New Year's Eve

I went into the city for a party in DC this year. It was a house party but with cocktail attire. I liked that- made it more festive somehow. There was general rowdiness but I think I'll keep further details away from this public forum. ;) It was a really fun night though.

Dr. Seuss for President

I went to the P and C Art Gallery in Old Town Alexandria today to check out an exhibit called "Dr. Seuss for President". The description for the exhibit was:

"Coinciding with the historic 2008 U.S. presidential election, this unusual show features Dr. Seuss's rarely seen political work, including the first release of "Knotty Problem," a cartoon on the issue of taxes and Capitol Hill created by Seuss in 1942; the first print of the "Triple Sling Jigger" from Seuss's "Butter Battle Book", and four environmentally friendly prints from "The Lorax". "

Sounds good right? Unfortunately, it was near the end of the exhibit and much of the artwork had been sold. There were still some nice pieces but it was a little disappointing. Not nearly as political as I was hoping for.

Merry Christmas!

My mom came to my house this year and we had xmas with the four of us- my mom, me, and my pups. Each of the pups had their own stocking to open. The look of joy on their faces when they realized that they were literally surrounded by new toys was priceless. Santa was good to me this year as well.

Georgie in his pile of toys..... This is a happy dog!

Izzie in her xmas outfit.... It has bells on it so she jingled everywhere she went. I laughed so hard. It was SO funny. I love that she allows me to do these things to her.
Here's my boy after he was done playing. He's passed out on my lap. Could he be any more adorable?

My mom and I did our usual baking and also did a turkey dinner, which was really more to make up for Thanksgiving. We don't typically do a xmas dinner but I missed out on my Thanksgiving stuffing this year and that's just unacceptable. :) Dinner was great and I now have more turkey than I know what to do with (I bought it late and the smallest thing I could find was a 17 lb bird!). My mom made fun of me for apologizing to Tom (the turkey) as I was stuffing him. But c'mon, I felt a little bad.......

Hope everyone had a great holiday!

Another Chill Weekend

It was another low-key weekend. I somehow found myself at the mall with Toby on Saturday. The weekend before xmas- what was I thinking? It's something I usually avoid at all costs but shopping was needed and so it was done. It actually wasn't that bad. I was supposed to go out Saturday night but everyone was being bums. I didn't want to leave my couch and apparently, neither did anyone else. So at least I didn't have to feel guilty about being a bum. Good weekend. Ready for xmas.....

Shakespeare

I went to see the Shakespeare Theater Company's performance of Twelfth Night in DC tonight with my friend Molly and 2 of her many, many relatives (also our age). I keep meaning to do more things like this in the city. The show was good. I'm a little spoiled since my first Shakespeare experience was seeing Coriolanus in London, performed by the Royal Shakespeare Company. It was phenomenal and I'm not sure anything else will ever compare. But Twelfth Night was good and I'm glad I went.

End of Semester

My group met to finish our "semester" project on Monday night and presented it tonight to the professor/class. The only bad part of throwing a semester project together in a week is that we didn't get a chance to practice the length of the presentation. It was timed to 15 minutes and I was last to speak about the analysis section. I had to speed-talk to get through everything in time which was a little awkward. We're still totally getting an "A". :)

Hermit

Is it sad that I stayed in all weekend? I know Jason will be proud. I needed time to catch up on stuff, do holiday shopping, etc. so I took the weekend and just caught up on everything. I got my xmas shopping done and packages sent. I also watched some movies- really upset that Horton Hears a Who wasn't better. Seriously- my favorite Dr. Seuss character and it was "eh". Anyway, I am feeling refreshed after my weekend in. I need weekends like this every now and then.

Smart People Make Me Happy

Although it may not have seemed like it this semester, I have been in school. I haven't actually gone to class in about a month and a half, since the test, but whatever. We have a semester project and I've teamed with my normal group- 2 other girls that work full time and really just want their piece of paper (degree) handed to them but are also total Type A's, like myself. The semester ends in a week and we have pushed the project off until tonight. We just met for 2 hours, planned out the entire project, broke it up into pieces, and are done working. Now we just have to complete our individual sections, put the pieces together, and will be good to go to present and turn in our 30 page paper next Tuesday. And this is why I'm an Industrial Engineer. :)

Lazy Sundays

I forgot how awesome a lazy Sunday was until I stopped having them. With being out of town in Italy and then West Virginia, today was my first lazy Sunday at home in at least a month. I got my Christmas tree set up and caught up on a lot of nothingness. It was awesome. I can't even say exactly what I did. I know I talked to a bunch of people. And watched a movie. Otherwise, pretty much nothing.

Holiday Party

Tonight was my work holiday party at Dave and Buster's in Rockville, MD. That's about an hour and a half metro ride from me but I was determined not to drive (which would only have taken 40 minutes) so I wouldn't have to worry about a car later in the night. Molly and Timur were awesome and picked me up. We drove to Timur's house in the city and took the metro from there but it was running on a single track which meant it took forever. And then we still had to walk the .4 miles to D+B's in the cold. It was a little bit miserable. They picked me up at 6:30; we got to D+B's around 9:00. Yeah. We basically missed the dinner portion of the evening, ate quickly, and headed to the game area to play.













We played all the classics- skee ball, the basketball shooting game, DDR (Dance, Dance Revolution), and air hockey. I haven't played DDR since I was in Seattle with Stephanie almost 4 years ago and the one at D+B's is completely different. And really hard! Steph and I tried again but it wasn't even fun because it was so difficult. We decided to go play at the bar instead.

After the party, a bunch of us went to a bar in the city called Wonderland. I had never been there but it had pretty decent music that was definitely dance-able. I had such a great night.

There was drinking....... and dancing.......

....and attempts at self-portraits......... and random hats........

........and a lot of smiles. :)

Do you see how happy I am? Life is good.

Sometimes Owning Sucks

The pilot light on my furnace keeps going out so I sometimes wake up or come home to no heat. Sucks. I had someone out here today and my best option may be to replace the whole unit. That is NOT cheap. Weighing my options and relighting my pilot every day or two.......

Mission Accomplished

I've been waiting to share this until I was sure it was really happening...... I have 2 new employees for the Quality Management Group! I've been trying to expand this program for a long time and it's finally happening. We hired an Industrial Engineer from Georgia Tech who will be working for me in the Reston office, as well as a Quality Manager for our new West Virginia project. This week involves a crash course in all things quality so we can hit the ground running. Woohoo- it's a good day!

West Virginia

We just won a big contract in West Virginia and I attended the kick-off meeting with other members of our corporate staff, the project management, and the client. The location is about 5 hours away from me. Ugh. Several of us took a van; I was thankful I didn't have to drive but man, that's a long trip. I wish I hadn't just gotten back from a trip; I needed more time to relax and catch up at home. Thankfully, it was just 1 night (and 2 really long days). Looks like I will be heading to West Virginia several more times to get things started and make sure all the quality "stuff" is in place.