for your safety, when using sandpaper, please wear goggles, a face mask, a welding shield, an apron, and gloves

larry chopping the trumpet vine

The trumpet vine, though beautiful, is growing like a weed and threatening to take over our backyard.  Larry is quite concerned about this.  I was looking out the window and caught him hacking at it with a child-sized shovel.

trumpet vine

piggy

Another gift left to us by the previous owners: piggy bootscraper.  I wonder how long he'll stay on our back porch?

roxy

close call

The day we moved in, during perfect weather, two 8' long branches randomly fell from the tree in our front yard.  Luckily, they did not land on the house, my car, or me/Larry.

redneck A/C

cherries

cone flowers

mark knopfler at wolf trap

a boy and his grill

Our first major purchase for the new house!  

goodbye apartment life

moving day!

the fun never stops

Yes, I'm still packing up my apartment (sigh).  Notice those two bottles of liquor in the foreground?  Liquor is a key ingredient to surviving a move.  Well, the rum is at least.  I don't know what the hell to do with that bottle of sherry.

a special gift

The sellers left us a very special gift...A BIG PILE OF TRASH.  And do you know what you get when you have a big pile of trash on your curb?  You get TRASH PICKERS.

mosquitoes 60, rachel 0

We celebrated our first evening as homeowners by sitting out in our OWN BACKYARD.  The mosquitoes celebrated by feasting on my blood.  I'm incredibly allergic to mosquito bites and discovered 60 bites on my legs the next day.  Itchy itch.

we're homeowners!

We also take crappy overexposed photos with the flash too close to our faces!  But today we closed on our new house and celebrated with champagne.

a nerd with A.D.D.

I'm supposed to be packing (see all those boxes behind me?)...but I keep getting distracted by all the "treasures" I find while sorting through junk.   Like 3D glasses! 

wall of pics

I took this photo to remember the dining room wall in my apartment.  I think I hung these up the first week I moved into my place in 2002.  Cheap frames, crappy prints, but I took all the pics in Europe while I was a student living abroad.

mouth of the blue vase

columbia pike after midnight

We were out late playing Big Buck Hunter at L.A. Bar and Grill...as a result we were walking home in the wee hours of the morning along the lovely streets of south Arlington.

big buck hunter

a packing disaster

Have I mentioned how much I hate moving?  And where did I get all this shit?  And why was I keeping it???

rubbish

Another load of crap goes down the chute.

more packing

Books?  Check.  Ugly Dog?  Check.

lucie in her favorite chair

masked man

a very lame fourth of july

Our intention was to walk down to the Potomac to watch the fireworks - but it rained and we were all lazy, so we watched them from the roof of a friend's condo.  But it was so cloudy that they were hardly visible.

"this is the sound the horse makes"

See the hand gestures?  He's imitating the sound of horseshoes on pavement.  Clip clop clip clop...

full disclosure

This is what I look like first thing in the morning - an impressive display of grumpiness and bedhead.

let the packing begin

George Foreman is in this box.