One thousand and Thirty. Thats about how many miles Laurie and I crossed this weekend.
Laurie and I in Apalachian Mountains of Southwest Virginia

Ok Ok.. we didn’t drive most of them (thank god!) but we did ride in a car at least for all of them. All the driving for the first event of the weekend was done by Laurie’s dad (with the exception of me driving down to southern MD to get to her parents house). Saturday morning we were off to almost the most south western part of Virginia, basically almost Tennessee, in the Appalachian Mtns. I was invited to come along to a Family reunion 4th of July weekend thing that Laurie’s Dad’s side of the family does every year. These are some down home country folk. This means of course 1. They’re extremely friendly. 2. Their closest neighbor is outside shouting distance (except maybe family) 3. Really really good and fattening food, and lots of it.

So it was a fun weekend of getting to know Laurie’s family better, as well as some really great views of the Virginia countryside, in the mountains. A big highlight for me was that Laurie and I were able to take a few really nice walks down some country roads. We seem to get out walking quite a bit, and its always nice to have some good scenery, and where her relatives live didn’t let us down. Come to think of it, the drive there and back, which Laurie was a bit apprehensive about, considering we were sitting in the backseat of her parents Explorer with her 13 year old sister, Kristin, really was pretty easy. We had enough to talk about, listen to, and watch on the portable DVD player to make the ride go by fairly quickly. It also helped on the way back, on Monday morning, that all of us, sans her father, slept for the first 3 hours of the trip back to southern Maryland.

Lastly I’d say the funniest thing to happen was an incident involving somebody else’s hash browns being eaten up, under the assumption that our own food had come out already. What made it funnier was that nobody else realized what had happened but us, and the classic “hand caught in the cookie jar” look that was given by the culprit as they realized that it wasn’t our food they were eating hash browns out of at the counter. I’m not going to say exactly who did this, I’ll just leave you to guess.

Second Part of the weekend:

Upon arriving back in southern Maryland, Laurie and I were 1st jealous that her parents were continuing to Ocean City, MD for most of the week, and we were both poor schleps who had to work, and 2nd we consoled ourselves by hanging out by the pool at the swim club her parents are a member of. After that was done we made the trek up to Baltimore to participate in the 4th of July festivities being held at Jason’s parent’s house. That was a fun time. I got some more pool time, all the crew was there, PLUS! Jay and Colleen made it down to Maryland for it, which was a surprise to me. So I got to see them for the first time in a long time, and they got to meet Laurie. The events of the day were first marked by me getting lost and going the wrong way on route 1, thus landing my self squarely in the worst part of Baltimore before I turned around and made my way back up to the slightly better part of Baltimore off Bel air road where Jason’s parents live. The next thing to note is of course the excellent BBQ pizza. Oh my god, when I get my own BBQ grill, I’m figuring out how to make this stuff. So good.

Lastly was of course what the 4th of July is all about. Fire and burning things, or blowing them up. To which we had a whole lot of incendiary devices that of course did not launch, since its illegal to use any fireworks that are “projectiles” within city limits. So we made due with the ground display burning and the shear macguyver like skills of Boehm and Sweeny binding together, normally dull ground fireworks into fun combinations that had everybody excited, and a little bit afraid of being burnt. Luckily, of course, there was a pool close by.