Labor Day Weekend (Part 1)

Hurricane Ernesto changed our Labor Day Weekend plans from a camping trip in the 'mountains' to a slumber party at my place. The expected (and received) rainfall was pretty significant on Friday and Saturday morning. Camping in the rain can be great, but setting up your tent in a downpour is not very fun. So the plans were changed to hanging out and doing some DC area things. Friday night, Jill and I braved the rain by doing a bit of shopping and going out to eat. The major task of the weekend, began at Target with the purchase of a small bookcase. Operation 'Organize' was launched. I had two end-tables in my room that held and hid way too much junk. There was too much flat surface that just tended to collect piles of stuff. And my saltwater aquariums are on some plastic racks that I got at Home Depot. They are starting to break under the weight of the tanks and really need to be replaced with something sturdier and not such an eye-sore. After looking around and a recent trip to Ikea, I had decided on purchasing two narrow chest-of-drawers that will support one tank each and disassemble the third tank. The bookcase will hold my monitor and will help solve the clutter problem. Saturday morning began early. The goal was to run a few errands then get the furniture at the Ikea in Beltsville before meeting Matt and Cami to start our Labor Day adventures. Well, nothing seemed to be in our favor. It started with my car battery being dead. Yuck! Then all of our morning errands either were not able to be completed or took much longer than they should have. Since Matt and Cami got an early start, our plans changed to meeting them at the Ikea in Potomac Mills. Cami and Matt quickly fell in love with Ikea (did you have any doubts?). We found some good organizational items along with the two pieces of furniture. Matt and Cami also found several items for their place. The weekend now felt like it was back on track. We stopped at Mount Vernon on our way back home. The rain had stopped and we actually saw a glimpse of the sun a couple of times. The grounds and buildings were pretty interesting. The most noteworthy part for me was the fact that I had NO camera!!! Another snafu from this morning. The grounds had experienced a bit of flooding overnight from the Potomac river overflowing its banks from all the rainfall. When we got home, Matt was excited about putting together the new purchases. I didn't complain! He and Cami assembled both them for me! Thanks for working on your Labor Day weekend! Jill and I ran to Home Depot to purchase some plywood that I cut to fit on top of the chest-of-drawers in order to distribute the weight. We also stopped to buy some groceries for Sunday's dinner and we cashed in all the loose change from my room. One of the things that those end tables in my room held was all my change. Everyday I emptied my pockets into a container. Then the container filled up and the change started collecting on the table top. We made our guesses as to the amount - $30, $40, $60, $80. Then we adjusted as the coin counter continued past our guesses - $120, $140, $150, $175. We were quite surprised when the machine finally stopped at over $230!!! After taking a fee of 8.9% we walked out with over $210! Woo Hoo!