My Travel Journal (and isn't life a glorious journey?)

My Shelves Are Done!!

2012-02-09T16:29:00.000-05:00

I'll still be rearranging for a while, but I finished them up today and have the pictures to prove it. :)

This is the walking-into-the-bedroom view just to give an idea of its surroundings. That's not a wood divider going down the middle - it's the divider in the window that's behind the blind that's behind the shelves.

And I actually had a nifty idea. The picture on the left shows the shelves sitting on the supports that I labored over installing for two days. The picture on the right shows them today with a little trim piece that I decided to glue on to the ends of the supports. I think it makes it look a lot tidier. Although it did dawn on me once I was finished installing the wood supports that I could have just installed two angle brackets on each side wall and ended up with the same amount of support. But, if I had such trouble getting things level installing one piece of wood that I could rest a level on while I marked it for installing, I can't imagine how much trouble it would have been to have to install two separate brackets on each side wall and have it all end up level side to side and front to back. Especially since the whole apartment is not exactly what you'd call "true"! The last picture, below, is just a close-up shot.

I had to borrow the building's tall ladder today and I swear it doesn't matter how many things you remember to collect and put on the shelves before you start - drill, drill bits, hammer, plastic anchors, screwdriver, measuring tape, the chains and "s" hooks, I still went up and down that ladder I'll bet 50 times!

But now it's done and I'm pleased - I kind of think the photo would have looked better matted, but in my own defense, when I took it to get it framed, I immediately found a perfect color frame for it and then the framer and I started looking for a good mat and we tried real pale greys, dirty whites, creams, etc., and both agreed that none of them were right with the photo's tones. If I ever have another photo that I want to frame, I may consider framing it in this frame (and make the photo a smaller size so that it could be matted) and then do another search for a good mat for this NYC one and get it re-framed. But probably not...

I've also started up on some more cross stitching and needlepoint. The needlepoint is on the Aubusson rug that I have been working on forever and the cross stitch is a new picture that I will be framing, not trying to make into a pillow. So hopefully, I'll be posting a picture of the finished cross stitch before too long. The rug? Who knows if it will ever be finished!

It's been a nice week "socially" too. My friend Brenda who I hadn't heard from in three weeks called and we had lunch Wednesday out in Kenova at Griffith & Feils Drug Store which is an authentic, old-time drug store soda fountain place with good food and lots of neat old photographs of the local surroundings. I had a couple of errands out that way so we just kind of ran around getting those taken care of.

Then, yesterday, Peggy, my other retired friend, finally came back from Florida and we had lunch at the Olive Garden, did a lot of browsing and some buying at Macy's, went to another smaller mall that's out that way and had a nice break at the Starbucks there and then went to go to Target and discovered Peggy didn't have her credit card. So then it was back to Olive Garden and at some point during all that I remembered that I hadn't used the gift card my sister gave me for Christmas when I paid for my stuff at Macy's! We were both feeling pretty senile by that point. So we went back to Macy's too and the poor lady there got me all straightened out. And, now tomorrow, I'll have my regularly scheduled lunch with Jamie (poor thing isn't retired) and last I heard, my friend Cindy and I will be doing something tomorrow evening. If we do, then I really hope it's a clear night because I still haven't been up to the Huntington Prime Restaurant's "penthouse" piano bar to take in the view and we're going to do that if it's clear.

Now I have to return the ladder, do a little stitching and figure out what I'll make for dinner tonight...

Chris is Chastising Me Again!

2012-02-02T10:30:00.000-05:00

So I'd better get something posted. He does keep after me...

I've actually been fairly busy this month what with my temporary filling in for the office manager type person in our condo building which entailed being available by phone, delivering packages, trying to help people who were having trouble with whatever, getting workmen down to the basement, up to the roof, taking down all the Christmas stuff in the lobby, etc., etc. I was so glad the gentleman who normally does all that finally got to have a nice vacation, but I was also very glad to see him come home!

And once I got to feeling better after my strange on again/off again cold, I seem to have gotten all inspired to get to work on various projects. I've actually started on getting those shelves installed in my bedroom window. Put one in yesterday and managed to get another one in today. It turns out to be killer work for me cause I'm having to drill into some kind of metal stud and really have to apply pressure whilst all twisted around trying to make sure I hold the drill straight, etc. It is so far from a perfect job that it's really kind of hilarious. After I got finished with the first one, I figured out that I had drilled at least 15 holes before I finally got the supports where I wanted them and even then I wasn't real pleased with them. But today's shelf went in with only the necessary 4 holes drilled. To get the screws in, I have to change drill bits three times!! However, as long as they don't fall down once I get stuff on them (and I don't I think they will...) I'll be happy with them.

And while I was putting my Christmas decorations away, I decided to leave my little Christmas shop out for a while cause I like it plus I liked having its light turned on in the corner where I had it sitting. That little shop started out as a pottery shop - I built the shop in a class at a miniature show and had all my collection of pottery pieces in it (mostly made by a guy here in Huntington who did beautiful work and then quit). But then when my Christmas collection started growing, I wanted to display it, so I switched out the shop. Long story short - I decided this year that I would use it for both - pottery shop all year and Christmas shop at Christmas. That entails some customizing - have to have different wallpaper for them so had to make a second back piece (which is removable), and for the pottery shop I will have to use shelves like I did originally, but the original shelves were set into grooves in the side walls and I want to change the location of them slightly. So, that means new shelves because the originals are glass and shattered when my framer guy tried to shorten them. That brought me to a bit of a standstill while I try to find some acrylic sheeting that will be sturdy enough not to sag.

And I finished my little cross stitch of the "big" cat head and it turned out real cute, I thought. Here's a picture of it where I was wanting to see how it would look framed since I was having a hard time working up the nerve to try and make it a pillow.

But I finally told myself to bite the bullet and attempt the pillow. Bravely stitched it to a backing fabric, with great effort managed to get it turned right side out, even got it fairly well stuffed, but by then the open edge of the cross stitch fabric was sort of totally disintegrating with one of the seams starting to separate. I made an effort to get the raw opening turned in so I could stitch it, but it was not to be. My happy little cat went into the trash. So, no more pillows for me! Should have just framed it. :(

I also decided I want to make another quilt, got out my fabric stash and selected 5 colors and am trying to decide which of two patterns to make. I had found a delightful scrapbooking paper that is tiny, tiny purple flowers, along with even tinier bits of yellow and pink flowers, green stems and leaves, all on a white background and I don't know why I bought it but I did.

When I get the quilt made, I will probably put it in my Etsy shop and maybe say "here's some paper if you want it". If I had a dollhouse that needed a bedroom, I know how I'd do it. I'd make the bottom of the wall white tongue and groove wainscoting and then paper the top with the paper.

I think that's all my projects - oh, I'm going to get back to work on my big petitpoint rug also. But that's all my projects. :)

The other thing I've been doing is cooking a lot. I've posted two new recipes - one for a recipe called Bulgarian Leek, Cabbage and Potato Soup and another for one my own creations that I made up last week and then tweaked it a little this week that's Pasta with White Beans, Tuna Fish and Tomatoes and so on. I liked my attempt last week but felt like it could use a little jazzing up, so I made it again tonight and that's what I put in my recipe collection cause I suppose I shouldn't say it, but I thought it was delicious.

At some point on one of my cooking evenings, I looked out through my pass-through in the kitchen and saw this outside my dining room windows:

It looks like I fooled with the color on these but I didn't. The sun on the hills somehow made them this very red color. Really stunning! I am SO glad I didn't have my pass-through closed in like I originally planned!

So, I had my cabbage soup twice, my pasta and bean creation twice, thawed my leftover meatball mix and had a meatball sub one night last week and spaghetti and meatballs one night this week. And I still have some frozen chili in the freezer. So, mother, pin a rose on me! :)

So there, Chris! I will post pictures of my shelves if and when I ever get them finished and stuff on them. And I'll post a picture of the pottery shop when it's finished.

No Post Since 12/28/11!!

2012-01-14T17:03:00.000-05:00

I'll be hauled in by the blog police for being a sluggard! But, in my own defense, it's been pretty quiet around here - at least as far as having anything interesting to report.

The first week I was back home I got one of my infrequent colds which pretty much took care of that week. But I had made a list of things I wanted to get done early in the new year and managed to finish one of them which was to clean out my desk. Actually, it was my mother's desk - the kind with the drop down front and the bookcase on top. Anyway, it had reached the point where when I dropped down the front, I was dangerously close to causing an avalanche and every time I had opened it for the past year or so, I would say to myself "you have got to clean this out sometime". So I got that done.

Also, I had agreed to take on the duties of the gentleman who lives here and takes care of office chores, locking up at night, delivering packages to residents' units, etc., so I've been doing that since I returned and it's been kind of nice having a "job" when I know it's only for a month.

One day in the midst of all my efficient reorganizing, cleaning out, etc., I was down at Pullman Square in the late afternoon and, being a skywatcher, saw this cloud formation which really amazed me. Wish I had a wide angle so I could have caught the full impact. I've seen these kinds of clouds before, but never in such an unusual formation - all radiating out from a central hub...

I also installed the nice slide-out drawers that I had put on my Christmas list and that my son gave me for Christmas and then got all the contents organized in them. Oh, and took down and packed away all my Christmas decorations.

Had promised myself that after some fairly incredible spending over the past 2 or 3 months, I would curtail myself for a couple of months so have been cooking a fair amount. Made my pot roast a few nights ago, have already made hash with some of it and tonight am going to make my chili and am sure looking forward to that. Last night I made the recipe I have in my collection "My Sister's Mushroom Pasta Sauce" and it is so tasty. But I still have to find the perfect pasta on which to serve it.

Had kind of a busy spell with my Etsy shop. It seems to go in spurts - nothing for days and days and then all of a sudden a couple of purchases or a custom order, etc. This kind of awful picture is of a 1/4" scale rug (only about 1-5/8" long with the fringe) that a woman ordered - she had seen another one I sold in different colors and wanted me to use these colors. The colors are much more attractive "in the flesh".

I also started another little piece that I will try and make into a pillow - something that I'm not too good at but need to learn to do nicely. Not sure if I'll be happy with the chart or not - I like it in the picture, it's a cat sleeping on a cushion, but it's pretty much just the head and part of the cushion and I don't know if I'll think it just looks like a giant head on a little pillow. However, I've seen other miniature cross stitch pieces that seem to be pretty much one large object rather than a detailed picture or design, and have liked most of them. So...

And, I guess lastly, I've been pondering putting in some bookshelves on one of the four windows in my bedroom. It's on the end wall of the room as you look down the hall from the living room and all my windows are deeply recessed. I've been thinking about it for a long time and figure I will just put the shelves in the lower half of the window cause I couldn't reach anything if I went up much higher. So then my thought was I would get a nice big print made of maybe one of Chris's beautiful photos and hang it with chains from the top of the window enclosure like I did with my giant poster of the duomo in Florence. But in going through some of my photos, I came across the one I took when Chris and I went to NYC last fall and got caught in the downpour walking to the J.P. Morgan library and museum. And just for the heck of it I decided to order a largish print of that picture and see if it would look too awful hanging up in the window. It's so not anywhere near Chris's caliber, but it is my photo of one of my memories of that trip so I figured why not. Today, the print came and I managed to get it situated about where it would be and I think I'm going to do it. Poor Chris will think "gee, Mom sure should have had me take that picture!" and he'll be right, but there it is.

So here it is, not matted and framed, of course which will help its appearance I think, along with getting rid of the masking tape and the chopped up foam core I taped it to!! :)

That's the desk I cleaned out, by the way. The two framed pictures facing the camera are photos my dad took way back probably before I was born. He was an "amateur" photographer but did excellent work. And, of course, back then he took them and developed them. The angel up on top of the secretary is a cross stitch I made for my mother. And you can see from the stack of books on the floor why I need more book shelves!

And here's just the print without masking tape and foamcore. It just really brings back that day for me. We had been absolutely drenched and sopping wet when we got to the place and then went in, squishing in our shoes, had a really lovely little lunch with a glass of wine in their cafe, and truly enjoyed the various exhibits. When we left 2 or 3 hours later, the rain had pretty much quit and to me, the street scene just had a very "Parisian" feel to it. (For some reason, this photo is showing up as almost square - click on it to see the oblong version - the square way is kind of scrunched.)

And that's pretty much it, really. Certainly nothing spectacular but when one has a blog, one is supposed to post. So I've posted and can now go make my chili and rest easy. :) Thanks for visiting!

Images of A Merry Christmas, 2011

2011-12-28T20:26:00.007-05:00

Still in Virginia, but another Christmas is now history and a very pleasant and happy one it was. I've taken photos most days and am just going to post them with bits of explanation. The first batch, taken at January and Maggie's delightful new-to-them home, were taken on Christmas Eve.

First are some pictures are of a little miniature scene I made as part of a club project quite a few years ago. When I moved into my apartment and told my children to take what they wanted of my Christmas stuff, January took this scene and it's always nice to see her at Christmas and get to see this again.

Next is a little Christmas village my sister made for me years ago and January now has that also. You can just see in the first picture the names of my three children on the cars. Then there is a Simpson Garage and an Oney (street where we lived then) Market.

Chris took my tree when I moved and I was very glad about that too because I absolutely love this tree. When you see it "in the flesh", the trunk is thick and covered with "bark" and the branches aren't full of needles - there are bare places which makes it very natural looking. Also, it is a nice slender tree for how tall it is. I'm posting a number of close-ups of it partly hoping the trunk shows a little but also to show some of the crochet and cross stitch ornaments I made.

I didn't make this wonderful bird - just had to take his picture.

And here is one of January and Maggie's two cats (Booty and Dandelion) posing for a Christmas card to wish everyone a Merry Christmas!

The next photos are from Heather and Alex's home. Not as many as there should be (no dinner pictures, no good present opening pictures, etc.) but we were all having too much fun and things were a little too hectic to remember to take pictures!

In fact, this is the only present opening one I'm using but it's pretty special, isn't it? Sophia is holding a mug she made for me in her kindergarten class. She drew and painted the chicken herself and then her artwork was applied to mugs, pencil cups and such so everyone got a chicken present. The other side of mine I am compelled to tell you says "the world's best grammy". :) She is certainly the world's sweetest grandbaby!

Next come Johnny and Sophia grooming their new miniature horses out in the barn on a very cold night after Christmas. These weren't Christmas presents - they've been in the family for a few weeks now.

And, the last one from Heather's house... a too-late-for-Christmas but early enough for New Year's gingerbread house that the kids and I made today. It was a kit, thank heavens - I didn't have to do all the baking. But it was a fun little project and for how I struggled with the darned frosting bag (my first-ever experience with one), it looks pretty decent ... in the picture! LOL!!

And, last of all, a sight I saw on my way up to Heather's on a very bright sunny day but wasn't able to get a picture from the car and then saw it again on the way back today and was stopped by a red light so took this very quick shot which doesn't do the scene justice:

The three trees are wrapped in tinsel garland and in bright sun really make an impact. The snowflakes and the snowman are also very glittery. First time I ever saw trees wrapped in tinsel!!

So that is an incomplete picture show of Christmas this year. Chris took myself, January and Maggie out for a very nice dinner on Friday evening and Heather took me out for a very nice dinner last night but I couldn't very well take pictures of that. Both were wonderful, though.

I won't post again before 2012 so I hope everyone has a great New Year's Eve (and safe, please) and a healthy, happy, hopefully prosperous, and just generally great 2012!

I'm Getting There...

2011-12-18T01:11:00.000-05:00

Yesterday I got the filling for the cuccidatti cookies made and in the fridge and last night I made the dough and put that in the fridge, and this morning, before I had too much time to think about it, I bit the bullet and dug in. With these cookies you divide the dough in half and just work with one half at a time, leaving the other in the fridge. And believe it or not, by the time I got the first half out of the oven and the glaze put on, it was probably around 1:30 or so. Figured I deserved a break and ran a couple of errands (which turned out to be pretty fruitless), had a Subway for a late lunch and got back home.

Decided I would try a new recipe I had saved for a raisin-cinnamon apple bread before I tackled the rest of the cookies and that had to be in the oven for about 70 minutes. About halfway through I started on the cookies again. I tell you, I suppose it's old age creeping up or something, but I really have to push myself to get going on them. Once I get them made I'm really glad I did and this year especially they seem extra good, but oh my gosh, they're a lot of work. And, of course you have to keep cleaning everything up cause there's the filling stuff, the dough stuff, the putting them together stuff, the frosting and glazing stuff and at least in my tiny kitchen, there's not enough room to just let all that stuff accumulate.

But I took a little package of them to my friend Peggy today (she's pretty much lost her voice and sounds pitiful but kind of hilarious) and have made up two more little bundles - one for a few of the women I used to work with and one for the barristas at Starbucks. The rest I'll take with me over to the kids - they all like them too.

I also got started gathering things up that I'll be taking with me. Wrapped presents, unwrapped presents, and such. I told myself to take something down to the car each time I go out of the building and then there won't be so much to do come Monday morning when I'm hoping to leave. Might be Tuesday, but I think I can be ready by Monday.

This was a stellar week in my Etsy shop - I sold four items! I think shoppers must have been having one last fling before settling down to getting ready for the big day. :)

Sorry there are no pictures - there are pictures of the cuccidatti cookies in the recipe collection including pictures of some of the steps in making them. Wish I had looked at them myself this year cause the new method I tried for measuring and cutting the strips this year didn't work as well as the new method I tried last year and forgot all about. :)

Christmas is Coming and I'm Ready!

2011-12-12T13:39:00.000-05:00

Not too much to report, really but it's been a while since I posted and a good blogger is supposed to post frequently. At least, that's my understanding...

So, let's see. I invited some of the friends I worked with before I retired for a little pre-Christmas get together which gave me the push I needed to get my various Christmas goodies out and "deck the halls". I did deck the hall, actually - have my snowmen there and my chocolate castle with its luminarias. Didn't take a picture of that but I did take some pictures of some of my Christmas. Probably have done that in previous years also, but this is this year, so here's what I have.

This is looking at one of my two living room windows. I haven't had a Christmas tree since I moved into the apartment and the first year I was here I decided that since I was living in the "big" city now, I'd go for the bling a little more than in the past. I've done the windows various ways, but found these trees last year and thought they were perfect for the windows. The dining room windows (two again) are more traditional - I have big silver candlesticks in each of them with red pillar candles and then artificial della robbia type swags around their bases.

But this year, I was really tickled with my latest Christmas find. All year long I have these pears in their tray on my dining room table and I love them - I found them at a Home Goods store before I even moved in but after my sister had given me the table rug as a housewarming gift. So I wanted something that reflected the colors but was simple enough not to detract from the gorgeous carpet and these filled the bill.

Then come Christmas, I would take the pears out and put some 3" frosted tea light glasses with little della robbia type candle rings around them in the tray. So, this year in Marshall's, what to my wondering eyes should appear but these - aren't they just a hoot?!

Okay, so enough of the bling, the next pictures are of my Christmas storefront and my 1/4" scale Christmas tree house, both of which I know I've posted before and are also on my miniatures page, but here they are again. :) Oh, and the little popsicle nativity is one that my daughter Heather made in grade school. Little clothespin figures with very flat heads and very big smiles.

And here's a close-up of the window contents and I can't claim to have made any of them. I did make the shop itself at a Ron and April Gill workshop years ago and for a long time it displayed my collection of miniature pottery.

And, then here's the little quarter scale Christmas tree house. It started life as a papier mache box. I added floors and interior walls and furnished it with things I made from scratch or kits and also from swaps I received from members of a 1/4" scale on-line group I used to belong to. This is the only 1/4" scale project I ever finished (of the many I started...) And I just noticed yesterday that one row of shingles didn't get it's "snow" applied. But since I've had this for who knows how long, it mustn't be too noticeable so I won't worry about that.

Another result of the little get together last week - we had cheese fondue and chili, by the way, strange, perhaps, but tasty - was that they embarrassed me with a very nice gift certificate to the wine shop right across the street from me. And the wine shop was having a wine tasting event on Friday so off I went, gift certificate in hand. Feeling quite flush, I purchased two bottles with the certificate and threw in one more since after all, I was saving so much money. I brought them home, and like I always do when I'm emptying bags in the kitchen, I put them up on my pass-through to the dining room with the intention of putting them away next time I was in there. But for right now, I'm letting them stay there cause I really kind of like how they look. So, here's a picture of that:

And I cannot tell a lie - I'm in the kitchen a whole lot more than I'm in the dining room, so really I have all the labels turned toward the kitchen side, but the kitchen's so narrow I wouldn't have been able to get a picture of them from that side!

And that's all my pictures. I have all my Christmas shopping finished but none wrapped and I must admit, I'm having a hard time talking myself into starting on that. I'm cross stitching a dollhouse Christmas tree skirt right now and think I can finish that this week. I get to have lunch with three friends this week which will be real nice - that used to be a fairly common occurrence but everyone has been busy, traveling, etc. Oh, and the "occupy Huntington" people are gone, gone, gone!!! They were finally told they had to move all the habitation paraphenalia and they did without protest. They've been back a few times to just stand on the corner with their signs and yell, but not very often, so that is a welcome change.

And the most welcome change is that the blister on my eyeball had gotten quite large again and I kept thinking "okay, tomorrow it will be smaller". Well, after more than a week of that, I was about out of my head so I went to the eye doc without an appointment and said I wanted them to at least see it while it was so big so they'd know how it gets sometimes. And the doctor pricked it and drained it and the relief was very sweet. So I am religiously using the two kinds of drops I now have. And if it does get real big again at some point, I won't be waiting - I'll get myself back in and get it drained again.

I'll be spending Christmas with my three kiddies and their families and will probably leave to go over there next Monday or Tuesday. Then let the good times roll tra-la! I most likely won't post again before then so I will wish everyone a very, very wonderful holiday filled with the pleasures of family and friends.

Thanksgiving Dinner for One

2011-11-26T17:11:00.001-05:00

Once again this year I had decided that just because I was going to be alone didn't mean I shouldn't have the pleasure of a day of cooking and an evening of eating, so after an hour or so perusing cookbooks a couple of days before, I finally decided on a pork roast. I found all kinds of great recipes for roasted chicken and thought that's what I'd do, but the recipe I found for roast pork was one where first you do this, a little later you do that, and that's what I wanted - something to fool with periodically throughout the day.

What with also making a pumpkin pie, fiddling off and on with the roast recipe, peeling and boiling some shrimp for a shrimp cocktail, and getting my sweet potato and asparagus in the oven, I ended up pretty much in the kitchen most of the day!

The only thing that wasn't good was the roasted asparagus I made for a green veggie - and I should have known better - it's very much a spring vegetable. But everything else was very good (if I'm allowed to say that myself) and I was thrilled with the pork roast. It cooked like a pot roast - covered and with liquid and I had never cooked a boneless pork roast that way. Always roasted them open and dry and then made good gravy with the drippings.

I ended up taking parts from two similar recipes and I've posted the resulting recipe HERE. If you like cooked cabbage and you like roast pork, I think you'll love this recipe!

Here are a couple pics of the end result of my efforts. On the left, my shrimp cocktail as appetizer (even pulled out one of my mother's pretty pieces of crystal)...and on the right, dinner! The cabbage didn't stay that bright, pretty purple color but that's probably just as well - it would definitely have clashed with my table rug (tee hee...)

Thanksgiving Day and I'm Waiting to Eat!

2011-11-24T18:44:00.000-05:00

And it dawned on me I had never finished reporting on my sister's visit. I guess the main thing to report would be that we did another letterbox search on Friday. This one was in Ritter Park and involved three letterboxes planted by the same person.

It was such a pretty day compared to the day before. Beautiful blue sky, lots of sun, but still quite chilly. And this was a much easier quest than the Rotary Park one also. I mean, we had to really search for the exact spot which is harder than it sounds, but it was all on level ground - no hills to climb and slide down. We did find all three eventually and I have to say - it's just fun to have to follow clues and poke around here and there and finally...success!!

I took a fair number of pictures because Ritter Park is a beautiful area and it was a beautiful day and there were beautiful trees. So here's my attempt to capture some of the beauty (oh, and we saw a deer right there in the park, but I wasn't quick enough to capture that).

Pictures of our first find of the three. I didn't take pictures of the other two - I think Chinch felt like we were going to be stopped by the Letterbox Police at any moment or, if not, then at least by some passerby wondering what these two crazy old ladies were up to.

The second one was probably the hardest to find - the planter had done almost too good a job of hiding it. The third one would have been relatively easy except for the fact that it was about two somethings (can't say what) beyond where the clue said it would be. But we persevered and found them both.

The rest of these pictures are just some of the trees that caught my eye.

Aren't they just something?? And isn't that sky also something?? Same tree in both pics, by the way - just the one on the right shows it all the way to the ground...

This tree is really incredible - four huge trunks coming out of one base. These were sycamores so they're that beautiful bright white which is so lovely against a blue sky.

This was so pretty because there were two huge white sycamores across the stream from each other. Couldn't really get the white to show well, though...

The one on the right is basically the same place but we were on a little stone bridge so I got some of that in the picture ...

And this last one we noticed on the way back to the car because of the way the two trees were leaning in towards one another. Had a very friendly look...

So that was our Ritter Park day. We went to Huntington Prime that evening for dinner and to have a drink up in the new 15th floor place only to discover that it wasn't open yet! So that was a disappointment. But all in all, it was such a very nice visit.

As I say, I'm still waiting to eat my Thanksgiving dinner. This is my second year of staying here by myself for Thanksgiving and, like last year, I've gone whole hog with my dinner. But I will report about that after I've eaten it. :) I'm trying a new roast pork recipe and figure if I don't like it I have a whole 9" pumpkin pie I can fill up on! LOL!!

On The Trail of a Letterbox

2011-11-18T08:55:00.001-05:00

I've been having such a nice visit with my sister. She flew into Charleston, WV on Tuesday afternoon and we've been doing a lot of talking, walking, and eating ever since.

At some point, she got into a "hobby" called letterboxing. Don't know how many people are familiar with that - I had never heard of it. But it's been going on since the 1800's apparently! The way it works is someone leaves a "letterbox" sequestered away somewhere in the world and posts clues to its whereabouts on the internet site of the group he/she belongs to. Other letterboxers can search that site for letterboxes that might be in their vicinity or in a place they plan to visit and then try and find them. If you find one, you open it up and there's a little book where you put your stamp, where you're from, and the date.

So, before she came to West Virginia, Chinch looked to see if there were any letterboxes near me and, by darn, there were! Yesterday, we had our first search and will do another one today. Yesterday we had quite a hike up hills, through woods, etc., etc., pretty much freezing cause it was cold!

This photo on the left is where we parked looking back down some of the road we just drove up. We were way up in the hills at this point. In the photo on the right, Chinch is started up the stairs towards that observation tower above her. We had some trouble following the clues to this point, but finally got ourselves on the right track. From the tower, there were two or three more clues taking you to the point where you think the letterbox should be. We had to poke around for a while, going downhill over here, back uphill and then downhill over there, and finally...

we FOUND it!! It really is such fun when you find it - makes you feel very victorious. And the best part of this find (aside from the fact that we could now go back to the car and warm up!) was that she was the first locator for this particular letterbox.

So, after stamping and dating the book in the box with her stamp, she then stamps her "finds" book with his stamp. When her hands are thawed out, she'll add a little note about the search. I think this was her 22nd find and, of course, as an assistant, it was my very first find. So, feeling quite chuffed, we started back, stopping at the observation tower to take a couple more pictures.

...a long view of the mighty Ohio River

and, a picture I took trying to give an idea of how high up we were. If you find the word "here" in red, and then look beside that and above the little red line, that dark little blob is a car on the highway.

All in all, quite an exciting morning and quite a workout for the old legs. I think the one we're going to try and find today should be somewhat easier. It's somewhere in Ritter Park and from the sounds of the clues, should be on flat ground rather than up in the hills. We shall see...

I'm curious, if this was being done back in the 1800's, how it worked. The internet makes it easy to learn where a box has been hidden and to let the person hiding the box know that you've found it. But back then, it seems like it would all have been kind of accidental - just sort of coming across one, entering your info in the book and then figuring that at some point the "hider" would be checking the box to see if anyone had found it. My sister's letterbox group is called AtlasQuest and there's probably more information there on the history of letterboxing which I will read sometime. Also, if this appeals to any readers, that would be a place you could visit to see if there would be any letterboxes in your area that you could try to find.

Downtown Keeps Getting Better!

2011-11-13T19:00:00.001-05:00

And I've been remiss in not keeping up with all of it. So without further ado, here's what's been happening.

I think way back in the summer I took a picture of the "coming soon" signs for a new place called "Tropical Moon". Since then, they've opened and have self-serve frozen yogurt (although I'm not sure if that's what I'm supposed to call it). When you go in, there's a bank of yogurt dispensers - I'm thinking probably 8 , maybe 10 - all different flavors and you grab a big cup, and take as much and as many flavors as you want. Then you can check out the toppings bar and put on as much and as many as you want of those too. Then you get it weighed and they tell you how much it costs. The flavors I've had are really delicious and the last couple of times I've added crumbled Oreos to mine. And...4 ounces only has 100 calories and is ridiculously cheap. So that's pretty exciting.

And then one of Huntington's favorite restaurants, Huntington Prime, is getting ready to open an addition of sorts. Their restaurant is located on the ground floor of the West Virginia building and a number of years ago there was a restaurant on top of that building. That's where Huntington Prime is opening their new area. I never ate at the old restaurant but from what I hear the views were spectacular so I'm really looking forward to their opening. I can't quite figure out if they'll have the exact same menu at both or if the rooftop will be maybe a somewhat lighter menu but the food I've had there has been very good so I bet the new place will be pretty good too.

And, then (yes, there's more), I just found out that apparently this coming week one of the empty storefronts on Fourth Avenue is going to be opening and will be one of those "malls" where various vendors rent space to sell various bits and pieces. NOTE: It's now a week later and they have opened so I have some pictures. These first two are of one of two antique dealers who have rented space there. I'm sure they have a business name, but if I was told what it was, I can't remember it. The second antique dealer had his shop at Heritage Station and is moving it here. I didn't take a picture of his area because he was still unpacking.

I always thought his shop had really nice pieces, but mostly stuff one could actually afford and this second dealer also has a wonderful collection of items. When they're finally all settled in, I'm going to have to take a really good look. I'm sure my sister and I will be wandering there when she gets here (two more days!)

Also, in this same "mall" will be the Crumpets and Tea Cafe that has been such a hit since it opened in Heritage Station along with their partner, Jenks Frame Shop. Losing these business will be a blow to Heritage Station, but hopefully, they will be finding new vendors also. I took some pictures of the tea room where they have hundreds of teacups and teapots and other delightful things to buy in addition to delicious lunches.

It's really great how much more room the tea room has now. And in that little nook in the back left corner they've set up a pint-sized table and chairs so a child can enjoy tea also. Guess where my granddaughter and I will be headed when she comes on a visit!?

And last but not least, is Jenk's Frame Shop. He's done a lot of framing for me over the years and it's nice to see him in such a great location.

Because my apartment is such a mess from the workers finally getting started on it this past Monday, I decided to treat myself to lunch at Hillbilly Hotdogs. On the way back I stopped at the River and Rail Bakery to stock up on my demi-baguettes (I've finally started freezing them and it works fine). I noticed that they were having some kind of Halloween/Autumn/whatever stuff going on outside and decided I'd better take a look around. I'm so glad I did because there are several more shops there that were new to me although they've been there for some months, I guess.

First off is Esscentials Gift, www.esscentialgifts.com, located in one of the two boxcars at Heritage Station (there's also an old steam locomotive and a passenger car that the kids love to climb on). The owner of this shop makes bead jewelry which covers one side of the center wall of the shop. On the opposite wall is some really beautiful costume jewelry. I just took a friend in there yesterday and I was still really impressed with the quality. And for how lovely it is, it's quite reasonably priced, I think. I tried pictures of each wall but they were fairly uninspired looking, so I just will post this one of three of the costume jewelry necklaces.

Aren't they fantastic? Of course, a lot of the pieces aren't quite this exotic, and the owner's own jewelry designs are quite simple, yet lovely, so there's something for every taste.

On the other side of the little jewelry area, is a collection of very nice primitive pieces, along with scented candles made from soy, and nifty decorated wax "tubes" that you sit down on a base that has a short electric candle attached to it with those silicone coated bulbs that are so pretty. As the "tube" heats up, it begins to very gently emit its aroma. Very nice. She also has numerous primitive framed prints, little bits and pieces to sit here and there looking cute, and so on. Her type of shop always makes me wish I had a room that I could do in primitive. As far as I know now, she is staying in Heritage Station.

The next new-to-me shop was Commonground Shoppes which is just a delightful gift shop. Everything pretty much handmade and a lot of that locally. In fact I bought a Christmas gift there for ... not telling. When I was there it was mostly Halloween-related although she had jewelry and other items that were not seasonal. Her card doesn't list a website. She will be staying at her Heritage Station location and her shop connects to three other storefronts which are occupied by MIAPPA (made in Appalachia). My understanding is that they are going to keep space at Heritage Station but also have space in the "mall" on Fourth Avenue. They have all kinds of wonderful, hand-made, items, some of which I'd like for myself and some which would make wonderful gifts. Beautiful knitted scarves, very unique carved wooden Santa tree ornaments, and beautiful leaf pendants carved from bone by the same artist. I spoke with the woman working there that day, Kari Newman, who handcrafts lampwork glass beads and they are fantastic! She has an etsy shop at www.BeadUniquebyKari.etsy.com which I haven't visited yet but I was really intrigued by these beads. I told her I've heard of lampwork glass for years and never did know for sure what it meant. I didn't know why lamps made from glass would be considered so special - I mean, there are thousands of those lamp oil lamps and who knows what else. But the "lamp" part comes from the fact that originally, the glass for the beads (or whatever) was heated by a very hot burning "lamp" and then shaped and formed into the artist's creation. My very favorite of her work was a toadstool that had so many colors in it. I might have to treat myself to that and put it on a cord as a pendant. Some more pictures:

First, Common Ground...

And, now MIAPPA:

Also, I finally got around to eating at one of Huntington's newer restaurants, the Tahona Grille. It's been open for several months and I don't know why but I had just never been inspired to try it. But one night this past week (with my apartment in shambles and me wanting OUT!) I called one of my neighbors whose husband was out of town to see if she wanted to have dinner with me there cause she had told me how much she and her husband like it. And I was very happy with what I ordered. Just a simple cheese quesadilla with chicken, but very nicely toasted and presented, and I'm certain that the guacamole and pico de gallo was all house-made. And people at a table nearby had what looked and smelled like really delicious choices so I'll probably be going back there again. I think one reason I was kind of hesitant was because their menu has Mexican, Italian and I guess you'd say American food and that made me think maybe none of it would be too great, but I was very pleasantly surprised.

And, finally!, it's good I didn't get this finished when I first started it because this past Sunday there was a write-up in the paper about another place to eat(!) called La Famiglia - Italian, obviously, and serving pasta, paninis and subs, and pizza baked in a wood-fired oven. So, of course, I had to go try that out. It's in one of the big old houses that Huntington has so many of within walking distance of me. I ordered a pulled pork panini cause it intrigued me to see pulled pork on a menu and not have it be bar-b-q. It was absolutely mouth-wateringly delicious. I shouldn't have eaten the whole thing but I did and began to think I'd never be hungry again. I was so delighted with it, that when Jamie and I had lunch on Friday, we went back and this time I had a prosciutto and provolone panini and she had...hmmm...it was a panini that I know had their marinara sauce on it, but I can't remember what else. Again, mine was very good. Their things like the prosciutto and other meats and their parmesan reggiano cheese, etc., are all from Italy. I'm anxious to try one of the pizzas cause I have always liked them baked in a wood-fired oven. And I'd like to try one of their pastas because in addition to the marinara sauce, they have a "La Famiglia" sauce that is made with the same shredded pork as was in my sandwich.

It's family run and everything, as far as I know, is homemade. However it's made, so far, it's delicious!

And, that's all for now folks. I've got a pot roast just about ready to eat, the Occupy Huntington folks who apparently will never leave their new home, have quit beating on their bongo drum, and it's been a pleasant Sunday.

I am so glad to finally get this post done. I've had it going for about two weeks, I think. :)

TA-DI-DA-DA-DA!!!

2011-11-08T16:10:00.001-05:00

The men from Lowe's just left with the damaged vanity/sink top in its incredibly bulky box which had been sitting in my living room, the plumber has been here and gone, and I may just spend the evening in my bathroom - maybe take in a chair, a glass of wine and a good book! :)

I love it, love it, love it!! The plumber couldn't find his miter box so we were unable to trim my two baseboard pieces that are too long for the new vanity, but who CARES??? Not me...I'll find a miter box somewhere, sometime. Meanwhile, ain't she purty?

And Then There Was Light...

2011-11-06T17:47:00.000-05:00

in my half inch scale kitchen roombox, that is. I had made a little list of things to do today in order to be as ready as possible for the coming week (mainly go wander around Lowe's and Home Depot one more time). But after my tea, newspaper, and crossword puzzle at Starbucks (and discovering that it was an hour earlier than I thought - oops!), I decided to heck with that, I'm just not going to have anything to do with the vanity today.

Instead I decided I would be brave and try and get the light fixed in that roombox. It's been hanging on the wall in my kitchen with all the accessories stuffed inside, all the tweezers, etc., on the counter below, and me looking at it every day and thinking "if I couldn't do it before, I won't be able to do it now". But today I thought "well, okay, what have I got to lose?"

So, I rigged up my big magnifying lamp to see where it was I was supposed to put insert the lightbulb wires and just slid it right in there like I was a pro or something and it lit up! Hooray! Then I went ahead and set up all the things I have for it so far, using that blu-tak type stuff except mine is white. I had more trouble with that than with the light cause it is all so tiny and my hands have gotten so shaky. But it's back in place now and to celebrate, I took the protective film off the acrylic front. I still need to add stuff to it. I want probably an upper and a lower cabinet on the bare wall in the kitchen - maybe I'll order that tomorrow in the midst of getting my real-life vanity cabinet. Bet it will be a whole lot easier. :) And I want to make little placemats and maybe seat cushions for the chairs, but who knows when that will happen. I should stitch some kind of tiny sampler too...

Then I went to the opening of the annual miniature art exhibit in the Renaissance Art Gallery here in Huntington. It's my favorite exhibit of the year and each year just seems to get better and better. Enjoyed that, and came home and ironed 4 shirts - I've ended up doing a bunch of laundry cause I just felt like all my clothes had spackle dust in them even though I had covered them all.

Didn't take any pictures of the shirts (tee hee) but here is a picture of the lit-up kitchen roombox back where it belongs and waiting for a little more decorating.

And, Wilbur, I am content. :)

The Vanity Diaries - A Horrifying, Modern-Day Tale

2011-11-05T18:53:00.000-04:00

My son has reminded me twice now that I'm past due on a posting and I did start one all about happenings in Huntington and have added some to it, but with all that's been going on I couldn't really put my heart into it, so today I wrote up my experiences of the last week and a half because I was going to e-mail them to my family, plus I wanted to remember as much of it as I could. And then I thought - shoot I'll post it to my blog so folks can see what I've been busy with. I'm including pictures cause there are so many words!

And, so, The Vanity Diaries (preceded by The Flood of August 21, 2011)

1. Vanity ordered on Wednesday, 10/26 from 84 Lumber. Was told it would probably be in in "2 or 3 days". So, Friday or Monday probably.
2. Called plumber and scheduled him for Wednesday.
3. Called 84 Lumber Monday, turns out the order was dated 10/27 so should be there Tuesday.
4. (A little history to clarify: The drywall guy started work on Monday 10/24 and worked thru Thursday morning. So, before he started I covered up, pulled out, rearranged, etc., as much as possible as seen in the pictures The painter started painting that same Thursday, called in sick Friday and painted a full day Monday, 10/31, saying he'd "get it knocked out tomorrow".) Repair work contractor calls that Monday evening to say painter won't be painting Tuesday or Wednesday which means I have to paint bathroom walls where vanity goes.

5. Tuesday - still no vanity at 84 Lumber but surely by Wednesday! Walls are painted.
6. Called plumber (who had told me most any day that week he could install it) to say make it Thursday. That's when he told me he wouldn't be able to get to it til next week. Begged, pleaded, cajoled, offered overtime for the weekend, etc., he finally said okay, he'd be here Friday morning.
7. Thursday - no vanity. 84 Lumber is trying to track it and knows it's on the road but hasn't reached Charleston yet.
8. Call plumber, tell him forget Friday and he says "oh, and I just told a woman I wouldn't be able to get to her on Friday". I asked if he could call her back and he said not to worry - he had plenty to keep him busy. We set it up for Tuesday of next week.
9. Friday - no vanity, although at some point it did apparently reach the Cross Lanes terminal (closer to Htgn than Charleston is). But that's when we discovered that the top that was ordered was the wrong size and wouldn't FIT the vanity we ordered.
10. At that point, I say I'm really sorry but I'm going to have to cancel the order and get myself to Lowe's and Home Depot and pick out something cause I told the plumber I'd haveone if I had to build it myself. They were okay with that.

Just a couple more pics of my delightful living quarters as they were for a week and a half or so. Sure was happy when at least the painter got done and I could get things pretty much back in place! And that's about the only time I've been glad since all this started. :)

11. Friday went back to Lowe's and HD and finally decided on one at Lowe's that I had originally decided I didn't like but somehow by Friday, it was looking better.
12. Asked my friend Jamie if she could maybe get her husband's truck and help me pick it up and get it home on Saturday. She could.
13. Saturday, we pick it up and with the help of a couple of strangers on the street get it unloaded and get it upstairs. She leaves.
14. I unpack it and find that it is damaged plus basically it's really crappy (could that be why it was kind of incredibly cheap???)
15. Spend many, many minutes (like probably an hour or more) on and off the phone with Lowe's - getting cut off, getting transferred to non-answered phones, etc. Thought if I could talk to a manager maybe they would let me return the vanity and buy just the top that came with it cause it's the kind I'd like and can't seem to find for sale by itself unless I want to pay beaucoup bucks. But, no, they couldn't do that. So I said okay schedule a pickup for return and refund. That took 2 more calls before it was accomplished.
16. So now, it will be picked up Tuesday (that's after we first agreed on Monday until I remembered that I'd have to probably be out still buying vanities and tops!).
17. My plan is to buy the vanity from 84 Lumber which still hasn't been delivered but is supposed to be in Cross Lanes. I'll call 84 first thing Monday morning and have them call Cross Lanes to see if I can go pick it up myself cause otherwise who knows when it would meander its way the 25 miles or so to Huntington?
18. If I can go pick it up, or if by some miracle, it's in Htgn Monday morning, then I'll spend Monday going back to Home Depot to get a top I saw that I liked (it costs as much as the whole vanity w/top combo that I'm returning). However, it has 8" center faucets which I like but that means I'll also have to get a new faucet set.
19. But I was going to get a new toilet also and I'll drop that from the list and tell myself that's at least $100 saved and I'll also tell myself that the plumber will charge me less to install just the vanity than he would have charged to install both the vanity and toilet so I won't really have spent all that much more money.
20. We will all pray diligently throughout the weekend that this last plan works cause if it doesn't I don't know what I'll do. Probably, like January, I will shoot my face off.
21. I forgot to mention that early on in the vanity saga, I decided I'd take out my old vanity so the painter could paint the walls (HA!) before the new one was installed. Since he was starting on Thursday, I started dismantling it on Wednesday 10/25 so have been without a vanity since then. A minor point in the grand scheme of things...

If I ever get a vanity (and I'm not holding my breath at this point), here is where it will go. And look what a surprise was behind the old one...no WALL!! And of course the new vanities (at least the ones I've been looking at) do not have backs. So again, if I ever get a vanity, then I will need to high-tail it to Lowe's and have them cut me a piece of luan mahogany to cover the back. Isn't it just fun???

As a humorous little sidebar to the above, it turns out that the vanity I bought today is a 19" deep one. My old one was 21" deep. Not a huge problem except that the wall where the old one was would need a fair amount of work to look good if I had ended up with the shallower one. And in a similar vein, it turns out that my old vanity was 29-1/2" wide rather than 30" wide (who knew?!), PLUS which, new vanities are nicer than my old one and go all the way down to the floor in the front (looking sort of like legs or something) which means that the baseboard that butted up against the vanity on the side and the piece that went along the wall and into the toe-kick area will both be too long and will have to be cut back.

I have to admit - I'm pretty well frazzled. At one point today, after being on hold forever with Lowe's, a woman came on the line to ask "who are you holding for?" and I couldn't remember why I was calling!! I stuttered around for a minute, and she remembered and we had a little chuckle, but, oh my gosh, I am SICK TO DEATH of this vanity situation!!!

And, this post proves to me yet again how glad I am I started it. After today's events I was really beat and couldn't talk myself into doing anything worthwhile (clean, iron, grocery shop, etc.) and did this instead and now I feel quite prepared to at least get myself to the grocery store. So thanks to those who read this for letting me vent. And keep your fingers crossed, please! :)

I'm All A-Twitter...

2011-10-08T18:09:00.056-04:00

Silly, I know...but I just found out a member of Etsy made up a Treasury List and included my Christmas tree quilt in it! That's a first for me and it just made me real happy. :)

(A few days later)...

I started this early this week and instead of doing a new post will just add to it. And it will be about my addiction to Etsy. :)

I've discovered that I love making Treasury Lists myself. I suppose everyone is familiar with Etsy, but it was all new to me and if it's new to you too, a Treasury List is something you create by doing a search for most anything - a color, a holiday, a word, whatever, and selecting from what comes up for your search. You can choose up to 16 items (and there are usually thousands) and you enter them, rearrange them to hopefully make a pleasing arrangement (some lists are truly beautiful) and then post it. There are a couple of rules - you're not to put in anything from your own shop and you're only supposed to have one item from any one shop and that's the hard part. Sometimes it's tempting to put in more than one if the shop is really relevant to your theme. There's something you do to make the lists get tons of hits - I saw one today with three thousand some but I don't know what it is, nor do I really care; I just enjoy doing the searching and putting them together. So, I'm going to put links here to the lists I've created so far. And just so you know, I'm spiraling...I already have collected three sets of items for three more lists!!

My first list was Itsy Bitsies and was, of course, all dollhouse miniatures.

Next, was Autumn in a Miniature World, again all miniatures.

Then, branching out, Ah, Bella Italia...Ah, Pottery which covers (as my readers know) two of my other loves.

I forget what inspired my It's Almost Time for Oktoberfest" list, maybe because I had come across a miniature beer mug.

Weather inspired A Cold, Rainy Day and a Pot of Tea and this and the Itsy Bitsies are probably my favorites.

And last, just a couple of days ago, I posted A Squadron of Sock Monkeys because I had just finished stitching and listing a cross stitched sock monkey dressed up as a pirate for Halloween. While working on it, I got to wondering if there were very many sock monkeys on Etsy, so did a search and, of course, thousands! This was an exciting one, because I posted it and about 3 minutes later, I got a message that someone had added it to their list of favorite treasury lists (which I didn't even know you could do).

Here's my little sock monkey pirate:

And...more excitement...in addition to the Christmas Tree quilt being included on someone's treasury list, this week two other treasury lists used an item of mine. Don't ask me why this tickles me so much...but I somehow find it more exciting than actually selling something! :)

And since you're probably really hoping I'll post the links to those three treasury lists so you can pick out my items, here they are:

A Little Bit of Red, A Little Bit of Green" for my Christmas tree quilt.

Christmas Quilting mine is the only tiny thing on the list.

And I'm just all filled up with ideas for stitching I want to do. I have an old sampler that my mother stitched that hung on the dining room wall of the house I grew up in. In emptying out the closet after my "flood" (would you believe nothing has been done about any of that yet?!) there it was and I looked at the back of it and discovered that she had stitched it in 1937!! Which means, if I have my dates right, she probably had only been married for a year or less. And I decided I would try and get it down to miniature size. I've finished charting it into my cross stitch program and it will be a large miniature, but I'm real excited about that. And I have a few "primitive" samplers I want to stitch that should go pretty quickly; I want to make some smaller, decorated Christmas tree quilts (like the one on my quilts page) that could be used as dollhouse wallhangings or as Christmas tree ornaments in "real life"; and I've picked out a few Christmas cross stitch patterns that will adapt well to miniature stitching, so I'm just having a great time with it all.

I think that's about all for now. Anything else I would have to report would all be bad news - no work on the water damage, a speed-trap speeding ticket on my way home from my NYC trip (and we just won't talk about the dollar amount), "Occupy Wall Street" protestors (noisy!) on the busy intersection that is less than 1/2 a block away from my bedroom, etc. So isn't it nice I have found a new obsession? :)

The weather here right now is pretty much fabulous and I hope it is for at least most, if not all, of my readers. Tomorrow is supposed to be another one, so a pleasant Sunday to all.

Bits and Pieces

2011-09-28T22:01:00.000-04:00

Probably my last post for this trip. I'm at Heather's (my older daughter) house now. She had her humerus bone reset this morning and we're not sure when she'll be released to come home. She's did well with the surgery apparently - they had told her that sometimes they have to get to some other bone in the body to get some grafting material and that didn't happen with hers, thank heavens! Alex (her husband) brought home a couple x-rays showing what the inside of her arm looks like now and I tell you, it has a very Halloween look to it. But at least it finally looks straight!

So I've been puttering around trying to be somewhat useful - did a couple loads of laundry and dismantled and packed up a hefty chandelier she's going to be returning. Have been meeting the kids' school buses, etc. There's not really been any good, sane, times to take pictures of the kids (and I try not to post many of them to the blog anyway) but today I took some pictures just for something to pass the time. Oh, and before I start on them, here's a pic of the miniatures that Chris has in his display cabinet right now just to give a better idea of what I was talking about in my previous post.

A lot of cobalt blue glass as you can see. Way back in the olden days, Chris was an avid collector of cobalt and way back in the olden days was when I decided I would try and make a roombox that would replicate his then living and dining room. He's been in two other apartments since then and has moved way beyond cobalt in his collecting, so that's why we're trying to decide what to do with what I've collected for it and what he's collected for it and also why I told him I should just give him all my stuff and let him arrange it in his cabinet. Probably should get him a petitpoint rug made sometime cause I've made both the girls one.

So moving on to today's pictures...

I couldn't resist the pose on the left. This is one of Heather's two cats. And I can't for the life of me remember his name - something Greek, I think. He is beautiful, isn't he? Looking a bit more pulled together in the picture on the right. I hardly ever see the other cat. They also have four dogs(!) and, of course, now the 13 alpacas.

Some of the 13...isn't the view lovely - and it's lovely 360 degrees around. I took a couple more pictures this afternoon when I met Sophia's bus cause the sun had finally been out, the sky was blue and there were beautiful big white clouds.

It is beautiful country. I just hope they don't all get tired of it after a while. They've put an awful lot of work into getting everything fixed up just so and now have their 13 new family members to take care of...

I probably won't see Heather again before I leave because they won't decide until tomorrow whether they'll keep her another day or two and then probably not til afternoon sometime. At which point, Alex will come back home where I'll be kid sitting because school is closed tomorrow and then I'll drive down to January's and go home Friday. So the end of the trip turns out not quite as happy-ifying as the beginning but one can't have everything, can one.

Probably won't post again for a bit either because I'm hoping to really get things moving on the repairs to my apartment when I get back which will involve some discussions with the contractor guy, some trips to Lowe's/Home Depot probably and a major decision as to who's going to paint what. And then I have several needlework ideas I'm itching to try out. I've already sold four little bits in my Etsy shop! Fun, no?

What We Brought Home from IGMA Show

2011-09-26T22:12:00.001-04:00

Okay - this will be a little show and tell and poor Chris will hang his head and cry when he sees the pictures I took of his treasures. I even sat the camera on the shelf so it would be steady and they still look grainy to me. But, Chris - you will have to take pictures yourself at some point and then you can post them on your Better Photo Gallery and they will be gorgeous.

Chris ended up with three wood turnings by the same artist. He bought two and one one in the live auction after the show. This little piece has a beautiful grain which changes appearance as you turn it this way and that and the light catches it. The lid fits perfectly and it's a sweet little piece.

He also purchased the bowl on the left during the show from the same artisan. Again, the picture doesn't come close to showing the lovely grain in the wood and the fact that the band around the top is of a different wood. The footed bowl on the left is the piece he bid for and won in the auction and it's a beauty. Chris told me the way he got the very thin white pieces into the bowl was not with inlay, but by first composing a block comprised of dark wood pieces and light wood pieces in such a way that when he turned the block on the lathe, this was the result. It is beautiful. The base is a black wood.

And the piece de resistance for Chris: this stunning ewer in sterling silver fashioned by Pete Acquisto - probably the best known miniature silversmith working today. You may need to enlarge the picture on the left to see that the handle has a double row of beading running the length of it and is attached at the base with a leaf-patterned design. I apologize that you see the reflection of my camera but that's how shiny it is.

Chris certainly brought home the true treasures this time. I didn't really buy very much, just enjoyed the atmosphere after a long time away from it. I went hoping to find bits and pieces for my little half inch scale scene and I did find plates which was especially what I was searching for. First bought some plain white porcelain ones and then discovered Ginger Langdon Siegel was there with her wonderful 3-dimensional framed miniatures. I had visited her site on-line and saw that she had pretty little 1/2 inch plates made out of paper but on line she just had them shown in sets of 4 plates, all with different patterns. At the show, she had a whole bunch of loose plates and I was able to pick out six of one pattern and I think 5 of another, so I'm pretty well plated.

I also bought a beautiful little handwoven basket of fruit that I can put on the hutch, table, or wherever and a little cookie jar. And I finally found a globe for January's library scene that may someday get built. I will probably take it off of this base. It was part of a boxed set she had made. The top of the box had a little magnifying glass insert and was quite delightful but I didn't want it in a box so she said she would sell me just the globe and save the top to make another one sometime. I've saved her information, but it's packed away until I get home so I can't tell you the name of the artist. But she had all sorts of neat things, including orreries (those antique mechanical thingies that showed the sun with the planets extending out on arms around it). If anyone wants the information on her, either e-mail me or say so in the comments section and I will be able to post it when I get back home in a week or so.

So I think that really and truly ends the report on my NYC and IGMA trip. Kind of hate to see it come to an end, but I've enjoyed today too, getting up to Heather's new house without getting lost one time (thanks for the directions, Chris), seeing my wonderful grandkiddies again, and especially meeting the alpacas! Weird but kind of endearing...I will be heading down to January's on Thursday once I know Heather has come through her "let's break her arm again and fix it right this time" surgery...poor thing. I feel so bad for her. But, hopefully a month or two from now, she'll be feeling pretty much like a person with two good arms again and can put all this behind her.

Sunday in New York City

2011-09-26T12:31:00.001-04:00

We discovered when we looked out our window Sunday morning, that, number one - it wasn't raining...hooray! And number two - we could see the Empire State Building. Fairly indistinct, but recognizable. So that's the first picture and we're not even out of the room yet. :) It was taken through glass which doesn't help. But it's a view!!

We got ourselves checked out, didn't have breakfast since we were going to brunch at Artisanal and headed on into the city by bus which stops right outside the hotel. It was really a pleasant morning - breezy, relatively cool, and here and there patches of blue breaking through the cloud cover. Got to the city with just one traffic jam at the entrance to the Holland(?) tunnel - anyway a tunnel under the river. About 4 or 5 lanes of traffic have to merge into two so I imagine it is often a lot worse than it was for us. Chris was a little worried we'd be late if we walked from the bus station plus we'd probably have heated up a little, so we took a cab and I was a good tourist and took a number of pictures out the window. So, keep that in mind as you look at them. Most of my pictures today are just of the "oh my gosh, I'm in the Big Apple" genre.

The picture on the left was in the Times Square area where all the buildings are huge "billboards" or neon, animated signs. I love it - so colorful and exciting. I usually never even notice what they're advertising cause I'm too busy gawking. The picture on the right was a first view of the Chrysler building which seemed to keep popping into view the whole time we were in town.

And the Chrysler building again just because the sky got a little prettier while we sat at a stoplight. :) Plus which, I love the building.

The building on the right is Grand Central Station, another beautiful (and grand) building.

The picture on the left is so New York City I think. Big cities are big, busy, dirty, whatever, but they're also beautiful, IMHO. I have to say, I love this picture.

And, oh, look - it's the Chrysler Building on the other side of the street now.

I know!!but can I help it if it was always in front of us??? And plus which, it's closer now. Last one, though because with the picture on the right, we have now arrived at Artisanal a little too early - they weren't open yet. So while we waited I took some pictures of this hotel across the street because it was such a nice, old, pretty building. And, for me, it's a lot more appealing than the one beside it.

Pretty soon, here came Megan down the street, the Artisanal opened and in we went, to again be greeted like visiting royalty or family or whatever. It's such fun. And...we got to sit in "the Cave"! Very fun. We were all looking forward to a Mimosa (or in my case, a Bellini) cocktail and then discovered in NY they don't serve alchoholic beverages until noon, so we had no choice but to use up the intervening time with lots of catching up (Megan is a delightful person!), eating the gougeres they always bring to the table, drinking lots of coffee and tea, and finally to use up the last 20 minutes or so until noon, giving our poor charming waiter a break by ordering a Guyere fondue. Delicious!! By the end of that, here came our cocktails so we then ordered our meals, had lots more conversation, (OH GOSH! I almost forgot that before the fondue, we had ordered a basket of fresh beignets which were heavenly) and enjoyed our meals when they came. Although my favorite was the fondue. It was perfect. They brought us a little sampler of petit four type treats and a flute of bubbly for each of us and we finally waddled our way out. I took this picture of Megan and Chris in the cave.

So as far as I know, a good time was had by all. It certainly was by me!

When we got back outside, we discovered it had warmed up quite a bit and was pretty darned muggy. But our plan had been to walk to a park-type place called Hi-Line Park. They've planted and beautified an unused elevated track area, the way I understand it and there are nice views and such from there. We started walking to it with me getting hotter and sweatier and moaning around more than I should have probably. But finally Chris suggested going on back to the train station to see if we could catch an earlier train. We did and we could, so we left the city at 3:00 rather than 5:00. Nice and cool in the train and an easy trip back. We had decided that when we got to Union Station we would eat at a PotBelly sandwich shop that's there, only to get off the train, into the station just in time to hear the loudspeaker telling everyone that due to an emergency, please leave the building. I think, although we never could find out for sure, that there was a fire on one of the metro lines. Lots of fire trucks, ambulances, police cars and people when we got outside. So not quite the evening we had pictured, but we went across the street to the Dubliner Pub or Restaurant which was pretty insanely busy and I got a delicious sirloin burger. I get hit with a craving for beef every now and then and this sure satisfied the craving.

We had been going to take the metro back to Alexandria where Chris had parked his car at his place of work, but that wasn't happening, so we called a cab, got back home and both were very happy to be there. But it was a wonderful weekend and I wouldn't have missed it for anything!

My First IGMA Show

2011-09-24T22:34:00.002-04:00

IGMA is the International Guild of Miniature Artisans, an organization dedicated to giving support and recognition to miniature artisans who can join IGMA as members, and if they desire to, apply for Artisan status, and then go on to Fellow status. For each of these steps, they must submit work which is then judged and if they don't earn the title, they are encouraged to try again and are constructively instructed on what would help them on a second attempt. So the work of these folks is truly a joy to see. We ended up spending pretty much the entire day in the show and, for me, especially, it was wonderful meeting several women who are members of the Yahoo petitpointers group that I belong to. They were all so warm and welcoming! I found various and sundry things to purchase - no treasures like I have sometimes bought in years past, but I'm happy with everything I bought. And Chris bought 2 very nice pieces and then, when we ended up staying for the live auction, he bid on and won a beautiful wood bowl. The auction was great fun - it and the auctions following IGMA's other events are their main sources of fund-raising and the artisans and other folks all donate beautiful, beautiful pieces to be auctioned off.

I took pictures of each of the petitpointers I met and am posting them here just because they made my day so very pleasant and I always post pictures of the highlights of my trips. These ladies were definitely highlights! :)

On the left is Christa Goes who came all the way from the Netherlands for the show. She does beautiful Hardanger embroidery on 54 count linen which you see pictured here on the right. She also had petitpoint on her table but I was especially enchanted with the Hardanger because that is something I've been trying to work up my nerve to try for a long time. You really should click on the Hardanger picture to get a better idea of the detail she manages to put into each piece. A delightful young woman and I'm glad I got to meet her!

And, this is Pat Richards on the left and a small sampling of her work on the right. She makes wonderful upholstered furniture, the little rugs you see that I believe are created by a method called penny felting. She also creates beautiful, and I mean beautiful petitpoint pieces and submitted a 1/12th scale framed picture done in stump work embroidery - a form of raised embroidery. Needless to say, it did very well as a fund raiser! Oh, and I mustn't forget to mention the cats - I think she must do these every now and then for fun because they certainly fun to look at. They are very lightly stuffed I think so they look like they've just sort of collapsed into the chair. I need to think of a perfect spot to display one because they make me smile when I look at them.

I also got to meet Peggy Meyers (I think it's 2 "e"s) in the blue jacket and visit with Annelle Ferguson in the black and white who is considered one of the "queens" of the petitpoint world. I have visited with her briefly at several other shows and she is delightful with her gentle southern drawl and her great sense of humor. And that's me and Annelle and I guess you can tell what a good time I was having! And I can't believe I didn't get a picture of Corky and am just real put out with myself! She stopped by our table at breakfast and stayed for a nice visit and then we both ended up out in the lobby while I ate lunch and we had another visit. She is a delight and I'm just sorry I didn't get a picture of her to share. She is a hoot! :)

It dawned on me after Chris and I pretty much packed everything up tonight for our trip back to DC tomorrow that I didn't take pictures yet of what we both bought. So I will do that maybe tomorrow night or Monday and try and get them posted too.

Tomorrow, we leave here in time to get to NYC by 10:30 when we'll join a Megan, a friend of Chris's. She lives in Brooklyn and we're all going to join up for brunch at ... wait for it ... Artisanal! It will be delicious I'm sure and pretty darned fabulous.

And, now - good night!

A Very Wet but Exciting Big Apple

2011-09-24T21:41:00.001-04:00

I drove over to Virginia on Thursday and had, thankfully, a very uneventful trip. I did see a few places where the leaves are changing colors in the hills so I imagine in a couple more weeks it will be getting quite beautiful. Got to Chris's in record time, really and we got ourselves all packed up for our trip to NYC.

Our train left at 9:20 a.m. and we needed to take two subway lines to get to the station so we got off to an early start. It was a very grey and gloomy looking morning and at some point on the way, I noticed it had started raining pretty heavily. By the time we got to Penn Station, it was pouring rain there - people coming into the station from outside were soaked about up to their knees. We had our umbrellas but with that kind of rain I decided I was going to try one of those poncho things. Chris got one too but of course, our legs still stuck out and by the time we got to the Morgan Library (5 blocks) we were pretty well soaked from the knees down and I was squishing in my shoes. Of course, it wasn't raining nearly as hard by the time we got to the library.

The library was really enjoyable. We had lunch in their cafe and it was very good and then we visited the exhibits and such. The library itself was built by J.P. Morgan to house his apparently ever-growing of antique books, documents, and whatever else struck his fancy. The library, his office/study and his librarian's office are in this building and they are all lovely rooms. Additions have been added, one by his son to house more of the ever-growing Morgan collection and one more recently which was built primarily to accommodate provide underground vaults for the huge collection, a concert hall, and a student reading room. Chris said to be sure and mention that the collection includes three original Gutenberg bibles. It also includes the Lindau Gospels with its incredibly gorgeous gold and jewel-encrusted upper cover created circa 880. You can find images of the cover on Google but there's no way they can do justice to its beauty.

We weren't allowed to take pictures anywhere but in the public area where the cafe was located and also this very interesting installation of Chinese calligraphy. It is titled "In the Living Word" and when you see the whole thing, it includes the dictionary definition of the Chinese word "niao" (bird) on the floor of the gallery written in the simplified text created by Mao. These characters then "break away" from the confines of the literal definition and take flight through the installation space. As they rise into the air, the characters gradually change from the simplified text to standardized Chinese text and finally to the ancient Chinese pictograph for "bird". (information from the exhibit literature)

Later as we were leaving, a string trio were playing in the cafe area so we stayed and listened to that for a bit.

Once outside we were glad to find that it was just raining very lightly. Still used our umbrellas but weren't in danger of drowning! In fact, it made me feel very cosmopolitan to just stroll along the big city streets filled with "umbrella-ed" people all going who knows where. I took this picture of the front of the original Morgan Library building. You don't enter here but as I said, the original library, office/study and librarian's office are all inside this building.

By the time we left here, we decided we might as well visit Chris's favorite restaurant "Artisanal" at least for a well-earned drink and a nibble if not a full meal. But of course once we got there, it was so wonderful to sit down in a warm, dry place that we decided to linger until a relatively decent hour, and then order dinner. Which we did, and as usual, it was pretty wonderful. The fact that Chris has been there so many times that they greet him like a long-lost family member certainly makes the whole experience very enjoyable. :) The picture below is of the "cave". When Jamie and I went to NYC together and stayed with Chris, we got to sit in here for dinner, but I don't think I took a picture of it then. It's filled with refrigerated cases of cheese and one feels quite special sitting in there.

This is taken in the dining room looking into the cave behind that iron grate.

Then, another walk back to Penn Station to get our checked suitcase, and then to the Port Authority bus station to catch the bus to Tea Neck, and finally check into our room, where speaking for myself, I slept like a log!

A Finished Project and NYC Coming Up!!

2011-09-21T01:10:00.001-04:00

I just finished a miniature quilt this evening and am adding these same pictures and info to my needlework "quilts" page.

I used a panel print and then quilted it by adding embroidery embellishments. I outlined some of the vines, the door mullions and a bit in the pumpkin, used French knots on some of the red berries, a long and short straight stitch on the broom handle, with a satin stitch banding the bristles which are long stitches that I cut after the broom was finished. I did all the embroidery through to a backing, then added the burnt orange border, and added a new, backing that I brought around to the top to make the second border. I'm happy with the way it turned out, but my favorite bit is the broom. :)

Now, tomorrow I have to get things cleaned up a little around here, have an appointment with the eye doctor, need to get gas, and then pack. And Thursday morning it will be off to D.C., stay the night with Chris, and then we take the train to NYC for the weekend. Hopefully, I'll get some good pictures at the miniature show and any wandering around we might do in the city. It's been a long while since this was actually a "travel" journal!

And, thankfully, I have finally had a settlement from the insurance company (a month after my "flood"), and have chosen a contractor to do the work. It has really worn me out and kept me fairly stressed trying to ever get estimates and a final figure from the insurance company, so I'm not even going to think about it while I'm gone. Told the contractor I'd call him when I get back home and we'll get things rolling.

And now, bed!

A Sunday tee-hee

2011-09-18T11:59:00.000-04:00

I saw this Garfield cartoon in the funnies this morning and had to share it with my faithful followers who bravely slog through my rambling posts.

Fortunately, I don't see people when they're reading my blog, so I don't know for sure that they're falling asleep. Of course, I don't know that they're not either!!

Have a nice day. :)
P.S. - if you have trouble reading it, you can enlarge it one more time.

West Virginia Fame

2011-09-15T12:27:00.001-04:00

I don't how many people I know who have had the experience when traveling of telling people they're from West Virginia and people think they mean the western part of the state of Virginia! We treat it as "sort of" a joke, but I'm sure for true WV natives, it rankles a little.

But...it's going to be difficult before too long for anybody not to know about us. Just in the past few years, we've had our wonderful Hillbilly Hotdogs featured on the Food Network show "Diners, Drive-ins and Dives", plus they were mentioned in a travel issue of "National Geographic" magazine and even got a mention in a London newspaper! And, of course, Jamie Oliver did his first set of the "Jamie's Kitchen" here in Huntington. And I was just reading the latest issue of "Budget Travel" magazine recently, and they had a section on the "10 most delightful towns in the US" and right up in the number one spot was Lewisburg, WV!! It IS a delightful town - I've been there several times and always enjoy it. And, now last night, a young man from Logan, WV, Landau Eugene Murphy, Jr., won "America's Got Talent". I don't watch the show and only learned last week from a friend that he was one of the finalists. When the news came on last night, that was the lead story which I thought was kind of fun.

So, look out world - West Virginia IS a state and who knows what will come next in our climb up the ladder of nationwide (and then world, no doubt) recognition!

And from my own experience, living in lots of different places, I can only say it is the friendliest state I've ever lived in and I love its hills and my Ohio River.

P.S. to My Morning Post

2011-09-05T17:18:00.001-04:00

I had a few more pictures to add to what I typed this morning and got so caught up in the recipes I forgot all about it!

My older daughter and her family have recently become alpaca farmers - how's that for a hoot!? So on the left is a picture of little Sophia with some of the little alpacas. And on the right is a picture of little Sophia with her hair cut!!! She started kindergarten this past week and reported to her mom when she got home after her first day ..."SCHOOL IS AWESOME!!!" And, yes, I used all caps cause when Sophia's happy and excited about something she's really excited and happy about it. :)

And they're refurbishing another building downtown. When we moved here so many of the old buildings had false fronts on them. I guess that was the style in what? the fifties or sixties? Anyway, over the last 5 or so years, a lot of those have been coming down and it sure is making Huntington a more attractive city. These next pictures are of what was one of three theaters in downtown Huntington (all of which closed back when the mall opened up with a multiplex type theater). One is back in business and is used for special concerts, the Marshall Artists Series, wedding receptions(!), etc. The other shows second run movies for a much lower price than the first run movies in the big theaters. And this third one has been the Joslyn School of Dance for several years now and I don't know what the plan is now that they are restoring the outside. I shall be watching for further developments.

This is as close as I have to what it looked like before they started. You can see the fake panels covered the entire front. That's the marquee coming down when I took this picture. Isn't the brick work great? Very art-deco I think.

And now everything has been removed and they've put the plywood up across the top. I think it's really going to be attractive when it's finished.

And now that is really and truly it for today. Please be sure and visit the post below this one for a few more pictures from Huntington and my update on floods, fender benders, etc. :)

A Rainy Day So A Good Time to Blog

2011-09-05T16:08:00.000-04:00

(Update from when I typed this this morning: I uploaded the two recipes mentioned below and now, you can either blame or thank the rain because I added four more! And it's still raining! So, 1 new under Pasta and 5 new under Sweets)

This is probably going to be long and rambling and I've been taking pictures around town so will just stick them in here and there even they won't relate to what I'm talking about.

I'm still waiting for anything to happen with getting repairs started on my condo. But at least it's beginning to sound like aside from my deductible, everything will be covered which has eased my mind quite a bit. This past two weeks have been kind of like living under a cloud! There was the flood, of course. Then I got one of those sore spots on my tongue which would not go away and hurt when I swallowed, talked, ate, etc. Finally after about 5 days I remembered how the aspirin had cleared up that wound on my hand that wouldn't healed and thought "well, nothing ventured, nothing won" so I managed to wedge an aspirin between my tongue and gum (a video of that would be hilarious) and the next morning it was quite a bit better - still there but not excruciating. So, who knows? Either it was time for it to get better, or I really have discovered that aspirin applied to whatever's bothering you does the trick! Still under that cloud, my eye had some problems - kept feeling like something was in it and hurting. I finally noticed a blister-type thing on my eyeball and thought "good grief". But it quit bothering me...the blister is still there and I should maybe have it looked at but... And as a final little "we're not done with you yet" reminder, my friend Peggy and I decided to go to Charleston last Wednesday and I parked my car at her house and she drove. We had just started our shopping when her husband called to see if we wanted to come back because her neighbor had pulled out of her garage and backed into my car!! Once he said the it was still driveable, and realizing that her insurance was going to be taking care of it all, I found the incident funny, actually. We didn't go back home and had a real nice time shopping and eating.

Two pictures of the new cupcake bakery. This was her second day in business and already when I walk by I see she's really got it looking spiffy. I, of course, got a cupcake the day I was there and it was, of course, delicious, but for the most part, I'll just try and forget it's there!

Speaking of eating (aren't I always?), I've posted two more recipes to my collection. One is for a roasted red pepper sauce that I've made before but apparently never posted. Made it again last night and really do like it. It's not Italian I guess, but whatever it is it's quite tasty. And it dawned on me as I was once again cutting the recipe into quarters that from now on when I cook these sauces I like so much, I'll cook the full recipe and freeze portions. Duh!! The other recipe is for a dessert called apple pudding, which sounds really weird but pudding is referring to a pudding like plum pudding. You don't steam this, but it's that kind of texture. Made it one evening when Jamie, Cindy and I went out for dinner. They professed to love it. I served it with some de leche ice cream which didn't hurt at all either. This was an old recipe that I had totally forgotten about. But once I made it and ate it I remembered that I used to make it years and years ago and we all liked it.

I set up a little shop on Etsy.com. Don't know why really - for one thing, I always enjoy learning how to get something like that done; ergo, the website, this blog, etc. But also it's pumped up my interest in my needlework and I just finished cross-stitching a little Noah's Ark and am pondering whether to frame it, fringe it for a wall-hanging, or maybe quilt strips of fabric in the colors of the stitching and then mount it to that. And I'm already looking forward to some more tiny stitching. It's unfortunate in a way that the second or third day my shop was "open" I sold a little rug. Because there's every possibility I'll never sell anything else which could be disheartening, but I won't let it be - I'll just use the shop as my excuse to keep on stitchin'. :) And when I have enough stitched, I might take it all out of the shop and get myself a table at a miniature show...

I've started (or am trying to) a new walking regimen of Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday walking at least more than a mile and a couple of times already, I've walked about 2 miles. I do it before breakfast which is a real nice time - not much going on and not much traffic except on the two one-way roads that go through downtown Huntington. I have music playing on my phone and it's been quite enjoyable. Especially before the weather got real hot again. The last few days of August were surprisingly nice - actually chilly in the morning, pleasant during the day and beautiful up on the roof in the evening. On one of the clearest days we've had all summer I think, I took some pictures at the river, but they didn't turn out as pretty as I wanted. But this one is pretty nice:

You can see how pretty the sky was and the flowers are pretty. All the flower beds and tubs at the riverfront park are planted and maintained by volunteers who are certainly earning their halos!

A couple of other pictures taken on my walks...

On the left, just a sign, but a sign of good things to come! They are apparently still on schedule to open mid-September.

And on the right is the water massage place I mentioned in an earlier post. They're already open and I wish them all success, but I don't think I'll be brave enough to try it out. And ever since I've lived in Huntington (and I'm sure for quite a while before that,) this place was a peanut/candy shop and I just can't get my head around going in for a water massage instead of a bag of peanuts! :)

That's about all I can think of for now. I am getting quite excited by the thought of going up to NYC for the miniature show and an evening on the town with Chris! He's just started a flex-time system at work and has the Friday off that week so instead of going up after he gets off work, we'll be going up Friday morning and can probably work in a little museum or just Manhattan walking or whatever when we get up there.

National Cathedral Damaged by Earthquake

2011-08-24T11:39:00.000-04:00

A photo from the National Cathedral's website showing some of the damage caused by the earthquake.

I want to share this e-mail I received from my son, Chris (who as my readers know, is a very frequent contributor to this blog!)

Hello;

Please bear with me for sending this type of mass-email, but I wanted to reach out to folks who have shared my love of the cathedral. If you're receiving this, you have experienced the cathedral with me in one form or another---mostly through photography or my private guided tours. You know what a magnificent, special and inspirational place the cathedral is. As a volunteer there for 16 years now, my heart sank with today's distressing news.

As you may know by now, the cathedral suffered some significant masonry damages from the 5.8 magnitude earthquake in Virginia today. The early reports were far from complete; damage was not limited to just 2 or 3 pinnacles as first reported. Several pinnacles are now broken apart and dangerously out of alignment, or missing entirely. One or two flying buttress arms, and some wall areas have developed cracks. A falling chunk of heavy limestone masonry actually punched a hole clear through the metal-clad roof.

Fortunately nobody was injured. Masons and engineers are now examining the building in detail to determine the extent of structural vs. cosmetic damages. But the painful truth is the number of critical repairs now facing the cathedral, and more importantly, the alarming price tag that effort will undoubtedly carry. As you know, the cathedral was built without taxpayer or Federal funding, and this landmark is still privately funded through gifts and donations today.

I would be remiss as a volunteer (as well as someone who cherishes the cathedral) if I didn't ask everyone that I know, who has enjoyed the cathedral with me over the years, to consider making a donation of any size to the repair efforts. (Donations of all sizes, from pennies to generous gifts, are what built the cathedral.) Please visit www.nationalcathedral.org for the latest news, damage photos and updates on the repair efforts, as well as a link to donate. And please forward this to any interested and/or concerned colleagues, camera clubs, etc., as you deem appropriate.

I won't trouble you with additional emails about this; I merely want to get the word out to as many people as I can. Thank you for your consideration and for spreading the word, and thank you in advance for any assistance you can provide to the cathedral's repair efforts.

Very sincerely,

-Chris Budny

Another Recipe and Catching Up

2011-08-22T15:41:00.000-04:00

I just posted another recipe to my recipe collection (see tab above). This is for scrambled eggs with olives which may sound fairly awful but I gave it a shot and loved it.

And as far as catching up, I was awakened at 3:00 a.m. Friday morning to the sound of running water, went to see what on earth (while one of our torrential storms raged outside) and found water pouring out of the ceiling vent fan in my bathroom. I also found, being in my bare feet that I was standing on soggy carpet. :( So, since then, I've pretty much been taken up with first of all doing all I could to sop up what seemed to be a vast amount of water in the bathroom (no problem, tile floor), my entire hallway into the entry area of the bedroom, and around the corner into the living room out to the front door. Sometime Friday they brought in four of those industrial type fans and I spent the next 24 hours or so in a wind tunnel - had to go into my little office closet when I wanted to use the phone). This is the first day that I've actually felt like staying home and getting caught up on things a little. I spent the weekend doing what I could here for as long as I could stand it and then leaving til I got unstressed enough to come back and do some more.

It's what's coming that is keeping me kind of stressed. I have a fair amount of water damage to areas of my walls throughout the apartment. It's worst in the bathroom but my bedroom closet will have to have wallboard replaced and there are several other places where the wallboard tape has curled up and that may mean those pieces of wallboard would have to be replaced also, unless they can somehow peel off the tape and just put on new (doubtful). However they repair it, I'm assuming they'll have to paint the entire apartment because even where there is no damage, the color wouldn't match after being on the walls for 5 years. I can't quite imagine how it's all going to take place without various disasters occurring, but I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

I think last week I was thinking of several tidbits I needed to journal but they've mostly flown out of my head with all this. But I can report that we're getting yet another new little business downtown - about a block away from me. It's a frozen yogurt place called "Tropical Moon" and some of you may be familiar with them. I guess you go in and serve yourself whatever flavors you want with whatever toppings and they charge by the ounce. Oh wowee wow is about all I can say about that! :)

Another place is going to be opening too and it's an aqua-massage salon(?) Has anyone ever heard of those and/or used them? I can't quite imagine it - he said it's like a tanning bed and you get in and get massaged with needles of spray. But then what - you just get out and drip for a while? I mean, this is going to be in a store that used to be a peanut/candy store and has windows and a very visible inside...don't know if I'll work up the nerve for that or not.

Anyway, that's it from Lake Woebegone (such an appropriate name right now...)

Just a Quick Note (I think...)

2011-08-11T21:17:00.000-04:00

My quick notes get long quickly. :)

I just posted a new recipe on my Recipe Collection page for a smoked salmon pasta with lemon and dill that I made a couple of nights ago and really enjoyed. If you try it and like it, let me know! And I actually learned how to set up a table within a post which is nice cause I can put in the full ingredients for a recipe and then in a second column put in how much I need to use for just me. I find myself using my recipe collection here as my recipe file.

It is a beautiful evening tonight - in fact it's been pleasant all day. Brilliant sun but low humidity and probably a high of around 85. Sure beats what we've been having. And now tonight is just perfect. I was up on the roof having my little wine and cheese "dinner" and once they quit playing their insanely loud music down at the free "concert" at Pullman Square (which they have every Thursday night in the summer), it was perfect.

They're also having the annual rib fest this weekend and that started this evening. I've gone a few times, but I find it's a lot of money to put out for a little bit of food. You pay to get in and then, of course, pay for the food too so for just some barbecue and a soda, it's fairly expensive. It sure smelled good though - with all the smokers going you can smell it all over town.

Went to see the movie "Midnight in Paris" last night mainly cause I wanted some popcorn and ended up really enjoying it. It was just a romantic comedy, I suppose, but a really interesting story line, the music was great and at the very beginning, instead of just starting with the credits, there's like a video tour of the city of Paris, no words - no credits, just gorgeous views and what I thought was a really wonderful musical score. So, if you haven't seen it - give it a look, maybe.

If you've made it down this far, here's a pretty picture as a reward. Just my beautiful Ohio River, but I never get tired of it. I'm disappointed though because when I took it, I could see the next bridge on down the river and there's not even a whisper of it in the picture which kind of surprises me. And now, I just clicked to make this bigger and the second bridge is visible so Wilbur, I am content.

I feel pretty certain that there was something that for the past couple of days I've thought - remember to post that when you post the recipe. I've spent a fair amount of time working on a couple of trip ideas I have but it's not that. So, if there was something, it's now gone, so I will sign off on this lovely Thursday evening and wish everyone a happy weekend.

I've Finished Building My Kitchen/Dining Roombox!!

2011-08-05T18:34:00.000-04:00

Mind you, it will now be an ongoing project as I try to gather up some "stuff" to fill it up. Right now it's looking pretty barren. But it's done and I'm pleased with it. It's not perfect, but my projects never are and for how long it's been since I've done anything like this, it could have turned out a lot worse.

So, of course, here are pictures...

The dark wood down the sides and across the bottom is dollhouse picture frame molding so I'll be able to slide a sheet of acrylic down inside to help keep it from getting too dirty. I'll probably rearrange the furniture a few times too. In fact, it already is in a different arrangement that I'll look at for a while. I want to make some kind of little chair pads at least for the two Windsor armchairs, plus I want to put a finish on them - they just bare wood right now. And I desperately need some dishes for the hutch, a little something for on the table, pictures, etc. In the kitchen I'm in the process of trying to get just a little piece or two of the same cabinets I put in my 1/2" scale dollhouse kitchen. And I have various pots and pans, a few canned goods, a basket of veggies, a baguette (me and my baguettes!). A couple of throw rugs would be nice too...maybe a cat...

A closer picture of the little stove that made all this effort necessary. I've glued the missing plate back on.

I think I mentioned in a previous post that I had an old cookbook with these charming pictures that I thought about using to make a corner scene, where the Italy page and a facing page with an Italian recipe would be the walls. But I found I didn't want to put anything in front of the pictures or the recipe! So, I took these two pictures and put one on each side of the box. I thought about choosing Germany since I lived there for a year, but I didn't like the picture as well and who knows, I may get myself to Scandinavia!

And this last picture is where it will be in my kitchen, except I'm going to mount it on the wall to get it up off the counter. So, that's how it will look when I walk into the kitchen and I'm just real happy with it. :)

And, guess what? Last night I was looking at the Miniature Collector magazine and saw the ad for the IGMA show in September right outside NYC, and I thought oooh, that would be a great show. Then I thought maybe, possibly, conceivably, Chris might want to go and we could share the cost of a room. Cause aside from not liking the job he had while he was working there, he loved NYC and especially the Artisanal restaurant and he's fairly intrigued by miniatures himself - not obsessed like some of us get, but enjoys seeing the beautiful work of some of the artisan miniaturists. So I called, we talked about it and this morning I get an e-mail from him saying he went ahead and reserved a room and we can take our time ironing out the details. Is that great, or what?! I've never been to an IGMA show and am really looking forward to it.

And, I guess that's it for tonight. I'm over my cold and just back to having apparently sinus issues with a drippy nose, achy teeth, and periodic headaches. But since that's how it was before my cold, I guess I can live with that.

Hope everyone has a happy weekend!

A Summer Cold - Yuck!

2011-07-29T19:37:00.001-04:00

I should keep track - I feel like I get a cold every summer. Always start with my throat getting sorer and scratchier, then progress on to the start of sniffles and a sneeze or two and then yesterday and today, doing nothing much except blowing my nose! Poor me...

But...I had just started working on a miniature project (I think I mentioned I was pondering a scene for my 1/2" scale stove in a previous post). So, I quit pondering and got started on it and when the cold hit, I didn't let it stop me (even though yesterday, especially, all I really wanted to do was go to bed). And I'm going to post pictures just cause this is the first time I've worked on a miniature project in probably 6 or 7 years. I made a tiny little vignette about 4 years ago for a friend's 50th birthday party but that's it. I wasn't going to post pictures until I was all done, but I got my two little light fixtures hooked up this evening and that's always such a great feeling when they work that I figured, what the heck and so here's the picture. :)

I used what miniaturists call "printies" which is stuff you can find on line for printing off and making all sorts of stuff for miniature scenes. I just used it for the wallpaper and the floor. The reason the two side walls baseboard and chair rail look different than the rest is cause I haven't glued on the wood pieces yet. But I'm pleased so far - think it has a nice cozy look. Next will be covering up the space above the ceiling with a facade type front and I'm pretty sure I know how I'm going to do that - just hope I can do a decent job of it. Then I'll cover the outside of the box with something and that will be pretty much be it for the box. I'll put the bit of stuff I have inside and then I may just have to find a miniature show and do some shopping!

On a totally different subject, I had lunch with my friend, Peggy, who is (thank heavens) finally back from Florida and after lunch we went to the bakery for bread and then went into the Bottle and Wedge (the beer, wine and cheese shop) cause Peggy didn't even know it was there. Turns out she and her husband enjoy brewery-type beers and the store lets you "build" your own 6-pack, so she did that. Got me so inspired, I bought two myself. One was a wheat beer cause I had just been watching a cooking show the day before and he was making a marinade or something and said "now be sure and use a wheat beer for this" and having never even heard of wheat beer, my thought was "yeah, and where do we get that???" And there it was. I also bought a summer beer and decided a couple of hours ago to see what a beer might do for my poor sick self cause I had been coughing and blowing til I thought I was going to have to be put down. And, strangely enough, it's been somewhat better since I finished it. Quite a while ago, I posted my medical discovery of putting ground up aspirin on a wound that wouldn't heal and was hurting like heck, and now I've discovered that beer can help the common cold sufferer. I may have to put out a shingle soon!

I guess that's about it for now - I really haven't done much except work on my little project and feel sorry for myself. So, everyone say there, there... :)

Speaking of weather...

2011-07-16T09:45:00.002-04:00

My cyber-friend, Jean, in Phoenix, AZ, sent me this link to a video of the sandstorm they experienced there last Tuesday, July 5.

She wrote: "Last Tuesday [July 5th] we had the Mother of all dust storms [haboob]. What a mess. Actually still cleaning up after it. Every cranny and nook is just gritty, sandy dust. Hope you enjoy the videos. Lots more on google. I opened the door and could not believe that I could hardly see my neighbors house. One mile high, 100 miles long and moving 60 mph. It was awesome. Usually follows with rain, but only got a few drops, just enough to make it 'stick'. Truly awesome."

And the video surely confirms her words. Unbelievable!!

Here's the link: dust storm Watch it and be glad you weren't there!!

A Beautiful Evening!

2011-07-14T21:21:00.008-04:00

I went up on the roof around 8:30 and it was gorgeous up there. A real breeze blowing, not hot at all - in fact, a little chilly by the time I came down a short while ago. And an incredibly beautiful sky. I'm certainly aware of the fact that even good photographers with great camera have a hard time doing justice to sunsets, but I took pictures anyway - had my phone and couldn't resist. So, I'll share them with you and you can let your imagination tell you how glorious it was.

And tonight I finished a little piece of cross stitch for the lady in Texas for whom I've done several other pieces. Gosh, that's an awkward sentence. But, whatever - I'm happy it's done and think I may actually get started on my half scale kitchen project. Or maybe more needlework - I do enjoy it once I get started.

The Last Couple Weeks

2011-07-07T22:15:00.001-04:00

As my son pointed out to me yesterday, it's been a while since I've posted and I had been thinking the same thing myself, so this will just be bits and pieces of things I've seen and done just sort of hanging around.

Two times since my last post, I've kicked myself for not having my camera with me. Although the first time, I wouldn't have had time to get a picture anyway. I was walking back to the apartment one evening after my visit to Starbucks and I got to the intersection at my corner and started across and there went a man on a bicycle wheeling past with a gorgeous macaw (or some exotic bird) sitting big and bold on his handlebar. It was so delightful to see it was all I could do not to holler "hey, wait a minute!" But they were gone...I was telling a woman who was visiting up on the roof the night of the fireworks and she said "oh, yes - he lives up by us and takes that bird everywhere. The bird seems to love it." I just was so tickled with how he looked - just had a sort of stalwart look about him - ready for any adventure.

And the fireworks night was the other time I kicked myself for not having my camera and of course was too lazy to come downstairs and get it. Well, and in my own defense, I kept telling myself that if I did, they'd be done by the time I got back up on the roof. But, they were beautiful as always and I think this is the first time in the 4 summers(?) I've lived here that it wasn't raining. Of course, there was the minor point that it wasn't the 4th of July yet!!, but heaven forbid, we should celebrate a holiday on its date. Seems a bit much for the 4th of July, though.

At any rate, I went back up on the roof on the real 4th of July, again without my camera, cause I figured there would be some fireworks popping off here and there and there certainly were. It was kind of fun because they were everywhere - across the river, out towards Ceredo-Kenova, several spots out towards the interstate, some distant ones off in the hills - just everywhere. I had to be careful not to get dizzy turning around in circles to watch them all. :)

Let's see, what else? I had a nice visit with several of my neighbors at Starbucks one afternoon. It was especially nice since my friends I usually do things with have been doing a lot of traveling lately.

I did my rotisserie chicken thing - had it first of all with some garlic smashed potatoes and I forget what else for dinner, then made chicken curry salad for 2 or 3 sandwiches, made pasta with chicken, zuchinni, yellow squash and tomatoes. I've started adding a splash of wine to that when I make it and I think it gives it a richer flavor. Very tasty at any rate.

I got a mad whim to go through my closet and change things around a little. Finally admitted there was a pile of things I was never going to wear anymore, got them all bagged up and took them to the consignment shop only to find they're not taking any stuff until August. But my closet is neater and part of the arranging involved moving one of those shelf tower things I keep folded shirts in from my clothes closet into my "office/storage" closet, which then inspired me to dig around in there through some of my miniature supplies, which then inspired me to once again think about starting a little miniature project making a 1/2" scale kitchen using this delightful Roper stove I bought years ago. I'm hoping to get to work on that in another couple days - I think I've figured out how I want to do it which is half the battle.

All that clearing out meant I had to do a little shopping and I've just been being so inspired by everything that today I got the two pairs of pants I bought ready to hem. Oh, and the other reason I was inspired to actually hem something for a change instead of leaving it in the closet for the next 5 years was because I also got inspired to finally do something about trying to stop some of the heat from pouring in my two huge hall windows right on to my thermostat. I found some fabric that has some type of backing on it that is supposed to be energy saving and I think it will help some. Probably not quite enough to make it worth practically killing myself getting them up - and down - and back up again - and down - and finally up.

And, I seem to have spent a fair amount of time the past week or so looking at travel sites - not sure what will come of that, but I do start getting excited when I think about another trip.

That's about all my activity. It took them another 3 or 4 days to finally finish up all the 5/3 bank move. And now, the past 4 or 5 days, they've been tearing up the street a block down to lay new gas pipe. I'm glad of that because that's on my walk to Starbucks and I've often smelled gas - even reported it one time.

And, I was glad to see an item in the newspaper today that this has been the wettest spring on record in Huntington. Every time we had one of our hurricane-style storms I would think to myself "this has GOT to be unusual" and it was. Poor farmers had trouble getting any crops to take hold so the article was saying that things are behind schedule at our farmers' market.

And, I hear we're going to be getting another bakery - this one will be for cupcakes and I guess maybe cakes. The woman opening the bakery has been selling her cupcakes from the Third and Ninth Deli and they have apparently sold like the proverbial hotcakes (or in this case, cupcakes). One of Chris's favorite treats when he was living in NYC was a cupcake place (although he, strangely enough, got their banana pudding), so maybe this will mean more visits from Chris (tee hee).

Oh, and I finally, with a lot of help from a blogger expert, got some links put up on the blog to what they call static pages. I transferred my whole recipe collection to one, and will sometime get around to posting pictures of my miniatures and any needlework projects I've already finished and hopefully, some new ones occasionally.

Ta-ta!!

And I looked in my camera and my I-phone and didn't find a single picture to post!

Saturday Night and It's All Done

2011-06-26T01:08:00.000-04:00

I'm going to pretty much just post my pictures and video links from today's "work". My first photo has a time stamp of 5:59 a.m. and the last photo taken was at 7:00 p.m. I had been out running a couple of errands and when I got home, it was looking like they were pretty much finished up. So I got myself upstairs, grabbed my camera, and watched while they got their trucks all positioned, moved the last of the road closed signs, and took off down Fifth Avenue.

So without further ado, here are a batch of photos:

First pic of the morning - very few people about as yet and they're getting the cage ready to hoist up.

The little green crane that could is already working away - this is looking down from my bedroom window to the canopy that extends out from our lobby door.

I didn't realize it til I got up on the roof, but there was also a marathon early this morning - this is the last of the runners coming in...

Then they gathered at Pullman Square.

Back at work, they're struggling to get this long side piece off and up. Part of it is behind a metal ladder that runs from the lower roof to the upper - think it would have been easier if they had sliced the trim piece in two.

I thought I heard a dove cooing...

All the red trim is off now so they can start on the sign. It takes quite a while!

They used an acetylene torch to cut through whatever was holding all this stuff on.

Here are the trim pieces and the first sign (there are three of them) on the ground.

I don't know when they took their lunch break, but I took mine and while I was outside, I got this picture from the ground up.

For the second and third signs, they had to do the cutting work from the cage - no convenient roof space to walk around on.

And here's that third sign going down to the trash.

Getting later in the day and they're now in the clean-up stage. I guess all that black on the pavement must be from using the torch to cut the metal pieces into smaller pieces.

And as long as I was up there, I figured I might as well take a couple shots of that beautiful river:

I should probably have taken more still shots and fewer videos cause the videos didn't turn out real great - I used the zoom a fair amount and didn't realize how blurry that would make the pictures. But here are the links to the ones I kept. Somewhat repetitive and basically boring, but it was exciting while it was all going on. :)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S7zFTESeFtQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XWqb_0ewTd8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RFmEikVloEs
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IF0MpqRD8Aw
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lscO85hHxWA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Njl0QReRNk

Not very fancy, but I've worn myself out with all this hi-tech stuff!

BIG Doings at My Condo Building!

2011-06-24T22:26:00.001-04:00

Friday started out as just a normal day - fiddled on the computer for quite a while in the morning doing some searching of places in Italy - both to visit and for lodgings. Nothing definite - just looking... I decided since it actually wasn't beastly hot, I'd walk over to Subway for lunch so I did that and when I got back to my apartment building, I ran into three of my neighbor ladies in the lobby who were on their way to Starbucks and asked me to come along. I decided what the heck and joined them. We had a nice long visit, lots of talk about travel (we're all retired and enjoying it), then walking back we stopped in at the Mug and Pia shop to browse for a bit. Started the walk back to our building, turned the corner onto 10th Avenue, and I, for one, about dropped my teeth. You could see from where we were that the entire block in front of our building was blocked with all kinds of trucks and they were putting up barricades and such - not that any traffic could have used that stretch of road anyway! It looked like some huge catastrophe or something.

So we walked on to our building and I stayed outside to see if I could figure out what was going on. It wasn't long before someone told me that they were all there to take down all the signage that is on our building for the bank that's been located there since before I moved in. I knew they were moving to a new location and in fact yesterday, they had all sorts of people there moving things out. So, I counted, and there were four flatbed trucks carry cranes - at least that's what I thought at first. Turned out actually three of them were carrying cranes and one of them was carrying big extensions to add to two of the cranes. And then there was a smaller green crane already unloaded and getting set up to work, plus various and sundry other trucks. I got all excited and took some pictures from upstairs out my window:

Cranes to the left of me...the little green guy and one of the "extra parts" flatbeds

Cranes to the right of me...unloading what turned out to be leveling platforms for the cranes' leveling feet to sit on.

And cranes right in the middle.

I decided I would go up the roof and be ready to take pictures when the action started up there. That's where the big sign is - actually I think probably two. While waiting I tried to get a picture of what they'll be removing, but I wasn't positioned very good for that:

I'm on the roof deck facing that open door so all you can see basically is the side of the sign - the grey, flat looking thing with (if you could see it) a big 5/3 in red on it.

So, I waited and waited, getting pretty warm up there in the sun and finally thought I should probably go see if my neighbor on the 12th floor knew for sure that this was in fact what was happening. Turns out it was happening but not until tomorrow morning. This afternoon they were just getting everything set up and the little green crane was taking down the red and black illuminated trim that runs around the building's street sides. So I took some videos (I'll only post two of the ones I took cause they drive me crazy trying to get them set up right) and just had all sorts of fun keeping track of what they were doing from my bird's eye view.

The first video shows the trim removal although they were so close to the building it was hard to get a good picture of what was happening. To see it just click HERE.

And the second one shows two of the huge cranes working to get the extension put on one of them. To see it, just click HERE.

Obviously a lot more fun to watch "in the real" than on a video, but might as well share them anyway. :)

So they worked and worked until 7:00 p.m. and managed to have everything set and ready to get started tomorrow morning. I've got to remember when I wake up early - like I always do - not to lollygag around in bed but get dressed and up on the roof to see all the action.

As for tonight - this is now the view right outside my bedroom windows:

And around 9:00, after struggling with trying to get more videos uploaded, I opted to come to Starbucks and publish what I already had and took this picture to show where they're taking off that trim I mentioned. I think in my video I said it was at the third or fourth floor level and obviously it isn't - it's right over the first floor.

They got a fair amount removed already. Tomorrow, they'll have to block off the street in front of the building (this is the side) in order to remove the trim there.

Hopefully, I'll get some good pictures tomorrow up on the roof...speaking of good pictures, one thing I've decided for my next trip (if it includes Florence, which I imagine it will...) is that I'm going to get up one morning at the crack of dawn and get myself to the Duomo before the hordes of people are there and see what I can get in the way of some pictures. Always good to have a goal, right?

June 19 - Sunday Afternoon

2011-06-19T14:47:00.001-04:00

A kind of grey, rainy day today which is all right with me. Had my nice Sunday morning at Starbucks with my yogurt, tea and newspaper. And had a nice long chat with a young man who asked if he could borrow the classified section of my paper. Turned out he wasn't looking for a job, but for somewhere to live for a month. He's a med student from University of Virginia and was sent here for one of his rotations. He apparently had just rolled into town this morning. We ended up visiting for half an hour or so. I told him about some of the neat places in Huntington, found out he has family in Massachusetts near where my sister and her husband live and we both agreed it's a great place to live, and anything else that popped into our heads...a very personable young man.

I'm kind of put out with my crazy old self right now, because as I mentioned in an earlier post, I had made some notes on what I did differently this last time I made my vodka sauce and when I got home and settled back down, I went to get them and add them to the recipe in My Recipe Collection and I cannot find them anywhere. I had a whole little stack of handwritten notes on various recipes I've tried and not typed up yet and that's where it should be and it's not. And, apparently, since I wrote it all down, my brain did not retain anything about what I changed except that I made half a recipe instead of a quarter recipe. Dumb old brain...

But the last two nights I've made myself dinner and enjoyed them both. I bought some organic lean beef mainly because it was a little less than a pound package, looked like nice meat, and I've been meat hungry lately. I divided it up into five 3-oz. servings, froze four of them and cooked the fifth one just in a real hot skillet after coating it with garlic infused olive oil. It was quite tasty but I cooked it longer than I should have cause it was well done all the way through which meant it was a little rubbery. Also, I cooked up some reconstituted dried shiitake mushrooms in some olive oil, added a little red wine to them and served that along with the meat. I'll do that again only with fresh mushrooms - they would work much better, I think. My starch with that was a couple slices of some delicious Moroccan olive bread from River and Rail Bakery. I used to buy that from Kroger's bakery and it was good, but I like this one better because it's a lighter bread which is nicer with a meal.

Then yesterday, Jamie and I went over to Charleston so I could return something I had bought at a Home Good Store while I was in Virginia. Then we browsed through Home Goods, Cato's (I'd never been in one before) and Marshall's, stopping for a delicious strawberry and chocolate crepe at a place called La Creperie in the same strip mall as the stores. A kind of strange place cause with that name, you'd think crepes and, of course, they have them, but it's very much a Greek-slanted restaurant with gyro sandwiches, Greek salads, and various other menu items.

Anyway, in Home Goods I found some tomato-basil linguine noodles that I had to buy (I'm going to have to buy a separate cupboard for all the pasta I seem to feel compelled to buy!) and also bought a little can of white tuna in olive oil, imported from Spain. I'd read some time ago, that tuna in olive oil is so much better than tuna in water or other oil and had found some at Kroger and used it several times in tuna/pasta salad and such. But it wasn't white tuna and plus which, what I got yesterday was a 3.25 oz. can instead of 6.50 oz. can so it was obvious I had to buy that also. Last night I cooked up a batch of the linguine and heated half the can of tuna, along with some of its oil, in a small skillet. I also threw in some frozen peas cause I wanted something green but not salad. When it had heated up enough, I added a little of the pasta water and let that cook down a little. When the pasta was done, I drained it, put it back in the pan on the heat, scraped in all the tuna, peas and oil and tossed that around for a bit til it was sizzling nicely, and then sprinkled in a goodly amount of parmesan cheese and tossed it around until it was melted. I really enjoyed it and it went very well with my glass of red wine.

Now I still have the other half can of tuna and it's entirely possible I may do the same thing tonight! I could also cook up some shell pasta and use the tuna in a salad with some capers, tomatoes, olive oil and Feta cheese... (LATER: I used the rest of the tuna in a very nummy salad - I'll post what I did in the recipe collection although it's one that you just do whatever you want.)

The only other thing to report is that the travel bug has been hovering around lately. I got a new book "Europe Through the Back Door" by Rick Steves and have been perusing that. Lots and lots of very useful information on travel even before you get to the chapters on the various countries. Wish I had known some of it on my second trip especially when I was constantly traveling from place to place. And with all his information on train travel, I might be able to convince myself to fly into Spain or France, visit there for a week or so and then train into Italy. I'm kind of embarassed to admit that I can't imagine being in Europe and not being in Italy at some point. I've begun to think maybe I should look at a trip in the spring sometime around my birthday. Have been looking on line and found several really nice looking places to stay for reasonable prices...

A Postscript to "Oh What a Beautiful Evening"

2011-06-16T21:32:00.000-04:00

I took those sky pictures right around 6:00 p.m. out the dining room window. After dinner, I took off for Starbucks, forgetting that they're now back to doing the Thursday night free and loud concerts down there. But I went in and enjoyed a nice iced tea and my new issue of Food and Wine and watched as the sky clouded over and there was a brief spurt of rain.

I left around 8:45 and this is what the sky looked like by then - still pretty but more rain coming for sure. In fact I just barely got back in before it started. Sure did look pretty for a brief spell, though...

Kind of like the horse and carriage in front of Five Guys. :)

Oh, What a Beautiful Evening!!!

2011-06-16T19:04:00.000-04:00

I'm back home now and as I was getting ready to fix dinner, I finally got around to rolling up my dining room window blinds and oh, how gorgeous the sky was! I figured I'd better take a couple of pictures to share.

And I'm kicking myself because I didn't take one single picture of January and Maggie's little house that they just moved into. It's like a little dollhouse and I'm just so happy thinking of them being in it. January, if you want to send me a picture or two, I'd be happy to post them. :)

Had a real nice visit with them - a good dinner at one of their favorite restaurants, Franklin's, in Hyattsville. Good food but I'm pretty sure their air wasn't working that night and oh my gosh, it was hot!! January and I got to spend Friday morning together cause she didn't have to be to work until 1:00 p.m. so we had a short but sweet visit.

And then I spent Friday through Wednesday morning at Chris's and that's always nice too. He's getting ready for a big party so I helped him out a little by dusting a bunch of his shelves of glass and polishing a few silver cocktail shakers that he's collected.

I had stayed through Wednesday morning to get a report on Heather's doctor visit Tuesday afternoon. It went well and he has said she can start coming in every two weeks now instead of every week. But she's got a long road ahead of her getting that arm back to normal.

And, that's pretty much it. Got home yesterday around 3:00 p.m. and would have been earlier if they hadn't had "road work ahead" signs every five miles! I needed to go grocery shopping and such, but what I REALLY needed was to get my hair cut and thank heavens I did. I was getting close to just shaving my head.

So now my pictures...

You can see little bits of the river here and there...

and a bigger snick of river. Isn't that just a gorgeous sky?

Oh, and last thought - I picked up my new eyeglasses today - my first pair of rimless specs. I think with the new prescription I can sing "I can see clearly now, the haze is gone", but I'm having trouble being bothered by the little nose-piece and ear-piece ends that hook on to the lenses. Do any of my readers have these and were you troubled and then finally didn't notice them anymore? I'm hoping that's what will happen. I'm also hoping that if I'm really seeing better (and I'm pretty sure I am), maybe my eyes won't always feel so tired.

And that's all, except to wish everyone a happy weekend. :)

Am I Delinquent?

2011-06-05T21:53:00.000-04:00

I guess so...my son informs me it has been a while and even one of his friends mentioned to him that it was a long time. Doesn't seem all that long to me, but I'll see what I can think to record. It was nice to hear that someone I don't even know is enjoying and following the blog and it would be even nicer to get comments, shared stories, reader's own recipe ideas, etc., from people other than my poor long-suffering family. So if you read my posts and something reminds you of a funny or interesting story, feel free to share it. If you experiment with one of my recipes and are pleased with the result, I'd love to hear about that. And if you have a favorite recipe or two you'd like to share, that would be great too.

Right now, I'm at my older daughter's home (Heather) in Maryland. She broke her arm last Saturday falling off a horse and her husband and my granddaughter Sophia were already booked on a flight to Ireland for a christening of his brand new nephew, so I said I would come over and stay with her while they're gone. I had already been thinking about coming over cause I hardly ever get to have my daughter all to myself and I'm selfish enough to think that would be real nice. So, here I am and even though it's not quite as planned, it is nice being with her and my grandson Johnny. Heather broke her humerus bone and the normal treatment for that, apparently, is to put a stiff something under the lower arm and a stiff something under the upper arm, and then wrap the whole thing in an Ace bandage and put it in a sling. It sort of horrifies me cause, of course, any time it gets nudged or jiggled or anything it gives her a lot of pain. She will see the doctor again on Tuesday and we're hopeful he'll move her on to "step 2" which is an upper arm brace type thing that, at least in the pictures, looks like it would be much better than what she has right now. So that's pretty much where I am now. She and her family are also moving into a new house in three weeks, so I told her I would try and get her breakables packed for her and have been working on that.

I'll be here probably until Thursday and then will go to my daughter January's new "place of residence". They found a little rental house that sounds so nice for them - nothing at all fancy but not an apartment!!! Over a very unpleasant lady!!! :)

On the homefront (Huntington), we have yet another new business that just opened - The Bottle and Wedge which is a delightful beer, wine and cheese store, along with having all sorts of special bottled sauces, jams and jellies, dips, marinades, all kinds of goodies. I don't know much about beer but these are not the standard "grocery store beers". And the cheeses he has so far are very enticing. The shop is located in Pullman Square (same place as "my" bakery) and Pullman Square is really beginning to come back to life. The bakery has open mike every Saturday and that really draws in a lot of people. And, of course, so does what the bakery sells! :) I took a picture of the outside and inside of the new shop, but only the outside photo is worth posting. The second photo is just two really pretty demi-baguettes I bought at the bakery shortly before I came over here and they just looked so nice I took a picture of them. Tasted good too!

Also, before I came over here, I was in kind of a cooking mood and tried that vodka pasta sauce recipe again. It was better this time and as I worked on it, I wrote down what I was doing, but, of course, I left my little notes at home so can't update the recipe yet. But I will and it really is quite tasty. In fact one of my neighbors was in Starbucks one evening and sat down for a visit (a young med student) and told me how much he enjoyed the smells coming from my apartment sometimes and mentioned the night before which just happened to be when I had made the vodka sauce. Here's a picture of dinner that night:..

and making half a recipe instead of a quarter, I had enough to eat it twice and then freeze the remainder for probably another one or two servings. Maybe I should take my neighbor a helping.

And I also got into a needleworking mood although the trip over here has kind of deep-sixed that for now. But the woman who commissioned the quilt block cross stitches from me has a real life sampler she sent me a picture of and asked if I could replicate it in miniature. Worked a long time getting a pattern for that and started stitching it, but discovered I was stitching on 28 count rather than 32 count so have put that one aside to ponder for a bit. Even on 32 count, I think it would be a little large, but then I always remind myself her dollhouse is really big. But starting on that got me digging once again through all my old patterns and I found several things I want to start working on and pulled out a rug I started a looonnnnggg time ago (probably at least 6 or 7 years ago and after the first burst of activity never worked on again. It's on 40 count silk gauze and I've started working on it again. Here's what was finished when I pulled it out:

In some ways, it's a much simpler pattern than the rug I stitched for January's roombox and the Aubusson I've been working on off and on for a while (not nearly as many colors for one thing), but it's just so striking and Oriental that I really like it. I brought it with me but haven't worked on it here - just too much going on. But I'll get back to it.

Oh, and one other neat thing - after Jamie Oliver filmed his first American food revolution TV show here in Huntington, what? two years ago? Jamie's Kitchen became Huntington's Kitchen, still using his program to teach cooking and nutrition and such and has been doing quite well I think. Anyway, they've reopened their fresh market on Fridays and I heard they had local eggs so went down a couple of Fridays ago and bought half a dozen of those plus a basil plant and an oregano plant, both of which are still alive and well. I went back a week or so later and this time a woman was there with two little goats in a cage and had some goat cheese samples which were delicious. I asked her about buying some and she said that they don't sell the cheese direct - they sell shares in the goats!! You buy a share or half a share and then you get a certain amount of cheese each month delivered to Huntington's Kitchen for pickup. I'm still pondering that - I loved the cheeses I tasted but don't know that I could use up even half a share a month. Might think about seeing if a neighbor would like to go in on it with me...

And that pretty much brings me up to date - just finished a marathon session of Craz y Eights with Johnny and Heather. The last round went on so long that we finally had to set a time limit and agree that if the hand wasn't over by then, we'd continue tomorrow night. And, amazingly enough, it wasn't finished, so we made sure we'd remember where to pick up again and are all eager to get back to it. :)

After spending this coming Thursday evening with January and Maggie, I'll go on to Chris's Friday afternoon, spend the weekend there and then go back home Monday unless something should happen with Heather's arm. Sure am anxious to see what Tuesday's appointment with the doc brings...

I Just Can't Quit Driving!

2011-05-20T00:31:00.000-04:00

After my somewhat endless-seeming trip home on Monday (not nearly as pleasant as my trip down to Asheville), I spent Tuesday doing laundry, catching up on things, unpacking, etc., and then turned right around and drove off to Lexington, KY with my pal, Jamie, on Wednesday!

Before I get into that, though, I have to post pictures of the scenic overlook I decided to stop at on my way home. I had seen several on my way down (a day of beautiful weather) but wasn't making stops on the down trip. So on Monday (a day of really nasty weather), I decide to stop at a scenic overlook. Weird, but fairly typical. :) I certainly was the only vehicle in the parking area and just hoped no one else would pull in while I was there. I started up the path, seeing what looked like a stone wall where you would stand to see the beauties of nature if it wasn't a foggy day. But when I got there - and it was a climb - I could see that even in nice weather you wouldn't see much. So started back down and then noticed that if I had turned to the right instead of the the left, there was a not as inviting looking path starting up. And sure enough, that was the "real" one. I think a big sign with arrows saying "this way to stone benches and no view" and "this way to the real view and no benches" would have been helpful.

Right after you start up that path, there is a sign that says you're at 2600 some feet and have 850 more feet to walk with a 150 foot incline. Off I went...

I took this picture while I could still see the car to give you some idea of how high I was so far, and it turned out I still had a long, long way to go. Sort of reminded me of that never-ending hill I walked up in Bologna to what was supposed to be a spectacular view (I thought) and wasn't. I really did begin to think I was kind of an idiot, because I had left my phone in the car and the way I was huffing and puffing and pausing to catch my breath, I figured there was a good possibility I'd have the "big one". But I didn't and I did finally achieve the summit. Was there a sign there to tell you how high you were??? No. I guess you were supposed to do the math, but I would like to have seen it in print. Plus, I would have liked to see a little more than this:

View to the left...

View to the right. And that was it! But at least going down was a whole lot easier than going up. But when I got to that bend in the path, I saw a car parked right beside mine - all those empty spaces and it was parked there. I have to admit to being just a little uneasy then. But when I got around far enough I saw what I was pretty sure was a woman standing over on the other high spot (probably wondering what was so great about this scenic overlook) and sure enough - when she started down her set of stairs, she saw me and boy she hustled right on down to her car, got in, and drove away without even an "ahoy, there". So I guess she was more cowardly than I was!

All, in all, just not a pleasant trip home.

But yesterday was quite pleasant. It only took about 1-1/2 hours to get to Lexington and when January and I used to make the trip to Atlanta to visit my mom, I think it took us about 2-1/2 hours to get from Lexington to home. Of course, when January and I traveled we stopped more than I do now. It was more fun too. :) I don't have pictures of anything cause we mostly poked around in stores - went to a couple of consignment stores that were nice with attractive things. I bought myself a little pin and a reversible long skirt for when and if I make another foreign trip. One skirt will be like having two outfits. We had lunch at an Italian restaurant, Portofino's, right downtown and it was good and very attractively decorated - old brick walls and broken up into smallish rooms. Stopped at several other places that were in a booklet we had picked up at AAA and didn't find anything too exciting in any of them, but it was fun driving around finding them and seeing some of the city. One street we travelled had gorgeous homes on it. I told Jamie it looked like Embassy Row in DC.

Then we drove back out of town to the Mall at Lexington Green, where I had learned there is a Whole Foods Store and a huge two-story independent bookstore. We really enjoyed the bookstore, especially the cafe where we had dessert! And we also visited a store that was in two units across the hall from each other. It was called Artique and was filled with beautiful, beautiful things that you wished you could own. A lot of it by local artisans. Then off to Whole Foods where I bought stuff I didn't need. I was real excited about going because I wanted to see if they had any interesting fresh ravioli but they only had one package of fresh cheese ravioli. :( So that was disappointing, but I bought a package of mixed mushrooms, and a basket of mixed small tomatoes and tonight cooked them up into a ragu recipe I copied out of a Cuisine at Home magazine a long time ago. It was pretty tasty but a lot of work for what seemed like a fairly pedestrian dish. Don't know that I'll do it again...

And, now, incredibly enough, it's Thursday evening - I had an eye exam this morning and so had dilated eyes for quite a while, then went and worked at the library for a while, came home and started cooking my dinner, and now....the sun is out and the sky is blue!!! I had begun to think it would never happen again. So, I'm off to Starbucks for a cup of tea and maybe sit outside for a bit until it gets too cool.

Sunday Morning in Asheville

2011-05-17T15:55:00.000-04:00

Having left the tour of the mansion itself til Sunday thinking that every day we were there, it was going to rain, Sunday turned into an absolutely picture perfect day. Brilliant blue sky, puffy white clouds, gorgeous! We enjoyed it on our way into the house. :)

I'm not real sure what one can say about a 250 room "house". It certainly is big and eye-boggling. We rented those audio things to tour the house and that probably took around two hours or so. Then after a brief respite and lunch there at one of the courtyard eateries, we took one of the special tours. There are three and Chris has done two of them so we opted for the third one "Lifestyles" (it didn't say "of the rich and famous" but easily could have!) cause that one appealed to me more than the other two and I liked that we'd both be seeing it for the first time.

You are not allowed to take any pictures inside, so afterward I went in search of postcards that I could then photograph and there were only three! Apparently their theory is if you want to have pictures of all the rooms then buy a book. But I didn't. So here are the three postcards I did buy:

This was the banquet hall which seated up to 40 people. George apparently did all his decorating prior to his marriage. I think a wife might have gently suggested that perhaps all the deer heads could go somewhere else. If I remember right, I think there were three fireplaces at the other end of the room also. At least some room had fireplaces at both ends of the room.

Probably should have had this one first - it's off to the right of the grand entrance hall and is a lovely spot. It's two or three steps down from the hall and is all open but has a nice enclosed feeling. They have various string quartets, wind instrument groups, etc., that perform during the day, at least on Sundays. It was a room that you could actually picture yourself enjoying.

And this is the library - gorgeous, obviously and filled with some of the 23,000 books in George's vast collection. He also collected prints and engravings (I think the amount stated in the tour was 16,000) and both books and prints are scattered throughout all the rooms, hallways, and such.

It really is fantastically impressive - just somewhat hard to relate to. His bedroom, for instance. He decorated it all in red and black which I can certainly relate to, and covered the walls in gold leaf!!! which I really can't relate to. Why not gold wallpaper or, like his wife did in her room, gold sateen fabric (which was lovely by the way). His room was really attractive also, but good grief - gold leaf!

The lifestyles tour was interesting because they took you through the kitchen areas and a lot of the guest room suites. The kitchen areas included a kitchen with sinks and all the pots and pans, knives, and a wood-burning stove, etc. But all the stuff we have in our kitchens was in its own separate rooms. There was a room for produce, a refrigerated room, a pantry for just canned goods, and a room where they roasted all their roasts - turkeys (at least twice a week!), venison, and whatever. It was a room with a door and inside up against the back wall were numerous long spits in brackets in front of whatever the heating method was - I couldn't really tell. So, in essence, I guess it was an oven. The wood-burning stove in the kitchen was used for baked goods, not meats.

The guest rooms were all very nice. The ones we saw included four sort of normal sized ones (actually George and Edith's rooms were relatively normal sized also), each with their own complete bathroom (the house has 43 bathrooms, total) and then two basically "master" guestrooms. They were located in a tower(?) or something that gave them windows wrapping around a curved wall in one set and I think two full walls in the other. Each set had a woman's bedroom and a gent's bedroom both beautifully decorated. My favorite was the lady's bedroom in the curved wall bedroom. Just beautiful!

We also saw some of the servants rooms which were certainly pleasant enough - each with a window looking out on a beautiful view. There couldn't be a window that didn't have a beautiful view in that setting. Oh, and we saw the bowling alley, the swimming pool, and the "fitness center", all pretty amazing for the time period of the house. As were the elevators - one for residents/guests and a service elevator.

That whole tour took about an hour and again involved much up and downstairs trekking. Felt like I was back in Florence all weekend!

These last two pictures were taken on the loggia which if I remember correctly was off the main hall:

The lord of the manor observing his estate...

and the dowager mother (tee hee)

The rest of the day since it was so gorgeous, we drove off the estate and took a look at Biltmore Village which originally was where homes were provided for a lot of the workers involved in building the house. They're nice cottage type homes and are mostly used now for shops and businesses. There is also a nice, comfortable looking church there that George built and it was nice to see that his money did more than build the country's largest house. He and his wife were actually involved in a number of philanthropic endeavors...This is a picture of the church:

There's an educational building attached at the side and the church is still in use today.

Scroll on down for Afternoon and Evening in Asheville.:)

Sunday Afternoon and Evening in Asheville

2011-05-17T15:53:00.000-04:00

After our drive through Biltmore Village, we headed to downtown Asheville to do some exploring there. And from what I've read and been told about Asheville for years I was pretty sure I would love it and I certainly do. And can't remember if I've already written this or just told my sister when I talked to her, but after wandering around downtown, I was all set to start planning a future move to Asheville, kind of seriously. Only thing is, any time I think of a move, I can't imagine leaving all my friends and acquaintances here and knowing no one there. Seems kind of late in life to be making all new friends. :) I suppose I would just start some volunteering here and there, maybe find some type of group - needleworking, miniatures, or something - that I could join and slowly get new friends. And at least living in a place like Asheville, my old friends might be happy to come visit!

Anyway, there were some neat buildings downtown and I took some pictures. It was still a beautiful day but was very windy and quite chilly. But the streets were full of folks enjoying themselves and it certainly looks like a convivial place. Here are my pics:

Bronze pigs and turkeys represent Asheville's crossroads history at Pack Square right in the middle of downtown. Looking online I see there is something called the Urban Trail and this is stop 2 on that trail. I really like it and especially like all the footprints.

This is a monument to Zebulon Baird Vance, the governor of North Carolina during the Civil War who is remembered for his dedication to encouraging tolerance among Christians and Jews. I looked him up and found this link of interest: http://www.mountainx.com/news/2003/0507vance.php It is also located at Pack Square as is the following statue:

Below is the county courthouse building - fantastic!

And an attractive and interesting building that I don't know the name of...

and a close-up of this building from another side:

Next we drove out to the Grove Park Inn, a HUGE resort hotel. My picture (below) doesn't even begin to give an idea of its size. This is just the entry part of the hotel.

We had thought we might have dinner there, but the only place we saw people eating was on an outdoor terrace and it was way too chilly to do that. So we wandered around inside a little and then headed back to the Biltmore.

Finally, it was a beautiful evening which was what Chris had been waiting for. He wanted photos of the house from the front and from the back with the golden glow of the setting sun. So, we hiked back up to that little Diana statue and started from there taking pictures as we walked down toward the house front. There were only two or three people near the house, no buses except the now and then shuttle bus, so it was a perfect time to take pictures. I took some just because that's what there was to do!

This is one of the gateposts of one of the two entrance gates to the esplanade in front of the house. And this was my best attempt at getting a shot of the house at this time of day with the sun pretty much shining directly into the camera:

And because of that sun, the beautiful blue sky and white clouds are invisible.

Finally, (no offense Chris!) we hiked back up to the greenhouse for a quick pit stop, then drove around to the lagoon, where you can get a beautiful view of the back of the house. I've already posted a picture from the lagoon, but there I was again so took some more. :)

Beautiful, isn't it? The Biltmore offers a 12-month ticket and at first I thought "why would I want that - you can only tour a house so many times". But after walking the grounds and enjoying their loveliness, I could easily go numerous times a year if I lived nearby, just to do more walking and enjoying during all the seasons of the year.

And, finally, (no offense, Chris) Chris managed to tear himself away I think for my sake more than anything. I think he would gladly have stayed til dark. But I was getting hungry and cold so we took ourselves off for dinner and went, again, to Cedric's Pub. This time we both had fish and chips - tender, crispy and greasy! Chris also ordered a shrimp ceviche appetizer and a bowl of smoked bacon/brown ale coated almonds that were sinfully delicious.

One more picture out in front of Cedric's Pub:

That's Cedric and Cornelia, George and Edith's daughter.

So that's it - a wonderful long weekend, made more wonderful because it was my son who suggested we do it together. Thanks, Chris! xo

Saturday in Asheville, Part IV (and the last one for Saturday!)

2011-05-17T12:39:00.000-04:00

As far as fauna goes, we saw rabbits, squirrels, wild turkeys, cows, horses and geese and ducks. But it's only the geese and ducks I have pictures of. I was entranced with them because they have all kinds of babies in various stages of development. Even saw one mama goose nesting on top of a little batch of them. So without further ado, here are some geese and ducks - all seen at the bass pond and the lagoon.

Not sure what bird this is, but he was very definitely on the trail of a tasty bite - still as a statue at the water's edge...

Mama and babies...

More babies - we saw much smaller ones also, but I guess I didn't get a picture of them.

These siblings are really close - they refused to spread apart and look like baby ducks!

Saturday finally concluded with a late dinner in downtown Asheville at The Market Place. Again, everything we ordered was truly delicious. We were puzzled, though, by how long it took to get our food since when we got there, things were clearing out rather than filling up. But the food was worth waiting for! Below is our shared menu:

smoked chicken spring roll with brown ale collards, smoked cheddar cheese, and a sweet chili sauce (I think my favorite - every bite was just mmm - mmm - oh my gosh!)

pecan crusted fried goat brie with a cranberry chutney - also very good

seared yellowfin tuna, togarashi, sea salt, asian "slaw", sriracha aioli (very good although not as "special" as the others)

and
pan seared sea scallops, cous cous pilaf, roasted red peppers, parsley, leek coulis, benton's bacon onion marmalade (the scallops were cooked perfectly and the cous cous was very tasty with all that "stuff" in it)

So, from beginning to end, an enjoyable - and tasty - day!

Saturday in Asheville, Part III

2011-05-16T20:18:00.000-04:00

Now for the big hike. We decided on taking the bass pond/waterfall trail which was listed as a third of a mile one way which seemed quite doable. And it was...but it was a real hike. A fair amount of up and down and we extended it at the end instead of turning around and coming back the exact same way and that made for a little extra up and down. But I enjoyed it so much! I told Chris as we parted this morning (Monday) that it made me think I should find places to just go hike occasionally. Of course, it didn't hurt at all that even though everything seemed like it had been there forever, the entire landscape has grown out of the plans and designs of Frederick Law Olmsted, a noted landscape architect of that era. So it is all "naturally" lovely. And it's been long enough now that the trees especially and most likely some of the many, many different species of flowering bushes and such are quite old. At any rate it is glorious. Incidentally, Mr. Olmsted was respobnsible for hiring Chauncey Beadle, a young horticulturist, as his assitant. Mr. Beadle ended up living on the Biltmore Estate in that lovely gardener's cottage with his wife I believe for the remainder of his life, overseeing the care of the landscape and gardens.

And having written more this time than in Part I, I'll now do the pictures the same way, mostly one after another with an interjection here and there. There are really way too many, but it's hard for me to weed them out (although I did!)

I love this tree. There are two of them, one at each end of a paved-road bridge and they appear to have been planted on the big rocks with their roots draped over going into the soil. They are perfectly, absolutely straight.

This was attractive and interesting - all sorts of new growth coming out of the trunk area and all along the big bough bending over the path. And what's especially interesting is that it's called a Japanese Upright Yew!

Another bridge picture - I hope I'm not repeating myself - they were scattered all around the areas where we walked...

The boat house in a truly peaceful setting

A bank full of beautiful rhodendrons

The "waterfall" - kind of a cheater, but a very nice walk to get there. And we had to climb down rocks and such which is always an adventure.

Following the water down from the fall on our "new way back" hike, we came across this little rapid caused by the huge slab of rock in the stream. It was almost completely hidden by the overhanging brush. We heard it and then had to search to find it.

Yep, another bridge!

Late afternoon found us at the lagoon looking across to the house. I actually managed to get a shot that includes the reflection of the house in the water and was quite pleased with myself. :)

And, I guess there's going to be a Part IV because I've posted all this flora and need to post some fauna. And report on another wonderful dinner. :)

Incidentally, I see that the setting I put on my camera is causing the date to print on each picture. I thought it was just for printed photos and that it would be on the back of the photo. I'm going to have to remember to change that cause I don't like it. Wonder if there's a way to remove it???

Saturday in Asheville, Part II

2011-05-16T19:37:00.000-04:00

So, to continue...After the greenhouse and gardens visit we walked up to the house and decided that most likely the genteel ladies of yesteryear didn't really make a habit of walking to and from the greenhouse! All our walking there was of the aerobic sort. We had decided that even though it wasn't very sunny, as long as it wasn't raining, we would try and see as much as possible of the grounds and then do the house tomorrow when it could rain if it wanted to. We wandered around the immediate grounds some and I took a few pictures there.

On the way up...

A trellised approach to the house where the genteel ladies probably loved to stroll - it's beautiful. There are busts on pedestals all the way down the length of it and looking out towards the view, there is the sunken Italian garden - don't know why it's called Italian but it's three pools with various water plants growing abundantly. And this next picture is at the end of the arbor nearest the house.

Next are several shots of parts of the exterior representing a drop in the bucket of the whole structure!

Lots and lots of gargoyles everywhere...

A very ornate facade and more gargoyles...

The exterior of the grand staircase - I think this is my favorite portion of the entire building.

And this is looking across from a terrace to the windows of George's den - he certainly had a wonderful view!

Next, we either had lunch or took a very long, very picture-taking walk. So, I'm going to report on lunch and save the 19 pictures I took(!) for a Saturday, Part III.

On the Biltmore Estate (it's 8,000 acres by the way, down from the original land purchase of 125,000 acres!!) is the Antler Village area where we had our wine tour on Friday. There are two restaurants there - The Bistro (Friday night's dinner spot) and Cedric's Pub named after George Washington Vanderbilt's dog, a big, very pleasant looking St. Bernard. And I just realized I haven't done very well at telling you what little I can about Biltmore. George Washington Vanderbilt is the man behind the magnificence. He started out wanting a small get-away (say 10,000 sq. feet. :) ) nestled in his 125,000 acres in the beautiful hills and mountains of North Carolina. The architect he hired was Richard Morris Hunt, a famous man known for, among other things, designing the base of the Statue of Liberty. Chris told me that he read that Mr. Hunt, when he took the commission, privately decided that this would be his biggest, best, and any other superlatives, project - a lasting icon of his brilliance. It's believed that he encouraged George to keep adding, changing, improving, etc., his 10,000 square foot cottage and they ended up with a 250-room (largest home in America) mansion - a very weak word for this building.

So that's the George that had the dog Cedric for whom the pub is named. :) Anyway, I ordered two appetizers - a Scotch egg which turned out to be a hard boiled egg which is then rolled in their own homemade sausage (just a thin coating), then in bread crumbs and then deep fried! It was served with Lusty Monk mustard which I didn't care for but I love the name. The sausage was real tasty but essentially it was a hard boiled egg. I also ordered what they called a ham and cheese fondue but it was more of a little gratin with exceptionally delicious shaved ham nestled in Gruyere cheese and baked til brown and bubbly. Wonderful, wonderful. Chris ordered the ploughman's sandwich, a big heaping of ham served with pickles and the lusty monk mustard along with homemade potato chips. Thus, we were quite well fortified for the coming hike which will be detailed in Saturday, Part III.

Saturday in Asheville, Part I

2011-05-15T23:28:00.001-04:00

Saturday was a wonderful day in spite of several mess-ups on my part and on-again, off-again showers. Chris wanted to get to a good photo-op place he likes fairly early in the morning before bunches of people were on the scene so we started out around 8:30 or so, and went to this little "temple of Diana, Goddess of the Hunt" which is just a sort of gazebo type structure made out of vines (I'd assume either wisteria or grape) with a small statue of Diana inside. But it stands at the top of a hill (up which we trekked) and looks directly across to the Biltmore mansion on another hill so it is a nice place for pictures. I, of course, discovered when we got to the top of the hill, that I had forgotten to put my memory card back in my camera the night before but I used my phone and took a couple pictures.

and here is a view of the Biltmore mansion from Diana's hill:

And the next is just one of the many little fences all over the grounds and woodland walkways and I found them delightful.

We then made a quick trip back to the hotel to get my card because this was going to be a picture taking day.

Next stop was the greenhouse and it was just fantastic. A huge, beautiful structure crammed with all varieties of plants, all very lush, some exotic, some familiar, lots of colors, lots of aromas, and beautifully displayed. For example, there was one small room that had almost all of the plants displayed in old suitcases and steamer trunks! Another small room was just succulents. I'm just going to post a picture of the greenhouse first of all, then post all the pictures I took inside the greenhouse just as a show - no tell. :)

I will say I thought this looked like a tiny miniature silver dollar plant - they were probably only about 1/4".

The next batch of pictures are of the gardens in front of the greenhouse. The pictures just don't do them justice at all, particularly the ones where I try and get a large area in the picture. The colors were so bright and pretty!

The gardener's house - a delightful perc for some lucky gardener!

Lots of large beds of alyssum and oh, what a delicious aroma...

The lattice work at the back of this bed is part of a long arbor walk from the front of the greenhouse to the back wall of the enclosed garden.

and, espaliered trees of various types along the back wall of the garden.

And this was just the start of our day!! I have probably way too many pictures - for sure too many to upload to one post, so I will post another batch in "Saturday, Part II".

At Home With the Vanderbilts

2011-05-14T23:55:00.000-04:00

I'm in Asheville, NC!! Drove down yesterday from Huntington and it only took about 4-1/2 hours and not on interstates!! A few weeks ago Chris asked me if I'd be interested in sharing a trip to the Biltmore Estate with him. He's been numerous times and loves it plus he really likes all the photo opportunities it provides. So, what mother could refuse an offer like that and here we are.

We met at the Visitors Center and got here in time for a late lunch - had delicious gyro sandwiches at a restaurant called Three Brothers within walking distance of the Center. Then came over to the Biltmore Inn which is the Biltmore Estate's hotel and got ourselves checked in and unpacked. And then it was off for a drive through the acreage for want of a better term. Drove up as close as you can get to the house (250 rooms!!) in a car and took one quick picture...

Then on to the greenhouse which is beautiful. I took a picture but was real disappointed with it so will get another one on Saturday, hopefully.

We drove around the lagoon, with its many, many geese and their little ones...

We saw one poor tiny little one all by himself crossing the road (in fact, Chris really had to hit the brakes to avoid hitting him). He was way too young to be out on his own, but finally managed to stumble across the road. I think one of his legs may not have been working real well and his future seemed doubtful, but we didn't know quite what to do about it.

Then we went over to the Biltmore Winery which is in the new-ish (I guess) Antler Village. We took the winery tour which included free tastings, and it turned out that, actually, there were free tastings for residents of the Inn any time you visited the winery. So before the tour I sampled reds and Chris sampled whites and after the tour, we switched. The tour was kind of a hoot. Our guide was quite personable and had lots to say, but very little about wine. We got a lot of information on the clock tower,

a lot of info on a 1913 car that sits in a specially built room, both of which "talks" were interesting and entertaining. Then on to the winery which consisted of looking at lots of steel tanks that we were told is where the wine ferments. Then downstairs to see an oak barrel sawed in half and a room where they have kept two bottles of each year's wines in storage since the winery's inception.

So as a wine tour, it wasn't too great, but as a fun thing to do, it was fine. And nothing like free sips of wine, right? The winery is located in what was originally the dairy barn and, of course, it was built to the standards of the mansion so is quite lovely. Crazy, but lovely...

This was just a pretty plant in one of the beds surrounding the dairy barn. I loved all its different colors.

We decided we were hungry finally and had dinner at The Bistro, a restaurant in the Biltmore Estate at the Antler Village. It was quite wonderful - I had a roasted carrot soup with tiny little bits of country ham dumplings and a dollop of creme fraiche on top, a liver pate served with a kind of strange green jelly on top (I liked the pate better without the jelly), and an almond-crusted, fried Brie cheese served with greens and absolutely luscious apple salsa. Chris also had the carrot soup (we both loved that) and ordered a flatbread with mozzarella, pancetta and carmelized onions and I think something else. We shared everything and pretty much stuffed ourselves.

This is a picture of a portion of the lobby of the Biltmore Inn.

The staircase goes down to their main dining room. In the loby itself is an area called the library which also serves smaller menu items. There are multiple terraces around the inn where you can sit and drink in the views.

Being our first day and having driven a good part of it, that's about all that transpired I think. But a nice start to the whole adventure.

Short and Sweet

2011-05-03T19:06:00.000-04:00

I seem to so seldom finish any of my needle work that I thought I'd better record a successful completion. I think I posted earlier with a couple of progress pictures that I was working on some quilt blocks a woman had asked me to make up for her and after finishing the stitching a few days ago and working on the frames, I finally got them all put together and signed and here they are.

I'm happy with them and hope she will be. I think the two smaller ones look a little distorted in the picture, but they're not. I made the frames from a very hard wood (I think maybe cocobolo or some such?) and was about ready to spit nails by the time I finally got all the pieces cut! But all's well that ends well...

Now I'm going to have my little dinner of a tuna/pasta/grape tomatoes, olives and onion salad I made last night that is quite nummy. Used olive oil and balsamic rather than mayo or something like that and it was good and I'm starving!

My Week With Johnny

2011-04-21T17:09:00.015-04:00

Here it is Thursday and I'm just now posting about Johnny's spring break time with me. I can't say we've been insanely busy doing things but somehow, when I have company, I'm not too inclined to spend much time on the computer. But I've taken a few pictures and will get those posted along with a hopefully somewhat brief log of our doings.

The trip to get him here was fairly hellacious both for his mom and me. We met halfway and I left Huntington about 5:45 a.m. in a pouring rain on a dark and stormy night. Heather apparently spent a lot of her trip in the fog. But we both got to the appointed spot at almost the appointed hour and then both made the same journey back to our homes but, thankfully, without the weather! Didn't do much the rest of Saturday - I was pretty frazzled so we got Johnny unpacked and settled in, and that's all I remember.

Since then, we've managed to hit several of our favorite eating places, including Hillbilly Hotdogs, Five Guys, and cookies from the bakery. I know, I know - I'm a bad grandmother but why else does one go to see one's grandmother?! And we split the cookies and split the French fries at Hillbilly Hotdogs and Five Guys, so.... We also made spaghetti and meatballs one night and Johnny pretty much made the meatballs himself, although I shaped most of them. It was kind of fun cause I treated it almost like a cooking class and explained as I went along why I did things the way I did, etc. I figure since it's become a family classic recipe, he might as well get his intro from "the source". And I finally did something different I've been meaning to try any time I've cooked spaghetti with any of my various recipes and never seem to remember. And that is to get the pasta cooked, drain it, put it back in the pan and then start adding some sauce to it and tossing it until it's coated but not much more. I've always put the pasta on the plate, then dumped on the meatballs and sauce and that's fine, but I see the photos of pasta where each strand is coated and think "hmmm, that looks good" and that's how this looked.

And last night, we had the rest of the meatballs and sauce on meatball subs using two demi-baguettes from the bakery which made for a wonderful treat.

Johnny is really back into Legos and wanted me to get out the stash right away so I did and he's played with those quite a bit. There was a castle in sad need of renovation and I don't know why, but I got the urge to see if I could figure out how it was supposed to be and make it that way. I've only ever put together one other Lego thing following the instruction manual that came with it and that was hard! The first challenge on the castle was to find the instructions. I knew they would have to be on the internet somewhere and by durn, I finally found a scanned copy of the actual manual and got started. It took me I think 3 days of off and on working but I did it!!! I'm almost positive the drawbridge is not the way it's supposed to be, but it does go up and down and that was the one place where I simply could not follow or figure out the illustrations (which is what Lego instructions are). But overall I was pleased. At one point, Johnny said "you're really enjoying this, aren't you Grammy?" and I had to admit that I was. So here's the little castle in all it's glory. :)

And as I was getting close to the finish line on the castle, Johnny decided to make a band of sturdy knights to stand guard so here is the finished scene. I think this kit was called the The Black Falcon's Fortress and was a kit that January received however many years ago - long since discontinued.

So, yesterday was our trip to Charleston to visit the Clay Center museum complex once again. Last year was the Egyptian exhibit which was right up Johnny's alley. This year everything, artwork, film, etc., was about NASA and I think he enjoyed it to a point. I enjoyed it cause I'm fascinated about what might be out there in the universe. We had just watched a NOVA episode on TV the night before about "Can We Make it to Mars" and that added to the enjoyment of the exhibits we saw. There were two or three school classes making field trips to the museum (first time we've run into that), so it was quite a wild and crazy place. We took a couple pictures of each other outside on the fantastic metal sculpture they have in front of the building.

Yesterday, we got into one of the projects from a kit I had given to Johnny at Christmas. I knew when I gave it to him, he would need some help with them and told him then that we could work on some of them over spring break. So he brought them with him and yesterday, we decided to try making a solar powered race car. I wasn't real impressed with the instructions and not too impressed with the parts given to complete it but we finally got it to where it looked like it should work. Of course, Johnny was convinced that we should be able to make it work using lamplight and I was fairly convinced that we couldn't, but we tried that for a while and finally decided to go up on the roof to see what would happen in the sunlight. The sun, by this time was at too much of an angle, I think, although we did at least get the wheels to turn once or twice if we were holding it, but it refused to run when we sat it down on the tile-topped tables up there. So, we were pretty discouraged but today it was a very bright, sunny day and we tried it first on my windowsill with the window open and it worked!! So then we took it with us when we went to pick up Jamie for lunch (our traditional "best pancakes in the world" lunch at Tudor's Biscuits) and tried it on the sidewalks and it went over the cracks and little twigs and everything. Quite, quite satisfying.. I had a video of it posted here but posted it as "private" and then discovered I couldn't upload it a second time, posted as public, because I kept getting "duplicate - can't publish" messages. So if we ever again have some sunshine (which is beginning to look doubtful!), I'll do another one and post that.

And that pretty much brings me up to date - oh, we also went to see "Rio" which was pretty darned cute - I really enjoyed it and Johnny liked it too. Right now, we're watching "Time Bandits" - started it last night and will finish it tonight and it is crazy but fun. British, so that's a clue to the kind of crazy it is.

Don't know if I'll have anything momentous to report for the remainder of Johnny's time here. I think tomorrow we'll be going to the paint-your-own pottery place and he'll make something that will have to be shipped to him. But he likes doing that so it will be fun.

Addendum to "My Week With Johnny" (with videos!!)

2011-04-21T00:50:00.000-04:00

Not too much to report although we DID make English muffins from scratch! I had found a recipe probably a year ago or more in my "Small Batch Baking" cookbook that I marked to try sometime cause I thought "how neat to make English muffins!" So we did and it went pretty well actually. I'm not going to post the recipe right now, because there are a few things I would do differently and I think I'll try making them a couple more times before I decide if I end up with something "right" enough to post. But here are the pictures to prove we made them. :)

Cooking...

Split - and they actually have holes!

And, we also got a thumbs-up. :)

Friday was a really rainy day so we didn't get to make a new video of the solar-powered race car to replace the one I lost. But we did go to the Pottery Place and Johnny painted a pirate treasure chest which will be mailed to him when it's been glazed and fired. We had a last lunch at Hillbilly Hotdogs with Johnny wearing his Hillbilly Hotdogs shirt, went to the grocery store to get the stuff to make my pork tenderloin with sweet potatoes and sauteed apples and started generally getting things organized for the trip back to Maryland on Saturday - laundry, putting Legos away, etc.

Our trip back to Maryland started in rain and ended in a beautiful sunshine-y afternoon and was uneventful, albeit looonnnng.

So that's my report and now here are the videos showing the results of our "work" the last couple days of Johnny's visit. After my first Visit post, we got out the second projects kit I gave Johnny for Christmas which was all about electricity. We really had fun with that one - a much easier kit to use, totally clear instructions and such great results that we had to take videos of those too.

And finally!! the solar race car - which for some reason I just really enjoy! It's sort of the "little engine that could".

Oh, and I have to sneak in this picture cause I got so tickled last night when I saw her, I had to take a picture. Heather has one of those whirlpool tubs and she turned it on until the soap bubbles about buried Sophia, so this is a true "head" shot of Sophia!

And, as a last parting shot, I thought I'd throw in a video I took while I was in Riomaggiore and then could never figure out how to get it on my blog. And you can see I still haven't learned how to do things like edit out the line that the setting sun made. If you happen to wish this one was bigger, you'll notice there's a "You Tube" link down in the bottom right corner. You can click on that and it takes you to this video on You Tube where you get a larger size (or even full screen size) picture.

Ah, bella Italia!

Having Some Pleasant Days

2011-04-06T20:13:00.002-04:00

Posted Wednesday, April 6
I've done a little cooking for one thing. Got so wrapped up in Chris being here and getting my new TV and Blu-Ray player all settled in and then being very with it and streaming, streaming, that I've only just come up for air the last few days!

Went grocery shopping and felt the need for something green. There was some nice looking asparagus so I bought a bunch having no real idea what I'd do with it. January had one time roasted or grilled some asparagus and I was quite impressed with that so the first night, I roasted some - put it on my foil-lined toaster oven baking sheet, drizzled olive oil over it and rolled the stalks back and forth til they were nicely coated, then sprinkled with some seasoned salt and put them in the toaster oven at 400 degrees. I think they were only in there 10 minutes at most and came out all sizzling and a little crispy. Very nice. And along with that, for my actual entree I made my infamous tomato/egg/bread soup which is a legitimate recipe from one of my favorite cookbooks but any time I tell anyone about it and how wonderful it is, I mostly get a "yuck" response. I hadn't made it at all this past winter and it was a cold, rainy, nasty night so I decided I'd make me a bowl. And I don't care what anyone thinks it is delicious! If anyone adventurous reads this post, you can find the recipe HERE.

I had defrosted some chicken tenders to make chicken tikka masala with my store-bought tikka masala sauce which I love and which Chris brought me FOUR jars of on this visit!! But getting all carried away with the tomato soup, I shelved that and so last night I cooked up the chicken, put half of it aside for the tikka masala (which I will eat this evening) and used the other half to make spaghetti with some of my asparagus. I Googled and there were numerous recipes, some of them making a cream sauce which I didn't really want and others basically just using olive oil, but hardly any which I couldn't quite think would work. So my first attempt I used a little olive oil, melted some of my truffle butter in it, added some roasted garlic cloves chopped up, stirred that around for a bit and dumped in 8 chopped up asparagus stalks and let that sizzle a little longer. One recipe I looked at said to put the asparagus in the pasta water about 2 minutes before the pasta was done and I might try that too although I liked the idea of having it cook in something other than just water. Then I added the chopped up chicken to the pan and when the pasta was done, mixed it all together with some Parmesan cheese and a little fresh olive oil. Most of the recipes that Google came up with used Penne pasta and I was out of that so I used spaghetti. Penne pasta would be better or the little fans (farfalle?) would work well too. It was tasty but needs something to give it some oomph. I think some chopped up shallots would have really helped, and maybe some lemon? And I've got to try shredding or slicing thin pieces of the chicken in any recipe like this. I find the little chunks hard to eat - if you spear them with the fork, you can't get anything else on the fork and if you try to scoop one or two of them up along with some of the pasta, they keep falling off. So I need to remember that next time.

Here it is with a hunk of delicious River and Rail Bakery's demi-baguette alongside. Still have a bunch of asparagus left and may just roast some again. I really did enjoy that.

Updated Saturday, April 9.
And last night I had one more pleasant cooking experience. I decided I would get a rotisserie chicken cause I want to make some of that curried chicken salad for sandwiches (on some delicious bread from the bakery!) Wondered what to fix with the leg for dinner and for some reason decided on a mushroom risotto. So again, I Googled recipes and found a nice from from Tyler Florence although quite lengthy. Decided to look in my book "The Pleasures of Cooking for One" and there was one there also. So I took a couple of things from the TF recipe and fiddled with the PCO recipe some and came up with a very tasty and creamy like it's supposed to be risotto. Had my chicken leg and roasted the rest of my asparagus. This time since I had used some truffle oil in the risotto, I rolled the stalks in truffle oil and sprinkled some truffle salt on them. Mm-mmm. I've posted the recipe for the risotto in my Recipe Collection HERE.

The rice after being briefly cooked in the oil and then adding a small amount of white wine...

The fresh mushrooms after they released their liquid and it has evaporated...

And a pretty nice little dinner!

I've also been doing some miniature cross stitching for the woman who has asked me to do three quilt block designs. I finally managed to get the Lone Star one done. Took me quite a while to design it because I didn't want to have just an eight-pointed star, I wanted all the little "patches" to be diamond shaped like they are in the traditional quilts. Then, for some reason, stitching it was pretty much a nightmare also until I reached the halfway point. I seemed to rip out about as much as I stitched! But I'm quite pleased with the end result and have moved on to a log cabin quilt block which I also had to design. The designing part is difficult for me - I don't have whatever it takes to have it come easily. And then once I get the chart made and start stitching, I always run into two or three things that I decide to change cause you really don't know what it's going to look like until you actually get some stitching done. But I'm liking this block now too and am probably about 3/4 of the way done with it. So here's what I have done so far:

The woman selected the colors herself although I added more shades of each color. And I think they turned out looking pretty nice together. Hope she does too! :)

I think for the third one, I'm going to give myself a break and just do a nine-patch pattern or at most a flying geese. Although, of course, being insane, I did spend a good part of this afternoon trying to chart a double wedding ring pattern. And actually, I got one worked out but, again, I'd need to stitch it to see what it would actually look like. Circles can be real tricky in cross stitch..

Too Long Since My Last Entry!

2011-03-29T20:02:00.002-04:00

because over the past week or two, I've had all kinds of little bits and pieces that I thought "oh, I should mention that in my blog" and I will be hard pressed to remember many of them. I keep telling myself that one of the reasons I started this whole project, aside from an actual travel journal, was to just record things as they strike me so I won't forget them! I don't seem to listen to myself very well, I guess.

At any rate, my last post was on March 16 and was all about the new River and Rail Bakery of which I am fast becoming a regular customer! As a matter of fact, my friend Anne had called to tell me that they were having a St. Patty's Day event at Heritage Station and if I wanted to I should join her and the same friends we did the river cruise and Christmas house tour with last year so I, of course, picked right up on that. It was real nice - a nice turnout but not a huge crowd that got in the way of enjoying the music. The music was provided by the 1937 Flood band which I have heard about practically ever since I've lived in Huntington and may have heard some of their recorded music but never live. They were very enjoyable - good bluegrass type music and looked like they enjoyed making it as much as we enjoyed listening to it.

The band...

The friends...

Of course, in the short while I sat there, I first of all dropped a big blob of grease on my slacks from a little appetizer I bit into, then one of Anne's granddaughters stopped by our table and when she went to pick up her glass of green punch, it somehow ended up making a great splash...on my slacks, and finally, I managed to make my own splash with my glass of red wine ... on my slacks. The other ladies were all going on to another spot and invited me along but I told them I was taking my pants and going home! :) While there though, I was raving to them about the bakery (none of them had been there yet) and decided I would go in and get something so they could sample it for themselves. The specialty bread that day was focaccio and Kim (the owner) told me it had I think onion and rosemary in it and then the crust was sprinkled with sea salt. Between the five of us, we finished the whole loaf in short order - it was truly scrumptious! So even though I collected a record number of stains, it was a very enjoyable evening.

So, to make sure the bakery didn't go out of business, I went back Thursday I think it was and bought a demi-baguette which was a real nice little loaf. Kim asked me how it tasted and I told her it was quite good but I thought it was different than the big baguette. She said she hadn't received the organic flour she ordered and had to use non-organic and it did make it taste different. But it was still a good little loaf - nice texture, nice crust, etc. Anne and her friends invited me over for a "porch evening" that Friday at one of their homes and I bought another full-size baguette and fixed up a plate of little slices spread with garlic oil and sprinkled with kosher salt and pepper. That loaf of bread was so absolutely perfect I was just stunned - even took a picture of it.

I know, I know - a strange picture and blurry to boot but I can almost smell it!

And that was a real nice evening also. At some point after that I bought my third full-size baguette and I have to say it wasn't as good as the first and second one or the demi. However, that doesn't stop me! I know this is a very new venture with lots of kinks in becoming familiar with the huge oven (which I got to see when I was bold enough to ask - I'd be terrified of it!), and the general idiosyncracies of baking bread - everything can affect the outcome! So, yesterday I bought another demi baguette and it was back to that wonderful, rich flavor that just seems to transport me to bread heaven. And, Kim, I only reported on that one disappointing loaf so that people would know I'm telling the truth about the wonderfulness of what you're doing. :)

So, let's see - that was the week before last. This past week, I worked at the library a couple of days and always enjoy that. Worked in the book sale room and found, of course, five books to buy - three by E.F. Benson. He's a long-dead writer who wrote, among other things, a series of books on which a BBC series was based called "Mapp and Lucia". I had read all the Mapp and Lucia books I could get my hands on and then my sister sent me the tapes of the series and both the books and the series are such a complete hoot. At least they certainly appeal to my sense of the absurd. I found another book by him "Desirable Residences" which I also enjoyed so when I saw these three I snapped them up. I decided to read them in date order and was flabbergasted to find that the earliest one was published in 1893!! I kind of wondered if I would like that one as much as some of the later ones and I didn't really. The main character in it was so sort of completely awful (unlike Lucia who was somehow awful and strangely likable at the same time) that I didn't finish that one. The other two were both published in the 1900's so they may be more to my liking. I would highly recommend the series if you can't find the books or don't enjoy reading very much.

I also did a pretty thorough (for me) spring type cleaning because not only was my son Chris coming for a long weekend but a woman who is a member of the Yahoo needlework I belong to and lives in Morgantown was coming to Huntington with her husband and daughter because the daughter had been selected for the annual All-State Band Concert which was being held in Huntington this year. Any time I have someone coming to the apartment who has never been there before, I want my windows to be really clean because the first thing anyone does when they walk in is say something on the order of "oh my goodness" and walk over to the windows. Fortunately the weather was pleasant for most of last week and I got them all washed - all 10 of them! I know that sounds like nothing compared to the number of windows in a house, but they're very big and very heavy and I'm no spring chicken anymore!

They (Lisa, Brad and daughter Ann) got into Huntington Thursday. Ann stayed with the other band kids at a hotel in Barboursville but Lisa and Brad stayed right downtown. I met up with them briefly Thursday and I know you won't believe this, but we ended up walking over to the bakery for a hot cup of coffee and tea. Surprise, right? I suggested the new-ish Thai restaurant to them for dinner that evening which they did, in fact, end up trying and were quite pleased with it as they reported Friday when we got together. We had already made our plan to have dinner at Chili Willi's Mexican Cantina Friday evening. Chris got to Huntington around noon-ish on Friday so, of course, he joined us which was nice. They came over to the apartment after a trip over to Maysville to visit the absolutely stunning miniature museum that just opened there a couple of years ago (or maybe a little more - time gets away from me). We had a glass of wine while I showed Lisa all my minis and she showed me a truly wonderful collection of her needlework - made me feel like such a ne'er-do-well!. Then it was off to Chili Willi's and we all ended up ordering fish tacos. I've heard about them for years but just couldn't really imagine them but Lisa and Brad love them and our waitress told us they were her favorite thing on the menu so I figured now was the time to try them. The fish is mahi-mahi cooked over a wood fire and very, very good. We shared a pitcher of margaritas and, at least for me, it was just a very nice evening.

That's Brad and Lisa on the left, Chris and myself on the right and a lot of food in between!

The reason Chris came over this weekend was because he and my older daughter, Heather, had decided to get me a flat screen TV after Chris and I had had any number of conversations about should I or shouldn't I get one, why I shouldn't buy one just because it was cheaper than the "good" brands, would I be able to watch movies instantly, etc., etc. So, I went and bought the TV and they paid for it! Chris came over to get it all set up. I got the old blunderbuss TV out of the house on Friday morning by giving it to a friend who had a friend of hers come pick it up. It turned into an almost all weekend project (off and on with breaks for nervous breakdowns on my part) to get it fully functional and wonderful. When we discovered that my antenna didn't seem to be pulling in very many stations (I don't have cable), we went and bought two different types of antennas figuring we'd return at least one. We also bought a rolling table because we discovered that with a flat screen you need to be closer to the picture than my current setup allowed. Found a really nice little table by the way. Anyway, came back home and tried both of those and neither one of them picked up even a single channel! That was one of the nervous breakdown times. So we decided to call it quits for that night and went to the Thai restaurant for dinner and it was real good again. A glass of wine and a good meal always does wonders for me. :) Chris had fixed everything up to enable me to watch "stuff from Netflix "instantly" so that was nice and the picture is beautiful, of course. So Friday night, Saturday night and Sunday night, we watched episodes of Season 4 of the IT crowd which are crazy and funny. Sunday we took the two antennas back, went to Best Buy and bought one that the guy said should do the trick and it does - it pulls in everything I had except for one of the major channels - I think CBS - but whichever one it is it's the one I don't mind not having cause there was nothing on it that I ever watched anyway. So as I e-mailed Chris and Heather last night as I sat on my couch (where I never sat to watch TV before) in my jammies and afghan and just being delightfully cozy "Wilbur, I am content!"

Chris left yesterday but was a nice enough son to not rush off first thing in the morning. We, incredibly enough, went to the bakery yet again, I bought another demi (good) and Chris bought a brown butter chocolate chip cookie "for the road". He added a comment to my first bakery post this morning to say that it ranks as one of the best chocolate chip cookies he's ever had. We did some laundry, walked around downtown for a bit, went back and packed up the car and then went to Subway for lunch. He left from there and I walked home which was nice for a change. Makes me anxious for nice weather to come and stay. So, nice, nice weekend in spite of the stress.

And if anyone has read this far, here's a reward for your perseverance - two pictures that Chris took from my windows - one looking to the right, the other to the left. He then used all his PhotoShop wizardry to make them look like old prints - said he was inspired by all the old flood photos.

And how many times have I tried to get a decent picture out of my windows? I LOVE this!

And this is looking toward the river and has a real nitty, gritty feel to it I think. He must have zoomed a fair amount on this one because that plant isn't really right outside my window!)

Something New (and Fattening!) in Huntington!

2011-03-16T17:02:00.001-04:00

Just a quick post to broadcast Huntington's latest new business. It's the River and Rail Bakery located in the old C&O Railroad Station at Heritage Station. They had their grand opening while I was out of town but I finally got there this past Saturday and oh, my...it's my kind of bakery! To heck with cakes and pies...Kim, the owner, is concentrating on mostly bread products. She does have some ginormous cookies, but other than that, it's scones (wonderful), muffins (tried the banana nut - wonderful), and BREAD!!! And by bread, I mean BREAD!!! She is open six days a week and each day she will have a lovely round loaf of whole wheat and French baguettes along with a different specialty bread for each day of the week When I was there Saturday, I waited until the baguettes came out of the oven (she also serves tea and coffee), then waited til mine had cooled enough to tear off a hunk and taste and I truly mean it when I say it was the best bread I've had here in the states. Now for folks living in New York or California or all those fantastic food places, this might not be too exciting. But to come across a loaf of bread like this here in West Virginia??? Unbelievable! I gave one little hunk to Kim's husband there at the bakery, gave another little hunk to a neighbor, and then "forced" myself to finish off the rest before it got stale. :)

Kim gave me a list of some of the specialty breads, stipulating that it is subject to change and that she has other breads she plans to try, but that essentially, each day one of these will be available in addition to the whole wheat and baguettes: olive bread with black olives, rosemary/pecan, sun dried tomato with parmesan, focaccio, Challah (this will be the traditional braided bread), and jalapeno/cheddar.

NOTE: I was just there again this afternoon (Wednesday) and she's already added several more specialty breads to the list she'll choose from each day, including a rye, sourdough, a Pullman (which comes by it's name because of the perfectly cornered oblong shape of the loaf), and probably a couple of more that I'm forgetting. And...when I was there on Saturday, I had mentioned that single people like myself might really appreciate a demi-baguette and those have now been added to the list also. And the whole time we were there today, people were coming in for bread and the few remaining cookies. While we were there, she brought out a pan of blueberry croissants and chocolate croissants (3 each) and I thought "oh no, I'm going to end up getting a chocolate!", but by the time my friend Brenda and I had taken a peek into the gift shop and come back out, all three chocolates were gone. So I think the bakery is already very much appreciated.

Here are a couple of pictures. Can't get any of the bread cause it's always sold out!

As you can see, the building itself is delightful - I love the brick walls...

And while I was there, I also went into the little gift shop next door that has been there for a while now. But they've really fine-tuned it into a delightful gathering of West Virginia artisans' work - photos, paintings, jewelry, textiles, woodwork, etc. And I took a couple of pictures of that also.

Both of these businesses are in the actual station, along with the Huntington Visitors' Center. These, along with the already established business in the buildings behind the station (Crumpets and Tea Shop, Jenks Framing, a delightful antique store that I can't remember the name right now, a spa and art gallery on the lower level) all make Heritage Station a very pleasant place to visit on a pretty Saturday afternoon.

See some previous photos of the Heritage Station area at this previous post:

A final piece of advice - if you live anywhere near Huntington, come visit this bakery!

A Pictorial Journal of a River on the Rise

2011-03-12T20:23:00.000-05:00

It's Saturday, March 12, and I took another series of photos as the river continues to rise. I'm going to post some repeat photos here because I want to have one post that covers from when I first started watching (it was already way up by then) to when it crests and begins to recede. And I'm trying to group them so each set shows a similar view.

These first pictures are of the main entrance area to the riverfront park area (this is the entrance where they've already closed the floodwall):

This is a photo from last year, when the river was up but not real high - probably covering the lower level sidewalks.

Same area - taken Thursday, March 1- shows the same area with the flowerpots and stairs still above water.

Friday, March 12 - the base of the flagpole is still uncovered, but the huge flowerpots closest to the river just have their little topknots of plants showing.

This morning (Saturday) - all the flowerpots and stairs are gone and the water has crept onto the circular roadway.

The next set are of the area near the boat ramp which is upriver at the other entrance through the floodwall:

Taken Thursday - I decided to use the white tree as a measuring stick and I could swear I had a picture of it with the trunk showing, but since I wasn't there until Thursday, I guess I'm dreaming.

I don't have a Friday picture - this is Saturday and you can just see the tops of the benches in this area.

Another Saturday picture - this is my white tree measuring stick.

Next is a set of the boat ramp area, mainly because all the deep water signs kind of tickled me - sort of a "duh!" moment!

This is another picture from last March. It shows the start of the boat ramp slanting down to the water (along with a lot of busy ducks)

Friday's picture taken from my car window as I was leaving the upper parking area shows that entire area now under water - the ducks don't seem to notice though - they're still swimming around here and there...

And this picture was taken this morning - no one swam out to move the signs...

Just two more...

I was still walking around on these sidewalks Friday...

And now, they're gone - the tops of those benches are on the "away from the river" side of those sidewalks, so it's covered the grass on the left of the sidewalks, the sidewalks, and is well on it's way up from them.

I don't know that even when it crests it will reach the floodwalls - the Corps of Engineers, along with building the floodwall also has installed all kinds of controls on the flow of the river so that hopefully it will never again be as horrible as the 1937 flood. I did read today that a number of our major roads are flooded - the road I used to take to get into Huntington is flooded, but that's not too unusual - it has two very low spots. But U.S. Rt. 60 is also flooded out towards Barboursville and that's a major highway into Huntington.

The Mighty Ohio is Making News Again!!

2011-03-10T18:44:00.000-05:00

I walked down to the river yesterday after a neighbor told me she had heard on the news that the river is supposed to crest sometime Sunday and they might be closing the flood wall. When I got there, the water was higher than this picture I took last winter - you could just see the top of this wall under the surface:

And, of course, I had just taken off for the river as soon as she told me and I didn't have my phone or my camera so couldn't take any pictures. But since it's been raining pretty much forever, I figured I could still get some pictures today (Thursday). So late this afternoon I armed myself with my camera, a raincoat with a hood and went to see what was happening. And this is the first thing I saw:

I couldn't get in through my normal point of entry because they are, indeed, closing the flood wall. I kind of doubt (although what do I know?) that it will end up being needed, but better safe than sorry. As you can see from the next picture, they closed it, so far, to the 63 foot point and last I heard it was expected to crest somewhere in the high 50's. But, WOW!!! I've lived here 33 years and the flood wall has never been closed in that time that I know of.

And I always wondered how it all worked so the next picture gives a general idea of that. The horizontal pieces come up from the street, I think. I seem to remember an opening that goes across. And then those support beams also come up from these normally covered openings in the pavement:

So it's quite a system. Designed and installed by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers...

And some pictures of the current state of the river:

This is a shot pointing the same way as the one at the beginning of this post from last winter. You can see that the wall which was partially submerged last year is totally covered now and the water has started up the steps to the entrance circle.

And this is the entrance circle and road with the partially closed flood wall in the back. I find it all very impressive and exciting. And exciting is probably not a good thing to admit to since I'm sure that lots of streams and small rivers are flooding all over the area, but the power of this river and the mechanics of protecting a city from its potential devastation is exciting.

This picture is looking towards the lower parking level where the boat ramp is located. It extends from what's left of the bank on the right side to beyond that mostly submerged tree so I thought that might provide some idea of how high the river is.

And that's all the pictures for today. There are great black clouds in the sky although right now, looking out the windows, it doesn't appear to be raining. Tomorrow's going to be a busier day than normal for me, but I will certainly try to get to the river and if the second opening in the flood wall is still open, see how things are developing.

I WAS in Savannah - Just Late With a Report...

2011-03-10T18:18:00.000-05:00

Yep, we left Florida bright and early on Monday morning and had an easy trip to Savannah. We stopped for a quick, light lunch right before we got to the city cause we figured we were going to have a nice dinner that evening.

Our hotel was about 3 or 4 miles out from the historic center of town but with Peggy's GPS, we found our way to the visitors' center and set out on a roundabout walk to the Savannah River. I didn't take too many pictures because with all the beautiful old trees and houses and buildings right near the street, it was difficult getting good shots. But here's what I did take:

This the Cathedral of St. John the Baptist and I would have loved to be able to get all of it in the picture. It's a really beautiful building, I think. It's painted a soft white with non-metallic gold trim so it's not opulent or incredible or anything. Just very lovely. And I took a few of the interior which was also very beautifully decorated - gorgeous stained glass windows which, of course, never show up well in my pictures because of the light shining through them. But here's what I have:

The altarpiece was like a mini cathedral itself...I've looked it up now that I'm home and the original parish for the current cathedral was established in the late 1700's, so it's about as old as our country is. Apparently, the parish was established because of the large numbers of refugees coming in from Haiti and France. The current cathedral was dedicated in 1876 and building then continued on the spires. I very much enjoyed seeing it.

Oh, and this is just an old house that was across the street from the church - a little cafe on the first floor, I think. But I thought it would sure be a nice place to have an apartment cause I forgot to mention there is one of Savannah's many pleasant squares right at the end of this street - just past the cathedral.

Gosh, and seeing it again now, I really would like to live there! Well, except for the summers...

So then we continued our walk down to the river and sometime during all this, the beautiful blue sky and sunshine had disappeared so my pictures became grayer and grayer, but what the heck, is what I always say.

And I couldn't even begin to get all of this building in a picture but it's another beautiful church - this one Presbyterian. I love the spires on both of these churches - they really reach for the clouds...

And this is City Hall with its brilliant gold dome. I thought I had straightened this picture pretty well, but it's looking crooked...

And from this street level, you finally come to a long island-area in the street and there are several old, steep staircases here and there that take you down to the old cobblestone River Street right at the river. The shops there were not much to speak of but we had been forewarned that they were pretty much for tourists to buy tourist stuff so we didn't mind.

After our trip downstairs, but not on the river side of these buildings yet - but you can see how old it all is. Very atmospheric...

And my favorite thing once we got there I think was this gorgeous tall ship. And turning around from that you see this:

Which doesn't show up well against the gray sky but it's the same kind of bridge we have in Huntington (ours is only one span) and I love them.

There were lots of restaurants down here too but I had my mind set on going to Vic's - a restaurant we had passed on the way to the river that looked real inviting. Peggy said she had eaten there before and enjoyed it and I liked the idea of it's not being in the "tourist strip". So after having a nice hot cup of tea and sitting at Starbucks until a decent dinner hour, that's where we went and it was really nice. Our food was delicious and the staff were also very friendly and pleasant. Even the people at the table next to ours were friendly. I had a salad that was pear slices, roasted butternut squash cubes, roasted pistachio nuts (and good grief, they were good!) and feta cheese served on arugula with I forget what kind of dressing, but a good one. It was just delicious. Then for my entree I had pan-seared scallops served with a creamy, cheesy risotto. And when the waitress brought me my glass of wine I said "and cheers to me because it's my birthday" and she said in that case, we'd be getting a cupcake with a candle for dessert which was nice. But, at the end of the meal she told us they had run out of cupcakes and so we were getting a piece of their praline cheesecake instead. And here it came with its candle and a little blob of whipped cream with blackberries, red raspberries and blueberries - what a treat! Peggy's entree was a blackened fresh salmon which she said was incredible so we were both happy campers. And we had planned to take the free shuttle back to the visitors' center and when we left the restaurant and walked to the "dot spot", here it came. All in all, a good day and evening.

Next day (Tuesday), an uneventful, long trip home and here's a picture of our last stop on the WV Turnpike:

Yes, SNOW!!!

Sunday and Another Brief One

2011-03-06T18:49:00.001-05:00

I think my last post was after the ball game. Since then there hasn't been a lot of excitement but there has been a lot of great weather - sunny, not at all too hot, lots flying in on the wind and flying out soon enough that it doesn't get gloomy. Each day there was a little more cleaning - my biggest job was cleaning the living room, dining room and my bedroom windows and this evening, after washing the living room patio doors three different times with three different cleaning agents, I was really ticked off to come out from my bedroom to see the sun blasting through horribly smeared glass. I really am flummoxed because the last thing I did was go buy a bottle of ammonia, mix it with water, use that to wash them with and dried them with newspaper which has always worked like a charm for me. It's embarrassing to know that I'm leaving them in such a state, but I gave it my best shot.

We did our cleaning mostly in the mornings and then would go out here and there during the afternoon and evening. Did some shopping and each bought some clothes and then each returned some the next day which is very typical for me. Friday night, we ended up down at one of the village squares and boy, the weekends are a happenin' time in The Villages! Other evenings we would see a few brave souls dancing around the bandstand, but Friday night it was standing room only. The guy they had providing the music was really great - sort of a combined entertainer/exercise instructor I think. Everyone was dancing but they were following his movements and he was moving! A hoot to watch...

Friday night after our shopping, we got bold and tried an Indian restaurant we had seen and I'm so glad we did. It was very nice, great staff, and very good food. Turned out our waiter had only been waiting tables for 2 days and was only working at the restaurant as a busboy and in the kitchen for 2 weeks before that and he knew that menu inside-out. Was very helpful and patient with questions and such. So we had a delicious meal. And then last night I fixed my pork tenderloin with the sauteed apples and baked potatoes and it was quite tasty too.

Finally, today, there really wasn't much cleaning left so we putzed around starting to get ready to leave tomorrow and then went out again. I took some pictures just cause it was such a beautiful day. All morning it was very cloudy and windy but still nice cause the skies kept changing. We first went to this huge craft fair type thing that was going on outside at the Spanish Springs village and saw all sorts of neat things and had a tasty hotdog for lunch. When we were through with that we went and got another ice cream at that place that I had swooned over and then started home.

We're leaving a little earlier than we planned to go home. We'll leave tomorrow morning but then stop in Savannah, Georgia with enough time to walk around some of the historic center. Then we'll only(?) have an 8-hour trip the next day which will beat our 13 hour trip coming down, for sure.

So here are my pictures:

A back corner of "the Church on the Square" in the Spanish Village. There's a lovely little garden back here too but my picture of it didn't do it justice.

However, this beautiful pond was in one corner of the garden with two extremely white ducks and two beautiful dark ducks that had dark purple shiny heads and then shiny purple, brown, black feathers on their backs and wings. Unfortunately, I deleted my one good picture of them. They were very busy just then cleaning their feathers so most of the pictures were blurred.

And I finally got a picture (actually several as you'll see next) of Spanish moss which I learned I love! Isn't it fantastic?!

And this one I took just because by this time the day the sky was just so beautiful...

So, maybe hopefully one more post about Savannah and then home again.

Still in Florida and Way Behind on Journaling!

2011-03-04T12:34:00.000-05:00

Tuesday I woke up to the sounds of a real downpour which was a shocker after the two days of bright sun and heat. It stopped by around 8:30 or so we were good and did some of our spring cleaning in the morning and then went to explore what turned out to be a great antique store. It's absolutely huge - we were there probably at least a couple of hours and still didn't finish one section! Then Peggy wanted to get to Target and buy a cannister vacuum cleaner and that turned out to be quite an adventure. We drove all over creation and DID finally end up at a Target but who knows where. We found out that there is one right at the edge of The Villages but too late. We had dinner out that night at a place called TooJay's which is a big chain in Florida. It was good but too much food. I will say, they're very generous with the wine! That was in the Spanish Springs village and we decided we would go back during the day to explore the shops there.

Wednesday was a real nice day. Woke up to a beautiful, cool morning - cool enough to start out with a light jacket. We gave ourselves a day off and drove over to Bradenton (in the Tampa Bay/St. Petersburg area) to go to the baseball game at the Pittsburg Pirates training camp. I have to say their playing was fairly dismal but it was such fun to be there. The only other pro baseball games I've ever been to are a few Cincinnati Reds games and they're fun too but with this smaller field, we were so much closer to the diamond. Made me realize in the bigger stadium it's more like just watching it on TV. And, of course, probably about the greatest thing about going to a game is eating! And I have got to learn to quit having my first purchase be an Italian sausage sub. I used to make those at home when I was young and not having to worry about calories and I loved, so I always think "oooh, that's what I'll get" and am then so disappointed cause they're not very great. So, I did it again and ended up throwing most of it out. Then went and got a corn dog and it was just like it should be only huge but I managed to get rid of most of it, along with a bag of chips and a drink. Then later in the game, it was time for something else - not because we were hungry, just because it was time for something else. So I bought a bag of peanuts in the shell and a small beer and, mmm, that was good too. You'd think somewhere in there I squeezed in something sweet, but I don't think I did. Here are a couple of so-so pictures but maybe better than none.

Our seats were just a few away from the man in the hat so you can see how close we were. And then at some point we went down into the rows of seats there in front so we were four rows away from the field!

While we were eating our "main meal" (corn dog for me, french fries for Peggy), we sat at a table with a guy who had a t-shirt on that said some about an Anna Maria Pier centennial. It was a nice picture on the shirt so I asked him what that was all about and he said it was a pier right nearby and told us how to get there. So after the game went in search of it and actually found it thanks to 2 guys who got us out of the ballpark area and almost to our destination. We only had to stop once to ask for more help and then it turned out we were about two blocks away from the pier. And it also turned out, when I finally got to look at a map, that we were on Anna Maria Key which I didn't even know existed. I knew about Longboat and Lido Key cause way back before children, my first husband and I had stayed for a week on Longboat Key in August!! So there I was on a key again and it looked like a nice place for exploring sometime. Lots of shops and cafes with neat names and lots and lots of vacation rental houses, small apartment buildings and such.

After going out to the end of the pier and looking way across to where you could barely see the long, long bridge going across to St. Petersburg (it's like our beautiful bridge in Huntington, only there are two spans instead of our one), we wandered up the bit of beach that's there - it's not a sunning beach but it was wonderful being so near the water and seeing all the different water birds.

Oh, and all these pictures - baseball and birds were taken with my phone because after having my camera and leaving the memory card out one day, I got home, put the memory card in right away, and then left the next day on this outing without the camera! HELP!!!

And then it was the long trek back home. Got home after dark but in time to watch In the Middle and Modern Family which we both like. Nice day...

Thursday was our spring cleaning in the morning and then lunch at Subway at the Sumter Lake village, a stop at a couple of shops there where Peggy was looking for a certain kind of shirt and then over to Spanish Springs village (these are the two villages in The Villages" just to make sure you're staying confused) to visit all the various shops there and also following a decent interval after lunch, stopping for ice cream which was some of the best I've ever had.

By then it was getting on towards 6:00 so we decided to sit in the village square and listen to the music and watch the dancing. Every night apparently, both these villages have live music in their squares along with happy hour and they really get good sized crowds. It's fun watching them - some of the couples last night were quite good and one especially you knew watching them that they must have really cut a rug in their younger days.

This is one corner of the square where we sat. This little guy flew in for a landing right over our heads and swam around looking quite pleased with himself.

And this is from the square looking at one of the Spanish style buildings surrounding it.

On the way home, we stopped at a grocery store and I bought some Brie cheese and good crusty rolls and strawberries. And that's what we ate when we got back home.

So another nice day and now it's already Friday, I've finished my window cleaning and we'll be setting out again for some more wandering. We noticed an Indian restaurant last night and might try that for lunch or dinner although I worry Peggy might not enjoy it - she's only had Indian food once...