CRANES!!

Well. I haven't updated lately, but then I haven't had much to blog about. That is until today.

Today, on my way to work, I counted, no lie, five, count 'em, five, cranes. It is true. They are everywhere. Now, there are some disclaimers, the first being that I went to the post office this morning and so took a substantially longer route to work than I generally do. The second; two of the cranes were bucket cranes changing the lightbulbs on the behemoth streetlight-type things on 270. The other three, however, real cranes. One was in the closed position on a truck on Shady Grove heading to some undetermined construction site. The second was sort of a weird little mini-crane (redundant, I know) off 270 near Rio. The final crane was at Montrose on 270 and it was a crazy giant crane (like the one at the monastery).

I was certainly impressed by my fortuitous crane sightings! Without a camera, I was unable to capture this whelming (not quite overwhelming) show of cranes; however I have drawn one for you. C'est ici:

Sadly my sketching is comparable to my photograpy. This was the big crane near Montrose. It is not to scale, I didn't notice what it was mounted on and the sky was neither that blue nor that omnipresent. The crane, however, was yellow. (Also, the crane was not broken. I just ran out of room when I was drawing it.)

That is certainly enough posting for me today. I have laundry to do, and I want to sweep the neighborhood for cranes.

M

Lazy Saturday

So yesterday, Daddy was saying he wanted to call Joe to see if they could go golf nine holes and then maybe grab a bite to eat. I thought he should go, but as he and I and Kelly all had lots of work to do, we decided to be responsible, stay home and focus on our work so that we could have a relaxing day Sunday. We wrote up our lists of things to do, had a quick lunch, and then moped around because we really didn't want to work on our to do lists.

Luckily, just then, the phone rang. Lo and behold it was Joe and Kathy inviting us to join them at a new restaurant in Columbia where they were dining al fresco and enjoying the ten-page beer list and 100 vintage wines. Needless to say, we dumped our responsibilities and headed out the door. Well not Kelly. She decided to be responsible and work on her homework while Daddy and I shirked our duties. (As it turns out, she watched a movie or imed with friends and did not do so well on completing her activity list, either!)

Sooooo, we got to Columbia in rapid fashion and did our best to catch up with Joe & Kathy. It was lovely out, so we sat there -- Kathy with her tea, me with my pinot grigio and Daddy & Joe with about seven of the zillion brews offered -- for seven hours. The owner came to talk with us, his daughter (who is their director or marketing -- she filled us in on all their upcoming events), his wife (who said they were going to charge us rent) and an auxillary back-up waiter (our regular waiter was named Joe. He had to go home to change his shirt as someone had spilled a coke on it.) named Marat, all came to talk with us. Marat had recently been on television with Emeril as he (Marat) had won some kind of contest. We're going to look it up on youtube at some point so we can feel famous. Marat said Emeril was very nice, easygoing and genuinely a nice guy. Who'd a thunk it?

After we got home, we watched Ironman with Kelly. I liked RD Jr., but I was not such a fan of all the shooting and exploding people and things. I have Les Choristes that I hope to watch tonight.

Right now the work I am avoiding (besides cleaning the bathrooms, which is top on my list of things to be avoided) is cleaning out my old desk so I can move all my files and assorted junk into the new file cabinet I bought today on sale for under $100! W00t! Model home clearance center was having a sale, and although I went to find comfy chairs for the moose lodge, I ended up with a file cabinet to match the obelisk in the basement. Oh well. Such is life.

So that is my day...actually my weekend. There is still much to do, so I suppose I must go to do it. Responsibility is overrated.

No pictures today, sorry. I guess I'll get back to work. M

Beach Cottage!

OK...we're back from Bethany. We had a lovely weekend with Uncle Steve --even with all the rain. Daddy got some work done on the privacy fence, so he was happy, and the rest of us mostly relaxed, so we were happy. Uncle Steve brought down one of Granpa's decoys to keep Mr. Adams' decoys company over the winter. Here he is in front of the newly-painted privacy fence. (The decoy, not Steve.)



We got down to the beach every day, but we didn't get in to the water past our feet -- well except Kelly who cannot be kept out. At least she only got in to about her knees.



Monday Kelly and I went in to town, shopped around and then shared a funnel cake on the boardwalk. Several of the paths to the beach from the main boardwalk in town were closed as the sand had eroded from the dunes over the past few weeks. The beach in Middlesex did not seem too badly eroded, but it was unusually flat. Maybe because the rain had pounded it down for several days. It looked odd, though.




We had a nice time, did a relaxed clean up as we did not want to leave too early and hit DC rush hour, and hit the road. We were home by 8. TTFN, M