Washington, Washington, 6' Tall, Made of Radiation

Libby and I just got back from a 3 day adventure in Washington DC. We visited our friends Dave and Mallory, who recently went through the same adventure that Libby and I went through (marriage, honeymooning, moving). Needless to say, DC kicked our butt. After a night of seeing the Univ. of Maryland campus - where Dave and Mallory both are going to grad school - we walked around the National Zoo, the Smithsonian Natural History Museum, and Arlington National Cemetery. We followed this up with a day of extreme hiking (more details to follow) and tennis. If I don't walk again for a while, I'll be happy.

Libby and I both agree that the coolest thing we saw in DC (other than our friends of course) were the dinosaur skeletons at the Natural History Museum. We had both come to the museum before, but we both had dinosaur-bone-amnesia (a very common disease that affects 1 in 6 humans). We couldn't remember seeing the bones, but were blown away by the shear awesomeness of the life-size recreation of dinosaurs. Then we made our way to the hope diamond, which was a lot smaller than I remember it being.

So about the hiking... we made it out to this very beautiful national park to get out of the city and do a little hiking. For a while we kept mostly to the paved trail but then one of us, I can't remember who, veered off course and started following a "rockier" trail. One hour later, after edging around the sides of cliffs, balancing across jagged rocks and scaling 30 feet cliffs we found a sign for the trail's emergency exit and bailed. Driving home we read a description of the portion of the trail we'd discovered, "Billy Goat's Trail." I can't remember exactly what it said but phrases such as: "tretcherous", "extremely difficult terrain" and "should be attempted only by well prepared and experienced hikers" are what comes to mind...

If Libby and I learned one thing this weekend, it's that we cannot be stopped while playing spades. With the exception of one mishap during a shoe-kicking game, Libby had the world's greatest and farthest reaching winning streak going on for herself. And when her powers were combined with mine in the game of spades - well, the results were disastrous for Dave and Mallory.

Now that we're back from our mini-vacation, the next thing to do is plan for our next vacation! For Libby's birthday, we're going to spend 2 days in NYC, something we're both really excited about. We've never been, but we're both ready to be surrounded by urban building stretching as far as the eye can see. We're staying in a cheap (relative to New York) hotel in Manhattan, and are going to do our best to see as much as we can in 2 days.

On the home front, Libby started school on Thursday, and will have her first full week this upcoming week. She's excited and ready to go into serious artist mode. I'm still looking for an engineering position. I got an offer on Friday, but due to some issues, I am turning down the offer and will continue my search.

That's all for now. We miss everyone a lot, and would love to hear from everyone as to how everyone is doing. I hope everyone is doing well!

Gregg

Stay tuned for a soapbox derby themed blog to come in the near future!