Saturday

Today it was sunny and warm. Not that I noticed at noon when we headed out for the day. It was a little windy at the time, and it did not seem to be such a bad idea to wear my jacket out. We took the metro just south of the Capital to visit the Library of Congress.* We navigated two of the four stone buildings trying to, one, get Sunshine an official researcher's card, and two, find the periodical room where the nineteen seventies Stars and Stripes magazine microforms were located. All of this was more difficult than you might imagine if you've never been inside the Library of Congress. Since this library must, by definition, house almost everything, it has whole rooms of stuff most libraries have mere shelves for. These are spread across an occasionally subterranean tangle of cinder block hallways that look vaguely unfinished owing to the open ducts, pipes, and electrical works running through them. It was also hot. At two we ate a sleazy lunch at the Union Station food court, a past experience I recalled more fondly than I should've. Then we spent a few hours at the National Zoo,* which was pretty neat considering its size and cost. The Zoo is located in one small arm of Woodly Park, a forested crevasse cut into northwest DC. Like most Smithsonian attractions, it's free. Even in the winter there was a lot to see, though golden tamarins and otters were inside for the season. Why? In my jacket I was hellishly hot today (and zoo drink machines cost a buck-fifty). The high point: overhearing a woman talking about the time the emu somehow escaped and turned up in her backyard. "That's him," she began, "that guy sort of startled me one morning." [Cavin]