Folklife

Well, it's the end of June and I feel like time is getting away from me these days! Maybe it's just the effects of summer and wanting to lay by the pool all day and read (which I did all day Saturday!) instead of getting things done, but I'm certainly feeling like time is slipping by too quickly. This weekend we took advantage of living close to D.C. and went to the Smithsonian Folklife Festival. We got there in the afternoon and spent most of our time exploring Wales - which meant listening to cool accents - and enjoying the fact that everything was free. We caught a cooking demonstration where the chef gutted a fish (never seen it done before and I was impressed!), listened to Welsh rap/poetry, watched some stone carving and just wandered around. It's continuing at the end of this week and the weekend if you missed the first week and still want to catch it!

Father's Day Go-Karting

So for Father's Day, Rob and I decided to get our dad a membership to a go-karting place in Dulles that Rob already belongs to. We made our first trip out there on Sunday afternoon to give the place a try and it was a ton of fun. We met up with Rob's roommate Chris and his dad as well. They make you wear racing suits and everything. I am proud to report that I was the third fastest in our heat, which you can see on the TV screen next to the track.

7th Annual Pindodge

Remember last year?
The 7th annual Pindodge tournament was held this past weekend. We played through the rain in the morning and then had sun for the afternoon. My team won!!! I now have a trophy! I'm still in so much pain (Chris is too) that I can hardly move, but it was well worth it.[Pictures courtesy of Robert.. stay tuned for the Pindodge 2009 video!]

Pass

My car is repaired!! And all for under $350 (200 of which were my new front tires). Anyway, we brought it over to Robert and his roommate Chris' place to see if they could help me out. They put on new brake pads, flushed my transmission, gave me new wiper blades, changed my cracked serpentine belt, fixed two tail lights, and fixed the latch on my hood which apparently broke some time during that whole process - all for about $120 and a batch of cookies!
I was shocked at how little it all cost, especially after getting prices from the auto place (example: $159 to change my belt - but the belt only costs $25). I even tried to help out a little bit by snapping in one of the tail lights myself, but ended up creating more work because I apparently didn't snap it in far enough and the light bulb fell out when I tried to push it back in the hole. We (meaning Chris while I stood back and watched) had to take out the whole tail light to try to shake the light bulb back out and from then on I kept my distance and just watched.

After all that, my car passed the state inspection!

Weekend Fun

Over memorial day weekend, my friend Whitney came back from California for her 23rd birthday to her parents' lake house in Locust Grove. Several high school friends were heading down there for the weekend, and Katie and I joined. Her stepdad Doug made up awesome t-shirts for us all to wear, which we did proudly. It was a great time of grilling, boating, jet skiing, and tubing. Pictures of me after I defeated Austin at tubing (he lost his pants in the process), Katie and I heading out on the jet ski (where she nearly flipped us over), and then the whole group with our t-shirts.

Then this past weekend, I headed down to Williamsburg to celebrate Bill and Lindy's 25 years at Chapel. Over 30 current and former members of Bill's bible study came back to celebrate the impact that Bill and Lindy have had on our lives. It was a great weekend. Pictures of the whole group and of Abe, Pete, Jord, and myself at Kyoto.

Rain rain go away

Who else is getting sick of all this rain? Seriously...no break in 10 days?

Fire alarm

When Chris got home this weekend we took a trip to the grocery store. The grocery store is underground in a sort of parking garage. We got a basket and picked up everything we needed. We were heading to get the last item on our list when lights start flashing the the fire alarm sounds. A recording was going off telling everyone to evacuate the store and employees started coming through telling everyone to leave. There were abandoned baskets and carts everywhere (especially in the check-out aisles) so we put ours down and followed the masses out. Over all this was not terribly interesting, but it's never happened to me in a grocery before. We didn't get to buy any of our groceries so we don't have milk for the morning and now I have to re-grocery shop tomorrow!!

The Arlington Rap

So this rap has been posted on a bunch of local blogs already, but here it is for those of you that we talked to:




It's hilarious because it's all true.

Detour

This afternoon we took a trip to Arlington's Urgent Care facility. Chris has been having a lot of pain in his left foot since the triathlon this past weekend and spent the past two days limping around. We got x-rays and spent two hours in the waiting room to find out nothing is broken or fractured. His foot has a soft tissue contusion (which is a fancy way to say it's bruised) and the doctor just said to stay off it as much as possible. However, the pain has been getting worse all afternoon and now he's more hobbling than limping. Hopefully this issue will resolve itself in the next couple days!

When it rains, it pours

I got a flat on my way home from work! It was a total disaster! For some reason I decided today would be a good day to wear pants and a black shirt to work, and it was HOT outside. I had to pull off on the grassy median on George Washington Pkwy, call Chris for advice, and then try to put on my spare.
Things I found out from this experience:
-Spare tires are deceptively heavy! They seem so small and lightweight, but they're not.
-You should loosen the lug nuts before you jack up the car.
-Put on your e-brake!!! I learned this the hard way. After jacking my car almost all the way up, the car rolled forward, fell off the jack, and I had to start again from scratch (while sweating and annoyed, mind you).

Anyway, then God sent me an angel dodging traffic and running across the highway from Teddy Roosevelt Island. Apparently he was on vacation enjoying the weather, and his wife saw my struggles and sent him over to help. He even brought me a bottle of water!

Now, I WISH that was the end of the story.

I took my car over to Midas to buy a new tire and I told them while they were at it, I needed my state inspection this month. Well, my car failed - which I had suspected because the check engine light has been on for quite some time. SOOO... I need:
-Both front tires (I was hoping to only buy one, but apparently they were both worn too much)
-New front brake pads (and they suggest new rotors)
-New rear brakes
-My left tail light is out
-Some belt in the car is cracked and needs to be replaced
-My transmission fluid needs to be flushed
-An alignment
-and last but not least, I have to still get the state inspection and emissions.

So anyway, I told them to replace the tires and I'm picking up the car tomorrow. I have almost 3 weeks until the end of the month to shop around and find out which of these services are absolutely necessary and see which can be done by mechanical savvy people I know. Wish me luck and leave advice if you have any!!

Triathlon

I don't have a list of things I want to do in my life, but whenever I do decide to make that list, I will write down triathlon, and then cross it off, because Robert and I did our first ever triathlon yesterday. I got the idea to try a triathlon about a month ago and asked Robert if he would be interested in doing it also, and he said that he was. After a month of strenuous lazy training (Two bike rides, two swims, and maybe one run but I don't recall), it was time to race. By and large, it was quite a success. My main goal was to finish the race and not do anything to embarrass myself. Mission accomplished. It was a sprint triathlon, so we swam 400 meters, biked 12 miles, and then ran a 5k. These great pictures are brought to you courtesy of my lovely wife, who was able to get great pictures of both Robert and I by sprinting all around the pool and the course to catch us each at various transition points.

Visualizing success:












Robert finishing the swim:








350 meters down and still good:








Robert on the bike:








Smiling (only on the outside):








Robert finishing:








I look less cool than him:








Tired:

E-mail is tricky

So Katie and I are spending tonight at my parents' house to watch my sisters, and my mom sent me this e-mail:
"Hi there, are you and Katie wanting to stay down or up? I need to make beds today. if you sleep upstairs, you'll have to change the bed for katie Rember for Sat. let me know what youwant to do. Looking forward to hanging out with you tonight!! Love, Mom"

I responded with this:
"Ha then downstairs it is. Plus I won't be sweating all night down there."

Here's where it gets tricky. At the same time, I was e-mailing back and forth with Katie, letting her know that I had chosen to sleep downstairs in the basement, where she is always freezing. So when I got this next e-mail from my mom, I thought it was from Katie:
"It's cold out!!!"

Having not paid enough attention to who it was actually from, I replied to my mom, thinking it was Katie, with this:
"nope it's pretty darn nice cutie!"

To which my mom replied:
"Ha ha ha!!! Did you think you were talking to your wife??!! I'm glad you think I'm a cutie!!!"

At this point, I realized that I had in fact, called my mom a cutie. In my defense though, my mom is quite pretty. So I replied with this:
"Oh jeez thats embarassing. Yep, thought I was talking to her."

And our nice conversation ended with my mom laughing in my face:
"ha ha ha ha hhhhhaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

E-mail is tricky.

Golf - the mini kind

After living in Arlington for close to a year, we've finally found a mini-golf place! And I'm sad we didn't find it sooner! I haven't been since last summer, which came up in conversation with a friend last week and she recommended a place only a few minutes away. We checked it out and now have a new activity for the summer evenings.

I came in second to last (which is not all together surprising) but still had a lot of fun and Chris came in first (again - not surprising given his competitive nature).

Wicked

This weekend Chris and I went to Norfolk to see Wicked. Chris surprised me with the tickets last month and I've been really excited to see it. They dyed the fountain outside Chrysler Hall green for the event! It was really good, but very different from Wicked the book.
Thankfully we didn't hit traffic on 95 going either direction and it was a gorgeous day. Hope you all had good weekends!