The National Zoo

May 26, 2012  (Memorial Day Weekend)

I opted to go to the zoo to take some pictures of the animals.  I thought this would be a great idea as i had just bought a couple of new lenses and needed to use them.  I had however, previously been warned that there are no animals at the zoo.  What this person meant, is not that there are literally no animals at the zoo, but rather there are no animals you can actually see at the zoo. 

I found this to be true on two accounts.  One, the zoo was so darn crowded you couldnt get close enough to the barriers to actually see the animals.  And secondly, the animals like to stay hidden in their habitats during the day. 

Had I of fully understood this I might would have chosen a different day and time to go.  Maybe like November when its not too hot to be outside, and maybe DC is not packed with summer time vacationers.   I also would have picked a different pair of shoes.  For some reason I thought it would be a good idea to wear a brand new pair of keen sandals on this day.  I might have failed to mention there is a ton of walking one must do at the zoo.  I love the keen sandals now, and wear them all the time but that particular day they rubbed blisters on my feet since i had not yet broke them in. 

The Pandas were inside, tThe nice part about that is A/C  the down side to that is it was super crowded in there and getting close to the glass to take a picture ended up being quite a waiting game.   

I thought this little duck was pretty cute just strutting it stuff. 

These little pictures do not do justice for the full size photos, but i liked how this one turned out in full screen. 

Peacocking!

This picture is just freaky to me.  Those gray eyes sort of give me the creeps.  This is also an anaconda so it is a huge snake. 

This was one of the few animals that was actually out moving around his environment.  I think he felt threated as he was out marking his territory. 

Although she just sat there quietly, im pretty sure I would not want to stumble up on her in the wild. 

I guess it wasnt really that bad, i did get a few photos of animals at the zoo that I liked. 

My first real outing.

So my first week up here was spent driving around to every wal-mart in the area.....there is nothing super about the supercenters up here. I also made a few trips to the Home Depot, as well as the cable company. As exciting as those places were, that is not what I had in mind when I was thinking DC might be a cool place to live.

So the second weekend I was up here, I went out for my first real outing. A walk around Washington DC. What could possibly be more exciting than walking around DC. For the record, springtime in DC means beautiful cool weather. Being from Texas I am used to hot muggy springs, but this was not the case.

To be honest, I was pretty excited about seeing all I could see, and snapping photos of everything. I have this fascination with seeing things live that I have seen on TV, and who hasnt seen DC on TV.

Here is a photo hike, of where I went. I didnt go into most of the places and i just walked around the Mall to get a feel for the area. I hope to provide future posts that are more specific to the individual places.





The Library of Congress

(Well one of the buildings anyway)

The U.S. Supreme Court

The U.S. Capital

The National Archives

J. Edgar Hoover FBI

Thhe White House

(the water is green because it was St. Patricks Day)

Vietnam War Memorial

The White House

(from Pennsylvania Ave)

The U.S. Treausry Department

The Washington Monument

The World War II Memorial

Korean War Memorial

The Lincoln Memorial

From the Beginning

Many of you know I opted to transfer from my previous employment in Texas (Gods Country) to a new position in Washington DC. The thought of leaving my friends and family and move 1400+ miles away was a bit overwhelming, but I with the relocation package I was offered and only a one year commitment, I thought what the heck. So come March 6, 2012 I climbed on a Southwest Plane at 6:00a.m. to venture to my new house in Virginia.

To give some history, the agency paid for me to come on a house hunting trip. So January 23-26 My mother and I flew up to Northern Virginia (NOVA) to a suburb of Fairfax VA, called Fair Lakes. Having spent many hours looking at google maps to determine where the Wal-Mart was, so I could be close, I felt Fair Lakes would be my home base for my DC Adventures. Well I was wrong! I felt like I was on house hunters as my realtor drove me from place to place that day. All of the places we looked at were townhouses, which the condition of varied greatly. We started at the one furtherst out. This was the one I had my heart set on, simply based on the online pictures. Unfortunately we never actually got to see the inside, the realtor before us didnt put the key back in the lockbox.

The second place we looked at was a four story townhouse. It was nice, but lets be honest, its one thing when movers are moving you in and they have to carry it up the stairs, its another thing when you know you will eventually move out, and you will have to haul that stuff out yourself. So that one got crossed off the list.

The next two townhouses were of the older variety. One we had to tip toe through because the baby wa asleep upstairs. It didnt really matter much, after walking in, I had that gut feeling this would not be my home. The two townhouses actually had the same basic floorplan which offered one very convenient feature. You would not have to get up from the toilet to wash your hands, in fact im not sure you could have actually gotten up from the toilet to wash your hands and had room to stand between the sink and toilet.

We continued to drive around looking at places, and finally it hit me. You dont go anywhere here without sitting in traffic. So this profound epiphany made me realize I didnt want to be in Fair Lakes, its six miles to the closest metro station and that would be 30 minutes in Traffic. Lucky for me Nikki, my realtor and chauffer for the day, had picked out a couple of places that were 1000ft from a metro station.

When I had looked on my own I thought I couldnt afford a place close to the metro because they are far more expensive. I learned however, that if you have to drive to the metro you have to pay for parking. This can be anywhere from $100-200 per month, and the rent was actually less than that.

So with all of that said, I opted for this joint. Its a two bedroom townhouse style condo. Its actually slightly larger than my house in Houston, as is the monthly rent. I have the bottom two floors, and then I have a neighbor above me.....that walks really hard.....and stomps down the stairs......at odd hours of the night.