Archive for September, 2009

Labor Day Weekend

September 11th, 2009

We didn’t have any big plans for the labor day weekend but we ended up having a pretty good weekend. To start off the weekend Nicole went to a Nationals game with her cousin Sarah on friday night. She called nicole up on thursday night since she found out she had access to her companies tickets. Nicole said she had a great time at the game and the seats were really nice but she and sarah really spent most of the game chatting and not paying attention to the game. They did end up staying all the way to the end since it was friday and there were fireworks after the game. For dinner before the game Nicole and I had a nice snow crab dinner since crab legs were on sale at giant. It was a good thing they were one sale this past weekend because thursday night we watched an Iron Chef on food network where the secret ingredient was Alaskan King crab and we were craving crab by the end of it.

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Nicole and Sarah at the Nationals game

Saturday morning we got up early and headed out to the Potomic Mills mall. Nicole had gotten a notification that Ann Taylor was going to be having a pretty big sale for the labor day weekend. I decided since i’ve never been out to the potomic mills mall we would go out there and walk around there since I heard it was a huge mall. I was a little disappointed with the mall and it wasn’t as big as i thought it was billed as. We spent a couple of hours walking around and checking out the various stores. Nicole ended up buying a pair of shoes and a bunch of clothes from Ann Taylor. The mall wasn’t nearly as crazy as i expected since it was a major holiday weekend. We ended up at the costco that was attached to the mall which was pretty neat. While we were in there I found that they were selling ooma and it was cheaper than the one I had just bought from the online site last week. (I’ll have another post on ooma later). So we ended up buying the cheaper version with plans to return the one we had just bought.

Sunday we were invited by Jill and Esto to come over to their place to get together along with brad a courtney. It was good to see them all since I hadn’t seen either couple since nicole’s graduation party. INicole tried her hand at making poi balls and spanicopeda to bring over since the theme was just to have a lot of appetizers. Both of the dishes came out quite yummy and we would have done a much better job on them had everyone else not brought tons of food. There was so much food it was a good thing we weren’t planning on eating at the table since there was no room left for plates. t was also the first chance I would have to meet little Lucia who was born just before we left for canada. She was very cute and Jill and Esto are clearly wrapped around her little finger. Nicole spent a good part of the time when we first got there holding lulu. She was very good while we were there and it sounds like the two new parents are adjusting well to their parenthood.

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Nicole holding lucia
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Lulu was giving her mother the most evil of looks.
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Way too much food
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Jill, Lucia, Nicole and Courtney
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Esto, it doesn’t count if you move her mouth

Monday was a much slower day for us since the weather outside was miserable. I spent the first part of the morning playing video games. However by late afternoon we got a little bored and wanted to get out of the apartment. So we took advantage of the fact there was a movie theater just across the street and went to go see Julie and Julia. The theater was surprisingly full with older couples but that might have been an artifact of us being there at 2PM. Overall the movie was quite good and I can see how it started as a blog and then became a book and now a movie. It was kinda interesting to learn more about the life of Julia Childs since we had just seen an exhibit on her at the Smithsonian. The only complaint i had with the movie was that the two story lines never got directly tied together. I had expected that the two characters would meet. Anyway we had a good labor day weekend and I was sad to be going back to the office on tuesday.

Scan It

September 1st, 2009

Upon moving to Northern Virginia, I was pleased to discover that our “in the city” grocery store was quite nice.  Well, I first went to a Safeway which was pitiful, and then checked out the Giant. Giant was a hundred times better than the Safeway, and even better than the Giant I used to shop at in Columbia.

Ross was excited to find out that the new Giant has a new shopping tool  — “Scan It”.  Scan It is a handheld scanner (much like the ones you use to register) that allows you to scan your groceries as you go.  (Fun gadget = more fun shopping experience for the guys).  In order to be able to ’scan’ your produce, there are scales where you can weight and print out a label for your produce.  Wegmans had a similar feature — but was easier to use because there were more scales, and the produce codes were obviously displayed.  At Giant you have to use the little look up feature to figure out what the produce code is.

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Look…the carts are even made with special holders for the scanner

The idea is to scan your groceries as you go, and then bag them in the cart.  That way when you go to the check-out all you have to do is slip the little scanner in the holder and pay.  As you go through the store, the scanner dings when you are passing a special — and it lets you know what the special is.  I would say that’s pretty sophisticated technology to know where you are in the store.

Ross thinks it’s a pretty cool gadget and wanted to use it again when we went grocery shopping yesterday.  I, however, don’t think I’ll be using it when I go to the grocery store on my own.  I think it’s kind of a pain to scan stuff as you go — and then have to walk around to the front of the cart to bag it. I don’t think it’s much of a time saver if you’re on your own.  However, a pretty cool gadget…wonder if other stores are doing something similar yet.