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

As I mentioned last year, we spent last Christmas in Breckenridge, CO with Katie’s side of the family. It was a wonderful trip and we enjoyed a very white Christmas. Katie didn’t break any bones this time around. But we did have fun skiing, tubing, snowboarding, making snow angels, and just enjoying the company. You can see the pictures by clicking the image below.

Colorado - December 2008

After the festivities had ended Katie returned to her research which did not end quite as early as planned. Chase returned to work and life returned to normal in Richmond until March. In March, we experienced one of those rare winter storms that actually drops snow and it accumulated.  This rare storm gave Richmond between 8″ and 10″.  Richmond will typically start shutting down at about 1″ of snow (yeah, yeah, laugh away all your northerners) Katie luckily got a day off since VCU is primarily a commuter school; unfortunately Chase still had to work. Check out the few pictures we took.

Snow - March 2009

At the end of April, Katie finally presented her research to the Medicinal Chemistry department. And May 1st successfully defended her Master’s Thesis (For your sanity, don’t read unless you really like Chemistry :-p – -Chase). May 16th, Katie graduated from VCU with her Master’s in Pharmaceutical Sciences. Of course, pictures of the joyous day are posted.

Katie's Graduation

In the days after her defense and before graduation Katie interviewed for a position as a Lab Specialist in a microbiology lab at VCU; and in June started her first job. She’s still working there and enjoying the opportunities available to learn new things.

Also in June we celebrated our first wedding anniversary. Some people claim the first year is the hardest. We honestly didn’t notice much of a change other than some added jewelry. We hope the years to come are as equally blissful.

July we bought our first house. It’s a nice 4-bedroom, 2.5-bath, brand new house in the same area of town we’ve been living in. There are plenty of pictures up of it, inside and out, furnished and unfurnished. The dogs seem to have finally gotten used to the house and to going out on their tie-out leashes.

House

We spent our birthdays in Key West with Chase’s parents. We toured most of the tiny island and learned a lot of its history. We even saw some interesting places including the Pelican Poop Shop, Garden of Eden, and the Love Muscle House. If you want to read more of our adventures just scroll back through the posts or browse the pictures.

Florida/Key West - August 2009

We stayed home this year for Halloween. We handed out about 7 large bags of candy to the neighborhood kids. Chantel and Alex even brought over Jay to go trick-or-treating. He was Bumblebee from Transformers. It was really neat to see all of the costumes. Our next door neighbors’ 2-year-old granddaughters were a pumpkin and a lady bug. The one got a kick out of being the same as our dog Gizmo. The jury’s still out on how Gizmo felt. Of course, we decorated the house.

Halloween 2009

Chase, Katie, and friend Mary-Jane, and her boyfriend, Adam, drove down to Florida for Thanksgiving. It was a nice to get away from work for a while and just be able to sit back and relax. We spent the date after Thanksgiving at Universal Studios and Islands of Adventure with Mom.

Florida - Thanksgiving 2009

This year we are hosting our first Christmas. Katie’s side of the family is coming down to visit for a few days. Mom O already made us a gorgeous wreath for our front door. The Christmas lights were up before Thanksgiving. Presents have been bought and wrapped. Now all we have to do is wait for Christmas to get here.

Christmas 2009

Once again, we wish you all a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

The photo gallery and blog is continuously updated, so be sure to look at it throughout the remained of 2009 and all of 2010 for updates.

Update (12/19/2009): Since this post was originally made we’ve had one of those rare snow-dumping storms hit Richmond. We got about 8-9″ of wet snow in the last 24 hours.

Snow December 2009

]]> http://www.alixblog.net/2009/12/06/another-year-of-memories/feed/ 0 http://www.alixblog.net/2009/03/02/snow-day/ http://www.alixblog.net/2009/03/02/snow-day/#comments Mon, 02 Mar 2009 13:52:26 +0000 Katie http://www.alixblog.net/?p=101 Evidently this is the first time since December 2005 the Richmond-metro area has received more than 4 inches of snow. Guesstimating we have about 6-8 inches here at our apartment. Given that, last night VCU said we would have a 2-hour delay. It took them an additional 11 hours (until 8am) to determine that they should probably just close instead. As for driving, based on the traffic reports from TV and Chase’s experience into work today, very few people know how to drive in this weather. The silver lining, I get a whole day without distractions (friends, reactions, Chase) to work on writing and the dogs get to play in the snow.

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.

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.