Where have the days gone?

I finally got to watch a couple games of an Ultimate tournament today, since I'm in Reston VA on business, and Alex's team happened to be in a tournament here. It took me a little time to figure out the rules, but after a while I could tell when a point was scored and when good plays were made. It was a gorgeous (though windy) Fall day, lots of fun.

I tried to catch some of the action, but I mostly ended up getting the shot right after the disc was thrown - it's a very quick game!

 

Last August after Nikki moved out, we decided to use her bedroom as a temporary TV room so that we could remodel the den downstairs. It hadn't been changed in the 20 years we've been here, and likely not in the 40 years of the house's existence. The carpet was a deep pile dark red, which over the years of living in a damp climate and having a dog, was pretty gross, no matter what we tried to do with it. The walls were paneled in a dark wood, which while it was a good quality paneling, real wood, just made the whole room so dark. There was a tiled area in front of the fireplace and garage door which was made of small dark green tiles that were beginning to come up in spots. The ceiling was still yellowed from the previous owners who had smoked. A lot. We had made a couple changes over the years... removed the teardrop 60's light fixture in the corner and replaced it with track lights over the fireplace ... installed a wood-burning fireplace insert that actually heats the house ... replaced the sliding glass door to the back patio with a french door opening onto an enclosed 3-season room (and removing the dark ornate tapestry-style drapes). But we decided it was now time for some real freshening up!

We started by completely gutting the room, down to floor joists and furring strips. Tore off the paneling, took up the carpet & padding & homasote, scraped off the tile. This took about a month. Note that when I say "we", I mostly mean Al, working when he had time :-)

After that, it was on to installing new plywood for the floor, hung drywall when Alex was home over Christmas break to help, painted & stained trim in April (took me a while to choose a color - pale taupe), installed new ceramic tile (actually leftover from the hall project from several years ago), Al designed and built a new light fixture for the wall opposite the fireplace this summer, and we finally got the carpet this month (took me even longer to decide what to put on the floor - decided on a pale sage recycled-fiber carpet).

 

And voila! Here is the finished project... final touches were done this weekend! It only took a year (LOL), but I think it was well worth it. So much brighter!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I really like the new light especially! And no, you can't have my awesome husband for your next project.

Now we just have to decide what to do with the TV. For now, it's staying upstairs because we removed the cable from the den, but it's really not convenient to have it there if we want to use that room as a guest room. Probable eventual outcome is a flat TV (some day) in the actual living room. The den will just be a sitting/reading/warm-by-the-fire sort of room, now much more comfortable and happy-feeling...

 

This year, instead of buying tickets for the Big Pour, we decided to go to the Brew at the Zoo (held at the Pittsburgh Zoo), a benefit for the United Mitochondrial Disease Foundation. The event was sold out; I'm not sure how many tickets that meant, but I would say there were at least 1,000 people there. Everyone received a little 4 oz muglet to have filled by the various breweries that had tables set up in each of 5 or 6 plaza areas throughout the zoo. There were bands and food tables at most of the plazas also, to add to the festivities.

 

 

 

It was a very different zoo experience visiting it at night, when there were no children there, but only adults drinking beer. It was kind of interesting listening to people's observations about the animals. We were a little concerned beforehand whether anyone would take it into their muddled head to, say, climb into the lion's area or something, but really with all the walking around you had to do between 3 oz beer samples, it didn't seem like anyone was in too bad of shape by the end of the evening.

 

Brewers ranged from Aneuser Busch and Pittsburgh Brewing, through imports such as Hofbräu and Guinness, through smaller breweries like Dogfish Head and Brooklyn, to several tables of homebrewers. As has been the case at the Big Pour in the past, I think my favorite beer was one from a homebrewer - a lemongrass wheat beer which was very refreshing. And actually another personal favorite was another homebrew, a honey smoked stout, which was very dark and, well, smoky.

 

 

 

 

There wasn't a huge variety of food, but it was good for between-beer nibbles: hoagies, spicy chicken from PF Chang, mozzarella sticks, antipasto trays, cups of popcorn, hotdogs.

Pretty much the whole zoo was open… I did get a few animal photos before it grew dark. After dark it was pretty cool to walk along the trails or sit and listen to the music. I would say there should have been some more lighting for the brewers' tables though, since after about 9:00 you (or they) couldn't really see to pour.

 

 

 

 

Overall, it was an enjoyable event, but we think we'll choose the Big Pour next year, mainly because of the larger selection of microbrews and food.

After a truly delicious breakfast at our B&B (savory herb/gorgonzola/cranberry scones, ham/cheese/broccoli mini-quiches, apple-rhubarb crisp, fresh fruit, coffee & OJ), we walked in to Essex Street, much of which is a pedestrian-only area full of interesting shops and restaurants.

My niece was mainly in charge of choosing where we went, so we visited these shops, among others:

Crow Haven Corner, where the willowy sales clerk reminded me a bit of Madame Trelawney, not so much in appearance, but in demeanor.

A gift/souvenir shop that had a squirrel in a cage.

The Goddess' Treasure Chest, which had lots of pretty cards and gifts.

Bewitched in Salem, which had a pretty extensive collection of oddities.

 

And the main shop my niece wanted to visit: Hex, which seemed to me more authentically witch-y. They had some really astounding hand made witch hats and robes, and a vast collection of herbs and artifacts. The witch who greeted us gave us each some stones for Love, and explained the altar they have their where people can add names of loved ones who've passed, to be remembered. She was also telling us about a news item that day about a zoo in Boston which may have to close and kill the resident animals - she seemed to be planning some "justice" spells on the city government folks...

Then we walked back to our room to relax for the rest of the afternoon, and make arrangements for the evening. We were stilll so full from breakfast, that we decided to skip lunch in favor of an early dinner.

 

Around 4:30 we walked down to the wharf area, and looked around there a little before our 5:30 dinner reservation.(The fife & drum photo was actually a random shot from earlier.)

Our B&B hostess had recommended Sixty2 on Wharf for dinner, and she was right... it was excellent! Great style, delicious food, attentive and friendly service.

My scallops were perfectly done, and the farro with roasted cauliflower and red pepper sort of sauce thing were oh-so-good. I tried an Italian Trebbiano with my meal, which I don't think I've had before - very light and tasty. By the way, Sixty2's idea of wine by the glass is what they call a quartino, which is 1/3 a bottle in a mini-carafe. My dessert was a grilled carmelized bruschetta made with plums, topped with ice cream, and of course accompanied by espresso. I tried "I"'s entree and dessert - also fantastic! Highly recommend this restaurant. And one of our desserts was free by mentioning the name of our B&B, so that was cool, too.

After dinner, we meandered back toward Museum Mall Place on Essex Street to sign up for the Ghosts & Gore tour my niece had chosen.

 

We bought our "tickets" from the Life & Death Tours funeral cart in the street, and then went into their shop of macabre items to "kill" time till our tour. This tour company is a little different from many of the others in Salem, in that they concentrate more on various gruesome murders and accidents, than on the witch trials or historic houses. The owners/tour guides, Rhys and Nicole, were lots of fun and really nice people. They're just getting started in their business this year, but they have done a lot of research on their subject matter - they referred a lot to newspaper accounts they'd read, mostly from the 1800's. The walking tour lasted about an hour and a half, through dusk into darkness.

The whole day was beautiful weather-wise, and we really enjoyed ourselves.

So, Google said it would take a little over 10 hours to drive from my house to Salem, Mass. But then after I picked up my niece "I" (this being her 15th-birthday trip) at her dad's house, Lori (my TomTom) said it would be more like 11 hours from there - I forgot that's almost an hour south of me. But in actuality, we made pretty good time through Pennsylvania, weather was mostly clear, just a little overcast; actually better not being so glare-y. Lori took me on a route I'd never been on before to get to NYC; she had us leave the PA turnpike at Carlisle, and go up 78 through Allentown and into New Jersey, then 95 from Newark. By the time we stopped for gas and lunch at a huge Panera in Basking Ridge NJ, we were 1/2 hour ahead of schedule, but then driving around trying to find a restaurant in one of those places that doesn't allow signs, and a non-self-serve gas station, and eating, put us back to an ETA of 6:30, still not bad.

 

But THEN, we hit the Big Apple. Actually, going through the city around 2:00 wasn't all that bad, but 95 and 81 between there and Hartford, was just awful - it took us 2-1/2 hours to go 60 miles. (The vehicles in this photo aren't moving.) That's what I get for trying to drive through the most densely populated area on the East Coast on a beautiful Friday afternoon. By the time we got through all that, our ETA was 8:00pm. But on the bright side (there's always one of those), that meant we totally missed rush hour in Boston!

 

 

 

 

After we were settled into our VERY nice room at the B&B by about 8:30, we got a restaurant recommendation from our hostess, and set out by foot. We passed by an old cemetery on our way, which will likely be a stop on the ghost tour we intend to take at some point this weekend.We got a little turned around in our directions vs the map in the dusk, but ended up in the right place eventually!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We had dinner at The Old Spot, an English-pub style restaurant. I had a really excellent slow-cooked pork roast, with bubble & squeak and wow-wow sauce, and a draught Guinness. My niece had grilled salmon and gnocchi, and she even tried the little clams on the plate!

 

We were too full for dessert just then, but it sounded sooo good, so we got it to go, and ate it back in our room! I got the Spotted Dick, which was their specialty bread pudding with whiskey sauce and ice cream (which they packaged up separately, very good job!), and she had cheesecake with berries. Yum!

Then I tried to read a little, but I succumbed pretty quickly to the coma-inducing combination of the 13-hour drive plus the big meal.

 

We spent a relaxing Memorial Day weekend in the woods along the Allegheny River just north of Kennerdell. The map above shows our hike in on Saturday morning in yellow (about 2 miles), and a red X around where we decided to camp. We were on a little bluff overlooking the River Trail, with a nice view of the river through the trees, but not very visible from the trail. I think only one of the passersby spotted our camp all weekend.

We spent a little time down at the river Saturday, but the riverbank just there was pretty muddy, so no really good place to sit and read. Did spot a yellow frog where a little stream emptied into the river. We mostly just relaxed Saturday afternoon and evening, and made up our own call for the Pens/Canes playoff game, since there was no cell service down in the river valley. The foil dinners were especially good this time... portabellas, fresh asparagus, onion, fresh tomato, prosciutto. Oh, and a bottle of homemade Cabernet Sauvignon. Excellent! There was a lot of foxfire right near our campfire later that night, but I couldn't get my camera to take a picture of it, just too dark.

 

There was a pretty heavy thunderstorm Sunday morning around sunrise, and our new tent fared very well; not a single leak! It stopped raining in time for breakfast, and then was nice all weekend after that. We brought along our Italian stovetop coffee maker, so we were able to have espresso with our pop tarts :-)  I found this pretty little orchid in the undergrowth back of our campsite, still moist from the rain.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And here's an early morning video from our campsite. There were many many birds singing, which unfortunately you can't hear very well, but you get an idea of our site, anyway. 

Later in the morning, we took a hike (marked in green on the map). As usual in this part of the world, we passed lots of old oil paraphernalia, relics of the oil heyday (for those who may not know, the first oil well was drilled in Titusville PA, just north of where we were, and the woods all around there and Oil City were full of oil wells for years; there still are a good many small ones running).

 

 

We scoped out a good campsite near Witherup Island, so we're going to keep that in mind for the big campout we're trying to organize for the end of June. It featured lots of flat area under hemlocks, and a steep descent to a nice pebbly riverbank, so we could do some wading. After we climbed to the top of the hill, I was able to check my cell messages, and learned from the kids' texts that the Penguins had won handily, and that part of our make-believe call had come true (I had allowed the Canes to score first, but I thought the Pens would then win 3-2; that was the score at one point, but then the Pens scored 3 more after that; must've been fun to watch!). We saw this tree growing around a rock along the Fisherman Cove Trail.

Dinner Sunday was tuna-noodles with leftover portabellas and canned peas, which worked pretty well, and I tried something new with a cheesy-garlic biscuit mix formed into one large biscuit and cooked in the skillet. It worked pretty well, though needed to be flatter. After dinner, we saw an osprey catch a fish from the river, which was very cool!

 

Monday morning we packed up after breakfast, and decided to hike back the long way (the pink line on the map, about 5 miles total), because we wanted to see more of the river, and also wanted to hike along the ridge on the Window Trail. Also, every bit of hiking is good training for the Rachel Carson Trail Challenge, which is less than 4 weeks away now! We had to finish putting out two campfires as we passed empty campsites along the trail, which is just ridiculous, a whole river-ful of water being right at hand they could have easily used...I guess that's what happens when sites are too accessible.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Part of the Rock Oak Trail goes past a deer exclosure, which is kind of interesting, so I took a picture. I think it's areas that have either been logged or had burned, and the State Forestry Dept fences it in to keep deer from overbrowsing the new little trees and undergrowth. To the right is the exclosure, to the left is where the deer have been allowed to browse.

 

Other than all this, we just mostly sat around and looked at the river (and I read "Night and Day" by Virginia Woolf, which I really liked, despite its un-Woolf-iness; I really enjoyed the characters). It being the holiday weekend, there were LOTS of motor boats and canoe flotillas, and lots of groups of campers making a good deal of noise downriver, but otherwise very relaxing. No decisions needed to be made, no work needed to be done...

Ah, the joys of having a sister (or two) in Germany! I picked up a package at the post office Saturday morning*, and stuff just kept coming out of it...

Food-wise, there were 3 packs of Mini-Zwieback (simply because I said I liked them!  Coconut, milk chocolate, and bitter chocolate, mmm!), a package of chocolate swirl knusper-brot, a boxed cake mix (Donau Welle), a box of lacy chocolate cake decorations (which I love), 2 dinner mixes, 2 boxes of caramel candies, 2 Lindt chocolate easter eggs, and a Lindt golden bunny full of treats.

Other goodies, totally unexpected (and above and beyond the call of sisterhood!): a lovely light blue cotton shirt (just my style), sport pants, and a cute striped cami set; a card that includes arugula seeds (my favorite!), a beautiful china teacup with strainer and lid, a very pretty ceramic easter egg, a CD of some sort that I haven't tried out yet, a Lindt magazine including chocolate recipes, and for Al a catalog of Mini accessories and a Bimmer magazine.

Such fun!

* This box did not come easily... I got the slip from the post office on April 7, but it said I needed to sign for it, and I knew I wouldn't be able to get to the post office during their (short) business hours till the 18th, so I took the slip with me to the office the next day to call to ask them to hold it till then. Unfortunately, I left the slip in my car, so later that morning I ran out to get it. I guess because it was cold and I didn't throw my coat on, I was literally running back in, with my arms folded around me, when my shoe fell off, and I wasn't able to catch myself well enough before splitting my chin open on the concrete sidewalk. When I realized there was blood gushing out of my face, I tried to catch it with the only thing I had, the post office slip, as I ran into the office and to the restroom to get cleaned up and assess the damage. Several people tried to get me to go get stitches, but I had a SharePoint trainer coming in about 45 minutes, and I didn't think I would have time, so I just went with wound closure thingies and bandaids (changing every so often throughout the afternoon). Later in the day, since it was still bleeding by 8:00, I did stop at MedExpress on the way home, and they checked and cleaned out the wound and put steri-strips on it to leave on for a week or so. So it's not too bad now, though sort of a lump in addition to the scab, so we'll see how it ends up. But anyway, the post office slip was pretty gross, so I hoped I wouldn't have to show the clerk, but I did, and then had to explain the whole story and show her my chin, so she wouldn't think something worse than it was.

 

Wow. Just wow. Those guys are SO good, and SO much fun!

When I found out that FoTC were touring the US this spring, and that they were doing a show in DC the day after Easter, when we were going to be there visiting anyway, I was pretty excited! We don't get HBO, but Nikki had told us about the show last winter, and we watched the 1st season DVD with her when she was home, and pretty much were hooked. Then when we went to New Zealand in November, it somehow helped me "get" them even more... The whole country seems to me gentle and understated, and slightly offbeat (and I mean that in a very good way).

Unfortunately, the tickets I got were way the heck up in the back corner of the venue (DAR / Constitution Hall), but we were still able to see well, and the sound was fine. There were a few times when a light was shining right in our faces, but there were video monitors mounted high beside the stage, so that was good for seeing facial expressions and so on. And I think my camera zoomed fairly well, considering the darkness and distance.

 

 

I bought a Band Meeting t-shirt before the show...

 

 

To the left is the graphic that was displayed on the video monitor before the concert began.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Kristen Schaal (aka Mel) opened for the guys, and she was hilarious! Here, she was performing a one-act play, a sort of love triangle among the pot, spoon, and lid. She "practiced" a number of different styles of jokes on us, from self-deprecating, to political.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

These are my best photos, not all that great, but you get the idea...

I neglected to take a photo of Nigel (the NZ Symphony Orchestra), but he was also very good, and even got to speak once or twice.

They really did a lot of songs; they explained that if they stop singing and talked for a while, not to worry, they would sing another song soon. Or, if you came for the talking, you'd have to wait till the song was over. I would have actually liked a little more talking (in those adorable kiwi accents), like about the "Issues", saving the whales, etc, but it may partly have been because of the time they had to take to shush stupid people in the audience who were calling out song names.

They came out in robot suits, and started with "Too Many Dicks on the Dance Floor", very disco-y with lights and smoke and dancing, lots of fun. They admonished DC to do a better job of keeping in touch, just so they wouldn't worry about how everyone is doing... Then (not in order), they also did "Hurt Feelings" (video below - not mine, but from this show), "The Most Beautiful Girl in the Room", "Business Time", "If You're Into It", "Motha 'Uckas" (that was the one with Bret on drums), "Hiphopapotamus vs Rhymnocerus", "Bowie" (nipple antennae and all), "Busdriver song", "Ex-Girlfriends" (with the women in the audience doing the oooo's as directed by Bret), "Humans are Dead" (WITH the binary solo!), "I'm not Crying", "Sugalumps" (involving an a capella final refrain with dancing - see mstresbabette's video from the show), "You Don't Have to be a Prostitute", "Jenny" (old video below - I couldn't take any video, being so far away, but this is one of my favorites...), and a new ballad about Stana, very funny!  So that's a lot of singing!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Excellent, excellent show! We thoroughly enjoyed ourselves!

We decided on Saturday evening to not try to get everyone up and going in time for 8:00 church Sunday, but rather to wait till the 4:00 Evensong service, which sounded kind of like something different anyway. So we planned instead to have a little earlier brunch with one of Alex's former roommates and his family who were in town for the weekend, and we left it up to the boys to arrange when and where (not easy for 9 people at the last minute for Easter Sunday brunch in the city...). Nik and I got up early enough for a light breakfast at the B&B; we had told our hostess Kristin the day before that we would not be having breakfast since we thought we were going to early church, but then when we decided not to do church, but rather brunch, we figured we still didn't want her to cook for us, but we did go down to the dining room for some excellent coffee, mango-orange juice, and cereal. We also got to meet our housemates, a couple from Connecticut (though really from Georgia), and a family from Washington state.

 

The boys decided on Cafe Deluxe in the Cleveland Park area, because we didn't need reservations for brunch, and we met Phil and his family there at 11:00. There was only a wait of a few minutes, very surprising, and the brunch was really very good! I had a mimosa and brioche french toast. A lot of the others had egg/omelet dishes; everyone liked what they had. We really enjoyed meeting Phil's family, and celebrating his mom's birthday. We talked a lot with his aunt about the school where she works, which sounded really interesting!

 

 

 

 

After lunch, we took Alex back to his place so he could work on his speech for class Monday night, and we went back to the B&B. Then we decided to take a little walk before it was time for church; we just looked on the map near our B&B, and found a little park about 7 blocks away, called Meridian Hill Park. It turned out to be a pretty interesting little city park, with lots of exposed aggregate balustrades and obelisks, a bronze statue of James Buchanan, and a very cool cascading fountain down the steep hillside (though the water wasn't running yet for the season. so people were climbing on it). There was a historical marker nearby that explained that 18th St got so steep in this area that the original DC city plan stopped here because horse-drawn carriages couldn't make the grade.

 

 

 

The various ornamental trees were in bloom, too, and the weather was just gorgeous, though cool and windy in the shade.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

After we walked through the whole park, we headed back toward the B&B, but took a detour down U St to pick up some stuff we needed at the drug store. We also stopped for coffees at Love Cafe, which was a very cool (and apparently popular) place, affiliated with the CakeLove bakery across the street. I had a piece of lemon cake with my cappuccino, because I just had to try one of those delectable pieces of cake sitting there in the case!

 

 

Then it was time to get dressed back up, and pick Alex up for church. The Evensong service at the National Cathedral was a much different service than the early morning Festival services we've attended the past two years, mostly choral, and much more subdued. I was a little concerned when I saw in the program that we were all supposed to sing the creed and Lord's Prayer, but it turned out they were sung in monotone. After the service, we took a little walk around the Bishop's garden, which was very pretty, though the flowers weren't quite ready yet. If you've never been to the National Cathedral, you really owe it to yourself, it's quite an impressive edifice!

 

 

 

 

 

And then we went out for a traditional (haha) Easter sushi dinner at Murasaki in Tenleytown, very good! At Alex's suggestion, we had steamed edamame as an appetizer; also we had some very large Japanese beers (Asahi), and this was our shared plate (avocado maki, California roll, Crisp spicy tuna roll, Screaming spicy roll, Alaskan roll, and Spicy salmon roll):

The roll with the cilantro and red sauce was extremely hot, but they were all excellent!

A great end to a nice day!

 

We got a good start Saturday morning, got out the door by 6:30, stopped for our coffees at 7:00 in Cranberry, and headed out the turnpike with our new friend Lori (the TomTom One) guiding us. Of course, we already knew where we were going, but she's new, and we just wanted to put her through her paces. She said we would arrive at 11:40, which eventually was revised to 11:20 once she realized the speed at which some of us drive :-)    Unfortunately, it started to rain after about a half an hour, and it never let up till we got to DC.

 

Best part of the trip: seeing and hugging our two kiddos for the first time since January! After we all met up, we went to 2Amys near Tenleytown for lunch. Excellent, excellent! We ordered 3 pizze: Etna (eggplant/olive/caper), Vongole (cockles/capers), and Norcia (salami/grilled peppers). All the pizze are baked in the wood-fired oven, and had delicious crusts!

We also had some good beers: Moretti, and Weihenstephan. And dessert: I had the marsala custard, which was really tasty (very wine-y and unusual); we ordered a cookie/biscotti platter; and of course espressos all around.

After lunch, we followed Lori's instructions to Akwaaba to check in (more on the B&B later, but it's great!), and then we relaxed there for the rest of the afternoon. Meanwhile, the weather turned very nice and sunny (though still fairly cool), so we decided to walk the mile to dinner in Adams Morgan. We left a little early, and stopped at Idle Time Books to pick up some reading material for the rest of the weekend. It's a really cool bookshop, with lots of used and unusual books to rummage through. I bought two in German (Pride & Prejudice, and a collection of folk tales), and something for my sister. Alex found some sort of esoteric economics book, and Nik got Utopia and some really cool cards.

Another highlight of the day was meeting Emjay and her husband "in real life" for dinner at Meskerem, an Ethopian restaurant. Great food (lots involving lamb, various sauces, lentils, potatoes, etc), all served on a big round piece of teff bread, with more bread to scoop it up with. Take a trip over to Emjay's blog - she has lots more information about the food! We had eaten here in the summer of '05, when we doing the college tour thing, and we had really liked it a lot, so I thought it was time to try it again. I really enjoyed meeting Emjay, we learned a lot about telescopes and such from her hubby, and she & Alex talked about Australia.

It's always fun to put a face with a name, especially when you've already learned so much about someone from their blog...