Extremes

The past few months have been months of extremes, lucky for me they ended up balancing themselves out:

Extreme weather: 

* DC Highs- April days of over 90, June/July days 100+... the hottest spring in Washington history.

* DC Storms- 3 with tornadoes

* Unexpected lows while camping- 59 degrees

http://climateprogress.org/2010/06/24/record-heat-sweeps-dc-nation-world/

Total number of daily high and low temperature records set in the U.S., data from NOAA National Climatic Data Center, background image © Kevin Ambrose.  Includes historical daily observations archived in NCDC’s Cooperative Summary of the Day data set and preliminary reports from Cooperative Observers and First Order National Weather Service stations.  All stations have a Period of Record of at least 30 years.

Extreme work: 

* Over 50 hours of overtime

* Working till 11 pm

* A 3 month rotation that is going on its 6th month

* Having nothing to do at times and thus attempting to master MineSweeper & 4 Suite Spider Solitaire

Extreme Vacation: 3 trips & 4 days of vacations

* Florida to visit my mom at the Insurance Convention in Orlando (and Disney World)

* Atlanta for Audrey's wedding

* Meet the Fleet in Norfolk 

Extreme Outdoors:

* Camping at Swallow Falls/ Deep Creek Lake 

* Kayaking the Potomac in Georgetown
* Hiking Stone Mountain

Extreme Apartment Failures: 

* Roughly 10 poop stains from Gusteau

* Bleach mishaps on these stains, making them worse

Extreme Apartment Makeovers: 

* Closet slimming & reorganization

* Building a balcony garden

In all, the summer has been a very very busy time. 

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Extreme Work: 

The rotation that won't end: 

While a NAVSEA intern, you do different work rotations to build experience. I have not done any external rotations yet (external being at a Shipyard, the Pentagon, a Program Office, a Technical Rotation, etc.) but I have done an internernal (still with NAVSEA Cost) rotation with the Industrial Analysis/ Rates group and am currently doing a rotation with another estimating group. I am working on a project that I begged my boss to get to do. When I set-up this rotation I imagined it would be a 3-4 month rotation (which is about average for rotations). I am now beginning my 6th month of this rotation and it looks like I will be here for a total of about 7 months. That is quite a long rotation when I only have 2.5 years to do all of the rotations I want to do! I have to be on this rotation until the project is complete, which is out of my hands. The project is located at an off site location endearingly referred to as "The CAVE." And for good reasons too. There are no windows,  no internet, no cellphones allowed, no music or flash drives allowed, and no visitors. We now refer to Excel and Windows Desktop Explorer as "the internet." 

The project workload is crazy. At times we have just 2 weeks to finish a month's worth of work, leading to late nights and lots of overtime, and at other times there is no work and the days drag on. During these lulls, the only thing to do is to improve upon my MineSweeper, FreeCell and Spider Solitaire skills. From these lulls I have learned two things: 1.) Don't play 4 suite Spider Solitaire, it will control your life, 2.) The expert Minesweeper level is impossible to beat and you will quickly revert to the medium level because you are tired of loosing. Minesweeper does hold some validity at work, as we are working on our "tactical littoral mine warfare fighting" skills. Very technical Navy stuff! 

On the up-side of it all, I think this has been a very helpful and worthwhile rotation where I have learned a lot and gotten to work with a lot of people that I normally might have never worked with. Tales from the CAVE are to follow in subsequent posts...... 

Extreme Vacations/ Outdoors: 

Trip to Florida for Disney & The Insurance Convention: 

Every year mom would go to the insurance convention as kids, Lindsay and I would be excited for two reason- 1.) Disney World  ;  2.) Free bag of stuff to dig through and fight over.

This year, quite a sizable amount of stuff was collected from the insurance convention. Items for the workplace are about the only useful part of this convention. We throw away the business cards-useless things. 

Items acquired during this year's convention- 

* Stress reliever squishies- Elephants, trucks, bulldogs, houses, construction hats & fish

* Frisbee

* Bags

* Lunch Box

* Roughly 15 different types of pens, pencils & highlighters

* Blinking necklaces

* Sticky notes

* Beach ball

* Cell Phone stand

* 3 different types of mints

* A wooden airplane

* Handheld air fans that display digital messages. We thought these would be useful while at Disney World, but they were so crappy they didn't actually make any wind!

* Mugs

* Pen holders/cups

* 5 pounds of other stuff....

At the convention, they actually had a white tiger!  I felt sort of bad for it. There was a baby one too. 

This is Shawn's first time to Animal Kingdom. On a safari!

Atlanta for Audrey's Wedding: 

My good friend Audrey who must have been engaged for at least 2 years now decided to do a rather last-minute wedding in the mountains. As it was going to be a small wedding, she was holding a celebration party in Atlanta for everyone to attend the day after. Shawn and I flew down to Atlanta for her party and I was really excited to see Heidi, Martha, Audrey and Elizabeth after so long away from my Agnes Scott ladies. While in Atlanta, Shawn and I visited the Atlanta Botanical Gardens (one of my most favorite places in Atlanta), stayed in Downtown Decatur, went and saw Rupelstillskin and the puppet museum at the Atlanta Center for the Puppetry Arts, Hiked Stone Mountain, saw Heidi & Hart's new house, walked around Agnes Scott, ate at one of my favorite places- The Flying Biscuit (we ate french toast and biscuits), shopped at my favorite Decatur boutiques, and attended the wedding party.

My gift to Audrey was a personalized photo-guest book (I made it through Photobook America). It was a book that had pictures of Audrey and Paul and pages for guests to sign and answer questions, such as: "What is your favorite memory of us?" ; "What is the best marriage advice you have ever gotten?" ; "What is a romantic place you thing we should visit?" ; etc. 

Photo Guest Book Cover: 

Some of the Guest Signature Pages: 

(Paul proposed to Audrey at Disney World)

Swallow Falls Camping: 

Shawn, his roommate (Brad) and I took a two day, 1 night camping trip at a site called Swallow Falls. Swallow Falls is located near Deep Creek Lake (where the WISP ski mountain is). Brad knew the area pretty well as he spent his summers with his grandparents at their house in the area.  Before embarking on our camping trip, I started a camping shopping list at work. I left it and when I came back to my desk, items had been added for me..... 

G-ma Wright: 

Our first stop on our trip was at Brad's grandmother's house. At first the idea of stopping at his G-ma's was not all that thrilling, but it turned out to be great. His G-ma was very friendly and very interesting. Her house sits on a tall hill where you can see country all around it, and she has a large garden on her hill. She has various types of apple trees, pear trees, and a vegetable garden growing everything you can think of- including boysenberries. We collected apples. His G-ma is also a world champion of wood carving. She showed me some of her award winning carvings. They were quite amazing. She had some of feathers that I didn't even realize were wood until she told me- I thought they were real feathers! 

Camping: 

Once we arrived at the campsite we set-up camp. This was the first time Shawn and I were setting up our new investment- our tent. It was surprisingly easy, and we were done with it way before Brad was finished setting up his tent (which he was "expert" at). 

After setting up camp and several lessons on why we can't leaving any traces of food (because of Black Bears) we headed to Swallow Falls to explore the river and its waterfalls. We spent most of the afternoon making our way up the river. Swimming at the first falls we encountered was near impossible as the water was too cold. Farther up the river at the next set of falls was a much warmer swimming hole and Shawn & Brad had fun jumping off ledges into the water. I'm too scared of jumping off things, and for me, this brought me back to memories of Crystal's lake house as a kid, where we would jump off the top of the boathouse. Even then I was too scared to jump off the top of the lake house. I only ever did a couple of times (including the first night we were there, where we stripped down to our undies and bras and ran to the boathouse and jumped into complete darkness- for this tricked me since I could not see how far of a jump it was- in Alabama there is complete blackness at night). Note: I will attempt to find the photo of us "jumping off the lake house" where Crystal, Bailey and Samantha were actually jumping off and I was fake jumping off.

Shawn and Brad jumping off at Swallow Falls. Shawn acts silly.

Shawn trying to get across without getting his hiking boots wet

Shawn after he slipped in (the rocks were super slippery)

My favorite part of the evening was roasting marshmallows over the fire. I'm pretty sure I ate most of a bag of marshmallows. Shawn's favorite part of camping was getting to use his cast iron skillet over the fire to cook steak in the evening and bacon in the morning (we took the "Meat, Meat, Meat" entries of the camping shopping list very seriously). Very manly. 

We bought fire wood for 3 dollars at a shack that had no one at it. The sign on the shack read as follows: 

"HONEST customers only. THIEVES NOT WELCOME! You are being watched by the supreme authority GOD. For the wages of sin is DEATH."

Shawn and Brad built our fire. Shawn made the pile of logs and lit it. 

Brad: "You want me to light that?"

**Low buzzing sound** as brad uses his battery powered mattress pump to feed the fire. 

Brad's addition to the fire

Brad roasting his weenie

Weenie roasting

Our camp site. The green tent is my new tent.

Shawn cooking bacon on his cast iron skillet

The evening was very cold, and we did not plan for this since when we left from DC, the evening temperatures were in the high 70s. I spent the evening doing four things: shivering, listening to dogs barking "at bears" all night (according to Brad, which I don't think that's what they were really barking at), wishing the fire hadn't of died out, & jumping at every noise  (I was convinced would visit us in the middle of the night). 

The next day we headed back to the swimming holes for some swimming. The river was lower than normal so we laid out on the large exposed boulders that were so warm from the sun.

On the way back home, we ate pizza at "Smiley's" , the best pizza at Deep Creek, drove up the mountain, and checked out the man-made white water rafting course at the top of the mountain (1 of only 2 in the country). 

I had so much fun I am already trying to plan our next camping trip. Shawn and I are very excited about our camping box we created. We put all of our camping equipment in a plastic bin so the next time we go it's easy to grab everything. One of our favorite parts about outdoor activities is the stuff we get to buy and have! 

Meet the Fleet: 

I love working for the Navy. My job doesn't have all of the perks/pay that private industry does, but I get to do some pretty cool things with work. I was lucky enough that I got to go on a "Meet the Fleet" trip. Meet the Fleet is a program where you travel to Norfolk VA for 2 days and visit various ships that are in dock at the Norfolk Naval Base. It is a way to get a better knowledge and hands on experience with the products you develop. The two days were packed with ship visits. We visited and toured: 

* A T-AO (Oiler and supply ship):
* A Los Angeles Class Submarine:

* A DDG (Destroyer):

* A LHD (Large deck Amphib): The U.S.S Batton

* An LCAC (Hover craft):

* An LCM:

* The submarine training center & Submarine simulator

Kayaking: 

We bought a Groupon for a twilight kayak tour of the Potomac from Jack's Boathouse in Georgetown. We paddled around the Potomac for about 1.5 hours with a guide and about 30 other Kayaks, which is an interesting thing to see once it gets dark and all of the kayaks have a small flashlight attached to the front of them. You just see lots of tiny lights on the river all moving around and bumping into each other.    We paddled in a tandem kayak and it took most of the time for Shawn and I to become a functional paddling team. But by the end we got our game together and paddled at ramming speed all the way back to the boathouse. We had so much fun that Shawn is looking into getting Kayaking lessons and we are planning to kayak in Annapolis.   

Extreme Apartment Failures: 

While I was out of town for Audrey's wedding, Gusteau was boarding at The Back Yard Pack (TBYP). This was his first time at the new location. The old TBYP was at a house, with a backyard. This new location is a large warehouse in an industrial area of VA. I picked him up on Sunday night, and Monday after work it became overwhelmingly apparent that he had not pooped the entire time he was there. When I came home, I was horrified to find around 10 different piles of poop in the apartment. It was like a horror movie; every time I turned around there was another poop pile. After scrubbing, powdering and vacuuming, it also became apparent that the stains would not be easily removed. Shawn decided he would bleach them out (taking the same approach we took towards the black spot created when the dog chewed a black pen). Unfortunately, Shawn felt over confident after his last successful bleach usage and didn't dilute it down, which ended up exponentially making the stains worse. Now we have several lovely permanent bleach stains on our carpet to remind of us the poop stains that used to be there. 

The evidence: 

We are currently searching for the perfect carpet to cover them.

Extreme Apartment Makeovers:

Closet Re-do: 

Shawn is very particular about his closet. He is like the Monk of the closet world. All of his clothes are on matching dark wooden hangers, all facing the same way and evenly spaced. If he even hears a wooden hanger move he rushes into the bedroom asking why I'm messing with his side of the closet. 

Exhibit A: Shawn's Pristine Closet

While he was gone in California, my clothes sort of leaked over to his side of the closet, making it not so picture perfect (downsizing from 7 closets to just half a closet is not easy)! He was not pleased about this upon his return. 

Exhibit B: Janae's not so classy side of the closet

In order to correct the infraction, two things had to be accomplished: 1.) Create a more space-friendly configuration to the closet, 2.) Additional downsizing of my wardrobe. 

Additional downsizing was not easy. I had already gone through my clothes and gotten rid of anything I hadn't worn recently, things that were too big or too small, and I got rid of half of my jackets and most of my t-shirts. The only thing left to get rid of were dresses and shoes. I never realized how many dresses I had until I took them all out of my closet. 

Exhibit C: Janae's dress collection

I was able to get rid of enough dresses and shoes so that now (most of) my shoes fit in my shoe rack and my clothes fit a bit better in the closet. We (and by we I mean Shawn) installed a second rack for additional hanging space. 

Exhibit D: Improved Closet

My closet is now friendly with Shawn's side of the closet

The next step to making a picture perfect closet (and on my list of things I want to buy) are a large set of entirely matching wooden hangers. Then when the hangers make noise Shawn won't know if it was my side or his side I touched. 

Balcony Garden:

We live in a relatively green section of the city, but you can never have enough flowers! We decided to become gardeners (as much as you can in a condo with a small balcony) and planted flowers hanging from our balcony. 

So far our garden includes Mums, Meadow flowers, Lavender, Rosemary and Oregano. We have seeds for.......

We will see how it goes. There is a reason I usually only keep fake flowers around..... 

P.S. The original Rosemary we planted died even before I was able to complete this post. The Rosemary you see here is newly planted. Don't die Rosemary!!