Your Tax Dollars

What I did at work today:

CAT equipment AND the Capital Building. Gotta love DC.

My boss was excited because this sign says Decatur, IL twice on it. 'Cause CAT's in D-town. And now he knows it actually exists, and is not just a figment of my imagination (I told him it's the soybean capital of the world, he thinks I'm making stuff up.)

Diggin for oil, in front of the Smithsonian Castle. Wonder if they found anything?

After making a smart comment about needing to find the Miller Lite stand...

LO AND BEHOLD. (angels singing in the background)

So now we can walk around outside on the Mall, look at heavy machinery, and drink beer. And it's not even my lunch hour. I love work.

Rain, Rain, GO AWAY!!!!

Here in the DC/NOVA area we've had a record amount of rain. Which shows absolutely no signs of stopping.

Team losses:

I-395 shut down due to mudslide.

GW Parkway had a flash flood and is recovering.

L'Enfant and Federal Triangle metro stations have been taken over by the alligators who used to live in the sewer. They have since been recovered; however, they still smell like the sewer.

The IRS, Federal Archives, Reagan Building, Smithsonian. NOT where I work, but real close. But not close enough for me to stay home and get paid for it.

Hunter Mill Road has been under water for awhile. VA now owes me 35 cents, as the only other route is the damn toll road. Lucky for them I had change floating around in the bottom of my purse.


And of course, this is what the 12th Street Tunnel looked like on Monday morning. Just to give you some sort of dimensions, at it's lowest point the street was under probably six feet of nasty polluted DC rainwater, which probably has more infectious diseases in it than the CDC can count.

A usual advocate of public transportation (not only do I really suck at parallel parking, but I also don't make enough to pay $15 a day for parking) I metro'd it. Only to stop for 10 minutes at each station between Vienna and Metro Station. Which, due to flooding, is the last stop. Federal Triangle was closed. So, I am hiking with my high heels, dry clean only clothes, and my PETA umbrella (spay and neuter your dogs and cats, man. the shelters are full enough already without your horny mutt adding to it.) the 1.2 miles from Metro Center to the building in which I work. In 100% humidity.

Boy, was I late to work.

boolsheet

I wanted to get this out of my system before the US plays Ghana today at 10.


What Italy had to do to get a red card, McBride's pretty face after DeRossi let him have an elbow.

















Apparently, the US doesn't have to try so hard.

Mastroeni gave a dirty tackle. Which for most teams, would be a straight yellow card. But for the US, it's obviously a red. Thanks, ref.

A slide tackle, resulting in a second yellow for Eddie Pope, should have been... nothing. It was all ball. He didn't touch the guy.

Copa Mundial 2006

We've been pretty distracted lately. At 9am, 12pm and 3pm everyday we've been glued to the television, the radio, or the internet for a couple hours each time.
I'm not going to post any brackets or scores, I'm just going to tell you where you can find them.


http://www.fifaworldcup.com/ (brackets, scores and articles)


http://broadband.espn.go.com/broadband/EBB2/web/shellMain (live on the web, but you have to have Flash Player, which is unable to be downloaded by many people at work)


http://clients.mediaondemand.net/theSun/?Channel=1 (radio feed, all the way from England)


http://www.laradiodelmundial.com/ (to listen in Spanish)

See you later!

D-C-U-NI-TED

We love soccer.
And this time, it wasn't just for the tailgating, although that was fun, too.

DC United - 1 New England - 0

YAY!

Memorial Day BBQ

Memorial Day marks the beginning of lots of things.
The pool opens.
You can now wear white shoes.
Summer is finally here.
The DC humidity kicks in.
What better way to celebrate these beginnings than a BBQ? Fire up the grill, pass out some cold ones. Gather up all your friends and toast the beginnings.

Out of all the guys present at the BBQ, us females all agreed that this one was by far the best looking. No offense, guys.

Fishies!!!!!

Okay. We all know that all things underwater hold some kind of strange fascination. So, we make the trek to the best place within driving distance to see the underwater, the Baltimore Aquarium. You can find out more about the Baltimore Aquarium at www.aqua.org.

Australian Freshwater Crocodile. As with all crocks, the depth and temperature of the nests where eggs are laid determines the gender of the babies.

Giant Amazon River Turtle. In the wild, they eat only during the rainy season when the Amazon River floods. Weird.

Parrotfish. Parrotfishes graze on coral, and have the ability to change genders.

A really cool fish that looks like a rock. Sorry, I don't remember it's name. If you do, let me know!

Coral reefs. The second picture (sorry about the quality) shows some great marine worms.

The outside of the aquarium at night.

Another great place to see fish:

www.montereybayaquarium.org

The New Regime

If we don't have some nice muscles in 4-6 weeks, one of the following has occurred:

-They lied in the infomercial.

-We were so exhausted after the fifty hours it took to assemble this complicated thing (which came in six seperate boxes, by the way) that we slept for 4-6 weeks.*

-This has turned into a clothing rack.

* I helped by sitting on the bed and staying out of the way. I find that is the most effective way for me to provide assistance whenever anything requiring assembly, tools, or comes with an instruction book is concerned. But watching is exhausting in itself.

Book Report: Marley & Me by John Grogan

This book is a must read for everyone who owns a dog. Actually, for anyone who owns a pet, has ever owned a pet, or knows someone who owns a pet. Grogan tells his life story through the true antics of his dog, "life and love with the world's worst dog".
Yes, this book explains a lot. It makes you love the world's worst dog, and you never question why Grogan loves this dog. And I love Grogan's ability to make you laugh and cry on the same page.
I started reading this book thinking, no way he could own the world's worst dog, because we do!!
We have the dog who ate a hole in the drywall in the bathroom. She has single-handedly destroyed more comforters than I can remember. She ate her muzzle. She barks and growls and scares the bejeezes out of people. She eats the living room rugs, gets into the trash and acts like she's starving to death whenever company comes. She has peed on the floor, on my pillow and on my foot.
But she's still my baby.

Janka, who is now not the world's worst dog.

Go Nats!!!!

We love baseball.
Actually, we love to tailgate at baseball games.
And the Nats actually won! But is was against the O's, after all.

The Official Paperwork

Ahh, papers, papers. And now I suppose it's official...
After one and a half hours at the Social Security Office.
After one hour at the Department of Motor Vehicles.
After thirty minutes at the bank.
And after endless phone calls, faxes and mailings.

We now have the same last name.

Los Cabos, Baja California

What a beautiful place. I'm totally ready to move there. The weather was perfect, the people so nice.

Places to hit:
El Squid Roe (best drinks)
Margaritavilla (best eats)
Jungle Boat (best drunk snorkeling)

The LinLos Wedding

That's right, we did it.

The deed has been done.

We've been hitched.

For better or for worse.

After six years of dating, five and a half years of living in sin, two dogs, three frogs, two lizards and an entire family tree of fish.

Welcome to the creation of the LinLos, The Work In Progress.