Two Years

First I would like to take a moment and say *happy anniversary* to my beloved squeeze! Yesterday marked two glorious years of having this goofy wonderful guy in my life, thank you for being you!

**Things I've learned about DC: It's beautiful here, the architecture is such that I can't even wrap my head around it. Everything is massive! The buildings aren't just big, they're practically continents. And even the things that aren't buildings are enormous, I mean, just look at the Washington Monument and its lawn. We realized that since all these stone and concrete constructions are several blocks long, that all of the attractions are several blocks away from each other.**

Walking is no joke in DC. We did master the metro which helped significantly, but boy are we beat. We had so much fun though, there are so many things to see here! First stop was the National Museum of Natural History.

OBVIOUSLY we had to find the dinosaur section, and it was a necessity for me to take a hundred photos in this section alone.

We came across a small ancient Egyptian section which had actual.real.mummies on display. I love Egyptian history, I wish this section had been larger!

Love was in the air in the insect sanctuary.

We had to make a visit to the Air and Space Museum, I basically just followed the squeeze around while he geeked out and constantly bombarded me with Space Shuttle facts.

We ended the night with a stop at a Hard Rock Cafe for dinner, on the way we spotted the famous Ford's Theatre. Our bartender told us it's still an active theatre, he said they show A Christmas Carol here during the holidays. I'm not sure if I'm superstitious or not, but I don't know if I'd see a play here... Checkout is noon, off to Raleigh!

Lift Off

The squeeze's dad has a theory, he calls it the rock wall theory (or sheet rock, I can't remember because I'm typing this at 2am). Basically the claim is that if you believe something only takes X amount of time, you should probably double it to be realistic. I think a rock wall was once being built and a situation occurred, leading to the creation of this theory. We should have listened. The photo of the marina was taken Sunday night, the day before we were supposed to leave. Both my and the squeeze's family gathered together for one last dinner by the water, it was beautiful out and we filled our bellies with lots of good food.

Unfortunately when we returned home we realized we had a tremendous amount of work ahead of us, much more than we realized. After hours of packing we dragged our lifeless bodies to bed and decided it was not the end of the world if we left Tuesday instead. This worked out in our favor as it gave us an extra day to tie up several loose ends.

I even made it out to Beans one last time!

It was a good thing we hung around an extra day because Molly brought us a going away present. Lucky us. Looks like there won't be any Easter Bunny next year...

When we did finally manage to get our lives together, Tuesday morning we said a (very, very, very) tearful goodbye to the squeeze's rents and my family. Our first stop was New Jersey, the squeeze's cousin and his adorable family welcomed us into their home for a night, thank you Vicky, Devin, and little Jory!

DC was next on our list, but we got hit with a terrible bout of traffic in Baltimore so we didn't arrive in the nation's capital until nearly 6pm. Not quite late enough to stay in, but definitely not early enough to to try and tackle lots of sight seeing. We tried anyway though, spotting the Capitol Building, the White House (which was a lot smaller than I imagined), the Eisenhower Executive Office Building (which is monstrous BTW and towered over the White House), the Lincoln Memorial, and the Washington Monument. We are planning on visiting the zoo and the Smithsonian tomorrow (today?) so we tried to soak in all the monuments now, which was great because we saw everything we wanted but terrible because we are both exhausted. Our comfy hotel bed is calling my name!

Palaces

I have been fortunate to travel outside the country once more since moving to the states. When I was 16 my sister got married and we flew to Ukraine to celebrate. I hadn't been back since coming to Maine at four years old, so it was exciting to see the type of culture and lifestyle my family came from. It was quite a trip to see such a different environment, from the rusty Soviet cars to the industrial apartment complexes. 

We were in Odessa for nearly a month, but had planned a trip to Moscow half-way through our stay. We traveled by train that took 24 hours (yes, 24 hours) to arrive at our destination. Being on a rickety, and sometimes violently shaky, train was definitely not my idea of a good time. We crossed the border of Russia at some crazy hour in the morning and border patrol had to board the train and check all of our visas and passports. If you didn't already know, Russia is very particular about visas.

Eventually we arrived in Moscow and got settled into our hotel. One of the first sites we made our way to was the Red Square, there I got to see the picturesque St. Basil's Cathedral. And yes, it's just as beautiful up close as it is in photos! While we were in the Red Square we also checked out the Lenin Mausoleum, quite gruesome if you ask me. We weren't allowed to really linger and take in the view of Lenin's waxy corpse because the men armed with guns in each corner ushered us along. 

But then again, this was Russia.

Evil Combs

I'm not sure what was happening here. Pig didn't take too kindly to the comb I was using. Cats are strange beings like that.

Today it's been relatively slow moving at work. There's a lot of downtime so my mind is all over the place. Currently I'm reaching out to all of my friends who have moved out of state, I'm picking their brains apart as to how they got where they did and by what means. Truck, trailer, shippers, everything crammed in one car in the back seat? I've heard it all so far. Some people found jobs and apartments before arriving at their destination, others found something after they crossed the state line. Some shipped their belongings there, and others crammed their life into their car.

So many options and alternatives. It's rather overwhelming to say the least.

Pig will unfortunately have to stay in Maine while we make our way down. This makes me extremely sad and I hate thinking about it. I know cats are aware. but I always wonder if they understand the entirety of what's going on around them.

So many things to plan.