporting my efforts.