Hiking the Monacacy River Aqueduct

Pinot & I set off on a hiking adventure today to give Nick some quality time to get some work done on the home front without us, aaah, distracting him.  (For some reason, he doesn’t seem to think he can get much done with us here….he even asked us to bring Cashew along for the ride!)

anyhow, it was a gorgeous day, and Pinot & I set off for about 6 miles on the C&O Canal towpath.  Actually, the C&O canal is dried up where we were in Southern Frederick county, but we were walking along the Potomac River for the entire way.  Pinot enjoyed a couple of mini dips – as much as she could without being taken off the leash anyway.

We stopped on the way back at the Lewis Farm market (Whoohoo!) and I picked up a big box of tomatoes, a big box of peaches, some corn, nectarines, honey gold apples – yum! 

The Season Begins!!

What a great Saturday.  Pinot & I started the day with a run, and I managed to get some stuffs done around the house early on, with college football as the soundtrack to our Saturday.  All four of us were sporting Husker gear for the early afternoon games in anticipation of the start of husker season last night.

Unfortunately, the first game was only on pay per view via Direct TV, which we don’t have, so we had to head to the bar to watch the game after Nick’s fantasy football draft.  The bar was standing room only – gotta love that much red in one place so far from NE.

The vibe was sort of different, at least to me, this year than the last time we watched a game at the bar.  We stood near one of the TV’s behind a larger group – maybe Nick has trained me well, but the group -especially the guys (?!) drove me nuts because they were talking during the ENTIRE game.  They weren’t even watching!  And they kept dancing around into my field of vision!  anyway, we moved around a bit and the second half was fine, but still – they reminded me of the “pick-a-little, talk-a-little” ladies in the music man, jabbering the entire game away.  there were quite a few fans that were paying attention, but it was sort of humorous after the fact.

It was almost a showcase of fans.  Combined with the social hour group, there were also the guys that exploding with “AW MAN!” when we’d get 5 years (instead of 6?) or when we’d block the other team from getting a touchdown….but we didn’t get an interception.  Come on folks, first game, new coach, and some plays that we wouldn’t have been able to make last year if there was money involved.  the first half of the game was exciting – I thought we played pretty well.  The second half was a bit sloppy, but overall, I think this season holds promise!

Oh – and this Saturday also marks the start of the 6th annual “Walkers Choice Rumble” college football pick-em for Nick and I.  Nick leads the series 3-2, but I’ve won the last two strait, so this could be the year that I tied it up.  But – I’m much better at picking against the spread (with or without confidence points), and this year we are doing strait up pick the winner with confidence points, which means that it is Nick’s game. And true to form, though we had exactly the same picks for the winners yesterday, he’s up on me by 14 points.  Stupid stupid confidence points.  Without the spread anyway. 

Bring on the long weekend!!

Bring on the long weekend!  I got out of work at 11AM on Friday, picked NJ up at the metro at 11:30, and we were off to the Leesburg outlets where we managed to do some damage before leaving at 4:30.  (Oh – and lunch @ Ruby Tuesday in Leesburg  – food was good, but we’d forgotten how nice it is to have restaurants all be smoker free, and they seated us in the middle of the mommy and me section at first, and we ended up moving to the bar…)  Anyway – Friday was an awesome day.  Pinot rocked at doggie daycare, looked happy from the minute she arrived and was tired when we picked her up.  NJ found more sales than I did – I was actually sort of disappointed at the womens/shoes sales.  But – most importantly, we both found long sleeved fall color shirts that we can wear with jeans for the upcoming family portrait, so the day was a success!

CYOAB

Hooray to choose your own adventure bookclub this past Thursday.  Mehul & Liz were great hosts, with a plethora of pizza mias and peach cobbler.  Our adventures in the Mayan ruins were interesting – from heading up to space to traveling back (and forward) in time.  Liz and I had the same adventure – and it rocked I may add. Thanks to Melanie for some of the pics!

Really? It’s only Wednesday?

Coming off of Monday night book club (the August book was Water for Elephants, which we both really enjoyed) and bocce last night (a maddening 16-13 loss, after we came back from being down 12-1), I think I’m about ready for a nap.  That’s not to mention the plethora of work stuff going on for both of us lately.  For me, the new hardware is in and we are in full test mode, but I’m meeting some of my engineers that work in PA for the first time today which is somehow ‘nerve racking’ despite the phone relationship we’ve had for the past few months.  For Nick, an upcoming thesis proposal means lots of getting organized, finalizing papers, scrutinizing reading lists, preparing slides, prep & practice talks.    I’m glad we’ve got nothing going on tonight other than getting home from work and vegging, because we’re both really looking forward to CYOAB tomorrow night, and outlet shopping on Friday since I get out of work early, and of course the start of Husker season on Saturday!

(I’m a bit bummed we don’t have direct tv and have to go to the bar for the game, so we won’t be able to have Pinot & Cashew in full NE gear with us for the game this weekend.)

Oh – and on a happy note – the wine that we made from the kit that Nick gave me last Christmas – well, it turned out less than stellar on it’s own.  (One of our friends who will remain nameless referred to the taste as rubbing alcohol.)  Despite many looks to the effect of me being crazy, I managed to turn it into a decent drinkable punch with the following formula  – one bottle ‘less than awesome’ red wine combined with an equal portion of mango juice and an equal portion of diet sprite.  Who would have thought?  Mmmmm, tasty. 

Long weekend, I can’t wait for you to get here!!  Oh okay, I’ll settle for Friday

Our weekend

Gorgeous, and loving being in town for a bit.  Saturday we hiked around not one, but two lakes in the area – Lake Needwood and Lake Frank – it’s funny how it can feel so rural only 6 miles from the hustle and bustle around our house.  Both lakes had their merit – the first was a nice place for Pinot to wade, the second was more of a ‘hike’ – and it had a bird refuge at the end.  Nick’s wingspan is actually more than Michael Phelps, too bad he didn’t get into swimming   One of the birds was a bald eagle that had been hurt badly and permanently lives in the refuge – it was cool to see one that up close!

Pinot cooling off

Nick’s Wingspan

Colleen’s Wingspan

Bald Eagle

All in a days work

Today has been an amazing day for renting the cottage.  The honeymoon couple that found me last year contacted me today to rent for a weekend this fall.  I had another request for a week in late September that confirmed this afternoon.  And another of our return customers from last fall has requested a weekend in September as well!

I’m totally excited – and only a little bit bummed that we won’t be able to go to the cottage when we’re in NY next – because it’s rented!  boo-yah!! 

Et tu, Bocce?

Oh what a night – a whomping 16-2 victory, followed by winning the flair contest! Woot woot, nothing to complain about for a random Tuesday evening!

Getting excited for football season && cheesecake

Aw, poor Chad – missing his flight last weekend meant missing out on chocolate chip cookie dough cheesecake goodness.

Cashew and Pinot (as well as Nick and myself) are getting pretty excited for Huskers season to start!