Snowfree Weekend!

So we did some fun stuff yesterday and will fill everyone in on that once we upload pics. Basically, we were just excited to have a weekend where it was above freezing (well without the windchill at least) and not snowing so we went in to the city for the afternoon. Last night we had a ping pong and foosball tournament. Ryan won ping pong, and I won foosball. I think he thought he would win ping pong again so he challenged me again today after we finished cleaning the apartment, but he was WRONG! I imagine there will be a tie breaker match some time this week.

For now, to summarize our winter so far I leave you with a few funny/entertaining items. Don't take the stats one too seriously, I just thought it was humorous (particularly the # of animals that escaped the zoo due to the snow storm!)...I have no idea how accurate it is. I got from here on the WP. The other is a video from the most recent blizzard. It's really short, but I think it takes watching it 2 or 3 times before you really capture how cool it is. If Ryan had a remote time-lapse contraption for his camera (I don't know the real name) we definitely could have done this! There are several other videos on youtube that are time-lapses and they all show just how crazy the snowfall was.

Oh and if anyone needs us to house sit a house in The Keys, California, Hawaii...you get the point...we are at your service!

Miss everyone!

Steph & Ryan


Click to enlarge the picture

Waxed Cheese & Cafe Salsa

Just a quick update. We finished waxing the cheese earlier this week and it is now aging in the fridge. Click HERE for pictures. We are going to head to Old Town Alexandria tonight to have dinner at a restaurant we went to last summer and loved - Cafe Salsa. Enjoy your weekends!

What happens when you lock us up for a week....

So DC in general does not handle being locked up due to the snow--a bunch of Type A workaholics get very cranky when this happens. Ryan and I learned that we were no exception to this and apparently fit right in this city. Neither of us has ever been so happy go to work as we were on Friday after having not been there since the previous Thursday. So on Wednesday to pass the time we made cheddar cheese. Click HERE to see pictures--captions describe the steps. It was more complicated than the feta because we had to press it. We used a large tower of my textbooks to do this and they kept falling over as the cheese would sink in certain spots. It would have been entertaining to be a fly on our walls because we would just sit there staring at the Leaning Tower of Public Health Books trying to decide if it was leaning. As soon as we thought it was alright we would walk away they would come crashing down! We are going to cover it in red cheese wax tomorrow and then let it age in the refrigerator for many months. We are so excited to taste it, and I hope we have the patience to wait for it to age.

That brings us to today. Neither of us are big Valentine's Day people, but we decided that it was a good excuse to at least make a nice dinner. So we experimented with something new--butternut squash lasagna (picture below). It was delicious!

Snoverkill (Snow + Overkill)

We are still here and haven't killed each other yet (jk), but are very stir crazy. GW is already canceled tomorrow which is the 4th day this week and my last day of classes for the week. Ryan is at most going in late but might be canceled as well. I'm hoping that it at least won't be snowing tomorrow even if we are stuck here so we can go outside and get some fresh air. The majority of today was whiteout conditions so we just stayed inside. I can't promise there will be any pictures of "Snoverkill" because we are pretty fed up with it and have run out of things to take pictures of. To pass the time we starting making cheddar cheese as our second cheese. It is being pressed right now. We took pictures and will post those sometime this week once the pressing is done. After it is pressed, it has to air dry for 3-5days and then we get to wax it with the pretty red cheese wax! :) Then we have to say goodbye to it for a minimum of 2 months and probably more like 6 months while it ages.

So this past Sunday Ryan woke up early to go take some sunrise pics. The day after a snow fall is always so pretty and we have had gorgeous blue skies every time. Once he came back I was ready to go out so we put on some ski pants (thanks, mom & dad for getting them out of the attic for us!) and went to the public park up the street. We spent a good two hours building our snowman! The snow was so high that we probably each fell down a good 50times so we were sore after the adventure, but it was a good and fun sore! Our snowman is pretty plump (and kind of feminine) but our neighborhood seemed to enjoy him. We had people tell us he was awesome and secretly watched other people take pictures of him (we were so proud!). So here are the pictures from the rest of the weekend's "Snowmaggedon" storm.



Wish us luck--there's more snow in the forecast for next week! Hope everyone else is staying warm and doing well!

"Snowmaggedon" DC 2010

So I'm ready for a vacation to the Keys or Hawaii but since that clearly isn't happening, we are embracing the snow for umpteenth time is this "bizarre" DC winter (or so they say). The skies cleared and snow stopped this afternoon just in time for a pretty sunset so we packed the camera up and ran outside. We didn't have time to make it very far before the sun set so the pics are of stuff most of you have seen before but they show the snow. We estimate it to be 2+ feet around here. It came up to my thighs and even then I think I was standing on packed snow. It is a wetter/heavier snow than the last blizzard or like the news channel likes to call it "heart attack snow" because it is so heavy to shovel. The snow was coming down fast and furiously for a good 24hrs and we enjoyed laughing at the SUVs who thought they could drive on it spinning their wheels from inside the apartment. The snow plows are out in full force now, but they haven't reached the asphalt yet. Ok, that's about it. We may venture to the city tomorrow and will update more pics if we do. Until then you can enjoy today's by clicking here. The pictures of the bird prints are from the "warm-up" snow fall last weekend--when does spring come???? Looking forward to the Cherry Blossom Festival!

-Steph