Spring Vacay part 1

Chris and I went on an awesome road trip for our vacation last month.



We got to do a lot of fun activities! For some reason, I didn't take a ton of pictures but I did get some.



We left on Saturday April 10, and had our longest day of driving.



I had picked out a brewpub to stop for lunch.



As usual, we left later than we had hoped and it was about 4 by the time we arrived there. So we had a late lunch at Cally's in Harrisonburg, Virginia.



The food was good, the beer was good, the bartender was friendly, and they had wifi so we could check in with our ipods!



Can't go wrong. We had a great lunch and then we were on our way again.



We headed down to Virginia to our campsite for the night. We got there after dark and it was getting chilly. We set up our tent in the dark. We had food that we were looking forward to cooking over the open fire, but since it was dark and we were tired, we debated about just using our camp stove. Unfortunately the entire dinner plan was thwarted when we realized we didn't have any lighters or matches. DOH! We figured out later that we could have used the car's cigarette lighter to get it started but since we'd had a late lunch it wasn't that big of a deal. I did munch on a few cold s'mores. They were almost as good as the hot ones! I love s'mores!

That night, it got cold. And I don't just mean a little chilly, I mean COLD. We were both shivering all night and neither one of us got much sleep! I think it got down to about 40 and maybe colder - there was frost on the ground in the morning. We are mean doggie parents and don't let Lilly sleep in the bed with us, but that night we coaxed her onto the air mattress with us so we would have some more heat and keep her warmer too. (Our goal of keeping her off the bed was reaffirmed when we woke up and the two of us were in about 1/3 of the mattress and Lilly was taking up the other 2/3.) The next morning when we broke down the tent it was difficult as we couldn't feel our fingers. I couldn't even tie my shoes. We shoved everything in the car as fast as we could and headed to the first diner we saw for a hot meal and hot coffee. That really hit the spot!

Then we were on our way again. We headed out to Asheville, NC. See you soon for part 2!

I was late to work this morning because...

I had to grab some footage of this guy! He was banging on our windows, trying to get in, and wasn't the least bit scared of us knocking on the window back at him!

I love lists!

This is my to-do list for the evening. I'm doing pretty good, eh? Checked off a lot of the list so far. I even write things I would have definitely done anyway, like shower and yoga. It just feels nice to check things off the list.

Here's more about some of the items on the list.

Laundry. Just one load, washed and now hanging on the line. Thank you to my wonderful husband for doing another load yesterday. Now we are just about caught up.

Look for sheets. I am really too embarrassed to even post a picture to explain this one. We have a set of sheets that was starting to get thin. Yes, just one set of sheets. Chris suggested that we get new ones, but I said, no, no, we don't need them, we have a brand new set waiting for us with the rest of our wedding presents to use next year when we have a bigger place. Then the next time I washed them I saw a small, barely noticeable snag in the bottom sheet, and acknowledged that we might want to think about new sheets. A couple of days later, I turned over in the night, half asleep, and put my elbow through the snag as I turned. Now it is a huge, gaping hole. So I need to look for sheets online. Haven't gotten to it yet.

I made mac and cheese for dinner! At the request of someone who I hope is looking forward to gobbling it up when he gets home tonight.

My mom wants to video chat with me online on skype. That sounds fine with me but I need to investigate how it works. We have a program called ichat on our computer that I had a little trouble with the one time I tried to use it, but if I could get that to work, maybe we could chat on that instead. And I got a new google voice account so I have to set it up. I will have a new Denver phone number! Cool!

I finally mailed in a form that has been just sitting on the counter for several days, just because I wanted to cross it off the list. This is why lists are wonderful.

I have been looking forward to editing photos all day. I got to take a bunch of portraits with Curt, Katie and baby Ev this weekend, and I am so excited to work on editing! Now it is 8:30 and I haven't even had a chance to look at them. That's what I am doing next. And hopefully later this week I'll have a blog post up with some of my faves!

The list says blog posts, not blog post. I had hoped to write a couple of posts so I would have some saved up for later this week. But now it is getting late and I want to edit photos (see above). So I am going to close here and open up photoshop!

HA! You've wasted several perfectly good minutes reading about my boring evening. Hope you have more excitement in your life today!

The Next Big Move

I got some good news recently. I've been accepted to a fellowship program for pediatric anesthesiology. In Denver! Chris and I are very excited to move back to Colorado a little over a year from now. I love living in New York City, but I'm not interested in living here indefinitely.



But this will not be our "next" big move. In other news, we found out today that our lease will not be renewed by our landlord at the end of May when it expires. BOO!



So I guess we are heading back to this:



We'd hoped to stay in our current apartment until I finish residency next year. But this wasn't a complete shock. About 3 months ago, we found out that they have to remodel our apartment. The short story: there used to be a really awesome deli downstairs, which was one of the first places we went when we moved in.



The owner was named K and she was super sweet. She used to smoke in the backyard and we would see her out there when we took Lilly. She loved Lilly - she told me once "she like me, I not speak good English and neither does she!" And she received packages for us, which made her one of my favorite people in Manhattan. Anyway, she closed her deli in November after they raised the rent and she decided she couldn't stay open anymore. She had a closing night, and tons of people from the neighborhood were there. Everyone was sad to see her go after 17 years in the same spot. When I was there, I found out that she actually lives uptown in the EXACT same building that I lived in for 3 months when I was in medical school! WEIRD!

Okay, so this is not such a short story. Anyway, she closed the deli and a "For lease" sign went up in the window. When they started looking into renting the space out, apparently they discovered that the entire building would be inspected and that they would need to change the fourth floor (our floor) - something about only being allowed to have one apartment on the floor, currently there are two. I don't really understand it all because the apartments do not look the least bit haphazard, it seems to be a reasonable setup. We both have access to fire escapes. Well, they didn't ask me.

So they told us they would keep us up to date. Originally they mentioned renting it to a bank (bo-ring!) and Chris heard them recently showing the place to people who were talking about opening a bar or restaurant and using the backyard as outdoor seating (a bit better). We didn't hear anything else until we called them today to get the scoop. Since our lease expires at the end of May, we figured they should have an answer for us. And they did. :(

At least moving is nothing new to us, and it is always a good opportunity to get rid of stuff we don't use. Hopefully we'll be able to get into a place with more space. Our calculation today was that we have about 380 square feet in our current apartment. Our landlord has lots of apartments in this area, and they've offered to show us any that are available right now. That would be nice - no new application, no waiting to get our security deposit back while we still have to send a security deposit to the new place, we know they're pet friendly. And we definitely plan to stay in this area.

I'll keep you updated!

I'm back!

Okay, I have been terrible about blogging for the past few months. But now I'm motivated to pick it up again, for the time being, at least! I made a couple of changes to the blog front page. I eliminated the brew update section since we are no longer actively brewing. Such a bummer! But in a year or so we'll be able to brew again, with more space!

I added a link to Carrie's blog.



She is traveling through New Zealand and Australia and blogging her adventures. I'm excited to read about all the fun, exciting, new things she'll be seeing and doing. (I hope she is better about blogging than I am!) A few weeks ago, Chris and I helped her load up her moving truck.

Can't leave Teddy behind.



But she did leave the loft bed - she's ready for a real bed when she comes back!



I'm so excited for Carrie.  She quit a job she was unhappy with and decided to move to Philadelphia.  She hadn't found a job yet in Philly, and decided to travel for 3 months!



 So we loaded her studio apartment into the moving truck and she headed to Philly where she stored everything in a friend's garage.



 Then she headed down under!



Chris insisted on taking a picture of me even though I had been at work overnight and then headed to Carrie's first thing in the morning. And then had been up and down the stairs a few times, carrying stuff, and arranging it all in the truck. Yet I'm still posting this photo on the internets. Brave.

Chris and I decided this was the best move ever.



 It was only a 3rd floor walk-up, and she didn't have that much stuff - very different from our last move.  Plus, we didn't have to pack the stuff, and we didn't have to unpack it!  A couple hours of work on a Sunday morning was all we had to do.  I wish our next move would be this easy!