On Saturday, the entire family (Mom & Dad O, the two exchanges students, Katie, and I) headed out to Washington D.C to see all the Cherry Blossoms. We all were in agreement that taking the Metro would be a much better idea then trying to find a place to park in D.C. It was quite busy at the Springfield-Franconia Metro station, but we expected that. We had an uneventful trip to the Smithsonian stop on the Blue Line of about 35 to 40 minutes (Keep in mind, the Blue Line is the only line for the Springfield-Franconia Station). We stayed for a few hours and took a lot of pictures of the Cherry Blossoms (link provided at the end) then we decided to return home. This is where the fun begins.

As we are standing around waiting for Dad O. to put more money on our fair cards so we can get home, we see a little message about increased police activity at the Pentagon City station and that the station was closed.  We didn’t think anything about it even though that station is on the Blue Line.  I mean the station is closed, but the trains are still running through right?  WRONG!  This is where all our troubles began.  After we boarded the train along with hundreds of other people and we start heading down the tracks, the driver notifies everyone that the train will be stopping at the Arlington Cemetery station and we will all have to get off and shuttle buses will be provided to get to the other stations.  We wait about 5 minutes and the driver comes back on the speaker telling us that the train will now be stopping at the Pentagon (one stop down) and shuttles will be provided from there.

So, a while later we end up at the Pentagon along with hundreds of other people (and hundreds if not a thousand people outside)  and we all head outside towards the bus area.  During the escalator ride up, I discover the reason for the Pentagon City station being closed.  A bomb threat and suspicious package.  So we all hit topside and what do we find?  Not a shuttle bus in sight.  Nope, not a single one.  Just normal buses running their regular routes.  On top of that, there is only one transit work and she had no idea what is going on.  The amount of disorganization by the WMATA was beyond belief.  Hundreds to Thousands of people stranded because of their ineptitude.

We stood around for a good 10 minutes while Dad O tried to see if the lady knew anything, once it was established that she did not, we all made out way towards the taxi area as we felt taking a taxi to a different metro stop past the Pentagon City was our best shot of getting home now.  Once we get down the the taxi stand, Dad O attempts to call the taxi company, but no one was answering after another 10 minutes or so.  At this point we start walking up the street as other people seem to be having luck catching taxis coming off the highway.  As luck would have it, we managed to catch two empty taxis (we had 6 people and needed two), one right behind the other.  At this point we decided to catch the metro at National Airport.  After a very scary taxi ride (I think he tried to kill us at least 2 times), we made it to the airport we an approximate cost of $10 per taxi.

From there, the metro ride was uneventful, but still quite packed.  We eventually made it back to Springfield and with an additional 15 min drive back to the house.  Total travel time:  3 hours.  That is around 4 to 5 times longer than it took us to get out there.  I can’t believe how horribly managed this situation was by the WMATA.  I couldn’t even begin to imagine what it would be like if there was an actual emergency and not just a scare.

Anyway, here are the Cherry Blossom and Easter Pictures as promised.

Cherry Blossoms and Easter 2010

Also, There have been some new pictures of Gimzo and Teddy uploaded.  They are the pictures at the end of the album.

New Pictures of Gizmo

New Pictures of Teddy

And finally, Katie’s flowers have started growing in the back of the house and I have managed to (mostly) complete our paver walkway that goes from the driveway to the door on the side of the garage.  As before, pictures are at the end of the album.

New Pictures of the House

Teddy in the Snow

One issue I have noticed with some people here is that most of them don’t know about driving in the snow. I lost count of the number of people we saw out today attempting to drive but instead causing unsafe conditions for both themselves and other drivers. One car was fishtailing so badly we were afraid to pass it while it was in the far right lane — we were in the far left lane with an empty lane between us and them. It was a good thing Chase knows how to drive in the snow… they lost control, started to spin, and we stopped about 2-3 feet from their car. Then, of course you have the people who don’t clean the snow off of their cars, the people who go too fast, the people who go too slow, and the people in 4-wheel drive vehicles thinking that they are also 4-wheel stop. And to top the list, the inexperienced drivers who just don’t know what they’re doing regardless of weather.

But enough about idiot drivers and the weather. I started a new job about two weeks after Christmas, so I no longer work for one of the local universities. I now work for a local biotech company that does contract research. I’ve had a bit of a learning curve since I’ve barely been exposed to the techniques that the primary focus of my new job requires. However, I am having fun and learning a lot in the process. I suppose overall it just feels a bit odd working for a larger company (still relatively small in the grand scheme of things), although the group I’m part of is rather small (just me and my boss). As a lot of my friends and family know, I collect giant microbes. Unfortunately, since my research now focuses on whichever contract I’m working on I won’t be getting a new work-related microbe. Although I have recently acquired HIV, swine flu, T4 bacteriophage, and the plague (giant, fluffy microbes that is).

This past weekend I installed a new processor and motherboard I reformatted my computer so I’m still trying to get everything set up properly. That being said, I have some snow pix, but you’ll have to wait until Chase gets home to see them. and they’re now up in the photo gallery.

Once again, Happy Holidays!

We usually try to keep the site up-to-date on what’s going on with us; haven’t been but so successful lately. So here’s what’s new (or the same) with us:

Katie’s still working on her Master’s in Medicinal Chemistry. She’ll hopefully be defending late Jan-early Feb. We’re hoping she’ll get a job around here since we’ve gotten attached to all of our wonderful friends here in Richmond. But as any scientist knows, research just doesn’t go the way you expect and always takes longer than anticipated.

Chase is still one of three in the IT department at G.D. But he loves the fact that it’s small enough that every day is different. Right now his department is in the midst of writing a new piece of software for their accountants to use so he’s been quite busy.

In the pet department all of our fish have died, probably due to a fungal infection. But Gizmo and Teddy are doing just fine. Gizmo is just as ornery in the morning as always about going in the kitchen. Teddy has had thankfully much fewer seizures. And this fall they got a new little sister, a little roborovski hamster named Kobito.

But here is a recap from the beginning:

We rang in the New Year here in Richmond with some friends just as we plan on ringing in 2009.

Katie and her friend Mary-Jane spent Valentine’s weekend back in Blacksburg for the fourth production of the Vagina Monologues at Virginia Tech. After working with the second and third productions it was fun change to just be an audience member for Katie.

We spent Easter in Florida with Mom and Dad A. Chantel, her fiance, and his son. We had a lot of fun dying eggs, visitng the grandparents, going to Sea World and attempting to teach Jay (Chantel’s fiance’s son) how to swim.

In May Katie presented some of her research at the Virginia Academy of Science annual meeting in Hampton, VA. And as with most of her family and friends her peers had the chance to be bored with her babbling about molecular modeling and docking of ligands to receptors.

As most of you know we tied the knot in June. We had a beautiful ceremony and reception at Whitehall Manor up in Leesburg, VA. Gorgeous setting in country. One of the pictures Dad A. keeps saying we should photo shop in some cannons and civil war soldiers. Thanks to Mom O’s help everything turned out perfect and like everyone had warned us, it was a whirlwind of fun then over before we were ready.

We spent the week after the wedding recuperating in the sun in the Grand Cayman Islands. We stayed in Chase’s parents timeshare right on the beach. Our room had a view of both the golf course and the ocean. We snorkeled with fish and an eel, swam and fed the stingrays, shopped, went sight-seeing, and of course relaxed. I think the best food I had all year was the food we had there.

Fourth of July was spent up in northern Virginia with Mom and Dad O and saying good-bye to Amanda (since she would spend the next 5 1/2 months in Australia). We drove out and watched the fireworks from the side of I-395 next to the Pentagon.

Celebrating birthdays in August was fairly uneventful. Just spent it here hanging out with friends. Although going out to eat wasn’t quite as funny as is with Mom A when we have to explain to the server that we’re really celebrating three birthdays at once.

Labor Day weekend was spent in Florida. We went out to Homosassa Springs and Katie did not take a hundred pictures of manatees like last time (Jan 2004); instead it was just the fish jumping.

For Halloween we once again went out to our friend Dustin’s uncle’s house. Where we all dressed up in scary masks to scare the kids coming through the haunted walk. Katie went as a ghoul and Chase went as death. I think we scared more adults than kids though.

Late October Katie’s car stopped producing heat. After the diagnosis of a clogged heater core we decided we had put enough money in the car that it wasn’t worth it for us to fix. So early November we bought Katie a new car; a Chevy Cobalt. So now we have a giant orange snowfall and a cobalt cobalt.

Thanksgiving was spent here in Richmond with friends. We enjoyed our first experience of hosting a big dinner as a married couple. The turkey came out perfect despite not having a pop-out timer. All of our made-from-scratch side dishes turned out well too. Although I think everyone’s favorite were the bottles of Copperridge wine (same blush we had at the wedding).

Christmas will be spent out in Colorado with Mom and Dad O, Melissa, her husband, Amanda, her boyfriend, and the two exchange students. Katie isn’t being allowed near any snowmobiles and is only skiing three days so hopefully we won’t have a repeat of Jan 2006 where Katie broke her arm.

And that brings us back to New Year’s. Happy Holidays again and enjoy the pictures!

Well, to start off, Katie on the other hand has been busy almost every waking moment with her research.  Her animal studies have been completed, she is working on her final target compound, and is nearing the finish line with her computer modeling.  Only thing left is that gigantic paper she has to write.  It has become clear that she won’t be officially graduating until May, but she should be able to defend her thesis come January and after that she can get a job.  She just won’t have that piece of paper that makes everything official.

Me on the other hand, I’ve basically been working and then relaxing on my evenings and days off.  I have found time to finally get a decent file server setup at the house.  It has a 1-TB RAID-5 array, which should be plenty for us.  We’ve currently only filled up 23% (approx. 230 GB), but that frees a lot of stuff off our of computer drives.  The best part is that I have it setup to backup to Carbonite, that way if anything happens all of Katie’s important research and all our pictures are safe.  I highly recommend it to everyone.  I have also spent time cleaning out the spare bedroom and slowly getting rid of the stuff in there.  We donated our old waterbed frame to Goodwill and gave MJ a lot of stuff too.  It feels nice to have an almost fully functional spare room again.

We are still going to most of the Virginia Tech football games.  I’ve have been currently working on finishing up both Ladder Ball (a.k.a Tailgate Golf or Redneck Golf) and Cornhole.  I’ve just hit the lazy part with them and don’t feel like painting.  I know for a fact Cornhole will be done by the next game against Duke on the 21st.  If the weather stays in the 60s or so I can probably finish Ladder Ball too.

The dogs are still doing fine.  Gizmo is goofy as always and Teddy is shy as always.  The other day I was using the unfinished Cornhole piece to block of the door because I was staining some picture frames and didn’t want the dogs running around getting all wood colored and what does Gizmo do?  Shoves his head through the 6″ opening and almost gets stuck.  See for yourself!

I was such a nice husband to Katie.  To help alleviate some of her stress, I got her a cute furry little friend.  It wasn’t the cheapest hamster, but it sure is the nicest.  I had to buy everything too, cage, food, bedding, etc.  Her name is Kobito and she is a female Robovski hamster.  We bought this type of hamster because the lady at the pet store recommended them as the friendliest.  They don’t bite and can be picked up fairly easily, but she is fast so she can’t get loose or it’s the end of her.  Teddy seems to have taken a liking to her and is very protective of her when Gizmo comes close.  Katie took a picture of her, but it’s all blurry.  I’ll post it anyway though.

I said that I was a nice husband above, well then I guess the next piece of news will make me an awesome husband.  I bought Katie a new car.  Yes, yes I did.  The 2000 Eclipse she was driving had started to become a problem in these colds months.  The heater core is clogged and we have been quoted $1800+ to fix it.  Just not worth it for that car.  So, I got her a 2009 Imperial Blue Metallic Chevrolet Cobalt.  I could go in to detail describing it, but if you click on the picture below it will take you to the gallery.

I have also been recording out Dungeons and Dragons sessions.  I plan on posting the highlights when CERTAIN PEOPLE send me the time codes of the best moments of the evening.  It isn’t conducive to my bandwidth to allow anyone who can access this site to download 250+ MB, 5+ hours long MP3’s.  So, when I get those time codes, I’ll start creating the highlight reel. . .err MP3.

Also, if it matters to anyone, I got the software for the blog (WordPress) and the photo gallery (gallery2) fully updated.  It was amazing. . .it’s the first time it worked without anything blowing up.

Anyway, I’ll see what I can do about getting Katie to post and to force myself to post more often.

First, I went to the Virginia Auto Show.  It was good, but nothing there was that impressive.  Worth the $7 though. I forgot the camera in the car, so no pictures.  Dustin and Gareth (Gee) came along, it was a good time.

After that, we headed over to Buffalo Wild Wings in the bottom.  Justin came and joined us and we had a good time sitting around eating good food and drinking beer.  We bet Gee $7 to snort a line of salt and pepper.  Well, he did it.  The face he made almost killed all of us from laughing.  After that we played some foosball on a really crappy table.

After that I came home and have spent the past 3 hours sitting here using my computer and talking to Josh.  It’s been a good evening.  Katie and the gang are almost here now. So, I am out.