After studying at the Sculpture Garden in downtown DC today I took a stroll out onto the vast expanse of the Mall. To my horror I found huge pieces of burnt aircraft laying all over the grass from the art museum to the Smithsonian. The charred chunks of metal were surrounded by police tape. News trucks with satellite dishes were nearby. Several cars were smashed to bits. My gosh, I thought, I didn't hear a plane crash! I stood there slack-jawed for a few moments trying to figure out what had happened. Then I noticed that instead of picking up the pieces, a crew was putting the pieces back onto the lawn. Not only that, but the news truck was from CWN - Constant World News. It was a movie under production.

After inquiry I found out the movie is about a Space Shuttle called "Patriot" that crashes - logically enough, right into the Mall between the Capitol Building and the Washington Monument (stick thingy). How plausible does that sound? A shuttle has the whole world to crash into and it just happens to plow into the front lawn of the US Capitol. Well, that's not good news for NASA's budget is it?

As if that wasn't enough excitement for the day, I saw the Dalai Lama today. I and 16,000 of my friends heard him speak at the MCI Center in DC this afternoon. This is something I had hoped I could experience during my life. Now I've seen the Pope (twice) the Dalai Lama (once) and Oral Roberts (many times). Now, if I could just see Elvis I would have a complete set.