Planes!

I've always wanted to fly. When I was in high school I dreamed of going to the Air Force, becoming a pilot. But when I was told that my eyesight was too poor and I'd never have a chance of flying, I gave up on the dream. Perhaps I shouldn't have let it drop so fast, but there were other things that I could do, other things that interested me, and I pursued them instead (hello AREs, have I told you how much I hate you lately?).

But my love of aviation and all things planes never died. One of my favorite parts of living in DC is the proximity to Regan National Airport. From my office window, I can watch planes on their final descent, flying along the Potomac, making that final sharp bank to the right to land at DCA. And when I discovered Gravelly Point Park, I fell in love. When planes are landing to the south, you can sit literally right beneath them as the fly overhead- so close that you feel the rotors off the wings, you hear the rush of air go by you, you hear the roar of the massive engines. It makes my heart race just thinking about it. You can walk, run, bike, jog, take the metro out to Gravelly Point. But my favorite is biking in the spring. You follow the Mt. Vernon trail right along the river, watching as planes pass you the entire length of the trail, culminating in the views you get when you reach the Point.

Here are a few videos from C's iPhone from a few weekends ago. Sorry they're sideways, I'm not tech-savvy enough to figure out how to turn them.

Weird childhood habits revisited

I have a candy dish at my desk at work. I hardly ever have to fill it because everyone else brings the candy in. And then I get the thanks and praise from everyone for having candy at my desk all the time. Its a win-win.

Today I was opening a Dove dark chocolate (is there any other kind?!?) egg and was suddenly reminded of when I was a kid- 7, 8, 9 maybe? Ok, probably like 10-14 - and I used to keep candy wrappers. Not all of them, just the foil ones. I would unwrap candy oh-so-carefully and then press the foil flat in a book for a few days, or I would methodically straighten the creases out using my finger nails. And darned it if I scratched a hole in one and the past 10 minutes were wasted. No holey-foil for my crafts. Throw it over, open a new one and start again (it was a good way to claim that I wasn't eating it because I wanted to, I was eating it because I had to). And when I had compiled enough wrappers, I'd find something creative to do with them. Usually it involved gluing them to the inside of a box. Checkerboard patterns, random arrangements, trying to line up the labels on the foil, sometimes only using the shiny silver insides...always something different. The outside would be a generic kid's Ked's box, but open it up and it was like a surprise of shininess. I was so proud of myself- of my creativity, my OCD neatness of every little piece of foil. I think at some point in my life I had a "foil box" for every holiday. Red and green at Christmas. Pink, blue, and green pastels at easter. Random ugly assortments at Halloween. Red, white and pink for Valentine's Day.

I was lame.

What the hell was I supposed to do with these things? I couldn't put anything in the boxes, because anything I put in them would scratch the foil. I would put the box tops on my shelves in my room, but eventually they'd just collect dust and I'd be disappointed and they'd get tossed. Or replaced with new ones. Eventually I grew out of this (my younger sister pointed out how lame I was). But it was fond memory that I just recalled. One of those memories that brings you back to childhood. When everything was easy and you didn't have a care in the world.

Oops

I need to blog more. There is so much to write about- studying for the ARE's, getting ready for Corey's deployment (do you call it that when he's a contractor and not military?), raising Spek, spring in DC....

Maybe I'll see you back here more often. I hope so.