ixnay on the okesjay.
5 miles! Whoo hoo! Although I'm just a wee bit out of practice, having not gone running for a week.
Most of today was spent not doing anything.
I got up and went for a run. My first since hitting up the East Coast. The Mayflower has a Jogging Map with 2-mile, 3-mile, and 5-mile routes around the Mall, and I decided to go for the 5-mile route. Well, ambitious is good, if not always successful.
I walked a lot. Okay? I did. So there. It was hot and amazingly humid and I'm really, really out of practice.
We had breakfast at the hotel and then decided to walk around some.
We ended up at the National Geographic Museum, which was pretty good--lots of hands-on exhibits for kids (or people who just like touching stuff). Their big exhibit was on Cats! (sponsored by Friskies), which had info on all types of cats, from the domesticated variety to sabre-tooth tigers.
Eventually Nevin and Peter came to pick us up, and we headed back out to Laurel, where the Cryptologic Museum is located. The Cryptologic Museum is the Museum of the National Security Agency--again, not doing too well in the secrecy arena, guys--which has a lot of cool stuff, including a working Enigma machine. Peter, who knows lots about the history of cryptology and spy stuff (mostly because he'd gone through the museum before, with a docent who told him most of it), told us everything he could remember.
Fun Fact: George Washington's Inaugural Sword is in this museum.
I could have bought a t-shirt with the NSA logo on it at the Gift Shoppe, but I held strong. If they'd had a Secret Decoder Ring--is that a gimme for the Cryptologic Museum or what--I'd have bought it in a heartbeat.
We also drove past the NSA (or, since the sign was partially obscured by bushes, the National Security Foliage), which looked fairly nondescript. Actually, one of the buildings was a big cement monstrosity, so I opined it had been built by the Soviets during the 60s--there are buildings exactly like it all over Eastern Europe.
(Given the number of signs warning people not to take any pictures--and the plethora of armed guards about--I have no pictures of this momentous visit. Trust me: big, boring buildings, all of which reflected out so that we couldn't see in. Not that we could get close enough to see in.)
The NSA is the one agency of the Big Three that I didn't think about joining when I was at Stanford. I signed up for an FBI interview but then forgot to go (I hope they're not still looking for me, 'cause I've done a really bad job of hiding). And I was all set to take my CIA entrance exam when I got the job at Apple and decided to do that instead.
The woman to whom I spoke when I called saying I regretfully declined to take their exam thanked me for letting her know. Like they couldn't find out. Oh wait--that'd be domestic; they'd have to go call the guys at the FBI to find out what happened to me, and the guys at the FBI were already pissed at me, so...
We went back to Peter's house, played a game of Rage (noticing a pattern?), then had dinner at Pasta Plus, which sounds like a dopey fast-food joint but was a really good Italian restaurant. Unfortunately, we had to bolt our food, because Nevin was going to drive us back to D.C. before then returning the car to BWI Airport in Baltimore and getting on a plane for Chicago.
We don't actually know if he made it. I hope he did.
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Copyright 1998 Diane Patterson
Send comments and questions to diane@spies.com