Meet you at the Concorde!

Steve works for a big company.  You've heard of them.  For the holiday party, the company rents out the new Air and Space Museum, the Stephen F. Udvar-Hazy Center (doesn't that just roll off the tongue?).  It's big.  Very, very big.   How big is it?  Well, it's so big that when it sits around Dulles Airport, it sits AROUUUNND Dulles Airport.  Actually, it's so big, it not only contains an actual Space Shuttle and an actual Air France Concorde, it contains scads of other planes as well. It's so big that it's virtually impossible to keep warm, even on the government dime, so I got to be smug (for the second year in a row) about wearing a vintage cashmere cardigan instead of a spaghetti strap dress.  Here are some shots for scale.  No, we don't know any of these people.


That's an actual Concorde.  With a DC-8 next to it (which, by the way, is how planes should look.  THAT'S an airplane, folks).  And lots and lots of room for other stuff becuase this is just one little wing.  Hey, the airplane museum has wings!



It was large, I tells ya.

In addition to airplanes, the joint was full of food.  Many, many buffet lines.  Standard American fare (including a mashed potato bar, which I thought was the cutest thing), Indian food, Chinese food (which was to be loaded into little take out containers), all the sushi you can eat (which, it turns out, is rather a lot)...given the ethnic mix of the attendees, I think everyone was happy.  Oh, and dessert.  Lots of yummy dessert.  They had the now-required-by-federal-entertainment-law chocolate fountains, in dark, milk, white, and caramel.  Folks were a leeetle too impressed, given that you can buy them at Toys R Us.  And dude?  There was white chocolate cheesecake.  Who cares about crappy ass melted "chocolate"?  Open bar, need I say more?  The joy of wasting other people's money is that you can say "whiskey sour, please" have a few sips, ditch it, and move on to another drink.  Given the amount of food in my gullet, I could have cleared the bar and not gotten tipsy.  Oh, and glowing ice cubes.  People loooved those.  They kinda creeped me out.  "Gin and Tonic, hold the uranium, please."

Did I mention that there's a Space Shuttle in there?  I don't know which one.  One of the ones that didn't kill anybody, I suppose.  Steve does like to rant about it, dear thing.  We ran into one of his friends from work and Steve started to launch into one of his "space-based money waster" rants--a good natured one, though, because it's the holidays--and his friend kind of rolled his eyes like an indulgent teenage son and said, "Is this a Thing, like you and the UN?"  Yes.  yes it is.  But humor him or I'll kick your ass.  The cool thing is that he could snack on desserts while shooting baleful glances at it:



Here's the shot from the entry to the Hall of Failed Experiments



See the dude on his cell phone?  There was a lot of that.  They're like little navigation devices--"Meet U at the Concorde!"  Things are cool.

Speaking of cool things--Jet Pack!


Why weren't we pouring money into THAT technology, huh?  I could get the kids to school in a trice if we had jet packs.

We didn't stay very long, since we had to spring the kids from our very kind neighbors who were staying up past their bedtimes to entertain my spawn.  We essentially hit the ground eating, grazing our way around the hall.  Me, I'm a dessert gal, and I only regret that the richness of mousses and cheesecakes keeps me from eating as much as I want to.  Steve, on the other hand, was made very happy by the sushi, which came out on little baggage carousels.  It was kind of a funny scene, each conveyor belt surrounded by hawk-eyed sushi-lovers, letting the daikon and cucumber go by, waiting for that unagi or yummy yummy octopus.  Heeerrree it comes....YOINK!  Get yer tafetta ass outta my way, that's MY TUNA!

I wish I'd gotten a picture of the woman who had apparently been sentenced, by a rather cruel judge, to be the center of a table on wheels.  She was in the middle of a round table w/a hole in the center. Picture those crocheted toilet paper cozies with the doll in the center.  But in satin.   Her dress cascaded over so that the food was arranged on her dress and she could walk around offering treats.   And making it really hard for me not to walk up and say, "Uh, excuse me, but there's a bit of food on your dress."

In addition to food, there is much people watching.  I've come up with a few fashion rules that need to be stated, apparently.

1. White women look stupid in saris.  Yes, saris are beautiful, I wish Icould wear them, too.  But you look like you're dressing up for a grade school Pageant of the World.

2. If you wear a white blouse and black skirt or pants, you will look like The Help and people will hand you their empty plates.  It is your own fault.

3. Men: you have it easy.  Just wear a damn suit.  And yet, you insist on screwing it up by wearing Warner Brothers ties.  You think it makes you look fun loving.  You think it says, "I'm wearing a tie, sure, but I'm not The Man."  It makes you look like Weird Al Yankovic.  Just buy a grown-up tie.  You are 40 years old and, therefore, a grown up.

Me?  I was a fashion plate, in my matte jersey skirt and vintage cashmere cardigan I got at a thrift shop in Las Vegas.  My children have somehow made my dress shoes disappear, so I wore my slinky red boots.  And I carried a teapot as a handbag.  yes, I did.  It was cool, so shut up.  This is my one dress up event a year, now that everyone I know is married.  I go buy makeup beforehand and then try valiantly to apply it so that I don't look like I got into my mom's stash.  I've promised my imaginary friends shots of me trying a "smokey eye".  Luckily I watch America's Next Top Model, so I know how to pose. Here we have relaxed face, eyes empty;  3/4 face, and Fierce!



I couldn't get the eye quite right.  Then, halfway down our street, I realized I never put on mascara.  At all. I suck at being a girl sometimes.

Anyway, in addition to all of this, there were IMAX movies, rides in those simulator thingies, a comedy club, a dance club, several bands (including a Beatles cover band of 30something guys in wigs.  Watching them rock out to Green Day as the other band finished its set was cracking me up), and some guy relentlessly drumming.  It was...something.  Not your standard office party.