Edit: I went back and added a few entries about notable events. Enjoy!

Okay, so sorry I haven't written in a while. Wow. I can't even think back on what all has happened to recount it all now. That's what happens with me, I get in a good writing habit for a while. Then I miss one thing I want to write about but don't have the time so I don't write anything else new thinking I'll get back to writing about that and get back on track.... Then a month goes by and I find myself explaining my absence.

Ahem, that being said, hi. I plan on doing better. I always do. :)

Not a whole lot happened really that was so exciting. More of the same... work, online classes, applying for jobs, and hanging out with Blake. It's crazy to think that the summer is already wrapping up. Wednesday will be my last day at work, and Kathleen is flying up here that night. She hasn't been up here in about 10 years - when she was 7, I guess. So, we're going to spend Thursday and Friday hanging out in DC or seeing whatever she wants to see. This Saturday we're starting the drive home. I'm fairly certain we can do it in 2 days with just one major stop in Nashville. That'll get us home Sunday night, which I'm really looking forward to.

Other than that, I'm just getting details ironed out for my class schedule and housing this fall. I'm excited that I got things moved around so I'll only be taking one class at UCO now, and I'm taking a class with Prof. Smith at OC instead. He's pretty cool, so I'm looking forward to that class for sure now.

I'm also living with Hippie Hanlon and his wife, Elsa, this fall. I really enjoy living in houses as compared to apartments, so I'm looking forward to moving into my room there too. I just need to find out what furniture they have or will have for me - if any. I have some time to get what I need, I just need to know what I need to be on the lookout for.

That's about it for now. Wrapping up another 3 months of my life to move on to the next 3-ish months. I've pretty much mastered the art of juggling how far ahead I can really worry about, but I'm so ready for graduation and having a little more consistency in my life. Of course, that is assuming that when I graduate I find a job that offers more consistency than my life has had these past 4.5 years. I quite literally have not lived in the same place for more than 4 months in 5 years. Maybe I'll get bored with it. I think it'll be a new kind of exciting to have regular activities that I do or places I go to hang out pretty often.

Anyway, I'll write some other time about my dreams of the future. For now I have enough planning and juggling to get me through August to worry about. I'll pick up that dream in September. :)

So, now it's been twice that I've gone to Glen Echo Park for their Friday night Contra Dancing! Lindsay had gone before, and she loved it so I had wanted to go at some point. Finally, Shanna invited me to go with her and some of her friends for a birthday party. I was excited to finally get to go, and now I'm just sad I didn't start going much earlier this summer. I'm pretty sure I would have gone every Friday night if only I had known...

Contra dancing is a lot like square dancing, but instead of 8 people in a square, you have lots of people all in a line. Your partner stays the same throughout the dance, but the other pairs are always changing as you finish a set and begin the next.

This place is so much fun because they are so open to new dancers! If you are new, then you wear a blue button that says "New Dancer" so the more experienced people can ask you to dance and teach you the ropes. And they sure will ask too. Every time one song ended, someone else would walk up and ask if you'd like to dance. The caller would help organize people from the stage and slowly walk through the instructions for the new dance a couple times for everyone to get the hang of it. Then the live band would crank up while the caller keeps calling moves for a few rounds. After a while you get the hang of it, and the caller fades out.

I took some pictures each time, so here are some to recap quickly:




Originally, the plan was for Kathleen and me to start driving home this Friday, but now the plan has changed so we're leaving Saturday morning - just so we can go Contra Dancing at Glen Echo Park. :)

This weekend I went up to Havre de Grace, MD to visit some family. Nana has been flying all around the US it seems recently, seeing old friends and visiting her brother. Since she was up here and not too far away, I drove up on Saturday to see her and all the family in the area I haven't seen in 10 years! It's amazing how quickly time flies by and how much changes, but we just seemed to pick up where we left off immediately.

Kathleen just graduated and is living at home with her mom; Nana's brother, Jim; and his wife, Pat. Jimmy and his wife also showed up, and we all had fun chatting and catching up that afternoon before going out for dinner where Lois and her boyfriend, Scott, met up with us. The restaurant was really nice, especially since we had a whole room to ourselves, so we didn't have to worry about bothering anyone else around us. :) Of course there were pictures being passed and stories of people not present told... 10 years is a lot of time to cover over one meal! Haha! Afterwards, we went back to the house and watched Slumdog Millionaire before crashing for the night.

The next day, some people headed off to Mass while the rest of us watched TV and talked more over breakfast. Most of the family was planning on going to a baseball game in the evening so Phil and his wife showed up too! I think seeing Phil was the biggest change because he's now married, and they have a baby on the way! That was all exciting, and it was nice to meet Erin and get to know her as several of us went out running errands.

I didn't end up going to the game so I could make it home at a decent time, but all our time together was really fun. Definitely if I end up in this area again I will have to go hang out with them again. And if I end up in Texas somewhere I'm going to convince Kathleen and Lois to come visit me!

Nana took a ton of pictures from the weekend, so it's not that I just didn't take any... there were enough cameras going off already. When I get those, I'll come back and update this with a few. :)

UPDATE:: pictures!!

I had dinner with Blake Wednesday. I just went over to his apartment, and he cooked for us. It was really good - Costco Eggplant Parmesan and 3 minute mashed potatoes. :) Then we went on a walk around a trail near his place. It was fun watching the fireflies and making up our route as we went, trying to decide if we were allowed to build fires or not. Not right then, just for future reference, of course. Haha! Then on the way back, we came across a deer! It was pretty big too, and we weren't very far from it when we saw it. We'd been walking and talking and suddenly we stopped and watched it as it took it's time walking away into the woods. Pretty cool!

Every time I'm with Blake I learn a little bit more about him, and it's been really fun so far. As always, can't wait until next time :)

Lindsay gets credit for showing me this.

Originally, Blake had talked about going into DC to see the fireworks for the 4th, but instead a coworker of his, Andrew, invited the guys he works with to a 4th of July barbecue at his house. We've both seen the DC fireworks, so we decided to go see what this party was all about. When we got there, Andrew and his wife said they were expecting anywhere from 30 to 300 people to show up! Apparently he's been putting together a 4th of July party at his house every year for the past 20+ years!! It was a big mix of people that we mostly had never met before, but everyone of all ages had a great time watching the live band, lighting firecrackers, or hanging out inside.

We started out watching the music outside, but after a while we moved inside to find Blake's roommates, Matt and Josh, who also came. They had found the one other guy they work with, so we all hung out for a while watching the Return of the Jedi with the occasional trivia and opinions about each movie. It's been a while since I'd seen any of them, so it was fun enjoying an "American classic" on our nation's birthday. At one point Blake left to talk to someone outside he knew, and a lady came in joking about the geeks outside talking about things she didn't understand. Hahaha! How cute.

Around 9 or so, the Fairfax City fireworks started up, and we had a great view of them while sitting on the lawn at Andrew's house. It was just a really fun, relaxing day overall, and I had so much fun again hanging out with Blake and joking around with Matt and Josh.

Besides Virginia's personal attack on me with it's allergens, I had a pretty nice day off today. It's almost crazy to think about how much I did today.

I got a very slow start today as my allergies were keeping me down most of the morning. They hadn't bothered me at all this summer yet, so I thought I was in the clear. Wrong. Yesterday I started sneezing a lot, and by this morning I was in allergy city. Of course I was too lazy to go get some allergy medicine, so I mostly just decided that as long as I had the day off anyway and not much that I had to accomplish, I'd just sleep it off. I also hoped that this would help my sleep schedule get back to normal, and I think it just might have worked!

Around lunch time I gave Blake a call to work out plans for the 4th. He had mentioned going into DC, but then a coworker invited everyone he works with to a big 4th of July party at his house in Fairfax. So now that's the plan. :) Neither of us was doing much so he invited me to come over if I felt up to it. I figured it was about time I did something about my allergies, so I went to the drug store for some medicine and went to hang out for a little while.

Meanwhile, Lindsay called to invite me to go to dinner in DC with her, a friend from Future Leaders, and some other friends of her friend from Liberty University. After going to Blake's I went to Lindsay's new place, and we picked up Morgan to head to the metro. We all immediately got along great telling lots of stories and taking pictures to record Morgan's adventures in buying her own metro ticket. We promised to take lots of pictures throughout the night, and we did a great job of keeping up with that. We met up with the rest of the group - Aaron, Tim, Rob, and Kendra - and went to Union Station for dinner at Uno's. As we stopped to pray before eating I realized that no matter where you are, you can always find amazing, Christian people to hang out and have fun with. After dinner we walked to the mall, planning to just walk along it from the Capital to the Washington Monument. When we got to the Capital, there was a huge crowd with a concert going on - a rehearsal for the 4th celebrations. So we hung around for a little bit to listen to Aretha Franklin and Barry Manilow before walking farther where we saw the cannons firing. We walked down past the Washington Monument to the World War 2 Memorial, and it was just beautiful to see all of those places lit up at night. Then we walked and walked and walked some more to find a metro and finally found Faragut West. I say this just to remember how far we walked. :)

All in all, today was a very long but rewarding day. Tomorrow should be fun too since I'll be spending the evening with Blake and his work friends and watching fireworks at night. I think this weekend will turn out to be one of the best out of the entire summer.

Friday marked the end of one of my summer classes, so it was nice to have some time this weekend to finally relax a little bit. I had good intentions for Saturday to clean up around my room, but in the end I kind off took the day off. Sunday was fun because not only did I spend the day meeting new people and eating great food, but Lindsay is finally in town!!

Blake had told me that he was putting together a bar-b-que for some friends at his place, so Sunday afternoon I headed over there. The weather wasn't the most ideal for an outdoor get-together, but we ended up having a lot of fun. Most of the people there were people he worked with, and two girls came also who are girlfriends of some of the guys he works with. The guys all packed up the food to take out to the grill while the girls decided we were fine with waiting inside. The food was all delicious, and the company was really fun to be around. I really enjoyed getting to meet some more of the people Blake hangs out with all the time.

From Blake's house, I went over to Frontline church service at the McLean Bible Church to see Lindsay! She's doing a one-year internship with the church, and she just got into town on Saturday. Her host mom lives in Reston, which is really close to me so hopefully we'll get to spend some time together this summer before I head back to college. I loved seeing her mom and sister, Natalie, again, and it was fun meeting some of the people Natalie worked with this past year and who Lindsay will be working with as well now. It's always nonstop laughter when there are Bingies involved, and they definitely did not disappoint!

This is a continuation of my last post, so if you haven't read that... do that now.

Okay, now that you're up to speed, we'll continue.

I had a kind of rough day at work today. I was confused and frustrated and tired from being at work all day, so when I got home I put everything aside, threw on my Snow White dress and joined Bailey and Brylee for some quality princess playing time. It's always so fun to watch them, and I try very hard to keep up with them. I didn't (still don't) have much of an imagination growing up, and they just amaze me with their ability to make up stories on the fly. Sometimes that's just as much work for me to follow as my programming assignments at work in languages I don't know. Haha, anyway, after dinner I headed back up to my room to finally settle in for some homework time.

That's when I checked my phone to see if I had any missed calls or texts, not really expecting anything. But yes! A missed call! And a message.... It was Blake saying hi, hoping I had a good day at work, and was wondering if I'd like to see a movie sometime this week. :) I called back, and we decided to see Up on Wednesday after work. Awesome! I'd been wanting to see that, and of course hearing from Blake was exciting!

>>Fast forward through the work/homework routine to Wednesday evening.

We ended up meeting up near the theatre to get kabobs for dinner before the movie. Neither of us had been there before so we asked the guy at the counter what he liked. The guy next to him had a great sense of humor and told us that guy #1 liked HIM, but sadly he was not available. Haha! We got our food and talked more before heading over to the movie.

For anyone who has not seen Up, it is a great movie, and I will definitely be buying that one when it comes out. It's sad, funny, and altogether adorable. I'd say it was probably one of the best picks for a first date - or second date, I suppose. :)

The rest of this week has been absolutely chaotic in my life. Today was the last day of my Western Civ class (HOORAY!) and a test day in my APE class. The only way I could get everything done just for classes was to take today off from work. I haven't heard from Blake since the movie, but he mentioned having a bar-b-que at his apartment Sunday, so I think I'll give him a call tomorrow to see how those plans are coming together and explain my recent hermit-like activity.

Ok, so here's the post my mom wanted me to write... Honestly, I'm somewhat ashamed to be writing this and still seriously shocked at my mom's reaction when I told her about it. That being said...

This past semester, my friend Tracy and I joined an online dating site. As a joke. At 3am. Out of boredom.

*sigh* There's just no cool way to say that.

Alright, now that you think...whatever you think...I'll tell the tale of my bike riding date. Without explaining all the ins and outs of online dating, I received a message from a guy about a week ago. Now, messages are quite varied in content. For emphasis, I'll go hunt down some random ones I've gotten:

you look like a fun girl. You actually travel instead of just claiming to like to travel, you go sky diving... I'm curious, why are you interested in moving to the UK?

Hello, I'm a professional male from Reston, Va. I'm a laid back down to earth kinda guy. Was wondering whether you would like to chat and see what spurs up.

ill be really honest, i didnt even read your profile, you seemed cute enough to msg, hi there :)

For the most part, the guys are nice and I'll at least message back to say hi, but for the most part, I find myself to be pretty picky. And I don't see anything wrong with that. I'm really not in a good position to date long-term right now anyway, but it's nice to chat and get to know people all the same. With messages anyway, there is always that underlying tone that can make things awkward sometimes. I mean...obviously...we're on a dating site. So, what are we looking for? Well, dating I suppose. :) Then this past week I got a message, that was truly the sweetest I'd ever gotten. (And I told him that, Haha) Blake...we'll call him Blake...mostly because his name is Blake... wrote this:

Good luck with your cs degree, wow you've done awesome things! Keep it up.

:) How sweet. Of course it was getting close to 1am by the time I finished my homework and saw it, and I knew I couldn't stay up any later but I had to at least respond. So I thanked him for his sweet message and hoped we could talk soon.

We did. A couple times, just talking about work (both in the tech world), being out in this area (he's from California), our college experiences, and hobbies. I mentioned that I really enjoyed biking every now and then, and he told me about the W&OD Trail. In fact he was going the next day, and I should join him! :) So, of course...I did!

Let me pause here to say that when I say I enjoy biking, it's because it is a freeing experience for me to get away by myself, feel the wind on my face, and go wherever I feel like going for no other reason than because I want to.

About a half mile into our biking trip, Blake told me his biking distance record was 100 miles. Ah, sheesh.

But we had a lot of fun. :) We started in Herndon and headed west, away from DC. Along the way, we talked for about half the time which was nice for getting to know each other. In Ashburn we stopped at a place with picnic tables for bikers to chill at and took a breather then hopped back on the trail heading home. Overall, I was really impressed with myself, and only about the last...2ish miles was I really slowing down and getting worn out.

In the end, we got back to his apartment and chilled on the couch talking to his roommates drinking lots of water. It was fun, but at that point we were past being able to make good impressions on each other. Haha! When I left, I really wasn't sure how he felt, and while I hoped he'd call me back...I didn't want to get my hopes up. No matter what it was a great day, and I felt great having pushed myself to go those 15 miles. Blake is a really nice guy, and it was a fantastic way to spend a Sunday afternoon and to meet for the first time. :)

Okay, so I've been lousy at keeping this up to date, but at request of my mom (who didn't even know about my blog) I am updating this. I would break this up into separate posts, but honestly, for the past month not a whole lot has been going on. I'll explain...

Since my first week of work, things have been going good in the office. My mentor, Lidong, is really nice. She hasn't been with the program for too long either, AND her programming history is all in C++ too, so it kind of helps to have someone who understands where I'm coming from sometimes. Mostly I dig and dig and dig into a problem until I THINK I found where the issue is, try a few little things on my own...fail...then ask Lidong. Haha! Yeah, that's basically the pattern of how I work these days.

Devin is interning with DSI again this summer, so it's nice to have a familiar face and someone to chat with throughout the day. We mostly joke around with the other people in the office when we're taking a break and make fun of each other. Sometimes he gets on his high horse and tries to tell me what to do. I quickly and shamelessly knock him off that horse, and we move on. :)

I caught up with the Dannenbergs again this summer at church, and it was really nice to see them. We decided we'll have to get lunch sometime with a few of their other friends I got to know and love last summer also. Betty said Klaus kept up with my Pac Rim blog quite a bit, so it will be fun to show them my pictures and tell some stories when we get the chance.

Other than that, my online summer classes through OC have kept me busy in any free time I would have had outside of work. The other day I was realizing that I should have taken summer classes all along the way, but then I also thought about the self-discipline it takes to get through these things. I'm pretty sure I wouldn't have been as devoted to my classes in previous summers, but with graduation peeking around the corner...yeah, that's a motivator. But seriously, these classes are killer. It's 16 weeks of coursework all squeezed into 4 weeks. The first one, Senior Bible Seminar, wasn't so bad. In fact, it was downright easy now that I think back on it. I finished that one before I got up here to Virginia, and then I immediately started Western Civilization the same day I started work. That one was considerably more work, and I had to keep myself focused everyday to come home from work to read my 2 chapters, take my quiz, and make an entry to the discussion board. It got to be a pretty good routine, so I got through it pretty well. The only thing is 2 weeks into that class, my American Political Economy class started up. Now, one summer class is manageable. Add to that a full-time job, and it gets a little tiresome. Throw another class on top, and.... I don't like when sleep becomes the optional bit of my life.

So this summer, I have rediscovered my love of bike riding, and as I looked forward to moving back up to Virginia I started looking at buying a cheap used bike for the summer. I hunted on Craigslist every now and then trying to find something inexpensive that I could sell again or give away in August, but really there wasn't much to find.

Until Sunday. That's when I found a posting that had only been up for 7 minutes, and it was advertising 7 bikes for free. Someone just looking to clean out their basement was trying to get rid of 7 bikes of various sizes and conditions for free. I emailed them immediately explaining how excited I was to have finally found a bike I could use for the summer and asking them to hold onto one adult bike for me.

Too late. They'd already gotten rid of all 7. :\ But, they said, since I was only in the area for the summer, they had 2 more bikes they were planning on keeping. They were in great shape, and if I wanted to just borrow one for the summer and return it in August I was more than welcome to do that. AWESOME!

So I went over in the bug, flipped down the seats, covered it all in plastics sheets and just barely got the bike to fit completely inside the car. They were super nice and didn't ask a lot of questions other than how I was enjoying the area, etc. I can't wait to get some real use out of this bike this summer.

It's good to know there are still people in this world who are so trusting and generous.

So, now that something has actually happened lately I figured I'd write again. I got up here all in one piece, and I'm so thankful my grandpa drove with me. Actually, he did all of the driving, which was totally awesome. For the most part we drove it straight through, but we did make a stop in Nashville, TN for the Country Music Hall of Fame. It wasn't necessarily that big of a deal for me, but it was pretty cool to see all the stuff they have in there. My grandpa likes the old country music, so he really got a kick out of it too. Definitely a fun stop, and now I can say I've been to Nashville. Haha!

I'm staying with the Jeffrey's this summer, and they are a really nice family I met at Fairfax church of Christ last summer when I was up here. They have 3 adorable kids: Bailey, Brylee, and Caleb, and I only feel bad that I can't stay home and play with them all day long. They're so sweet though, and it's cute to watch them play together or even when they try to convince me that it's ok to break the rules. I feel like a big sister sometimes having to suggest that maybe their parents know what they're talking about. :) Emille and Sam are great too, and they're always trying to find ways to make me feel more at home.


Work started on Monday, and it's been kind of weird stepping back into the same office but on a different team. The eRule team from last summer isn't there anymore because they lost their contract, but I came back to work with the DSI team this year. My first day, my boss brought up dress code, and the relaxed rules they have regarding it. Haha! I can pretty much wear nice jeans and a professional shirt any day of the week. It's like casual Friday everyday! That's definitely something I can get used to. They assigned me my first task on Tuesday, and I'm excited to complete that so I can understand the project I'm working on better and become more useful as the summer goes on.

Unfortunately, yesterday I woke up with a terrible sore throat. I emailed in sick to work, and I went to an Urgent Care clinic up the road. As I suspected, they told me I have Strep Throat so I ended up taking all of yesterday off. I intended on being well enough to go in for work today, but I woke up feeling worse today than I did yesterday so I emailed in again. Hopefully this downtime plus the weekend will give me the time I need to get back on my feet.

Okay, so it's been a while since I updated my blog. And yeah... YouTube videos don't really count as entries, so that puts me even farther behind. The semester ended. Not as great as I'd hoped for, but it is in fact over. So, that's always good. Summer classes have now started, and this first one - Senior Bible Seminar - is pretty interesting! I guess I'm on week 2 of that class, and it'll wrap up at the end of the month.

Right now I'm mainly looking forward to starting my internship in June. I'm driving up there this time, so hopefully my mom can get some time off to go with me. Grandpa might come, but there's a lot up in the air on that to see if he can or not. In either case, I'm excited to start working at Lockheed again and see what they have planned for me. I'm honestly not sure what I'm doing this summer yet, but my friend Devin is coming back for a 2nd internship too so that'll be fun. We definitely had a random bunch of people interning together last summer, but Devin was one of my favorites for sure. I'm also still really up in the air about what I want to do after graduation, so hopefully this summer I can take some time to really look at what I'm doing and what it would be like to jump straight into a career up in DC. I talked to Sarah Byrd about doing the HIM Program because she is leaving in August to spend 2 years in Germany, and she said that she did not know for sure that she was doing the HIM Program until after Thanksgiving, so I guess I have more time than I was expecting to decide after I get back next semester. I'm glad I have this summer to experience a regular 40 hour week software job again before deciding my whole future. Haha!

Not much else going on right now. I've enjoyed my downtime, and I've been trying to take advantage of it by riding a bike around the neighborhood or going swimming since I'm not sure how much time my next summer classes will take up on top of starting work. Oh! I also started reading Ender's Game again. It's just as good as I remember, and this time I also picked up a few more in the series for when I finish it. That's about all for now!