Snowed In

Today we had a blizzard go through the Washington area. A real one! Kyle and I have decided it can now be called a "real" winter. Generally, an inch of snow in the area can be a cause of panic....I guess when you get 21" it's acceptable. Before the storm hit people stormed the grocery stores to stock up.

Apparently the grocery stores were completely out of milk, ground beef, and eggs. I only made a short trip into Wal-Mart last night after going to see Avatar, so that we could buy a new kennel for our cats before the trip, so I cannot personally attest to the state of the grocery stores. However, I did notice that the food isles at Wal-Mart were in a state of disarray (and oddly enough, they seemed to be out of ketchup).

At the moment I can hear the plow making its way through our parking lot for at least the 4th time today. From the window you can see our car. There is literally an unbroken blanket of snow from the road in the back of the car to the road in the front of the car....you can't see underneath it (except along the sides). I've watched a few silly people try to dig their cars out. They must have somewhere important to go to brave the roads, or they feel spending 45 minutes digging their car out from under the snow is a good way to spend a snowy day. Tomorrow I plan to take some pictures.

Youth Group Craziness and Christmas Trains

Last night we went to the church for the youth group "spy" night. Mostly, we played various games that had a spy twist to them. During the first game, which was basically capture the flag, I got elbowed in the nose. It wasn't pretty, and I spent the rest of the evening hanging out in the kitchen with an ice pack on my face. Luckily, the damage was minimal, and other than a tender face and a small bruise it wasn't too bad. Kyle and I have decided that next time we are going to wear helmets with face masks, since last time his glasses got smashed. Hopefully nothing more will happen of that nature...at least for a while.

The following are some pictures from our trip to Chicago for Thanksgiving. On Friday we went to the Chicago Botanic Gardens to see their train exhibit. The cool part is that all of the buildings are made out of organic matter (like acorns and stuff).

These are just a few of the photos that I took. The buildings were all Chicago landmarks. The little kids were fascinated by all the trains and the "snow" that was falling from the ceiling. It was a much better way to spend Black Friday in my opinion.

Today it snowed! It feels like an actual winter day, which for Virginia's mild winter was a nice change. We put our tree up and enjoyed the opportunity to feel festive. While we were putting up the ornaments, Sphinx started to chew on the nativity set (more specifically the head of a wise man). Needless to say, we had to move the nativity to a cat safe area. Anyhow, here is a picture of our tree this year. I'm hoping that the cats don't manage to knock it over this year...

Paintball

Here are some pictures from the paintball trip we took with the youth group. It was a great day and the weather was perfect. The only thing that caused some problems was the excessive amounts of mud on some of the courses, but other than that is was smooth sailing.

This was before we got too messy. I think we had just completed the first course.

Go team orange! This was the only course where we were able to stay out of bounds and coach our teams/take pictures of the actual courses.

Ouch! His front was totally covered too.

Our group at the end of the day, tired and muddy. The last two games we played were total elimination w/ no time limit. My team dominated :). The biggest bummer was that I never saw Kyle during the matches, and never had a chance to take him out (we were on opposing teams).

Oh the things you will see.

So one of the best things about this area is the plethora of things to do. Of course, this can also be a downfall, as there are so many choices and it can be overwhelming. Kyle and I have made a conscious effort to take advantage of these opportunities and have been going downtown more often.

One of the best parts of going downtown is coming up out the Smithsonian metro stop. This is because you never know what you will be greeted with. True, half the time it is a group of scientologists with a book table...but still, the anticipation is always there when I ride the escalator. The most recent surprise was to arrive on the Mall and be greeted by hoards of people who were there for the DOE Solar Decathlon It was so cool. Luckily I had my camera and was able to capture some fun pictures, but the pictures on the website are free from all the bystanders....so you can actually see the houses. Some of the houses were so interesting looking, that I had to laugh when I saw U of I 's house in comparison...it looks like a morton building. But, at least it would fit right into the landscape of good old Illinois. Anyhow, for those who might like to see some good pictures, I've posted the link to the website. I really liked Cornell, Team Spain, and Team Alberta. http://www.solardecathlon.org/2009/final_results.cfm While we were downtown we went to the American History Museum. My favorite part was seeing Julia Child's kitchen. Kyle of course wanted to see the exhibit "America at War"....longest exhibit ever.

Two weekends ago we went to the National Gallery of Art and the Portrait Gallery. We wanted to check out the temporary exhibit of Spanish Armor. The detail work was amazing, exquisite. Kyle got yelled at for taking a picture. Oops. It's frustrating because half of the Gallery allows photographs and half doesn't. Anyhow, I was excited to see some of the works that I had learned about in and art history class. I was surprised that I still remembered some of the names. It was certainly a great museum, but I have to admit it all starts to look the same after a bit, so it is best to spend only a short amount of time there at once.

Last weekend while Kyle's dad was here, we made another trip downtown. There we went to see Ford's Theater and the Peterson House. I thought the museum at Ford's was very well done. One of my favorites, in fact. There was just enough information to be interesting, but not overwhelming. It was a good choice, since we didn't have a lot of time before Kyle's dad had to leave. Ford's is putting on a production of A Christmas Carol at the moment, so maybe I'll try to go see it. Interesting tibit: The commonwealth of Virginia's motto is "Sic Semper Tyrannis" meaning "thus always to the tyrants" or "death to the tyrants". This is, of course, what Booth yelled while jumping from the balcony. Interesting choice. At least it is better than our unofficial motto: Virginia is for Lovers.

Hmmm....this looks so plain. Next time I will post pictures.

God is good

So I spent Last night and this morning at the women's retreat at church. It was amazing! It started with a wonderful dinner prepared by some of the men at church (several of which are great cooks/chefs). There was this cream sauce on the pasta that was delectable to the nth degree. For desert there was a flourless chocolate cake that was positively incredible. It was so nice to relax with friends and enjoy a meal that I didn't have to prepare. On that note, I have to say that I love how our church doesn't have age specific ministries. As a result I have met some women who are amazing at all different ages and backgrounds. It makes for some wonderful conversation.

Our speaker was Ellie Lofaro and she was amazing! She speaks nationally, so if anybody ever gets the chance to hear her talk I would recommend it. First of all, I haven't laughed so hard in such a long time. Maybe it's because she is an Italian from Brooklyn and all the wonderful things that come with that heritage. Who knows. But I have to say that her message was so refreshing and uplifting. The whole theme of the weekend was imagining. Imagine what God can and wants to do for you and through you. There was of course a lot more than that, and I still need to devote some time to looking more closely and some of the scriptures that we touched on, but in short it was just what I needed.

This morning we resumed our gathering over a wonderful spread of breakfast items. Ellie talked again for most of the morning, followed by some worship music and prayer. It was a short, but very powerful retreat. I ended up buying two of her books, which I hope will be as engaging as she was. I have high hopes (the woman taught English in NY public schools for 10 years..she must have captivated her students to have thrived in that environment as she did).

Kyle volunteered to help clean up and I ended up staying as well and helped dry dishes (gotta love the industrial dishwashers). I ended up coming home with some of the wonderful cream sauce that was left over from dinner and some very pretty flowers. I'm going to try to get the greens (Acuba) to root. Supposedly it's fairly easy to do with this plant. So with any luck, I'll get some more plants out the deal for our apartment.

So all that is left now is to enjoy the rest of the evening. I think we might rent a movie. Star Wars maybe. Last weekend we went to see the informant! and really enjoyed it. The two teens behind us certainly didn't appreciate the humor....stinks for them. So anyhow, as soon as my dorky husband finished up his computer game it's off to the video store.

This and That

So, today Kyle and I drove forty minutes to a baby shower that we thought was today, only to arrive there and have Kyle remember that it actually was yesterday. Oops! How lame to get the date mixed up. Even more of a bummer because Kyle has to go into work again tonight. School has started, but I still haven't gotten any calls to sub. So I've just been hanging out and using my time "wisely".... Seriously though, having a second car makes a huge difference. I've been able to go to youth group for the past two Sunday's even though Kyle has had to go into work. I've also been able to join a Friday morning Bible study, which has been great so far.

One upside of all my free time is that I have been motivated to work on a lot of my ongoing knitting projects that I had going on and have finished quite a few of them. I'll try to post some pictures of them next time. My camera has been out of batteries and I haven't had a chance to replace them yet....must get rechargeable batteries. But like I said, it has been nice to have the time to knit enough to see the progress almost immediately. It makes for the motivation to keep it up.

Well, I think I'm going to get some ice cream and watch some more of the Emmys.

Enough already!

So last week was very stressful, but thankfully it ended on a good note. As I wrote earlier, I had things pretty much figured out as far as work stuff goes. Well, Wednesday night I got a call asking if I would be willing to be considered for a FT long term sub job, as a growth and human development teacher until the position could be filled. I agreed that I would like to be considered. Well, the school called me Thursday to offer me the position. I told them yes, that sounded great. Two hours later I got a call from another high school in the area asking if I wanted to interview for a full time English position. Yes! So I schedule the interview for Friday, but realize I need to tell the school I agreed to sub for. So I call them to let them know. I go in Friday morning to meet with the principal and she says that she is nervous about not finding a backup sub in case I get the job (which she is sure will happen), but to let her know just in case. Well, the interview goes well, but not well enough. I don't get the job, and when I call the other school they have already found another sub. Bummer. So I am right back where I started, which is okay with me. What was the most stressful is that I had all these anxieties about how I would prepare for the school week that starts tomorrow without knowing what classes I was going to teach or having any clue about the materials. So I didn't sleep well, and then I was just nervous about the interview and such.

As I said, the weekend ended well. Kyle and I took our first step towards helping out with the youth group at church and joined them for a LOTR marathon. We watched the first two films and played a game of ultimate Frisbee in between. It was a lot of fun, but we were exhausted after our long week, so we didn't stay for the last movie. Saturday we finally bought a car for me. It's a 2007 Chevy Aveo. It looks like a toy. Anyhow, it was a good deal for us and it is really all I need. It will get me where I want to go without any crazy frills, plus it has pretty good gas mileage. So that was exciting.

Other exciting news was finding out this morning that a good friend from college is engaged. It is really exciting news, but it also just reminds me of how far away and out of touch we are with people back home. I mean, we aren't across the ocean, but it feels that way sometimes.

Happy Birthday to Me

So I am now 24 years old. Yay.

Anyhow, it seems that it will be a long tedious day. I have to take the car into the shop...not cool. We can't afford a major repair if we are going to put a down payment on another car, and we most certainly can't afford two car payments. After that I have to take the bus to Springfield to get fingerprinted for my background check. I also have to have my background check release form notarized...which means finding a notary, and a bus that goes there. If all goes well, I will be able to walk to the post office to mail my application in for the tutoring position I was offered. But it seems these things rarely do.

Kyle won't get home until 7 or so, after which we will go for a run. We've been working on a running program all summer, but have had several setbacks (vacations, work schedules, and sickness) which have kept us from improving as quickly as we would like. Anyhow, we have to be diligent about sticking to the schedule, or we have trouble getting back on track. We might try to enter a fun run this fall if we can find one....but neither one of us has yet to find out what anybody finds fun about running.

He offered to cook dinner in honor of my bday, but I don't know what he is going to make since we are seriously low on groceries...and since the car will be in the shop, I don't think there will be any improvement before tonight. So, I'm thinking it will be leftovers from the freezer. Last time he got home this late and we went running, we didn't eat until almost 9. So maybe there will be time to play a game before going to bed.

Anyhow, I think I will celebrate my birthday on Friday.

A new car please....

This weekend offers me another new opportunity, one which I'm quite excited about actually. We are going to buy me a car : ). This might not seem all that exciting to some, but considering I've spent the last 6 years of my life dependent upon public transportation and rides from others to get around, I'm very much looking forward to having a bit more freedom. Not only that, but it will be much easier to get to and from the schools, which will give me more flexibility about which sub jobs I can accept, since before I could only accept calls I got the night before due to time constraints. This leads me to my next thought, which is my pursuit for gainful employment.

For the time being, it seems that I will not be teaching this coming school year, at least not in my own classroom. I have applied to work with a private tutoring company and that looks good as long as my paper work goes through. In addition to that I will continue to sub in the local school district and probably continue to look for openings throughout the year. I did have an interview for a half time position for 9th grade English, but it was a preliminary interview, and the department chair will be doing call backs today or tomorrow. If I get another interview chance that would be great, but I'm no longer stressed about finding classroom job. So anyhow, as long as I can sub 2-4 days a week and such, then things should be okay. If that doesn't fill my time enough then I will probably branch out into another tutoring position or retail. Whatever. God will provide something for me, it just might not be what I'm expecting. But as long as I can start paying off my student loans and start saving up more money for when we buy a house.

Last week we went to Hilton Head SC and had a blast. Sadly, I took no pictures. I don't know what I was thinking. Anyhow, no pictures to post of that vacation, but I'll try to post some pictures sometime soon of our adventures of late. Hopefully, there will be at least one more trip downtown to do some exploring somewhere new. We haven't yet been to Eastern Market, which should be fun. Anyhow, it's something to add to the list.

Gettysburg, PA

This past weekend Kyle and I went up to Gettysburg to celebrate our anniversary. We drove up early on Saturday and spent the morning exploring part of the park and listening to a ranger talk about the Battle of Little Round Top. It's so cool to get up close and personal with history. So so much better than any history classes that I have taken. I think it is one of those things that if I had known I enjoy history this much, and that it could be this exciting, I might have taken the history route in college. Oh well, part of me knows that I will be going back to school sometime in the future, so I guess I'll have another chance if I want.

Anyhow, we drove over to Hanover, PA and enjoyed the annual Dutch Festival. We bought a really room divider built out of old windows. So cool. After wrestling it into our car we drove to the B & B where we stayed that night. It was a beautiful, charming old brownstone. Our hosts were great and the breakfast we had was amazing :)

We spent Sunday back at Gettysburg exploring the museum there and then driving back home. Then I had to run to the grocery store so I could make dinner for a family in our Bible study who just got home with their newly adopted son. It was a rather exhausting, but wonderful weekend. Now it's back to the grind of looking for a job.

Planes, trains, and automobiles

We just got back from a wonderful and much needed vacation in J'ville and in the Ozarks. Coming back, Kyle had to be paged for his flight and during his hurry to the gate the strap on his bag broke. Oops! I spent most of my day in various airports, as my first flight left after Kyle's and had a lengthy layover in Atlanta on the second leg of my trip. Needless to say, it would have taken only 1 hour more to drive the trip as it did to fly...Maybe next time. The trip ended with me getting a phone call from Kyle saying that he couldn't come pick me up at the airport because the car was dead. Seriously? Well, that led to taking the train, waiting, and then taking the bus. At least I met a charming young boy who was pulling flower petals off of his sunflower and handing them to me.

The vacation itself was great. I mostly just hung out at home and enjoyed some wonderful food. My old neighbor got married on the 11th, so we went to the wedding and had fun with my family at the reception. It was fun to get dressed up, but I was mortified to find that my own choice in attire was almost identical to the bridesmaids dresses. Yikes! At least the bride didn't seem to mind and actually thought it was funny :).

After the wedding it was time to head to the lake for a couple of days of fabulous relaxing and fantastic food. Fishing, swimming, water skiing, and a couple of games of Agracola and Bohnanza made up most of our free time when we weren't sleeping or eating. It was exactly what we both needed. I think the rest of the summer can be spent searching for a job and decorating/painting our place without the chance of me loosing my mind. Yay.

Does Mr. Clean have a Mrs.?

So it occurred to me that a better name for this blog might be "Challenges Domestic," because it seems that most of the interesting things that happen to me seem to be related to the tedious tasks related to the domestic side of life. However, that would make this rather lame and tedious itself. So, instead I will maintain the current title.

That being said, have you ever cleaned a "self-cleaning" oven? It is a misnomer. There is no such thing as an oven that cleans itself. Even if you run the self-clean feature and subject yourself to the noxious fumes for 4 hours and 20 minutes, you will still be required to scrub the oven door and all the nooks and crannies around the door, which will require more elbow grease than any normal human being possesses. Well, I stopped the whole aggravating process once the darn thing became presentable, if not sparkling clean.

Of course, once I tackled the oven nothing was going to stop me from cleaning the rest of the kitchen. So I cleaned out the microwave, scrubbed the sink, wiped the counter tops, cupboards, and walls, and swept the floor. I ran out of steam before I got to the fridge....maybe tomorrow.

This whole process would not have been necessary if I hadn't managed to drop dinner in the oven yesterday after it had finished baking. It was a eggplant timbale that smelled delicious and looked rather impressive until it was dropped and splattered everywhere. This event was preceded by one almost as disastrous. My can opener needs to be replaced. I had trouble opening the can of tomatoes...lets just say there was a minor explosion.

Anyhow, things are okay for the moment. Next time I'll make my culinary goals more attainable...like PBJ.