Weekend Review {11/7}

We're going to start this party on Thursday since that's when it felt like the weekend started, despite some work that took place during the "weekend".

THURSDAY

We woke up at 0400 on Thursday to get ready for work and for Teh German to drop me off at the airport by 0530.  Getting checked in and through security wasn't complicated.  I stopped and grabbed a bagel and a tea for breakfast and headed to my gate to wait to board.  YAY for Jetblue, we boarded back to front, which was delightful.  Finally, we were DC bound.  The flight was right at an hour.  We landed, I picked up my bag (37 pounds WITH Teh 10lb Pillow, woot) and headed to the rental car shuttle.

Flying into DCA:
Fall at Arlington National Cemetery

After the guy at the rental counter tried to upsale me on every single possible item, with me saying no each time (WTF stop trying to sell me your rental insurance when my credit card covers it!), I finally was able to "pick" from the one car that was over where the guy had directed me.  I hit the road and headed down to Pax River.

While Teh MD-AR had left me a hidden key, she didn't know that I had always planned to go straight to base (while I still can) to surprise her.  I did get distracted by the tree (that I showed you on Friday), but I did make it to her office and she was actually very surprised to see me.  I WIN!  After leaving her office, I headed to the commissary to pick up a sub for lunch, then headed to Teh MD-AR's house to accomplish some work tasks.

Dat tree dough.

Synchronized roaching by Olive and Zoey.

Oh Olive-Walive... you so preeetttay.

I was miraculously able to withstand the peer pressure from the dogs to take a nap in the afternoon, barely.  Eventually, Teh MD-AR came home and after we chatted for a bit, we headed to Salsa's for dinner.  Salsa's was my favorite mexican place when I lived here, so I was pumped to get to eat there.

After dinner we came home and hung out with the dogs and neighbors and eventually headed to bed.

FRIDAY

Friday was 1 of 2 meetings I came up to DC for.  I had to be at the Navy Yard by 0830 so I could be at my meeting by 9.  I drove up to the Branch Ave Metro station and took the Metro to the Navy Yard stop.  When I arrived, it was 0800.  Since I had some time to burn, I searched Yelp for a coffee shop to avoid the Starbuckos.  I ended up at this hipster place called Philz Coffee.  The names on the menu were all strange and unrecognizable.  The real lesson I learned from this experience was that if they don't have peppermint syrup for a peppermint mocha, just get a tea.  Period.  Even if they will use real mint to make something like a peppermint mocha.  Just get the tea.

Teh MD-AR had loaned me her wifi hotspot and I was able to turn it on and check my email, people/dog watch, and catch up on my internets.  Around 0830, I packed up and traded my flip flops for heels and headed towards the base.  The instruction I had weren't very precise and included something about a Harris Teeter being on the same side of the road and "follow the crowd".  Fantastic.  This actually made me late for my meeting.  I saw the crowd headed towards base and I followed.  I ended up at a turnstile where my ID wouldn't grant me access to base, so the turnstile wouldn't turn.  Fantastic.

In true Megan luck/weirdness, there was another lady standing there who was having the same problem as me, her ID wasn't giving her base access.  I called the number that was on the call button and turns out, that number goes to the turnstile help desk, not the base access desk.  Unfortunately, I was standing outside a construction zone and in a bad cell reception area, so I wasn't able to hear the operator tell me that and we got sassy with each other.

After I ended the call, I told the lady I was going to have to walk all the way around to a gate with guards, then find my way to my 0900 meeting.  She had some sympathy on me and explained that her husband's apartment was 1 block up and if I wanted to wait on her to fetch her keys, she'd just drive me to my meeting since she was going to the gym anyways.  Not one to look a gift horse in the mouth, I said yes.  I waited in the lobby while she fetched her keys and she drove me to my meeting.  I was only 10ish minutes late instead of the 30-45 if I hadn't gotten a lift.

Sometimes, my life is very strange, but I've embraced the strange and weird things that happen to me.  This was one of those instances.  I'm very grateful for my blessings for sure.

My meeting was awkward and moderately successful.  Our client wants things, but doesn't know what and apparently they've been led to believe that what they are asking for is simple, but it isn't.  It will be a delightful shit show to deal with that when I get back.  I did get to meet some of the people that I've only ever interacted with over teleconference.  So many things were explained.  Like the fact that they all want to have the last word so they speak over each other all the time, which is why I often have a difficult time understanding what is going on during their meetings.  When the meeting ended, I was waiting for someone to call in so we could chat, but we were unable to get ahold of this person.

While one participant and I stayed back waiting on the call, I chatted with them about their prior navy career and everything that I knew about this person came into complete focus.  Their history in the navy explained every painful interaction I'd ever had with this person.  The person that was supposed to call in never did, so I finally took my leave and headed to grab lunch.

I ended up at a bbq place right by the Navy Yard on the water.  I chatted with my PM about the meeting and caught up on emails again.  I finished my minutes and emailed them out.  Then I headed to the Metro to go fetch the car and head to Annapolis to pick up our 10k race packets for Sunday.

I walked along the water and through the park and had to take a selfie on such a gorgeous day!

Carolina bbq sandwich (Willie Jewel's is better).

Bread pudding (Again, Willie Jewel's is better).

The Department of Transportation has some pretty cool stuff nearby.

The drive was heinous, but I was in the final hours of The One Man so it worked out perfectly.  When I got to the Navy Marine Corps Stadium for packet pickup, I was 1.5 hours from being finished with the book, which was perfect since that was at least how long it was going to take me to get back to Teh MD-AR's house from packet pickup.

Since I was there, I walked through the expo to check out what vendors were there and I ended up buying more running socks since I've been wearing them more and more as day to day socks since they don't slip down my ankle.  While I was there, the guy helping me said he recognized me and I told him that unless he did events in Charleston, he did not actually know me.  He countered with the fact that he DID actually do events in Charleston since his territory was quite large.  I admitted to him that I had recognized his accent, but I thought I was crazy since I was so far away from where I had met the person with that accent before.  We laughed about it and he informed me that he lived in Charlotte, so it wasn't weird that I recognized him from so many Charleston events.

I came away with the interaction with 2 thoughts.  Either I'm very memorable with my very outgoing personality and chattiness or he was trying to pick me up and I was completely oblivious until well after I had walked away.  Either way, my ego was stoked.  This also came on the heels of someone in my morning meeting saying they had recognized me, but turns out, it was someone else with light curly hair.  #MissPopular

After picking up the packets and some socks, I headed towards the car, stopping for some photos of the stadium, since I'd never been there before.

Navy Chiefs (E7-E9) use the ram/goat as their mascot.
I've never understood "the goat locker" but Navy tradition or whatever.
So I had to get a selfie.

Go Navy!  Beat Army!
Always and forever.

Traffic was a nightmare on the way home.  It was also made extra stressful by the ending of the book.  I was literally screaming at the characters of the book like a crazy lady.  #notsorry  The book ended about 20 minutes before my 2 hour drive home ended and I was left in a void.  Readers, you know what I'm talking about.

When I got home, Teh MD-AR was chillin' with the dogs.  We shared about our days and played on the internet for a bit.  Eventually, we got hungry and headed to Red Robin for dinner.  We figured since it was 7pm, there was no way we would get my spot right in front of the door, but... because of my life skills, it was open.  Those 2 people who were in front of us when we pulled into the parking lot missed out.  #parkingmagic

Despite eating too much, our food was as delicious as we had wanted it to be.  Also, we may have ordered a dessert as an appetizer.  #notsorry

Smores sweet potato fries.
They were AHHHMAZING.

After we were overly stuffed, we headed home.  I chatted with Teh German on Skype for a short bit, and then it was bedtime since we had a long day planned on Saturday.

SATURDAY

A dog day was planned for Saturday.  We were out of the house by 9 with 3 greyhounds and 3 people in tow.  Our destination was a meet and greet in Fredericksburg, VA.  We arrived a little after 11.  I got to hang out with GEGR people who I hadn't seen since I had moved down to SC, so it was awesome.

All the dogs who come into this house love these front windows.
I'm glad that Phil's tradition carries on.

greyhound puppy available through SHUG (Meri's group)

LOL to that Humom's face!

dem ears!

Siblings.  /swoon

After several hours, we were starting to get tired and Olive was getting snarky, so I took her out for a short walk to get her away from the other dogs.  While I was out, I missed my DLSR again.

Finally, a little after 2, we left and headed back to MD.

I won't lie, I couldn't resist the peer pressure and I, too, took a nap on the way home and everyone was happy that my grouchy ass was asleep.  When we got back home, we were lazy for the rest of the day.  I did a load of laundry and we played on the internet and had dinner in the evening.  When it was finally time for bed, I wanted to finish my Afghanistan book since my Kindle estimated I only had an hour left and we were gaining an hour on Sunday.. soooo why not.

Turns out, it was only 30 minutes left of my book, which was perfect.  Right after I turned out the light around midnight/0100, depending on when you set your clocks back, Teh German texted and asked if I wanted to Skype.  I told him that I had an early start on Sunday and promised we would Skype on Sunday... then I struggled to fall asleep for an hour and then proceeded to have super fucked up dreams.  Grand.

SUNDAY

I woke up exhausted on Sunday from a rough night.  I just had to throw on clothes and brush my teeth and I was ready, so that was a plus.  We were out the door by 0600 and we stopped on the way to Annapolis to pick up a running mate.  We arrived in Annapolis around 0730 and we jumped on the shuttle and were in the start chute by 0830.

Ready for the Across the Bridge 10k!

Instead of starting with our prescribed waves, we all started at the same time, YAY!  It had already been determined that I would be running on my own, so right after we started running I said bye and set off on my own.  That hill was a slayer, I won't lie.  It absolutely killed my time and my life.  Additionally, several factors went into play: I was an idiot and walked around the Navy Yard in heels for an extended period of time (stupid), I started my period, I was extra bloated (see previous point), I hadn't really trained (haaa), my body is still adjusting to my normal gait still, my hips are out of alignment and I should have went to the chiro last week, and my phone wasn't getting service so instead of listening to music, I started a new audiobook... to name a few.  Essentially:

I did get these awesome shots during the race though:

I made it to the finish line in 1 hour, 11 minutes, with an average pace of 11:28, which is probably the slowest run I've done (excluding Disney).  I scoped out the finish area while waiting on my running mates.  While I was waiting, I got to witness a proposal, she said yes.  Soon after, my running mates joined me and we all oooed and aaaahhed over our finisher medals.

After we meandered through the finish area, we headed to the shuttle area.  We were super pumped to see that our shuttle had NO line.  This was awesome...  then, we endured a 1.5+ hour school bus ride back to the other side of the bridge where we were parked.  It took that long because of traffic jams since the run had closed down 1 direction of traffic and both directions had been funneled down to single-lane traffic on one side of the bridge.  Better that bus driver than me.

I chatted with my seatmate for a bit, then I ended up taking a nap because my head was absolutely killing me.  I woke up as we were crossing the top of the bridge because I got chilly.  I tried to doze till we arrived back, but I was awake after that blast of cold air.

Fortunately, when we got back, we were only 10 minutes from our brunch destination, Miss Shirley's,  and Teh FL Greyhound Neighbors had already checked us in around 11 and burned through most of the wait time.  When we arrived after noon, we waited for about 20 more minutes before we were seated.

Everyone's food but mine was delicious.  Mine ended up being too spicy for me to eat, so I ordered a biscuit and ate that after picking through what I could of my original meal.  I had asked the waitress if my meal was spicy, and of course, she said no.  I need to just stop asking people.  I know better.  Just like the peppermint syrup lesson.

Carolina bbq skillet something.  Something too spicy for me, for certain.
Smores hot chocolate adult beverage was mine too.  #notsorry

After brunch, we headed back to the car.  We stopped by a quilting place for our 3rd running mate and then we headed home.  Teh MD-AR started feeling bad, so #3 drove us to her house and then I drove Teh MD-AR and myself back home.  After showers, Teh MD-AR laid down and I stayed up and Skyped with Teh German.  After our Skype session, I figured I should figure out a dinner plan and so I decided on Texas Roadhouse take away.  It was a solid life choice.  I went and picked it up and brought it back home and Teh MD-AR was up, felt better, and was ready to eat.

After dinner, we cleaned up and social media-ed for the rest of the night.  In fact, way past my bedtime.  Monday holds another work meeting and flying back to Charleston in the evening.  I'm excited for snuggles with Teh German and Teh Cloud and seeing the Chiro soon and Teh WJL's arrival in less than a week and ALL THE FUN THINGS AND STUFF!


Happy November, Gentle Readers!!!