Brian Ulmer's Web Site

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Sunday afternoon, I ventured up to Winterbrook Farm in Maryland with Jason, Melissa, Tommy, and Meghan for some corn maze fun. Last time I did this it was in the dark, which made it more challenging. It also degenerated into trying to sneak around and hide from or scare people pretty quickly. We were feeling a little more serious at noon on a Sunday. Winterbrook has one of the largest mazes around and they give you a map with numbered points on it. The intent is that you navigate through the maze from point to point until you find them all. Once you get to a point, there’s a numbered post with a special paper hole punch you use to punch the number on your map. We worked our way through the maze and were able to find all the points fairly quickly. Once we emerged from the corn, it was time to try out the apple and pumpkin cannons. Both are compressed air powered and targets of various types are provided. Metal barrels, a couple fake boats, an old car. Tommy, Melissa, and Jason took their turns shooting stuff and then we headed home, stopping off to buy pumpkins for carving on the way back to DC. Lots more pictures here.

The Marine Corp Marathon, going on this morning, passes right under my window. I went out to try to find my friend Mike and got a couple extremely bad pictures. There’s also a moron across the street who backed his car up to the road and has been playing “Eye of the Tiger” at top volume on loop for an hour now. Oh wait, he’s actually alternating with “Born to Run” so two songs. That’s much better… :-/ Click this link for a few more photos.

Lauren, Frank, and Ella are back in town this week for vacation and I met up with them last night. Ella spent most of the time sleeping but agreed to take a couple pictures. She’s gotten bigger!

On this morning’s Meet the Press, Colin Powell summed up his impression of the presidential campaign thus far and the importance of the choice we’re making this year before endorsing Barack Obama. It is throughly refreshing to hear Powell’s practical analysis of the facts, seemingly independent of partisanship. Then again, maybe he’s looking for some work…

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22425001/vp/27265490#27265490

Today, I went down to the National Mall to meet up with my dad who was up from Richmond with a tour group visiting the National Gallery of Art. There were lots of people out walking, running, playing frisbee and kickball, and doing what tourists do best. I very nice fall day in DC.

Last night, I went to see Ray Lamontagne at the Music Center at Strathmore. This is a really nice venue that looks similar to an opera hall and has great acoustics. Our seats were in a box fairly close to the stage for a somewhat elevated but excellent view. Leona Naess, who I’d never heard before, opened for him and was very good. After an intermission and wine break, we returned to our seats and Ray came on to play a long set with two encores. His new album was actually just released yesterday and he played a mix of new songs and older stuff. It all sounded fantastic and I throughly enjoyed it.

This year’s 4th of July plan was to rent canoes and kayaks and watch the DC fireworks from the Potomac River. Unfortunately, a couple thunderstorms rolled through and we ended up taking the party inside. Everyone had rain checks to use and a group of us met up to do a little kayaking on a beautiful Sunday afternoon. We started from Jack’s Boathouse in Georgetown, which is right under the Key Bridge. We headed across to the Virginia side, worked our way around Roosevelt Island, and then returned along the Georgetown side. It was a leisurely voyage and we had plenty of time to stop and see how much seaweed we could pile on each other’s boats. Lots more photos here.

On the way to lunch, we ran across this rolling advertisement. This guy was hitting on the Cheesecake Factory staff…

I love the stream of pictures on all the news sites of Wall Street traders looking on as the Dow drops another 600 points. Here’s my version:

UPDATE: After making this, I watched my Tivo’ed Colbert Report from the night before and he did his own bit on these stock broker pictures. It’s the first segment after the intro.