It's been a while

It's been a while since I made a blog post. Not a whole lot has happened.

Somebody at work mentioned that they once had an intestinal blockage and it hurt like crap too, so my crazy abdominal pain could have been some form of constipation. That was something the folks at the hospital suggested. I've gotten pretty good at figuring out when I need to take what medication to handle nausea/constipation/diarrhea so I was a bit doubtful as I was pretty sure I was still in the "OK" zone at the time, but maybe. It hasn't come back so I don't care anymore really.

This was a pretty normal week of work. There was a conference this week and some visiting guys who we spent quite a bit of time talking to. I really didn't accomplish much of anything all week long, but I was physically present at the minimum. It was really hard to get things rolling again, having not been in to the office for three weeks. I never really did, but perhaps a little.

Friday night Emily and I went into DC to the Warner Theater to see PJ Harvey and John Parish in concert. We had never been to the Warner Theater, and I had never really listened to PJ Harvey (though Emily is extremely fond of her music). The venue was amazingly nice, and the concert was a pretty good as well, though a bit loud (as all music is nowadays for some reason) and I didn't really care for the way the music was mixed. I think it was largely on purpose to fit the style of music, but everything was very "harsh". The drummer was a basher, and the bass was mixed with absolutely no treble. Still though, there was a good bit of sonic diversity and I enjoyed it. My favorite song of the night was actually the first encore and was a John Parish song, called False Fire. That's probably because it was basically a two-step and I seem to love all two-steps. Also I rather enjoyed a song called "16 15 14".

Before the concert we ate at Chef Geoff's Downtown, which was recommended by Dave at work. It was literally across the street from the theater, which was pretty cool. It was a very good recommendation. The food was absolutely excellent, and very well proportioned too. I was glad to get a meal that I could actually finish. And it was prepared extremely well with what was surely extremely fresh ingredients. I had a Madras curry chicken which had some neat couscous contraption next to it. Emily had a salmon with a Caribbean-style salsa and sweet potato fries. It was all good.

Today we are going up to PA to visit one of Emily's coworkers for a party. It should be entertaining. We're going to stop at REI on the way up and waste some more money ;) I want some more "base layer" undershirts. I have one white one from them and it is amazingly comfortable in the summer sun.

It's been raining all week pretty much, so we haven't spent too much time on our new deck. But last weekend we did grill out on Sunday with Trevor. And we got a hammock which is up there now. I've fallen asleep in it once and Emily has used it a couple of times too. This weekend is supposed to be nice and sunny, so we hope to get some more hammock time in tomorrow.

Here are some deck pictures:




As you can see we have a grill already! (We got it the day after it was finished). No pictures of the hammock, but it's nice. Also, you almost can't tell we live in a city with all those trees around.