R.I.P. ROUS

When Josh got home from work last night, he noticed a nasty odor in the back yard. After some investigation with a flashlight, he discovered the giant possum had expired behind his windsurfer, which was propped against the back of the house. Being the decent guy that he is, Josh gave it a proper burial in the back yard and covered it with a rock -- not so much as a grave marker but to discourage other animals from trying to dig it back up.

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The Discovery Channel has a new blog called The Discovery Insider that promises to provide a behind-the-scenes look at what's going on at Discovery. The first post is an interview with one of the Executive Producers of LIFE, the new nature series that follows in the footsteps of PLANET EARTH, which premieres Sunday night.

What does this have to do with green renovations? Absolutely nothing. Just thought you might enjoy this new blog. No particular reason...

Although as an interesting side note, "pansy martini" is a perfect anagram for Naina P Mistry...

ROUS

I was working from home yesterday when something caught my eye in the back yard (which my office overlooks). It was a massive opossum trundling along the back fence! It walked right up to my neighbor's fluffy white cat, Romeo, who tends to hang out in our back yard. Romeo took one look at the 'possum -- which was about the same size as he is -- and hightailed it out of there. By the time I grabbed my camera and unlocked the door to the back porch, the (non-)Rodent Of Unusual Size had made its way into Romeo's yard -- just to add insult to injury, I'm sure -- but I did manage to snap a rather blurry photo with my crappy camera. (The gray, rainy weather didn't help much, either.)
The good news is that my dear husband bought me a fancy new digital camera for my birthday, so once I figure out how to use it, I should be able to post higher-quality photos here. If they still look bad, I'll have to accept the fact that I'm just a terrible photographer...

In other news, we finally gave our twice-postponed green renovation presentation at our neighborhood civic association meeting on Monday. The president had attended one of our open houses last fall and was impressed enough to ask us to put together a presentation for the January meeting in hopes that we might inspire some of our neighbors to green their homes as well. Unfortunately, a series of rather scary crimes in our otherwise very safe neighborhood led them to postpone it so the county police could come to the meeting and respond to questions.

That gave us a little more time to prepare, but when the February meeting rolled around, there was 3 feet of snow on the ground. Only a handful of people were willing to brave Snowmageddon to come to the meeting, and we discovered we didn't have the correct adaptor to connect my Mac laptop to the projector. We gave a brief talk for the hardy souls in attendance and agreed to give it another try at the March meeting.

This time we came prepared not only with a handout and the right adaptor, but with Steve W (our builder) and Marta (our architect) to help answer questions. The turnout was much better -- about 30-40 people -- and there were no further technical difficulties. After another talk by the local police -- this time on child safety & technology -- we showed some before & after photos and floor plans, and then briefly went over the green features of the house (with more photos, of course). We spent 15-20 minutes answering questions -- with help from Marta and Steve -- and the meeting was adjourned around 10 pm. Steve and Marta both acted like proud parents afterwards -- they said we did a great job with the presentation and were impressed with how much we had learned over the past couple years. They chatted with a few of our neighbors after the meeting, so maybe they'll get some new clients in exchange for giving up a Monday evening to sit through a 2-hour civic association meeting.

Believe it or not, the opossum made another appearance while I was sitting here typing, so I grabbed my NEW camera and snapped a couple photos. It is even more gray and rainy than yesterday, but the new camera has a much better zoom and deals better with low light. The critter is about the same distance from me as it was in the previous photo, so you can see the difference! Too bad he chose to hang out in the corner of our yard that's full of junk from our long-gone garage. It's not very pretty -- but then neither is the possum...
As for the snow, it still remains in spots where it had been plowed up into giant mountains -- particularly in parking lots -- but the last little bit disappeared from our yard on Thursday, and now the spring bulbs are starting to make an appearance. Sadly, that's not the end of the precipitation -- we've had several days of rain and more to come. The Potomac is so high that it has flooded its banks in several places. I hope we'll get to see the sun again soon!

Vegas Vacation

So, Josh and I were planning to take an exotic overseas vacation to celebrate my birthday last week, but we discovered that both of our passports expired in February. Rather than deal with the stress and expense of trying to renew them at the last minute, we decided to save that trip for Josh's birthday and planned a long weekend in Las Vegas instead.

We flew to Vegas on Saturday (Feb 20) and checked into the Bellagio. I had reserved the least expensive room, but since I mentioned it was my birthday when I made the reservation, they upgraded us to a "lake view" room. I have to say, that was probably the best view I've ever had from a hotel room.
Not only could we watch the fountain show from our room, but we could listen to the music through one of the hotel's TV channels. It was awesome!

My friends Ann and Esther both flew out from California with their husbands. I've known them both since 4th grade, so it meant a lot to me to be able to celebrate my birthday with them. We have another friend, Taleen, we've known since junior high who lives in Las Vegas, so we arranged to all meet up for dinner Saturday night. So, here's the whole gang (from left to right): Karl, Josh, Esther, Ethan, Zachary, Taleen, Naina, Ann, and Matt.
If anyone's still reading this blog who doesn't know who all these people are (or isn't in the photo), the couples are Naina & Josh, Esther & Karl, Ann & Matt, and Taleen & Ethan + Zachary. It was great fun to see everyone and have a mini-reunion with some of my oldest and dearest friends. (Here's Taleen, Esther, Naina, & Ann)
Oh, another nice birthday perk: soon after we checked into our room, a bellman knocked on our door and handed me a box of chocolate truffles as a gift from the casino. It turns out the Bellagio is home to the "World's Largest Chocolate Fountain," which Ann was equally excited to discover.
The hotel's conservatory was decorated for Chinese New Year. Apparently Las Vegas is a popular destination for Chinese tourists, so every hotel/casino was festooned with red lanterns, regardless of their theme.
It is the year of the tiger, so of course there was a large, animatronic tiger...
...and, of course, pandas!
Sunday afternoon, the four of us met for lunch and went off on a little shopping expedition. As you can see, the Venetian was similar decorated for the New Year.
Sunday night we had dinner at Olives restaurant in the Bellagio. They brought me a special birthday dessert.
And then we saw the Cirque du Soleil show 'O' with Ann & Matt. Sadly, I did not consider the consequences of seeing a 10 pm show in the Pacific time zone -- which meant it started at 1 am our time. I'm pretty sure I saw most of the show, but I did doze off a couple times...
Ann and Esther both flew home on Monday, so Josh and I decided to make good use of our rental car and drove out to the Hoover Dam that afternoon. It was clear and sunny, but cool and breezy. Not as warm as I would have liked, but at least there was no snow!
They are building a bridge to bypass the dam, which looked very dramatic in its unfinished state.
It's a LONG way down -- those little white things are trucks!
Here's a self-portrait with the dam in the background. I'd never been there before so I wasn't sure why a dam would be such a big tourist attraction, but in addition to being HUGE, it's actually got some nice art deco touches to it.
The dam also spans the border between Nevada and Arizona, which is in a different time zone -- and doesn't observe Daylight Saving Time -- so there are clocks at each end indicating the current time in that state.
Here's the view from the other side of the dam.
Monday night we had an early dinner at the Bellagio buffet -- which was quite spectacular and a pretty good bargain at $30/person. Afterwards, we spent a couple hours gambling -- which neither of us had really done so far -- and turned in for the night. I think I ended up losing about $50 playing video poker, and Josh won about $20 playing craps, so neither of us are high rollers. We had more fun hanging out with our friends.

We flew home on Tuesday and tried to transition back to the real world. Not so easy after being in Las Vegas!

Wednesday was my actual birthday, but it was a pretty busy day for me at work since I'd been out Monday and Tuesday. I wasn't really expecting anything to happen, but I did get suspicious when my boss called me into a last-minute meeting in the kitchen in the late afternoon. He even stopped by my desk to make sure I was coming. I told him I'd be right there as soon as I sent an email I was in the middle of, and then walked into the kitchen a couple minutes later to find him and my two co-workers seated at a table ready to go over our disaster preparedness plan. Yep, that's right. It wasn't a surprise party -- it was an actual meeting. Oh well...

Josh took me out to dinner when I got home from work, and then we went grocery shopping on the way home, since we didn't have any food in the house. Not much of a celebration, but when your birthday falls on a Wednesday, it's best to keep expectations low.

The weekend after my birthday help make up for all that. We went out to a nice dinner with our friends Scott & Paige on Saturday, and then my friend Margie showed up as a surprise guest for breakfast on Sunday, thanks to Josh. (We had already invited another mutual friend and her kids over for breakfast that morning, so it worked out nicely) Sunday afternoon Josh had to run a mysterious errand to shop for my birthday gift. After he returned, we had just settled in to watch the Olympics when I got a frantic call from my friend Elizabeth. She said her husband wasn't home and her daughter Lauren was throwing up and her son Patrick was crying (I could hear him in the background) and could I come over and help her out. I told her I'd be right over and relayed the story to Josh as I was grabbing my coat. I figured he'd want to stay and watch the hockey game, but he put on his coat and shoes and drove me over.

When we got there, Elizabeth answered the door with a smiling Patrick in her arms. He seemed to have recovered from whatever was bothering him, but Elizabeth pointed towards the kitchen and said Lauren was still throwing up back there. Right on cue, we heard Lauren giggling from that vicinity. We walked into the dining room, and there was Lauren, Jason, and Diana, all saying "surprise!" It turned out that Josh's mysterious errand was to pick up food from Lebanese Taverna for my surprise birthday dinner. Our friend Rob showed up soon after, and once the kids went to bed we all had a nice dinner together, followed by tasty homemade cupcakes, courtesy of Diana. All in all, a pretty good birthday celebration without too much fuss.