D.C. Bound

Tuesday, January 19th

Today Mike and I traveled to Battle Creek to pick up the curtains and pillows mom and Aunt Betty worked really hard on for our new living room. We were really excited to see the final product. Mom worried the pillows were good enough but honestly, they're 100x better than the pillow cases that came with the pillows! Overall we were really happy with the results of the curtains and pillows and couldn't wait to see how they looked when we got home.

Thursday, January 21st

Today I called in sick. I've had nothing but colds since winter started and I'm really, really tired of them. I'm glad I took today off though because we're leaving for D.C. in a few days and I really needed the rest and the time to get caught up on laundry before our trip.

On another note, you may have noticed my french club notes went out the door months ago. This is mainly because I stopped going. The Towards Fluency class was a little over my head for my current memory of french. I did just fine understanding everyone but communicating was very difficult for me. I felt out of place and therefore stalled around and didn't go for a long time. Finally a coworker of mine mentioned an interest in going so I felt it might be the boost I needed to start going again. My coworker, Katharina, is German and speaks french better than I speak English but she's a good sport and joined the lower level "Intermediate" level french class with me. She says it's challenging since it's learning french in English which is like her third language.

Anyways, Thursday was our first meeting together and I really liked it. Much more to my level of french right now. I struggle with the teacher though because he's from Senegal and I'm used to the Parisian accent. It's VERY different and hard to understand at first. I'm not quite sure he's prouncing things correct for me to learn if I want to travel to France but at least I'll be understood =)

Friday, January 20th -

Today I tagged along with Mike to see him play in his other bowling league. He joined another bowling league because he liked going so much and I refused to go more than just twice a month (when we have our own league to go to). So he's playing two leagues at once. Anyways, this day he was playing a group from my finance department who happened to sign up for the same league.

The boys were creamed by my finance girl friends! It was quite sad but overall we had a good time. In case you're wondering - I stuck by my husband and the losing team =P Although I did visit the winning team often since they were my coworkers.

We didn't stay too long after the league because we needed to get home and finish packing for our trip to Washington D.C.

Saturday - January 23rd

After an early morning and several hours in the airport and on flights, we arrived in Washington D.C. I am following Mike on one of his business trips because I have vacation to kill and I haven't been to the capital since high school. The weather wasn't very warm but it was MUCH warmer than Michigan so our first day here we were able to travel a bit without our coats.

We didn't get in until pretty late so we checked into the hotel and hopped a ride to the metro station to take the subway into D.C. We learned very quickly that D.C. shuts down at about 5 and we were there about 6:30. There wasn't much to do at all and it was getting dark. In the end we decided to find a restaurant, which was also harder than expected, to eat and think about what we wanted to try next.

After while we found a nice restaurant and had a fabulous dinner. Afterwards we were so tired for traveling and with a full stomach we decided to go back to the hotel and call it a night. I think we were in bed by 10.

Sunday, January 24th

Today we got up early enough to catch the metro once again to D.C. to check out some Smithsonian museums. There isn't much open on Sunday's in D.C. either so we were limited to just the museums. We ended up checking out the American History Museum and the Museum of Natural History. Both were very cool museums with lots of different exhibits and things to see and do. We paid an outrageous fee for lunch ($8 for just my ham sandwich) but we figured since the admission to all Smithsonian's are free we paid for lunch AND an entrance fee.

I discovered quickly, or maybe I should say my body reminded me, that I am pregnant and full of water. After a few hours on the marble floors and walking around non-stop I began to balloon up. My shoes got tight and my ring finger swelled up around my wedding rings. I had to sit down several times to get through the day. There was one point where I felt greatly embarrassed (I'm not showing enough yet for people to know right away I'm pregnant) when I was taking up a bench and a bunch of older people squeezed on my bench to rest and I didn't get up right away to give them my seat. I wanted to explain but they looked like spry old people and didn't say anything when I didn't move immediately.

After a long day in the museums, we took off for dinner in Chinatown. I'd never been to Chinatown but at night, I can kind of see why people think it's scary. It's like another country in a small area! Great food though... After dinner we headed back to our hotel.

At this point I feel I need to comment on our hotel. We are Sheraton Hotel fans but this hotel was seriously the worst we've ever been to. The hotel staff barely spoke English and were very difficult to communicate with. We struggled with instructions for being picked up from the hotel and driven to the metro station (it's about 5 miles away from the hotel) and a laundry list of other offenses which just really turned us off from the whole place. If the service wasn't bad enough, the hotel wasn't the cleanest and the rooms literally had paper thin walls.

Let me tell you how thin these walls are... I hear our neighbor in the hotel talking on the phone to a friend about this 37 year old hot guy she met at the bar. She didn't know much about him except that he was from Maryland. "A-huh, A-huh, Yeah, I know, A-huh, A-huh. Heh, heh! Heh, heh! Don't go there girl, it ain't like that." Think it's bad enough I can hear the conversation from our room? Oh no, it gets better when she invites this hot guy over to her hotel room and they get to know each other better at 11:15 p.m., 12:35 p.m. and 6:45 a.m.

Monday, January 25th -

Today I began my hunt for a mall in the D.C. area. After ballooning up at the Smithsonian I decided I better forgo the walking tours I could go on around D.C. when I knew I would be on my own. Mike had his conference from 8-5:30. I braved the front desk to arrange a shuttle to the metro station and I managed to navigate with very few mistakes to my destinations. I traveled to Crystal City first which was an hour metro ride only to be very disappointed when I found the mall there. It was a very touristy place with D.C. stuff souvenir stuff everywhere. It was also near a base somewhere so there were normal stores like grocery, eye glasses places, doctors offices, etc. I stayed maybe a half hour and then I turned back to go to downtown D.C.

On my own I walked around the Washington Mall and some more of the Smithsonian museums. It was a gorgeous 50 degrees out and I was able to walk around without a coat. It was heavenly after such a cold winter this year. It wasn't long before I had to go through. It takes a long time to travel on the metro.

Once I was back at the hotel I waited a little bit for Mike to get back and then we took off to meet my old friend Kate in Bethesda. It was yet another long metro ride but we eventually made it there in one piece - just an hour late! Luckily Kate and her husband Bill are understanding people and weren't too upset by it. Anyways, we had a very nice dinner with them and it was great to catch up with Kate and see how she's doing. I could tell Mike really wanted to talk shop with her because she's an Electrical Engineer too but she does something different with her degree that involves some mathematical thing that Mike recognized and was interested in. Unfortunately for them, Bill and I are not engineers so I made sure we talked about more interesting things like pets, family, and future Spodfests! =)

Tuesday, January 26th -

Today I continued my search for the perfect mall. This time I had the advice of Kate who lives in the area to try this place in Virginia. I managed to find it off the metro and it was perfect for my needs. It was a smaller mall but it had four floors. It was like narrow and tall instead of spread out.

I wandered around for awhile window shopping and eventually saw the movie "Young Victoria" which is only a limited release right now. I enjoyed the movie although I think the BBC version of "Albert and Victoria" did a better job of telling their story.

After the movie I had to head back to the hotel to meet up with Mike for dinner. Before we knew it the evening was over and we were heading to bed.

Wednesday, January 27th -

Today was a very uneventful day of traveling. After packing up the hotel and having a brief breakfast, we were on our way to the airport. Finally at 12 a.m., we arrived home.

Thursdays, January 28th

Today I slept in and did some laundry while poor Mike had to go to work. In the afternoon we had our 23 week appointment at the doctors. Everything is going really well. The baby moves a lot more now and I'm up to the point where I have to have some kind of glucose test done to check my sugar levels. Overall it was a pretty uneventful trip. My belly measured 24 cm which they say is normal despite the fact I should measure 23mm since I'm only 23 weeks along. Maybe the baby is growing faster than expected? Or maybe it was that extra candy bar I had...

Friday, January 29th

Today Melanie helped me get some stuff up on Craigslist. I was really apprehensive about this because you never know who is on Craigslist and honestly, who would want my junk? I was only too surprised to see a lot of people want my junk! I'm emailing all the time now trying to arrange for people to come see what I'm selling. Overall I'm getting rid of three fish tanks, a computer desk, head board/foot board, and a flower girl dress. I'm not sure I could do this all the time but it's certainly an effective way to get rid of stuff when you can't have a garage sale. Pretty soon that spare room will be cleaned out and we can start painting the future baby room!

Speaking of baby room, we did pick a theme for our baby room. We haven't registered yet but this is the set we picked from CoCaLo called Peek A Boo Friends:

After my endeavors with Craigslist I had dinner plans with Norm and Mary. They had a very nice meal planned and I had a great time filling them in on the baby and our trip to D.C. They were the first to buy us a gift for the new baby. They bought a very cute onesie set. The onesie was such a hit with Mike that when we were out looking at cribs on Sunday he bought a robot onesie just because he thought it was cool.

Saturday, January 30th

Today we watched "Legion" with Mom and Dad in Battle Creek and had a nice dinner afterwards at their house. The movie was good but it wasn't something I would rush out to see again or recommend someone see at the theaters. Dinner was great but we had to leave early to get home so someone from Craigslist could pick up the computer desk we were getting rid of. We rushed home for nothing though because the guy didn't come until almost an hour later!

Sunday, January 31st

We didn't do a whole lot today just because we had a busy weekend. Mike had to work some of the day but not too long. We had dinner plans with some friends for around 5. We made it to the restaurant and had a great time with our friends. One friend brought her new boyfriend so we were able to meet him. He was very nice and I think fit in well, even though we didn't give him much of a chance to talk. Apparently we haven't talked in awhile because we had a lot to say in a short amount of time!

Monday, February 1st

I can't believe it's February already. Today I spent most of my day catching up from being gone a week. It's amazing how much things pile up when you're gone! Thankfully my team is great about helping out but there is still always something left for me =)

We start baby classes this week so that should be interesting. I think I have to sign up for a Lamaze class soon too. I hear those are good to go to.

Tomorrow I have more Craigslist people coming to look at stuff. It won't be much longer before my junk will be gone forever!