Tubin' Tuesday

The LBC should do more outings more often.  Today was an official lab holiday as part of a goodbye to Brenna, who's going off to grad school.  But let me start off with monday's mass email about it...

So Kara emailed the entire LBC about the trip, asking who was going and who was able to drive.   I clicked 'reply' to tell her i was going and i could drive, but i thought it was addressed to her, so i worded it as so:

"i can drive, and i can fit 3 other people, 4 if someone wants to be in the uncomfortable bitch seat....also, what other news is there about food/picnics/booze?"

or something to that effect, but definitely "bitch" and "booze" were in the email....and then someone else had sent something to the listserve and addressed it to Kara, and i freaked.  looking at my outbox, the "to:" field said..."LBCSTAFF"  so...my email was sent out to THE ENTIRE LBC!  SUPERVISORS INCLUDED!! so i immediately sent out an apology email.  when the emails finally showed up, i got like, 4 IMs from the other irtas about it, and when i went into the Dorm office to heat up my lunch, 2 postdocs were in there and as soon as they saw me they started laughing, and Mike was all, "hey naomi, i didn't know you were bringing a 40!" or something like that...it was a good laugh.  of course i felt like an idiot, but whatever, stuff like that happens, i just have to frickin' make sure i look at the damn "to" field next time =P

Today started at 8:30am, but since it was raining, it started more around 9:15am because of latecomers, traffic, etc.  The tubing trip took place at Harper's Ferry, West Virgnina, which was about a 90-120 minute drive from Bethesda.  It was cloudy and drizzly, but towards the afternoon the sun was out for a bit and it was really warm.  It was warm when the clouds were around anyway, it's humid like that out here.  i kinda like it when it rains and i don't need a coat.  but i still don't like the humidity.

So tubing down the Potomac involves each individual with his or her own inner tube, and you just float down the river, paddling with your hands if you need to.  On some occasions there are small rapids, but they're so fun, it's just like a little rollercoaster that you go down on, and the water splashes you and everything; the water was fairly warm, it wasn't freezing cold or anything either.  we stopped twice to eat/drink, once on shore and once on a large rock in the middle of the river. The river after that was pretty calm, no more real rapids, so we just floated and tanned (or burnt in some cases).  Christian and i were floating down together during the 2nd half, and most of the IRTAs had made a little ring to float down together (formed from their inner tubes), and Kara and Saskia were making little kissy noises, etc as we neared them. In the spur of the moment i just reached over and kissed him, and we could her saskia's resounding "EW!"  from over there.  hehehe. i guess you had to be there to see it. 

I did NOT put any sunblock on because i thought it'd be cloudy and rainy all day, but when the sun came out, it felt nice, but i could really FEEL it on my skin.  so i tried rotating around every once in a while so one side wouldn't be totally baked compared to the other.  i got a mild sandal tan though. 

So today was a lot of fun, very relaxing, and after the tubing we went into Harper's Ferry and got ice cream/custard.  Christian refreshed my memory that Harper's Ferry is where that John Brown guy did a rebellion prior to the civil war, and his cave was somewhere along the portion of the river that we were on.  Neat stuff.  And on the way there we passed the road that went towards the Antietam battlefield, which i remember from history class was the bloodiest battle during the Civil war.  That's one cool thing about living on the east coast, there's a lot of history that can be experienced here. Not that that's not the case out west, but it's a little different, you know??  And lewis and clark stopped somewhere in harper's ferry during their expedition.

anyway i'm tired.  ciao!