Artwork?

I've sent this to a few people and no one seems quite as fascinated by it as I do. I just love the way that things can be represented graphically in so many different ways. Maybe its the artsy part of me, I don't know. But I want this mounted and hung on my wall. The DC one, the NYC one, the New Orleans one....

They can be found here.

I ride my Bicycle

Last year when C and I got this handsome devil:

we came up with a game plan. Since Spek was still only 4 months old and needed to go outside...a LOT...we agreed that C would do the middle-of-the-night walkings, while I would do the mid-day walkings. It made sense. Although I didn't drive to work and C did, C worked 30 miles and about 40 minutes away, so it was just unreasonable for him to do it. I work about 1.2 miles away. And there isn't an easy way to get to/from other than walking. I don't live OR work near a metro, and there are no bus lines that go conveniently from Georgetown to the part of Rossyln where we live. I love walking, don't get me wrong, but its still at least a 20 minute walk, and when you factor in time to change before and after the walk (I sweat at the first sign of physical activity. Even when I'm in great shape. Always have, always will), it would leave me barely 10 minutes to spend some quality time with pup during my lunch break, before I had to head back to work. That just wasn't enough play/pee/exercise time for a little puppy in the middle of the day. Putting him back in his cage when I had to leave broke my heart (note: it still does). 

So we (I) decided that I should get a bike to make the trip quicker. C has a bike that I could have used, but my short legs (I'm 4'-11") could barely reach the pedals when I was on it. Not fun. I knew I didn't want to spend a ton of money, it was just a short commute after all, but I didn't want something that would fall apart on me after my 10th ride. So I looked and I looked until I found a sweet deal on this little thing:

A Schwinn Frontier GS. It was a 2009 model, so it was on sale, and a Labor Day sale made it even cheaper. And? It came in an XS frame size. Perfect!

So my trips with pup became longer, we were able to play more, he could eat a bit of food, take a longer walk, and just spend more time together. Just the 2 of us. 

When winter came, I stopped riding. Mainly because I'm a huge cold wuss, but also because he just didn't NEED a mid-day walk anymore. Our mid-day walks became less pee-centered and more "Mommy I don't want to go inside yet. I'll lay on the ground and you'll have to drag me inside because I won't go. I won't." See also:

 

But now that the weather is nicer, and my walks TO work just make me sweaty, I figure its time to break out old Schwinny and start riding again. I won't be going home to pup at lunch still, but if I work through lunch I can leave earlier and spend more time after work with him anyway. Its a good trade off. 

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.

New York City!

Our weekend was amazing! I'm so tired. We did so much walking and saw so much. Friday we woke up earlyish and walked around until we found "real New York Jew bagels" that were up to Corey's standards. We passed like 10 bagel places until we found this one, and then we wound up going back to the same place Saturday and Sunday because they were so good. We were close to Times Square so we walked there to see it in the morning/day light, then took the subway up to the Upper West Side and walked through Central Park to the Met. We spent a few hours in the Met, then wandered around the Upper East Side. We got hot dogs at this famous hot dog place, Papaya King. Took the subway back down to Grand Central and walked around the market and the great hall there. Then walked to the Empire State building (didn’t go up b/c of time and money). Then we took the subway to the Brooklyn Bridge and walked across the bridge, which was pretty cool. The views from the middle of it were amazing. We walked around Brooklyn for a little bit, then took the subway to Ground Zero. I was kind of disappointed because the last time I was there we were able to walk right up to the edge of the "hole" and look down, but now you're not even allowed to cross the street to the hole. We went back and rested for a bit after that, and then walked to an Italian place that a coworker recommended for dinner, which was amazing, and then walked back through Times Square so Corey could see it at night. I woke up at like 4 am and wound up throwing up, but I don’t know why or what made me sick. I think I just ate too much. We really ate like pigs all weekend, but Friday was bad.

Saturday we went to the Guggenheim (I just wanted to see the outside because I had never been), walked around Upper East Side again. Then walked around the Highline and Chelsea Market. We were on our way to the Skinny Building and took a detour through the market at Union Station. Then got coffee near the building, and went to Eataly. Walked around there for a while, looked for Corey's special spaghetti, but no luck. We went up to the IBM building and went to Abika, the mozzarella bar that Corey went to in Rome. We wound up near the park again and went into FAO Schwartz. We were exhausted after that, so we got a free movie from the front desk, watched that, then walked around our neighborhood and got dinner from a street vendor- spicy Italian sausage gyro thing. It was yummy. I know we did more Saturday but I can't remember anything. Ha.

Yesterday we slept in a little more, got bagels, walked around Times Square, and then went down to South Street Seaport. We were going to take the ferry to the Empire State building but it was an hour plus wait, so we just walked up to the Sea Port. There's a really good market with people from all over New England selling fresh cheese, meat, wines, etc. Then we went up to Carnegie Deli and stuffed ourselves. Then got a cheesecake to go and sat and ate it on a big rock in Central Park. Then wandered down to Rockefeller Center, watched ice skating, went to the NBC store because we were out of things to do, then just sat outside for awhile because it was a beautiful day. By about 4 we were ready to go but our train wasn’t until 9. We went and got a beer at a brewery, then wanted to find pizza (well, I did. I can't leave NYC without eating street pizza, but Corey was still stuffed). Then got our bags from the hotel and went to the train station, where we got another beer and waited for the train. We didn’t get in until after midnight, didn’t get home until almost 1 after the sketchiest cab ride ever. He stuffed 5 people in the cab, told us it would be $20, and then when he dropped us off told us he said $25. We were like, um, no, you said $20, and walked away. He was so sketchy. All in all, it was a great weekend. I needed it. My legs/feet are tired and sore, but it was so worth it.

Almost a Year Soda Free!

I gave up diet soda sometime around this time last year. Since then, I've lost close to 20 pounds (which is a lot considering that I started around 125). Not to say that its too much, or unhealthy, because I'm only 4'-11" and I'm pretty thin framed. This just put me back to my high school weight, and I look and feel so much better.

Anyway, since I've quit and started losing the weight, I've always been convinced that it's because I also don't crave sweets mid-afternoon like I always used to. I had a routine- diet-coke with lunch, and then I'd crave chocolate or sweets by 2 or 3. When I stopped drinking the diet soda (soda at all actually, I hate the taste of regular soda), I stopped wanting an afternoon snack. The combination of non consuming soda and not consuming the few hundred extra calories mid-afternoon had made a WORLD of difference.

Just today, I saw the first article on it, that supports what I believed the reasons were:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/39543011/ns/health-diet_and_nutrition/