Border Collies, BBQ, Board Games, Babies, & Rock Band

A few weeks ago, I went to the East Coast for a long weekend and visited Maryland, Virginia, and West Virginia. As the title of this blog implies, my weekend was spent participating in activities involving Border Collies, a BBQ dinner, playing a board game, meeting two new babies, and rocking out to Rock Band.

Border Collies

Let’s start with the Border Collies. David’s Aunt Lynn and Uncle David are border collie enthusiasts. They own a border collie of their own named Duncan, and are highly interested in the sport/competition of the sheepdog trials. They were planning to attend the national sheep herding finals in Middletown, VA the same weekend that I would be visiting, so David’s family and I all went to watch the competition one day.

The Serta Sheep Were There!

 

"That’ll Do Pig"

 

Remember the movie Babe with the talking pig? Of course you do! Well in Babe there is a scene where he enters a sheep herding competition and gets a perfect score beating out the dogs! When he finished competing, the farmer praised him with “That’ll do pig”. I’m not sure if this is a standard sheepherding saying, but I’m pretty sure I heard one of the trainers say this to her dog after he finished the competition. (Well, minus the “pig” part of course.)

The competition was amazing – the dogs would drive the sheep down the field, through a set of gates, through another set of gates, over to an area where they would separate out one sheep, and then finally herd the sheep into a pen. Wow, I was amazed. Especially as the owner of two cute and lovable, and strikingly less talented dogs. I consider coming home to no pee on my floor a training “win” in my house! Sad…

Sheepherding in Action

We watched about a handful of dogs run through the challenge before checking out some of the vendors at the competition. They sold things such as coats, leashes, snacks, knick-knacks that any dog enthusiast would love. I managed to get a bag full of high-end dog treats such as bully sticks at half the price that they usually retail at in pet stores. They had one “long lasting” chew treat that I had never heard of before – elk antler! Apparently, they’re great for the aggressive chewer. I was thinking about getting small ones for my dogs but in the end my cheapness won out. At a price of $5 each I’d be paying $10 for two which was almost as much as I was paying for the six other treats I’d selected in total. Isn’t it funny to see how much cheaper we get as soon as we start to get a deal? In other stores, bully sticks run about $7 each. When I found out that I could get a bully stick for $2, I was suddenly unwilling to pay more than that per treat for anything else, even though $5 for an elk antler is apparently a great deal. Oh well, there’s always next year to load up on antlers!

Allen Men Enjoying the Competition

 

David Makes a Friend

 

BBQ

After we’d all had about as much time out in the blazing sun as we could take while watching the competition, we headed back to David’s parents’ new house in West Virginia. David’s dad and brother set to work grilling steaks for dinner in the backyard and we enjoyed a nice dinner of BBQ’d steak, salad, and fresh fruit.

Houston & Duncan Greeting Each Other

Grilling Steaks for Dinner

Board Game Time

Growing up, I always loved playing board games! Unfortunately as an only child, there weren’t many likely opponents besides my parents to play games with me. I still recall the slight hint of dread that I’d see cross my dad’s face when I'd asked him to play a board game with me. He always would of course, but many timeswhen it came to Monopoly, there was a point where he just couldn’t stand to play the game anymore. What, paying money for my hotels on Park Avenue for four hours isn’t fun Dad? Just kidding Dad, I’m sure you enjoyed the time we spent playing games just as much as I did!

David’s cousin and uncle turned out to be big strategy board game lovers, and brought one game called “Carcassonne” with them. The board game is described on Amazon's site as "A clever tile-laying game. The southern French city of Carcassonne is famous for its unique roman and medieval fortifications. The players develop the area around Carcassonne and deploy their followers on the roads, in the cities, in the cloisters, and in the fields. The skill of the players to develop the area will determine who is victorious. The game is for ages 8 and up and 2 to 5 players."

My Characters are Black

 

There were different strategic roles your players could take during the game. Some reaped rewards almost immediately, while others took longer and involved chance, and the final role of “the farmer” which I placed most of my bets on paid off in the very end. Or should I say they didn’t. Sigh… I had a good strategy but was outwitted by a high schooler! Oh well, it was only my first time playing. Maybe if we all played again I’ll do better.

Babies

Whenever I come out to the MD/VA area I feel like I have to strategically plan my weekend to try to see as many people as possible. I have both family and friends in the area, and David has his family of course. We are usually able to see a few of our handful of options each time, and it somehow seems to require careful planning up front. In addition to seeing friends and family, I was also trying to squeeze in a work lunch on one of the days that I was there, but that didn’t end up happening.

On Sunday, we had plans to go meet my cousin Sandy’s second child Charlotte. I hadn’t seen Sandy and her husband in a while and I was looking forward to meeting baby Charlotte. David and I came over to their house they cooked us dinner. We had Cincinatti Chili which is chili served over spaghetti and topped with cheese and onion. It was delicious! (I skipped the cheese of course.)  For dessert, we had homemade cupcakes with homemade icing. Wow, what a treat! In turn, we brought my ‘famous’ spinach dip in a bread bowl. I joke that its famous, it’s really just my favorite thing to bring to events. Hey, its fat free and people love it. And, it’s easy to make. Score!

Charlotte and Mommy

 

The next day I went to go visit my friend Colleen who had recently had her first son – Baby Liam. I had seen her at about three months and five months into her pregnancy but hadn’t seen her since. Her baby was two months now and I was so excited that we were able to set up a time to hang out. It seems that in the past when I’ve tried to meet up with friends and family members a few months into them being a new parents, things just never worked out. They were either too tired or too busy or too overwhelmed to entertain. Not like I need high level entertaining, but still I guess any change to their routine was too much. Luckily Colleen and Liam were doing great in their first few months, and were happy to have visitors.

Liam and Mommy

Rock Band

My visit with Colleen was brief and soon I was headed back to College Park to meet David to prepare to cook dinner for his brother who was coming over. David was going to recreate a meal that he had made for himself earlier in the week: flank steak and Greek salad. I wanted to contribute in some way as well, so I baked chocolate chip cookies and made fresh ice cream cookie sandwiches. (I took inspiration for the cookie sandwiches from the restaurant Starlite in San Diego. I didn’t like the food the first time I had dinner there but I loved their fresh homemade cookie sandwiches for dessert!)

Brothers Enjoying a Steak Dinner

 

After dinner, we retreated to the “recording studio” – aka the basement downstairs where the Rock Band competition usually took place. David was on the drums, Kenny and I played guitar, and David’s roommate rocked out the vocals. We played the Beatles for a while before moving on to classic songs. The game was a lot of fun and reminded me of how much I used to love playing Guitar Hero. (I still love Guitar Hero, but its just not as much fun to play by yourself. If only my dogs had opposable thumbs. Sigh.)

Rock Band ended up being the end of my long weekend fun. The next morning I got up at 3:30 am EST to get to the airport for a 5:30am flight. I got into San Diego around 10:30am PST and zipped right up to work .. only to finish with a long day of coaching GOTR after work. Man I was beat that day!

The long weekend was a lot of fun and I was happy to see friends and family old and new.

That’ll do.