Wednesday, May 31, 2006

Would you say I have a plethora of pictures, Jefe?

Some of you are going to be disappointed, so let me say this up front: I don't have any pictures ready. For those of you still reading, I have a very good excuse for not having them ready. There are just too many! I have about 400+ from Cort's wedding, another 400 or so from Justin and Kate's wedding, as well as another 200 or so from a hiking trip, plus another 500 or so from a whirlwind tour of Washington D.C. I'm guessing I have close to 1,500 pics to go through, and since I insist on shooting RAW, it means going through every single one of them before I can post them. Right now, Cort and Emily's pictures will be up first, followed by Kate and Justin's.

That being said, the last few weeks have been a blast. It was good seeing family again, especially my 3 adorable nieces. I already miss them terribly. The wedding went off rather well, and my only regret was that the wedding was my last night there as I had to say alot of goodbyes on a rather fun night. The following weekend was Justin and Kate's wedding which was also a blast. Anytime our gang gets together to party is a good time, and a wedding just sends us to the stratosphere of enjoyment. My favorite quote of the night: "It's your birthday! I told you I work!" The next morning I picked up Josh at the airport and we immediately started our road trip to D.C.

Our trip was a whirlwind tour of 4 days since we had to spend about 8 hours of driving each way. On Sunday morning we signed up for a bus tour to maximize our time. We're waiting in front of the Hojo and this 80's Dodge Ram van pulls up. The driver asks us if we're there for the tour. I timidly said "yes" hoping he was taking us to the tour bus. After picking up 3 other passengers (Australians on vacation), we realized he WAS the tour, complete with microphone he plugged into the lighter on the dash. As nervous as this made me, it turned out the guy really knew his stuff and took us to every highlight of the city and gave us plenty of time to get out and walk around each monument and attraction. He had it timed rather well, and even got us to Arlington at the exact time they changed the guard at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. We started rather early, so I got pics of some monuments like the Lincoln Memorial and the Vietnam wall without any other tourists to clutter up pictures. He had the tour done by 3, but we weren't done so he left us in the city and told us how to get to the subway back to the hotel. We were so impressed we tipped him $20. We spent the rest of the afternoon in the Air & Space museum. The next day we took a tour of the Capitol building and the Library of Congress. We decided to cut our trip short at that point and head back to Boston so we could relax a bit on Tuesday. We were headed north and when we go to the NJ turnpike the traffic was so clogged we decided to take a slight detour through Philadelphia, which turned out to be a fun distraction compared to driving through boring NJ. We spent the next day at Fenway, starting with lunch at the Beer Works, then taking the tour of Fenway Park. They started batting practice as we were finishing up our view from the Green Monster. We then headed back to the Beer Works for more beer until they opened the park. We then watched the rest of batting practice, and of course the game against the Yankees. (We lost! grrr) There's nothing quite like guys spending the whole day watching baseball and drinking beer.

This last weekend was the weekend the Cali's made their move back to upstate New York. I was sad to see them go, but we did get to celebrate Jeremy finishing law school. I'm still amazed he managed to finish while working a very low paying job and taking care of his family. I spent Sunday and Monday down in RI for BBQ's and such. I would have enjoyed it more, but I think the last few weeks finally caught up with me and I ended up with a cold that's been going around. Tuesday was spent almost entirely in bed. Today I'm feeling better but I'm looking forward to another nap.

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