Our Urban Dare

On April 18, The Rock Lobsters (myself and hubby) embarked on a grand adventure in DC called the Urban Dare. We had a great 3.5 hour fun-filled tour of miscellaneous statues.

Our Dare started at McFadden's near Washington Circle (Foggy Bottom Metro). Our race started fashionably late at about 12:15 p.m. or so with a list of 11 clues that sent us to various locations across the city. Thus began our worst mistake... we wasted a good 30 minutes at least using our laptop to google all the clues (which led to statues or circles) without moving. A better option would have been to just ride the Circulator over to Union Station, the first stop we figured out from the clues.

So after walking to Gandhi's statue near Dupont Circle and then over to Logan Circle to do a 3-legged race challenge, we were way behind the 8-ball. Once we got moving on the Circulator, our pace improved as we had mapped out every location and how to get there quickly.

We found our way to Gallatin's statue at the Treasury building and lucked into a bonus picture of Lafayette. We also got a bus to save us some walking over to the Art Museum where we photographed a bust of Longfellow... oh WAIT, the one they meant for us to find was way back at Dupont Circle!!!

The highlight of our day was smashing through the spelling challenge. It was a basic cipher where letters had numerical values. Nerd power!

So, we will use our lessons learned tomorrow when we compete on the Great Urban Race, a similar Amazing Race style adventure with cryptic clues and physical challenges.

Molly & Pongo's Great Adventure - Part 2

So, I go to Pep Boys and they say I'm looking at 1.5-2 hours before being ready. It's about 5:00 pm, so it's looking like 6:30 - 7:00. I decide to walk the dogs over to the Pet Smart. We go waste about 1.5 hours over there, and then return to Pep Boys. I was able to watch my car getting serviced.

So, 7:15 rolls around, and I'm paying for the work on the car, but I have a softball game in Gaithersburg at 8:15pm. If I go back home to drop off the dogs, I miss all of game 1. So, I decide to grab some snacks at the gas station (trail mix rocks!) and drive down to the park with dogs in tow.

The games went well (we won both!), and the dogs behaved just great. They were beat from all the excitement, so not much energy left. I ended up getting home just past 11:00pm.

Did I mention I didn't get to sleep until about 10 til midnight and woke up this morning at 4:30 am? Ah yes, thank God the pets cooperated this morning.

Molly & Pongo's Great Adventure

Ever have one of those days? Yesterday was one for me. It all started when my foot started itching overnight, and I got woken up again by a ringing phone on my day off. So, I'm up early and not feeling well-rested.

A comical series of errors then unfolded. Hubby and I were going to drive separate cars to the office parking lot and then I drop him off at the Metro. Well, we dilly-dallied our way through lunch and ended up rushing. We ended up in one car. Oh, and the dogs came with us. I wanted to take the pups to the Ridge Road Dog Park after dropping him off.

So, everything is honky dory until I get to the park. That's when I notice a hissing noise on my back left tire. It's a jagged metal loop sticking into the rubber... a FLAT! So, here it is mid 90s with dewpoints near 70 and I have two dogs and a flat tire. So, I put the dogs inside the dog park fence so they don't get super hot while I try to take care of the tire.

I get the jack out and the donut tire and the piece you put into the edge of the jack to get it to go up/down is missing. I end up trying a small screwdriver. I got it high enough to get the flat off, but not high enough to put the donut on. I end up calling roadside assistance. So, I go inside the park to wait with the dogs and play with them, resuming my original plan. Might as well try to salvage the trip and get the dogs running around.

After about an hour, the donut's on the car and I need to find a place to patch the flat. I can't commute around here on a donut (50 mph limit). I end up going to Pep Boys.

Invisible Fence

We have started training the dogs on the Invisible Fence. Hopefully in about a month or so, we can just let them out in the morning and go do their business. It will be nice for the dogs to be able to run around in the yard. We just have to teach them to respect the boundary.

Life gets funky

What a great time it was to have my parents come up to the house and hang out for Memorial Day. The neighbors are really nice... we all sat around and had picnic food (watermelon!). It seemed like everyone brought their dog, so we joined the party by allowing Molly and Pongo to socialize. The kids started running through the sprinkler in a classic display of summer fun.

On the funky side, I got a nasty blister on my foot. Hopefully everything will be healing nice by the time I get to San Fran this weekend. I'm going to see my sister and enjoy a vacation for 5 days.

Reunited and it feels so good....

Steve (my husband) is finally making his way to Maryland permanently. He's visited a few times since I left Grand Forks in January '07, but it will be so great to be back together, living in our new house.