Studying and Even More Snow

It snowed on Saint Patrick’s Day.

I love a good snow day as much as the next guy- probably more, in fact- but this is getting ridiculous. We’re only a couple days from the first official day of Spring! and we had finally had to break down and buy a snow shovel.

I know, after the year we’ve had it’s pretty unbelievable that our resolve to avoid the purchase of  shovels and ice scrapers lasted this long, but we’re both spoiled by years in the south, where snow is a novelty and no one is required to travel in it.

Incidentally, this is the snow shovel Seth bought. I’m not even sure how it works. What’s going on with that wheel, anyway?

At any rate, we’ve had another quiet week or so. Seth has to retake the GRE, having gotten into grad school but missing the Army Civil Schooling cutoff by a couple points. It appears that he’s actually studying this time, so we’ve settled into low key evenings where he takes practice test after practice test on my work computer and I lounge on our giant couch with the remote. Kind of a funny role reversal. Plus it cracks me up that, in order to accommodate my "Drop Dead Diva" watching, Seth wears his shooting earmuffs while studying.

Our weekend was uneventful. I entertained myself with a fruitless trip to Sterling in search of a new coffee table, and came back with nothing but smoothies and thirteen fewer dollars, thanks to the abominable Dulles Toll Road. Seth took a break and cleaned the man cave (which made me happy enough to grill for him, usually The Man’s Territory in our house. My chicken souvlaki was actually not half bad. If I do say so myself.)

Because studying is the priority right now, our St. Patrick’s Day was uncharacteristically chill. Seth took me to a local “Irish” dive the night before, where we consumed the requisite Guiness and potatoes while rich white people decked out in green went crazy for an “old white lady singing Kenny G songs,” as Seth put it. Not very Irish, but classic Bethesda, we thought.

We had a snow day for the actual holiday, so Seth studied and I took myself snowshoeing on the canal. Fresh powder, DC-style… There’s only so much corned beef hash anyone can choke down, as Missy points out, so we did “pinot and pizza” instead at Haven, a coal-fired Italian place we hadn’t tried before. It was not half bad- and way better than crowding into one of Bethesda’s two fake-Irish bars with the rest of town. Maybe we’re getting old, but we’re doing it in style!

And now it’s back to the grind.

Photo of the week is this one, which I sneakily took right after we got done swimming laps. I was half afraid I would be arrested for being a camera creep at the pool, but I’m just so proud of Seth I had to share. The guy who only recently had to be coaxed into the water now swims a mile nearly every day- and he's lost 30 pounds of wheelchair weight doing it!

Recovery Week

We got home from California well after midnight on Monday. I had to work in just a few hours (we always try to squeeze every last second out of vacation!), and our return was jarring, to say the least. It had dumped snow on DC again, meaning we spent most of the trip back concerned about flight cancellations. That and, after 65 degree weather in Fresno, it was 8 when we landed and the roads were terrible. We slipped and slid the whole way home, wishing we were still on the West Coast.

We needed a recovery week at home after our trip, though, and enjoyed every minute of it. We gutted out the week, and spent the weekend catching up on sleep and laundry. We obsessively followed the Iditarod, with the help of our own Alaska Insider. (It just wound up today, and WHAT an epic finish!) And we both went for a swim Saturday- Seth in the pool, and me in the Potomac. (I did a charity Polar Bear Plunge with my office. It was freezing.)  

We got to catch up with some great Walter Reed friends this weekend, too, which we really need to do more often. We’re on the go so often, we sometimes forget to enjoy Bethesda! After I recovered from my icy dip, we checked out a hilarious comedy show with Taylor and Danielle (http://taylormorris.org/), and discovered a new local dive bar.

Sunday we helped Flip and Jess (https://www.facebook.com/FriendsOfFlip) move to their new place in Gaithersburg, and they rewarded us with margaritas and delicious Salvadoran food at their new local dive.

And that’s about all our news- we’re finally caught up, just in time for daylight savings to throw us for another loop.

The photo of the week is of Seth’s admission letter to the University of Maryland kinesiology graduate program. I’m super proud of him, and excited about this new chapter in our adventures.

Adventures in "Sunny" Southern Cal

I gripped the wheel with both hands, squinted out the window through the rain and fog, and sighed loudly. Seth, next to me, was a study of patience and calm. “We seriously can’t win with this weather,” I said, for probably the seventh time that morning. “I’m having fun,” he said. “Let’s stop here and get some lunch and a beer.”

A couple of beachside tacos and a pint or two later, and I was feeling better. Seth does know how to handle the occasional fit of temper. This one was, I thought, well-warranted. I had been looking forward to showing him California practically since we met, and had spent weeks making plans to see friends and squeeze in as much scenic beautiful as humanly possible over the long weekend, when “Snowmageddon” ruined out trip. We had rescheduled for this weekend, and arrived to LA Times headlines about the huge storm: http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-california-storms-big-waves-tornado-warning-more-rain-ahead-20140301,0,7788366.story#axzz2v7pXxASh I was nearly inconsolable.

The weather, at least, turned out to be as bad as it sounded. We got dressed up for dinner one night and dashed through the deluge from the valet stand, looking like drowned rats by the time we got inside. I white-knuckled most of the driving as the rain came down in sheets. For the bulk of the scenic drive of the Pacific Coast Highway- which I had been talking up for more than a year- you couldn’t even see the ocean, or tell that the winding road hugged stunning cliffs. We had to avoid Malibu entirely due to mudslides. The redwoods were obscured by fog and downed branches, and we had to squint through pea soup fog to see the iconic Golden Gate and the Hollywood sign.

Hollywood was another story, since I had forgotten all about Academy Awards weekend. The streets
were so blocked off, we couldn’t even get in the obligatory glance at Graumann’s Theater and the Walk of Fame.

Seth promised we could have a “redo,” which cheered me up a little bit, and he was so cheerful about the whole thing that I eventually had to laugh about the weather conspiracy. And we still had a great time. Even though I was so indignant about his missing the Big Sur views that I made him google “what it usually looks like.”

I got to introduce Seth to some of my very closest friends (and vice versa), and we had a great time with all of them. We made a pilgrimage to Manhattan Beach, went to a killer new beach restaurant with Petey and Lauren, got to see Jean and Travis’ gorgeous new house and cute toddler, and had dinner and cocktails (with mandatory celebrity sighting, of course) in Hollywood with Tori and Todd.

Largely thanks to Seth we enjoyed our soggy road trip, and he got to catch up with a friend in San Francisco. (The nerd I married also insisted that- with hundreds of miles of the most beautiful coastline in the world to see- we go to the Reagan Library. And it was kind of cool.)

We spent a rainy afternoon in bed with room service in Studio City, and found the only dive bar in beautiful- and insanely upscale- Carmel, which served, yes, a bacon bloody Mary. Seth was in heaven. And finally, I got to show him why a trip to Fresno to see the Russos, who make five-star Italian dinners and never let a wine glass go empty, is always worth the trip.

The whole thing- monsoon notwithstanding- in retrospect, was pretty magical, if comical. I’m beyond thrilled that Seth enjoyed my favorite people and places, and patting myself on the back for marrying a guy who’s a killer road trip buddy- and always knows when to pull over for a beer.

The photo of the week is Seth's completely outrageous fortune cookie from dinner one night. Unbelievable.

Oh, and our obligatory souvenir photo from the Reagan Museum. His Air Force One really is inside it.

And one more, since we got great news while we were gone: Ben's home!!!