museum moonshine

As I mentioned in It’s a date!, A charged us to each plan a date for the other.
Last night was the date YBW planned.
We arrived about half an hour early and decided to wander a bit. I took a few photos (with my phone) outside the Museum of the American Indian while YBW blew up portals on Ingress.

It was just breezy enough to make the shadows of the corn on the building feel almost Halloween-y!

Our date was an event called “Museum Moonshine, Eclipse in the Garden” at the National Air and Space Museum downtown. Telescopes set up on the garden terrace to better see the supermoon eclipse. Yummies and goodies to taste. Event panels to educate and entertain.
We were totally getting our nerd on!
But I love the moon like crazy, so it was perfect for me. The event was at the air and space museum, therefore it was perfect for YBW.

Food was a little charcuterie bento box from Sona Creamery. Apparently the first creamery to actually make their cheese in DC proper. They had the absolute best goat cheese I’ve ever tasted. (Y’all, I eat a LOT of goat cheese.) It was creamy and buttery with much less of that tang you get with goat cheese. I love that tang, but this was something else entirely. There’s a wine and cheese paring class in October that I’m hoping to take. Just for fun. (And to buy some of that goat cheese.)

Drink offerings came in the form of “Bee Sting Mead” (I seriously checked how they made their mead before I tasted any because I’m allergic to bees and didn’t feel like YBW having to stab me in my thigh because I had a drink.) I was assured it was just a fun name and I would be safe. Charm City Meadworks offered us a mead spiced with a pepper I can’t remember the name of, and a basil lemongrass mead. (YUM!) They’re Baltimore based but they do ship via Schneider’s of Capitol Hill
The mead maker and two Smithsonian Gardens employees gave a talk called “Bee There” about pollinators. They discussed Charm City’s beekeeping to create their mead as well as what the Smithsonian does to make it easier for natural pollinators to visit their gardens.
It was actually quite interesting. We need pollinators, especially bees…even though they could kill me.

A second talk was lead by Jamie Floyd of Ninkasi Brewing Company. Essentially it was about how some of the brewing company’s yeast had been to space and back aboard a model rocket. It was playful and fun with clips of model rocket “bloopers”.
The beer they make from the space traveling yeast is an imperial stout called “Ground Control”.
It was gross…but I don’t like stout.

After the talks, we went out to the garden terrace and watched the eclipse. It had been cloudy and foul since late Friday night but the breeze on Sunday began to clear the clouds away. And we were able to watch as Earth came between the sun and moon!

We weren’t able to really see any of the umbra because the clouds came back in with a vengeance. So we drove home quietly holding hands.