Time Flies!

Wow, November 11.  Go figure.  I got a little note from Merry Mom asking how I’d been and realized I hadn’t posted in TWO MONTHS.  YIKES.  I guess I’m due for an update!

All is well here.  BUSY.  Like, crazy busy.  As usual.

So, the big news is I survived my organization of information class.  I really had a VERY hard time with it.  I felt stupid the whole semester and was so glad it was my only class.  I somehow managed to get an A, and when I tell you it was a miracle and in no small part due to my partners in the small group project, I am not lying.  Not even a little bit.  I had a lot of help from our local friends too, who attempted to teach me XML and database building, and thanks to my husband who took lots of time off so I could get caught up and get homework done and whatnot.

I am registered for 2 classes this semester:  Ethics for Library and Information Professionals and Introduction to Archives.  I’m excited about it, neither class seems too hard core and both seem interesting, more importantly.  Classes start Wednesday.  I’ve gotten a volunteer job at a local archives, so I should get some hands on learning, which should help with a paper I have to write for the archives class!  I hope the archives class and volunteer experience helps me decide once and for all if that’s the direction I want to go in.

AFS kept me busy.  There were some problems with Kristin and her new family and their other student, so I wound up doing an intervention, which is not really what I think I’m good at, but I did it and got the family to stay together for a little so I was proud of that accomplishment.

Thanksgiving was a lot of fun.  We did the Turkey Trot in the morning—my goal was to do it in less than an hour and I accomplished that goal, which made me happy.  My dad was here and made the turkey, but we were all tired from walking and running so I can’t say as we did very much.  We had a little birthday party for my niece that weekend, and I really can’t believe she turned 3.  The time is just flying by!

December was a whirlwind!  Emily and I went to see Diane Keaton in November and decided to go back and see Michael Ian Black on December 1.  He was HILARIOUS—we were at 6th and I Synagogue and he started a joke that mentioned Anne Frank (it wasn’t a joke about Anne Frank) and he looked up at the stained glass window waiting for lightning to strike and said, “Well, if it’s gonna happen, it’s gonna happen now!” and everyone was just laughing hysterically.  It’s the second time I’ve seen him, the first time doing a solo act, and he was really great.

We took Kristin and fellow student Ilaria to Wolf Trap for the annual holiday sing-a-long and for pizza afterwards.  They had a lot of fun and I enjoyed having them along for the tradition.  The following weekend we spent some time at my sister’s and then went to our friends Paul and Kris’s house and church for their annual Christmas pageant and dinner.  It was really lovely, and wouldn’t seem like Christmas if we didn’t go.

Unfortunately, I was in a minor car accident the following week, and my car was in the shop until after Christmas.  I was driving to meet some friends for dinner and a kitten ran in the road.  I stopped and the person coming towards me stopped, but the guy behind me didn’t stop and hit me.  At first glance, it didn’t look so bad, but ultimately cost Allstate somewhere in the neighborhood of $6000 when all was said and done.  They did give me a rental, and I was pleased about that since I put almost 800 miles on it in just over a week’s time.

The following weekend was my Christmas concert.  This is my second year with the Stafford Regional Choral Society and in November I was elected to the board of directors.  I really thought that this Christmas concert would be the best concert I’d ever sung in, and I dare say I was correct.  I did a lot of rehearsing at home with the on line tracks, and managed to sing without my music, which made me happy since I didn’t have to lug a bunch of books around!  The choir chairman was nice enough to give me rides to rehearsals and the concert since my car was out of commission and I hadn’t gotten my rental yet.

The following day, Monday, my dad and his girlfriend decided to make a big turkey pre-Christmas dinner, and since I was still eating turkey from Thanksgiving, I decided to go ahead and invite some people over.  We had about 15 people who came to eat turkey and still had plenty of leftovers!  Leah had a ball.  Our neighbors came and brought her gifts and some other friends came and brought us fresh eggs from their chickens.  It was great!

Tuesday, for their first Christmas present, I took Dad and Linda to see ICE! at the Gaylord National Resort.  Mike’s and my theme for Christmas this year was cherishing old memories and making new ones.  To that end, we made a conscious decision not to buy “stuff” that people wouldn’t want or wear, and instead to either make things or make memories.  A few years ago, we bought tickets for the whole family to go see ICE! but couldn’t afford it this year, so I just took Dad and Linda (Leah got in free).  We had lunch with my sister beforehand and then went to the show, which was really lovely—it had a Madagascar theme, which didn’t mean much to the rest of us, but I enjoyed it anyway.  It was a really nice afternoon.  Midway through, I got a text from my mom that she was coming up early, so I prepared myself for her arrival as well!

Wednesday, Mom came and Mike and I went down to Richmond to pick up Penny’s brother Mickey at the airport.  He is in boarding school out in Kentucky (Or Cuh-cucky as Leah calls it) and needed a place to go when the school closed for 2 weeks for Christmas.  He took one look at us when he saw us at the gate and kept on walking and when I stopped him to ask if he was Mickey, he said he had to get his bags and took off to the baggage claim.  That was essentially the high point of his visit.  He was a rude little bugger. 

Thursday, Mom came back to our house to stay for a week plus.  She and my sister started arguing and at this point I can’t say who’s wrong or who’s right, I just really wish it hadn’t happened.  My goal for this Christmas was for everyone to get along, no fighting, and to have a peaceful and calm time.  It didn’t happen.  By Christmas Day, I had a nervous breakdown.  There were SO MANY people and SO MUCH was going on, it was crazy!!!  Friday, my buddy Joe arrived and Saturday we went to my sister’s for Christmas Eve. 

Christmas Day was here, my sister brought a stray with her, so if you’re keeping count, there were 13 people here.  Judy’s stray wanted to make wassail for everyone and the crockpot wouldn’t hold it all, so we had to do it on the stove, which he fretted over literally all day.  The present situation, even though we all scaled back, was again totally crazy out of control—even if you only buy each person 1 thing, that’s 13 presents for 13 people (for a total of 169), and you know that no one bought ONLY one thing for each of the kids.  So it was pandemonium.

For our part, Mike and I made each family member (Mom, Dad, Judy, Lucas, and Joe) a scrapbook of memories of our times together.  It was a special moment for everyone and there were a lot of tears flowing as everyone looked through their pictures and swapped books and traded stories.  We also made a photo collage of all of us making funny faces (mostly unintentionally).

And framed them. Everyone got one of those.  So it helped lighten the mood a bit from all the other crying.

Dinner was the traditional roast beef and Yorkshire pudding.  Mickey announced the first night he was here that he wasn’t eating a thing I cooked, all he wanted to eat was beef ramen noodles, despite the fact that he doesn’t eat beef.  He informed me that the noodles are only beef flavored.  I asked him where the beef flavoring came from and he couldn’t tell me.  I read the package and sure enough they contain beef, but I didn’t give a damn and didn’t tell him.  And I also let him eat Yorkshire pudding, despite it having beef “flavoring” in it. :-)

Dad and I did our traditional trip to Richmond to see the Ginter Gardens Festival of Lights, which was beautiful, as was the weather!  It wasn’t warm, but it was far warmer than usual when I had to stand by the bonfire for an hour mid-way through.  They expanded their repertoire slightly so we got to see some new lights and of course, we got crapped on at our favorite awful Burger King, where we ALWAYS get lousy service.  It was a fun night!

Post-Christmas was similarly busy.  Our “memory” present to Mom was a trip to the Melting Pot, so I took her out one night for that.  Joe decided I needed to start watching Ghost Adventures and Ancient Aliens, and we invented a drinking game to correspond with those (every time someone yelled “DUDE!” in Ghost Adventures or said “Aliens” or “extra terrestrials” or some variant there of in Ancient Aliens, we took a drink).  By the time we were done, (and let me be clear here, we were drinking Mike’s Hard Lemonades, this was not serious alcohol!  But I haven’t had a drink in probably 5 or 6 years and Joe is a real lightweight when it comes to alcohol so this was never going to end well), I was sitting on the floor convinced I could understand every word some German guy was saying, and Joe was moaning about a headache, which took him most of the next day to get rid of. 

We spent one day with Andy and Melissa bowling and taking Mickey to Coldstone Creamery, since he wanted ice cream.  Mike took the whole week off, which was nice for me to have a break! 

I took Mickey on my famous nighttime tour of DC in an effort to get him to spend some portion of the day either not watching TV or playing around on the computer and to interact with some member of our family.  I think he enjoyed it once we left, although he put up a bit of a fight about going.  I was excited to see the new Martin Luther King Jr Memorial, which I hadn’t seen yet and somehow almost drove past.  You can’t believe how big that thing is.  The pictures I’ve seen of it do it no justice at all.  It is literally massive.

We essentially did nothing to celebrate New Year’s Eve.  We forced Mickey away from the computer 10 seconds before the ball dropped on Times Square so at least he could say he saw it, although he wasn’t much impressed.  Mike went back to work on the 3rd, so I tried to come up with things to do with Mickey every day.  We went and saw a 3D movie—my first one ever, The Adventures of TinTin, which was OK, went to the mall, and had lots of Thai food, which is in short supply in rural KY.  Friday we started getting ready for our 3 Kings party, which was seriously scaled back this year—half what it was last year.  I didn’t want to have a huge crowd and be exhausted, so I decided just to have a few people and call it a night.  Mickey announced the beef stroganoff smelled terrible and that he was going to sit in the kitchen so he could leave, and then after watching me cook, clean, and set up for 2 days, just as we were ready to sit down, he asked if he could make ramen noodles.  I should have told him what he could do with his ramen noodles, but held my temper and told him no as politely as I could.  When I sat down to dinner on the other end of the table, my friend asked me what was wrong, that I looked like I was ready to commit murder.  Haha.

We dropped him at the airport yesterday and spent the rest of the day tidying up.  I had a nice evening last night, preparing English tea and watching the Downton Abbey premiere on PBS.

So that brings us to January.  Leah is in dance lessons—has been doing it for over a month now and LOVES it.  She is particularly fond of tap dancing and although she is the tiniest and youngest girl in her class, she is doing just great and learning a lot.  We have started back to Toddlin’ Time on Tuesdays and now are on the hunt for pre-school.  I am touring one place tomorrow which is probably the one that is farthest from my house and at the far end of where I am willing to go.  I start school on Wednesday.  We are going to my dad’s for a week next week, but Mike is staying home again to have some peace and quiet. 

Otherwise, I am watching lots of Quantum Leap on NetFlix, trying to keep up with housework (a losing battle), and trying to make good on my New Year’s resolution of cutting back and doing less while making it mean more.  I would like to get back into Weight Watchers, but every time I say that, I go for 3 weeks and quit again.  I need to find the motivation I had in 2008.

So I’ll probably write again in another 2 months when Merry says “WAKE UP!” :) 

Bloggety, Blog, Blog, Blog

The last time I blogged was on 9/11 and little did I know that all hell would continue to break loose around here.  We got our basement fixed up beautifully—I’m happy to say you would never know anything happened.  There is one less couch and there is a lot of extra lighting now, which is awesome, but other than that, life is back to normal downstairs!

In the meantime, the car needed new brakes and I needed glasses, which added up to a lot of money!!!!!  Thankfully we were able to get both done and finish paying off the credit card bills, because things just kept getting crazier!

Unfortunately, just as we were preparing to go to NY for my dad’s 60th, my mom called to say her long time companion Jim had collapsed after having suffered a massive heart attack.  He passed away on September 28th.  Having been a big part of our lives for a number of our years, this was a really sad loss for the family.  I was thus in Florida for almost 3 weeks.  During this time, Kristin from Iceland moved out.  I was disappointed in a way, but I think it was probably for the best and since I am still working with her new family’s other student, I will see her here and there.  I very much doubt we will host next year although I said that this year, so who knows, but I’m excited to say that Penny’s brother Mickey is coming to spend Christmas with us this year, so it’ll be kind of like celebrating with an exchange student anyway and we’ll get 2 weeks of fun before sending him on his way.

Florida was a good time, despite the circumstances.  I found things for Leah to do in and around Vero Beach and we went to the Brevard Zoo, SeaWorld, and Lion Country Safari.  I do believe the kid knows more about animals than any other 2 year old around!  Her particular favorites were the sharks and penguins at SeaWorld.  I also took her to see the movie A Dolphin Tale, which she loved and went around telling everyone she could find that the dolphin broke its tail.  We came home from SeaWorld with a 3 foot long Shamu, and just recently Leah ripped all the stuffing from ‘Mu’s tail and has informed me that Mu has a broken tail like the dolphin.  When I re-stuff Mu, we shall remedy his broken tail with a band-aid!  We also paid some extra money to go pet a rhinoceros, which was a pretty awesome experience that I won’t soon forget!  Leah liked taking a scrub brush to him and tickling him.  Whenever I ask her about the rhino, she says, “BRUSH!” (you can kind of see the rhino behind my mom in the picture above)  So we did a lot of things we might not otherwise have gotten to do and I got to go to the beach (even if it wasn’t Myrtle Beach) and just chill out and help out my mom as needed.  We kind of tossed around the idea of Disney World, I think more because Mom and I wanted to go than we really wanted to take Leah, but cooler heads prevailed—she really is still too young and we want her to remember that first time forever.  Another couple of years!

This class I am taking is really kicking my butt.  For 3 weeks, I basically did nothing, as the professor told me not to worry about it, so I’ve been playing catch up ever since.  We have group projects to do, and I’m happy to say I have great group members who really picked up the slack for me, and so I am now going to work doubly hard to make up for the work I didn’t do on Assignment 2.  Only 36 days till the class is over, THANK GOD, and let us hope I never take a class about organizing data and information EVER AGAIN!  Next semester I hope to take Introduction to Archiving so I can see if I really want to pursue that as a career option like I’ve been thinking I might.

I had fun in October going to the Kennedy Center to see Les Mis with some members of my choir, and then spending that evening answering phones for WAMU at their annual member drive.  We had a recordbreaking night, getting $35,000 in 3 hours, which is pretty incredible.  I love volunteering during The Big Broadcast—the most interesting mix of people volunteer and we had  fun table.  It was nice to unwind and let my hair down after the stress of Jim’s death and the classwork piling up.  The production of Les Mis was spellbinding—literally I wept many times and it was just a great performance. 

Leah and I have been having a lot of fun getting ready for Halloween.  We’ve been doing little projects now, like baking bread and making pumpkin-shaped jello and pumpkin-shaped crayons from all the crayons she broke to bits.  I went over to the local teacher supply store and bought a few charts for the walls so we are learning our colors and taking little scavenger hunts.  We talk about the weather and count the days on the calendar.  We went to the pumpkin patch and carved pumpkins today.  It’s fun and keeps her engaged.  I am looking forward to getting her into preschool, but am not in any rush.  We are keeping busy with a music class and MOPS and various and sundry other activities and are looking into gymnastics.  She’s a fun kid and able to do so much more.  Even though I miss snuggling with a newborn, I do enjoy these toddler days!  I like being crafty and even little things turn into a lot of fun for her, so I try to come up with something to keep her interested and teach her something new, while allowing me to stretch my creative muscles and keep from getting cranky!

Hopefully our bathroom project will get underway soon.  We finally got our loan approved and got the money to pay the contractor, so we’re ready to go.  We picked a design and that’s that!  It’s hard to believe it’s been nearly 3 months since the Great Flood, and while it had unintended consequences, it’s fun to think of the positives of the situation and how we’re going to come out of it.  We also paid off our car this month, ahead of schedule, which loosens up our budget some to do some other things.  It’s the first time in 6 years we don’t have a car payment.  We nearly got hit today by the local ne’er-do-well on our way out to get pumpkins to carve, and I thought, “Wouldn’t that just be my luck!?” but thankfully he got back on his side of the road with about 6 inches to spare before he hit us.

Joe and I went and saw the MST3K live show, Cinematic Titanic, again on Thursday night.  It’s a fun way for him and I to celebrate our frienshipversary—this year being #17.  It won’t be long now before I’ve known him more than half my life, which I find mindboggling.  We had our traditional Bertucci’s dinner and then walked around DC for a couple of hours before the show started.  Afterwards, we got on line for the signing and I got myself a poster to have signed.  We also discovered Joel was allowing people to take pictures, so of course, we took full advantage.  I like that all of us are modeling sexy eyewear! :-D  My next big celebrity trip will be in November to see Diane Keaton at 6th and I Synagogue, which should be quite interesting.  I enjoy watching her, and she seems like she’d just be a really nice and down to earth person, so I’m looking forward to meeting her!  I wonder if she’s going to wear something crazy or just dress casually.

In general, I’m just feeling quite content with life.  I seem to have made friends with some exceptionally kind and low key people—just last week I was able to go out to dinner with 3 new girlfriends and we all sat around and laughed and chattered until before we knew it, 2+ hours had gone by.  I’ve joined a new book club here in town, which is fun, and my NoVa book club seems to have gotten back on track, surviving the 7 year itch.  I’ve become very friendly with a wonderful couple down the street and their daughter, all of whom think Leah is the best kid in the universe (and of course, I quite agree!). 

I’m keeping busy, busy, busy and keep telling Mike, “I promise, I’m going to calm down…after this week”.  Fortunately he’s been patient with what has been a ridiculous autumn!

There have been a lot of fun little things going on and I always think, “Oh, I should blog about that!” but usually I am too tired!  It’s a shame—Leah says some damned cute stuff that I’d like to remember and we have a lot of fun and do a lot of things, but time just keeps on slipping away…  I really can’t believe tomorrow is Halloween!  Then it’s November, and I do debate doing NaNoWriMo just so I can get this damned whiteboard down from my bulletin board and finish my book!  And then in a few short weeks, it will be Thanksgiving.  Mike and I have been debating what to do in April for our 10th wedding anniversary, and yet it seems like just yesterday we were getting married.  I feel too young to be this old and too old at the same time. 

I’ll close here and who knows when I’ll blog again!  The new Facebook sucks, but it doesn’t seem to keep me from using it, so of course, you can get my updates there if I don’t update here :)  Ta ta!

A Taste Test

I’ve recently become addicted to a podcast for the first time.  Mike and Tom Eat Snacks is a podcast by Tom Cavanagh and Michael Ian Black, formerly of Ed fame, which was one of my favorite TV shows back in the day.  They’ve both gone on to do other things, but recently re-united to start doing this podcast in which they taste various snacks and discuss them, usually while touching on lots of other pop culture topics.  It’s hilarious and fun, and makes me think about my snack options!

We just got back from nearly a week in New England and while I was taking Penny grocery shopping to prepare some Thai food for Mike’s family, Mike asked me to please pick him up some Yodels.  Mike is a big fan of Drake’s Cakes and Yodels are his top pick.  I got two boxes, and then noted that Drakes has been taken over by Hostess.  I thus made the pronouncement that Yodels and HoHo’s are the same thing and from now on, he could just eat a Ho Ho.  I was informed that a Ho Ho and  a Yodel are two totally different animals and it was an insult to the Yodel-eating universe to suggest that one could be substituted for the other.

I then suggested that perhaps a Swiss Roll by Little Debbie was a good alternative, and again was rebuffed.  So I posited that if he was so sure of himself, we’d just set up a blind taste test and if he could choose the difference and correctly identify the Yodel, I would, in essence, shut up.

Last night, I went to the grocery store and picked up Ho Ho’s and Swiss Rolls.  The stage thus set, we decided to set some ground rules.  Mike said he’d be able to tell just by holding the cakes in his hand which was which.  Consequently, until the test was over, I made him eat with a spoon.  I couldn’t do much about smell, which he also said would be a clear indication.  So I set up the test and he sampled all three.

He correctly identified one out of three cakes, but the one he correctly identified was indeed the Yodel.  He confused the HoHo and the Swiss roll.  Thus mollified, Penny and I had to jump in on “the snack game” as Mike and Tom call it and sample the cakes for ourselves.

Having now sampled all three cakes at the same time, I can confirm that they all do have distinct tastes.  Here are our findings:

(From left to right:  Swiss Roll, Ho Ho, Yodel)

1.  The Ho Ho was consistently all three of our least favorite cake.  Mike said it was plastic tasting, and I found the cake to be quite dry.  We all agreed it had the most frosting on the inside and the smell was the chocolatiest of all the cakes.

2.  The Yodel was Mike’s favorite and Penny and I were not able to say we liked it more or less than the Swiss Roll.  It had much more cake and much less frosting which actually fooled Mike into thinking it had chocolate cream—you really couldn’t taste the cream very much at all.  It also had the darkest chocolate coating on the outside.

3.  The Swiss Roll is the one I would lean towards as my favorite.  While it seemed to have the least chocolate on the outside, it was the easiest one to taste the various components of the snack (frosting, cake, coating).  The chocolate was quite pale on the outside.  The Swiss Roll was also the sweetest.

(The all-important sniff test)

Interestingly, despite the Swiss Roll tasting the sweetest, it contains fewer grams of sugar than the Yodel.  The HoHo had the least sugar of all the cakes we sampled.

It was a lot of fun and we had a lot of laughs while we sampled the cakes.  I doubt this is something we will do any more of, but I think it’d be pretty cool if MATES did something similar—compared the offerings of several different companies’ version of the same snack.  And if they need a box of HoHo’s, they just have to ask.

Whirlwind Weekend

This is one of those weekend that got so busy and so crazy so quickly that you’re almost glad it’s Monday.  Except that I don’t have back up to keep Leah entertained on Monday. But it’s nice to have her to myself today!

Last Tuesday, we got the mail and in it was a little postcard from Lisner Auditorium.  I was sitting on the back porch when Penny brought the mail up and as I read the postcard, I yelled, “Holy sh**!” and ran in the house to buy my tickets for Cinematic Titanic, the live MST3K show.  I got a great seat and emailed my friend Joe and asked him to go with me, since we spent a good deal of college watching MST3K. 

Friday night, we met up at the Lisner and headed over to Bertucci’s for dinner.  It was a big night for us, every October on some nebulous date, we celebrate one more year of friendship, and this year we celebrated being friends for 16 years.  I brought him some fun cards and he paid for dinner.  Due to the crappy service at Bertucci’s, we sat around for 90 minutes, but it was a fun time to reminisce and talk about life now and I got to preview his new comic book, which is amazing.  (way to go, Joe!)

The show was spectacular.  I laughed for 2 1/2 solid hours.  The movie was predictably horrible.  Although the postcard read for something like “Battle of the Insects”, the real name of the movie was Genocide.  (But as they pointed out, who wants to say they went to the theater to see genocide, and even worse, who wants to say they laughed at it?)  When Joel Hodgson stepped out on stage, the whole theater erupted.  One of the cast members said, “MST3K fans are the best fans in the world.  You know why?  Because the show has been off the air for 12 years and you’re still packing auditoriums!”  WOO HOO!!!!

The movie was horrible—I was actually bored of it, although not of the experience, but I was just like, “Come on already!”  As the MST3K cast riffed on the movie, there was a chance for them to interact with the audience depending on how we reacted to their jokes, so it was just amazing.  Joe and I agreed to bookmark it and if they ever come back to DC, sign us up!

Afterwards, we got on line to get autographs.  I had dug out my old VHS tapes, which Joe was extremely impressed at their condition.  And I had picked up a couple of DVD’s at Borders the night before.  The line was quite long but moved rather quickly and it was exciting to get up there and talk to the cast.  Joel said hello and shook my hand (I’ll never wash it again! haha) and then signed my tapes and I moved on down the line.  For some reason, one of my DVD sets piqued their interest as none of them had seen it before.  Go figure!  It was awesome to meet Trace Beaulieu (unrecognizable without the crazy hair) and Frank Conniff, who looks exactly the same as he did as TV’s Frank.  I shook hand with all of them and they were all so nice.  Joe and I were beside ourselves.

I got home around midnight, and I was exhausted, but I knew the cavalry was coming.  Saturday morning, I got up and we got Leah ready to go to Woodbridge to spend they day with Auntie Melissa.  We drove her up there and dropped her and a pile of toys off and then came home.  Penny was waiting for us, and she told us she missed Leah as soon as we walked in the door! :-D    She had Homecoming on Saturday night, so she was excited to go dancing with her friends.  I spent the day cleaning up the house, which I am happy to report is still pretty clean even though Hurricane Leah has been home a full day now.  It only took me a few hours and then everything was more or less up to snuff—I need to wash the floors, but other than that, I’m in good shape, vacuuming, dusting, and surfaces all complete.

Penny’s friend Ashley came over around 4:30 to do her hair and make up and I sat down and watched a zombie prank on YouTube that my buddy Steve had posted to his Facebook.  I was laughing so hard Penny and Ashley came down to see what the heck was going on.  I don’t know where the Japanese get off making this kind of stuff, but it is HILARIOUS.  I was crying I was laughing so hard, mainly because I could totally picture Leah kicking the zombie in the back.  If you want to see it, click here.

Afterwards, we got Penny dressed and took a few photos before going up the hill to see the family of the young man she was taking to the dance, who happened to be Ashley’s cousin.  He was all dressed up and ready to go, so we all took a bunch of pictures and then Ashley, Penny, and JB headed out and Michael and I came home to go have a quiet dinner somewhere.  We decided on Ruby Tuesday’s.  We went to the one in Central Park, but it was JAMMED, so we took off and went to the one on Mine Road, where we had a delightful meal.

We came home and decided it was a perfect night to spark up the firepit and have some smores and our neighbor Jett came over to say hello while we were out there.  We chatted with him for a while till the fire died out and then retreated to the warmth of the house just in time to get the call that Penny was on her way home.  I downloaded the new Sara Bareilles song King of Anything, which has become my new anthem of the moment and when Penny arrived, we were debriefed on the fun of homecoming, at which it seems she had a great time, and that was confirmed looking at her pictures!

Sunday, Melissa brought Leah home, although Leah didn’t particularly care if she was brought home or not (between you and me, I think she enjoys the spoiling she gets up there).  We took Melissa out to lunch as a thank you for watching our girl and then she headed out and I made a big pot of tomato sauce for my family for dinner, since I was heading up to NPR.  I had planned to bake pumpkin cookies, but frankly, I fell asleep.  The only thing that woke me up at 4:00 was my mother-in-law calling to talk to Penny. :-)  Since I needed to leave around 4:30, it was just as well.  I got up and found Penny and called back to Rhode Island and got myself together and headed out to WAMU, with a quick stop to get gas.  I don’t know how it happened, but I saved 60 cents on gas at Giant, which was awesome.  I thought I’d save about 40 cents, which would have been good enough, but 60 cents is even better!

I got to WAMU at 6:10 or so and found my preferred table was back where I wanted it to be.  My sister walked in and a bat-shit crazy part of me was so happy to see her that I even smiled at her, which she completely ignored and sat elsewhere with her husband.  I found his presence interesting on a number of levels that I can’t really go into.  Anyway, it was a good night, we raised $35,000 in 3 hours.  I only took about 8 calls and not for big money, but a lot of people were getting small donations that apparently added up to a bunch of money in the end.  A place called Tonic (I think) provided the meal, which was a chicken pasta dish, bbq chicken, mashed potatoes, carrots, salad, cupcakes and brownies.  The food was very good, especially the salad.  I picked up 5 or 6 new books from the table, which was cool, read a lot of my book club book, and I was home by 11:30.  I’m looking forward to the February campaign!

Good thing too since Michael’s carpool driver didn’t sleep last night (I know the feeling), so he had to get me up at 6:00 to go and take him to the train.  It was actually nice, though, as I got to spend some time with Penny before she left for school, and I was able to write out her note for missing a couple days for our upcoming trip.  I took a hot shower and now I’ve been able to fill in my blog updates! WOW!

By some miracle, it’s 7:45 and Leah is still sleeping!  It was most definitely an awesome weekend.  My father once told my sister that I didn’t understand the importance of feeding the soul.  Well I do, and this weekend, I fed it by just being me and having a whole lot of fun.  And can I just say, walking into a clean house is a real boon to the spirits!  I’ve been beating myself up mentally a lot lately, and this was just one of those weekends that let me put things into perspective.

Coming up, I will finish off my grad school applications—I am waiting on one more letter of recommendation—and we are heading out for my mom’s 60th birthday soon.  Penny and I will spend a day at Disney World, her first time there.  She has triple and quadruple invitations to Halloween parties, so she has to decide what she wants to do about Halloween and I have decided to skip the Rally to Restore Sanity to preserve my own sanity so I can take the girls to the pumpkin patch and we can carve pumpkins and whatnot.  The annual Kosior Fall Festival—I want it to happen! :)

Ta ta for now!

Bitches With Books

October marks the last month of any given year of our book club’s schedule.  This October was particularly special, in that I had asked all the women in the club if they would grant me a wish and come down to Fredericksburg once for book club.  I haven’t hosted a meeting in my home since November 2004, when we lived in Centreville, because the commute to the ‘burg is insane.  I was pleased when everyone agreed to come on down and lose out on a Saturday of their precious weekend to come to my place and talk book.

Last month’s meeting got a little rowdy, and while we were all laughing and crying and enjoying ourselves, Lauren suggested that we should include a night at the bingo hall at the end of book club as part of the F’burg experience.  Then I was beyond excited!  So it was set, October 2 was books and bingo day.

I selected The Last Days of Summer by Steve Kluger as my book for this year.  I love going to book club and discussing the books, don’t get me wrong, but I also wanted to shake things up a little bit and try something new.  Since I knew we’d have a good amount of time between book club and bingo, I decided to change our format of eating and discussing to include arts and crafts hour.

Cecily contacted Steve and he agreed to call into the club meeting at 2:00pm.  We were scheduled to start the meeting at 1pm, but of course with a car fire on I95, everyone got to the house around 1:30.  We tucked into our food (Dinner theme:  What would you serve if your favorite celebrity came to dinner?), and then discussed the book for a few minutes until the phone rang and Steve was ready to chat with us!

He is a fascinating book club speaker and talked with us for about 45 minutes.  He told us lots of stories about how the book came to be, who the characters were, and so forth, and a hilarious story about the Tony Awards (seriously, if you ever have him call into your club, ask him about that one!). 

Afterwards, I finished off with one of my favorite quotes in the book and then it was time to set the schedule for next year.  We have an awesome round up of books coming up this year (see below for the list) and I’m really excited to get reading!!!  We asked Penny to take a group photo as well.  She agreed, but we had pre-arranged that after we took one regular shot, we would all make a peace sign like Penny does in most of her pictures.  Oh my gosh, she was so embarrassed and laughing.  it was ADORABLE!

The it was time to get busy and do some crafty fun!  I asked each member to bring a picture of someone who had changed their life and be ready to talk about it.  We went around the circle with our pictures and everyone started talking about the person who influenced them.  More than a few tears were shed as we talked about moms and best friends and teachers and aunts and uncles.  It was a special and moving experience that I can’t hope to capture here, but it was awesome to be a part of. 

Then I got out all my scrapbooking materials and we set up shop on the coffee table.  Pretty soon scraps of paper were flying, stickers were being exchanged, and projects began to take shape.  I’m so glad I decided to do something a little different—I think it was a whole lot of fun for everyone and gave us all a lot to think about.

 

The person I selected was the school librarian from my school growing up.  I first remember meeting Mrs. Collins (at the time, Miss LeBel) when I was in kindergarten and she really inspired me with what has become a lifetime love of reading.  In 1998, when I had moved home and was trying to figure out what to do with my life, Mrs. Collins would request me all the time as her sub when she was out.  In the spring of 1999, she asked me to be her long term sub while she battled cancer, a fight she ultimately won.  Then she was diagnosed with MS and retired from the library.  This spring, I was lucky enough to see her at my dad’s retirement party, and introducing her to my husband and my daughter was a special moment for me.  Then I sat down with her and began to talk about the new crossroads in my life:  what’s next?  What am I going to do with myself after Leah doesn’t need me full time any more?  Mrs. Collins responded, “You would make a great librarian.” 

So here I am now applying to library school, the final push in the right direction having been applied.  And I have asked Mrs. C to write me a reference.

Back to book club…

After we all finished our projects and shared them, we had some time to hang out and relax until bingo.  We started packing up at about 5:45 and headed over to Wawa for some extra provisions in case our meeting leftovers didn’t hold out.  We got to bingo a trifle bit late, so we all had to cram around a table for 6 (and there were 7 of us and the people next to us were not giving an inch!). 

Luck held.  Melissa won big, $100, her first ever bingo win!  For most of the night, we were all sitting around laughing, eating, and hoping for big winnings, but Melissa was the lucky draw.  Then a few games later, my number came up at the exact same time 6 other people’s lucky number came up, so I won a whopping $14.  Ah well, it nearly paid my admission! :)  A win is a win is a win, right?

 

Anyway, at the meeting, we officially agreed that a) we would change our names from NoVa Lit Chicks to Bitches with Books and that b) Books and Bingo will now be an annual event and I’ll get to host, so I am over the moon excited with how great that is.  My favorite girls, my favorite game, my favorite hobby!  What gets better than that? 

**************************************

Bitches With Books Year 7 Reading List

The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake by Aimee Bender
The Opposite of Me by Sarah Pekkaner
The Mighty Queens of Freeville by Amy Dickinson
Gift from the Sea by Anne Morrow Lindbergh
Picnic at Hanging Rock by Joan Lindsay
The Postmistress by Sarah Blake
The Kitchen House by Kathleen Grissom
A Scattered Life by Karen McQuestion

and 4 choices to be named later.  Happy reading!

Thus Begins The Insanity!

Tomorrow is April 1, and in a week, my baby will turn 1.  It is something I simply cannot fathom.  She is a beautiful, smart, funny little darling, and while we’ve had moments of stress and anxiety in the past year, I would not have changed a thing about it at all.  I have a dream job—staying home and raising a little person.  What a joy!  Even though I just had some Easter portraits done at Sears, I scheduled an appointment to have some more portraits done on her actual birthday over at Picture People, since they sent me a coupon. 

Today, Leah and I went to the mall with my friend Lisa and her little guy, Daniel, who is about 5 months older than Leah.  We walked them around the mall, they both met the Easter bunny, we had a nice lunch, and let them play at the playpark in the mall.  Lisa and I met last summer when I decided to have a Pampered Chef show and put a notice in every mailbox on the street to try and meet my neighbors.  Unfortunately, Lisa couldn’t make it, but we started walking together around the neighborhood.  Leah was still too little to play much, so we didn’t really hang around, but now that Leah is a little bit bigger, we’ve been spending more time together.  Tomorrow, we are going to go up to DC to see the cherry blossoms, have a picnic, and let the kids play out on W. Potomac Park.  It should be a great day.  We are both going back to WW the Saturday after Easter (Leah’s birthday party), and we’ve been motivating each other to walk a couple miles each day when the weather is nice.  I have been enjoying having a friend right down the street and we have common interests and a similar parenting philosophy.  The other night, she, Daniel, and her husband were walking around our block and stopped over.  John and Michael hit it off like a house on fire, so I’m sure we’ll be seeing more of them!

Work started on the house today.  The main level and all the brick and the front porch were powerwashed and the old shutters were removed.  It looks kind of odd in that whoever lived here before didn’t bother to paint underneath the shutters when they painted the house, so we can actually see the color of the original brick.  It makes me wish even more that whoever did it had not painted the brick, but what’s done is done, so now we will finish the job.  We picked what I hope is a nice yellow color, although I suspect that it’s going to be more beige-ish.  I’m reserving judgment till I see it, but I hope I’m going to like it!

Then it’ll be time to get ready for the weekend!!!!  I plan to spend Friday shopping and defrosting a giant turkey, as well as starting to prepare the coconut cake I’m going to make for dessert (unless I wimp out at get the Wegman’s Ultimate White Cake, which, frankly, is AMAZING).  Saturday will be spent doing preparations for Easter, and then in the evening I’ll be going off to dinner and bingo with Wendy.  (Anyone else want to play?  We’ll be in the usual spot!)

I’m really excited for Easter.  I think we’ll have a nice crew and it’ll be fun having some kids around.  Most importantly, Mr. Gobble will be out of my freezer, freeing up valuable real estate for provisions for the party.  I hope the painters get the house painted by Easter is the only thing!  I plan to take Leah to church first thing and then we’ll get cookin’!  So far, Manda is bringing potato salad, Melissa is bringing devilled eggs, and Wendy is bringing a ham and mac n’ cheese to make her fussy eaters happy.  I think we’ll have a nice variety of food for sure.

Monday is book club.  We’ll be discussing Olive Kitteridge and then I will post a review here afterwards.  Friday, Michael is having some training on Leah stuff, and then we have to go to DMV, since we just discovered his ID expired a year ago!  Then we’ll start preparing for the big blow out.  My buddy Joe is coming down Friday to help out, and we’ll go and get the food.  I hope the weather is nice—we’re going to try having a cook out and I would love to be outside as much as possible.  If you’re coming and it’s nice, please bring a camp chair, lawn chair, etc. if you have them.  Saturday is the party and then Sunday I have choir practice.  Then Jennifer arrives that Thursday, and we’ll spend Friday apartment hunting.  Saturday we will take her back to Richmond to the airport, go to a birthday party in Richmond, and hopefully meet up with some new friends we’ve been corresponding with through our adoption attorney—they are hoping to adopt soon, and have turned to us for advice.  The following week is our wedding anniversary, and a pile of dress rehearsals for the chorus concert, which is the following weekend.  The 24th, I am getting together with my friend Kris, whose kids and husband will all be out of town.  The 25th is the big concert (tickets are still available at the low, low price of $85!), and by then, it’ll be the end of the month!  Sheesh, I’m tired just thinking about it.

I’ve been in contact with a friend from home since I sent out the email asking people to vote for Leah.  I said to her that if we won, we would come visit her while we are in NYC, since she lives in NYC, and she told us not to wait, to come anyway!  Turns out she lives right near where I went to college, so I’m thrilled that I can go visit my old stomping grounds, show Michael Manhattan College, and we can go around NYC.  We are hoping to get up there in June.  And of course, in May, we’ve got our trip to Myrtle Beach lined up.  I got Leah some clothes today and a bathing suit—this one a one piece to compliment the two piece her auntie sent her.  We are so excited to be going, although sad to hear the Wellses can’t join us after all!!!  I plan to do a lot of R&R that week.  And it’s nice the fee for the condo includes the maid service, so we can just walk on out of there Saturday morning with nary a thought.

We have become the smoothie king and queen.  We had a box of oranges to use up, so I juiced them all and then put the juice in the blender with the strawberries I had picked and frozen last summer.  YUM!  Since then, we’ve been trying different kinds.  We had strawberry lemonade slush tonight, and last night we had peach-berry.  Michael has loved them too, and we have similar taste in fruit, so it’s working out very well.

So that’s about it.  Less than a week till I get to go back on Facebook, but it doesn’t seem as important as it did nearly 40 days ago.  I have enjoyed blogging again, so I can see myself reading other people’s updates, and I’m sure I’ll post updates, but I just hope I keep up with my blog. 

Till next time!

Janet Evanovich and the Womb on Wheels

So, yesterday was it, the big day, the day I've been waiting for since the end of April when I found out Janet Evanovich was going to do book signings and she was coming to New Jersey. It only got better when I posted to the blog asking if anyone wanted to go to New Jersey with me, and not only did Melissa respond, but Russell and Amy said they'd like to come up from Savannah for the occasion! PARTY!

So at 9am yesterday, we met up with Melissa in the commuter lot on 123 and headed to New Jersey. The email we got from Janet's site said there'd be a big street festival in New Jersey to kick off the book's release, complete with a costume contest (this turned out to be a bit of a bust--nothing was really going on while we were there, although we won free drinks from Chick Fil A). We went back and forth--I immediately knew that I was going to dress Leah up as Lula, but finally we all decided to dress up--Melissa as Stephanie, me as Connie, and Amy as Mrs. Plum. I thought we all looked great! Melissa volunteered to drive and for her blue Vue to be the vehicle of the day, so we crammed in and off we went! Russell was excited because he got to see a new state--he'd never been to New Jersey before.

We made good time. We stopped once at a rest area to use the bathroom and get some provisions and still got to New Jersey at 12:30. We had a little bit of a challenge finding the B&N, getting a wee bit lost along the way (apparently I drained the iPhone's battery playing Tetris, so we weren't able to get directions as clearly as we might have), but finally found it, wonder of wonders, next to a Wegman's and... *drum roll* a CHRISTMAS TREE SHOP!!!!!!!!! Wahoo! Seriously, the shopping area was huge. We finally got out of the car and everyone hit the ground running for the bathroom--apparently it's not a good idea to get big drinks when you're going to be stuck in the car for a while :-) Then we went and bought our books--we cleaned them out! Well, not really, but we did buy a LOT of books. Afterwards, the clerk sent us outside to get our wristbands. We were #447-450 in line.



We headed over to Cheeburger Cheeburger for lunch instead of going into Philadelphia for a trip to the Dining Car, as planned. I'd never been there, but it was SO good. I had a grilled portabella melt, and it was amazing. On good Jersey rye bread. YUM. We got extra onion rings, which were delicious and then we decided to dress Leah up in her Lula costume. Melissa had borrowed donuts and fried chicken toys from her school, and we had a Cutielicious onesie from my mom, and Melissa got her a pimp hat and pants and cuffs and my sister contributed pants as well. Leah looked SO Lula by the time we were done, it was awesome.



Then we did some wandering and shopping for a while--hit the Christmas Tree Shop, went to Wegman's (their raspberry cupcakes are AWESOME!!!!!), and then decided to go back to B&N to see what was going on. We met Mr. Cluck and then went into the store. They'd broken out a bunch of helium balloons, and I decided I wanted to get a couple for Leah. I went over to a young woman with a pile of balloons and she said hello and started asking about the baby. She said, "What number are you?" and I said, "448" and she said, "Well, I hate it that you'd have to wait that whole time with a baby. Tell you what, I want you to go up to the front of the line and tell them that Alex said it was OK for you guys to go first--we're letting babies and people with disabilities go ahead."

Well, alrighty then, I thought! GREAT news! So I went towards where she pointed, thinking B&N has the nicest employees ever. Melissa said something about Janet's daughter and I said, "Who's Janet's daughter?" and Melissa said, "You were just talking to her!" Yes, folks, Alex is Janet's daughter and I didn't even know it!!!!! *Sigh* :-) But it was cool that she was so awesome, and I got balloons for Leah.

So we went up and stood where Janet was coming out and then I thought we should probably figure out where to stand to get in the right place to have the books actually signed and I went up to the B&N line manager and told her Alex said we could cut the line with the baby and where should we stand? She gave me directions, I rounded up our crew, and we stood. They let the line open for the first 50, and I will say, I agreed with the fact that the people who got there first should have gone ahead of us. After those 50 went through, they sent us through--it was the 4 of us and one other lady in a wheelchair. It was AWESOME.

Alex came back through the line and started asking Ranger or Morelli? I said, "Please, ask your mom to write 300 pages of Stephanie and Ranger, just once, no detail too small, and then Morelli forever." She said, "Sounds like you're a Ranger girl!" and handed me an "I love Ranger pin". I wore it proudly, despite also being a Morelli girl. I think Amy and Melissa got Morelli pins and Russell and I got Ranger pins :-) FUN!

Then we were up! There was an assistant taking cameras and pictures, and so I stepped up and gave him my camera. Then I went to stand with Janet, who was signing my books. She wasn't doing personalizations, which gave her a chance to do pictures, and I'd have rather had the pictures, honestly. Unfortunately, coming face to face with your favorite author tends to render you speechless and I could think of NOTHING, and I mean NOTHING, to say to her. And I was buying a good number of books, so it's not like I didn't have time. My mind drew a complete blank. She admired Leah a bit and finally I came up with, "Thank you for writing these books, they've brought me hours of joy" like a dumbass.

Because they'd said we could take a group picture afterwards, I stood to the side while Melissa got her book signed and then Janet turned to me and asked if she could have Leah. :-) She said, "I want one of those!" and I said, "Sorry, it took me too long to get this one." She said, "Oh, I can tell she was worth the wait!"

Then Russell and Amy went and then we all went back and got a group picture taken together. (Leah had long since lost the Lula gear--it was HOT in the store and we were all sweating.)





Each time I stepped forward with Leah, you could hear a bunch of sighs and squeals! Leah was eating it up. She was smiling like a champion. And then it was time to head back south. We loaded up the balloons, but soon it became clear that they had a mind of their own, so we decided to let the helium out and before long, Amy was huffing helium and saying, "I love you, Russell" and giggling in a helium voice. It was hilarious. Then Russell got in on the action, and I thought he sounded just a little bit gay with the helium voice, so I told him, "Say you love your J. Crew sweater" and Melissa amended it to, "Say you love your pink sweater from J. Crew." When he said it, I thought we were all going to fall out of the car laughing. The helium ran out WAY too quickly.

Russell requested we stop for Roy Rogers for dinner, so we hit a rest area with a RR and had some grub. Leah was starting to get VERY angry, so Melissa and I fed her and then Amy and I strapped her back in the car and we got back on the highway.

In no time flat, the screaming began. And continued unabated until finally we decided to pull into the next rest area and I would try to calm her down. I walked her around for a bit and then we settled into the car, her snuggled into my chest. Melissa offered to drive slowly around a bit to get the feel of the road back into her, and I said something to the effect that I had a noisemaker at home that plays a heartbeat, which babies find very soothing as it reminds them of being in the womb and they feel secure and snuggly. I asked her if she had a heartbeat on her iPhone and she found a free app for it, but it wasn't doing what it was supposed to do. Then she logged on and found a "baby soothing app" and it was only 99 cents, so she decided to download it. It had a heartbeat sound, so she plugged the phone into her car's sound system and soon we were listening to "ba-bump, ba-bump, ba-bump". Melissa put the car in gear, and started slowly circling the parking lot, and we were all giggling quietly, when I said, "I feel like we're being stalked by the tell-tale heart" and we all busted out laughing. There was a dude standing by his car in the parking lot and we were driving in circles around him with the heartbeat blaring. Melissa said, "Well, we've got a womb on wheels!" and we all started dying laughing again. It was HILARIOUS. I was crying I was laughing so hard, and I was not alone. So we start making all these heart jokes--I told Leah (who was snoring happily away against me) that she'd better be a cardiologist. We came up with every song we could think of that had the word "heart" in the title.

Finally, Leah was settled enough that we put her back in the carseat and headed down the road, heartbeat blaring, and the 4 of us 'adults' cackling like crazy. We got to the Ft. McHenry tunnel toll booths, and I told Melissa to crank the stereo as she paid. We were all dying laughing again, but the attendant didn't do anything. DISAPPOINTING!

Finally we made it to Virginia. The Beltway was clogged, so Melissa made a crack about clogged arteries and maybe we needed to get a bypass. Then Russell turned on his video camera to film us on the Wilson Bridge and at the mixing bowl and said into the microphone, "Here we are on the DC Beltway. We've been listening to a heartbeat for the last 200 miles to try to keep Leah calm" and I interjected, "But it was not 'in vein' because she's stayed asleep." and we all just totally lost it. Completely and totally lost it. The womb on wheels was rocking from the 4 of us just busting a gut laughing. How the baby did not wake up, I do not know. Seriously. We were howling, the tears flowing, I thought we might even drive off the road.

Well, all good things must come to an end, and eventually we hit Woodbridge and parted ways leaving the Womb on Wheels behind, and of course, Leah woke up and started SCREAMING without the heartbeat on. She screamed most of the way back to the 'burg, but I think it was just some serious tired, because we got home, I fed her, and I put her to bed, and she was out like a light in about 2 minutes and slept 8 solid hours. (For which I was very, very thankful)

It was a WONDERFUL trip, the most fun I've had in FOREVER on the road. I'm so glad Melissa, Russell and Amy made it and we had as much fun as we did. As Russell said on his Facebook this morning, "I'd do it again 'in a heartbeat'."

Excuse my while I go dry my tears and start reading. I've got Fingerlickin' Fifteen to get through :-)

Crazy Road Trip Idea

Ok, I have an idea for a road trip knocking around in my head. I'm looking to see if anyone else is as crazy as I am and wants to take a trip? If you are not a Janet Evanovich fan, you can quit reading now.

Ok, Janet fans, as you know, Fingerlickin' Fifteen is coming out in June. This should indicate a book tour, no? Right, and we were promised tour dates at the end of April. Well, they're there all right, all 5 of them. She's going to a whopping 5 stops, one of which is in Canada.

*SIGH*

But I got to thinking about it. New Jersey isn't THAT far away. Cherry Hill is on the south end of New Jersey. And if we had a couple of drivers, well, it wouldn't be so bad.

Honestly, I'm thinking of going even if I have to go alone.

The date of the book signing is Tuesday, June 23rd at 6:00pm in Cherry Hill, NJ. My recommendation is that we call the book store that morning to make sure everything is cool and if so, we go up. We can be Jersey girls for the day. Now obviously, if you're working that day, you'll have a choice to make. A day of fun and frivolity versus being chained to your desk.

Anyway, I just thought I'd throw it out there. I'm happy to drive, I'm happy to pay for gas if someone else wants to drive, I'll bring the Tastykakes and pizza, whatever! If you think you'd like to go, drop me a line.

(Our other road trip options are Chicago, Alpharetta GA, or Ft. Meyers FL. Thank God we don't live on the west coast. If you'd like to see the list yourself, click here)

Oh, and the Name Book Sixteen contest is up at http://www.evanovich.com/funstuff/funfacts/name_book_16 Given my stellar success so far, I'm going to try a few titles out and see what happens. Get creative!

An Evening With Spinal Tap

Last night, Michael and I went out for a BIG date. We've gone out a couple of times for an hour or two, but last night we were excited to go to Washington DC for dinner and a concert. We were heading to see Unwigged and Unplugged at the Warner Theater as our ultimate destination. After discussion about Metro, parking, food, etc. we decided to really make a night of it and drive into town, park, have a nice meal, enjoy the show, and go home. Because I haven't been to Washington since December, I was in a bit of a state over planning our night on the town once the decision was made. However, I must give the Warner Theater's website its due. That site has it all--directions, nearby restaurants, parking, etc. Turns out it's blind friendly too! I read through the nearby restaurants section and the words "Washington's authentic British Pub" caught my eye. I sent the suggestion over to Michael, who hopped onto the Warner website and agreed it sounded like just the ticket.

So it was settled. I picked him up at 4:00 at Quantico and we headed to Washington. There was a slight glitch with Jane (our GPS) who was under the impression we were at the Naval Surface Warfare Center or something, but she quickly righted herself and we were off! We got to Washington before 5:00 and found a parking space by some miracle, and so we decided then and there to take our time over dinner. We selected Elephant and Castle as our dining location, and it was exactly two blocks from the theater. When we arrived, the sun was shining and we decided to dine on the patio! It's been so nice to be able to get out into the open air--Leah's spent the last 3 or 4 days out on our front porch taking in the good clean open air and we've taken lots of walks. Michael and I are well aware that summer is quickly approaching and that means a lot more indoors time, so we are getting it in while we can!

We ordered a short appetizer of potato skins, and then my main entree arrived--stuffed Yorkshire pudding, hell yes! (I actually wanted to type "stuffed Yorkshire pudding, bitches!" but I don't want any of you to take offense :-D) Oh my God, was it good. It was not as good as the Yorkshire pudding that my mom and I make, but it was pretty freakin' fantastic Yorkshire pudding nonetheless. Is there even such a thing as a bad Yorkshire pudding? Doubtful. Michael got the Union Jack pub burger, and he said it was awesome. The mashed potatoes with my meal were real--they had big chunks of actual potato in them, and Michael thought his fries had been fresh cut. We were in heaven. We took our time eating. It's a very popular place and a lot of people who seem to be very impressed with themselves were eating there. But we were seated under a lovely tall tree and I don't think we would have noticed if the President himself had shown up, honestly.

After our main dish, a wind kicked up and I got a little chilly, so I asked our excellent waiter Chris if they had hot tea and he brought me a cup of English breakfast tea. Michael got a cup of coffee and then we decided to get some dessert to kill some more time, so I got an apple berry crumble and he got cheesecake. Yeah, we were totally living it up. I don't know (apart from the Melting Pot) the last time he and I lingered over dinner for two solid hours. It felt like such a luxury to reconnect. We did both admit to missing Leah and we phoned home once during the meal, but my father-in-law told us everything was just dandy and not to worry about a thing.

So, after supper we gathered up our things and went back to the theater. We went up to Will Call and got our tickets and then the security guard suggested we stay in the lobby so that we didn't get trampled when the doors opened. Everyone else had to wait outside!!! Talk about the VIP treatment!!! It was AWESOME! They opened up the main doors about 5 minutes later and then I decided to make one final trip to the ladies room and they let me use the main level restrooms instead of going downstairs because I had Michael with me! VIP treatment!!! A private bathroom!!! LUXURY! :-)

The ushers couldn't have been more helpful and we got to our seats. We were in row B, seats 2 and 4, smack dab on the aisle, so close to the stage we could just about taste it. When you request ADA seating, typically you get put in the back where a wheelchair can just pull up, but we got this wonderful, wonderful seating right in the front of the theater. I'm telling you, these were the best seats I've ever had to any show or concert, bar none.

The show kicked off around 8:15. It was supposed to be no photography, but tons of people were taking pictures, so I snuck a couple myself. Due to the fact I didn't want to draw attention to my clandestine activities, I turned off the flash and kept the camera low. So sorry about the dude's head in front of me. But you can see how close we were!



They played a huge variety of songs, mostly from Spinal Tap and A Mighty Wind. I didn't know a lot of the songs, I've only seen Spinal Tap once, but I greatly enjoyed it, and I enjoyed the hell out of the stuff from A Mighty Wind. They did a brief Q&A session with the audience, during which we learned that Christopher Guest and Eugene Levy are now working to turn Waiting for Guffman into a Broadway show. I'm not so sure how it'll work, but I'll be interested to see what they do!

They are all tremendously witty, I'm sure that goes without saying, and there was lots of laughter and humor in the show. They made a special video themselves for the Stonehenge song, during which some Troll dolls "danced" around a miniature Stonehenge. They showed a couple of user submitted videos of their songs--one by some dude Reverend Stevie in Perth, Australia and another with the song being sung by Lego people--I have now seen a Lego mosh pit, and it is as cool as you think it could be.

Annette O'Toole (Michael McKean's wife) came out and sang a couple of songs as well, and then it was winding down. They did 2 encores, however, and when they sang "Old Joe's Place", the place went wild. The entire audience yelled "Ea a Oe's" at the appropriate place and then everyone busted up laughing. It was so great. It looked for a minute like they'd do a third encore, but they didn't, and the lights came back on so we headed out. We got home around 11:30 to a couple of rather harried grandparents--Leah gets into little fits at night. She's a perfect angel all day, but at night she kind of goes a little bonkers. Well, they hadn't seen bonkers baby, only angel baby, so I think they were glad we made it back! But they had done an excellent job putting her to sleep, so it was a grateful me who got to sleep all night.

What a great evening and what a treat to see these guys perform live! We left with great big grins on our faces. The Guest mockumentaries are something we've enjoyed since very early on in our marriage, and so it was kind of special to see these guys in person.

Here are a few more pictures! Again, sorry these are blurry--no flash and all of them dancing around, it was hard to get great pictures! (Oh and Harry Shearer kept looking the other way, so I never did get a really great one of him, but I've met him before, so I guess I can live with my disappointment!)

Hooray for Special Days!

We went to the Melting Pot tonight, spur of the moment, when Hank and Sheila offered to babysit for the evening. Here we are over our dessert course. It was HOT back in that little booth in the section of the restaurant they call "Lover's Lane" (you can see how flushed I was!), but we had so much fun eating our lobster and filet mignon and cheese and chocolate. Plus, I got a goodie bag of freebies to remember the night by. I have never had a bad meal there, have never had bad service, in fact the wait staff at the Melting Pot in Fredericksburg is the friendliest and nicest ever. I told tonight's waiter David to just keep the mushroom caps coming, and he obliged before I finished the first batch!

Michael informed David we'd be back on August 23rd, so I don't have too long to wait! WOO HOO! Oh, and I think I'm looking damned good in this picture :-) Finally I can see a BIG difference!

Trip to WV

So this past weekend was the big trip to West Virginia to visit the Wellses and Annette, and introduce Melissa to everyone. The scheduling changed a bazillion times due to my work schedule, Melissa's work schedule, Annette's work schedule, but eventually everything worked out. It even turned out that Melissa's and my schedules jived so we could all carpool and even better, when I emailed her to ask if that was cool, she said only on the condition that she could drive, which you know was A-OK with me! Totally stress-free weekend thus ensued. Anyone wants to make me happy, utter those three magic words to me: "Let me drive." I'm yours.

We arrived in WV in the mid-afternoon, having left Woodbridge at around 2:00. We made several stops for gas, drinks, and potty breaks (which is how I know I'm getting older!), and got to the cabin just after 4pm. They had left it open, which was incredibly nice of them so that we could just roll on in and not have to worry about registering or waiting for the Wellses to arrive. The cabin slept 6 adults and was totally beautiful! We stayed in Cabin Number 1: Rainbow Trout. There was a room with 2 twin beds and a room with a queen, both of which were on the main level, and a loft upstairs with a king sized bed and jacuzzi tub. On the main floor was also a great big room which served as kitchen/living room (with gas fireplace)/dining room. The main wall, as you can see, was totally made up of windows, and look at the amazing view:



So after we unpacked, Melissa decided that we needed to go up this hinky little forest service road into Dolly Sods. According to the Forest Service website, "The Dolly Sods Scenic Area was created in 1970 to protect the unique scenic qualities of the area north of Forest Road 19. Today approximately 2,000 acres along Forest Road 75 is managed by the US Forest Service as a scenic area. The Dolly Sods Scenic Area is the most accessible and most visited part of the Sods."

It was just hinting at getting dark, we decided to roll on up there and see what was what. The signs warn it is impassible if there is snow, but we were feeling adventurous and kept going up, up, up. It really was quite lovely up there. We had rolled into WV listening to John Denver on Melissa's iPhone, and it seemed like the perfect soundtrack for everything while we were there.



After a while of driving around up there, we were flagged down by a passing Jeep and the driver, a slightly panicked looking young man rolled down his window and said, "I'm lost. I'm trying to get to Washington." We were in shock, as evidenced by Melissa saying, "Washington, D.C.?" and cackling maniacally when the poor dude nodded affirmatively. He looked even more distressed when we informed him he had at least a 3 hour ride ahead of him. He'd been following his GPS. This is apparently a major no-no in rural West Virginia--many of the websites we went to for the weekend's festivities said, "Don't use a GPS to get here" and a couple we ran into later were taking their GPS back to the store after it got them so turned around it took them hours to get where they were going!

Well, eventually it got kinda slippery up there, so we turned around. We decided to check the cabin to see if anyone had made it, but no one had, so we decided to haul it on out to a Pizza Hut we'd passed. This Pizza Hut was the jumpingest place in town--it was PACKED to the rafters. I made the mistake of needing to use the facility while I was there, and it was disgusting. I literally wanted to Purell the heck out of my hiney when I was done in there. Ugh. The pizza was pretty good though, so no complaints. We headed back to the cabin and Russell and Amy had arrived, so that was cool! They headed out to grab some dinner and we decided to go in the hot tub that was out back. It was then I discovered the need for a new bathing suit--the legs of my old one are SHOT! So I will be getting a new bathing suit come beach time. The hot tub was AWESOME though. Wow was it nice.

Afterwards we hung out with Russell and Amy, who'd brought back their grub, and then we all started getting a little nervous because it was late and no Annette yet! Well, Annette also succumbed to the bad GPS and to poor directions, so she was just quite late. But she made it and that's all that mattered to us! The celebration could begin!

Just as soon as I got some shut eye. I was tired. This usually happens to me on the first day of a trip--once I get away from home, from work, the routine, and can let my hair down, it just all comes out and I need some zzzz's. Unfortunately, Friday night I got the worst night's sleep EVAR! Seriously. The room was so stinkin' hot, I just lay there all night, dozing in and out of sleep, but not really sleeping. It was also quite noisy in Cabin 1: Rainbow Trout due to its proximity to the highway and the number of trucks steaming past, especially in the wee small hours of the morning. Melissa reported in the morning that she had a similarly terrible night's sleep, so I didn't feel too bad.

When I got up and came out of the bedroom, which was like a little cave, I was blinded by the bright sun streaming through the windows. It looked like a glorious day, so I got dressed and decided to take a walk around the cabin sites and get some fresh air and exercise. I grabbed my cameras and started hauling. It was COLD outside, but the fresh air was great. I am not partial to the mountains, as you know, I'm a beach type of girl, but the presence of the little stream/river was comforting and the scenery was gorgeous. I walked down off the road and followed the edge of the water, and managed to keep my shoes dry--a major feat (haha) since I had economized and only brought one pair of shoes with me!




I got back to the cabin and we assembled a makeshift breakfast before heading off to start our day. We hit a Bob Evans for lunch, where I had the Wildfire salad and it was HOT BBQ sauce. Like OMGWTFBBQ sauce, as the young people say. It was good, no doubt, but it was HOT.

And then we began our trek to Helvetia. Each year, people gather in Helvetia, WV to celebrate Fasnacht, wherein they parade around in scary masks, dance around the bonfire, and set Old Man Winter alight. I was especially excited about this because it was rumored that there would be many Swiss delicacies to enjoy and I thought I'd cover it as part of the 80 Plates experience. We arrived there after 3:00. Everything was supposed to kick off at about 3:00 and dinner would be served as a buffet at 5:00pm at the only restaurant in town, The Hutte. However, it would seem the townsfolk didn't get the memo about Fasnacht because it was D-E-A-D dead when we arrived. So I did what I always do in such situations--took pictures. There was one little craft shop open, and we did go in there, but there was not much to see, really. The lady who ran it was very warm and personable however and more than happy to chat. I found the loose teas and herbs, and thought I might grab some to experiment with, but they were local to Ohio, not Helvetia, so I didn't bother. Usually on these trips I like to buy a souvenir to take home with me, but nothing really struck my fancy, so I declined a purchase there. Russell and I made friends with the town goat, who seemed kind of unhappy that we hadn't brought him something to eat!



Afterwards, Melissa and I started walking the town. The Cheese Haus and Healing Honey shops were closed, although through the windows of the Honey shop we could see a Fasnacht mask, which was pretty cool. We went to the General store, which was closed, but Russell, Amy, and Annette had the magic touch, for when they joined us, the store opened! There was a post office in front, with old post office boxes on one side and current ones on the other. The back had all kinds of supplies--canned and boxed non-perishables, T-shirts, birthday cards, and the like. But what caught my eye was the Alpen Rose Garden Club's cookbook, Oppis Guet's Vo Helvetia. I have no idea what that means, but that's the title of it. Flipping through it, I found a chapter entitled "Out the Bunghole" and I was sold, because even though it's about wine in the cellar, it's clear that Helvetians don't take themselves too seriously.

We wandered the historic town square, which was deserted, and peeked in the library, which was also closed, as was the nearby town museum. The local dance and brats and beer were in the Star Hall, but it didn't appear that anything was going on there and in fact, as we were standing around trying to think what else we could do, the band meandered past us on the town bridge, carrying a bunch of beer along with their instruments. Melissa and I decided to take a walk down the road that led along the creek and past the Cheese Haus, and walked a good 10 minutes before turning back due to nothing really being down there.



By now it was 4:50 or so, so we gathered up our group and convened on the steps of the Hutte to get ourselves some dinner! The Hutte promised an extensive dinner menu and I was hungry just looking at it! Hutte chicken, homemade sausage, parsley potatoes, green beans, carrots, applesauce, sauerkraut, onion pie, salad, homemade bread, Helvetia's own Swiss cheese, and peach cobbler--YUM! But we were in for a rude awakening! When the door swung open at 5pm on the dot, the woman running the place said, "What's your reservation under?" and we said, "We don't have a reservation." She was not pleased. "We didn't know we needed a reservation." "Oh dear, oh dear, just a minute," she said and pondered the situation. "We're from out of town?" I tried lamely, before realizing that probably everyone there was from out of town and it was unlikely to melt her flinty little heart.

Finally she said, "I can seat you but you'll have to eat and leave in an hour. I will have to insist you leave in one hour." Anything, just let us in! She did so and led us to the back room, where we had a large round table. The waitress came in to get our drink orders and the hostess came back with two other people and said, "Here, you can sit with these other people who DIDN'T HAVE RESERVATIONS EITHER."

Well, at this point, I was utterly charmed--this woman was a riot! Melissa posted a picture of her on her blog--go check it out. She's wearing feathers and a mardi gras mask. So they brought us our drinks and told us to go ahead and enjoy the buffet. The Hutte is a small restaurant that has been built inside a house. There are lots of little rooms, but not much room to maneuver around the many people who come to Fasnacht. Consequently, it was rather tight getting our food.




I'm not sure how they made the chicken, other than I am certain there were bay leaves in it and something very warming was added. Not in terms of spicy heat, but it just tasted warm, like curry. It was a great dish. I do have a recipe in the Helvetia cookbook for the onion pie, which I will definitely be trying to make here at home, because I loved it. The veggies were all great, and I even got brave and tried the Helvetia cheese, because I figured it was what one should really do when one is dining in Helvetia. Despite not ever eating a piece of cheese like that, I can say I actually didn't hate it. Not to say I plan to start eating hunks of cheese, I don't, but it wasn't bad. The cobbler was not what we expect when we think of cobbler, or at least not what I think of. I think of peaches in a syrup created by cooking them down, topped with a crumbly topping. This was actually peaches in a cake, maybe like a pound cake. It was wonderful! Different, but wonderful! We ate ourselves full.

Then it was time to head back over the mountain. We made our pitstop at Kroger's to get supplies for the fondue party and then headed on home, as there was nothing in Helvetia that was going on to amuse us until it was time for the parade or the bonfire. We decided we could hear the siren's call of the hot tub. When we got back, we quickly changed up and this time Amy joined us out there under the stars! Then it was bedtime. I was so tired I think I could have slept standing up! I opened the bedroom window just a crack so it wouldn't be so hot in there and passed out cold until almost 9am. When I sleep that late, you know I slept good!

Again, our crew got together, and we cobbled up a breakfast before Melissa set out on a hike. She decided to hike up to the top of that giant rock formation we could see from the windows of the cabin. She came back after a while and you could just tell that Russell was itching to go up there too. I decided that if they were going to do it, we should all sign a rock that they could leave up at the top of the hill. I went out and found a perfect little round rock and we used Russell's CD pen to all sign it. And soon they were off!

Amy watched through the powerful zoom on her video camera and in short order (I was surprised how quickly they made it--way to go, Russell and Melissa!) we could catch a glimpse of them up at the top. Russell stuck the rock out towards the edge of the ledge and they were back. It was so great to see the pride in Russell's face, knowing that a year ago, he wouldn't have felt able to make that hike and that this year not only did he think he could, but he did! Hopefully next year, I'll be able to go!

And then it was time for the fondue party, as detailed in my previous post, and then time to roll it on home! We got back to Woodbridge around 5 and to Fredericksburg by 6:30 even with a quick stop at WalMart for rabbit chow. It was such a great trip, I had so much fun.

Thank you, Russell and Amy and Annette and Melissa, for the great time away! It was very much appreciated and needed! Big hugs and love to you all!