Inane Chatter

Today and tonight did not go exactly like we expected.  First thing today, we mowed, weeded, mulched, and trimmed, all so we could spend the rest of the day doing whatever we wanted.  But that took three hours and we hadn’t had breakfast yet.  A little later, I was practicing and John was fixing the toilet that won’t stop running, but he somehow managed to break the tank (the bottom cracked open), so we had to get the shop vac and suck up all the water.  After that, John picked up the broken tank and sliced two of his fingers on the apparently very sharp broken porcelain.  So, since one of the cuts wouldn’t stop bleeding and we couldn’t tell how deep it was, we went to ER in Lansdowne.  About an hour and a half, a couple of band-aids, and one tetanus shot later, we were back home.  John’s fine.  But the hall bathroom is a wreck, and while we were grilling our steaks, the propane ran out.  We had another tank, so John hooked that up and then set both steaks on fire.  I’m not sure how that happened, really.  They were perfect on the inside, but pretty charred on the outside.

Summary: John broke the hall toilet, got a tetanus shot, and burned our steaks. 

I got the letter and certificate today.  I have been honorably discharged from the Navy, as of May 25, 2009 (Memorial Day, coincidentally).  I wouldn’t say I’d been worried about it, but the threat of not getting out was certainly hanging over my head.  I can see it now that’s it’s not an issue.  Now that I’ve burst into tears of relief while reading that letter.  It’s over!  Hooray for me!

I’m getting really tired of this.  I know later I’ll wish for rain, but does it have to rain every day?  It was beautiful and sunny for the first half of today, and then around 3 or 4 it started to pour (thunder and everything), and it hasn’t stopped since then (it’s 6:30 now).  Stop it!

Also, I’m still at work, which really sucks.  I’m not working any more today, but John still has stuff to do, so I’m stuck.  So I just watched the season finale of Fringe (which is coming back next season – yay!), and boy, was that a good ending.  They knew exactly how to get a visceral reaction from their entire audience.  Lost did not have that kind of ending.  On the other hand, Lost made me tear up a bit.  Just a bit. 

Hey, I think John’s done and we can go.  Hooray for the weekend!

It finally feels like summer.  I know it’s early, I know summer doesn’t actually start until June 20th (or 19th or 21st – who cares?), but as far as I’m concerned, summer starts as soon as it’s reliably 80 degrees outside.  Memorial Day helps.  Today, it was cloudy and muggy all morning, and then out of nowhere, the skies opened and it just POURED.  For about 10 minutes.  Now the clouds are thinning and the sun is trying to peek through.  That’s summer.  And I like it, except that I’m still worried about my poor plants.  This is why I don’t like doing anything with the yard.  Too much rain should not be a reason for worry!  Hmm.  Let me rephrase.  Flash floods and other water-related disasters aside, too much rain should not be a reason for me to worry about anything, let alone my yard.  I don’t want to get attached to this flower bed.  The whole point, the reason I planted the things I planted, was to keep me from having to worry about it.  No (okay, less) weeding, no fuss.  Just plants.

Anything else?  Yes.  I went to the eye doctor last night, and apparently, my eyesight is both a little better and much worse than it was last time I went (almost two years ago).  I’m a little less nearsighted than I was, but my astigmatism (which used to only affect my left eye) is much worse and affects both eyes now.  So I need whole new prescriptions.  My contacts are easy, but I’m not sure when I’m going to get around to getting new lenses for my glasses.  Maybe over the weekend.  And apparently, the whole box of left contact lenses (the foggy ones) was defective, so that was definitely not caused by my eye.  Good to know.

Is this a sign I’m getting old?  I’m starting to obsess over plants and I’m going blind.

Seriously, it’s been a busy few days.  Today was super-intense for me at work, with deadlines and micromanaging and furious typing and all that.  Not much fun.  But over, for now.

We spent Saturday in Maryland with Jess and Chuck (and her parents and Jack, Rachel, and Alex).  We met them at the Harris Crab House (on the other side of Annapolis) as a surprise for Chuck.  We were celebrating his recent promotion to Master Chief (Way to go, Chuck!  I mean, Master Chief!    ), and after a very messy (but delicious) lunch of crabs and crab legs, corn on the cob, and mussels and things, we went back to their house to hang out for a while.  We had a very low-key afternoon (John and Cody spent some time playing guitars and stuff upstairs, and the rest of us watched Alex (who’s almost two) run around the house – very entertaining), and John and I headed back home around seven or so.  It was about 9:30 when we got home.  It really only takes two hours to get home from there, but we just had to stop for ice cream.  Maggie Moo’s was mobbed, which really shouldn’t have been a surprise after dinner on the Saturday night of Memorial Weekend.  The ice cream was worth it, though.  I love Better Batter.  We got to bed late because we finally watched the last two hours of Lost.  I think we wanted to get up early Sunday morning, but I can’t remember why now.  And I don’t think we really did…maybe by nine.  Nine something.  Whatever, not important.  The important thing is that I spent FOUR HOURS weeding my flower bed Sunday afternoon.  Got it completely clear, and I really wish I had taken before and after pictures.  What a difference.  Sunday night we watched Atonement (also finally – we’ve had it since February).  I read the book a long time ago (shortly after it was published, I think – it was one of those books Mom sent me when we lived in San Diego).  It was good, but I don’t think I could say I liked it.  The movie brought it all back (which was to be expected, of course).  John…didn’t like it, I think.  I can’t decide.  I think the movie was really good, really well done, etc, but did I like it?  Maybe not.  Of course, I can’t stop thinking about it.

Anyway, Monday morning we did get up early.  Joe called us Sunday night to invite us to run a 5K with him Monday morning in Falls Church and then hang out, but while it sounded like fun, it was too last minute and I had big plans for Monday.    I got up, went to Panera to pick up breakfast, and then went to the nursery to buy my flower bed plants!  After how many weeks of planning and procrastinating?  Let’s not talk about that.  Instead, let’s talk about how it’s done!  All done!  (Except for the mulching.  Soon.)  I spent an hour or so at the nursery, bought some soil and 28 plants, and then spent another four hours (maybe a little more) digging up the whole bed, and then planting my flowers and ground cover and stuff.  A couple hours later, it started to rain, and it hasn’t stopped raining since.  More than 24 hours of almost constant rain.  I’m really hoping my plants aren’t drowning.  Especially since it’s supposed to rain tomorrow, too.  These plants need sunlight!

Anyway, I feel like I really accomplished something this weekend.  We didn’t make it to the basement (to start sorting and throwing things out), but maybe we can do that this coming weekend.

Tonight’s lesson was wonderful.  We learned a new turn (the cuddle) for swing that I had some trouble with, but it was fun anyway, and we reviewed the foxtrot (which we’re good at now), and then at the end, our instructor (Jade) had us waltz again.  We remembered everything, no prompting needed, and we were good!  John felt confident, I was comfortable, and we felt like we were actually dancing, not stumbling through some steps.  I’m not sure I can say he likes to waltz, but he certainly feels more comfortable doing that than the foxtrot.  And I love it.    This is the best present.

On top of that, it’s Friday night, and we have a three-day weekend.  It’s going to be busy, but we’ll be doing things WE want to do.  And I don’t have to worry about work for a while.  I got a lot done today (when i could concentrate), but there’s a lot more for Tuesday, and it’s possible I’ll do a little this weekend.  Not likely, but possible.  But whatever – I don’t have to do it now and I don’t have to get up early tomorrow.  We’ll need to be in the car by 11, and I want to run first, so I can’t exactly sleep in…but I won’t be awake for 6:30 tomorrow.  Oh, and I’ll need time to find something I look thin in.  I felt fat today.

Well, they are.  It’s getting a bit crowded. They’ve driven out every other thought.  Them and South Park.

Wow.  Red Bull commercials sound like drug commercials (“Red Bull gets you high!  I mean, gives you wings!”), but this other energy drink commercial (5-hour something?) just went on and on about how it doesn’t have any sugar in it (so it’s healthy?), but it’ll keep you alert for five hours.  Like…speed?  How’s the crash after 5 hours?  I hate energy drinks.

Mom and Dad drove up yesterday and spent the night with us before flying to France today.  Total whirlwind.  They got here midafternoon, I came home from work, we hung out until John came home, we went to dinner, we went to bed.  We got up, we got ready, and I drove them to the airport and they left.  And they met Colin when Will and Christina came over.  Maybe 16 hours, total?  It was a little crazy.  Fun, of course, but I’m tired.    When they come back, we’ll have three or four days, so maybe we can slow it down a little.

Oh yeah – Roxy had a seizure last night, too.  Mom and Dad slept through it, but John and I got up to help her out.  We slid a pillow under her head to keep her from cracking any more teeth.  Seemed to be effective.  She’s okay now.  It’s like clockwork – we pick her up from the kennel and she has a seizure within three days.  We picked her up Sunday evening, so Tuesday night (late) was right on time.  I don’t know if it’s because they mess up the timing of her doses (we know they do that for sure) or if the kennel is just stressful for her, but this happens every time.

One last thing – I haven’t seen a goose near my office since I started carrying the camera to work.  I did, however, see the cutest video about a duckling rescue in Washington state.  Check it out.

Three years today.  Woohoo!

I have a lot to do today (and my eyes feel normal now, thank you very much), so I may not be able to revisit this later.  I have to stay focused at work, and I have errands to run and some straightening up and cleaning to do when I get home.  My running has suffered terribly over the last week (from laziness last week, and over the weekend and the first few days of this week from lack of time), but I’ll be climbing back on the eat-right wagon today.  Please ignore the tall skim white mocha from Starbucks this morning.  (Damn!  Slipping already!  Okay, I’m eating right starting….NOW!)

Quick to-do list:

1. Work – become an expert in this thing I have to have a meeting about tomorrow
2. Grocery store on the way home from work
3. Move drumset out of guest room
4. Vacuum upstairs, make the beds, clean the bathroom

Not too bad.

This weekend was weird.  For me, anyway.  It started fine.  We got home from work kinda late on Friday, ate a quick dinner, and then went to our second dance lesson.  We started the waltz!  I know I’ve watched too many Disney movies and too many musicals, but I’ve always wanted to be the princess being waltzed around the ballroom.  Learning to waltz (and having someone to waltz with) is probably the main reason I wanted us to take these lessons.  So that was cool.    We got up early Saturday morning (6-ish), dropped the dogs at the kennel, and drove to John’s parents’ house in PA.  And this is where it got weird.  As I drove from the house to the kennel, I noticed that I was really only seeing out of my right eye.  If I closed my right eye and only used my left, it was like looking through a frosted window.  There was no discomfort, but I couldn’t go the whole weekend only using my right eye, so when we got to the kennel, I took my contact solution to the restroom and cleaned my left lens.  Put it back in, same problem.  So, since they were disposable lenses, I threw them out and switched to my glasses.  Clear vision, no problems, and I drove the rest of the way.  Almost as soon as we walked in the door in Fogelsville, my left eye started to water.  Pat told us she had to clean a thin layer of pollen off of every surface in the house that morning, so I’m pretty sure this was a reaction to that.  After a couple of hours, my left eye was itching, watering, and red (and a little puffy).  I took some benadryl and conked out for about two hours (they woke me up for dinner).  When I woke up, both eyes were bothering me, not just the left one.  Anyway, I felt fine, but watering, itching eyes are really annoying.  I felt like I was constantly on the verge of tears.  We had tickets to a minor league baseball game (the Lehigh Valley Iron Pigs were playing the Gwinnett Braves) that night, and even though I was still a bit groggy from the benadryl, I wanted to go.  The stadium is new and really nice, and our tickets were for the club level, right along the first base line.  Sometime during the 8th inning, the skies opened and it started to POUR.  Heavy rain, thunder, lightning, the works.  They had the field covered before we made it under the roof.  We waited a little to see if the rain would stop, but after about 15 minutes, it hadn’t let up even a little, so we gave up.  I don’t think they had called the game yet, but the Iron Pigs didn’t have a chance anyway.  The score was 4 or 5 to nothing, and the Pigs had only managed to get three guys on base the whole game.  (They’re not very good, apparently.)  It was fun, even with the rain.  We got back to the house, dried off, and watched the Walken Family Reunion skit from SNL on the projector in the basement.  Amy Poehler does a hilarious Christopher Walken impression.  It wasn’t all that late, but with my eyes and the benadryl, I was fading, so I went to bed.  Woke up feeling a little better this morning (I think because I closed the windows in bedroom), but that didn’t last long after I got up.  I was counting on getting home (and away from whatever tree is trying to kill me – maybe the dogwoods in their front yard?) to clear this up.  I’m all clean, hair washed, no pollen anywhere near me (not from PA, anyway), so I’m hoping to wake up tomorrow morning with normal eyes.  We’ll see.  It skewed the whole visit for me.  It’s hard to enjoy seeing family when you’re basically crying and fighting to stay awake.  We’ll see them again soon, though.

Seriously, now that I have stated my intention to photograph adorable little goslings, there are none to be found.  What’s up with that?

Enough about the (nonexistent, apparently) geese.  Tonight, I’m still at work (it’s almost seven), and John and I have our second dance lesson.    I’m very excited about this.  Ooh!  More exciting?  We can go home!

Does it surprise anyone that the day I remembered my camera, I didn’t see any geese, baby or otherwise?  Maybe I’ll have better luck tomorrow.  For today, I’m sorry, but I have no adorable pictures of fuzzy baby geese to share with you.

For the last three mornings, I’ve had to stop on the access road to my office to allow geese and their adorable little baby geese to cross the road.  I meant to bring my camera today, but I forgot it.  Hang on a minute…

Okay.  The camera is now in my purse.  They’re just so CUTE!  And hopefully I’ll have pictures tomorrow.

Today got a lot better.  My meeting downtown went smoothly (all I had to do was be there, anyway), and we were done in just over an hour.  I had a very pleasant drive home from DC.  I took the GW Parkway to the beltway.  It’s beautiful.  The trees are all leafed out and it’s wonderfully shady.  It’s a really nice day today.  Upper 60′s, sunny skies, a little breezy – this is my favorite kind of day.

I got home and took the dogs out for a walk that turned into more of a jog.  It was just so nice!  Oh, I almost forgot.  We were on Claiborne heading towards where the W&OD trail crosses over the road, and I looked up and saw a horse on the trail.  Totally weird.  I mean, I’ve seen signs for horse crossings on the trail before, but where in suburban Ashburn could someone keep a horse?  I guess they could have been heading back to Leesburg…  Wherever they came from, It was very strange to see someone riding a horse over Claiborne Parkway, about a mile from my house.

Speaking of weird sightings, as I left the Department of Education building this afternoon, there was a guy outside, wearing only red shorts and shoes, doing pushups on the sidewalk.  Who on earth would decide to drop and do pushups, wearing no shirt, immediately outside the main entrance of the Department of Education building?

John isn’t feeling well today (scratchy throat, stuffy head), so I’m heading out to get him soup for dinner.  (He actually asked for soup!  I’m totally wearing him down!)

Six hours is not enough sleep for me.  Only my anal sense of punctuality (can you have a sense of punctuality?  Is there a phrase I should be using here that I can’t think of because my brain isn’t working?  You know what I mean, right?) got me out of bed this morning.  I get paranoid about being late for most things, but I’m worst about work and airplanes.  Anyway, I’m having a really hard time focusing.  I’m a little better now (after Starbucks and a croissant).  We’ll see how long I have before the crash.  At least I’m not comfortable today.  I’m wearing a suit ’cause I have to go downtown for a meeting this afternoon.  On the bright side, I may be able to go straight home from that rather than come back to the office.  It depends on how short the meeting is.  If it lasts at least an hour, I’ll be heading home.  Less than that and I can’t really justify not going back to work.

I was just telling Christina about the program we used to get Mom new ringtones for her cell phone, and now I have “Sweet Pea” stuck in my head.  I can deal with that.  I like this song.    Mom, if you’re reading, can you email me the mp3?

At the risk of sounding like Garfield, Mondays suck.  (I’m paraphrasing.)  Tuesdays are usually better, but I don’t have my hopes up for tomorrow.  We’ll see.

Not much else to talk about, really.  Tonight was John’s Theory of Algorithms final.  He’s not back yet (it’s later than usual), and I don’t know if that’s a good sign or a bad sign.  Or not a sign at all.  But this was his last final, so he’s free until fall.

(That’s Mother’s Day to most of you.  My mother doesn’t believe in Mother’s Day.)  It’s been a beautiful day here.  Unfortunately, John isn’t able to enjoy it (and neither is Roxy, but for entirely different reasons).  John has been (and still is) studying for his last final.  It’s tomorrow night, and he’s not feeling all that confident.  He didn’t have a lot of time to study yesterday (because we were having a wonderful afternoon in DC with Chuck, Jess, and Cody), and not having the answers to his practice questions keeps him guessing about whether or not he’s getting them right.

Roxy is not studying.  She, poor thing, threw up all night and hasn’t really been feeling well all day.  We woke up this morning to several messes downstairs, and when we got her outside, she threw up some more.  She was finally able to keep a little water down, and I gave her her medicine.  After a while, I made her some rice and chicken broth.  She ate a few bites, but she didn’t want anymore (which is the real cause for alarm, I think).  At least she kept it down.  I’ll give her more later, and when John is free to help me, I’ll try to take her temperature.  That should be fun.  She’s been crashed out on the floor all day, looking pathetic, barely wagging her tail.  She spends most days crashed out on the floor, but she usually doesn’t look this miserable.

Update: I went over to check on her and she wagged her tail and played with me a little.  I gave her some rice and she scarfed it down.  I think she’s feeling better.    She’s looking around for more, but I want to make sure she can keep it down first.  TMI a little?  Sorry.

Yesterday, we saw Arcadia at the theater at the Folger Shakespeare Library with Jess, Chuck, and Cody.  It was so good.  I’ve seen it twice before, once with Corey as Septimus Hodge in Lexington and once at GW.  The actor playing Septimus this time was really good and very Corey-like in his movements and expressions.  Is it just that the character has to be played that way?  Whatever.  I like it.  And the woman who played Thomasina was fantastic.  Oh, they all were.  We all really enjoyed it.

We went to the Sonoma Wine Bar for dinner immediately after (the play was at 2pm).  It was five after 5, and there were two, maybe three other parties already there.  We had to convince the hostess to seat us (yes, we’ll be done by 8, sorry to inconvenience you), and then a couple of items we wanted to order weren’t available anymore (but still on the menu), but other than those minor things, it was really good.  Expensive, yes, but very good.  John had the ribeye, Jess and I had the filet, we all had ceviche, sashimi, and beef carpaccio to start, and mozzarella risotto with dinner.  Everything we had was delicious, including my wine, but I’ve already forgotten what I was drinking, which is a shame.  (My choice of wine was one of the items no longer available, so while I remember what I wanted, I don’t remember what I had.)

We followed dinner with a five-block trek to the Baskin Robbins on 8th Street for dessert.  ‘Cause, you know, we hadn’t eaten enough yet.    I certainly don’t regret the ice cream (an Oreo cookies ‘n’ cream ice cream cone is totally worth the calories), but the walk there and back killed my feet.  I love those shoes, but they’re better for standing around and looking nice.  Hiking ten blocks is not what they were made for.  I’ve been walking a bit gingerly today, but I think I’ll be fine for running tomorrow.

We fell asleep last night while watching Shakespeare in Love (can’t get enough Tom Stoppard), so we might finish that tonight.  John is on the phone with his mom and he just started to mess with what might be the inside of the $5 amp he bought from a garage sale on his run yesterday, so I think he’s done studying for the day.  That’s my cue to fire up the grill.  Salmon, asparagus, portabello mushrooms, and a caprese salad.  All from Wegman’s, all fresh and delicious.

So, I tried to let the dogs sleep upstairs last night, but that didn’t last long.  John went to PA yesterday morning to surprise his mom and see Emily before she headed back to Pittsburgh (he gets back tonight), leaving me I was alone in the house.  I’m easily unnerved, so I try to keep the dogs close.  We didn’t even make it to midnight.  Roxy got up and shoved repeatedly against the mattress with her chest.  I’m not sleeping through that, so I kicked them out.  Back downstairs for them.

I had arranged to come in to work late today, so I was able to sleep in this morning.  It was great.  No alarm clock, I woke up to beautiful blue skies, and I had more than enough time to run, have a leisurely breakfast (I watched another episode of Fringe), shower, and get to work with time to spare before our 1pm meeting.  The rest of the day has been a little crazy though, with several additional meetings and last minute requests from the client for data.  But it’s officially over now and I’m heading out to dinner with some people from work.

Heather Graham makes some really bad movies.  I mean, just awful.  But I have discovered who I wish I looked like.  Bridget Moynihan is beautiful – tall, thin, gorgeous, great smile.  If I were going to (and able to) look like anybody else, it would be her.  I watched Gray Matters today (that’s the bad movie that triggered the mean Heather Graham comment), and although it really was bad, Alan Cumming was adorable in it.

More TV:

I know I said Cupid is a dumb show (and I still think so), but the episode I just watched made me cry.

Sorry for the disjointed post.  I didn’t write it all at the same time.  Only one thing of note actually happened today (which is one more than most days, I guess).  I finally met our new neighbors on the uphill side.  Our realtor neighbor with the adopted Russian kids moved out sometime in March, and our new neighbors moved in shortly after that, but we’d hardly even seen them.  They were never in the backyard, and we only caught a couple of glimpses of them out front.  Their yard (front and back) was turning quickly into a jungle, and last weekend, the guy tried to mow his jungle/lawn with an electric lawn mower.  He didn’t get far before some other neighbors came over with a gas lawn mower to help out.  (We came home while this pow-wow was going on the driveway.)  Anyway, John is convinced they’ve never had a yard to take care of before, and that this guy has never used a lawn mower.  The next day we saw him in the backyard, mowing (attempting to mow – seriously the grass is almost two feet high in some places) in khakis and a button down shirt.

Anyway, I met him today because I let the dogs out and Riley started to bark.  I opened the door to tell him to quit it and saw that he was barking at our new neighbor.  So I headed to the fence to introduce myself (and apologize for Riley).  His name is Andy, and they lived in an apartment in Chantilly before moving next door.  His wife (who I haven’t met yet) is Iris, they’re Chinese (he made a point of that, I’m not sure why, since we weren’t talking about anyone’s background), and they’re planning a cruise to Alaska in the next month or so.  He’s a very nice guy (who asked me some basic lawn care questions), and we have tentative plans to have a cookout when they get settled in.  That’s all I know.  Oh, no kids, no dog.  That’s all I know.

Okay, missing one tooth doesn’t really make her toothless.  I just picked Roxy up from the vet, and she’s doing fine.  Not even groggy.  I’ve got all kinds of pain medication and antibiotics to get her through the next few days.

I’m home and happy to be here, but I wish the weekend could get here faster.  Anybody know how to make that happen?  I’m worn out.