The End Has Come (of our Research)

This morning I got up early to get in my run on our last day of researching.  Since we had no idea how much, if anything, would be waiting for us at LAC in the afternoon, I decided to knock out my run before we started our day.  I got up early enough that my husband wasn't even awake when I left.  I put a note on my pillow telling him that I had gone running and when I left (so he would know how long before he should worry) and then headed off to run.

I had an interval run today and after my crummy one last week, I was nervous about it.  I had also decided (these past few days of not having a bunch to do have given me too much time to think) that I wanted to start increasing my run-to-rest ratio.  My first thought was to simply increase my running time, but that made me too nervous so I decided to decrease my rest time.  Instead of doing 3 min slow followed by 3 minutes fast, I did 2 minutes slow and then 3 minutes fast.  I did that for the entire 30 minutes today and went 2.67 miles.

I got back and got ready and we headed out.  We got to DHH at around 9 and were the first, and only, ones in the research room.  Today I worked on a lot of the documents that had been declassified for us the previous day.  It was pretty cool to know I was the first person, without a security clearance, to look at those pages.  Today was also filled with a lot of documents marked "Top Secret" or "Cosmic - Top Secret".  I had been taking lots of pictures of things marked, "Secret" or "Classified" and had secretly been longing to photograph some "Top Secret" stuff.  It made me happier than I cared to admit to see all the "Top Secret" labels.

Recently declassified, like yesterday!

Top Secret Stuff! (or at least it used to be)

We finished up with all of our stuff at DHH by lunchtime.  We packed up, said goodbye and thank your to research assistants and the security guards and then headed out.  We were finally able to catch the Urban Cowboy food truck when it was open so we got some.  We also used up almost all of our Canadian money in the process, which is fine since we will be out of Canada in around 24 hours.  We got brisket burgers that definitely were worthy of the label Texan in their taste, but not in their size.

We went back to the hotel and I took a nap while my husband headed over to LAC.  Part of me didn't want to be there if we found out that, yet again, there was nothing for us.  When I woke up I had a text message from my husband telling me that we had 10 boxes of stuff to go through!  I got ready and headed over.  My husband had worked hard while I was napping, going through boxes and labeling things for me to photograph.  We got 4 more boxes right before they closed and then we were one our own to get through everything.  We finished up at around 7, which was sooner than I expected, and went to get dinner.

While we were eating my husband was looking things up on the tablet and asked me what I thought about heading to Toronto that night.  I thought it was a little crazy, but I knew that he wouldn't have asked me unless he had a good plan, so I agreed with the condition that I wouldn't have to drive if I didn't want to.  So we packed up our stuff, checked out of the hotel, loaded up and headed off to Toronto.

My husband thought the drive was going to take us around 4.5 hours, which would have meant us getting in at 12:30.  Unfortunately, either google maps or him was off because as soon as I put the address in the GPS it said we would get there at around 2:00.

Apparently it is Google Maps.  Such lies!

He was feeling fine with it and so off we went.  There was a good amount of construction along the drive, but the traffic always seemed to be drastically worse (aka stopped) in the opposite direction, so I felt good about it.  We were really tired by the time we got to the hotel, but I know that it will be worth it when we get home earlier.