The Capitol (at Night!)

Backdated from more than a week later...I'm a bad person (again).

This evening, when I arrived home from work, I found the first half of dinner on the table and the other half being constructed in the kitchen by J, who can cook gourmet-quality when he sets his mind to it.  We ate early, because he had been advised to see the Capitol at night.  So we walked up 4th and took a right at the mall.  Unlike yesterday, I had the good sense to bring my camera:

What most people don't know is that there are two reflecting pools - the famous one that runs from the Lincoln Memorial east, and then this one, between the Capitol and the rest of the Mall.  On the other side of the pool is a statue of U.S. Grant (probably the only memorial he's got, unless you count Grant's Tomb).  From this far away you get a lot of traffic lights - not a terribly good photo.  We ventured closer, and I tried again.

There, that's better.  Interestingly, the dome is the only part of the Capitol that gets floodlit.  I suppose I had expected it to be more like the White House, which is almost entirely illuminated:

(This is from March - I haven't actually been past the White House at night since I moved here.  Perhaps I should rectify that.)

Today, I should note, was the first day Congress was in session since the midterm elections.  As we hung out and looked around (I insisted on inspecting this fountain because I love water feature's - J doesn't), we heard sirens and looked to the north - left - and saw a cavalcade of police cars with a black van in their midst.  I wondered aloud if it were a cabinet official coming from testifying to Congress, but J thought it was too grand for a secretary, and besides, would they be testifying over the dinner hour?  It was big enough for the president, he opined.  Then I remembered that the vice president is the president of the Senate, and noted that the flag on the Senate - which indicates whether it's in session - had been taken down.  It would make perfect sense for a cavalcade to speed the vice president from the Senate to the north-west, which is where he lives (the Naval Observatory is in the northwest part of town).  So perhaps that was him.  My first brush with Washington celebrity!

We talked and observed a while longer, but then it got colder - it had been cold to start, but the wind picked up - so we walked home.  J was to leave tomorrow - he would fly out while I was at work.  Fortunately for both of us, our parting wouldn't be as unhappy as when I left Chicago (we were both torn up for days), because over the few days we've been together we've sorted a lot of things out in the best possible way.

Anyhow, the Capitol's always been neat - now it just has another layer of significance for me, which can be added to all the other layers of significance others have attached to it.  If you could see them all, the Capitol would start to look more like an onion than a legislature.  This might be awkward - who wants to take orders from an onion?