Sunday, May 20, 2007

Day 87 - 05/18/2007

Today is National Bike to Work Day so with that in mind, even though it was on the cool and wet side, I rode Sparky to work. (One of these days I'll get a picture of Sparky on here for you to drool over.) There weren't many other bikers on the road, but that may have been due to the either the early hour or the weather conditions. (It wasn't that cool, probably around 55° F but it was damp, which made it feel a little colder.) The ride was uneventful and, after getting to work, hit the gym for a morning workout and then heading into the office.

For breakfast I had two packs of banana bread instant oatmeal. I'm not sure if it was this or the lack of sleep or a combination thereof (I felt fine when I got up and when I left the gym), but soon after finishing them, I started getting an upset stomach. All day long I felt this way and was worried I wouldn't be able to make it to M's dance later on. Fortunately it subsided over the course of the day (but didn't go away completely until after we got to the dance), so maybe it was just a 12-hour bug or something. Whatever it was, I'm glad it didn't get worse, I really hate it when I'm sick for the weekend.

Tonight was the annual Girl Scout Father/Daughter Dance. In years past it's been held at the high school. Groups of dads would get together and take their daughters out to dinner beforehand and then everyone would descend en masse on the dance. This year they did things a little differently as the dance was held at the Sheraton Reston and dinner was included. It was held in a ballroom and the room was setup similar to how a wedding would be. We were a little late due to a miscommunication (I thought it began at 630p when that's when dinner was to be served), but were able to find a seat with people we knew (Burke and Riley), so that turned out well. Actually, it was even better as Riley is on M's softball team and they've become better friends over the season. They're in the same grade as well, which makes her one of the few girls (outside M's class) that M is friends with that's her age. I wish we lived closer to them (they live in our old neighborhood) so they could do more stuff together, but for now we'll have to settle for driving over to each other's houses.

After the buffet line and dinner, the dance floor was opened up. In years past M would want me to twirl her around by her arms. This year was no exception, although she's now too big to twirl around like I could when she was six. We settled for spins and dips and doing the twist instead. After a while we headed out into the hallway to participate in some of the games that were setup. This was a new twist as in previous years the contests were held on the dance floor. Having them in the hallway was better as it allowed the girls to mill about and do different things in case they didn't want to dance all night long. There were a variety of ongoing games, ranging from balloon stomps to paper-clip races to hula hoop contests to the ever-present jump rope contest. M did pretty good (as can be seen below), but there was a Daisy that out-jumped pretty much everyone.


It seemed most of the girls had fun, as did most of the dads. Having the festivities spread out in separate areas seemed to provide for more interaction between both girls and dads vs. previous years where most of the dads simply formed a horseshoe around the girls while they did their various contests.

As the night wound down, prizes were announced but, unfortunately, M didn't win any. Oh well, we had a good time and that was the important thing. As we were leaving I told her that if it was held in the hotel again next year, we'd think about staying over.

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