Category Archives: weekend

Assateague Island

Posted by Leaf on June 1, 2011 None comments

Assateague Island is a quick 30 minute drive from Ocean City. It’s a national park with wild horses (or ponies). They are genetically horses but they’re the size of ponies because they’ve adapted to the harsher environment of the island. There are about 120 horses on the island currently and the theory is, they got there because the locals released them on the island to graze so they wouldn’t be taxed for owning livestock. And they eventually went feral. These horses are beautiful.
Assateague Island
And even though they say they’re wild, I think they’re so used to people that they aren’t afraid of going near people. In fact, we saw a group hanging out all around the campers. They probably get treats from the people even though they’re not supposed to.

Assateague Island
The beach on Assateague is a lot more secluded than at Ocean City. I think the water was still too cold though. Not many people went in.

Assateague Island - Marsh Trail
There are also many mosquitoes on the island. We took a quick walk around the marsh areas to look for horses and got bitten a few times. We found a horse though!

Taste of Arlington

Posted by Leaf on May 23, 2011 None comments

It was very crowded and the food was mediocre. Not sure I’d do it again.
Taste of Arlington
This may have been the best sight of the day for us. Jaleo’s giganto paella.

I felt like we spent most of the time wading through crowds to find the end of the line for whatever vendor was good. The other vendors that weren’t busy had no lines for a reason. Bayou Bakery for example, I mean shaved ice? Seriously? Thumbs down. I’ve been looking forward to trying their food but this “taste” doesn’t exactly leave us banging down the doors to try them any time soon.

On the plus side, the weather was perfect. Not overly hot or sunny. In fact there were a few raindrops but it didn’t last long enough to affect anybody.

Almost the end of the world

Posted by Leaf on May 21, 2011 None comments

I don’t know who these crazy ass religious rapture folks are but I’ve read their theory in the paper. They thought the world was going to end today at 6AM. Well, it’s 8:30PM and the only thing that almost felt like the end of the world was when my PC crapped out yesterday. I was getting these hard drive errors and I couldn’t access any of my files and it was just a mess. All I had was the Internet. Good enough. I watched a crapload of Weeds on Netflix.

Luckily we have a nerd in this house, and I ain’t talking about Gina. I tried fixing it by restarting the PC a few times and calling Dell who gave me nothing because I was no longer under warranty. A 1.5 year old computer. I was ready to buy a new one. Turns out it was a virus. I felt so dirty. So violated. It’s cleared now though. All clean! We were playing Plants vs. Zombies again this morning.

Whew!

Dogs and Cats

Posted by Leaf on May 16, 2011 None comments

After taking a hiatus from volunteering to walk dogs around for adoption, we went back this weekend.  They usually assign me a small dog and him a large one.  Guess they don’t want the dog to take me for a walk.  This time, he got a 50 lb puppy, Lincoln, and I got a 2 year old pit mix girl named Oreo.  She was as sweet as could be especially when she looked up at you with her puppy dog eyes.  But you could definitely tell her preferences.  I think she liked boys.  I mean, she didn’t mind me so much and was nice enough, but she was kind of aloof towards me.  Then, when a little boy came up to her, she went right to him, leaned into him and then as he was petting her, she rolled over for a full on belly rub.  My jaw dropped, HEY!  You don’t do that for me!  Later, another guy came up to her and she did the same thing.  I decided to swap for Lincoln.  He was a leash puller and had way too much puppydog energy so he ran him a few laps when he first got him and by the time we swapped leashes, Lincoln was pooped and fell asleep.

The next day, we met with a friend for lunch at Bollywood Bistro in Old Town Fairfax.  The food was good but I think we’ll stick to our tried and true, Raaga.  Old Town Fairfax is a neat little place though.  Fun to walk through with lots of restaurants and little shops.  By luck, there was a farmers market in that area that day, so after lunch we headed there and bought a ton of stuff.  Boy have I missed farmers markets!  I got beets, bok choy, a cantaloupe, strawberries, spring onions, and swiss chard.  I would’ve gotten more but I knew our fridge was already bursting at the seams.  I seem to like to buy a lot of food.  It’s the only shopping he can tolerate and I have to get out my shopping urge somehow.  While at the farmers market, we saw a lady walking her cat on a harness.  We approached her to ask her what breed of cat she had and she said it’s a mutt cat she adopted a while back and she doesn’t know why but this cat enjoys walking about outside on a leash.  That cat was browsing the market and greeting some of the vendors.  It was pretty neat to see.

Popular

Posted by Leaf on May 11, 2011 None comments

Sunday while we were walking to the grocery store, we saw a jogger who ran into a buddy of his stopped at a red light in a car. The buddy honked at Jogger and he waved and chatted with him through his car window. By coincidence, the next car over was another friend of Jogger who also honked and waved at him (all during this red light). The light turns green and Jogger continues on and we see him getting honked at by yet another driver who is a 3rd friend of his… he slows to give him a hello. Geez what is he, a local bartender? He knows everybody!

Girls Just Wanna Have Fun!

Posted by Leaf on March 19, 2011 1 comments

I organized 5 of us ladies for mani pedis. Hey! It’s my first time (pedi at least) so I needed to turn it into an event unto itself.
Fire Engine Red

To-do’s this weekend

Posted by Leaf on March 13, 2011 None comments

I have a gajillion to-do’s this weekend but the one big to-do for me was to tackle my taxes. This year, and I am so embarrassed I didn’t think of this last year, instead of doing and redoing my taxes over and over looking for the same number twice, I did it twice. Then, I compared the two to see the delta between the two and caught my errors that way. It was so much faster and I’m happy to report I have done my taxes. Every year, I drag my feet about it because it’s just tedious. Not so much difficult as a pain in the ass. To the point where I feel like geez, how about I skip the filing and you can keep my return. And every year, after completing it, I wonder why I was dreading it so much, it’s not so bad and I get some money back. Anyway, this year is the same. Glad it’s done though.

And the rest of the things on my to-do’s: return VS items at the post office – check, grocery shopping – check, packing – not yet, cleaning – not yet. That’ll be another foot dragger I’m sure. At least I don’t have to work this weekend.

I feel so silly and petty talking about my mundane activities and frivolous feelings in light of the earthquake(s) and tsunami in Japan. It’s not that I’m not aware, I’m stunned, saddened and yet just carrying on with my life. It sure does put things into perspective in terms of my silly complaints about my life. I feel very fortunate. And an ebonics-speaking boss has its endearing side.

Ali Baba

Posted by Leaf on March 12, 2011 3 comments

Today, after we came back from running errands and grocery shopping, we headed upstairs to our place and since his hands were full, I took the keys to open the door. For some reason though I couldn’t turn the key and I kept trying and saying “Nope.” And he said “It’s the right key.” And I tried 2 more times. Just as he pushed the key in to try it, we heard someone behind the door unlocking it. I thought our neighbors had dropped by to play with the chinchillas. But then an old man poked his head through and we immediately stammered oh geez, we got the wrong floor. He said he’s done it before himself. We were so mortified we quickly ran back to the elevators. We need to paint a big “X” on our door.

Relaxing Sunday

Posted by Leaf on February 20, 2011 3 comments

Today feels like Saturday because I had to work yesterday and we have Monday off for the holiday. For lunch, we went to the Cinema Drafthouse to see Tangled and have greasy bar food and beer. It’s been so long since I’ve seen a movie in the theater, I think the last one was a year and a half ago. And it was a Disney princess movie! And a new place I’ve never eaten. We had fried mac n’ cheese appetizers and nachos. I loved the movie. I mean ok yeah it’s stupid Disney princessy and the story is all jacked up but still, I just like the fairytale la-dee-da escape from reality! And the mac n’ cheese triangles were dangerously yummy.

This afternoon I attempted to do my taxes. I think I’m done but I’m going to sit on it a bit in case anymore forms come in. Taxes are such a chore. I needed to relax afterwards with some chinchilla-mania.
Marco
Marco’s attacking the water bottle for some reason.
Marco & Gina
Gina (on the left) can’t figure out what the interest with the water bottle is either. I love my crazy chinchees.

Dance!

Posted by Leaf on January 28, 2011 None comments

We just got back from our first ballroom dance class and boy do my hips and knees ache. It was just 2 hours but 2 hours on your feet moving about can be a lot of work. We first learned the 3 step waltz, then the 4 count rumba (which is basically the waltz but there’s a pause on beat 2), then the simple hustle, and then merengue. I think I rather like it. So we learned that for the waltz, the women step back with their right leg (aka “sexy leg”) and the men step forward with their left leg. Ladies put their left hand on his bicep and he puts his right hand on her shoulder blade. Then it’s just 1-2-3, back side together, up (left) right together for the women and opposite for the guys. The women have to look to the left. No eye contact. Easy peasy eh? I think I can handle that. It’s when they start introducing fancy side twirls and such that I start to get dizzy.