June 1, 2009 At Bill's

OK, so I'm bending the rules a little. Can't help it. Choosing one view was too difficult.

Here's the view from my front window that faces southwest. The gold dome sits above a Starbuck's on the first floor. That's a sports bar spreading out on the sidewalk behind the double-parked car. The Argentine Admiralty is to the left of the flowers. The building in the distance on the left is the Department of Justice.

Here's the view from my front window that faces northeast. That tall building on the left is the home of the Department of Justice's Anti-Trust Division. Now I'll tell you a secret. Until this afternoon, I really didn't know what was there. I knew the building had been used by the Obama transition team -- boy you should've seen the security and closed streets around the place from November to January -- but in the nearly 10 years I've lived here I'd never really wondered until today what was in there. But I had to caption this picture for Facebook and I needed to say what it was, so I walked over there a little while ago and asked the parking garage guard what was inside and he refused to tell me! He said he was authorized to say only that the building is named, "Liberty Square." Well, harrumph! I walked around to the other side and found a nice young lady in a jogging outfit coming out the door and I asked her and she gave me the full scoop. Department of Justice. Nice. I think our obsession with security is getting out of hand.

The white stone building in the distance on the right is the District Court of Appeals now, but it's been around long enough to have a more interesting history. It was the District of Columbia courthouse where the assassins of McKinley and Garfield were tried.

And the red-brick building with the peaked roof between them used to be Daniel Webster's law office (there's a plaque on the wall to prove it) but now it's a Subway Sandwich Shop.

OK, now we're on the roof. I just couldn't stop taking pictures. There's the National Archives, home of the Declaration and the Constitution, and behind it is the Washington Monument. See the tree line to the right of the Washington Monument? At night you can see the Lee-Custis mansion at Arlington Cemetery right up there, with Kennedy's eternal flame flickering just below it.

There's the Starbuck's gold dome again, with the Navy Memorial behind the trees, the Old Post Office tower to the right of center, and the Washington Monument to the left of center.

And there's the building that's on the $50 bill.