Unexpected long weekend!
It was an eventful weekend!
I had plans to be in Berkeley Springs, WV for the weekend, an annual tradition girls'-weekend thing that I always enjoy. My vacation leave at work is over-taxed so the plan was to drive up on Friday at 7 p.m. with Christine after we both got off work. And so we did! Everything was going great. I was constantly unsure if I should stop for dinner, or just get there and figure something out, or what. A bit past Frederick/before Hagerstown, I spotted a sign for Wendy's, and we both thought that sounded good, so we stopped. As we sat, dusk was busy falling. I noticed a bit of lightning, but there was still enough daylight that I didn't think much about it. Then as we picked up to head west again...wow. The lightning show was amazing. It was distracting, until I realized the wind was trying to throw the car off the road, which got my attention all right. It was a bit of a white-knuckle ride for the last bit, as I kept waiting for the rain to really start and blind me - but it never did. We just made it to the house before the skies REALLY opened up. So it sounded scary, and there were sirens and leaky windows and other chaos, but ultimately the storm blew through and none of us were the worse for wear.
The next morning, as people checked email and Facebook, we started seeing what damage the storm had really done. But our rental cabin had power, as did the town, so we set about the day. We did note that the power line supplying our cabin had narrowly missed being taken down, but a narrow miss is still a miss! We walked to town and eventually did our own thing more or less, in varying small groups. We did wade in the springs together and grabbed lunch. I accomplished more than I thought I would, all in the first shop. The cruise coming up at the end of the month features something called "White Night," which sounds vaguely terrifying. But it's just a night where all passengers (who'd like to participate) and crew wear all white. Then they have disco lounges with black lights running all night. So, big party on the high seas, then? Right. Except I own zero pairs of white pants or shorts or white skirts. Because...why? Still, in the Sage Moon Herb Shop I managed to find a lovely, probably entirely too dressy all-white outfit. It's probably more suited to a wedding than a disco, but you know. I love it. It turns out I don't own white shoes but I'll deal with that another time.
After that I knew I wasn't really going to be buying anything else (though the outfit was very reasonable!), so I just enjoyed soaking up the atmosphere. Eventually I soaked up so much atmosphere that I left the possibility of the Roman baths too late in the day. Kim and I soaked our feet in the springs again then headed back to the cabin. Everyone dressed up a little for dinner and we ate at Lot 12, a lovely dining experience. SO much delicious food! Yum! The table with ten seated was a bit long to hear all the conversations, but it was still a great gathering. Then we headed back to the cabin and drank and sat in the hot tub and talked and stuff. The essence of a weekend away! I went to bed far too late considering that I wasn't sleeping too well in the loft.
Still, despite some surliness on my part Sunday morning, everything went well during the weekend. Christine and I drove home, and I was very fortunate not to have lost power at all. Not even a flicker! Those lucky cats, they had air conditioning the whole time! I got home, unpacked, started laundry, ran out to grocery shop, came home to put food away, ran out because I got a bee in my bonnet about the LL Bean sale. My lovely white outfit will be great for the cruise! It will not be great for my friends' wedding in two weeks. Sure enough, there was some nice stuff at LL Bean on sale, so I got another outfit for the wedding. (It's also nice and light and will travel well so it will probably go on the cruise too.) Then I came home and tidied the house and vacuumed, moreso than a real thorough cleaning, but still. When I finally sat down at like 6:30 I was exhausted. Bone tired, totally worn out. I tried to watch the third episode of Sherlock Series 1 and could barely stay awake. My Mom called and it turned out she and my brother's family lost their power. Oops! Not much to be done at that hour, I was tired and cranky and told her I'd call her the next day.
I wondered if work would have power, but there was no real way to know until that time, so I got up at 5 like usual. I worked out, and came back and ate breakfast, all the while fervently hoping that the office would be closed. A long weekend with not-great sleep was making me feel kind of terrible. Sure enough at 7 a.m. my boss called to say we were closed for the day. Hooray! I tidied up the breakfast dishes and went the heck back to bed. I slept from like 7:30 to 11:30 and it was AWESOME. I felt like a whole new person. Catch-up sleep: finally achieved! I got up and showered and called my Mom's cell phone, which she didn't answer. I called my sister-in-law, who was doing fine even without power because they have a generator. I decided to just head to Bowie to see if Mom needed anything. I got there and she met me at the door saying the power had just come on 5 minutes before! Huzzah! The A/C was cranking and we decided to go to lunch. We stayed local and went to Popeye's, and had a nice chat/catch-up. Then I drove home with a stop at Target on the way. I also made a scan of DSW for white shoes but found nothing I liked. I may just wear my neutral shade semi-dressy Tevas, because when the hell else will I wear white shoes?!
My boss called around 3 p.m. in the middle of chatting with Mom, to say that power was back on and we'd be open Tuesday. So I went home and put stuff away and ate a very tiny supper and hung out with the cats and then went to bed at a reasonable hour. Today I was much more prepared to go back to work than I would have been yesterday. Huzzah!
I had plans to be in Berkeley Springs, WV for the weekend, an annual tradition girls'-weekend thing that I always enjoy. My vacation leave at work is over-taxed so the plan was to drive up on Friday at 7 p.m. with Christine after we both got off work. And so we did! Everything was going great. I was constantly unsure if I should stop for dinner, or just get there and figure something out, or what. A bit past Frederick/before Hagerstown, I spotted a sign for Wendy's, and we both thought that sounded good, so we stopped. As we sat, dusk was busy falling. I noticed a bit of lightning, but there was still enough daylight that I didn't think much about it. Then as we picked up to head west again...wow. The lightning show was amazing. It was distracting, until I realized the wind was trying to throw the car off the road, which got my attention all right. It was a bit of a white-knuckle ride for the last bit, as I kept waiting for the rain to really start and blind me - but it never did. We just made it to the house before the skies REALLY opened up. So it sounded scary, and there were sirens and leaky windows and other chaos, but ultimately the storm blew through and none of us were the worse for wear.
The next morning, as people checked email and Facebook, we started seeing what damage the storm had really done. But our rental cabin had power, as did the town, so we set about the day. We did note that the power line supplying our cabin had narrowly missed being taken down, but a narrow miss is still a miss! We walked to town and eventually did our own thing more or less, in varying small groups. We did wade in the springs together and grabbed lunch. I accomplished more than I thought I would, all in the first shop. The cruise coming up at the end of the month features something called "White Night," which sounds vaguely terrifying. But it's just a night where all passengers (who'd like to participate) and crew wear all white. Then they have disco lounges with black lights running all night. So, big party on the high seas, then? Right. Except I own zero pairs of white pants or shorts or white skirts. Because...why? Still, in the Sage Moon Herb Shop I managed to find a lovely, probably entirely too dressy all-white outfit. It's probably more suited to a wedding than a disco, but you know. I love it. It turns out I don't own white shoes but I'll deal with that another time.
After that I knew I wasn't really going to be buying anything else (though the outfit was very reasonable!), so I just enjoyed soaking up the atmosphere. Eventually I soaked up so much atmosphere that I left the possibility of the Roman baths too late in the day. Kim and I soaked our feet in the springs again then headed back to the cabin. Everyone dressed up a little for dinner and we ate at Lot 12, a lovely dining experience. SO much delicious food! Yum! The table with ten seated was a bit long to hear all the conversations, but it was still a great gathering. Then we headed back to the cabin and drank and sat in the hot tub and talked and stuff. The essence of a weekend away! I went to bed far too late considering that I wasn't sleeping too well in the loft.
Still, despite some surliness on my part Sunday morning, everything went well during the weekend. Christine and I drove home, and I was very fortunate not to have lost power at all. Not even a flicker! Those lucky cats, they had air conditioning the whole time! I got home, unpacked, started laundry, ran out to grocery shop, came home to put food away, ran out because I got a bee in my bonnet about the LL Bean sale. My lovely white outfit will be great for the cruise! It will not be great for my friends' wedding in two weeks. Sure enough, there was some nice stuff at LL Bean on sale, so I got another outfit for the wedding. (It's also nice and light and will travel well so it will probably go on the cruise too.) Then I came home and tidied the house and vacuumed, moreso than a real thorough cleaning, but still. When I finally sat down at like 6:30 I was exhausted. Bone tired, totally worn out. I tried to watch the third episode of Sherlock Series 1 and could barely stay awake. My Mom called and it turned out she and my brother's family lost their power. Oops! Not much to be done at that hour, I was tired and cranky and told her I'd call her the next day.
I wondered if work would have power, but there was no real way to know until that time, so I got up at 5 like usual. I worked out, and came back and ate breakfast, all the while fervently hoping that the office would be closed. A long weekend with not-great sleep was making me feel kind of terrible. Sure enough at 7 a.m. my boss called to say we were closed for the day. Hooray! I tidied up the breakfast dishes and went the heck back to bed. I slept from like 7:30 to 11:30 and it was AWESOME. I felt like a whole new person. Catch-up sleep: finally achieved! I got up and showered and called my Mom's cell phone, which she didn't answer. I called my sister-in-law, who was doing fine even without power because they have a generator. I decided to just head to Bowie to see if Mom needed anything. I got there and she met me at the door saying the power had just come on 5 minutes before! Huzzah! The A/C was cranking and we decided to go to lunch. We stayed local and went to Popeye's, and had a nice chat/catch-up. Then I drove home with a stop at Target on the way. I also made a scan of DSW for white shoes but found nothing I liked. I may just wear my neutral shade semi-dressy Tevas, because when the hell else will I wear white shoes?!
My boss called around 3 p.m. in the middle of chatting with Mom, to say that power was back on and we'd be open Tuesday. So I went home and put stuff away and ate a very tiny supper and hung out with the cats and then went to bed at a reasonable hour. Today I was much more prepared to go back to work than I would have been yesterday. Huzzah!