Home Again

It sure is great to be back home again!  After the last post, I went in to Washington and outprocessed from the State Department.  I am officially unemployed again.  The whole procedure at State was quick and efficient.  Afterwards, I went over to my favorite place in DC, the National Gallery of Art, to see what they had on exhibit.  One show caught my eye: a small Philip Guston retrospective, which was very interesting.  He's not my favorite artist, but he's a guy who reinvented himself and his art in a major way at least twice, which was (is) very inspiring and encouraging.  

The trip from Washington to Asheville was pretty uneventful - I got delayed, but what else is new?  Had a very interesting woman sitting next to me on the flight to Charlotte: she's a British research scientist who morphed into a marketing consultant a decade ago.  Evidently research scientists and artists have much the same economics: they're constantly trying to find funding for their projects.  If there's no funding (or the funding comes with too many strings attached), then they do something else.  Like becoming marketing consultants.  Or project managers in Baghdad.

I have to give a big thumbs-up to my hotel in Washington.  I stayed at the Best Western Dulles Airport.  It was a pretty typical mid-grade hotel, but it was very clean, the breakfast bar was a notch above normal, and the staff was exceptionally helpful.  And the price was lower than just about anybody else in the area.  I'll definitely stay there again.

It was wonderful to finally land in Asheville shortly before midnight and walk out to find Janis waiting for me.  Nothing like a big welcome home!  And I got another one from the dogs when we got back to the house.  They jumped all over me.  Janis says she's just chopped liver to them now that I'm back.  

We've gotten back into the groove pretty quickly.  It's my job to walk the dogs, and now that the weather has warmed up, we're doing it twice a day.  I've been taking care of some more screening items for the Corps of Engineers, trying to wrap the remaining items up.  Last night we went down to the Art 4 Food event that our friend Genie Maples put on - a fundraiser for the Manna Food Bank.  There was a HUGE crowd there, much bigger than I expected.  Many were my artist friends from around town and it was great to see all of them again.  I have to admit, my memory is getting shot to hell (I blame it on advancing age ... why not?) and there was more than one occasion when somebody walked up and we had a great time talking but I couldn't recall their name to save my soul.  I remembered the person, just not their tag.

We're off on a road trip today.  It's supposed to be a beautiful day, so we're going to get outa town and play.  And the boss just came in and told me to get my butt in gear.  So I'm off.  I've got some pictures to share and a few random observations, but they'll wait til next time.