Thursday, June 27, 2013

Traffic


Traffic. Yep. Thanks for the reminder. I have babysat the same kids for the past two summers. I like them, we get along, it's a pretty decent deal most days. Well right after we bought our house their mom emailed about this summer. I was worried about the commute, but I decided to do it thinking it couldn't be horrible. It's summer...less commuters was my thought. Wrong. I don't know for sure what it's like during the school year, but this is no joke. It's a fiasco. For example...I live about 5 miles from 66 (the main road to get anywhere) and it takes about a 1/2 hour to get there. Not necessary. 

So I've tried backroads, multiple routes, every type of traffic research I can think of to no avail. I have two other major issues with these commuting animals. 1. The people I call "cheaters." These are the people who cut in front of people who are following the traffic rules. The people like me who have seen the same light change colors 9 times, but wait impatiently while yelling at cheaters in the confines of their car. And 2. Unpredictability. I think that's up there with one of the worst parts of living in NoVa. You never know when there will be traffic or how long it will take you to get somewhere. It's seriously amazing the difference in traffic on any given day at any random time. And I swear that channel 4 news does no traffic report on 66 any day of the week because no one would actually go to work. I'm so sick of 95 getting all the attention. 

On one final note. Thank god for the Kane Show. 

Tuesday, June 25, 2013

Food Lover in the Suburbs

Taste of Historic Manassas
When we were city dwellers we used to go to this food festival called Taste of Arlington...well great news...there is now a Taste of Historic Manassas. I was excited at the potential of this. And it turned out to be pretty good. Here is how these "taste of...." things work: you buy a ticket and it has eight small tasting tickets, the restaurants that are participating set up booths with a few different samples of their food, and then there is usually some entertainment and other random people trying to get your attention.  The most exciting part of this for Matt was that he got to actually try another restaurant than Katerina's. This brings me to my next point. Katerina's. 

Katerina's is pretty much the only restaurant I go to in my new suburban nights out. I love it. It might be accurate to say it's a minor obsession. Katerina's is a tiny little restaurant with Greek food. Literally everything is good. I would say that the tirokafteri, tzatziki, the avgolemono, the gyros, and mousaka are among the top of our list. I mean honestly this place is just right up my alley...lemon, olive oil, salty feta, oregano...you really can't go wrong. If you live around here you should go, and if you don't when you visit us that's the only place we take people. 





Wednesday, June 19, 2013

The Bennett Wave 2013


Yes, Blog Friends, school is out for summer!!! Here is yesterday's Bennett wave. You can also relive 2012 and 2011 on the blog. This year it was a rainy wave...not as exciting. Today, on my first day of summer, I started babysitting. More on this later, but just know that if the commute does not get better you are going to have to read a lot of complaining.

Thursday, June 13, 2013

Bus Duty

Bus duty is always an adventure. On any given day I save at least one child from getting run over. Most days it's at least two. The days when we have some type of precipitation are really the best. I mean because between the line of traffic and the sideways rain (far and above my favorite type of bus duty precip), I'm really not sure which makes me want to win the lottery more. Well let's add the word derecho to bus duty...that will really get people going. It also inspired my new fashion statement. Behold the derecho bus duty uniform:


Because really when sideways rain comes....umbrellas no longer cut it. 



Saturday, June 8, 2013

Yard Work

The Before
(granted it was early spring when somethings really were looking their worst)
Yard work = Hard work. It doesn't help that the first weekend we finally had to do yard work was also the hottest weekend in Virginia so far. Not ideal. First of all, when we bought our house the landscaping wasn't horrible. There was something to go from, but about half of the stuff was dead. We also needed to make it look like a female graced the threshold of the place.

The After
We decided to do some transplanting to move all of the alive boxwoods to one side of the house along the foundation. Then we replaced the stuff we moved and all the dead stuff with some holly bushes and a dwarf spruce tree. I potted some flowers as well. Sounds somewhat simple, right? Not so much. Virginia, I hate your drivers and your unpredictable traffic, but your stupid red clay soil...is that really necessary? And then there are big boulders in the middle of all that red clay. So so so ridiculous. There is no doubt in my mind we were a site to see. It was a struggle. I have never been so happy to be done with something in my life. I do have to say it looks better in my opinion.

The transplanted boxwoods
Some of the pots
New holly bushes and dwarf spruce tree

Side of the house
The other thing you have to consider when you live in a townhouse...where to put all this dirt you just moved. And all that clay and mulch was heavy. We went to a dirt composting place that ironically doesn't take dirt. After I realized the guy wasn't joking I begged him to let us drop off our two cars full of dirt just this one time...he caved. Blog readers, I tell you it better only have to be this one time because I cannot dig a hole one more time. Ever. Again.

After