Shenandoah Nat'l Park Hike - Hawksbill Peak

I'm slowly working my way through the hikes in this book, Best Easy Day Hikes Shenandoah National Park, 4th (Best Easy Day Hikes Series).

Hawksbill Peak is the highest point in Shenandoah National Park at 4,049 feet, and it's been on my to-do list for a few years now.  It's a fairly short loop hike (a little over 3 miles), totally doable for kids, and has spectacular views at the top.  I organized this as a group event for my church and it turned out really well.

Lesson learned the hard way:  There are TWO trail heads from the parking area.  

This was supposed to be a counter-clockwise loop that would go up slowly over about two miles, then come down a shorter, steeper route to the parking lot. 

Well, I got us on the wrong trail head and ended up going UP the short, steep route to the top, but then we had a nice leisurely hike back to the parking lot following the path clockwise instead.  As a result, here's what our altitude profile looked like:

One of my sons went charging up the hill and wasn't phased at all by the steepness.  The other moaned and groaned and I wasn't sure I was going to get him to the top without dragging him, but after a lot of cajoling him and distracting him with conversation we made it to the top.  When we got to the top and he looked out at the view of the Shenandoah Valley, he said, "THAT was worth it!"

My boys on top of Hawksbill Peak

Blunoz & Sons on top of Hawksbill

It was a gorgeous day!  Mid 70s and a light breeze was blowing.  We packed our lunches to bring with us, so we sat and enjoyed lunch there at the top with the splendor of the Shenandoah Valley before us.

Most of the trail is under the shade of trees.  (Picture by Jason R.)

The trails are well-marked with blazes on the trees.

Of course, I had to stop and admire the flowers along the way.

Tubing on the Shenandoah River

Friends at my church asked me to organize another tubing trip on the Shenandoah River like I did back in 2009.  We went with River Riders again in Harpers Ferry.  They were VERY busy, but they have a large staff that has been doing this for a while and somehow manage to get everybody through in a pretty well-orchestrated and efficient manner.  For anyone else trying to organize this as a group activity, River Riders has put together a very useful group-leader packet with all their gouge and recommendations how to make things go smoothly.

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It was a gorgeous, sunny day.  

75F air temp, 77F water temp.

I used my last blog post as a guide for what to expect.  This time we brought lunches with us to put in the cooler tubes.  River Riders advertises that they have tubes to rent that will carry a cooler to bring lunch and refreshments with you on the river.  I emailed them a couple of times asking for the size of the cooler, but they didn't respond.  At the River Riders compound, you have to pay for the cooler tube rental, but they didn't have one there to actually SEE how big it was or how many we would need for our small coolers.  So for anybody else heading out to River Riders, here's how big the cooler tubes are:

Note, they have a large and a small cooler tube, but both cost the same price to rent.  I recommend chipping in and getting the large tube and sharing.

River Riders upgraded their standard tubes.  The new tubes have a built-in cup-holder.  I liked that, although the cup holder wasn't big enough for a Camelbak bottle.

In addition to bringing a few footballs and tennis balls to toss back and forth on the water, we also brought along some water cannons.  I told the group if they brought water guns, they had to FLOAT because I didn't want someone dropping their toy plastic water gun in the river, then it sinks and becomes a piece of trash in the river. 

So we brought a few of the water cannons made out of those foam noodles.  They shoot pretty far, and they float if you drop them.

Our trip went a lot quicker this time than it did last time.  Last time, we had a 10:30 reservation, we got on the water at 12:10, got off the water at 1:30, waited for the bus back to River Riders, and got back to River Riders after 2 p.m.  This time, we had the same 10:30 reservation, but we got on the water at 11:30 and got off the water at 12:30.  So the operation at River Riders was a little more efficient and the river was moving a little faster - 1 hour instead of 1 hour 20 minutes. 

We could have gotten on the water even sooner if I had been on-the-ball about the liability forms.  When I handed them our liability forms, they audited the stack and found several where the second page hadn't been initialed, or a birthdate was missing, or the child hadn't signed (even though the adult had signed).  Next time, I will make more of an effort to get the liability waivers filled out in advance, and I will audit them to make sure EVERY blank is filled in before I try to turn them in. 

Also, I had two people who emailed me they were coming, but I didn't have a phone number for them, so we waited for them to show up.  Next time, I'm going to make sure I have a phone number for everybody who signed up, so if someone doesn't show, I can call and find out where they are or if they weren't going to make it.  

If I had done those two things above, then we would have gotten on the water another 30 minutes sooner (at 11 instead of 11:30).

Last time we didn't bring food with us, so we were forced to go back to River Riders because we were starving.  This time, we brought our lunches, so we could easily have gone back and gone down the river again.

Overall though, it was another fun and relaxing float trip down the Shenandoah River.  I hope we get to do this again next summer.

Triangles and Stupid Kevin Tricks

Last night, I went with four friends from church to the National Symphony Orchestra's performance of Handel's Messiah at the Kennedy Center. Overall, it was a wonderful performance, and I tremendously enjoyed sharing the experience with friends. (It's not LW's cup of tea, so she took the boys out to admire the Christmas lights in the nearby neighborhoods.)

I changed into a suit and tie in my office and left my uniform in my office, then headed over to meet my friends for dinner at CPK. We were a little worried at first that the traffic would prevent them from joining me for dinner, but the timing worked out perfectly. They trusted me to order a few pizzas and a salad for us all to share. I ordered, and the food was delivered to the table mere moments before they walked in the door. We had plenty of time to eat without feeling rushed, then drove over to the Kennedy Center.

C, me, and J at Kennedy Center

This was my first time to the Kennedy Center. It's ginormous and spectacular inside and out.


Of course, anytime you attend a live performance such as this, there will be little differences in how they present it to make it their own. For example, one section I'm used to hearing sung by the soprano was sung by the baritone. Another part that I am used to hearing done by the brass section was done by the wood-winds, and the wood-winds have never stood out in my mind as a prominent feature of previous Messiah performances. Those differences are easy to adapt and enjoy. However, there was one key difference that really threw me for a loop.

Before the performance, I was reading the program and noted the list of instruments included. Among the list of the usual violins, cellos, french horns, trumpets, and trombones, there was listed one triangle. I laughed, leaned over to my friend M sitting next to me and said, "There's a triangle down there somewhere." We spent a few moments scanning the orchestra trying to find the triangle. M guessed that it would be in the percussion section. (She was right, BTW). We joked about how we wouldn't be able to hear it over the rest of the orchestra, so why bother with it?

On went the performance, and when we got to my most favorite part...

And the government shall be upon his shoulders And his name shall be called

BRRRRRIIIIIIIIIINNNNNNNNNGGGGGG!!!!
Wonderful counselor, Almighty God, the Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace

It sounded like someone wheeled in a 2-ton version of the classic alarm clock with the two dome-shaped bells on top and was wailing on the bells with a sledge hammer at the speed of a hummingbird's wings. There in the percussion section of the orchestra stood a man who must have been a professional body-builder by day in order to lift this very manly triangle. Ney, not a triangle. It was a

It would be inappropriate to use lower-case letters to describe this TRIANGLE. It had the diameter of a steam-roller. I think it was made from some recycled battleship gun barrel. Even from our seats up in the nose-bleed section, we could see the guy's rippling muscles as he lifted up that TRIANGLE.

Each time the chorus got to my favorite part, he beat the holy crap out of that darned TRIANGLE so hard that the echos of it ringing reverberated through my skull for several moments after the percussionist had set down his monstrous instrument, turned the page of his music and taken his seat.

After he did this the first time, M and I turned and looked at each other and laughed out loud at how wrong we were to assume that the TRIANGLE was such an un-manly instrument or that we would never notice it in the performance.

Stupid Kevin Tricks Vol 37 Ed 342

For those of you who aren't in the DC area or didn't notice in the news, the weather forecast last night was calling for heavy snow starting last night and throughout the day today. During the intermission, we stepped outside briefly to see the first snow starting to gently fall. It was very surreal and beautiful out on the terrace outside the Kennedy Center overlooking the Potomac River as the snowflakes slowly fell - only visible in the shafts of light from the spotlights under the evenly spaced trees on the terrace. After a short while, the house lights flicked on and off and signaled that it was time for us to return to our seats.

When we came out of the Kennedy Center, the roads weren't too bad, but they were a little slippery and traffic was already a mess with more traffic accidents than the emergency crews could keep up with. We left just after 10:30 p.m. and proceeded to creep home on I-66 in bumper-to-bumper traffic.

It was quiet initially in the minivan as we all had our cell phones open - texting and facebooking our experience at the Messiah performance while our driver listened to the traffic on WTOP. As time ticked on, the conversation in the car picked up as one-by-one, each of our cell phone batteries died.

Two and a half hours after departing the Kennedy Center, we finally arrived at my car in the Dulles North commuter parking lot where I had caught the bus to work that morning. I geared up - gloves on, hat on, backpack in hand, braced for the cold, got out of the car and trudged through the few inches of snow on the ground to my car. Brushed snow off my windshield, headlights, windows, then tried to open my car door... nothing.

You see, my car has the RFID keyless entry system where I just have the keys in my pocket and it senses that I'm there and allows me to open the door and start the car. I never even think about where my keys are, because they're always just in my pocket.

Yyyyyeah, not so much.

The keys weren't in my pocket. They were in the pocket of my uniform back in my office in Crystal City.

Me and that tall pointy-hat that said "DUNCE" on it got back into the van to humbly ask J for a ride home because I forgot my car keys. We made three stops to drop people off at their various homes, and then J took me to our house. I figured he would just drop me off and I'd worry about getting my car later. He insisted that I go in and get the spare set of keys and that we go back and get the car immediately before conditions got any worse.

By the time I got back to my house for the last time, it was 3:30 a.m. I didn't get out of bed until about 9 a.m. When I did sleepily stagger down the stairs, I was glad J took me back to get my car last night. There was 11 inches of snow on the back deck when first walked into the kitchen and measured it. As I write this on Saturday afternoon, we now have 21 inches of snow on our back deck, and it's still coming down hard.


I hope you all are safe and sound and enjoying some quality time with your family over the holidays - whether you're snowed in or not.

Rockbridge

Over the holiday weekend, I went with a group of guys from my church to the Rockbridge Men's Weekend.

Rockbridge is a Young Life camp near Goshen, Virginia, about fifty or so miles west of Charlottesville. We left Ashburn shortly before 3 p.m. on Friday. We had a BSC along the way (Brief Stop for Coffee at Starbucks) and arrived at the camp just after 6 p.m. Registered and picked out our bunks then headed to dinner.

Overall, it was an awesome weekend! I'm really glad I went. Friday evening, Saturday morning, Saturday evening, and Sunday morning there were sessions in the meeting hall. Each session started out with The Riverman giving us funny lessons about being a man. Then the band would lead us in singing some songs of worship. Then we'd get to hear the guest speaker. The main guest speaker who led most of the sessions was Bill Paige, and he was an AWESOME, inspiring, truly remarkable speaker. If you're interested, you can check out a video of Bill Paige here on the YoungLife page. The video is more geared toward the youth group audiences, but it certainly gives you a feel for his style of speaking and his enthusiasm.

The band that played the music for us during worship was absolutely incredible. They were extremely talented musicians, and all the music was fantastic. They said they came from a church in Richmond. They should be Christian recording artists if they aren't already. I actually kept wondering if they already are some famous contemporary Christian band and just weren't introducing themselves that way because they didn't want to draw undue attention to themselves or detract from the purpose of the weekend or Bill Paige's speaking.

When we weren't in the meeting hall for the worship and seminars, there was a lot of stuff to do around the camp.

We played frisbee-golf on their 18 "hole" course.

This is the first "tee." Each "tee" consisted of a rectangle on the ground from which you had to throw the frisbee.

Each "hole" was really a wooden post with the number on a blue sign. You just have to hit the post with your frisbee.

Then some of us did the ropes course.

Gearing-up for the ropes.

On the course.

The staff members kept saying "don't look down." Not sure why.

At the end of the course, you come down via a swing. I was perfectly fine thoughout the ropes course until I got to the swing. It took me a minute to work up the nerve to scoot myself off that ledge. I sent my camera down before I did the swing so one of my friends could take this picture of me swinging down.

Blunoz on the swing.

Totally random aside: Does anyone know why my camera keeps making those thump noises on the audio when I take movies like the one above? If I knew what was causing it, then I would try to stop it from happening.

There's also a rock-climbing wall, a gym, basketball courts, hiking trails. In the summertime they have a lake with a zip-line, but the lake was drained while we were there this weekend. Unfortunately, since we were only there for the weekend, we didn't have enough free time to try out all the different activities they had to offer.

I love autumn.

It was a great blessing to share this weekend with the guys from church down at Rockbridge. I hope I can go again next year, too.

Tubing on the Shenandoah River

On Saturday, I organized a flat-water tubing trip on the Shenandoah River for my church. Overall: We had a great time floating down the river and the staff at River Riders were very friendly and easy-going.

We met up at 10 for our 10:30 reservation.

By the time we got done with the orientation and safety brief, got our life preservers, and got on the bus, it was 11:41.

They bring the tubes along in a trailer behind the bus.

Note: It's not advertised on their website, but they DO have double-tubes if you have a small child that you want to ride with you instead of letting them go off on independent ops.

The entry point was hard-pack dirt/mud and rocks. They recommend wearing some sort of water shoes or old sneakers, and I can see why.

As for me, I got to try out my new Keen Newport water-sandals. They were very nice, comfortable, and worked like a champ on the slippery rocks in the water.

YB and me in our double-tube.

It turns out that mesh-bottom in one of the holes of the double-tube was a pretty nice feature. It prevented us from losing a few things like YB's crocs.

Unfortunately, my wife's sunglasses slid off the back of her head and into the water. Plunk! Gone. We spent a while feeling around in the brown water, but weren't able to find them.

PLUNK!
Last known photo of my wife's sunglasses.

The boys kept putting on their goggles and looking around underwater trying to find the sunglasses for Mommy.

YB had fun blowing bubbles while he was searching, too.

A couple of people in our group brought footballs along. That was actually a pretty-good idea. We had fun tossing the football back and forth. (See the green football airborne in the image above.)

YB got out of the tube and had fun swimming back and forth to retrieve the football and give it to people. He also took a break to just kick back and float down the river a while.

There were a couple of spots of very light rapids. This short video shows you about as fast as it got.

This orange tube nailed to the tree was the marker telling us where to get out. River Riders runs a bus here every 30 minutes to pick people up. You can either ride the bus back to the beginning and ride the river again, or you can ride the bus back to the River Riders HQ.

The boys looking back the way we came.

Here are a smattering of other notes about our trip:

Timing. River Riders advertises on their website that it takes on average 1.5 hours but anywhere from 1 to 2 hours depending on the current. According to my GPS, we got in the water at 12:10 and got out of the water at 1:30 p.m.

We were a little frustrated with the efficiency of the River Riders operation and our 10:30 reservation got us in the water at 12:10. By the time we got back to River Riders to eat "lunch" it was 2:55 p.m. Lesson learned: They rent tubes you can put a cooler in to float with you down the river. Next time, bring a cooler with snacks and drinks so you aren't starving for lunch.

Weather. Definitely wear sun screen. When we started it was mostly cloudy, but the clouds burned off and the sun came out during our trek down the river.

Water Temp. The water was very nice - I would guess about 75 degrees based on how it felt compared to Lake Winnipesaukee last week. It seemed like the water was never more than about waist deep. The few times I got out of my tube, I was able to stand up.

Bugs. I was pleasantly surprised that we didn't really have any problem with bugs. We saw a lot of dragon flies while we were on the river, but that was it.

Shop. If you forget anything River Riders probably has it for sale in their shop. They seemed to have just about everything in there, including some cool t-shirts with things like, "Paddle Faster!" and "Dude, Where's My Paddle?"

Food. The Front Porch Cafe offered friendly service and pretty decent food, but had a little trouble keeping up with the demand. There wasn't a wait to place your order, but there was a bit of a wait for your food to come out of the kitchen from being cooked.

Today at church, I got a lot of positive feedback on the trip. Everyone seemed to have a good time and said they want to go again. I look forward to organizing a trip like this again.

Kailee's Run

Sunday morning was Kailee's Run - a 5K fund raiser to benefit Tracy's Kids who have helped Kailee, a member of our church, in a battle with cancer.

It turns out that walking 7 miles around DC sight-seeing yesterday was a pretty good warm up for running in the 5K this morning. I set a new PR at 29:16 - nowhere near the front of the pack, but a darn good time for me.

Segway into related topic... you'll see the connection in a few minutes.

I think maybe I'm just cursed when it comes to electronic gadgets.

You don't have to scroll back very far in my blog to find a couple of common themes - an obsession with high-tech electronic gadgets... and an element of frustration and banging my head against the wall when said high-tech electronic gadgets don't work right.

No, I'm not going to regale you with more stories of my BlackBerry woes. Although I will say that my wife got the same BlackBerry that I did the same day that I did (buy one get one free promo). We use pretty much the same applications on them, too, and she doesn't seem to have the same problems I have with her BlackBerry. Maybe it's just me.

Okay, so yesterday we went to do our sight-seeing trip around DC. I wore my Garmin Forerunner GPS watch to keep track of the mileage we walked. When we got out of the car at the Iwo Jima Memorial, I looked at my watch to see what time it was. The watch said 9:16:50... I said to myself, "Self, I coulda sworn we left the house about 9:15, did we travel back in time?" In the time it took me to ask myself that question, I noted that the seconds didn't budge.

Yep, my super-whamodyne fancy high-tech GPS watch read 9:16:50 the ENTIRE day.

I tried looking for a reset button somewhere but found none. I tried pushing and holding one or both buttons for multiple seconds to see if that did anything. Nope, nada, zip, no response.

When we got home from sight-seeing, I went on the Garmin website and looked up the trouble-shooting guide. In order to do a factory reset, first you have to hold BOTH buttons for 6 seconds then LET GO of the TOP button for 3 seconds. Gosh darnit, why didn't *I* think of that???

That worked.

Then it beeped at me and told me the battery was low.

Nice.

No, it didn't really matter by that point, it just seemed to add insult to injury. No worries, I put it on the charger last night to get it fully charged before the 5K this morning.

Everything started out fine on the 5K, but it was sprinkling rain. Over the course of the run, it grew to a deluge of rain and I was SOPPING wet by the end.

Kailee's Run in the Rain

The Garmin Forerunner uses a cool touch-screen type of display where you touch the corners of the bezel to activate different functions.

Well... it doesn't work so well in the rain.

The water pretty much shorted out all four corners of the bezel. The entire run, the watch was beeping at me as the rain was causing it to go into all sorts of different sub-menus and activating all sorts of obscure work-out programs and options. I had NO control over it. When I actually touched anywhere on the bezel with my finger, it didn't respond at all.

The RAIN was in control.

Normally, my watch tells me how far I've run and what my pace is. This morning, I couldn't get it to go back to the display that told me how far I ran or what pace I was running, so I had no clue for the duration of the race.

So I just ran.

No idea what my pace was. I just ran at what I thought was a comfortable steady pace that I could maintain to the finish line.

It still recorded the data though, and I was able to download it when I got home. When I got home and looked at my pace and my time on the computer screen, my jaw dropped. I routinely jog 3 miles around Ashburn on my own, and I usually finish in about 30-33 minutes or so. Today I hit the 3 mile mark at 28:27 and I finished the 5K at 29:16. That averages out to about a 9 1/2 minute/mile pace, which is pretty darn good for me.

I still think maybe I'm just cursed with (a) an obsession with electronic gadgets and (b) very bad luck with getting them to work right.

Weekend Recap

Friday night

Friday for Family Movie Night, we broke our habit of getting our pizza from Boston's North End Pizza across the street and drove over to Pearl Ridge Mall to get pizza from CPK instead. We had a Santa Fe Chicken pizza that was really good.

Our movie selection for the evening was The Princess Bride. We had been talking about watching it for a couple of days, and I was pretty excited. Before we watched the movie, I kept saying things to ES like, "My name is Inego Montoya. You keeled my fadder. Prepare to die." and "Incontheivable!" ES thought I was crazy, looked at me like I had three heads and said, "What?!?!" The boys really enjoyed the movie, and now ES has been going around saying, "You keeled my fadder. Prepare to die." and "Incontheivable!"

I think given how well ES took to this movie and memorizing one-liner sound-bites from the movie, I may have to break out Monty Python and the Holy Grail next. Man, if I get ES quoting Monty Python, LW will go absolutely NUTS. :-)

Lazy Saturday

Saturday for me was one of those lazy days you need once in a while to just sit around and do nothing. In the morning, we happened upon Mr. Bean's Holiday on TV and got sucked into it. The boys and I really enjoyed it. None of us had watched any of Mr. Bean's stuff before. There wasn't a lot of dialog - just a lot of slapstick, physical type of comedy.

Then we watched the new episode of Battle 360 on the DVR. In case you haven't seen Battle 360 yet, here's a segment on YouTube:



We also played a good amount of LIJ.

LW was actually much more productive with her day, to include sneaking a car load of stuff off to Good Will (she has to do it in stealth mode so the boys won't throw a fit over the toys she takes).

Both our neighbors' husbands across the street were out of town and didn't feel like cooking, so we invited them to join us for dinner on the lanai. LW made up some awesome mini-cheesesteak sandwiches for dinner, some sort of frozen margarita concoction to drink, plus some downright sinful pots-de-creme from this PW recipe.

Mmmmm... Pots de creme
(We forgot the whipped cream though)

Sunday

My favorite song on the radio right now is Song of Hope by Robbie Seay Band (click the song title to give it a listen). I'm sad though, because it has been elevated it to that ultimately popular status where they play it like once an hour and I know I'm going to be sick of hearing it by the end of the day. As much as I love KLOVE, I wish they wouldn't do that (play good songs so repetitively that they run them into the ground and make you sick of them).

When we went to church, they started off with one of those songs that in all reality is a pretty good song, but the radio stations have overplayed it so much that it's just like scraping finger nails across a chalk board to me (Heaven by Salvador). Luckily, they made up for it though and played one of my favorite and NOT overplayed songs after the sermon - I Can Only Imagine by MercyMe.

El Mariachi Mexican restaurant

For lunch, we made our third attempt to find the Mexican restaurant in Kaneohe that one of my JO's recommended (oops, sorry, I mean DO's - we're not supposed to call them JO's anymore). The first two times, we tried to find it just by using the address in the GPS receiver and had no luck. Today we actually called the place and asked for directions. The lady on the phone explained to us that they were tucked back behind the Aloha Gas Station on Kam Highway, across the street from the bank. If you happen to go looking for this place, that's an important point to remember because there are two Aloha Gas Stations right across the street from each other, so you need to go behind the one ACROSS the street from the bank.

El Mariachi Mexican restaurant is a very nondescript little hole in the wall. The fact that all the tables were full in a place so hard to find is a pretty good sign their food is good though, eh?

Atmosphere: Once you get inside, you'll find about 8 tables crammed into a small place with some Mexican music playing softly in the background. Most hole-in-the-wall Mexican restaurants share the same decor - paintings of Mexican countryside scenery, a Mexican flag, etc. This place had some of those typical wall-hangings you would expect, but added a coat of textured red paint and some faux-brick wainscoting for a nicer appearance. Plus, it was cleaner than your average hole-in-the-wall type of place.

Food: Although they didn't have my favorite mole poblano on the menu, they did have a good variety of other Mexican dishes that I love like carnitas, chili verde, and carne asada. LW had the carne asada burrito - I tried a bite and it was excellent. I had the carnitas and it was also superb. The meat was tender, flaking apart, and flavorful. The guacamole was the smooth consistency of the processed stuff you get at other Tex-Mex chain restaurants (i.e. not made from fresh avocados), but it was alright. The drinks are served from a fountain (as opposed to selling you cans of soda). While it wasn't the BEST Mexican food I've had on the island, it was certainly a very tasty meal that I enjoyed very much.

Service: When we got there, all the tables were full, but we only had to wait like 5 minutes for someone to finish and leave for them to clear off the table for us to sit. Have you ever played that addicting game Diner Dash on the internet? I felt like I was in a real live version of that game. There was one waitress serving all 8 tables, but I thought she did an excellent job. Given how small the place is, she was never far away from any of us and easy to get her attention. She was working her butt off, but she did a great job.

Lego Sculptures at the Mall

After lunch, LW went to get a pedicure with the neighbor ladies from across the street. I had wanted to take the boys for a hike, but it was drizzling rain off and on with some heavy black clouds looming overhead. I didn't want to get a mile out and have the heavens open up, dumping buckets on us and turning the trail to mud (not like that's ever happened to us before).

Instead, I took the boys to see the lego sculptures display at the mall.

The boys check-out the hanging-man.
That gray tower he's hanging from is
all made out of legos, too.

ES and J check out the Parthenon.

Man! How do I sign up for THAT job?!?! I wish someone would pay ME to sit around and make sculptures out of legos all day. I couldn't do what he does with the curves of human forms, but I could totally do the parthenon and the other balanced shapes. Maybe when the Navy is done with me we can retire to Legoland!

This afternoon, I tried to be at least a little bit productive. When we moved the furniture around last week (when we thought we were staying in Hawaii for shore duty), I took down all the pictures hanging on my "me wall" because we wanted to put the entertainment center along that wall. Now that we're NOT staying in Hawaii and we have company coming at the end of this week, LW made up a new honey-do list for me, and the first item was to rehang the pictures. Normally, I wouldn't mind so much, but the aluminum frames in these houses make hanging pictures a pain in the arse. At least I got that item crossed off the honey-do list.

I started to write about wine-tasting tonight, but I'm going to save that for another post. This one has gone on long enough. If you've actually made it this far and read all of my rambling above, then please leave a comment - I'd love to know WHY??? :-)