Busy weekend!

Phew!  Our Friday went like this:

9:00 Leave for the north DMV
9:30 -10:10 DMV stuff {holy cow, we were not expecting it to go this fast! 40 minutes here vs. 4 hours at the other place!!}
10:10-2:00 We had to take the car to get inspected, then the mechanic fixed the car, and reinspected it so it would pass.  We paid a bunch for it and in the meantime we ate lunch {sushi} and browsed around the nearby mall.
2:00 - Left the DMV/mechanic/mall area for campus
2:30-3:00 I got my picture for my new student ID card, got the campus parking sticker for my car, and bought books. That also set us back a few bucks.

We had a little downtime to have a smoothie and relax before heading out again.

4:30 Left for some organized bowling. I'm pretty sure we drove through some ghettos, and made it there late, but alive. GoogleMaps estimates of driving times through cities is about half of what it actually is. Ugh.
5:10 BOWLING!  We bowled and the Mr. scored 147 then 145.  I bowled 109 and 112.  We bowled until
7:30 left the bowling alley, taking a different way back, making much better time than before
8:00 got back to the apartment
8:15 headed out to the movie theater to meet up with another couple to catch the
9:10  showing of THOR. I thought it was a pretty fantastic movie. It lasted until
11:10 at which point we drove back and basically fell straight asleep!

I've gotten so used to going to bed around 9, that I was honestly surprised that I stayed awake after such a busy day.  I even kind of tripped on the escalator since I am so nimble on my feet {har har har}.

On Saturday and Sunday we did more necessary paperwork and chores.  Today we went on a walk through a protected forest area, and that was pretty interesting.  We also planted some seeds, so hopefully those will turn out well!

I hope everyone else had a fun, relaxing weekend!

Weekend Walk

Hello, everyone!  I hope you all had a fantastic weekend!  It was gorgeous here both Saturday and Sunday... I couldn't have asked for any better weather for the weekend.  The sun was out, it was 65-70*, slight breeze...verrrry nice weather. 

On Saturday, the Mr. and I walked to the library to get our cards and check out some books. It was a rather forest-y walk there, which was nice to enjoy.  The only downside was that there was no sidewalk the entire way there, so I'm not sure if it would be feasible to walk there when it's wintertime and snowy.  There was a nature-type expo going on at the library, which included naturalists from the area, a local photographer/journalist for the capital region newspaper, wildlife experts, and the local boyscouts.  Everyone wanted us to take their calender of events, and it was pretty fun hearing everyone so excited about their neck of the woods. Which, as it turns out, is also our neck of the woods, now, too. :)  So, we'll have to look through several pages of events, and pick out a few things that look fun and interesting to us.  Some of the events were stargazing, cutting out invasive species (which we could use as an ingredient in pesto), and several hikes through the area. 

Anywho, after we visited the library, we trekked on over to the YMCA to check the place out and look at their rates.  We're also pretty interested in continuing with a martial arts program (taekwondo and/or hapkido, preferably).  There are a few dojangs around the area, and the Y's martial arts program looks decent.  For now, though, our apartment complex has a basic workout area [2 treadmills, 1 elliptical, 1 bike, multipurpose weight machine] which should be able to get us through the warm months.   After the Y, we ate lunch on the balcony and did some necessary paperwork, before heading out for a walk which ended up with carrying groceries back from the store. We rested up a bit, and went out again, since it was so nice, and played Frisbee.  I had worn the pedometer on Saturday, and it said we walked 5.4 miles. HOLY COW! Cardio= walking, strength training= carrying groceries back from the store, short burst activity=frisbee.  Needless to say, I slept well that night.

this is what it looked like for most of our walk to the library

we also saw this on our way to the library

At the library- I'm not really sure who this book is trying to appeal to. But it looked weird enough, so I took a picture of it.

Sunday, even though it's {obviously} more recent than Saturday, kind of eludes me.  I know we went for two walks and ended up buying some seeds {basil, green onion, yellow squash, green peppers, tomatoes, marigolds, snapdragons} and pots to put them in. The pedometer said we walked 3.3 miles on Sunday, by the end of the day.  I think being out in the sun made me more tired than usual, since it has been almost constantly rainy here.  It's turned everything green pretty fast!  Looks like things will either get 'greener' or 'soggier'- the forecast for the week is:

Mon-  Showers

Tues-  T-Showers
Wed-  Rain
Thurs- Few Showers
Fri- Partly Cloudy

We saw that plant a bunch of times on our walk.

could it be wild rhubarb or something else?

white, flowering tree.



I was surprised how well these pictures came out, btw.  I snapped these with the Mr.'s camera on his phone, and they turned out surprisingly well, if not as good as my camera. Happy Monday!

Ring holders

This past weekend shopping, the mister and I picked up these cuuuuuuuuute ring holders at Bed Bath & Beyond.  I snapped a pic of them before putting the bunny in the bathroom and the puppy in the kitchen.

I take my ring off every time I wash my hands, take a shower, do dishes, etc. These are cute and help remind me to take my ring off.  They're nice and heavy stainless steel, so I don't have to worry about them breaking.  If these were ceramic, they'd stand no chance at survival!

I couldn't find the links for these online at BBB, but a different site has the bunny and poochie instead. Just more pictures, I can't read whatever it says in German though!

Rings can go on either of the bunny's ears or on the puppy's tail.  Form meets function. My favorite!

Outwitting the Music

I have quite a bit of sheet music and other books for cello and piano.  It hasn't really been organized or sorted through in quite a while (read: ever?), and figured it was about time.  The "giant-stack-of-formidable-music" was previously jumbled all together.  This was a huge pain to look through each time I wanted to find one specific piece of music.  These past few days, it has been my project to sort through all the music by instrument, and then attempt to sort it -somewhat- by skill level and music type.

"AHA!" I thought to myself.

...it dawned on me that stores make special things for organizing other things.  I checked out the office supplies section of Target and found two nice sized boxes with hanging files inside.  So, I bought the portfolio type boxes and they each fit nicely inside the larger, sturdier box.  (Boxes, boxes, boxes! I can't seem to escape boxes!)

There's some stuff that doesn't fit in the two smaller boxes, so it stays in the "extra space" or sits on top.  The oddly shaped extra strings, metronomes, rosin, polish, etc. fit perfectly in the lower left corner area.

So now, when I want music, I can lift it out vertically and have a much easier time searching for it.  It might sound lame, but I'm glad I finally made sense of it all.  We finally have enough space to leave the cello (and the mister's guitars) out in the den, and there's a piano/library room in our apartment's clubhouse which we have 24/7 access to.  I've only tried it out for a few minutes before, but it seems fairly decent. Now I just need to make myself take a break and go play for awhile!

Unfamiliar sounds

Two or three days ago, the weather was really rainy, pretty blustery, and quite cold.  VERY unpleasant to be outside in, so the mister and I chose to stay inside for the evening.  I didn't think the weather was horrible or anything, just really, really icky weather. (Definitely not picnic weather!) We heard a loud siren; it was pretty identical to what we know a tornado siren typically sounds like. Wondering about it together ("the weather's not that bad, is it?"), we decided to ask our neighbor what was going on. 

We had met our neighbor briefly when the movers were in the middle of hauling all our stuff inside, so we didn't have too much time to chat.  Anyway, I knocked on her door to ask her what the sound meant.  Alas, she told us that it was a siren from the local fire station.  That was a relief to hear, but also made us wonder what the tornado sirens sound like around here . . . 

As much as it was a little annoyance, it wasn't really that loud; just loud enough to make us double check.  I really can't complain about a fire station being nearby, since that's a good thing in my book!  I hopped on over to Google Maps to check it out, and it's exactly one mile away as the crow flies.  Thus ended the mystery of the loud siren and our evening resumed to pushing boxes around for fun.