Dave in the rain

Yesterday we went to the concert of one of Jeremy's favorite bands - the Dave Matthews Band. It was my first real concert experience (unless you count John Farnham when I was 12 and Human Nature when I was 14) and it was so much fun!

We got to the concert venue early for a long-standing American tradition - tailgating. Tailgating is essentially drinking beer and grilling burgers and hotdogs out of the trunk of your car. Although it's not exactly legal to drink beer in parking lots, we got around it by drinking it out of plastic blue cups. Woo! High class right there! So anyway, we got to the Nissan Pavilion at about 3:30pm, ready for a fun afternoon with friends. We met up with some friends of Jeremy's - Bill and Kathleen (Bill works for the SS), and Keith (who works with Jeremy at CACI). One of the great things about tailgating is that everyone's there to have fun, and so you end up meeting so many random people that by the time the concert actually starts you have a dozen new friends when you started out with just three. By the time the concert began, I had become old friends of Gina and Jason (Jason's like a savant when it comes to numbers), Jill and Brandon (who have an adorable 1 and a half year old son), Josh and his girlfriend (Josh was the reigning champion of all beer games), and some guy in a blue checked shirt. After a long afternoon of beer and chips and hotdogs, and after staking out a prime viewing position on the lawn, much to our dismay it starts bucketing down rain. And I mean buckets and buckets and buckets. It was ridiculously wet and I was ridiculously cold. Luckily Jeremy and I had bought some stylish ponchos ($1.29 at Sports Authority) that actually kept us pretty dry. Good thing too, because I was wearing a white tank top, and everyone knows what happens when a white shirt gets wet! Still, I somehow managed to come home covered in mud (probably due to the mud-slide that some crazy kids beside us had made) and scratches (at one stage I was in the bushes - don't ask!).

Rain, mud and scratches aside, it was a great night. I had so much fun even though I didn't know any of the songs they played bar one, and seeing Jeremy so excited was priceless. We met some great people, drank a lot of Budweiser, and went home soaked and covered in mud. What a great night!!


Kathleen and I


Jill, Kathleen, Gina and me


Kathleen and Bill


Awww...we're so goodlooking!


Bill and Jeremy


And I'm posting this much to Jeremy's disgust because I think it's hilarious.

On a completely unrelated note, yesterday (Sunday) saw even more torrential downpours. The rain was so bad that roads were flooded all around the DC area. It took me 6 hours to get home from Jeremy's place! The highway I usually take home had been cut off by a huge mudslide (they reported as much as 5 feet of debris), so I was sitting in traffic that was dead still for hours. To make matters even worse, I had turned off the car and once traffic started moving again it wouldn't start. So here I am, at 10 o'clock at night, in the middle of the highway with a dead car! It was pretty terrible. What really made me mad was the fact that absolutely no-one stopped to help me. It's not as though people were actually going anywhere - traffic was crawling along - and yet people just went around me, gave me dirty looks, and continued on their way! Finally, a knight in shining armor (well, he was actually in a U-Haul rental truck) stopped and pushed my car off onto the shoulder. Much to my disgust, once I was out of the way I tried to start the car again and, what do you know? It started right up. So I was back in action. Not that it really did me any good to be moving again - we went about a mile and then were dead stopped again. Finally, (I'm talking about 3 hours later) I made it up to the site of the slide, when I was re-directed onto the other side of the highway going back in the direction from which I had just come!!! It just keeps getting worse...wait for it! So I figured I could go back to another highway that I knew would get me home and just take that route. So I'm driving along, through DC, in rain so heavy I was going a mere 20 miles an hour on the highway and I still couldn't see a thing. And then, to my utter dismay, the highway I was on was closed as well!! So we were re-directed yet again, except this time I was put onto some road I didn't know and had no real clue how to get home. So I just kept on driving, hoping to see a sign pointing me in the right direction. Finally I came upon a state highway that I knew, and managed to find my way slowly-but-surely back home. By this stage I'm utterly exhausted (especially after our big night out on Saturday), and can't wait to crawl into bed. Poor me! I got to bed at 3am. Good thing it's still rainy out today, so I can just laze around the house and not do a whole lot of anything.

If only I could've sent the rain your way! Then everyone would have been much much happier!

Summer fun

So I get home from Jeremy's on Monday, and I discover that Bob & Marianne have bought this giant inflatable water slide. Why, I'm not entirely sure, but it's fun anyway! Here's some pics...

The girls sliding down


Making their way out


Carina looking so cute and innocent (don't let that fool you!)


Marisa getting ready to launch


Me at the top with the kids


Me looking oh-so-beautiful!


Me looking fancy again with the kids.

Crabs and Statistics!

Well, today is Monday and I only just got back to Bob & Marianne's. We had a great weekend...

Saturday was a nice, lazy day. Jeremy and I went to Sports Authority to pick me up - wait for it.... a tennis racket of all things!! He has a really nice tennis court at his new apartment complex, so we thought we'd go hit some balls. Then it was off to my new favorite place to eat, Chipotle for a tasty burrito. Mmmm...burritos! Hehe. After that we did some window shopping at some of the fancy schmancy stores by his new apartment. We went into this one store called Wylie Wagg to see if we could find anything for his puppies. It was such a snooty dog store - they had all sorts of fancy doggie treats (we got his puppies some doggie donuts, complete with icing and sprinkles!), as well as strollers for your dog and all those funny doggie outfits! Haha.

Then on Saturday night we went over to Eric and Shannon's house for a CRABFEAST! Woo!! Jeremy used to work with Eric when he was SS, so we've become good friends with them. They had ordered 3 dozen crabs, already cooked with yummy Old Bay seasoning on them (Old Bay is this spicy stuff they use a lot on seafood). So we spent the night cracking open crabs, drinking wine, and being eaten alive by mozzies! Jeremy wussed out after cutting his fingers on the crab shells, but I could've eaten them all night!! Once you get past all the intestines and lungs they're soooooo yummy! It was great fun!

Sunday morning I did a little studying, then we headed out to the tennis court for a friendly little fiance vs fiancee game. It was really nice out to start, but then it got unbearably hot!! It was 94 degrees (or for all you back home, about 34 Celcius), and humid! It was terrible! I think my game suffered because of it. Haha. Of course Jeremy beat me, but had it been cooler he would've got his butt kicked!! After spending about an hour in the excruciating heat, we cooled off in the complex pool - it was so nice to be able to actually get in some water that goes past my knees! Sunday night I made Jeremy a typical Aussie roast - we had roast beef with broccoli and cauliflower in white sauce, honey carrots and baked potatoes. It was pretty darn good, if I may say so myself!

Then today, I had my dreaded stats exam. Oh boy... It was sooooo hard! But I guess it's my own fault for not studying as much as I should have. I'm sure I'll pass, but I'm not sure by how much. Oh well. At least the class is done now! Goodbye and good riddance statistics!!

And that brings us up to now. It's still super hot out, so I'm just hanging out inside the nicely air-conditioned house with the kids. Later we'll probably fill up the pool and jump in. But for now I'm content to just sit and stew over how ridiculous stats are, and how much I wish I was back at home lying on the beach.

Time for something new

As some of you probably already know, I have been talking about a new nanny job that I would be starting in mid-September. The job was pretty much exactly what I wanted - afternoon hours only, close to home, and with decent pay. I had been all set with this new family - they had done a background check on me and we had spoken about getting together with the kids a few times before I started. Then, everything got turned upside down.

Although I had found this "perfect" job, I kept my profile up on Great AuPair. So last week I received an email from a man named Bob who was looking for a nanny for his three kids. I ignored the email, thinking I had already found a job. Then, a few days later, he called. After speaking with him, he invited me to go for an interview. I agreed, thinking "what the hell...I may as well keep my options open". So on Sunday I went for the interview, came home 2 and a half hours later, and today he called and offered me the job!

So now I will be working for Bob & Elizabeth Schmidt. They are separated, in the process of going through a divorce. Bob has a great new girlfriend named Janice, who I met on Sunday as well. I'll be looking after 3 kids - Caroline (14), Russell (11) and Will (7). Most of my time will be spent with Will, as he's the youngest and and the only one who actually needs care. I'll be working afternoons, with the occasional Saturday morning. The kids spend a week with their dad and then a week with their mum, so I'll be between two houses. The kids are great! They're all really into sports (ice hockey, baseball, soccer, tennis and more), and both Caroline and Russell are straight A students. Will is having a few problems with reading, so I'll be spending a lot of time helping him out (I'm used to that - I had to teach Carina & Marisa to read!). The job will basically consist of me shuttling the kids to and from sporting and other activities. They're members of the Belle Haven Country Club, so I'll get a nanny pass to there and will be able to take the kids there to swim, play golf and tennis. They also have season tickets to the ice-hockey team in DC (Capitals), and also to the baseball team (Redskins), so we'll be spending some time there. The pay is fantastic (for the work) - they offered me $375 a week, which is over double what I earn now for less than half the work!

I think that's about it in a nutshell. I'm so excited to start working for them!! They really are the nicest people I've met here - very friendly, and very loud, and they all get along great (even though they're in the process of a divorce). I'm excited that I will be able to work with kids for whom I can be more of a friend and a mentor, rather than just an authority figure. I think it will be a lot of fun working for them, and I can't wait!!

To keep you all informed

Well, I've finally decided to start a "blog" as a means of keeping everyone I love up to date with my not-so-exciting life. Hopefully this will eliminate the need for me to email everyone on a constant basis (something I'm notoriously bad at remembering to do), while providing a colorful-yet-informative way for me to keep in touch. Check back whenever you want, but I can pretty much guarantee I won't have much to post except for a weekly rambling. Feel free to pass on whatever you read to whomever you want - like I said, I'm not the most exciting person in the world so I'm sure there will be nothing too sensitive on here.

Oh, and Grandma & Grandpa, don't worry - these things are super easy to use! Yay for technology!