Road Trip

This past weekend, Billy and I took a quick roadtrip to New York for our friends' wedding. After a couple of wrong turns and an overnight stay in Mahwah, NJ, we arrived in the cute town of Schenectady, NY. We unloaded our stuff and set out to find a good running spot in town before the wedding festivities began.

With the help of a town brochure and our new gps (love that thing!!), we ventured through a very sketchy neighborhood to find a cute park in a nicer neighborhood and got our runs in. We had initially had hopes of staying in NYC Friday night and getting to run in Central Park on Saturday before heading to the wedding but decided that would be trying to do too much. We did, however, get to run in Central Park- just the one in Schenectady instead :) It was a neat park area and had a beautiful rose garden where a wedding was taking place as I passed it. This website has some nice pics of the place, since I forgot our camera back at the hotel.

After the run, we stumbled upon the Schenectady Strawberry Festival (Billy had actually discovered it during his run and decided we should check it out :)), grabbed lunch at a deli, picked up some local beer, and headed back to get ready for the wedding. Maybe we'll make it to our local strawberry festival next year!

We got in the hotel hot tub for a few minutes (Billy used to think I was weird for always bringing a bathing suit on trips, but it does come in handy!!), got dressed, sampled a local beverage, and headed to the wedding at Riverstone Manor, this beautiful estate right on the Mohawk River. I felt so bad for the bride and groom, as they wanted an outdoor wedding, and it was raining pretty steadily when we pulled up to the site. About 10 minutes before the ceremony was to begin, we were informed that they still wanted an outdoor wedding, so all of the guests headed over to the lawn area, umbrellas in hand, and witnessed a beautiful outdoor wedding...in the rain! Definitely memorable for all! And, one of our other friends officiated the ceremony, so that was fun to watch too :)

Riverstone Manor (from their website)

This is kind of how the tent looked (also from RSM website)

Here is a picture of us with Pete and Mollie at their wedding!

The next day, Billy got up early to run, I packed up our stuff, and we headed out on what turned out to be a VERY long ride home. Note to self, if we ever drive up to the northeast again, the Eastern Shore is the best way to go (not 95)!!

My attempt to take a picture of NYC as we were driving by

(you can faintly see the skyline in the background :))

We are very glad we made the trip up there, so yay for a fun weekend and for the newlywed Turners :)

Laundry Time

Recently Jefferson has discovered that he can jump up on the dryer door, onto the top of the dryer, and be eye-level with his treat cabinet. So yesterday when Billy and I were at home for lunch, I was folding laundry while he was cooking veggie burgers for us, and Jefferson decided to do this new ritual. First, though, he stuck his head and front legs into the dryer, so I came up with the brilliant plan to put a cookie in the dryer and see what he would do. Here's the result...

Dryer Dog!!

Isn't he the cutest thing ever!! :) They say terriers do like to burrow, so I think he enjoys this new hiding spot!

The Office

Most weekdays, I feel like I am a character on one of our favorite shows - The Office. I know a lot of people feel like their work environments are somewhat Office-esque, but mine seriously rivals the make-me-cringe-and-turn-away-from-tv awkwardness and nonsensical requests from the boss that we watch in overwhelming abundance each Thursday night. Now I love my boss, who is also my father-in-law, dearly, but he LOVES to dress up in costumes whenever the occasion arises or he can create an occasion for (he especially gets excited when that can somehow involve our state's college rivalries). And, being an admin person here, I have the fun job of helping him concoct his costumes and shop for new items for his "skit bin" (which I purchased for him, with the hopes of fewer shopping trips in the future since he's able to keep up with all of his attire now!). I even had to help him apply fake barbed wire tattoos to his arms for a recent presentation video shoot.

In addition to the strange duties I am tasked with (see below for a recent example :)), there are countless moments throughout the day when I shake my head and say to myself, "I am living in the real life 'Office'". My husband works with me as well, so we get a few laughs and regular moments of "I can't believe this is actually happening here", which we are glad we can share. I won't go into detailed examples now, but I'll be sure to share as things come up.

Photo from TV Guide

This scene looks a little too familiar :)

My Office-like project last week was to morph a Virginia Tech hat into a hat that said "VPI" with a banner saying "Magnum Come Lordy" (which he interpreted as the Hokies' way of saying "Magna cum Laude" just for an extra jab). Here is my masterpiece:

I felt completely like Pam, doing an "art project" for the boss (although she probably would have been more excited about getting to do this artistic endeavor - haha :))

Close-up

I'll be sure to post more "Office moments" from my work, but hopefully that captures the essence of my not exaggerating that I do actually work in a real life "Office" (as I'm sure many people do as well :)). Glad to have a job for now, though, and to work with nice people, awkward as they may be sometimes. And we do love that my boss has no shame about dressing up and enjoying it, as it's part of who he is :)

Memorial Day Weekend Fun & Projects

So, our Memorial Day weekend ended up having more relaxation time than I had anticipated, which was really nice, and we did manage to get a few things done around the house...

Billy had a race on Saturday morning, so we took it easy Friday night and got up bright and early (6:15 - on a Saturday!) to head to P-town for the race. He won his age group with his second fastest time for that distance! Got back home around noon, ate a quick lunch, and drove up to Clairmont, VA to see a co-worker's river house (he's been trying to get Billy to check it out for a few years now, so hopefully we'll go stay there soon!). Then, we headed to Williamsburg via the Jamestown-Scotland Ferry to meet some friends for a brewery tour at Williamsburg Alewerks (although we ended up missing the tour) and an early bird special dinner at Green Leafe - yummy!

Here are some photos from the first part of our weekend:

runners getting ready to go...

...and they're off!

half way through!

never thought we'd be on a boat (this picture was a big sacrifice for billy, as he hates taking pictures by holding the camera in front of you :))

a big boat comin my way

Sunday after church when Billy headed to the gym, I went home and began a workout of my own - washing the siding on our porch and all of the windows (basically like washing a giant car :)). Definitely looks better though - and had the added bonus of being a killer arm workout! Then, I went to work organizing the garage and have almost finished that! The only major thing we have left to do there is get a big storage tub for our above-ground pool that we used a couple of years ago. Both of us are hesitant to move it around too much, though, as there is a great likelihood that snakes and/or poisonous spiders could have made a home in there. Maybe for Jefferson's birthday party, we'll break out the pool again though! Later on, I worked on cleaning out the attic but still have a little ways to go there - we filled up our big trashcan and got together more stuff for Good Will out of the work done, though, so that was good! Some shelving might be nice for organizing in the attic, but we're trying to save dollars, so I worked with what we had in both the attic and garage.

I never ended up taking any "before" pictures, but here are some "after" (or still in progress :)) ones:

lawncare area (with motorcycle helmets on top)

paint & tool area

attic - travel section (bags, snowboards, etc.)

housewares (aka pre-marriage possessions & the wedding presents we only use occasionally)

office area (old computer, phones, etc.)

On Monday, we went to VA Beach to go running and furniture shopping. Running was good, furniture shopping was not successful (other than the fact that we saved $ instead of buying a new couch :)), but it was a nice day together. We made a German-inspired dinner that night and ate and relaxed on the porch for the duration of the evening, which was great! Tuesday came a little too quickly, but we have another short week this week because of my reunion in C-ville!