A Short Trip to Tucson, Arizona

Last Saturday we took a long weekend trip to Tucson. See some photos here. I got to see lots of friends and Cayne got to see the desert for the first time. The desert was beautiful - very green and almost all the cacti were in bloom...even the saguaros were starting to blossom! We also got to eat lots of delicious Mexican food and enjoy the warm weather and sunshine. The trip definitely was not long enough but I'm pretty sure Cayne liked it enough to go back many, many more times. Some of the things we did include : Sabino Canyon, The Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum, Saguaro National Park (East and West sides), San Xavier del Bac Mission, The University of Arizona, and we drove past the Pima Air and Space Museum and the Boneyard. We also did lots of drives through the desert! I had fun showing Cayne as many sites as possible in the 3 and a half days we had and we both had fun getting to see (or meet) old friends at Anne Cione's house! The only inconvenience was that our flight home was delayed in Dallas, meaning we didn't get home until 1:30 in the morning.

Biometrics

Cayne had his biometrics (fingerprinting) appointment as part of the visa process on Saturday - it was quite an adventure to get out there! The government chose to put the DC area UCSIS application support office (the only one we could go to) for fingerprinting in a location that is not easily accessible by public transportation. Maybe that's not fair...it is accessible by public transportation but took us about 2 hours via metro and bus to get there from Dupont Circle - it was about a 45 minute bus ride to the office from the nearest metro station in Virginia. We got there a little early, which was good because we waited about an hour until they could take his fingerprints. Granted, once they called his number, it only took about 10 minutes to be finished and we were on our way back to DC. Hopefully, Cayne will get his US work permit in a couple of months.

Actually, instead of going straight home after the fingerprinting, we went all the way back out to Rockville to actually tour the Fenestra apartments. We liked them (and all the extra space - about 200 more square feet for $200 less than we currently pay) but figure we should look at a few others before making a decision about what to do.

Rockville

As Betsey mentioned earlier we took a trip to Rockville last weekend. I decided it was the perfect opportunity to play with the GPS functionality in my iPhone.


GPS tracking powered by InstaMapper.com

I enjoyed the GPS tracking, but not the drain on my iPhone battery. After a 3 hour trip my iPhone was almost dead, from a full recharge. Note to developers: BUFFER THE INFORMATION AND THEN SEND IT.

In other news, look what I got with my Chinese a couple of nights ago.


Well duh!

Happy Easter

This weekend, Cayne and I took some time to try to plan for the future while still relaxing and having fun. Cayne spent most of the day on the rainy Saturday teaching himself new web design techniques too keep up with the changing world of mobile web sites. He's even attending Stanford this semester...via podcasts of an iPhone application building course. Check out the site he made for Pukeko Software.

While Cayne was busy doing that, I made Easter sugar cookies (bunnies and chicks) and tried to finish updating our keepsake wedding album. We're still trying to figure out what to do with getting all those photos online in one place!

Today, I had fun showing Cayne Peepshow III - The Washington Post's diorama contest using Peeps! Check out the finalists on the slide show - the "artists" are so clever! Those of you who are not in the US may not get all the pop culture references but they should be fun to look at nonetheless.

We also ventured out to Rockville for the first time. We've been considering trying to find a larger apartment and larger apartments in Dupont are so pricey! We walked around the Rockville Town Square... most things were closed for Easter but it was was cute area with very little traffic and easy accessibility to the metro. Unfortunately, the leasing office for the apartments there were closed (we should have known better than to go on Easter) but since neither of us experienced a gag reflex at the area (we both thought we would), we'll definitely head back when they are open to check out some apartments. Of course, that would mean being tied into a year lease, possibly the need for a car, and all sorts of considerations. So we have some tough decisions to make! Good thing we have those sugar cookies...

Peak Bloom at the Cherry Blossom Festival

Today Cayne and I took the metro to Arlington National Cemetery and hiked up to Arlington House (the Robert E. Lee Memorial). From there we had amazing views of the National Mall and the cherry blossoms along the Potomac and the Tidal Basin.

Then, we hiked back down the hill and across the Arlington Memorial Bridge to see the pink-clouded cherry trees at the Tidal Basin. We're at the end of the Peak Bloom Period for the Cherry Blossom Festival. Things looked very different than they did 2 weeks ago when there were hardly any people around and the trees only had buds (no blossoms). It was beautiful!

We found a nice spot away from the crowds at the Constitution Gardens Lake to relax and enjoy our sushi lunch before heading home. In all, we walked about 6 miles.

A Lazy Saturday Walk To Georgetown

We have been taking advantage of the spring weather by exploring our neighborhood (on foot). Trees and flowers have been blooming daily. Today we walked to Georgetown so that I could finally get my new driver's license with my married name - gotta love the DMV (at least they are open on Saturdays and an easy walk away)! We stopped by the Old Stone House (yes, we got our NPS passport stamp) on our way home. We discovered that Cayne is almost as tall as Thomas Jefferson was and I'm about as tall as the average male was in the 1800s.

Betsey at Old Stone House garden,
originally uploaded by Cayne Wagener.

We got exciting news in the mail today: Cayne has an appointment for the biometrics (fingerprinting) part of his visa application. I'm happy that this aspect of the application has moved so quickly. Now we'll just keep our fingers crossed that the rest of it goes smoothly!