Planes!

Hello blog-y people! I haven’t blogged in FOOOOOOOREEEEEEVVVVEEEEEEEER (now, go watch Goonies again if you need to). Apparently when I’m gainfully employed and not lonely (i.e. have enough friends/social activities to keep me from getting restless), I just don’t blog much.

Yep. Living in Rockville, Maryland and working in aviation regulatory law in DC has been good for me. Currently we are living in Northern Virginia, in my parents’ house (but in the guest room, not my old room, that would be weird) while Ben works on securing continual funding for more AMO physics research. Dr. Smarty-Pants!

Anyway, the real reason I’m blogging today is to dump all the photos and a few videos I took of today’s flyover off of Ben’s phone (we swapped today because I left the big camera at home, even though I’d gotten it out to take to work with me today).

Want more info about the WWII war plan flyover to celebrate the 70th anniversary of VE day?

Schedule and route:       http://ww2flyover.org/general-information/flyover-schedule-and-route/

Great write-up of some of the pilots and their planes:     http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/pilots-prepare-for-historic-wwii-flyover-of-mall/article/2563250

Here are the photos from the lower terrace of the Kennedy Center (no filter, just a Moto G cell phone doing whatever it wants), I know they’re not the best, but PLANES! (There is a video on my Facebook page, but not on here because I’m cheap.)

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Hi, world!

Sorry I’ve been quiet on the blog-o-sphere for so long. Busy + happy = no time to mope around and blog. Ben and I have been doing a lot of local exploring lately with friends, which means I’m shy about bringing my camera along and then using it when I do bring it and posts without photos are just dull.

Anyhow, I just wanted to let any remaining readers know that I haven’t abandoned you, I’ve just been busy. Also, I’m tired and cranky today and that seems to be my trigger to blog!

Why am I tired and cranky? The fire alarm in our apartment building went off THREE TIMES yesterday. Once at 3:30 PM (no big deal, we went for a walk). Then again at 11:10 PM (thankfully we were running late with the whole bed time thing and hadn’t gotten in the shower yet, though normally one of us would be all clean and brushing their teeth while the other showered right then. Than again at 12:45 AM this morning. BLECH! Apparently there is some sort of pressure issue with the sprinkler system in the parking deck next to/attached to our building (not the first time this has happened) and it was so drastic that it set off the alarm for the apartment building too!

What I’m wondering is that there are over 100 units in our building, most of which are 2 bedrooms, where were all those people!? There were about 40 people milling around outside the building for the afternoon alarm, then maybe 20 for the 11:10 PM alarm, and then only about a dozen people milling around the front door for the 12:45 AM alarm. Did people sleep through it? HOW!? Did they stay inside? WHY?! What kind of person ignores a fucking fire alarm and stays inside? I knew there was a 99% chance of it being a false alarm, but I still put on a coat, boots, hat, mittens, and grabbed my nook HD (it’s an awesome little Android tablet I bought myself for hannukah with leftover birthday money), cell phone, and purse each time. If I’d actually smelled smoke I may have made the stupid choice to grab a few choice items (change of clothes, meds, laptop, ketubah, jewelry, and viola). But the hallway was cool, smelled like curry (not usual in our building), and no one seemed panicked.

I suppose I can save this post from being whine-fest 2014 by summing up some of the awesome things we’ve done over the past few months, you can see why I say we’ve been busy:

• Ben was on partial leave due to the shutdown (only allowed to work 5 hours/week “to preserve property”)
• Becca came to visit from Calgary! They went and did touristy things and made me some awesome dinners while I continued to adjust to my new job
• Visited the Maryland Renaissance Festival, where we met up with some friends to see an organ recital in the woods
• Attended a CU alumni event focusing on the NASA/CU collaboration on MAVEN
• Saw CAVALIA at the National Harbor with my dad and got a VIP tour of the stables after the show
• Hosted a cooking party where we cooked fondue bread pudding in a pumpkin with vegan “bacon,” yum!

• Visited the White House for the Fall Garden Tour (post forthcoming)
• attended the National Kidney Foundation masquerade gala (sans masks, but with peacock feathers!)

• watched a rocket launch from Wallops Island Spaceport from the roof of our apartment building
• Cooked a vegetarian Thanksgiving feast (served with a side of turkey, for those who wanted it) at my parents house for my dad, my brothers, and a friend of ours
• Went shopping for some very specific good deals on Black Friday, then stopped by my parents house to eat leftovers for lunch and finish my shopping online (new carry-on suitcases, nook HD and cover, etc.)
• Hosted a friend for Shabbat Thanksgiving to help sooth her nerves before arguing before the Supreme Court
• Attended a last-night-of-Hannukah holiday potluck (yum!)
• Attended and helped deep fried a kosher turkey at “Friendsgivikkah” pot-luck feast

we had to prep in the laundry room because their kitchen is dairy and then decided that the floor was less wobbly than the washer/dryer tops

G and Ben checking on the bird 3/4 way through cooking

• Attended my office holiday party and Secret Santa gift swap at a nice steak restaurant downtown (we each had a beautiful, huge, salmon steak)
• Went out for pre-Christmas Dim Sum and a movie [the Hobbit, part 2 of 3] with my family (even Gramma came!)
• Attended Ben’s uncle and family’s holiday party
• Spent a whole day visiting the Newseum
• Attended a potluck New Years Eve party at a friend’s apartment building’s party room downtown
• Spent a whole day cooking party with Andrea and company preparing a Turcchetta with a sues-vide machine and then deep frying it and serving it with other modern-American Thanksgiving fare
• Had pizza with an old friend and her family in McLean and then went to see the Capitol Steps show at the community center

What else…. My weight loss goal is going SLOOWLY, but mostly steadily down. It’s frustrating when you keep weighing in at -0.4 lbs per week, but then I realize that that adds up to almost -2 lbs/month, and that .4 lbs is just shy of two sticks of butter (eww!). Slow and steady supposedly stays off more easily and more permanently than binge dieting, but sometimes I just want to fool the scale and be done with all this meticulous attention to my food intake and exercise-earned flex points allowance. Re-learning proper portion and teaching myself to have self control and around tasty foods is HARD. F’ing cookies, salt water taffy, home made caramels, and other holiday treats. I’m just grateful that I’m allergic to most traditional treats (no nuts, peanuts, chocolate, or berries, plus lots of other things too). My allergies are a good reason not to try something and great and easy excuse as to why I’m not eating something at parties. SELTZER WATER IS MY FRIEND, but then I have to occasional be seen with an alcoholic beverage or folks start to stare and my mid-section (which is still kinda plumpy, but not in a baby-filled way, just a food-baby way).

Please remind me to post about the White House tour if I forget by the end of the week!

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Flash-back to a month ago

My mom came home a few days before Passover. She used a bunch of sick leave to have a whole week state-side, every day she had a doctor’s appointment (dentist, eye doc, etc.) she was able to use a sick day. Anyway, my dad has a friend who works in the Smithsonian Natural History Museum’s PR department and he was able to sneak us in on a tour of the new/temporary orchid exhibit with a bunch of local garden club members!

The exhibit closed recently, but here are a few of my photos that actually came out. I was trying to catch how glittery and lush the orchids looked, but I only had my tiny point-and-shoot with me. Oh well.

dendrobum orchids (white and yellow centers with pink edges)

the elephant in the rotunda

CYMBIDIUM orchids, green tea colored petals and white and pink centers

white orchids with magenta splotches, my favorite!

frilly pink orchid with a deep magenta beard

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It’s finally spring in DC!

This has been a BUSY month. During Passover I went through a few rounds of interviews for a new job, which I was only at for about two and a half weeks. It wasn’t a good fit. Tax law was too passive for me, I really like getting to do legal research and helping support aggressive arguments, and tax law was more about actuarial calculations and data entry; not enough law for me in the long term. Oh well. At least I hadn’t gotten too settled yet. It was never meant to be, I was just too optimistic to realize that at the time. The entire time I was there, I felt a bit like this:

 

That is NOT how one should feel at work when the job and the employee are a good fit.

In cheerier news, we went downtown as the cherry blossoms were starting to bud (but before most had blossomed) 2 weeks ago.

Now, I’m back to where I was a month ago, looking for a NEW new job, but at least I have a slightly better idea of what to look for and what I should have seen as warning flags earlier in the interview process.

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why Boulder?

Why not?! Boulder is where we live and a beautiful and amazing place.

Originally, we’d planned on marrying in DC or Northern Virginia, near where I grew up and my immediate family all live. Then things got complicated. My grandfather passed away last spring (April 2009), and we realized that having him there was what had been tying us to DC and without that we could be married anywhere!

There are two main reasons we chose Boulder, 1) it’s where we live and can easily plan things in a hands-on way without having to pay for any travel expenses beyond a tank of gas and 2) the cost of hosting the wedding here will be significantly less per person than in DC or northern VA, so we’re able to invite more people. The downfall of getting married out here is that it is virtually a destination wedding, even though we live here, we’re asking the vast majority of our guests to travel here to celebrate with us.

Does the blog-o-sphere have any input on destination weddings? Is it somehow weird or rude to ask people to travel to you, rather than going to where most of them are? I figure that it’s our wedding, and that everyone can plan their own wedding as they wish.

original wedding & reception location

 

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Temporary LDR (long distance relationship)

The Ben is going away for just over a week. I’ve never been home by myself before since we moved into our own apartment together. It’ll be weird.

I think I’m going to be spending a LOT of time on the phone with my dad, my grandmother and my aunt talking about wedding crap. I live in Boulder, CO and we’re getting married in the DC area, where I grew up. Plus, my mom travels for 10 months of the year for work and we haven’t really been especially close since I moved out 10 years ago. So yeah, lots of phone time, internet time and hopefully gym time.

-insert complete change of subject-

Has anyone ever gone contra dancing? The Ben’s little sister is really into and I’d like to go, but he’s such a dance-phobe! Would contra/line dancing a “My Big Fat Jewish Wedding” be -too- weird? I’m afraid that might be the only way I can get the dude to do a first dance with me…. or maybe any dance. He won’t even hug-and-waddle like a middle schooler, just skulk around and avoid dancing.

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