Learnding is fun

I just got back from Fredericksburg with my dad. It was surprisingly fun, and I took along my video camera, so later I might edit it together once I get an iMac. Here's what we did:

We left home a little before noon on Saturday and luckily had very little traffic. We brought along a lot of CDs just in case, and got to listen to most of them. At exactly 12:45 (ish), we got to the Fredericksburg Hampton Inn. It was pretty nice, and after unloading our stuff and making sure the room was OK, we went out to the battlefield itself. We saw a great 20-minute video all about the battle and looked around the museum. Luckily, there wasn't anyone watching us while we viewed the movie, so I just taped the screen on my camera. It's kinda sorta illegal, but, you know, it's uh...well, it's too late to change that now. Next subject.

Then we looked around briefly in the immediate area before going to Chancellorsville, the battlefield which basically was the South's stepping stone before they made their way north to Gettysburg. We saw another great video made by the same people. Taped that one, too. We also got to look around in a larger museum-like area. From there, we just called it a day and went to this great Italian place for dinner. Much to my shock, with Gibbs letting Patrick Ramsey play now, the Redskins are actually much more fun to watch than they used to be. I previously hated NFL just 'cause they were so abysmal, but let's see if this style continues.

Today I got up at like 6:00 AM because the beds were really uncomfortable. I basically slacked off for 6 hours, with a shower and breakfast in there somewhere, before we went to the nearby Chatham mansion. It, too, was great fun, just to look around and see all the cool stuff there. After a short presentation about how civilians were affected during the battle, we got to see a man dressed up as 1860s Santa Claus based on Thomas Nast's drawings of the time. He was very knowledgeable and extremely interesting. Finally, we got complementary apple cider (best I've ever had) and some pretty good cookies and crackers courtesy of some of the park's volunteers. I strongly urge anyone interested in either history and/or good food to go to the park at this time next year.

Pray for snow!