A teaser...

Update on my new place:

I closed on my new place on Thursday. Settlement was supposed to be on Tuesday but it had to be delayed. I am so glad that the whole thing is finally done. It ended up being such a huge hassle trying to get the seller to do the things he agreed to do on the inspection notice. But it's all over and the place is mine now!

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I've started painting this weekend since I need to have the spare room done before I move all my stuff in. It's fun to pick out colors but it's also really difficult. I tested a couple shades of yellow and decided they were all too dark, so I bought a much lighter shade than I had originally been thinking and it looked good on the first wall. Now that the first coat is on all the walls- it seems very bright. Hopefully once the white trim is done and the furniture is moved in it will seem less like looking directly at the sun on a clear day.

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Other stuff:

After my last post I realized the event I forgot to mention was my cousins wedding! Sorry Brian and Jen!!! I have some pictures from the wedding to post (like everything else- someday in the future). I drove up to New Jersey for their wedding and had a great time seeing them as well as my Aunt Doris and Uncle Jim (Brian's parents) and my cousin Andrea who I hadn't seen in a long time. But I just have to ask one thing. What is it with the East coast and toll roads? Don't we already pay taxes for the upkeep of the roads??? It seriously cost me almost $30 in tolls round trip (for the non-east coasters, it's a 3 hour drive from here to NJ).

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Since several people asked when I was going to post photos from Balloon Fiesta, here are a few teasers until I have time to look through all the photos I took. These are in no particular order.

Surfacing for Air

If you've been wondering where I've been, it's been a very busy summer for me. I am still loving life back on the mainland and being in the DC area. I have one last set of photos to upload from the Alaska trip, then I will be done with that trip. Here's a snapshot of what I've been up to since Alaska.

In August I traveled to Nebraska for my great grandmother's 100th birthday celebration. It was great to see my family again, including my great grandma, my grandpa (her son) and my aunts on my Dad's side of the family. We also got to briefly see some distant cousins that we haven't seen since we lived in Nebraska (when I was in 4th and 5th grades). After spending a couple days in Nebraska I spent a couple more days in Colorado visiting my college friends. It was great to see all of them and meet the newest additions (there are two new babies and another one on the way). During the summer I also went to my first Nationals (DC's baseball team) game with my friends, participated in a walk to raise awareness about Human Trafficking (modern day slavery) and just enjoyed hanging out with my friends over countless meals including one trip to Allison's brother's restaurant in Southern Maryland.

At the end of the summer I finally decided to buy a house (after thinking about it for a long time and doing a lot of research about buying a house). In September I began that whole process. It's a strange market we're in out here right now, and not quite what I was expecting. I am pleased to say, however, that an offer I made on a two bedroom condo was accepted on my Birthday and if all continues to go well, I will close in about 10 days. I am very excited to be a homeowner and have a place of my own.

In September I also began a class at the community college. It's an introduction to Photoshop class and I am really enjoying it. There are several bloggers whose work (photography) I really admire who talk a lot about Photoshop and have written articles about how they do different things and showing comparisons of their photos before and after. While they have REALLY expensive cameras and multiple lenses, I cannot afford that kind of camera. I think I take decent photos with the camera I have now, but I saw the potential to make them that much better with better editing software (sorry HP, but your photo editing software just doesn't compare). The Photoshop software is so complex that my class really only skims the surface, but it will be enough for me to get started. This class is also one of the reasons I haven't posted much. I keep wanting to wait and post pictures and everything after I've learned enough to be able to edit them in Photoshop. However, I am taking photos at a pace that is far outstripping my future ability to edit and blog about it all since the class goes until December. Thus, I'm going to try and just post the photo's (time is still an issue for me) unedited and come back later and post a few favorites at a later date after I edit them.

At the beginning of October I travelled to Albuquerque for a long weekend with my Mom during Balloon Fiesta. I manage a hotel there and I was very happy to be able to meet the managers I work with who are on site and see the hotel, which just finished a remodel. It was also a fabulous opportunity to get two rooms at $40/night during the biggest event of the year in Albuquerque, and go see an event (Balloon Fiesta) that I have always wanted to attend. More to come on that in a separate post.

Last weekend I went camping at Cunningham Falls with four of my friends and it was great. I thought since the park was named after a waterfall that the waterfall must be great, but alas it was little more than a small stream flowing over a very large boulder. We hiked around in the park for several hours, then headed over to our camp site where we enjoyed the requisite hot dogs, hot chocolate and smores. The campgrounds had an actual bathroom building, which was nice since I am used to backpacking and no toilets.

This weekend we celebrated my friend Ellin's Birthday with a get together on Friday night. Yesterday morning I met my friend Allison at a local spa courtesy of her financial planner (as a way for him to meet new potential clients) and we enjoyed a morning of mani's and pedi's. I braved the mall in the afternoon for a little winter clothes shopping then gave my hair stylist free reign late in the afternoon. My hair is now a little blonder and I don't really have bangs anymore. Right now, I love the change, but I haven't had to style it myself yet- so I'll have to see how it goes.

And there you have it, the past couple months in a nutshell. No doubt I've forgotten some activities. Perhaps downloading my camera someday soon will jar my memory.

Independence Day

For the Fourth of July I went downtown with Ellin (she works downtown and has a parking pass) to see the fireworks by the Washington Monument. I was warned not to take the Metro, and thank goodness I went with Ellin and stayed away from the Metro. As soon as the fireworks ended, the zillion people who were swarming downtown to watch the fireworks all made a beeline for the subway. It took us a while to get out of downtown, but it was way better than being underground with all those people.

Here are a few shots I took.

A Friday Afternoon

Since we had the day off last Friday due to the Holiday Weekend, Ellin and I went to visit a park near her house that turned out to have beautiful gardens. I only snapped a few photos because there were just too many pretty flowers to take pictures of them all.

Brian and Jen visit

Easter weekend my cousin Brian, his fiance Jen and their son Connor came down to DC. They live in New Jersey, which is just a few hours away. I hadn't seen Brian since I was in Middle School and he was in High School. That was the last time I lived on the east coast and the last time he lived in New Jersey. Both of us have lived in several other places in the mean time.

They came down on Saturday afternoon and checked into the hotel (yes- a Marriott). I took the metro down to where they were staying and met up with them and then we all headed downtown to the waterfront for a seafood dinner. After dinner we walked down the waterfront to the Washington Memorial then down the mall to the Capitol.

Easter Sunday I met up with them at the hotel for brunch then we headed down the street to the Zoo. It was pretty busy, but it was a really nice day. Here's some pictures of us at the zoo. I thought I had a picture of all three of them, but it turns out I was always using their camera, so I have to get Jen to send me one from her camera.

As you can see, we managed to catch the Pandas eating. If you have been to zoo's with Panda's before you are probably aware that it is not easy to capture a panda doing anything except sleeping and sometimes they aren't even sleeping in a place that you can see very well. Thus, you will have to forgive me for posting multiple Panda pictures. I restrained myself and did not post all 12.

And this guy looked so harmless and cute...

These two anteaters were by far the cutest animals I saw all day. The baby was just a couple of weeks old and he was just riding around on Mama's back.

And here's one of me, Connor and Brian.

Spirit to Serve

A week and a half ago Marriott had it's annual Spirit to Serve our Communities Day. This was the tenth year that the company has done this. In case you do not know someone who works for Marriott and have not heard of this, let me enlighten you. Our company is very service oriented and one day a year is dedicated to as many people in the company as possible going out in their communities and serving. Wondering how many people that is? Marriot has more than 300,000 employees at 3,200 properties worldwide.

We do a lot of fundraising and serving throughout the rest of the year for charities like United Way and Children's Miracle Network and local food banks, but this one day is special. When you are on property like I have been for the past 5 years, not as many people can go at once, so it stretches out over a week or two with various different activities.

Being here at corporate this year has given me a whole new perspective on it, and I liked it a lot. There are a lot of employees at a large hotel- several hundred, but at corporate there are several thousand of us. On May 13th about 2,000 employees from corporate went out into the DC area and served our community. It started that morning with breakfast at the associate entrance, music playing as we walked up, and everyone in jeans and their Spirit to Serve t-shirts. Everyone gathered outside the associate entrance for a quick rally and Mr. Marriott gave us a pep talk. Then we headed over to our buses- there were 20-30 buses in 4 lines across the parking lot waiting to take the first round of teams to their service site. Not everyone left the building, some people stayed at HQ and did service projects in the building like making sandwiches for a homeless shelter in the kitchens.

The Global Revenue Management Team went to the CHI Center (except for a handful that went with the Fairfield Inn team to a Habitat for Humanity site). The CHI Center serves handicap people in our community by helping them find employment in the community if they are able, providing employment at the center for people who are not able to go to a job site but can still do things like stuff envelopes and put mailing stickers on them or other simple tasks like this, and some are so severely handicapped that they come for daycare. They also help their clients to find living situations appropriate to their abilities and check on them periodically to make sure everything is well at home. I was very interested to learn about the center because my friend Kelly in Minnesota used to work for a similar type of organization (from what I understand).

We mostly worked outside on the grounds weeding, cleaning windows, washing and cleaning buses, picking up trash, etc. We did get to see some of the clients when they were arriving in their buses (and some of them were very curious about us!) and we also saw them at lunch time. In order to keep from disrupting their routines we did not do much work inside the building. Despite the centers lack of organization in preparing for 40 volunteers, it was a good time.

If you are interested in reading more and learning what some of the Marriott teams in other countries did, check out this story.

Cherry Blossom Festival

Back at the end of March/early April DC had its annual Cherry Blossom Festival. I thought it sounded really fun and headed down there at the peak viewing time. I had visions of strolling along the path by the water and the Cherry trees and enjoying the sights. Indeed, there was water and there were Cherry trees, my vision just didn't take into account the other 5 million people who would also be there.

I was told there would be a lot of people there, but as I came to find out, my understanding of "a lot of people" was insufficient to accurately describe the situation. The best way I can describe it is if you've seen one of those photos of a beach in China where you can't even see the beach or the water because there are so many people- that's what downtown DC was like. It was nearly impossible to take any pictures with that many people around and honestly, I find it nearly impossible to enjoy anything with that many people around.

Here are a few photos I did manage to capture:

The Zoo Part II and Other Random Bits of Life

Well, it's taken me a while to get around to posting the second part of my photos from the zoo. Since then I have also visited the Museum of Natural History and the National Holocaust Museum.

The Museum of Natural History is too big to do in one day, so I just plan to keep going back until I've made it to all of the different areas! Plus, it is very busy and I get tired of the million kids who are there on school trips and couldn't care less about looking at the exhibits.

The Holocaust Museum was also very busy, but luckily I was there in the off season when you don't have to pick-up time cards to the visit the main exhibit. It was very interesting, although after living in Switzerland and studying World War II and the Holocaust while I was in school there, I was surprised by some of the things I thought they very briefly passed over or did not mention that I expected them to spend more time on.

Besides visiting downtown DC, I have also been busy with the last trappings of the move. Primarily, getting a Maryland Drivers License and registering my car here. Getting my car registered here turned out to be more of a fiasco than I expected since they require a long and expensive safety inspection, from which they made me get several hundred dollars worth of work done on my car. The fan belt I was happy to replace as from what I understand that is a rather important thing and bad things happen if it breaks (yes- clearly I am mechanically inclined as I can explain it so well!). They also made me replace this broken piece of plastic on the edge of one of the rear wheel wells. Now, you have to understand my car is plastic and the broken part wasn't sticking out, it was just a big crack. This piece had also been broken for the past three years and the state of Hawaii had twice inspected my car and deemed it safe even with this piece of plastic cracked. But the state of Maryland- NO, they decided it was a clear safety hazard to have a cracked piece of plastic on my car. And could this piece of plastic be replaced while I waited? Of course not. I had to leave my car for two days and get a rental car because the stupid piece of plastic needed to be painted and the stupid paint had to dry. (Okay- I will concede that I am not ghetto enough to drive around with a different colored part on one piece of the car, so the paint part was necessary.)

I have also found a great church out here and I have recently started attending a Bible Study at the church and a small group in my area. I already love the ladies in my small group and feel so blessed to have found them. They are so much fun! They get together every Wednesday night, but they often get together on other days/weekends for impromptu things like to go out to dinner and a movie or to have a potluck and play boardgames. Over the past couple of years almost all of my friends have been from work, so it is fun to find girls outside of work but also single and with careers to hang out with.

Anyways, here are the pictures from the zoo:

Does this not look like the worlds largest Guinea Pig?

Where I Live Now

It's been a while since I have blogged, but I am finally moved in and mostly unpacked. It is just the pesky little things like hanging photos and organizing my craft stuff in the second bedroom that still remains to be done. I don't want to take any pictures inside until I get rid of all the empty boxes and paper and the boxes of stuff for the Salvation Army. I'm so proud of myself for how much stuff I am giving away. I am a consummate pack rat and it's hard for me to give away or throw away things even if I haven't used them in years. I always feel like I'm going to give it away and then the day will come that I need whatever it was.

I love my new place. The kitchen and bathrooms are outdated, but lets face it- that's to be expected unless you're willing to pay a significant premium for a brand new or newly remodeled place. The location is great- really can't be beat. I'm in a little town that still has lots of stores close by, I'm close to the interstate for getting to work, and I am right on a lake.

Here's some pictures of the outside of the buildings:

Notice how the snow looks surprisingly shiny? We had an ice storm earlier this week. That was my first ice storm ever and it was pretty interesting. My car looked like a giant ice sculpture and it took me almost a half hour to chisel the ice off the windows so I could drive to work. The upside? All the schools were closed and there was much less traffic on the roads so I made it to work in about 20 minutes.

Here's the view from my balcony. It's hard to see the edge of the lake because it is frozen over and white like rest of the ground is:

You can kind of make out the foot bridge and trail (white strip) in the picture above. Here's a close up of the bridge (also taken from my balcony).

Here's a picture of the lake I took from a different spot along the shore this afternoon. The trail is still really icy, but I was able to get down to to the shore at this spot because it's by an open grassy area where more of the ice was melted.