Things I Learned This Weekend

(Just a few things I learned as I'll write more about weekend happenings later in the week. As well as all the other things I keep saying I'll write about.)

It's possible to love my blanket in public.
It only took me a lifetime of owning the thing, and 7 years of consistent travelling, to figure out how to discretely hide my blanket so I can put my favorite corner to my mouth in public. This could change everything.

Adding text to photos in Photobucket is fun.
They took away my ability to collage photos, but at least I can add fun text. Or, well, if not fun text, at least just text. And just in case the above photo wasn't obvious enough.

Work from home days are great, but work from home home days are even better.
I left for NC on Thursday evening and worked from home home the next day. There's something about doing my job in the room I spent my high school years studying myself crazy, that's kind of nice/weird.

There's no such thing as eating too many Krispy Kreme doughnuts.
I may have eaten 6 Krispy Kreme doughnuts in 10 hours. This may not be remotely close to my record. (What we call the "Krispy Kreme Incident of '07," when I ate approximately 9 doughnuts in a few hours after returning from London. I only remember the first 3; the rest are just a blur.)


A quick meal and shopping with mom during my lunch break is way better than sitting at my desk and eating while working.
We went to my favorite Mexican place, Torero's, and then mom bought me pretty things at Target. I would have been happy just to ride around town with her, but don't tell her that, I also like the Target stuff.

My sister and I really should wear tiaras all the time.
While waiting to try on bridesmaid dresses at David's Bridal, we had a little photo shoot with some tiaras. We think our brother's fiancee should let us incorporate them into our wedding day attire.

  

Cleaning out papers and junk from the room you lived in from 5 to 22 is fun and weird and sad and happy.
Even though I cleaned out the majority of my room when I moved to DC, I kept a lot of books out and a lot of stuff in my closet. While looking for some clothes, I decided to clean out the rest of my closet. More on this later. But first, a glimpse of a report from my 9th grade computer class. On e-mail. That was done with a friend. That we only got a 98 on. I'm not happy about this.

My Dad is awesome.
He got a knot out of my necklace, took a bunch of my papers to the dump, lasted longer than 5 minutes in Ulta, got us Bojangles on Sunday morning, bought a great computer that I now want, and he makes me laugh.

My Mom is awesome.
She brought me Krispy Kreme and a Pepsi to the train station at midnight. She just wants to go shopping with me and have me fix her Pinterest. She lets me go around her house and pick out stuff I want. She got more excited than me when I told her I was going to make a t-shirt quilt. (More on her day later.)


It is possible for me to sleep on a train. And "The West Wing" really is just the greatest show ever.
I managed to sleep for a few minutes on both train trips. This never happens. Even though, on the way back, I was watching "The West Wing" and missed half an episode. But that's what DVDs are for.

The absolute worst way to end a long weekend at home is with an all-day meeting on Monday.
I got in at 8 last night and had a meeting downtown today for work. This can be good because my commute is only 15 minutes and costs me less than $2. But it can also be bad when it's raining, I'm running late, my metro train is off-loaded due to the fact that it's smoking, I have to run to the meeting in the rain, alternating sidewalks on opposite sides of the street due to construction, making it with just 5 minutes to spare and only enough time to switch into my grown up shoes but not brush my hair.


And that last graph should explain why I'm not going to spend forever fixing the wonky spacing in this post or care that there are, yet again, too many commas. I'm tired and just want to curl up in my queen-sized bed with my visible baby blanket and watch C.J., Sam, Josh, etc. do their thing.

December Recap

The past month has been hectic to say the least. All my bullet points in the last post came true, and then some. But it is the most wonderful time of the year and amidst all the long days and stress was a lot of good as well.

My mom and sister came up for a weekend for fun Christmas shopping and activities. We were lucky enough to score a White House tour and got to see it all decked out for the Obama's first Christmas. This is my second time seeing the WH at Christmas and it was even better than the last.

Outside the WH after the tour

We also stopped by the National Christmas tree, the Newseum, and just did some talking, shopping, and laughing.

Melissa and me at the National Christmas tree

The next week was my work Christmas party. I took the roommate as my date -- and then made her pose in front of our Christmas tree -- and we ate a ton, drank a little, and got lost in Maryland. Fun for all.

The next weekend I left for home, just as a crazy blizzard turned a good portion of the east coast into a not-quite winter wonderland. When I left Saturday there was already about 8 inches on the ground and it just kept falling as I made my way through Virginia and to my sweet Carolina. It took me eight hours on the train instead of four, but I made it.

Accumulating snow at Union Station

Statue on Capitol just barely visible through the snow

View from train in Alexandria

The next day we celebrated Christmas with the nieces, and spent the evening playing with their new gift: Rock Band. I've never played rock band before and I think that's for the best. I had fun but to say I'm awful would be an understatement. I possess the triple threat of anti-musical ability: lack of coordination, rhythm, and tune. Therefore, I should never be let near a musical instrument. Never ever.

Joe Cool

Actual Christmas came a few days later and we were all spoiled beyond what we deserve, as usual. To say I am blessed doesn't begin to cover it.

To cap off the week was a day I live for every year: the annual reunion of my best friends from college. It gets sweeter and sweeter every year, harder and harder to say goodbye, but I wouldn't change it for the world.
Tomorrow is CHAPEL HILL for Franklin Street dining and shopping, walking on campus, and of course, Tar Heel basketball!!

Day 335: All dogs go to the train station

Despite proving several months ago that Peanut (and Dimples) simply are not adventurous dogs, we still took Peanut with us to drop me off at the train station today. Which meant I spent an hour petting her, trying to keep her nails out of my sweater, and attempting to convince her she is simply not a lap dog. (I only succeeded at the petting her part, like she'd have it any other way.) Of course as soon I get out to check my bag, she jumps in my seat, where she proceeds to sit nicely the rest of the wait and apparently almost all of the way home for Mom. I think she was just acting out since I was leaving, she is nearly human after all.

Day 287: Au revoir

As much as I love my job and apartment and most of the time my life in DC, I did not want to leave home home today. It just went by too quickly. But leave I had to, and this time I left on a train out of Wilson train station, instead of Rocky Mount. It was smaller and a bit sketchier than the other, but it was closer to home, and meant I got 20 more minutes of chilling on the couch, which was exactly what I needed.

Day 282: Title

Another trip home, another train ride. Finally I got a window seat, and finally I had no one sitting beside me. Though I did have one little boy that kept staring at me, and three people with the need to comment on the "Doctor Who" episode I was watching. Note to self, maybe not watch the one with a very large and scary Satan-like creature next time, as everyone behind you can see.

Anyway, that doesn't matter. I always get the cheese tray when I'm on the train, because I love cheese and crackers and it's cheap and good. But as I was quite hungry I also got a hot dog, microwaved to perfection for 45 seconds, on a train.

On the 23rd day of my 23rd year...

It’s cold here. Really cold here. And windy. The kind of wind that pierces your body, making it hard to move, which is unfortunate as all you want to do is move to anyplace that is warm.

Yesterday was back to work as normal after a busy but good weekend. I’m hoping that the way Monday morning went is not an omen for the rest of the week. I fell up the stairs at work, spilled hot tea on my foot, ripped my panty hose, and smashed part-ways into a wall. In my partial defense, however, I would like to say that this is only the fifth time I have fallen at work. This is HUGE, as there are four flights of stairs and I run up them, easily, 20 or 25 times a day, and in four and a half months I’ve only fallen five times.

As to the weekend, Saturday I took the train to Cardiff for the day. I love taking the train as it provides amazing scenery and makes me appreciate all of Great Britain. To be honest the scenery this time wasn’t that great until after we passed Bristol, but there was one scene in particular that will stay with me a long time. Passing through the countryside, which was a beautiful shade of green that I didn’t expect in January, there was a solitary hill, with one, perfect tree at the center. I’m not good with tree names and types, but it was one where you could see all the branches and leaves, appreciating the structure and shape. The way it stood at the center of the mound, and the way the mound stood alone, overlooking everything around it, it was strength and protection manifested in the landscape in a way I’ve never really seen before. I started to take a picture, but the train moved too fast, and I’m kind of glad, because a picture never would have captured how perfect I found the scene to be.

As for Cardiff, it is a nice city, small but nice. I started at Cardiff Castle, located very near the city centre. It’s small, but the grounds are beautiful, and very green as well. Though it was cold and windy, the sky was clear and blue and made walking around the grounds nice. I took a tour of the inside, where the architecture was amazing. So many intricate details, murals on the walls and ceilings, delicately carved woodwork everywhere you looked. There was little furniture, which was nice because it’s always the furniture that deters me as it always seems so unwelcoming. The tour guide was great because he had a perfect, dramatic British voice. He would take pauses when describing the room, that weren’t too short or too long, but gave a sense of anticipation to whatever he said in only a way that British people can do. My favorite room was the library, an incredibly long room full of shelves of books, with the names of different great writers painted on the walls. And it was the warmest room of the house (the tour guide called it a house) as it still used the original heating method to heat it. (Or well, maybe not the original, having trouble remembering the exact date of the radiator, but at the latest it was from the 19th century.)

Oh, almost forgot the peacocks. Peacocks freely roam the castle grounds. My hatred of birds is no secret, but there are certain birds I can tolerate, at a safe distance of course. Penguins, flamingoes, swans – but only in an appreciation of the fact that they mate for life – and peacocks, the latter simply because their feathers are pretty. So the fact that there were peacocks just walking around didn’t bother me as much as you might think – until I came out of the house after the tour and had one on the railing by my head, so close that when it jumped away the tail grazed my hat. I froze, cursed, and then hightailed it out of there. And of course the whole time there I never saw them with their feathers out, which I think is a good thing because I think that means they are going to attack, doesn’t it?

After the tour of the inside I climbed to the top of the Keep to get a good view of the grounds and Cardiff. I didn’t stay long, however, as the wind was too strong and I was having trouble keeping my balance. And flying off the top of a castle keep in Wales, while a great story, is not how I’d like to die.

By this point I was quite frozen, so after warming up in the gift shop, and buying a few things of course, I walked around town a bit, passed City Hall and other municipal buildings, and finally ended up at the National Museum, where I went to unthaw for awhile. I also looked at some of the exhibits too. They had some great artifacts, and some beautiful, and massive, Celtic crosses made of stone.

After the museum I headed back toward the city centre to eat and shop and absorb Welsh culture…in their malls. Yes, malls abounded in the city centre to the point that I kept getting lost and couldn’t tell if I was in St. David’s mall or Queen Anne’s arcade. I bought some really good mixed nuts, spent less than 10 pounds at their three-story Primark, quite a feat, and then spent my last hours warming up, yet again, in a Café Nero with a cup of tea and my book.

The first half hour of the train ride home was miserable thanks to two incredibly drunk, vulgar men in the same car as me. I waited it out hoping they would pass out, but when they didn’t, wisely switched cars, where I was later yelled at by another drunken man coming out of the toilet for my “bad manners.” Apparently he being in my way and refusing to budge, forcing me to move around him, constituted bad manners. Whatever.

Sunday I slept late, then slept some more later in the afternoon. Just was very exhausted. In between all the sleeping I ran in Hyde Park, and then went to the Imperial War Museum, easily one of my favorite museums in London, and I've seen them all. I only went through two of the exhibits, my favorites, the one on the Holocaust, and the one on post-1945 conflicts.

Nothing too big looming on the horizon. Hope to see another play this week, and then will probably just stay in London this weekend. I want to take another trip out of the city, maybe an overnight one, and then think about where I want to go for a few days my last week here. Any ideas throw them my way. For a weekend trip I’m leaning toward Liverpool, and for my last week I’m still leaning toward Ireland, but just for a few days.