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!