The Snowcation Continues

We are now on day four of our "Snowcation." Unreal.


Mark is out shoveling AGAIN.

We have enjoyed our four days off from school and the federal government, but cannot believe what the last week has brought us!

I did not post pictures of the snow yesterday but let me give you a little review.

Blizzard conditions. White outs across the metro region.



No public buses running. No above ground subway lines running. Again.


Yesterday was perhaps the most severe day of weather as winds gusted up to 50 mph.


It was so cold and so windy that the snow even made its way into our house. Yes, that's with the glass door closed. Amazing.



Mark took the opportunity to do a little work inside the house (he only shoveled ONCE yesterday). He recaulked our bathroom tile...and did an outstanding job of it!



I worked on finishing up projects that have been way overdue.

Soba just chilled on our bed with Timmy.


Here are pictures from Mark's daily shovel job.



He's holding up three fingers in the one picture for the third snow storm that he's been a shoveling fool!


Last night for dinner I decided to make a pot roast without the meat---what makes it pot roast then? Well, my argument is that really the tastiest part of the pot roast is the soft potatoes and carrots and onions that come with it. We also bought baby bella mushrooms for our stir fry the day before but forgot to add them in so we added them to last night's dinner. I called mom and got the heads up as to what to do for the broth since I didn't have a pot roast package. She gave me the perfect recipe!

I had already cut up one white onion, three garlics (not the bulb!), four white potatoes, and seven carrots.

To that mom suggested I add:

2 cups of vegetable broth
1 veggie broth bullion cube for extra flavor (I actually added a total of three veggie bullion cubes and found it to be perfect!)
a dash of Crazy Jane's salt
Bay leaves
Parsley
1/2 cup of red wine (I added closer to a cup)

I let it cook in the crockpot for 4 hours and whoop! There it was! A perfect wintry night meal! It was filling but didn't leave us feeling gluttonous. I loved it and so did Mark.



Last night we decided to watch Couples Retreat. HI-LAR-I-OUS! Mark and I had a great evening. Here's the trailer. If you haven't already seen it, we highly recommend it. If you have seen it, we recommend you watch it again. :)



School was out again TODAY, but it's a beautiful and sunny day here. Mark is out shoveling AGAIN--there's just nowhere to go with all of the snow.


We're looking forward to getting out soon and heading to the gym and then to the dog park for Soba.



No word yet if tomorrow will be another snow day. Still no public buses running and no above ground subway today. The kids didn't have school scheduled anyway since it was a PD day for teachers...I will keep you posted!

Movie Madness

With all of our snow days we've had plenty of time to catch up on movies. Our favorite new thing is to rent movies from iTunes or Amazon. For $1.99 or $2.99 you can bring the theater to you. We used to have Netflix and loved that service until we lost one of the DVDs. We didn't lose it permanently but we did lose it within the timeframe of our subscription....in fact, I think losing it is what ended our subscription.

So, the renting from iTunes and Amazon is wonderful for us because there isn't any disk to keep track of, nothing to return, nothing to lose.

I brought home the LCD projector from school and Mark hooked up to my computer so that we could project the movie on to the only bare wall in our house (we had to take the TV off from its TV stand first). We hooked up our external speakers and voila! We have a home movie theater!

So what have we been watching?


On Saturday night we watched Nursery University.

This documentary was stunning. It details the admissions process for NURSERY SCHOOL in Manhattan. Evidently due to the baby boom shortly after 9/11 the competition for the "good" nursery schools became cut throat. It might be easy to laugh at all of this if it weren't the reality for some.

And at the end of it, I was left asking, "what's wrong with NYC public schools?" I'm pretty sure there have to be SOME good public schools that are FREE (not $20,000 a year!!)!!!

Regardless, it's a great introspective film and we definitely enjoyed following the different families in the film to see where they (more so their children) would end up. We found ourselves rooting for the "nice" and "down to earth" parents, while chastising the pushy ones.

You'll have to watch it for yourself!


On Sunday night we watched Religulous. Wow!

This was very interesting, but I think Mark and I definitely felt it was VERY slanted by the end. Granted, that's what documentaries usually are, but the more it went on, the more absurd (or rather the reporting of it) became.

We enjoyed the questions that Bill Maher asked and the comedic way that he approached religion, and all that goes with it. We also like the variety of people he interviewed. We did like the intertwining of beliefs from the different religions and the comparative nature of the Creation stories.

It's a great movie if you can take it with a grain of salt and not see it as an attack on your religion or other's perceptions.



On Monday night we watched Dogtown and Z-Boys.

From Wikipedia: The Z-Boys were a group of skateboarders in the 1970's from South Santa Monica and Venice California who are credited with inventing modern skateboarding and essentially creating the punk/skater subculture that now exists. Their name is derived from the name of the team they competed with together, the Zephyr Competition Team.

Mark and I loved the photographs and learning about evolution of skateboarding from surfing. It's really well done and taught us something we had heard about but hadn't really stopped to investigate before. The skateboarding of the Zephyr team was incredibly well documented. This history teacher really appreciated all of the archival footage!



Check out this review if you're curious to read more!

Last night we decided to just read magazines and watch the Biggest Loser. Although, we were reminded of how much we prefer to watch the Biggest Loser ala Tivo---the weigh in takes a tenth of the time when you can just fast forward and see who lost what weight without the drama and commercials.

What's on the docket for tonight? Not sure yet. Any recommendations?

Stayin' In With Stir Fry

Our outing to the gym and dog park yesterday afforded us the opportunity to go to the grocery store and to pick up some fresh produce. Last night seemed like the perfect night for some stir fry with brown rice. The veggies were just what we needed!

What all was in our stir fry?

Red pepper, yellow pepper, bamboo shoots, yellow squash, peas, broccoli, carrots, baby corns, and Quorn Chicken.

All of it was topped off with one of our favorite stir fry sauces: House of Tsang Classic Stir Fry Sauce.



Mark dug out our chopsticks and we dug into our food! It was a tasty and healthy--perfect as we hunkered down for another night of snow.

Day of Gracious Living (Repeat..and Repeat again)

In an unprecedented move, DCPS has just closed for tomorrow as well--that will make three snow days in a row.

I'm starting to wonder what the long term effects of this will be:

A. We will be going to school until the 4th of July--(we had no snow days built into our school calendar this year---it is said that the snow days will be tacked on to the end of the year--but how many days can you tack on once kids have graduated and summer school is set to begin?)

B. We will lose spring break days--oh I hope not...but I can see how a trim there and a trim there could happen.

C. We give up our testing days (this is my favorite option, but I think the least likely to happen).

Yesterday I was starting to feel so cooped up that Mark and I hatched a plan. We would go to a gym today and try it on a trial basis. We spent a significant amount of time last night researching which gym we would go to that had trial passes. Our choices were:

1. Bally's
2. Washington Sports Club
3. LA Fitness
4. Gold's Gym
5. Results

We woke up this morning and headed out to assess the situation. Our gym choice wasn't just about who offered what for free, but rather where we could park if we went there.

We drove to get coffee and exercise the dog. My favorite line came from Mark this morning who said that if our dog didn't get in a good run that he thought Soba would turn ferrel and eat us. That about sums up how our dog was feeling. It was imperative that we run him.

After some driving around, sliding around, and very cautious driving we ended up at the R Street Dog Park. Soba ran after the frisbee like a mad dog, or maybe I should say the ferrel dog he had become. :)



In our driving around we assessed the parking situations for the various gyms we named. Our top gym choice was the Washington Sports Club but because it's on Connecticut Avenue and only one lane of traffic went each way on Connecticut, parking in the MOUNDS of snow was not an option.


In the end we chose the Results on U Street near Dupont/Adams Morgan.

We drove home, dropped the dog off, changed and printed our passes and were off.

I was so excited to work out and impatient with the slow driving conditions that Mark turned to me at one point and mentioned that he thought I was going to turn ferrel and eat HIM! I simmered down after that--clearly I had annoyed him.

The gym was heavenly!!!!!

Cardio equipment everywhere! Relatively few people! Clean areas! TVs attached to the equipment or large flat screens everywhere! Oh the joy!

After 35 minutes on the elliptical Mark and I went exploring and found this other cool machine called the Arc Trainer.

The ones in the gym were bright yellow--yet another attraction for me.


I did another 20 minutes on it---I thought it was an interesting cross between an elliptical trainer and a bike and running---after looking it up when I got home I realize it's another elliptical but it had a different feel than the PreCore machines I usually use.

I loved it because while I worked out I could look out the wall of windows and watch the people walk around on the street below---people watching entertainment!

While we went in just to get exercise, we walked out big fans of Result.

We were uber excited to come home and read our email and find out that our coupons were really good for three visits in one week---and since tomorrow is yet another snow day...maybe we'll be heading back to Results!

A Day of Gracious Living

When Mark and I went to Kalamazoo College there was always one day in the spring that was much anticipated. It usually came toward the end of the quarter, week 7 or 8, when everyone just needed a break from the work and the looming finals week.

It was called the Day of Gracious Living.

It started with the Chapel bells ringing at 8 am. It meant that there was no classes for the day. Organizers tried to have it on a beautiful spring day. It was a day to just be thankful for the day and enjoy life. The Quad was littered with blankets, students basking in the sun or playing a round (or many rounds) of frisbee golf. Some of us headed to South Haven and the beach (even if it was too cold to swim) or to the Indiana Dunes.

Today, we had a day of Gracious Living.

Granted, it's not very balmy out, but for the first time in a long time we got a snow day! By "we" I mean DCPS. This wasn't the case until 8:30 last night....the federal government had closed, along with 350+ other locations in the Metro Area (including all other area school districts), but DCPS was only operating on a 2 hour delay.

We found this quite incredible since much of the city hasn't been unearthed yet. The public buses weren't running as of last night (and I don't think they're running yet today). The subway is still not running above ground. The public buses and the subway are two of the main ways a lot of students get to school.

So we were incredibly relieved when we saw that school was canceled today. And because I did all my prep work this weekend in anticipation of going to school today I really feel like I've had a day of gracious living.

Mark and I slept in and around 10:30 chose to go for a walk to see how the rest of the neighborhood was looking.

We armed Soba with his paw protection that Jon gave us at Christmas. It works so well!





Then we headed out to see what was out there!


From the end of our driveway it looked like a mixed bag. To the left we had a shoveled path to Evarts.

At the end of the driveway was patch of thick ice from where yesterday's melted and shoveled snow had pooled and refroze over night.

And to the right, toward Douglas, was nothing but snow with some footprints from other who had braved the snow before us.

We chose to head toward Douglas.

This is North Capitol---if you look in the center of the picture, near the horizon you can see the US Capitol. It's a beautiful and clear day here.


About 3 blocks into our walk Soba refused to move and took turns lifting his paws and looking at us pathetically. Mark picked him and cleaned out the snow that had collected between his toes. He carried him for the rest o the block and then put him down...all better!


We saw a lot of cool things on our walk. Like the snow cliff that had formed over a yard wall.



We saw a stranded car or two...


Cars buried by snow...

The sun shone bright through the trees.


We saw very cool snowscapes--like this picture below where the snow has started to melt and collapse on itself.


Some sidewalks are not shoveled at all.


Some streets are more slush and snow than clear.


We took to the street in some spots until the sidewalk cleared.





The bus stops aren't even clear...which is ok since the buses aren't running yet.



Cool icicles from overhangs.


Check out the Washington Post box in the snow!


We stopped for a few staples at the corner market.


Armed with some bread, potato chips and Diet Coke we continued our trek.

Some sidewalks are completely cleared!


Our sidewalk is clear, but the corner is piled high with plowed snow.

I couldn't resist taking the picture of the cemetery gate behind our house.



More cool pictures of the snow....


That's snow wrapped around a cord against our house...


The ice at the end of the driveway...


Pristine snow in our neighbor's backyard...


At the intersection of our alley and Evarts this is what our view was:
(to the west)

(to the south)

(to the north)

(to the east)



More icicles...
An icicle hanging from wires...


A sheet of ice from our back awning.


A fantastic Day of Gracious Living.