Harry on the Beach

Harry on the Beach
Originally uploaded by jmsmall2005.

You'll note from my earlier entry that I did, as predicted, read the entirety of "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows" (is it too early to refer to it as DH?) on the day it came out. I decided to brave the crowds for myself at midnight on the 21st and headed down to Borders to pick up my book (Jason, who was still apparently on Libyan time, konked out at about 9:30). However, I did manage to wait until we were actually settled on the beach to open it to the first page. It appears that I do have a bit of self control, after all.

It was really lovely on the beach, by the way. We left at the crack of dawn (I think the "out the door time" was officially 6:55 a.m.) in order to get across the Bay Bridge before traffic backed up for hours. Even with light traffic it was a three or more hour drive, so by the time we had ourselves set up (and wow, we had quite a set up!) it was time for lunch...at least to our stomachs! Assatague State Park is our favorite beach--much quieter and wilder than most places on the Eastern Shore. Jason read, slept, played in the water a bit, did all the beachy sort of things. I, well, this picture pretty much captures it.

What this picture does NOT capture (thankfully) is the ugly, red, swollen souveniers I took home from the beach...in the form of my feet. Despite my best efforts at reapplying sunscreen and hiding under an umbrella (once the wind stopped blowing). My feet have never been so sunburnt, even during the infamous trip to Venezuela after college. I have basically been laying on the couch for two days, trying to get the swelling down so that I can stuff these pigs in shoes and go to work... It is quite pathetic. Still, the beach was worth the six hour drive and even toasted piggies, just to sit there with the wind and the waves...and the other five people around us also reading Harry Potter.

Finished.

White House Pictures

At the White House North Face
Originally uploaded by jmsmall2005.

The nice ex-Marine came through! Click on this photo or the link to the left to see our pictures from the West Wing tour we did a couple weekends ago.

Information Embargo

Seriously, what the--? It's things like this that make me lose my hope in humankind. I've officially decided to send Jason to get the book for me on Saturday morning. I just don't think it's safe out there anymore.

(Perhaps it wasn't a mistake after all to marry someone with little interest in all things Harry...)

Almost There...

Yesterday, as I was peddling away on the bike at the gym, I noticed that the girl on the bike beside me was reading a purple and black book just like the one I held. Apparently I am not the only one on the last stretch of the Harry Potter marathon (or, rather, sprint in my case). Jason is somewhere between Libya and Rome right now, so on Sunday after church I grabbed a huge bowl of cherries and parked on the couch (a delightful new addition to our living room, much preferable to the lone lawn chair) for...10 hours? Wow. I did take a short break to put a desk together, but basically I went from not-quite-halfway-through-OOTP to 2/3-through-HBP. Gorging on Harry Potter is delicious. Telfer and Andrea, I think you were quite right to cheat.

I only have a few chapters left, but, predictably, I am dreading the end of Book 6 again and will not let myself read it late at night in a husband-less house (my imagination is already overly active without worrying that when I look out the darkened window I will find the face of He Who Must Not Be Named staring back at me). Jason comes back tomorrow, though, so I should easily slide into home by 00:01 on the 21st.

Can I just say, I am a bit sad about the coming book. I'm not quite ready to have all my questions answered, and I don't want to know who dies next, and mostly I know that I will read the book all in one sitting (inevitable) and the last time that I experience reading a Harry Potter book for the first time will be over all too soon. Plus, I'm still a bit traumatized by the end of HBP (as Scott said at the time, "Oh, you poor thing, you really didn't see it coming?"), even though I'm on my third reading. Angst. I have a lot of angst.

We are planning to go to the beach on Saturday, post-book-pick-up (mostly I think we are going to the beach just to say we went this summer, as the next, what, six weekends are booked? Oh, and also to get away from our house for a bit. :)). I don't think I'll see much of the water.

The Real Reason We Bought a House:

We grill everything but cereal.

The Worst Thing Is When...

...you are just starting a coveted and rare tour of the West Wing, and you discover that you have left the memory card for your camera in your computer at home. And that your battery is almost dead, but that really doesn't matter at this point.

You see, we should have a really sweet picture of us in the Rose Garden, of us in front of the West Wing, of us by the North Face of the White House. But nooooo... someone (me) left the stupid card in the stupid computer. Stupid. Actually, the not-stupid one in this story is the nice ex-Marine foreign service officer on the tour with us who offered to take and then email us the afore mentioned pictures. So you may see them yet.

And while we don't have a picture of the Oval Office (you couldn't take pictures inside, to my relief), we really did get to see it today. It's hard enough to get the overrated tour of the fancy part of the White House ("and here is the Red Room, and we're walking, we're walking, and the Green Room..."), but to get into the West Wing you have to be escorted by someone who works there. It was pretty sweet (phenomenal understatement). So happy Sunday to us.

(Pictures, hopefully, forthcoming.)

Fireworks

Fireworks on the Mall
Originally uploaded by jmsmall2005.

Happy Fourth Plus One. We took a break from our endless home improving/desperately trying to find the rice cooker and ventured out into the wild blue yonder. Okay, not so much "yonder" as down to the US Marine Corps Memorial (fondly known as Iwo Jima) to get a great view of the fireworks on the Mall. If you look really closely and use your imagination, you can see our view in the picture--Lincoln, Washington, and the Capitol all lined up. It was an ideal alternative to fighting the crowds and madness down on the Mall. The first summer we lived here we did the whole Capitol Steps thing, and it is something everyone should do...once.

We also put up a pretty little flag on our house. It is cute. Hee hee.

I love Fourth of July. When we got home from the Show, our neighbor kids were letting off their own fireworks in the driveway. Fireworks smell like the beach to me, which is where I spent the first 22 Independence Days of my life (minus the one where we all went to Disneyland). Fourth of July meant roasting hot dogs and s'mores, three-legged races on the beach, watching my cousins from Oregon blow their fingers off (slight exaggeration) with fireworks from Idaho, and remembering how blessed we are to live in this country. Someday I'd like to take Jason to the beach. But for now, this Fourth was just right.

Welcome to Our Home!

Welcome Home!
Originally uploaded by jmsmall2005.

Wow, we have a lot of stairs. And since we've been running up and down them for the past four days, wow, we are tired! I know a few of you have looked for pictures here over the past few days, and I apologize that it's taken me a while to get them up. I'd like to blame it on the fact that we didn't have our internet hooked up until now, but anyone who knows Jason knows that the Comcast guy was here before the movers finished. We all have our priorities...

Our move went pretty smoothly, and the movers would have been worth every penny even if all they did was get our couch into our basement. What is it with couches and getting them through doorways? About the only thing we accomplished on Thursday after the move was putting the bed together (as Shaanti said, "the best Mom idea ever," so that when you can't move another box you can plop into a waiting bed) and finding the toothpaste.

Between yesterday and today, we managed to get our kitchen at least functional, which makes me very happy. I am so tired of eating out! I've been wrestling with Contact paper (yelch) and Jason's been wrestling with new bits of hardware for the bathroom. We ran the sprinker all day in hopes of resuscitating our lawn. And we've taken our third trip to Home Depot. So far.

There are a few pictures on here of the rooms that are semi-put together. Of course, my favorite is Jason in the smashing living room furniture (aka lawn furniture). Actually, it's a good thing we don't have living room furniture yet--if we did there would be no room for all the cleaning supplies, boxes, and Target bags full of bins.

The best part of the day was when Jason turned up some "Shot Through the Heart" really, really loud. And no neighbors could hear. Yay!

This is a long entry, but it's been an exciting (albeit exhausting) weekend. Oh, and I'm on HP4 now, so it turns out I may manage to complete my sprint through the Harry Potter books...