The Guest Column Archive 2
	Sunday, August 11th, 2002 ? Suddenly I?m in the FBI We drove back to Washington, arriving in the late afternoon.  Since we had to fly out the next day, we wanted to make the most of our time, so we drove down to the White House to check it out.  It was strange to be there.  I have seen it on t.v. a bunch of times, but to be right there looking at it in person was kinda weird.  As we walked past the front, there were tons of people taking pictures and generally being annoying.  We snapped a couple of pictures of it and decided to walk to the other end of the block.  As we were doing so, we noticed a strange man sitting on the sidewalk staring at the White House.  He was freaky looking.  He had white-blond hair and steel blue eyes and he was smoking a cigarette.  Everything about him looked creepy.  We immediately determined that he was up to no good.  We kept an eye on him for a few minutes and then he walked down the sidewalk and started staring up at the fence as if contemplating a climb.  I wanted to tackle him and hold him until the Secret Service got there, but John wouldn?t let me.  Eventually the man just left (I think I intimidated him). Monday, August 12th, 2002 ? The brawl at Arlington We got up and drove back down to mall area of Washington, D.C.  If you?ve never been there, the White House, the Capital and basically all of the important government buildings are all in a ten block area known as the mall.  We wanted to see the Smithsonian and the Lincoln Memorial.  We drove around for a while, but John couldn?t figure out where to go to find parking for the things that we really wanted to see.  At one point we ended up at Arlington National Cemetery.  There is a parking garage there, so we decided that fate had chosen our sightseeing for the day. Ever since the episode at the White House I was feeling like a defender of the country.  It shouldn?t surprise you then, that I almost got into a brawl at Arlington.  We took a tourmobile through the cemetery for a guided tour with three stops.  The first stop was at JFK?s grave.  They have a big memorial set up there for him with a rounded and angled wall that is inscribed with something (we never could read the thing because of the people around it).  Anyway, all around the cemetery there are signs that request silence and respect.  There were even more at the JFK memorial and there are also a group of signs asking you not to climb on the wall.  There were a lot of people at the memorial, and a large group of them were standing next to the wall being loud and letting their children climb all over it.  I found this extremely irritating.  A man walked up to the group and asked them politely to stop their child from climbing on the wall.  The people were rude to him and John and I stepped forward to back the man up.  Just then, the child ran right in front of me and jumped down off the wall to avoid me as I reached for him.  This settled things down and we all went our separate ways, but for that one second? Then, the icing on the cake ? at the airport we ran into the worst parent ever.  We got to the airport early and bought books to read while we waited.  While sitting in the terminal reading a book a two year old approached me, asking me what my name is.  I ignored him, hoping he would leave me alone or that his mother would come and get him when she realized that I was trying to read.  Neither happened.  The little boy continued to ask me for my name.  I told him that it was Amy and that John?s was Joe.  The mother saw all of this occurring, but didn?t seem to care.  I was annoyed so I told the little boy to go away.  Then he grabbed a gummy bear out of his pocket and put it in his mouth.  Worse yet he then tried to stick it on my leg.  I grabbed his arm and pushed him away from me.  All the while, the mother sat watching.  The gummy bear disappeared (into his mouth or on the floor, I?m not sure which), and then the boy draped himself over my legs.  This time I pushed a little harder.  The mother then took the boy across the terminal from us, but where we could still watch.  He proceeded to start pulling things out of other people?s bags and even grabbed one woman?s bottle of water and threw it on the ground.  All the while the mother ignored the carnage that her son was wreaking on the people around her.  John and I agreed that we would intentionally miss our flight and go standby on the next flight if the woman and her son were on our flight. Anyway, that was our trip to the East Coast.  It was very tiring, but we had a great time.  Next time I?m doing the driving.
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Larisa?s Travel Diary, Part One

I have decided to chronicle my vacation to the East Coast with my husband, John.  You all know John,
of course, from his ramblings elsewhere on this website.  I finally decided that it was time that my voice
was heard.  After all, my name is Granger too.  So anyway, he has often used this site as a place to rag
on me, so there will be a healthy dose of Johnny-bashing in my article.  I hope you enjoy it.

Wednesday, August 7th, 2002 ? The Best Care in the Air

I hate flying.  Really.  It?s not just that the seats are uncomfortable and the ride is bumpy, although those
things bother me too, I just don?t like to fly.  Maybe it has something to do with going 400 miles an hour
at 36,000 feet above the Earth.  It makes me really nervous.  So I tend to drink beforehand to ease the
nerves a bit.  John and I found the airport bar in Kansas City and had a few beers before we hopped on
the flight.  I was still nervous, but I have to tell you, this was the best flight I?ve ever been on.  If you ever
have a chance to fly Midwest Express, it is worth a little extra cash to do it.  Every seat is like a first class
seat.  All leather, two seats per aisle, plenty of room to move around.  They also serve a meal on every
flight ? and bake fresh chocolate chip cookies on the plane!  Except for the guy in front of us that had
gas, everything was great.

Then we get to Washington, D.C.  We rented a car and John gets behind the wheel.  John has lived in
Kansas City for the last four or five years and he still gets lost driving down to the Plaza, so just imagine
what it was like in a strange city.  We were going to Annapolis for the night, which is due east of
Washington.  Somehow John gets us on a highway heading south and we end up in Manassas before he
realizes that he?s going the wrong way.  Once finally turned around we get to Annapolis and wander
around for a half an hour looking for the hotel because, and you gotta love this, John never got directions
to the hotel before we left.  He thought we would just drive around and see it on the side of the road.  I
made him pull over and call for directions.

Thursday, August 8th, 2002 ? Drunk Driving in Dover Delaware

We spent the day walking around downtown Annapolis.  It is a wonderful city.  If you have never visited
I highly recommend spending a day there (any longer and you might get bored, though).  There are a lot
of cute little shops in the old downtown area to walk through.  Unfortunately, John was a stick in the mud
and I only got to buy a few things.  We also took a water tour of the Chesapeake Bay, which was cool.  
Now I want to live somewhere that we can buy a boat to take out.

At night we decided to take a little road trip into Delaware.  The only real reason there is to go to
Delaware is so that you can say you?ve been there, which is precisely the reason we went there.  Dover
is only about an hour or so from Annapolis, so it wasn?t too long of a trip.  It is really amazing how close
things are together on the East Coast.  In the Midwest it takes days to drive across some states, it takes
no time at all to jump from state to state on the East Coast.  Anyway, we went to Dover and had dinner
at a cool little bar on Main Street.  We might have had a couple of beers too many to drink because after
dinner we drove around town trying to find the capital to take a picture and laughing at the Amish people
we saw.

Friday, August 9th, 2002  - Visiting that Jefferson-guy?s house

John got online in the morning and copied directions from where we stayed in Annapolis to the resort we
were staying at near Roanoke, Virginia.  I was relieved that we actually had directions this time, until we
started driving.  He found the most ridiculous way to get there.  We hit every two lane highway and
backwoods town in Virginia (and believe me, there are a shitload of them).  We got a phone call from
Drew and Jess (who we were staying with that night) saying that they were lost and running late.  Since
we couldn?t check in until they got there we decided to pull off the road and do a little sightseeing.  It
looked like Monticello was close to where we were, so we tried to find it.  After John got us lost for a
little while, we eventually found Thomas Jefferson?s home.

I was really impressed with Monticello.  The house and the grounds were beautiful.  Typical of John, he
made friends with the tour guide, who happened to be an out of work law school graduate from nearby
UVA (I think John was jealous).  They didn?t once mention how Jefferson slept with his slaves and
fathered a bunch of illegitimate children.  I wondered where the tour was that would tell those stories.

Saturday, August 10th, 2002 ? Exhausted, we do nothing

There was a screw up with our room and we don?t have a bed.  I slept on the couch last night and John
slept on the floor.  I would feel bad about that, but after having to sit through all the drunken reminiscing
he did with Drew and Hoyt Friday night, I don?t feel too bad.  We are pretty tired after the drive and the
subsequent drinking, so we spend all day laying around and watching t.v. with Jess.  Drew went and
played golf with the rest of the guys, but John wussed out on it.

The reception for Hoyt?s wedding was Saturday night.  It was a lot of fun ? there was good music and
good food and John didn?t embarrass himself by dancing until most everyone had already left.  The
highlight of the night was during the toasts.  Hoyt?s wife has a 9 year old son who took the microphone
and told everyone that he was happy his mom married Hoyt because he was the best daddy he?d ever
had.  There wasn?t a dry eye in the whole place, even the guy they called Meatball that was sitting at our
table was dabbing his eye with a napkin.