Around Sterling

July 4, 2010

Today my mom and I decided to hang around Sterling. There are several parks around the area so we decided to check out two of them. We went to Algonkian Park where there are several picnic areas and a few trails. One trail is a 2-mile loop, we decided to walk part of it. It was a nice hike in the trees. It was hot so the shade was a welcome relief. While on the hike we saw several daddy long-leg spiders and other little creatures. Virginia definitely has more bugs than Colorado! It will take some time to get used to it again. All of the bugs remind me of Minnesota. The second park we went to was Claude Moore Park. It has several more trails but most of them are closed due to snow storm damage...which happened LAST winter! I guess they are very short staffed or don't have enough chain saws! There is a trail that leads to a Civil War lookout post...but the trail was closed. That was a bummer. It was about 4:30pm and pretty hot out when we went to this park so we only spent about 1/2 an hour there an were on our way back to the comfort of air conditioning.

Washington DC for the Day

July 3, 2010

My mom flew into town on Friday to keep me company over the holiday weekend. The East coast finally had a few days of nice weather (below 90 and low humidity) so we decided to go down to the National Mall. We spent a good part of the day down there...we got down there around 10:00am and left around 4:00pm. It was warm out but we brought plenty of water. We didn't go into any museums, we spent most of the time walking around the southern half of the mall. We didn't make it to the northern end...it is a pretty big area with lots to see. We were able to visit these memorials: F.D.R., Thomas Jefferson, Lincoln, Washington, WWII (where we saw & heard some bagpipe players), & Korean War. We also took a walk over to see the front of the White House. It was a full morning and our feet started to hurt so we took a break for lunch. We found a really good restaurant at a Holiday Inn hotel.After lunch we headed over to Arlington National Cemetery. We walked to President Taft's grave site, took a quick walk through tour of Robert E. Lee's house, saw the JFK grave site and saw some of the "changing of the guards" at the tomb of the unknown soldiers.

Thoughts for the day

July 1, 2010

The truck is still out of commission because of the camera issue so I'm not on the road yet. I'm not sure how much longer it will be. I'm filling the days working at the office.

The weather has gotten much, much nicer here. There is little to no humidity and I've been able to have my windows open rather than the AC blasting. It is nice!

Here are a couple of thoughts for the day.

• When you get a massage and they massage your head why does it sound like sand paper? Why does something that feels so good have to sound so bad???
• When you got to turn off a computer why do you have to tell it to "shut down" twice? Start - Shut down - then you have to hit another shut down button.

Ice Water

June 23, 2010

It has been a while since I've posted anything from a work trip. After the last couple of parks we collected we (our program) decided that the cameras we have in our new truck do not let in enough light for the areas we collect. When we collected Redwood National Park the video images turned out pretty dark :(. Not good news. So we decided to get new cameras put into the truck. The process has taken some time but testing is currently going on with new equipment so I hope to be back on the road in a week or two.

I have to post a little blurb from this article I was reading.
http://www.beachbody.com/product/newsletters/nl_413.do

Ice water. Almost every nutritionist will recommend drinking eight 8-ounce glasses of water every day, but did you know that if you drink ice water versus room-temperature water, your body will burn an extra 9 calories per glass? Drinking room-temperature water can burn about 16 calories per glass—that's 25 calories per glass for ice water. So, eight glasses of cool water a day can be responsible for burning 200 calories! Plus, water is necessary for all of your bodily processes, including the ones that control your metabolism. If you're underhydrated, your body will underperform. Water also flushes out fat deposits and toxins, which can hamper your energy.

Can you believe it! I never would have imagined that it would matter if you drank ice water or room temperature water.

I was at the grocery store the other day and garlic was on my list. This is what i found...garlic with a purple outside. Yes, I double checked the label and it said garlic. I had to make sure it wasn't a shallot (small type of onion). It kind of looks of like garlic but Colorado garlic is not purple...weird. Must be an East Coast thing.Oh, and just thought I'd mention that it was 80% humidity here yesterday!

Apartment Organizing

June 20, 2010

Today was another day filled with unpacking and organizing. It is not easy going from a 2 bedroom 2 bathroom condo to a 1.5 bedroom and 1 bath apartment. Things are coming along and I posted a couple of photos but I'm still too embarassed to post more photos. I'm just not sure what I'm going to do with a few remaining boxes. My bedroom still need some work before I can post a photo :).