Washington, D.C.
In August 1995, I was in Orlando, Florida for the American Statistical Association conference. I have an email penpal, Elizabeth, who lives outside of Columbia, Maryland. We had been sending email to each other for about a year and a half, and this was the first time we met in person. We've gotten together twice since then.

The two of us spent a day in Washington D.C. to visit the sites. It was a really hot and humid day, but I enjoyed it anyway.

When I was at Walt Disney World, we got to look at some of the work they do in the nursery. They shape trees inside wire mesh frames to create a variety of Disney characters, and take up to seven years to finish. Here are three of them:

This is a samurai warrior. The size of the man next to it shows you how large they really are:

 

Mickey Mouse:

 

A couple of giraffes and an elephant:

Enough Disney. Now on to Washington, D.C.

I'm standing in front of the White House, 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. This is the north side, which some crazy pilot mistook for a landing strip and a gunman thought was a shooting range...

 

This is another picture, from the other side of the street:

 

The south side is where you will see the beautiful gardens:

 

I got on a tour of the White House (it's worth the wait in line!) and got this picture of the front driveway area where heads of state arrive at the main entrance:

 

In front of the Treasury Building, you will see a statue of Alexander Hamilton:

 

This is the Washington Monument, before the current restoration:

 

The two of us also went inside the Capital Building. This was taken from the east side:

 

The view from the Capital Building shows the entire Mall area. This is looking west towards the White House:

 

Liz and I also checked out a couple of the Smithsonian museums. This is a (bad) picture of the infamous Hope Diamond. It's a solid blue diamond weighing about 45 karats. Unfortunately, the flash went off accidentally.

 

This is the 'Castle', which is the original Smithsonian building:

 

This is a picture (slightly blurry) of Liz inside the Natural History museum: