A Birthday Weekend Away

I kept bugging Mark about what he was planning for my birthday and he kept not really saying anything.  So, I decided that since he wasn't really doing anything I would like to go to DC to visit my sister as my "birthday present".  Mark could not tell me that she was going to be flying in for my surprise birthday party as that would ruin the surprise.....nor could he deny my request to go visit my sister since then he would seem like a jerk.....so he reluctantly agreed and had my sister play along on a date that would work.

On the way he asked me if I would have not wanted to go out if I knew that she was coming in for my birthday party. 

I would have still wanted to come out - over the years we have tried to get trips back and forth so that we are seeing each other once a year plus maybe Christmas - but I may have looked at a different weekend.  Probably in the spring or the fall.....

DC is hot in the summer.  And, it was built on a swamp.  So it is hot....and extremely humid.

Now I know that everyone thinks that Minnesota is essentially the Arctic and that it never gets hot here.  It actually does.  We have the pleasure of extremes.  The coldest temperature recorded was -60 degrees F (with windchill) and the warmest was 114 degrees F.  We have even seen temperature changes up 72 degrees F within a 24 hour period.

It wouldn't be so bad if this was a dry heat, but sadly it is not.  Minnesota really is the land of 10,000 lakes (11,842 actually according the MNDNR).  Lots of water leads to lots of Mosquitoes (see my posts last summer about our "state bird") and high dew points.  Our average relative humidity is 79% in the morning and 62% in the afternoon. Did I mention that Minnesota is on the northern edge of "tornado alley" with an average of 27 tornadoes per year, and that our average snowfall is   with single storms dumping almost 30 inches at once. 

Please explain to me again why I live here?

Anyway, turns out that the average relative humidity in DC is only slightly different than Minneapolis (83% in the morning and 55% in the afternoon). 

In our defense, the temps were in the 90s this weekend with dew points in the 80s (meaning uncomfortable).  We typically spend nearly all of our time inside (a nice temperature and humidity controlled environment), so spending large quantities of time outside, walking around, is not the norm and we are not used to it.

It was good for us to get a weekend away.  While everything that we have been experiencing lately is a happy event, it is also very, very stressful.  It was good for us to get a away from everything (if only for a little while) and that I got to spend some time with my sister.