Snow Photos

As promised, here are some pictures of the first snow storm. I left town before the second one hit so imagine 20 more inches on top of the snow in these pictures!

Friday night, a few hours after the snow really started coming down, view from my balcony

Saturday Morning, about halfway through the storm

I took this to show how deep the snow was on the tree branches. The snow was really heavy and many of the tree limbs were sagging alot and/or breaking off entirely

Saturday night after the snow had stopped, this is was I came out to find in my parking lot

And this is the row I guessed my car was in

Yup, there it is! Only 6+ feet of snow behind it to clear away

Sunday Morning view from my balcony

This is what it looked like driving around in old town Alexandria

Good luck getting those cars out

Man, just seeing those pictures reminds me of how much there really was! most of it is still around but in huge huge huge piles by the side of the road and in my parking lot.

Snowpocalypse

Well, I survived the first round of snow we received last weekend. It was quite an adventure though. Even being from Michigan, where I have seen a lot of snow, I was overwhelmed by this storm, I've never seen so much snow in my life. It started Friday afternoon (the 5th) and by Saturday evening, we had 25 inches on the ground. I made sure to stock up on food and water before the storm came just in case, but luckily I didn't really need it. Virtually no one was out on the roads Friday and Saturday so the crews did as good of a job as can be expected in cleaning up the mess making them relatively passable by Saturday night.

My friend came to town that weekend however and on Saturday night, I had to venture out and pick her up from the train station about 8 miles away. I knew it would be tough to dig out my car, I figured it would probably take 20-30 minutes worst case scenario. Boy was I wrong. First of all, when I got out to the parking lot, I couldn't even tell which car was mine because the snow was deeper than the bumpers of all the cars and snow coated the entire exterior of the parts of the cars that were above the snow, so I used my panic button to find my car because I could see my headlights flashing through the snow. I also knew that even though my parking lot had been plowed, that my car would probably plowed in, meaning when the plow goes through, they actually pile up more snow behind the cars than there would be in the first place, but I figured I would be able to clear that snow with some manual labor. Wrong again. The distance from the path plowed in the parking lot to my back bumper was at least 6 feet, and all that snow was at least 2 feet deep. I don't know who I was kidding thinking I'd be able to clear that out. Luckily, there were a couple mini-plows in the parking lot, only about the width of one parking spot that were helping people clear out the snow behind their cars so I got one of those guys to clear out most of the snow behind my car. After that though, just getting the snow off the top and sides of my car was an ordeal in itself. You'd think it would be easy to brush the snow off the top of the car, but when its two feet deep, it is not! Plus, I had to unbury all of my tires while I had cars parked on either side of me as well. I think I probably buried their cars worse while trying to dig mine out. I was out there in my full snow gear (ski coat, snow pants, boots) just to dig out my car. I really needed it, I was laying down in the snow trying to get at my front tires and getting the snow out from under my car. Also not helping was the fact that I had sprained my left shoulder the previous weekend snowboarding so using it to dig out of the snow was less than pleasant.

I finally cleared enough snow away to open the driver's side door so that I could turn my car on and hopefully help melt some of the snow away. When I had cleared enough snow away from behind my car and behind my tires, I tried backing out but my wheels would just keep spinning, so I had to get out and dig some more. After about three rounds of digging and trying to back out, I finally got my car out of the spot. I actually have no idea how long it all took but I know it was more than an hour. In the meantime, my friend has been at the train station (which is outside) for about 20 minutes waiting for me when I finally left my parking lot.

Driving to the train station wasn't spectacular, but luckily there were no other cars on the road and I only had to take one major road and it was pretty well plowed, really icey but no significant snow. My friend in the meantime found a hotel nearby the train station and waited in the lobby so she wouldn't freeze to death and by the time I picked her up and got back to my place, it was about 2.5 hours after I started clearing off my car.

Sunday-Tuesday were all pretty good, no additional snow at least so I was able to get places when I needed to. Also, the metro (the subway system in DC) shut down all above ground service on Friday night because it can not run in more than 8 inches of snow (I guess that is the point at which the electric third rail which powers the trains gets completely buried). The metro didn't reopen until Tuesday morning, but only on a limited basis (every 30 minutes, usually it is every 6-12 minutes) and there were no busses running until Tuesday. Since this city relies so heavily on public transportion (I'd say more than half of the employees at the patent office alone use the metro to get to work), if the metro shuts down, the whole city shuts down. And there is nowhere near enough parking to accomodate everyone driving to work. Therefore, we were sent home early from work on Friday and work was cancelled on Monday.

Then came word that another storm was coming and it would start Tuesday afternoon/evening and last until Wednesday evening and would dump 10-20 more inches of snow on the 25 we already had, plus, this storm was going to hit more of the east coast than the previous one, which had left New York and New Jersey unscathed but which were now forecast to get up to 12 inches as well. I was already planning on going to New Jersey for President's day weekend so I had to make a quick decision. Work was still cancelled Tuesday (which was probably not necessary since the metro was at least running a little bit but I think people were scared of the next storm) and I made a gamble that work would be closed at least on Wednesday as well because of the second storm so I decided to drive up to New Jersey Tuesday afternoon and get here before the next storm struck and when I got here, I found out that work was indeed cancelled for Wednesday! (if work had not been cancelled, it would not have been the end of the world, I just would have had to take an hour or two of leave). So now I am in New Jersey in the midst of another snow storm. It is pretty bad here too, virtually no visibility and a good amount of snow (not sure of the exact depth though because we are 16 floors up and I don't want to go down and measure).

So that's my current status, hanging out in New Jersey while Matt works (he was told to work from home today however and might be able to tomorrow so I'm not totally by myself twiddling my thumbs). Also, I took lots of pictures of the snow, but I forget to bring my connector cable with me to New Jersey so I can't download the pictures from my camera but I will post the snowpocalypse pictures when I get back to DC. Still waiting to hear what the status of the federal government is going to be tomorrow (Thursday), hopefully we will get another snow day!

My First Patent!

After working at the PTO for a year and a half, the first patent I allowed has finally issued! Here is the first page, you can find my name listed as the "assistant examiner". Although it says assistant examiner, I actually am the one who does all the examining for the case, but my boss is listed as the primary examiner because I don't have the authority to allow anything without his approval (and I won't for about 5 more years...).

Click here if you want to see the whole patent

Sorry I didn't post for all of December, it was an extremely busy month, I'll post Christmas pictures soon

Christmas Tree!

This year I decided I wanted to put up a fill size Christmas Tree. I originally thought I would get a real tree, but then I realized there were just too many logistical issues. I had no real way of transporting a tree and I'm gone so much that I was worried it would die. So I asked my parents if they had any old trees at the house and they brought me the tree we always used growing up when they came to visit me a few weeks ago. I usually don't like decorating before Thanksgiving, but I didn't want to put the tree up myself and since Matt was here this weekend I decided to just put it up and celebrate for an extra week this year. Here she is!

Merry Christmas everyone!!

Back to Bermuda

Well, I was lucky enough to have the opportunity to go back to Bermuda for a long weekend in October because Matt was sent there again for work. We stayed in the same place but did a few new things this time. On Saturday we went to see two different caves on the island and then went to the beach for a little while.

These are some pictures from the first cave, look at how clear the water is. The water is so clear because there is no sunlight, and therefore no growth. Since there is no growth, there is no food so no fish come in there either, leaving the water really clear. It looked about 4 feet deep, but our guide told us it is actually about 20ft.



Both of these pictures are completely underwater




These are in the second cave, it had a "pontoon bridge" that allowed us to walk over the water, it also forced us to duck and crouch pretty low under some of the stalactites because it is illegal to touch them, even though we could have walked right in to them!





After that we went to Church Bay for a few hours in the late afternoon and it was beautiful, it is not one of the more popular beaches since it is sort of small, but there were only a few other people there so it was nice and peaceful. The ocean floor was covered by large rocks, however they were incredibly smooth and really easy to walk on so it did not hurt and was really nice.




On Monday I visited the Botanical Gardens by myself because Matt had to work. They were beautiful however I think I was a little past peak season because not much was left in bloom.

This was the "cactus hillside" and the right is a rose garden next to the premiere's house



The left is the premiere's house, the right is a banyan tree, it spreads out really far by dropping roots to the ground along the lengths of the limbs



I don't remember what kind of tree this is but it was another spreading out type



This is the view of the beach from where we had dinner on the last night, it looked like there was a storm or something over the water but it was fine where we were




Bermuda was just as beautiful and awesome the second time around as it was the first time, I definitely want to go back and I recommend it as a vacation destination for anyone (especially when you don't have to pay for a hotel or food)!

Summer Recap Part 3: Visiting Avon Rae

For those of you who are not in the know, my family used to have a cottage called Avon Rae in Ontario, Canada on the beautiful Ipperwash Beach. I grew up spending every summer there playing on the beach and swimming in the lake. This is where I first learned about the joys of happy hour (kids with pop, parents with manhattens). Many a late game of monopoly and uno were played there, sand castles built, and campfires had. A few years ago we got our place up north in Oscoda and my Aunt and Uncle still have the place in Canada. We've been up there about once per summer since and I was really excited that I was still able to go this summer. Here are some pictures showing the beautiful scenery and sunsets :)

New sign at one end of the beach

View of the front with the new windows instead of the old floor to ceiling screens

View from the deck one way
View down the beach the other way
My room
Christy's Room
Parent's Room
View of the cottage from the beach
View of the neighboring cottages
Uncle's laser and the beach
Lake Huron, boats docked for the day
A beautiful Ipperwash Sunset...can't be topped

Summer Recap Part 2: 1.5 weeks up north

After Ted, Sara, and Leili left town I went back to work for about 4 days, then headed up north with Matt to good old Michigan from July 3rd until the 12th. The trip was amazing but we almost didn't make it there! Here's what went down:

First of all, you should know the plan was for me and Matt to fly out of our respective cities really early Friday morning the 3rd (7:30ish am flights) so that we could make the three hour drive up north to Oscoda and get there by 2ish so as to not waste the whole day. Now I'll tell the story...I get a call Thursday night July 2nd from Matt saying "o by the way, I just found out that my flight tomorrow got canceled (which should not have been a shock because Newark airport is the worst airport in the world, Matt has had a lot of canceled and/or severely delayed flights out of there) and I proceed to have a minor panic attack. Matt says he's going to call the airline and find out what other flights he can get on so we hang up.

I then call the cottage (where mom, dad, christy, ted, sara, and leili already are) and talk to dad and tell him about the bad news. He calms me down with his usual "it will all work out schpeel" and suggests we think outside the box for a solution, maybe Matt can fly out of a different city etc... My memory is a little fuzzy on the sequence of things here (that's what happens when you wait two months to post something) but eventually I was on the phone with Matt again and the only flights were like 12 hours later than the original, which would put us up north around midnight and would strand me at the airport for 10 or so hours. So, on a whim I check my flight out of DC and find out that there is ONE, exactly one, seat left on it and I ask Matt if he would be willing to drive down to DC tonight and fly out on my flight in the morning. He agrees to ask the airline but we are both concerned they'll slap some huge fee on him for having to transfer the ticket to another city or something. So Matt's on the phone with the airline, and talking to me online at the same time to try to coordinate everything and the airline agrees to put him on my flight and transferred his return flight to fly into DC instead of Newark since his car would be down here, all for no fee. Momentary sigh of relief, but it was about 6 or 7pm Thursday by the time we got this all figured out mind you and Matt still had to pack for the week and a half long trip and make the 5 hour drive down to DC that night for the 7:30 flight out in the AM, so it was still a little tense.

I finally get the call from Matt at about 10pm that he is now just leaving New Jersey so that puts his eta in Alexandria around 2:30/2:45, which really does not sound good when the alarm is set for 5am. I tried to go to bed right after that because in addition to getting up at 5am, I also had to drive for three hours after landing while Matt could sleep in the car, but as can be expected I probably got about a total of an hour of sleep by the time Matt got there at 2:45. So we got about 2 hours of sleep, then got up at 5am so that we could be out the door by 6am to take the shuttle from my apartment complex to the metro, which we were taking to the airport.

It only takes about 10 minutes to get to the airport on the metro from my stop, so it is incredibly convenient. So far everything is going well, we get to the metro at about 6:10 and I expect to arrive at the airport before 6:30, plenty of time. Well, when we tried to enter the metro station, we found out the gates were locked. The metro opens at 5 am on weekdays, and this was a Friday morning so I was really confused about why the gates would be locked, but then I remembered that since July 4th is a Saturday, everyone gets a holiday on July 3rd, which includes the metro employees. Turns out the metro doesn't open until 7am on holidays, it didnt even occur to me that the metro would not be open...cue another panic attack.

I call the cottage even though I know everyone must be sleeping to ask mom to look up the number for a cab company in Alexandria (I really should have a number stored in my phone, but hindsight is 20/20). So she looks up a number, I call the cab company, they send a cab and we are on our way from the metro station in the cab at around 6:40, much later than I would like, but still doable. Luckily, Reagan airport is pretty small and the Northwest flights leave from a separate terminal that has like 5 gates, so security lines are really short. The drive to the airport should take about 15/20 minutes and we are about to pull off the George Washington Parkway at the airport exit when the cab driver inexplicably bails at the last minute and gets back on the parkway because he thought he was on the wrong exit. Now I really thought we were going to miss the flight. The parkway does not have very many exits and I was worried we'd have to go several miles before being able to turn around, but the cab driver at least had a GPS and he pulled it out and it directed us back to the airport with a net loss of about 10 minutes. So we FINALLY get to the airport at about 7:10, flight is at 7:35. Luckily there was no line at all for northwest check in or security, and we got to the gate right when they began boarding.

It was pretty much smooth sailing from then on, we drove up north and arrived a little after 2pm, when we proceeded to pass out for a couple hours. After that we managed to have a good time up north with the fam. We hung out with my niece Leili, built a sand castle on the beach, hung out around the beach fire, went to the 4th of July fireworks on the beach (in sweatshirts and under blankets mind you) and just relaxed, it was paradise. Here are some pictures:

After spending Friday-Monday in Oscoda, we headed across the state to Matt's place on Burt Lake in Indian River. A TON of Matt's family was there, his mom's 4 siblings and all of their kids and their kids kids etc...it took up three whole cottages. There were three boats up there for the week and three jet skis so we just spent the whole time on the water. It was also a lot warmer than it had been during the weekend so it was much more fun to be outside. I was pretty terrible about taking pictures (the only reason I have pictures from Oscoda is because my mom took most of them for me) but here is a picture of all the boats hanging out at the north end of the lake.

There is a bald eagle at the top of a tree toward the middle of the picture...it was amazing, it just sat on that tree for like an hour before it flew away.

Getting back was much less eventful than getting there, it was a great trip and I really really mis being able to go up north all the time but it makes me appreciate it even more!