Fun Saturday. While Amy attended to some school tasks I went into town to meet up with mach5 from MeFi at Air and Space. But first, lunch at Ben’s Chili Bowl, my first time. (Yeah, I’ve lived around here for 10 years and never gone to Ben’s. That oversight has now been rectified.) Lunch: chili half smoke with chips and iced tea, eaten in front of a sign stating that only Bill Cosby and President Obama (plus family) eat for free.

En route to the National Mall I ran into the Cherry Blossom Festival, which I’d forgotten was still scheduled for this weekend — peak bloom having occurred weeks earlier. I had to wait a bit for the parade to pass by before I could cross Constitution Ave NW.

Down in the Air and Space Museum we looked at Skylab and spacesuits:

…and noticed that the Hughes H-1 seems to be leaking oil:

After the museum I bid farewell to Mach5 and Metro’d up to College Park (overshooting to Greenbelt, oops) to see a Craigslister about a cheap secondhand Sony NEX3 camera, as I’d been feeling like upgrading from point-and-shoot to a simple small-body mirrorless DSLR.

We ended the day at Legal Sea Foods in Tysons, where I indulged myself in a dozen mixed Northeast Coast oysters.

And later that evening I put the NEX3 and its bundled 18-55mm lens kit through their rounds with some indoor depth-of-field feline photos:

A worthy camera for the price, which should serve quite well for Shuttle Spotting when the NASA Shuttle Carrier flies over DC with Discovery on Tuesday. Here are more photos from the weekend, plus NEX3 test photos.