An outdoors weekend

The weather was beautiful this weekend, and I managed to have some free time to go outdoors and enjoy it. Yesterday, I biked down to Mt. Vernon from Arlington. Once the trail is south of Alexandria, the scenery starts to improve dramatically, and the urban sprawl of DC fades away. It was my first major bike ride of the season, and I got a major workout. The trip was only thirty-seven miles long, but around mile thirty-five, my legs were definitely protesting the hills.


The Potomac River near Mt. Vernon

For those of you who haven't been on the Mt. Vernon Trail, there are miniature road signs along the trail. They range from speed limit signs near DC (officially fifteen miles per hour, but cyclists still do twenty), to "slippery when wet" signs like the one below.


A sign along the Mt. Vernon Trail

This afternoon, I went hiking on the Virginia side of Great Falls. My last trip to the Virginia side was in the winter, when the trail was all iced over. It's amazing how much different things look in the summertime. I followed the River Trail all the way down to Difficult Run, and then I followed the Difficult Run Trail upstream for a bit. The trails on the Virginia side aren't quite as demanding as the Billy Goat Trail on the Maryland side, but they still run through some beautiful scenery.


The Potomac River cutting through the rocks


Difficult Run

Three cheers for Dads

On this Father's Day, it's nice to take a moment to appreciate fathers everywhere. Because women tend to be the primary caregivers in many homes, society tends to overlook the contributions that fathers make. Fathers make their contributions in the background, and they're not going to be permanently offended if you forget to send a Father's Day card, or if you accidentally give him the same tie two years in a row (thankfully, I haven't done that).

This article on CNN.com was interesting to read. It discusses how the parenting styles of fathers differ from mothers. Contrary to the opinion of some mothers, it's a good thing for dads to be different. The balance of parenting styles helps turn kids into well-adjusted people.

Back online

My Comcast Business Internet connection is operational again, so I am close to being fully operational again. I am still running on my backup server, which means that most of the pictures for my blog are not visible. However, my Sun V120 server is as noisy as a plane taking off. Since it is now having to reside in my bedroom, I am going to keep it offline until later this month, when I install a sound reducing enclosure for it.

A new toy arrived in the mail for me today. I used the rewards points from my business credit card to purchase a Canon SD800 IS Digital Elph. This camera is similar to my existing point-and-shoot, but it adds optical stablization and a longer zoom lens. Based on my initial testing, the image stablization appears to work quite nicely. I'm looking forward to taking the camera out on my next hike, and playing around the features a bit.

Today was a bit of a peculiar today. I was a bit stressed out last night, so after getting about half an hour of sleep, I could not fall back asleep. I finally gave up on sleeping, and went in to work around five in the morning. It was very unusual to be the first person at work, and it really took some of my co-workers by suprise.

Tetris in the real world

I took a break today from my unpacking, and spent the afternoon hiking up at Great Falls. I hiked the Billy Goat Trail up to the north end, and then did a little rock-scrambling near the falls. I find rock-scrambling to be rather fun. It is sort of like the real-world equivalent to playing Tetris, except that I'm the piece that is trying to find the right place to go.


The C&O Canal

I managed to get several more boxes unpacked yesterday. I'm down to about eleven more boxes that remain to be unpacked. I still don't know where I'm going to manage to put everything once it has been unpacked, but I can cross that bridge once I get there.


Water flowing over the falls

Survival Flight Crash

One of the University of Michigan Survival Flight air ambulances crashed yesterday in Lake Michigan. My thoughts and prayers go out to the friends and families of the pilots and doctors that were on board.

Post-move random musings

Well, it has been a long, crazy, and exhausting week. I moved to a new apartment on Friday, and the move did not go nearly as smoothly as planned. The moving company that was supposed to move me failed to show up. Apparently, they overbooked themselves, and that left me to fend for myself. Thankfully, two of my wonderful neighbors in Colonial Village helped me move. I managed to cram my belongings into my new room, and I have started the slow and painful process of unpacking. Unfortunately, it has been a difficult process, because there is so little space in which to unpack things. At the moment, I only have a few square feet of empty floor space in my bedroom. Hopefully, that will improve as I get boxes unpacked.

Work hasn't been much fun lately. I have lots of administrative work piling up, and I haven't had a chance to work on it due to the move. One of my contracts looks like it is on the verge of imploding, and I feel like I'm drowning in paperwork, policies, and meetings. Unfortunately, work doesn't look like it will improve any time soon.

I'm hoping that life settles down quickly. I really want to take some vacation time this summer. I had hoped that I could go see Yellowstone in June, but it looks like that trip has been delayed until the late summer or early fall. In the short term, I'm hoping that I can get in a few short trips a little closer to home. I'm planning a trip down to southeastern Virginia, and then on to the Outer Banks.