Ocala National Forest

We headed out today for an explore around Florida, going to visit Ocala National Forest, just an hour from where we are staying.

The forest is huge, and we only saw a tiny portion of it. Even in winter, the weather was lovely today, and perfect for taking a stroll. To get to the trailhead, we followed the signs, going down ever smaller roads until we nearly missed our turn into a 2 mile dirt track:




Sarah did a great job following this, and eventually we reached our destination; a trail leading to a sinkhole near a lake. These sinkholes are formed when the limestone underground is dissolved away by water, and when enough is gone, a chunk of land collapse. The one we saw was huge, and it took a hundred odd steps down to get near the base.

It was a really scenic area, and a lovely place for a stroll.

Christmas Time

We got to spend Christmas this year with Sarah's family, including our new niece, Valerie. Here is a nice shot of everyone opening presents the baby handed around:



It was also Sarah's birthday, as Valerie and Sarah pointed out:




Merry Christmas all!

The Week Before Christmas

Its the weekend before Christmas, and Sarah is suffering from some serious winter luergy. Hopefully, both of us will be well in time for our the holidays.

We did get away to DC this weekend, to a market near the Verizon Center. It was good to go for a walk in the city, but it's starting to get real cold out.




We also had a mysterious visitor on Sunday night. To a wail of sirens and flashes of lights, a parade of police, ambulance and fire-trucks drove by. On top of the fire-truck, you could just make out Father Christmas, waving to the children in the streets:

Sarah is back from the UK

Sarah is back, safe and sound from the UK.

This is good, as I was beginning to sing to myself as I did chores at home, and even I think I have a terrible singing voice...

Home Alone

Sarah is out of the country, going to a friend's wedding in the UK. This meant I had a weekend to do some minor home improvement. Luckily, I realised that doing too much unsupervised could go a little wrong, so I limited myself to just putting up some pictures and finally clearing out all the junk in my car. I will leave the shelves until I have someone responsible to help.

I also have eaten far too much junk food over the last few days. Way, way too much......

Another peaceful weekend

Been a quiet week.

Spent the weekend pottering around the house, trying to finally get rid of all the boxes of cardboard in the basement. I am amazed at how much cardboard we have. With the mass buying of fans and air conditioners to keep is cool this summer, combined with all the other stuff we bought to keep the house going, we ended up with more cardboard boxes than basement...

Of course, now this is done, we are not allowed to buy any more stuff. Ever.

Can you die of Turkey overdose?

This week was Thanksgiving, and we had a lovely meal with friends. Due to the lack of small Turkeys being available this time of year, we slightly overdid the quantity of Turkey available.




Since then, every meal has been turkey themed. We are about half way done with the left overs, but already I feel I am past the point of no return. I am even wondering if you can get turkey cereal with milk for breakfast.

Other than this, we had a lovely few days and the weather was beautiful for some great local walks:

A quiet weekend

After all the recent excitement, Sarah and I spent the weekend relaxing and going slow. We took the time to go on a walk in a nearby park and found a cool stream:






Next week, thanksgiving!

Shoot out

Just went to see the Caps play the Devils, and saw another penalty shoot out. The caps lost, sadly, but was a good game! On way home now....

Sweeping up the Leaves

It's autumn, and as the snow has cleared we spent some time clearing up the leaves. We made quite a few piles on our lawns, realising the small drawback of living next to a wood.



It is all worth it however, as the trees are very pretty around here now...

Snow-tober

Crazily, we had snow this weekend. Yesterday was a whiteout, with snow or sleet all day. We ended up getting about one to two inches of snow.

This means in a week the weather went from this:



To this:


To highlight how odd this is, here are Halloween pumpkins covered in snow:



We are also excited about our first Halloween in our new house!

Trip to the National Air and Space Museum

This week, I took my parents on a visit to the air and space museum out at Dulles. I really like this museum, with it's huge hangar chocked full of planes and spaceships.



We also spent ages in the space section:







We got to see the Enterprise shuttle this time. I think next year, they are going to replace it with one of the recently retired shuttle that went into space. I would love to see how they actually move the shuttles into the museum, and whether they drive or fly it into the area. Would be awesome to see the space shuttle being towed along a highway (although maybe its too heavy?).




We saw the enterprise again. Next year, I think they

Autumn Colours

We did some more exploring this weekend, taking my Mum and Dad to Frederick, a near-by town with a museum on Medicine in the civil war. It also has a cool market street, with lots of good shops and places to eat.





Autumn is starting here, and our lake is looking quite pretty. We took an extended walk around it, and are now quite tired,

Parents visiting!

My parents are here this week, and the weather was lovely, so we took them on a trip to Shenandoah. It was a beautiful day, really nice after all the storms. We found a waterfall about 10 miles in...








We also got to show them our new place, and show them around our town!

PS. Sarah wants me to clarify that we drove for ten miles, prior to a slightly shorter hike to find the falls.

Caps win against the Sabres

Sarah and I went to see the ice hockey on Friday. We were lucky to watch the Washington Capitals beat the Buffalo Sabres 4-3 in a pre-season game. I also got to see my first in shoot-out in person, with the game going into overtime and being settled on the fifth round of shots. It was a fun game, and nice to go to see before the season starts next week.




The rest of the weekend has been nice and quiet. Our plans for a hike were stymied by perpetual rain yesterday, but at least this finally gave me time to move everything from our basement and set up our den upstairs. It also gave us time to work off the stadium food from Friday night, which I am sure has three times the calories as normal food.

Ticket to Ride

Sarah and I have been treating our chilli peppers quite badly of late. On cleaning the deck, we left them alone in the garden just below the deck and forgot about them for a month.

It turns out that the plants do better away from our careful green fingers. Before moving the plants back, we were amazed to find our best crop of chilils yet:





Last night, we had some of these in our burgers. I wonder if this strategy will work with other plants in future?

We also played a game of ticket to ride whilst watching some movies last night. It was close, but I pulled ahead with 10 extra points, based on some risky additional routes at the end of the game:

San Diego

I headed out to the West Coast this week, for a conference in San Diego. After the rain, it was great to be in a place full of sun. I decided to stay on East Coast time, and found myself getting up early and going for a run at sunrise, when the city was very quiet:




I also took the city tram to explore a little :



I got back home Wednesday, and after recovering, Sarah and I went toDC to see the Lego exhibit at the Building museum. It was cool!

Then came the Rain...

After the earthquake and the hurricane, then came the rain. This week it rained, a lot.

On my way home on Thursday, I have never seen so much water falling out of the sky. I made it as far as our road in my little Fit along the main roads, going through ever bigger puddles following SUVs and hoping Tribble could make it. As I drove up our road, just by the school, I realised one of the drains had blocked, with road ending results:




I saw an SUV get through this, but the water completely covered it's wheels. Tribble would probably not have been a happy car in these situations. So, I parked in the school, got out my brolly, and walked the rest of the way.

On my way, I saw evidence of a drain that was still working:



Luckily, most of the rain was on the roads or running into storm drains, so I made it home safe (but bedraggled). Once the rain stopped, it cleared up pretty quickly, we think it was just raining so hard the drains just couldn't take the flow.

After this, we were further thwarted today as our kayak rental place by the lake was closed for flood repairs!

Cleaning the Deck

This long weekend, Sarah and I did some exploring of local towns, looking at Havre le Grace, by the Cheasapeake mouth, and Newmarket just down the road. In Havre, we found a really cool comic/toy figure shop, and loads of antique places.




We also cleaned our deck this weekend, sanding the worst bits and scrubbing off much of the grime and dirt. This was well timed, as the rain is currently washing away the cleaning solutions and grime. Once it dries, we will seal it, and hopefully can leave it for some time!

Hurricane Irene (Mk 2)

It was a gusty and rainy night as the hurricane came past us to the East, but we awoke with power, lots of leaves and small trees strewn on the ground and about 2 inches of rain from the night:



I went on a run this morning, and some of the trees around our lake are down, but mainly it's only branches and leaves that have fallen. Here is a photo off one of the trees by the lake, which the storm snapped in half:



It's still raining some, but this afternoon is forecast to be lovely. Now we are left with the happy task of eating all the food we panic bought as the hurricane approached. French toast and bacon this morning!

Hurricane Irene

It has been an exciting week in Maryland. We had a 5.8 magnitude earthquake in Virginia, and I am writing this as Hurricane Irene works it's way up the East Coast.

Both Sarah and I felt the earthquake, and there was a significant amount of shaking, but it luckily did very little damage.

We have spent the day doing DIY and watching the weather channel as the hurricane moves up the coast. It should pass to the east of us, with strong winds on the coast. We're currently watching our local news, and a poor reporter at Ocean City being covered in an awful sea foam, which they definitely didn't have in Virginia.

It's raining here at the moment, but not too hard. Here's a satellite, picture from the weather channel:

Ticket to Ride

Today, Sarah and I played Ticket To Ride, the railroad building game across the US. You have to plot connections between cities to achieve certain long range routes.

This was our first game, I was Blue and Sarah Black. It was close, but I was lucky to complete the Portland to Nashville route and win. The game would have been different if I didn't find out where Nashville was just before the end.

Montgomery County Fair

We went to the Montgomy County Fair today, just one town south of here. Despite reports of impending rain, it was lovely weather:




The fair was huge, with a carnival, pens full of animals and halls full of food of every variety of food you can grow, all judged by category and size:



The honey bee exhibit was awesome too, explaining how to make different grades of honey. None of it was as cool as the food, though. Sarah and I were good, and only tried one thing - deep fried Oreo cookies. These tasted, well, like nothing else I have ever tasted. At the time, I didn't really like them, but 5 minutes later, I really wanted more.



At home, we also performed an important task. My lab has been plagued by Gremlins of late, and in an attempt to drive out these foul creatures, we baked Gremlin gingerbread cookies:

More Repairs!

This week, we had some wood on the corner of our roof repaired; a piece between the end of the roof overhang and the wall.

The section is affectionately called the birds nest, and based on this photo, you can see the birds were quite content there:

Billy Goat Trail

This weekend, Sarah and I re-visited the Billy Goat Trail at Great Falls on the C&O canal. After last year's visit, when we were quite unprepared for the trail, we decided to plan this one more carefully. The result was a much more fun walk, where we were far less worried about running out of water, and less crisp-ified by the sun and the heat.

The views were still wonderful, and the steep climb next to the river was still scary:

I even braved crossing this stream without using the newly built bridge -

Road Trip

Good news! Our air conditioning is fixed, and we have headed out from the basement to recolonize the rest of the house. It's wonderful to be back in the upper levels of out home, and so nice to cool down again.

It was also my birthday this week. Here is my cake:


Ice cream cake is brilliant!

We went of a road trip to Connecticut to see Sarah's family this weekend. Had a good trip, and clocked over 800 miles of driving: