Direction Connection

We are back from vacation and getting into the swing of things again, and I thought I would write a quick update before our legions of fans start to wonder what became of us.

Asheville was incredibly relaxing, we had a very cozy (if somewhat poorly decorated) cabin that was pleasantly close to town without being in the middle of everything — it was on a road with other cabins, and no spectacular views, but it was far better than staying in a hotel. We got to make use of the hot tub a couple of times, though it did rain a bit while we were there, which put a bit of a damper on the whole sitting outside in hot water. When we weren’t lounging at the cabin, we were usually eating or thinking about where to eat in Asheville. We went to the Noodle Shop twice, and to Salsas, and had dessert at Old Europe, and of course had our New Year’s Eve dinner with Julie and Tracy at Zambra’s. Zambra’s was the first time I’ve ever been responsible for any portion of a $350 tab for four people, so that was quite an event — but the food was good, as well as the company. Melissa and I headed back to the cabin a little before midnight and watched Dick Clark count down to the new year before, I’m told, I promptly fell asleep.

On our way back home we stopped at my bank to create a long-discussed joint account, with the help of a very nice man named Napoleon. For the last few months we have been begging cashiers to split our total between our two debit cards, and trying to keep track of who owed who what for purchases that were obviously joint. By the end of the vacation, it was clear we needed a better way. We snuck it in on January 3, while I was still 29, so now I can say I had a joint account before I turned 30. We are still in negotiations about how I will turn in my receipts so that Melissa can track our funds in the rather robust spreadsheet she has created. These things are her domain, and it is better that way.

When we finally did get home, it was time to celebrate my birthday, my 30th; Melissa got me a very, very, very nice Kitchen Aid food processor, and so I have been looking for opportunities to chop anything and everything for the last few days. Right now I am roasting some garlic as part of an effort to replicate this white bean spread/dip/stuff that Tracy made for a party last night, which will put the food processor to some good use. Tonight’s meal will be food processor-less, though I may use it to chop the onion for the Chick Pea and Tofu curry I’ll be making from my new Moosewood Cooks at Home cookbook.

Enough for now.

With a quiet Christmas behind us, we’re getting ready to head to Asheville for a little New Year’s getaway. We had so much fun in the mountains during our Labor Day trip with friends that we thought we’d try it again with just the two of us. We’ve got a nice (hopefully) little cabin just outside of town, where we’ll be staying for four nights. We’re meeting Julie and Tracy at Zambra’s, a great tapas place downtown, for New Year’s Eve festivities, and I’m told that Asheville does a nice New Year’s downtown, complete with fireworks.

The kitchen in the house we stayed at in September was a little lacking, so I’m leaving nothing to chance and bringing along some of my pots and pans so we can cook a couple of meals while we’re there, but I’m also looking forward to all the good food in Asheville. It’s a great place, and when we were there in September for Julie and Tracy’s wedding, we got a little dreamy about maybe someday living there, since both of our jobs are fairly portable. We’ll see. We’re also packing two more Buffy’s and our hiking boots, in case the weather is nice enough to get outside and go for a hike. The Josie-girl will be staying behind at Sonia’s, and if there was any way we could communicate that to her, she’d probably be as excited about our trip as we are.

I don’t think there’s any real chance of snow while we’re there, but if there was, then this is what it would look like:

The week before Thanksgiving, Rebecca and I traveled to my parents’ house in Florida to visit with them and my brothers and their families. My brother Matt and sister-in-law Kim and their daughters Naomi (age 8) and Una (age 4) traveled from Portland, Oregon. My brother Mike and sister-in-law Ange and their daughter Mira (age 2) traveled from Minneapolis, Minnesota. So there were 11 of us in all–too many for my parents’ house to accommodate, so my parents stayed at the neighbors’ house!

We did lots of fun stuff while we were there, including a trip to Disney World’s Magic Kingdom on Friday, lots of hot-tubbing on my parents’ screened lanai, swimming in the community pool, and playing miniature golf and bocce ball. We also celebrated two birthdays while we were there–Ange’s on Friday the 17th and mine on Saturday the 18th. We had Thanksgiving dinner a bit early, on Sunday before everyone headed home on Monday.

I also played duck-duck-goose, hide-and-seek, school, and dentist with the girls (mostly Naomi and Una, but sometimes Mira too). I was glad to get to spend some time with Naomi and Una in particular, because it had been a long time since I’d seen them last (I just saw Mira in August, before I knew Mike and Ange were coming to Florida).

Here are some pictures of us at the Magic Kingdom. My parents, Naomi and Una, and Rebecca and I all went. The last one is of Naomi and Una on the teacups. That was our favorite ride for the four of us to go on together. We did it twice, and this is the only picture we have because we were spinning much too fast to take pictures. My parents may have more pictures; if they do, I’ll add them later.

And here’s a picture of me playing dentist with Una (I pretended to pull out a loose tooth, and then when she didn’t pay me $1000, I just pulled them all out!). I also later installed braces on Naomi, then on Una.

Here’s another cute one of Una and me:

And one of Naomi and Mira and I (and another of just Naomi and Mira) looking at an e-card my boss sent me while I was away. Mira kept saying “Agin! Agin!” as she took it all in. Mira LOVES her cousin Naomi. She would just wrap her little arms around Naomi’s neck so that Naomi could pick her up, and off the two of them would go!

And here are my brothers and Rebecca and me playing bocce ball. Rebecca took all of the pictures, which is why she isn’t in any of them. I’m working on being more proactive in my picture-taking.

My brothers won both bocce ball games we played (one of which was an abbreviated game). [Note: An anonymous comment from an IP adddress in Minnesota indicated that perhaps I did not emphasize this point adequately in my previous version of this post.] I do think I have bocce ball potential, though. Rebecca and I have looked into purchasing a bocce ball set, and Rebecca found out that a local community center offers bocce ball.

Here are some pictures of each of the girls on Monday, right before they all departed for the airport:

I know there are other pictures that my family took, but these are the highlights of what was on Rebecca’s new camera. I hope to add pictures of duck-duck-goose that Mike took and the teacups at the Magic Kingdom that my parents took, as well as any available swimming pictures.

This past weekend, we traveled to Asheville/Black Mountain, NC for Julie and Tracy’s wedding. We arrived on Thursday night in time for karaoke at Fred’s Speakeasy. While I managed to maintain my resolve not to participate in karaoke, Rebecca caved, in large part because the bride-to-be (her good friend Julie) requested her presence for a round of “relay karaoke.” It was…something.

We crashed that night at Julie’s mom’s house, then spent Friday morning and early afternoon at a place called Gourmet Perks, doing “work-work” and finishing up our matting of Julie’s childhood photos. Then we headed out to find a sweater for me to wear with my spaghetti-strap dress, because based on the weather on Friday (cold and overcast), it seemed like I really might need it. We finally found one, but I lost my sunglasses in a dressing room in the process.

Before checking in at the Bella Luna Inn, we delivered gift bags and bottles of wine to several guests at area hotels. Then we realized that the individually-matted photos that we’d prepared using Julie’s childhood photos weren’t going to work in the space we had available. While Rebecca showered, I scoped out the space, and after she got out of the shower, we concocted a plan to use twine to stringe the photos together by slitting the top and bottom of the matting of each one. We spent an hour or so implementing our plan, and were really pleased with the results! We patted ourselves on the back for being great joint problem-solvers once again! [Note: If we were really on the ball, we would insert a picture of the pictures here, but we don’t have one. Oops.] After we finished hanging the pictures, we attended the “rehearsal dinner” (really a pizza dinner for everyone after Julie and Tracy had rehearsed) that night at the Inn.

The next day was Saturday–wedding day. After a fabulous breakfast at the Inn, Rebecca devoted most of the late morning and early afternoon to making sure Julie had what she needed, conveying messages, and generally being as useful as she could be to Julie, while I did more “work-work.” Despite earlier reports that it would begin to rain at precisely 3:30, which was when the (outdoor) ceremony was supposed to start at the Inn (or was Tracy just making that up?), the weather was perfect–sunny but not too hot. I didn’t need the sweater, but found myself wishing I hadn’t lost my sunglasses!

The wedding was beautiful, without all of the frilly churchiness of a lot of weddings. Julie and Tracy maintained some of the wedding traditions that had meaning to them, and added their own personal touches as well (like asking each guest to take a flower petal from a bouquet and placing it at the wedding arch to indicate our blessing). Rebecca cried out of one eye as I tried to figure out what this wedding business is all about anyway.

The reception also was outdoors at the Inn. The weather remained cooperative the entire day, and everyone seemed to have a really good time. Several of the photographers (friends of Julie and Tracy’s who happen to be amateur or professional photographers) tried to get a good shot of Rebecca and me, because we had mentioned that we were having trouble getting pictures of us together in which one of us did not look hideous. We haven’t seen all of the pictures yet, but here’s one that Julie and Tracy’s neighbor Jan took:

We think it’s pretty good. Better of Rebecca than of me, but still not bad.

And here are a few nice shots of Julie and Tracy (also taken by Jan):

A fun thing that Julie and Tracy did was to have a polaroid camera set up by the wedding arch, along with some costumes that people could put on to pose for a picture for the guest book. Here are some pictures that Rebecca’s friend Kristin took of us posing for the guest book:

I was a little tipsy already. I think the second picture would be really good of the two of us if we weren’t wearing those costumes!

On Sunday, we had another great breakfast at the Inn, then headed to Asheville to browse some shops before meeting Julie and Tracy and a few others for some “brunch” (really a Bloody Mary bar) in downtown Asheville. Then we headed home, picked up Josie at the petsitter’s, and got ready for another work week!

Over Labor Day weekend, we stayed in a great mountain house in Butler, TN with four other couples. I went on a similar trip with roughly the same group of people last Labor Day, so this was the second annual event.

The house was great, and we enjoyed a wonderful view of Lake Watauga. We were lucky to have taken my Honda CR-V, because the driveway was very steep and we ended up shuttling several of the other couples who had traveled in cars up and down the driveway. Surprisingly, one of the three cars to make it up the driveway was a Toyota Prius! The other two were SUVs.

As typically happens on these trips, each couple packed so much food that we could have all eaten quite well for at least two weeks! Each couple cooked a different meal, and we ate very well.

We spent the weekend playing games, using the hot tub, and floating on the lake. We played Phase 10, Travel Scrabble, and Apples to Apples; I lost numerous Scrabble games to Rebecca, but usually not by much. I had a fairly bad attitude about it, which I am attributing to PMS. The hot tub didn’t work when we first arrived, and the property manager even called to apologize about that. But Rebecca and another one of our number were determined to try to fix it. All they did was open the panel and try to figure out what all of the parts did, but after that it worked! It got as hot as 105 degrees, which was terrific! The highlight of our time on the lake was spent in a Coleman Party Island; we all decided that one of us should purchase one of these for future lake adventures.

Overall, it was a very good weekend, although at times it was overstimulating to be sharing a house with so many other people! Our human:dog ratio was 2:1 (that’s five dogs), so we definitely had a full house.

I traveled to Minneapolis in August to see my youngest niece, Mira (and my brother and sister-in-law too). Mira was 22 months old at the time, and very cute. The last time I saw her was Christmas 2005, and before that I saw her when she was three weeks old, in November 2004.

While I was there, we went to the park several times, where Mira demonstrated her advanced climbing abilities (my brother likes it when I call her advanced). We also went for a bike ride, and Mira rode behind her mom in her Chariot. Mira and I did a “pizza dance” together to celebrate pizza night (usually a Friday night occurrence, which was rescheduled to Saturday night because of my visit). The pizza was excellent, by the way. We also checked out the farmers’ market and the library (which was really impressive). On my last day there, we went to the Children’s Museum, which is in Saint Paul, I think.

Mira knows a lot of words and has quite a personality! I look forward to seeing her and my other two nieces when we all travel to Florida in November.