Tuesday, July 15, 2014

Busy, Busy

Oh my, have we been busy. We went to the Canada Cup and the day after I got home I took off on a trip for work. I went to Alexandria, Va again just across the river from Washington DC.

Canada Cup was another awesome agility weekend.  The weather was perfect; in fact it was quite chilly on Friday morning. I was nervous on our first run thinking maybe we weren`t up to the competition but Beckett did great. We have to work on tighter turns and I need to get fitter, as I`m sure that if I could run faster Beckett would run faster.  Beckett and I didn`t make any finals, we missed out by just 1.7 seconds for Steeplechase and were quite close in Grand Prix. The competition is very tough as even clean runs didn`t put us in the top 10. Keltic did fine too. He needs more work to understand the crosses and turns; we also need to work on his jumping skills too. And I need to remember the courses, poor Keltic, on his way to a clean run and I forget the course. I drove back from Guelph on Sunday night. I kind of hoped I could make it all the way but it was just too far and I had to stop for the night in Kingston which is about 2 and half hours away from home.



After getting home on Monday morning, I unpacked the car, did laundry and repacked for my trip to Washington. I also packed up the dog`s things as they  would be staying at my sister`s place. That evening, I went to dinner at my sister`s place as our aunt was visiting from England. That made things easier as I brought the dogs with me to dinner so the next morning I was able to get up and go straight to the airport.

I arrived in Alexandria at about 9:30 am, I was able to check in early at the hotel and as a result got to the meeting location just as they were breaking for lunch. It was hot and muggy most of the week. I had only brought one pair of shorts and one pair of capris. I went out shopping while I was there and was lucky enough to find four pairs of shorts at the Gap Outlet store and, a bonus, everything was on sale. Our meetings ended earlier than expected so we had a day to see the sights in Washington before flying home Friday evening.

Old Town waterfront

Chart House restaurant, the blue building.
We went out to dinner on Wednesday night to the Chart House restaurant which is right down on the water front. It was a tad pricey but the food was excellent. Afterwards while waiting for the trolley we saw this man playing wine glasses filled with water.



I did get a chance to see some of DC again.  Right near our hotel was the George Washington Masonic Memorial. Unfortunately, it's only open from 10 am to 4 pm so I didn't get the chance to go inside. We did go to the Holocaust Museum (very sobering) and walked the National Mall. We tried to go up the Washington Monument but same day tickets mean lining up at 7:30 am so we really missed out on those. Most tickets are booked online months in advance.

George Washington Masonic Memorial

The White House - front view

Washington Monument

Now that I`m home I`m dealing with all kinds of things that need to be done before I head done east for Nationals and on vacation. The air conditioner needs to be serviced, it's not working right. I need to get into the bank to sign my new mortgage. Still trying to get quotes to have a new sun room built, I've been trying since May. I have one quote and one ball park estimate that are miles apart so I guess I'll need a third quote so probably won't see construction this fall. And to top that off, my computer crashed and was repaired but it didn't seem to help much. I'm working mostly off my laptop and tablet, the computer is just so slow.

Can't wait for Nationals and my vacation, I so need the time off.