whew. a month without a blog entry clearly reflects my past month. which was crazy.

First, work got crazy b/c i inherited a very interesting project, but they needed analysis fast, and the data was not adding up, so a lot of my time got sucked down to debugging. However, I did manage to get everything together just in time. and it isn’t like I actually had time to pick up a new project, but I do love me some stats analysis, so it is good.

Life has been different in general since Ben started school. he has class three days a week during the dinner hour. This has resulted me shifting my hours up in the day, which is good b/c i beat traffic. I also like having an hour and half of office quiet. Also, it lowers my baseline stress level to know that I’m going to be able to to deal with whatever email//fire before people get in in the morning.

but it has also been different b/c i now have the childs for ~3 hours by myself in the afternoon/evening that involves bathing (usually), making dinner, and getting people to bed. after working for 8.5 hours a day plus commute (20 min each way), plus getting up at 5 to work out, I am exhausted by 8. so I don’t do much (though many sad times this month i tried to work, though failed many times). I do not know how it do it!

Though it tires me out, and makes me cranky, I am enjoying my solo time with the kids. it is much different to be solo with them. Today I took them to a kids fest at our county seat. It was rainy and cold, but the three of use had a great time with model trains, the train ride, the petting zoo, the bounce house, and the kettle corn. (Ben said home b/c he is sick, and had work to do.) reminds me of when i was at home with them and everyday was a solo outing. fun times, though i always weight those times with the fact I never slept through the night.

speaking of solo time, I went to the san fran area in the middle of sept. I had training at our “main campus”, and so since i was having to fly across the plant, ben and I went out a few days before and had a mini vacation. HAHAHAHA i worked enough on the plane out there and then at 4 AM (7 am eastern time) every morning that I didn’t actually have to take any vacation time. however, we did do vacation things…slept until our bodies told us to get home instead of when the alarm or childs said so.

as you may have heard, we surveyed the hurricane. hahahaha. all it did was rain for 22 hours. i didn’t miss a run (thank you irene for waiting until after my saturday run and ending sunday morning in time for my run). Though i am still running slllloooowwwwllllyyyyy due to the missing teeth – when my blood pressure gets too high the feeling in my mouth is VERY WEIRD so i run slow. and i had to run a bit of a different path on sunday b/c of the water on the trail by the stream.

we only lost power for an hour (yay!) and we went to the zoo on sunday afternoon which was not crazy busy due to the whole hurricane thing. it was awesome. my kids are awesome. one note – it was really weird to drive across the potomac and not see any planes coming or going on a sunday afternoon!

i am seriously thinking about getting myself an iPad just to pay these games that ben has gotten be addicted to. (he has started school now and insists on taking it with him)

OMG i am watching house hunters and the dude is carrying around a boston terrier (i think) in a SLING like a BABY. it is a really white boston if it a boston. OH it is a white frenchie with some black markings. OMG i should FIND MY SLING!

hoping for the best for our favorite vacation spot on the outer banks

when we moved to dc, i mainly thought about how we were escaping the blizzards and frozenness of chicago. i knew that we would be moving into hot and humid summers. i did not think we would be moving into the reaches of hurricanes (though just the outer reaches so really topical storm). or earthquakes. funny how things go. i’m very glad that irene is visiting us during the weekend and not during the week. Though my work building is built to sway in the wind (which was why it was probably one of the safest buildings in this area to be in during the earthquake), i certainly don’t want to experience its swaying during topical storm winds. I’ll be happy watching it from my house. : )

funny story about the earthquake – I was reading our company news page (how i get to my timecard) and noticed that they had a blurb on the earthquake and how the arlington staff “evacuated as a precaution”. We certainly did not evacuate, as my boss is a geologist and actually did not freak out like the rest of the city who poured out into the streets, which, turns out, is the worst thing you could do. also a bad thing – sending everyone home at once in the middle of the afternoon with transportation at a standstill. The only lasting affect has been my obsession with checking the USGS real-time earthquake monitor. Though today I am obsessively checking weather radar and marveling at irene. I easily got a run in this morning before the rain (which started around 11). So i am happy. Though if we really do 3-5 inches of rain, my trail along the river may not be run-able tomorrow. : (

this morning aiden did a little impromptu science experiment testing what things in our living room are magnetic by trying to stick a magnet to them. it was awesome. he asked why some things are magnetic and I explained that those materials’ atoms’ electrons’ spins were aligned, which makes them magnetic. to which he replied – i have a song about that! (We’ve been listing to the they might be giants science cd again.)

seriously. one of the best thing about having kids in introducing them to science! real science!

Happy 4th birthday to my inquisitive, talkative, awesome boy!

Birth -

One year -

Two years-

Three years -

Four years -

so today. i’m just sitting at my desk. on the 26th floor. working away.
and the building starts to shake
now, when it is windy it is not uncommon for the building to shake
but it was really shaking.
and my door, which was closed, was rattling in the frame.
and i looked outside. no wind.
so i thought
bomb?
(i do live in the “dc nuclear blast radius”)
it did not cross my mind that it was an EARTHQUAKE
i went into the hallway, were my coworkers had gathered and they said earthquake! we have lots of CA and Japan transplants so they said, oh, this is nothing! i mean, it is something for the east coast, but it is all fine.
i freaked out a bit in my head. mainly b/c in that minute of shaking i was acutely aware how suddenly it could ALL END.
but it didn’t end
and we all have lots of work to do. so we all went back to work.
the rest of the city. not so much. the federal gov’t sent all their peeps home.
the monuments closed
the metro slowed the a crawl
virginia abandoned its HOV restrictions (this is actually a huge deal b/c a WHOLE interstate is HOV)
we worked
and by 5, there was little traffic. (though a fair amount of people milling around rosslyn)