DC Trip to visit Josie

This past weekend I went down to DC to visit Josie and Del. It was a lot of fun but sooooo hot. We did the touristy stuff, but breezed right through since I've already been there and was going to visit Josie and not the museums. The first day (Friday) I was really tired because I didn't sleep the night before. My flight was at 6am so I had to be at the airport at 5am. I didn't see a point in going to sleep so I just stayed up all night. I slept a little bit on the plane, but the ride was only 50 minutes so I didn't get much shut eye. When I got there we went to the Smithsonian, but it wasn't opened yet. Josie and I sat on some benches and commented about the runners and how it was too warm to be running. After going through the Smithsonian we went back out and sat on the benches for another hour. We had a nice view of the Capitol Building and the Washington Monument from our bench and of the even crazier noontime runners. After vegging out on the bench for a while, we mustered up the energy to take come cheesy pictures with the Washington Monument and then walk to the Federal Reserve building to have lunch with Del. On our walk we passed by the Washington Monument, the WWII memorial, and the Reflection Pool. It was too hot to go and take pictures so there are none of those. I was literally walking with my hands on my hips to air out my underarms. I just hope no one was behind me! After lunch Del showed us around his office and then we got to go see the board room where all the big decisions get made. I think that was the best part of the touring. I thought it was pretty cool that we got to sit in the chairs and pretend that we were important.

Sitting on the bench being hot and sweaty.

At the Natural History Museum





The Federal Reserve
These are a little blurry because we had the flash off so that we wouldn't disturb anything or anyone. Now that I think about it we probably could have had the flash on since news photographers are in there all the time and probably use their flashes. Oh well it's still cool anyway.




The Jefferson Memorial
The Washington Memorial

Bread lines at FDR memorial.

The FDR Memorial
One of the first times that I went to China my dad and I took a picture when we vistied the Terracotta Army. He posed on his knee with a tough face on like one of the warriors and I sat on one of the kneeling soldier's lap. That started my sitting on statues while picture taking. The last time we went to China with my mom's side of the family I sat on a statue of a director at the Hong Kong Harbor. In this picture I'm sitting on FDR and joked that it's like I'm sitting on Santa's lap.

Are we hams or what?

On Saturday we were planning on going kayaking or to the zoo, but I woke up a little to late to go to the zoo and Josie and Del were sore so we didn't go kayaking. Instead we went to the outlet mall and shopped for five hours. We couldn't believe that we shopped that long! After that we went to the Costco that is connected to the outlet mall and bought a premarinated pork roast for dinner. It was very tasty. A few of Del's cousins came over and we had a nice salad with poppy seed dressing, homemade garlic and oregano croutons, homemade garlic bread, and the pork. It was quite good.

Then on Sunday I got to sleep in while Josie and Del went to church. They came back for me and we had lunch at a Peruvian chicken place before going out the Sports Authority and TJ Maxx. Hehe, I got some cute stuff on this trip! After shopping we went to play ultimate frisbee with church people and then out to pho, which I was very happy about. Josie stayed on the side and held two of the players' baby and got eaten alive by mosquitos. Last week I had some pretty nasty bites so I've been carrying around a stick of Cortizone with me. Luckily for her I still had it in my bag. She got like eight bites! I have two, but neither of them are as bad as hers. Anyway, we played frisbee for like, two and a half hours and now I'm super sore. When I first woke up I wasn't sore at all, but now that it's been 24 hours, I'm feeling it. I had made a comment that I had never hung out with so many Asian people who I'm not related to. It was weird to meet another Chin! It was even weirder that he is Del's cousin! I acatually think I met him at the wedding, but I didn't know his last name was Chin also. I had never seen the monuments at night so after dinner we headed out to see the Jefferson and FDR memorials. We drove by the Lincoln, but didn't know where to park so didn't go up to it. I wasn't too upset about it because it was still pretty muggy outside and we were all sweaty and dirty. I also wanted to have time watch High School Musical with Josie.

This morning I left DC to come back to Troy before leaving for Concord on Friday. My flight was at 9:40am so we planned on leaving Josie's place at 8:40am. She knocked on the door at 6:17am asking if I was awake.

Josie: Are you awake?
Me: Huhhh? It's 6 o'clock.
Josie: No it's not. It's eight.
Me: (squinting at my cell phone because I'm tired and don't have my glasses on.) My phone say 6:17.
Josie: It does? (she walks away and then comes back) Oh, you're right. Okay.

I'm surprised she even understood me since I usually don't make any sense when I'm tired. I guess her clock went wonky and flipped ahead two hours because Del's clock said that it was 6:17 also. Oh man, that was early. All in all, it was a great trip and I should have taken it earlier. I didn't realize that the flight was literally only 50 minutes!

What I've been up to

Lately at work I've picked up the "art" of doodling. I always doodled in class, but now I'm actually doing it at work too. It keeps me calm when walking the elderly through programming their fax machines. I got myself a little pad of paper and everything. I started with the doodle of Christopher's name (near bottom), which he requested, and then moved on to Pooh and the eyeball. The pictures aren't really in any order. I do believe the picture near the bottom that looks like it has a crane in it was my very first Celery doodle. The Sailor Mercury was done by my friend after I told him I picked doodling back up. His drawing totally trumps mine, but like I said to Christopher, there's a reason I write and not draw... though my friend is not an artist either.

I took all of these with the phone on my camera so they're not the best quality, but you get the point.

P.S. I also started the blog last week, but didn't have time to write in it and post.




I think he looks like Honey Bear.




This was one of the first pictures I did. There is only so much you can do with a Bic pen.

The one on the left was my first try. The one on the right is the second try. These don't look nearly as creepy in my blurry pictures as they do in the notepad.


That's the Adium duck! Adium is the chat client that I use so that I can have Aim, Google talk, MSN, Facebook, and cell phones in one chat program. I love it. It makes it so that I don't have to switch back and forth with all of my programs. I think it's very similar to iChat that Macs come with, but I'm just used to this program now.



Ahhh! This is so much better than mine!


I had a gift certificate to The Pottery Place that Edward had given me ages ago. For some reason I never used it, but since I'm leaving this week I had to get in there to make something. Last Monday I went in and made this cake stand. I think it will look really nice and since I've been baking more I can actually use it. It seems like a practical piece for me. In this picture it hasn't been glazed and fired yet, but it will be a dark blue with white speckles. I'll be picking up the piece tonight so I'll take pictures of the final product and post them.

Packed the closet

Today I packed up the closet and only have a little bit of clothes left out for the next month. I didn't tie up the bags incase I needed something, but I'm going to try to only use what I have left out. I haven't really been packing much because I was finding that I had to pull stuff back out to use again. It was frustrating so I just stopped until it got closer to move day. I realized last night that I only have 20 days left in Troy. It makes me a little sad, though I won't be saying that come winter rolls around. I will be driving with a friend across the country starting the 21st of August, so I need to get a move on the packing. Even though most of my scrapbooking stuff is stored neatly in boxes and shelves, I totally got overwhelmed with the amount of stuff I have. I have a lot of everything! ( I chose to ignore the scrapbooking corner for today. Maybe I'll close up all of those boxes tomorrow.) Can you believe that I have an entire Hefty bag full of high heels? I didn't count how many pair I packed on purpose. I'm even getting rid of four or five pairs. I think I probably took better care of the shoes than anything else. I packed each pair in a grocery bag and then put them in the Hefty. I also have an entire bag full of tennis shoes. Now there's actually room in the mud room for Ed's shoes. It looks normal in there now. Before it looked like there was an entire family's worth of shoes in there but they were all mine! Maybe I need to downsize, but I really like them all and plan to wear them. So two hours later, the shoes are done and the closet is pretty much ready for me to pack up and go. Now for the rest of the house!

This doesn't even look like it's my closet! Though I have a feeling that this is what a normal person's closet looks more like. Hahah. I actually went back to a blog post from when I moved in and the closet looks very similar. I haven't been able to see the ugly floor of the closet for years.