Stopping at Home

We have not looked at any houses yet, and won't start until next weekend. Part of the problem is that Eric and I have not found any time together. Eric did make it through Restaurant Week last week largely unscathed. Past restaurant weeks have done a major number on his hands. If you've never seen the hands and forearms of a working chef, you don't know how much I dread restaurant week every half a year. He doesn't cut himself on his knives too often, but he manages to cut himself on just about everything (from a broom to tin cans). He also comes home with grease and fire burns all the time. He can also pick up hot plates with his bare hands without even thinking about it, which is a problem when he then hands said plates to me. Although I worked in a restaurant for several months, I just never gained the tolerance to heat that so many career servers and cooks develop. However, back to my original point... we didn't have time last week because Eric worked a 6 day week, and his only day off was Wednesday.

This weekend is my fault. I am flying to Portland, OR next week for a work strategy meeting. But I'm leaving late afternoon on Friday of this week and stopping in Grand Rapids, MI on the way. Both my parents and my in-laws live there and I'm beyond excited to get to go home for two days. Eric gets to stay and hang out with our cat. I've already finished packing everything. All I need are my keys and I'm good to go. I've even packed my toothbrush and will have to either use Eric's or pull out my spare (wherever that went).



Sir managed to climb on top of a stack of chairs not seconds after Eric had stacked them on the table to vaccum.



Crocheted Coral Reef at the Natural History Museum

Last Saturday, while Eric was watching the SuperBowl, I had an adventure of my very own. I walked through the Sculpture Garden, past the ice skaters, and headed to the Natural History Museum on the National Mall. They have a few new exhibits, including a huge crocheted coral reef in the Oceans wing of the Museum. 800 people helped to create that reef and it has a section in the back that's in whites and greys and beiges to symbolize a bleached coral reef. And it has a section made almost entirely of plastic to represent the amount of plastic that can be found in today's oceans. They also had separate display cases around the outside of the room for the portion of the exhibit that travels from one place to another.



I also went upstairs to see the new setting for the Hope Diamond. Of the three possible settings that the American public got to vote on, I definitely think the one that was chosen was by far the best. The title of the new setting is "Embracing Hope" which I thought particularly fitting. I also took a quick peek at their rotating exhibit which is about Cyprus right now. Unfortunately, no photography was allowed in the exhibit, although I was unaware of that when I first entered. Some "nice" lady pointed it out to me in the middle of my trying to capture something on film, which scared me so much that the composition is completely out of wack.

My biggest wish right now is to get a new camera that I can actually manually zoom in and out with. I'm so tired of trying to get a cool close-up with my digital camera and 9 out of 10 pictures coming out blurry until I figure out what distance isn't too close and tricking my camera into doing what I want it to do.

NaNoWriMo and House Search

Sorry for the long absence. For all of those who want to know, I did not finish NaNoWriMo in November. Between my very first business trip (which was amazing) and Thanksgiving, etc. I got to about 12,000 words before I gave up. It was slow going at best after the first week. They have a term for that at NaNoWriMo, getting week two'd.

I also recently got word, that we would not have to relocate for my job. So that means we can finally restart our search for a place of our own. We have a loan officer and a realtor and I have a list of places that I want to go look at. I'm so ready to have our own place, to be able to decorate it the way we want it to look. I want to be able to paint the walls without having to repaint them white. I want to be able to have hardwood floors where I want them and no carpet that we can spill stuff on in our dining room or under our computers.

I just came back from another business trip last week. It was a lot more exhausting than the first one, but it was good in other ways. We had our annual planning session and got a lot of things hedged out. The next trip is coming up fast. I leave this Friday and stop over in Michigan to see my family, which I'm really excited about. I haven't seen them since our wedding in September and that's just not often enough. After that I'll be in Portland, OR for a week for yet another strategy planning session. I'm becoming a righteous jet-setter.