Sneex Peak

My friend Mary and I usually take a walk whenever we get together, but it's been a few weeks since I've seen her, and it's been so hot that I suggested doing something else today. What that might be, I had no idea, but fortunately, Mary was more resourceful than I. How about the Inventors Hall of Fame? she texted, with a link. 

Once I clicked? I was in! 

The IHF is in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office complex located just west of Old Town Alexandria. Street parking was easy to find, and once we turned onto Dulaney Street, we followed the colorful trademark seals on the sidewalk to the Madison Building. Security guards checked our IDs on the front steps and ushered us through the huge revolving door into an atrium lined with banners showing trademarked items such as Haas avocados and Honeycrisp apples, and small display cases with miniature prototypes of familiar, patented items from history, like a horse-drawn fire truck and a railroad light. 

We were a little confused as to where the actual museum was, but as Mary pushed through the door to the gift shop, we were greeted by a friendly docent. "You actually have the museum to yourselves," she told us. "Let me give you an overview and show you around a little."

She led us into the gallery space and explained how the exhibits were arranged. "On this wall you'll see information about the most recent inductees," she pointed. "Like Sara Blakely. She's the billionaire who invented Spanx!" 

"And they are actually installing the newest exhibit down there," she said, waving to the far end of the room. "It's the dress she wore to the gala when she was inducted."

We nodded appreciatively, and she left us to explore the museum. It was very fun! We started by watching a movie about Esther Takeuchi, who invented a compact lithium battery that can last for up to 10 years in implantable defibrillators. Then we sat in the vintage Mustang on display and tried to guess six trademarked products from clues on the walls. Next, we took a quiz on trademarked mascots in advertising, which we aced, followed by another on the color palette of familiar logos, which we did not ace. 

We were good at spotting the knockoffs in a display with authentic items and their counterfeit counterparts, and had just come back into the main gallery when the same docent hailed us again. "They just finished the display," she said. "You will literally be the first visitors to ever see it!"

We hurried down to where a couple of women were dusting off their hands with satisfaction. "Tell them about the dress," the docent asked one of them. "It has the designs of some of her patented items on it," she told us.

"This was her first patent," the young woman explained, pointing to where the mannequin's right hand rested near the hip. "Sara wanted it in a prominent place. And the shoes are down here near the hem. She knew what she wanted when we talked about the design."

"Wait, you're the designer?" I asked in surprise.

"Yes, ma'am," she answered, nodding humbly.

"What!" I laughed. "We get to be the first ones to see the exhibit AND meet the designer! How are we so lucky? And where is the press? This should be a VIP experience!"

300 Pins a Week

I received more than a few spontaneous hugs and countless high-fives and fist bumps this morning as my bowling league season commenced. It was fun to catch up with the ladies as we cheered for each other across all ten lanes, hooting up a 7-10 pickup here and applauding a nice turkey there. Even though I personally was more than a little rusty, I eked out my average, in an inconsistent sort of way. 

And one other thing was clear-- I'm not the rookie anymore.

Here's Looking at You, Kid

"She's the most skeptical baby in the world!" Pebbles' dad told us when we finally met her yesterday. "All she does is give you the side-eye whenever you change her, feed her, talk to her, whatever."

"She may come by that honestly," I laughed, because he is the questioning, analytical type himself.

And, sure enough, she did side-eye me with raised eyebrows as I cooed and rocked her, but you know who she looked right at? Heidi! 

No one can resist those big blue eyes, not even the most skeptical baby in the world.

My Next Retirement Project

I'm going to try to eat every dish on The Washington Post's list of the "40 most essential dishes" of the D.C. area. 

So far? I've had five, which puts me in the top 24 percent of readers who've used the interactive checklist so far. And that does beg the question of exactly how essential these dishes are to our area, but nevertheless, I will carry on.

So, this week I'm going with low-hanging fruit: Chiko's "orangish chicken," since there is a location right down at Shirlington, and the fish tacos from Taqueria Picoso, which is also very close to home.

Of course, there are also some delivery options, but eventually I will have to venture a little further from home than usual, and isn't that really the point?

S-M-L Talk

"Are you going anywhere for the holiday next weekend?" the nail technician asked me as she cleaned up my cuticles.

"No," I answered, and then employed my favorite conversational move: "How about you?"

"No," she replied.

"Were you able to take any vacations at all this summer?" I asked, building on my first question to keep the conversation going.

"No," she said, shaking her head again. 

I was just about to give in to the not unpleasant silence when she added, "My kids finally moved to this country," she told me, "and we've been very busy getting them settled."

"That would take a lot of time," I agreed. "Do they have any children who will be in school?"

"Yes," she said. "He starts on Monday."

"In Arlington?" I clarified, because everyone else has started already. "Which school? I used to be a teacher in Arlington."

"Kenmore," she answered. "Eighth grade."

"Did he learn English before they moved?" I asked.

"No," she said. "He has a lot to catch up."

"They're really good at that at Kenmore," I assured her. "They have a lot of students who are learning English. Does he like school?"

"He loves it!" she said proudly.

"Oh, I know that kind of student," I laughed. "I bet he'll do really well."

"I hope so," she smiled, and our conversation flowed effortlessly from there.

What's Flat, Round, and Obsolete?

Besides the penny?

I recently read a recipe for a tuna tostada. Topped with seared, rare tuna, avocados, and a fresh salsa of melon and cucumber, the dish appealed to me as a quick, easy, light, and summery meal. Try as I might, however, I could not find tostada shells for sale at any of my local groceries. 

At first, I was confused because I distinctly recall buying the flat, crunchy shells all the time for all sorts of southwestern-inspired dishes. But then I took a minute to consider the last time I had made or ordered a tostada of any kind, and I realized it had been well over thirty years. 

I knew I could fry my own soft tortillas, or even just break crunchy taco shells, but even so? I mourned the loss of something I didn't even know was gone.

Board of Bulletins

"I swear half the people I went to grad school with only wanted their teaching degree so they could do bulletin boards," a teacher laughed yesterday when she saw us carrying the telltale roll of fadeless paper. "Personally?" I think they're a tedious waste of time."

"They do seem low priority when you have so much other stuff to do," I agreed. "But they are so old-school, literally, that I can't imagine ever getting rid of them."

I thought back to my own years in elementary school and those standard letters and cardboard cut-outs of presidents, Cupid, snowmen, punctuation marks, math operation symbols, shamrocks, etc. And those classic wavy borders! I do admit to a bit of a thrill when I put up the first bulletin board of my own! But the novelty quickly wore off, and by the end of my career, I had resorted to year-long displays with just a few rotating pieces. (Opening the stapler and punching it with the heel of my hand never got old, though.)

Heidi tells a funny story about a student at the special ed school where she first worked who loved to tear down papers as he went by the bulletin board next to his classroom. "Put his work on there!" suggested a behavior specialist, and that did the trick. He never bothered the board again.

I have my own story of bulletin board defiance. Years ago, when we got a new assistant principal, he walked through the hallway at preservice week and ordered all the teams to "freshen up" their bulletin boards. As team leader, this edict rubbed me the wrong way, especially coming without context from someone new to the building, so rather than take any time for the bulletin board, I put in a work order to have it removed from the wall. No board? No problem.

Of course, the guy never noticed, because he had no idea where the bulletin boards were; he was just planning to inspect the walls. A few years later, though, at the beginning of yet another school year, the administration assigned instructional assistants the task of doing the bulletin boards. "We noticed you don't have one in your area," the principal told me with concern, so we're having one installed."

By then, I was no longer team leader, and I had a great idea for our board. It was called "Advice from Dolphin," since we were the Dolphin Team, and was based on the "Advice from Nature" series of posters by Ilan Shamir, combining his poetic guidance with practical suggestions from former students. One of the maxims in his poem is, "Find your life's porpoise."

Evidently? One of mine has to do with bulletin boards.