Weather Report

At 6:50 pm it is 95 deg F and 50% humidity -- heat index of 107 deg F!

Daddy Geek was sent on errands this morning and then we spent the late afternoon in the pool.

Did I mention the air conditioning failed yesterday? Thankfully it is working again. Because we need it.

The Importance of Diversification

Scene: Geek Girl's bedroom. Evening. A game of Monopoly Jr. is underway.

Daddy Geek looks down at the distribution of $1, $2, $3, $4, and $5 bills he has. He has no $5, but lots of $2. He decides to swap 5 $2s for 2 $5s.

A Geek who shall remain nameless, um, expels gas.

Daddy Geek: [looking at bills] I think I'll diversify.

Geek Girl: Does that mean fart?

Both parents burst out laughing.

Must stop saving stuff for later

I am not a hard-core hoarder, but I definitely have hoarder tendencies. Fortunately a lot of stuff has been eliminated after two international moves. We're about to move (two blocks to a rental house) and it's time to purge again. And I've discovered Swiss Easter chocolate that friends gave us when we left in April 2009.

I have a bad habit of saving toys and other stuff for a rainy day. And then the pen dries out. Or I can't find those darn growing dinosaurs that have been carefully hidden somewhere. Must stop this bad habit. And eat little chocolate chicks. Before Daddy Geek reads the blog.

Rain and Rain Forests

We've been back from Puerto Rico for a week and after a week of endless heat, we were happy to wake up to some rain this morning. Why don't I show you some photos from the rain forest El Yunque?

After spending some time at the visitor's center, we drove to see some of the sights. It was warm and humid and not enough time to hike to the farther out waterfalls, but we did stop to see Coco Falls.

Here are Daddy Geek and Girl Geek.


And then Geek Girl insisted on climbing the rocks to get closer, so here they are in front of the waterfall.


That night we stayed in an ecolodge on the south side of the park. It was a long and winding road and fortunately Geek Girl was so tired from waking up early and the heat that she was asleep for most of the drive. I had trouble sleeping because of the waterfall, so in the morning, we decided we had to go see the waterfall that had kept me up all night.

Pretty plants on the walk.


A great big snail!


And the Geeks in front of the waterfall.


We saw many lizards on our trip. Geek Girl proceeded to name them.

Here's Eagle.

This is Summer.

This one is Dotty.


Bark and Branch were also named and sketched, but not photographed.

Summertime!

Last week we had a couple of visitors -- One of many favorite aunts (OOMFA) and Dear Friend.

OOMFA was here on business and kindly drove up on a weeknight for a burger with Daddy Geek and ice cream with all of us. Girl Geek showed OOMFA her toys and read some new books that OOMFA gave her. It was a school night and OOMFA had to go back to work, but we had a good time catching up.

Dear Friend was here for a meeting. She had Friday night free so I picked her up and we went to the pan-Latin restaurant in town. We enjoyed saltenas, peanut soup, and arepas. The arepas were so good she couldn't decide if she wanted another arepa or the quattro leches cake for dessert. We had the cake, but the frosting was kind of weird. I picked her up after her meeting ended on Saturday and we decided to have more Bolivian food. More saltenas and peanut soup and I even got a couple of saltenas to go for Daddy Geek. (Note: I tried ordering in Spanish but kept saying bitte instead of por favor. Agggghh!)

We ran into Daddy Geek and Girl Geek when we got back to the apartment. They were on their way to the library and to get a summer hair cut for Girl Geek. We wanted to go to the baseball game and Girl Geek was also keen to go. However, Daddy Geek wisely realized that a 4 pm game on a hot day was not a good idea and only Dear Friend and I went. Our seats were in the blistering sun, and after three innings of trying not to get burnt by the plastic seats and sweat dripping down our legs we decided to try to find a better place to watch the game. We ended up standing at the back of one of the field-level sections on the first base line. The Nationals pitcher held the White Sox to only one run, but the Nationals hitters were held scoreless. After the game we met Daddy Geek and Girl Geek in Clarendon for dinner.

The next day, after I took Dear Friend to the airport, Girl Geek gave Daddy Geek his Father's Day presents -- a book she had made in school, the pinch pot she made in art class, homemade card, and more. Daddy Geek packed for his trip to L.A. and then took Girl Geek to the pool for some fun. Then we took him to the airport.

Now it's summer break and you'd think we'd be having slow, relaxing days. However, I scheduled dental and eye appointments for this week and we have to run around collecting supplies for our vacation in Puerto Rico next week. As long as I don't plan too many errands on each day, Girl Geek has been reasonably cooperative. We've been ending the days with evenings in the pool before dinner and bedtime.

Ne-va-da, Ne-vah-da

Aggggh. Our West Coast kid is getting corrupted by these East Coast types. And now I can't remember if it's Ne-va-da (va rhymes with bad) or Ne-vah-da (vah like father).

Memorial Day Weekend

We had a fun and busy Memorial Day Weekend. Saturday morning, Daddy Geek went for a long bike ride -- the Arlington Loop. You can click to see a map of the ride and keep in mind that he had to ride from our apartment to the loop. We did a little shopping in the afternoon and then we met our dear friends in Arlington for dinner. They've moved to Paris so we're sad that they're no longer here, but we look forward to visiting them!

On Sunday we knew that if we wanted to do something outdoors we should go before it got too hot. Both Daddy Geek and I had noticed on separate bike rides that there were nice walking paths by Four Mile Run (ie the creek). We parked in Bluemont Park and followed the creek down through Glencarlyn Park. We found a frisbee golf course, stopped at a playground and watched happy dogs playing in the creek. The bike path is in the sun, but there was a parallel shady walking path.

After lunch it was time to get down to business. The pool had opened the day before and we needed to check it out.

Here are Daddy Geek and Geek Girl ready for the pool.

Last Spring was unusually cold and I don't even remember the pool being very warm until July. However, this year's warm Spring resulted in a very comfortable pool.

On Monday it was time to go to the Memorial Day Festival and Parade. Well, maybe go to the parade. Last year it was too hot to stay for the parade and we had a feeling it would be that way this year too.

Geek Girl wanted to get her face painted. If you didn't know, she is currently a dragon, so here she is with a dragon painted on her face. Notice the horns and the fire breath.


And here she is on the pony ride.


Unfortunately, we forgot that you can't go on the inflatables with face paint on and so Geek Girl chose to wash off the face paint. She attempted to climb the mountain, but it was too hot in bare feet so Daddy Geek went home to get socks while we waited in line for the Obstacle Course. Unfortunately the inflatables were just too hot, so we need to remember that you need to go on the bouncy things while they're still cool.

Daddy Geek returned with the socks and Geek Girl scaled the mountain.

(Note: we have video but isn't loading so if we can get it to load we'll put it in another post.)

It was hot and we decided to head home. However, Geek Girl wanted a bubble drink. However, I made the mistake of not realizing that the drink would have both mango juice and tea and Geek Girl did not like the tea at all. By this time many of us were getting cranky, so we decided to stay and get some lunch and listen to the concert band play. The parade was only an hour away, but we decided to go home and spend more time in the pool.