Freedom Park

I don't know about you, but when I hear "park" I think green grass, trees, streams, etc.

We took a walk this afternoon through Rosslyn and towards DC and decided to stop when we saw Freedom Park.It certainly had some trees, but they were masked by the concrete boxes containing them. The whole thing was stairs and no grass to be seen. Once we got to the top, we found a nice plateau which would be a wonderful place to sit down on a bench, read a book and enjoy the lovely view:In all seriousness though, you can see the Washington Monument in the background of this picture, and in another area of the "park" you can see the Jefferson Memorial. The area is actually a nice break from the surrounding buildings, I just think it was a little mislabeled.

For your enjoyment

Chris (and Robert) in 1986.

A year of blogging

I've been blogging for a year now and just realized it! My roommates and I all decided to start blogs together at the end of last year as many of us were heading off to different places, and we wanted an easy way to see what each other were up to. I'm happy to say it worked out great!I know it's lamer than writing letters and making phone calls, but through blogging I have been able to keep in touch and stay close with everyone - and as a bonus, family now reads the blog, as well. Thanks to everyone who reads this!

Dad's bday!

Happy Birthday Dad!! Chocolate cake, chocolate icing and chocolate candy bars to celebrate!

Memorial Day!

I am really looking forward to a three day weekend!!! I haven't had a day off from work since the new year started (excluding weekends of course).

Anyone have big plans??

Good dinner, Hop Sing

Yesterday Maggie and I were playing against Chris and her sister Kelly in triv. Maggie and I were dominating the game. We had all six pieces and were attempting to get our last question while Kelly and Chris still only had two pieces. I think we were being a little too confident, because we could NOT win. After awhile (probably an hour), Kelly and Chris caught up to us! It was a close race; down to who could answer the final question first.

Anyway, Maggie and I finally landed in the middle again and got the entertainment question "Who was the Cartwright family's chinese immigrant cook?" Well, neither of us had any idea who the Cartwrights were, or knew the names of any cooks, let alone chinese ones. We were about to give up when I remembered a phrase my Grammy and Aunt Holly used to say after finishing a meal: "Good dinner, Hop Sing." I had NO clue what this meant or where it came from, but in the pressure of trying to guess an answer to the final triv question, I shouted out the phrase. Turns out, Hop Sing was the answer! Thanks Grammy and Aunt Holly!

The Haircut

Before:

During:

After:I think I did a decent job for my first try! Anyone need a haircut?

Philadelphia

So I'm in Philadelphia this week for work. Check out my sweet hotel room. It's almost the size of our partment. View from the front door, kitchen, bedroom with a king bed, and a sweet bath robe that I felt that I should model. Also of note is that my hotel is located at 1776 Benjamin Franklin Parkway. How historical.

Last night I had to work pretty late, but today we got done at about 7:30, so I had a little bit of sunlight left, so I decided to try to take advantage of my location and walked about a mile over to the historic part of the city and saw city hall, the liberty bell, and independence hall.

We'll see what the work schedule is like for the rest of the week. My hotel is only about a mile from the Museum of Art, so if I get done while it's still light out another night, I'm going to have to run there and do the Rocky pose on the steps. Also I should probably track down a cheese steak. Yeah, I think I'll do that.

Graduation

One year ago today was graduation from college. Some things over the past year have gone according to plan (my plan, that is), but honestly so so so much about life today is different than what I thought it would be one year ago! Sometimes the unexpected is stressful, sometimes exciting, but overall I'm not sure I would change anything. I'm learning that things happen for a reason and that reason is often something you don't realize until further down the road.

Here's to Williamsburg, which will always be my home away from home (unless of course we move there one day!).

Happy Mother's Day!

We took a hike in Sky Meadow National Park to celebrate the occasion.

It was a gorgeous day. I hope you all had a great time celebrating your mothers!

Love you mom!!

Scrubs Perfect Ending

I know you guys thought I was done with Scrubs, and I thought I was too. Last one I promise. But there was no way I couldn't put up the ending clip of Scrubs, with the future montage and then the acoustic music from the theme song. Perfect ending to my favorite show.

Farewell to Scrubs

Well, tonight's the night. After 8 years and 168 episodes, Scrubs is coming to an end. Hard to believe that I've been watching this show since my sophomore year of high school. And sad to see it go. I feel like I've grown up with the characters, from the first episodes when they first became interns. Will be sad to not be able to turn on the TV every week and see what happens next. It's probably also sad that the most serious/heartfelt blog post I've ever written is about a TV show. Don't make fun of me. I'll leave you with the ending to episode #100, one of my favorite endings to an episode, and an appropriate way to end my tribute to the show. Thanks guys, it's been real.

Suspicious Package

I've experienced my fair share of problems riding the Metro to work this past year. This morning I experienced a new one: A 'suspicious package' at my stop. Some Metro stops only have one entrance/exit. Luckily, my stop, Farragut West, has two. The suspicious package was located at the one that I use, so I was forced to exit at the other end of the station and have a longer walk through the rain. I've included a map of the experience:

My normal exit is marked with the Red x, and my office is marked by the blue x. Normally, I walk out of the station and have a nice little jaunt up 18th street to my office. Notice, however, that today, this route was located smack in the middle of what i like to call the "Danger Zone." So I exited the station where the black line starts. I tried to walk west on I street, but unfortunately there were a few policemen blowing whistles very loudly and telling us we could not walk on that block. They are indicated (not to scale) by the policeman clipart. So i then had to reverse course back out to 17th street, walk north for a block up to K street (if you're curious why it skips from I street to K street, Maggie has the answer here), then walk west on K to the office. In the end, it only lengthened my commute by about 8 minutes, so no harm done. But now I can add 'suspicious package' to the list of things to happen to me on the Metro.

Update (Tuesday): It was an empty can.

D.C. Serv-a-thon

On Saturday morning Chris and I participated in D.C.'s annual serv-a-thon with Navigant. We were kind of excited because we thought we were going to be planting trees at DC public schools. Turns out we had to weed, mulch and water trees instead - not quite as fun, but it was still a good time. Since we were technically working on the outside of the fence, they made us wear these ridiculous yellow vests (what made it more awesome was that Chris had to wear a size large serv-a-thon t-shirt because they didn't have any more XLs left!). We had a great time and got done early because so many people showed up to help. We were actually really lucky because it started raining right after we finished and were walking towards the car.

Alexandria

Last weekend we went to old town Alexandria and took a self-guided walking tour. It was pretty hot out, but the day was beautiful and the tour was pretty fun. Part way through Chris had to return to the car and feed the meter, so we abandoned the tour and just walked around near the waterfront. Among the historic things we saw were Lafayette's house during the Revolutionary War and the old torpedo factory.

Some of the more interesting but not historical things we saw were these parrots and some metal giraffes in someones backyard.

There are tons of restaurants on the main street and on the waterfront, as well as shops and museums to go into. It's a fun (and free) place to visit if you have some time on your hands!