Friday, June 30, 2006

happy 4th!

Work has dragged this week. It was raining continuously here until Thursday, so everyone was in a grumpy mood. Rainy days are only great if you have nowhere to go and you don’t care what condition you are in when you get there. I love the rain, but only if I can stay in bed listening to it fall….

Anyway, I’m happy the week is over. All of my bosses will be gone next week, out of the country for work or vacation. So that, combined with a 3 day work week will hopefully make the road to next weekend fast and painless. We have family friends who are moving to the area this weekend, so on Monday I am driving up there to help them move in to their new house and lend a helping hand. They have the most adorable little girls who I love to death, and who I haven’t seen in almost 7 months. I have heard from Leah that they are really big now….they grow up so fast…. Hopefully I will be back in Bmore to see the fireworks, but its suppposed to rain on Tuesday so they may be delayed.

Happy 4th everyone! Have a good weekend.

Tuesday, June 27, 2006

procrastination

I have no desire to work at the moment. The beginning of the week can be so hard! Kirsten and I had a really good weekend. She is house sitting for one of our bosses who is in Mozambique at the moment, so we plotted a mini-escape from Baltimore for the weekend. It was great. I didn’t realize just how much being surrounded by concrete all the time has influenced my psyche, but as we drove down to Columbia and saw, gasp, trees and green I realized how much all the downtown buildings can depress me. Without a car, I often feel trapped in the urban jungle, destined to never see foliage again! (Ok, maybe I am being a little overdramatic there).

Columbia was a great respite. We slept in late on Saturday morning and watched television all day, mesmerized by the cable neither one of us has in our homes. There were so many channels! After vegging out all day long, we drove into DC to see Christine for the evening and went out dancing in Adams Morgan. So fun! Ever since Christine’s bday in April I have wanted to go back there and hang out. It is a very unique space, with club after club in old row homes and people everywhere. We ended up in the lounge of The Blue Room, and once that closed grabbed some pizza at Jumbo Slice. Now, that may seem like a normal activity except that this particular pizza place had a disco ball, neon lights and the best dance music we had heard all night. People danced in line as they waited for their food, it was bizarre and great.

We didn’t end up in Columbia again until 4, and I slept away Sunday morning while Kirsten was good and went to church. I was too tired from the night before to go, so I hope God forgives! All in all, it was a great weekend which makes it harder to sit at my desk today.

A few interesting things in the news:
Loved this article from last week's New York Times about pigeons in Trafalgar’s Square. Every time I have gone to London I have made an effort to people watch there, and I guess now a “radical splinter group” of pigeon feeders is destroying the Mayor’s plan to get rid of the pigeons.

This is a really sad piece about an African woman who lost her daughter to FGM. I cannon imagine how difficult it would be to make a choice for your child that you believe will allow her to grow up healthy and well, and then she ends up dying because of that choice. Truly tragic.

This is an article from today’s NY Times about women in Indonesia and some of their struggles. Once again, it makes me thankful that I am a woman who grew up in America.

Sunday, June 18, 2006

just another weekend

This weekend has been very relaxed. It’s been great. You know you have crossed a new threshold into adulthood when suddenly weekends aren’t for sleeping in or relaxing, but running all the errands you can’t do during the week while you are at work. Luckily, I didn’t have any of those this past weekend.

Saturday was so nice! I got to sleep in and bum around the apartment, and then I headed down to a coffee place down the street, Spoons, to check my email and read a bit. Kirsten and I went out for dinner (yet another tapas place!) and ended up the night in typical fashion, with coffee and a walk in Fells Point.

Today I went shopping with a few of the girls. Lynnae has a wedding to go to next weekend, so we wanted to find something for her to wear. Of course, she ended up with nothing for the wedding and I ended up with a new dress and a haircut. I really need to stop joining people on their shopping trips, its becoming seriously dangerous for my budget.

Anyway, like I said it’s been very relaxed. I am not looking forward to rolling out of bed tomorrow morning. Sometimes I wish the week was nothing but Saturdays, but I suppose then I’d get bored with relaxing and look forward to work.

Friday, June 16, 2006

life's randomness

So, I can say that I am a lot happier now in Baltimore than I was the last time I blogged. Kirsten and I are becoming better friends, and having her to talk to is saving my mind and sanity in this place! Plus, I have a few stories to tell.

Work is the same. I just finished a killer concept paper this week about volunteers in the field and how we can better accommodate them. I successfully procrastinated on it all week long until today, the day it was due. I have had quite a few distractions this week!
For a while, it looked like work was going to send me to Indonesia to help set up their office there. Alas, that is not meant to be. We have decided not to go operational there after all, so I will not be going. I am very bummed about it, because the experience would have been incredible, but I have been promised that I will get some international experience yet this year so I still have hope!

Kirsten and I had a bit of an adventure last week. Somehow we ended up on a British Royal Navy ship. We were in Fells Point on Wednesday wandering around, and we happened to walk by this ship docked on the pier. We were chatting about what kind of ship it could be when a British guy came by and said it was a Navy ship. He asked if we wanted a tour (of course we said yes!) and he took us onboard and showed us around. We saw the bridge, and I sat in the chair where the steering wheel was, and then he took us down into the communications room where all the radars were. It was really cool and very unexpected. After the tour, we sat in a lounge on the ship and talked to a few of the British guys. We left our numbers and email, since they were going to be in town for a few days.

The next day I got a call from one of them, Chris, and he invited us to dinner with a bunch of the Navy guys from the ship. It was pretty funny, since Kirsten and I had left our number with a few of them, we had no idea which guy was calling us so we wandered into the restaurant hoping that we would recognize accents. We ended up having dinner at the Bay Café and then going back to Fells Point to hang out. Kirsten and I had so much fun; every single guy there was interesting to talk to and there was such a drastic contrast between guys I have known in the American Navy and these guys from the Royal Navy. It was like night and day.

Anyway, Chris and I ended up going out for dinner on Sunday. I had a fabulous time but, of course, their ship left on Monday morning. Now they are somewhere in the middle of the Atlantic and I am still here. I guess that’s what email is for...