Aaron and Virginia's Blog

It’s been all wintery and cold..

2012-01-22T19:37:00.001-05:00

It’s been all cold and wintery… and Virginia and I have both been sick… so.. we’ve not been out having too much fun… we’ve been cooped up in the house… so.. when you’re stuck in the house, it’s a little hard to take too many fun pictures and whatnot… but.. here ya go.

So… yeah… Virginia and I played around with some wine glasses and some strawberries for a while… but… other than that… it’s been a lot of sitting around.. watching TV… eating ham…

NYC Part II

2012-01-14T19:59:00.001-05:00

Okay, so after seeing Harry Potter sing and dance like a pro with an American accent we took a stroll down 5th Avenue to see all the lights. It was beautiful, but very crowded. Then we went back to the Loft to change clothes and catch our breath.

We decided to go to dinner in little Italy at Il Palazzo, which was delicious.

After dinner we took the Metro to the end of the island for a walk on the Brooklyn Bridge. It was so lovely! Amazing views of Manhattan and all the bridges, boats, airplanes, sky scrapers, so cool!

So then back to the Loft because we wanted to get up super early for our last day in the city.

Did I mention that we were in the Gramercy Park area and the Loft was just a block away from the flatiron building? Great view to take in on your way to breakfast.

We had breakfast at the Grey Dog in Chelsea. Cool place with a nice hippie vibe.

Then we walked through Chelsea Market, but we were too full to eat, so we just feasted our eyes.

The last thing we did was walk on the highline, which is this park that is built on an old elevated train line. It’s really neat because it’s been all landscaped and filled with art exhibits and allows you to walk about 20 ft. above the street level.

This billboard was a work of art called “the first hundred thousand that I ever made.”

Since we had to walk about ten looong blocks back to the Loft in the chilly morning air, I suggested we stop and get some hot tea. But I think I subconsciously sensed that we’d find this awesome-ness:

Two dozen varieties of macaroons! A macaroon specialty shop. SO GOODDD!

Then back to Penn Station for a long train-ride home.

The traveler at rest.

It’s a won-der-ful toooooown!

2012-01-13T22:10:00.001-05:00

So over winter break Martha and I got to take an exciting trip to NYC!

We had a blast. We got to stay at the Appalachian Loft which is run by my former employer, ASU. Luckily I’m an alum, so we got an amazing rate.

It’s basically like a hostel for students, so we slept in a bunk room.

But there was a lovely view and the common space and kitchen were beautiful.

We got up super early every day and hit the city. First Rockefeller Center.

We did the NBC studio tour and learned all kinds of fun facts about SNL. I also got to play weather-woman for the “tour video studio.” Also, TV studios are really small. They look so much bigger on TV!

The ice skating rink was also smaller than I thought it would be, but very pretty. All the Christmas lights were up and the tree was huge!

Also huge was the crowd at the Lego store, where they had Lego replicas of all the statues in Rockefeller Center AND the Center itself with Lego people iceskating. Very cool.

Then to Times Square to buy theater tickets.

We got there early so we had time to grab empanadas from a food cart. Gotta love the street food.

We ended up with amazing orchestra tickets to Avenue Q which was technically off Broadway, but had been on Broadway back in 2004 for a few years. I’ve wanted to see it for a while – it’s like the Book of Mormon of its day.

So being off Broadway was cool because they have cigarette/snack guys and bartenders that bring you drinks. The show was awesome and hilarious. Overheard exchange of the night:

Dude 1: I didn’t know there was going to be graphic puppet sex.

Dude 2: Didn’t you see the sign outside?

Dude 1: I thought that was a joke!

Here’s us dressed up in our fancy theater clothes. We are standing in front of the Loft’s handy-dandy metro map which we used ALOT! We were about 1 block from two different lines, but we managed to get everywhere we were trying to go.

The next morning we got up and went to an awesome breakfast at the “quintessential modern American Jewish deli” - (they had a sign… which sadly we didn’t get a picture of). It was delicious. Martha’s cultured work friends had given her a list of restaurant suggestions, and they did not let us down.

Then we walked all through Central Park on the way to the Met.

After the Met, we did try to win theater tickets for the Book of Mormon, but sadly we didn’t win the lottery. In case you don’t know the Book of Mormon is sold out until Feb., but you can enter a day-of-drawing to win tickets. There were probably over 300 people at this lottery. It was, not surprisingly, a fun crowd, but not great odds.

So we decided to buy tickets to How to Succeed in Business (without really trying) instead. Daniel Radcliffe of Harry Potter fame was headlining and it was INCREDIBLE. Great, great, great show. Very classic Broadway fun. We were close enough to throw things at Daniel (but we didn’t).

Also, on the way there I almost ran into Samuel L. Jackson in the intersection. Didn’t get a picture though, sadly.

Okay, so that’s about halfway… To be continued tomorrow.

It’s January!

2012-01-08T22:03:00.001-05:00

So… we’ve been kinda lacking on this half of the blog lately… but… things have been busy… I’m working, Virginia is working… holidays and all of that have rolled through…. so… yeah. That’s our excuse. And we’re sticking to it.

So.. here’s what Christmas looked like….

As you can see, Santa Claws came to visit…. O.C. made such a cute Santa… and Grace actually liked the sweater…. the antlers on the other hand… we’re just getting to the point now where we’re not afraid to sleep… Grace was threatening us for a while… looming over us while we slept… just watching… biding her time… just waiting for our eyelids to fall… but now, she seems like she’s forgetting about it.

Josh also came up… and we had a second Thanksgiving with another awesome turkey…

This one was brined for 2 days… then I injected it… then we smoked it on the grill… it was a special kind of awesome… just thinking about it now makes me want to cook up another one… I think that turkey doesn’t get enough “play”… it shouldn’t be relegated just to holidays and crappy lunch meat… Fresh carved turkey, and the subsequent week’s worth of leftover turkey sandwiches is something that should be celebrated at least quarterly.

Here’s our spread… we kept it reasonably small since it was Thanksgiving #2…. but, it did provide the important thing…

Nom Nom Nom Nom Nom Nom Sandwiches.

Then… there was work… and more work… and more work… and then Christmas… which we already mentioned above… then I went back to work, and Virginia… well… Virginia took off to New York with Martha… it must be nice to be able to take off like that…. There are pictures of the New York trip somewhere… I think Martha has them… and Virginia has the stories… so… I’m gonna just say “They went to New York” and leave it at that…. Virginia can fill in the rest with pictures and whatnot…

Then more work… and more work… and more work… but then today, we decided to get out of the house… actually, we decided to do that yesterday, but Virginia left her house without her coat… so we couldn’t really do anything, because whenever she got out of the car, she froze into a solid block of ice… according to her that is… according to the thermometer on the car, it was 62 degrees yesterday… so, anyhow… where was I… oh yeah…. today.. we got back into the car and tried that whole “doing something” thing again… so we drove up onto the Parkway, parked with dozens of other cars, and went walking towards Humpback Rock…

This is the view from the top… but… it’s a pretty crazy walk up there.. so there was a lot of this going on…

But… it was pretty amazing up at the top… quite a few people… but there was enough room to spread out a little bit….

Here’s Virginia… on top of the world…

It’s absolutely amazing up there…. you feel like you’re above absolutely everything…. except for the people who are on rocks above you… but you can push them off… then you become King of the Mountain! … or a felon… I’m not sure which… maybe both.

Anyhow… we had a good time. It was nice to get out of the house, and we might have to do it again sometime…

It’s beginning to look a lot like….

2011-12-04T17:28:00.001-05:00

…I haven’t updated the blog in a good long time.

Oh… and Christmas.

Lights and Whatnot…

The above is part of a display at Pufferbellies toy store here in Staunton… pretty cool stuff….

Even if they didn’t use real gingerbread..

But, they are extremely detailed…..

So… Things have been a bit quiet here on the normal blog for a while.. there have been occasional posts over on the cooking blog… but things have been way too quiet on here…. basically, life has happened. I got a new job, Virginia has settled into her job… Maybe we can convince Virginia to hop on the blog and give some more details some time… I know I probably have tons of uploaded pictures that I haven’t said anything about yet… so… we’ll see… for now, it’s time for me to do some laundry, and get ready for work this week…

And then….

2011-08-22T22:51:00.001-04:00

The weekend before last, Courtney, Ashley, and Josh came to visit all of the way from NC. … Unfortunately… I don’t have a ton of pictures… so. we’ll have to shoot from the hip.

Friday, Josh got here first. He needed a quick transmission flush, so a trip to Foreign Affairs and several hundred dollars later.. he was ready to roll again with a “Danger-Ranger” that was shifting nice and smooth again. I had a big pot of Chili going at home… so we ran back to the house, met up with Virginia… ate some Chili.. and headed out again. (For the interested folks.. the Chili is over on the cooking blog… ) We headed out to a wine tasting down at the wharf here in Staunton … For the record, there is no water near the wharf. … But the wine shop was really neat. It was in the bottom of a rather old building… HUGE timber frame members… and the fire suppression system was plumbed entirely in copper, complete with solder joints. I’d be interested to know what happens to solder joints in the event of a fire in a building full of alcohol.

Anyhoo. We walked around town with Josh.. then returned to the house to relax a bit before Courtney and Ashley got here. Since they were coming from Asheville, they got here to Staunton around 10:30… and we just sat and talked for a while before going to bed. Saturday morning, we all meandered out of bed… got ready to go… and hit Kathy’s for breakfast. Kathy’s is a local restaurant… really down-home Southern cooking. This translates to: they make an awesome breakfast. Virginia got “bacon waffles” … you might think that this would be a waffle, with a side of bacon. And you’d be wrong. This would be a waffle with chunks of bacon magically cooked into it. Uh-mazing.

We then hit downtown Staunton, and caught the tour “Trolley” around town. This was … interesting. The trolley had a “guide” that was narrating the trip, but it didn’t seem overly well rehearsed. The narration was either very fast, or lacking, depending on the speed of the bus. Special attention was paid to churches (apparently there are over 80 churches in Staunton). Special attention was NOT paid to hygiene by the man who was sitting in front of us. I think he may have actually rubbed himself with dead mammals AND fish before boarding the bus. He then sat in the front seat, and opened his window. Of course he opened his window. If the latent smell wasn’t bad enough, we had to add movement and airflow to it. Since he was sitting in the front seat, we all got to share in this awesomeness. As an added bonus, at one point, he leaned out of the window to BARK at a woman on the street, who was walking her dog… in retrospect, he was probably barking at the dog… the woman was just collateral damage. So… Maybe I was too quick to judge the narrator of the trip… obviously, I wasn’t really paying attention.

After the trolley ride, we went into the Visitor’s Center, where Courtney could grab 3 copies of every pamphlet in the place. Normally, I would tae the rest of this paragraph to find some reason to make fun of her for reading all of the pamphlets in a town that she’s just visiting… but… she actually found something that we didn’t know about.. so… +10 points to Courtney. What was it that we found?? Finally picture time…

Those are brewing barrels. Apparently, here in Staunton we have an awesome little place called Queen City Brewing. Now, for those folks that live in “real” cities, it’s no big deal to have a brewery…But… this isn’t just a brewery… sure, they do make their own beers (quite a lot of them in fact)… and they do tastings…..

… with 12 beers on tap, and more in the back…. but, the kicker is: this place is like a Build-A-Bear workshop. Except replace Build with Brew, and Bear with Beer…. Yep. You go in there, you can make your own beer… spend about an hour and a half doing that, then come back in a few weeks (depending on brew time) to pick it up. Yeah. Beat that.

Our first trip there, we didn’t brew our own… but we did a tasting, and then bought a “pig” of beer. What’s a “pig” of beer?

This is a “pig” of beer. It’s 2.25 gallons, and it sells for right around $30… then, you have a tank of fresh frosty beer in the fridge…. there’s even a magical little bag inside that fills with air as you drink the beer out in order to keep the beer from going flat.

But, there was one HUGE flaw with the pig…. it just didn’t look right.. so… the girls got to work…

Some Crayons.. some construction paper… some tape….

We have the technology….

Petunia was born….

Curly tail and all… now.. it was truly a pig…

But it was a pig wit magical powers… a pig that could dispense cool refreshing beer.

So.. we had our pig.. we had good food… what else did we need?

Nothing. .. So. we sat around… talked… Courtney and Ashley played with the iPad… we watched some movies… then played some games… and just enjoyed the rainy weather inside…

The next morning, we started with some pound cake… then Josh took off to get back home… Courtney and Ashley stuck around for a little longer… so we went to Gypsy Hill Park…

The ladies fed the ducks….

We all rode the mini train….

For some reason… there were a bunch of children on the train… and they screamed every time we went through a tunnel… so… that was… loud… but… the train is really neat…

After the train ride, and the feeding of the ducks… Virginia posed the following question: “Do you guys want to walk around the park? or… We could go get some Gelato…” …. so.. of course, we went and got Gelato! … But then… it was time for Courtney and Ashley to head back to Asheville….

It was an awesome weekend… but it was over far too soon….

Picture update!

2011-08-22T22:50:00.000-04:00

So.. we recently went to Northern VA … We were lucky to attend the wedding of Virginia’s prior room-mate in Richmond, Elise’s wedding! I didn’t take any pics during the wedding or the reception really… but.. the day after, there was a brunch… with a petting zoo!!! so… we’ll use this are just to put out some pictures from the weekend’s wedding.

Oh yeah… the reception was on a river boat… on the Potomac.

I did much better with this boat than with the boat from our honeymoon… I didn’t feel sick at all… so.. that’s good.

This was actually a really cute scene… the dog and the cow were getting close, and sniffing at each other… but then, the cow would lunge forward towards the dog… the above shot shows the dog recoiling in fear.. with his crazy ears.

This is a male horse.. some itty bitty thing… unfortunately, they painted his hooves, and put glitter in his hair…. poor guy…

This is a “Skinny Pig”… which apparently is a Guinea Pig without fur.

Virginia with an Angora Rabbit… she’s thinking about making it into a sweater….

The bride and groom…. Elise and Jamie

Big Update. … AKA… I thought I already updated this blog several times.. and I didn’t.

2011-08-22T22:08:00.001-04:00

I didn’t realize that this part of the blog hasn’t been updated in so long… so… let’s see… we’ll start off with some scenery of downtown…

So… you can see… Staunton is a very photogenic town… there are plenty of good looking old buildings… and lots of good spots to walk around..

My personal favorite, when Virginia drags me kicking and screaming out for a walk, is to go downtown to walk around. This is because the downtown is littered with cool little places to go grab a beer. So, walk for a few blocks…. stop in to the local Irish Pub for a beer… walk a bit more.. drop by a beer garden… walk a bit more…. what’s that you say? A free wine tasting? Well then.. we’ll be right in.

Also, we decided to try to take in some local fun in the area…. so, the above picture is from our short foray to the Churchville carnival. It was…. … … … interesting. Of course we didn’t grab the best parking.. and it started to rain as we were walking around… so we had to hide under the BINGO tent for a little while. That’s one drawback of hauling around the big camera all of the time.. it doesn’t like the weather, and it doesn’t stow easily when the bad weather does come…. I need to get my little camera back from my mom.. Anyhow… the carnival…. The carnival was a big change for us, because we haven’t been to a carnival back in this area for a long time. As far as carnivals in Southwest Virginia go, this one was nothing amazingly odd. However when you’re used to “Fairs” and whatnot in Boone that are full of the upper middle class folks that can actually afford to live in Boone, and their children in their outfits that make them look like they fell out of the J-Crew catalog…. the missing teeth, Gravedigger Monster Truck T-Shirts (With sleeves ripped off), and Confederate Flag hats of Southwest Virginia are a bit of a change….

Now… another scenic part of Staunton….

Purty ain’t it? Ok… one more from this location…

Yeah… it’s a cemetery. Specifically, it’s the Thornrose Cemetery here in Staunton. The place is HUGE. We’ve gone here to walk around for a little bit…. it’s good for about an hour’s worth of walking if you take all of the various little paths around… and there’s some interesting stuff to see… some very old gravestones… a lot of civil war monuments…. I need to find out more about this place at some point… also, the clouds around here have been crazy lately… I don’t know what the deal is… but it’s like I haven’t seen clouds for years… the clouds around here tend to amaze me on a near daily basis.

This isn’t so much a cloud shot… or related to what I was talking about… but… it’s a shot of one of the downtown theaters…. there are two of them downtown… both are pretty old and historic….

Farmer’s Market and lake trip!

2011-07-18T20:08:00.000-04:00

So… we just got back from a busy weekend.. but it was a good one… We started off with a trip to the Staunton farmer’s market….

We weren’t sure what to expect… and honestly, we’ve been a bit spoiled with the Boone farmer’s market… but… it was pretty awesome…

There were flowers, plants, eggs, meats, cheeses… it’s pretty damn amazing…. We picked up some veggies.. Virginia got some fresh tomatoes, some basil… and we got some home-made fresh mozzarella … and some home-made fresh ricotta… we took out freshly acquired fresh goodies… hopped back in the car, and headed to the lake to met up with the Oliver folks….

Good times were had at the lake…

A short break-down…. Virginia made bruschetta… I made ravioli… with a little help from Erin…

I went swimming with my phone in my pocket… we went out and played on a boat… all in all… a good time….

Beginning of July…

2011-07-13T19:06:00.002-04:00

So… the last update really took you through the end of June… so I suppose I can pick up with July….

July 1st, I woke up, having made another revolution around the sun (it was my birthday for the slow folks out there) after creaking around the house for a little bit, and drinking some coffee, Virginia and I loaded the cats into the car, then she took off to drop them at my parents’ house, and I hopped on the motorcycle. We both got on the road, and drove and drove for a while… things were relatively uneventful on the bike, but apparently, the cats were being rather evil for Virginia in the car. Virginia pushed on like a trooper, dropped off the cats, then headed up towards Staunton… We met back up on the highway, and arrived to our new home in Staunton in time to meet the new landlord and sign the lease papers…. Then, it was off to drop off the bike, then spend the weekend spending time with our families and enjoying festivities related to the Independence Day celebration….

Up at the VMI parade grounds, there was live music, hot air balloons, vendors, food, and fireworks… So, we spent some time up there.. went up early with mom one morning to watch a balloon launch…

The 4th was a wonderful day… it was Virginia’s celebration of making another revolution around the sun as well… and w celebrated with food, drinks, and desserts… but… when it came time for the fireworks… well… it had been raining and crappy… so, we didn’t want to go sit on the grass up at VMI… so, we watched the fireworks from the top of the hill over by the Page household.. and that was an interesting change of venue… there were more people up at the top of the hill than I expected… including some young-ish girls behind us that would occasionally erupt with a “They’re so PRETTY!!!” … I had to work to stifle my laughter..

Then.. it was back to Boone.. and back to the grindstone of moving …so… we got boxes.. we were packing stuff.. we got bubble wrap… totally good times…

but… eventually, we got everything into boxes.. we rented a truck.. and left Boone for Staunton…. pictures of the new place will be coming as soon as I figure out where everything goes… for now, there are still a few boxes left to be unpacked, and a few pictures left to be hung… oh.. also… if anyone has an extra 200 square feet of kitchen space available.. I could use it…

In other news.. I shot a local autocross event here in the new area… it was a rather good time…. Jonathan was out there having fun….

and there were some Subaru WRX’s out there having fun… (*hint hint* to one certain reader….)

So… good times so far… I got us a new washer and dryer… and I’m still trying to get everything in the house where it belongs… and trying to find a job…. so… super good times…

This weekend….

2011-06-25T22:04:00.001-04:00

This weekend was a bit more chill than last weekend… Thursday, Lynette threw a going away party for us… which featured awesome food… awesome drinks.. and amazing conversation late into the evening….

Once again, I was slacking with the pictures… really, the only one I took was:

I need to get back to taking pictures more often… I always bring the gear, and plan to do it… but… it’s more fun to socialize than to sit there snapping away the entire time… I need to find a happy medium…

Today, we went to Asheville to spend some time with Courtney and Ashley… we started off with lunch at 12 Bones, a BBQ place that apparently President Obama eats at when he comes to Asheville.. it was some pretty good swine…

We then went for a walk around Asheville, which was unseasonably warm… but they were having some sort of art / craft sale thingie…

So… we walked around… Courtney tried to talk us into buying some sort of air plants…

I don’t know what they are… but… according to Courtney’s excitement about them… they make you fly. They make you have x-ray vision. They may even make you be able to leap tall buildings in a single bound. Courtney was rather excited about these things..

So.. we walked around… looked at stuff… then… of course it was time to get back to our regular scheduled programming… so… we found a wine shop that was doing a tasting… sampled some tasty white wines from New Zealand… then walked into a store that specializes in: Potato Chips. …. …. Really. They had all kinds of chips… a menu you could order from… and even free samples of their plantain chips with a Nutella dipping sauce… they were pretty dang good… but… a whole store that sells nothing but potato chips? I’ll be looking to see if this store still exists in the future…

We also went into a pretty cool beer store… they had a rather amazing selection, but their prices were a bit higher on the beers that I recognized… They did have a huge selection.. and the above super-cool beer cabinet made out of a monk… the front of his robes do close… so.. yeah.. I’m adding this big burly beer bureau to my birthday list… I’ll figure out how to hook up a refrigeration system in his organ cavity….

After walking and sampling wine… and chips…. of course, it was time to eat again… so we hit a place that specialized in chocolate… beer… and ice cream… I had a macaroon brownie… Virginia got a “Stout Float” … yeah… Stout beer with 2 scoops of vanilla ice cream in it…

It was an awesome trip to Asheville… spent with good people… eating good food… having good times… add trips like this and people like Courtney and Ashley to the list of things/people we’ll miss from Boone…

Farewell Boone….

2011-06-25T21:32:00.001-04:00

Well… our time in Boone is coming to an end… and we’ve been making the most of it…

Last Friday, one of Virginia’s coworkers, Angel, hosted a going away party for us… AKA Trovatopalooza.. you may have seen the event on Facebook.. it was the biggest event in Boone in recent history. Given that it was such a huge event… I didn’t take many pictures….

The above is a wonderful creation that Josh came up with… it’s an awesome ham biscuit… with a deviled egg in it.. and a piece of teriyaki chicken… basically a combination of almost all of the foods available…. I made cannoli because Angel didn’t get to try the last batch, and I made some teriyaki wings… and some special hot wings…

The above would be a handful of Habaneros that I smoked on cedar planks… then, after getting them smoked to the point I wanted, I cranked up the heat to get a bit of flame on the cedar… just for picture purposes…

But.. the party was awesome… I just didn’t take pictures…

Saturday, we slept in a little bit… skipped the Farmer’s Market (we’re trying to eat all of the food out of our house…) Then, we went to Peabody’s for our regular Saturday afternoon wine tasting… we met there with Courtney, Ashley, and Josh to do the tasting… then to sit outside and have a few drinks before heading to our evening activity….

We drank some wine… it rained like crazy…. we had some cheese and crackers… then… we went to the Roller Derby.

I didn’t bring my good camera to the Derby… just the point and shoot… but, with the point and shoot I did make the video that I posted up last week…. so… this little ELPH 300HS isn’t a bad camera…

We started off sitting on the floor.. the “Suicide” seating… but.. my back wasn’t cooperating… in fact… my back hurt like hell… it hurt to stand.. it hurt to sit.. and it sure as hell hurt to be bent over, sitting on the floor… so… Saturday night, I headed home to a heating pad and the absolute strongest over the counter drugs that I could find..

Then Sunday… it was back into the car….

Then, on Sunday we went and visited Amanda in Greensboro… the above is a piece of campus artwork at Guilford College where she works… it’s an interesting campus…

The Hut … So… this sign belongs to the following building…

... and this building is apparently where the head Quaker dude on campus hangs out… they have meetings there… and… I dunno… they… make Oatmeal? I dunno…

According to the signs and whatnot around the area, Quakers decided to settle in the Greensboro / Guilford area…

We didn’t see a lot of these people walking around…

But… word on the street is that the Quakers run the college… in fact, Amanda was telling us something about all decisions by the governing bodies of the various parts of the school must be decided by consensus… which begs to raise the question… How do you fire someone? “Well, the board has reached an agreement… you’re fired” …. “See… I don’t agree with that.. I am in fact, not fired.” …. I see a flaw with the way they do things…

More to come soon….

Quick update from the Roller Derby....

2011-06-19T20:48:00.000-04:00

So... a lot was going on this weekend... but... here's the easiest part to report.. the trip to watch the Appalachian Rollergirls....

Sunday Afternoon…

2011-06-12T16:17:00.001-04:00

Well… after blogging this morning… we decided that we should get out of the house for a little bit… so… we hopped in the car.. drove over to Jefferson… and went for a little hike.

Mount Jefferson has a lovely hiking trail up at the top of the mountain… it takes you along the ridge of the mountain, and unlike 90% of the other trails around here… this one actually makes a loop…it also provides some great views along the way….

There were hawk/eagle-like birds flying around….

…and you can look down over huge sections of Ashe and surrounding counties….

The trails were well maintained… and there were the awesome flowering bush things all around…

Looking down on the surrounding areas made the towns look like models..

All in all… totally a fun trip…. a good hike.. not overly strenuous… but.. it had some great views….

The move from Boone….

2011-06-12T10:30:00.000-04:00

Well, our time here in Boone has flown by… and it’s nearing time for us to leave. So, Thursday, we hopped in the car at 10AM and drove to Staunton so that Virginia could sign some papers at the HR office at Mary Baldwin. We then spent the night with the Newhalls… which is always fun.. we got to play with Jade… and Virginia went to do some yoga with Lisa… Virginia really enjoyed this, because apparently, this Yoga class is led by some kind of Adonis of a man…in Virginia’s words… he’s a beautiful man… I can’t provide my input… so we’ll have to take Virginia's word for it… but… for those folks in the Staunton area… looking for a yoga class taught by a male model… talk with Virginia. She’ll let you know where to go.

Meanwhile, Jonathan and I were hanging out with Jade…. so… I think we had the better half of the deal.

Friday morning, we started off our day with realtors… So… we were looking for something to rent… I still haven’t nailed down a job yet… so.. we’re planning on renting a place for a little while… then buying a place when we’re all good and settled in. So… I was ready to just get either: A) The cheapest place we could find or B) The first place we looked at. … … So… the first place we looked at was a house on Baltimore Street …

So… it was about a block off of Route 11… behind the Fisher Auto Parts… and next to Staunton Steam Laundry….

This place was absolutely dripping with character… Built in probably the early 1900’s…

Plaster walls… dark wood floors…

A “Sleeping Porch”….

Big rooms…. central heating…

Recently redone tile floors in the kitchen and entry…. decent appliances… somewhat dated kitchen….

And… it had a nice little back porch and a back yard….

But… the central heat was gas heat…. and the porch was kind of falling apart… and the back yard meant that I’d have to mow… and the charm of a old house is negated when you think about some of what that means… for example… the back door really doesn’t close… so.. it had one of these numbers on the back door to actually keep it somewhat closed… or… to at least keep it from swinging all of the way open….

All of the windows in the house are single pane… there are doors all over the basement are that you can see light around… air leaks are present all over the house in the form of covered chimney access holes… covered fireplaces… windows that are no longer square, so no longer close all of the way.. So… all of that money spent on natural gas heat would be rather rapidly lost through these many holes and crevices. So… even though we loved the house… I would have been more interested in buying it than renting it..

The Condo

2011-06-12T10:29:00.000-04:00

I suppose at this point… I should say that we looked at many places… but the only places I ended up taking pictures at are places that I saw as a possibility… so.. the house with the back porch falling off that was $850 a month… no pictures… the house with access only by a dirt pull-off on the street, and then a 150ft walk uphill to the house… no pictures… the house that the door frame was pieced together after damage from what appeared to be a dozen break-ins…. no pictures…

But… another possibility was a condo off of Statler BLVD….

This place was 2BR, 1 BA… but the location was pretty cool….

The kitchen was a nice size… new appliances… fans in every room… A/C… gas heat and gas water heater…

The master bedroom had an awesome view of a retaining wall…I liked the feel of this place… but I don’t think it even rated on Virginia’s radar…. but.. it was a condo… it has gas.. and it was one of the smallest places we looked at….

The coolest thing about the apartments we saw through Remax was the real estate agent… She was from the midwest… but moved to Staunton when she attended school at Mary Baldwin…. she stayed in Staunton after she graduated in 1958… Since then, it seems like she has sold every building in Staunton at least 3 or 4 times…. Mainly, she worked with large, expensive, historic properties…. ranging from old women’s colleges to houses that belonged to cartographers from the Civil War…

She also showed us another place that was located on the first floor of a “multi-family” home… that place was…. interesting… It was early 1900’s… but fairly updated… but… it was 1 bedroom…and had a gas range/stove… the interesting thing was that utilities were included… that seems dangerous… if someone else is paying the utilities… I’d be tempted to have a 60 degree house all summer, and a 80 degree house all winter… but… neither the condo, nor the lower floor of a house really screamed out to us…

So… what did we end up with?

2011-06-12T10:25:00.000-04:00

After reading the above posts… you may be wondering… “Did you find a place? Are you going to live in a box? Will you have to dig a hole and create a series of tunnels to be able to park your car?” … Or you might not be wondering these things… but… in any case… here in the last installment… you’ll find out where we ended up… so.. grab your popcorn and a soda.. and stay tuned.

Ok.. so.. this actually came earlier in the day… but in order for the flow of the posts to make sense… we’ll say that this happened latest…

So… upon starting the search for a place to live… I thought I knew what I wanted… I wanted a house #1… townhouse #2… or apartment / condo #3…. however.. the houses we looked at… well.. weren’t the most exciting… but… on the other hand… we looked at a rather nice townhouse… it’s located here….

hmmm…. so.. that patch of trees to the left of Seth Drive…… towards the top… there are 6 buildings there now.. with 10 townhouses in each one… Google Maps is a little bit behind with their satellite images… but… the townhouses are just outside of Staunton on 252…. just under 2 miles from Virginia’s office at Mary Baldwin….

All brand new appliances in a nice big kitchen….

A small back porch with a view of the mountains and room enough for my grill…..

2 Large bedrooms…

A full bath upstairs… and a half bath downstairs…

and a nice, large living room off of the kitchen, as soon as you walk into the place….

Here’s the kicker… the place has NEVER been lived in…. it’s got a heat pump for heating and cooling… and since it’s modern construction, heating and cooling costs should be relatively low… also, there is a “garden apartment” below us.. so in the winter, our floors should be heated by the people below us… so… we’re pretty excited about the new place… looking forward to making the move… once we make the move and get all settled in.. we’ll be sure to distribute the address accordingly… but… if you’re in the Staunton area, and want to drive by and take a look at where we’ll be living… the name of the complex is Windgate… and it’s just off of 252 on Seth Drive….

Long Awaited Leah and Brian Wedding Part II

2011-06-06T20:02:00.001-04:00

Okay, when we left off we had just gotten to the beautiful Claxton Farm. The girls got ready in this tiny cottage-like shed. I wish I had pictures of it, but sadly no. To look at this thing, you’d never believe that we fit Leah, Leah’s Mom, four bridesmaids and two guest book ladies in it, but we did!

Meanwhile, Brian and the gentlemen got ready:

Doesn’t he look dapper? Here’s what the ladies looked like:

Leah did a beautiful job picking out the dresses, no? Of course the bride herself looked amazing.

The ceremony was so beautiful, with a special recognition for the parents, a song from the brother of the bride, and Leah and Brian wrote their own vows which was really special.

After the ceremony I got to sign the marriage license. I don’t think we had witnesses at our wedding, maybe this is because we were married in Virginia, or maybe it’s because we aren’t really married, who knows?

Ladies and gentlemen, Mr. and Mrs. McGrath!

One of the super nice things about the wedding was that there was all this space to play games and frolic…

Another nice thing was that there was pie!

Doesn’t Leah look just like Suzie Homemaker??! I will say that while Leah didn’t make these pies, she does make a delicious pie.

Guests got to choose from blueberry, strawberry/rhubarb, and mixed berry. Brian enjoyed his.

And then there was dancing!

Leah and her dad…

I’ll say it again, her dress was amazing!

And Brian and his Mom…

So that was the wedding. We had a great time. Hopefully I’ll get more adventures up on the blog soon. Happy spring!

The Amazing True Story of Leah and Brian’s Wedding

2011-05-24T21:56:00.003-04:00

We had the privilege of going to a wedding this past weekend in Asheville. Now sometimes, I hate to say this, but at this stage in life sometimes you get a bit wedding’ed out, but we were super excited for this joyous event. For one thing, it was in Asheville, which is an awesome city, but most importantly, it was Leah and Brian’s wedding.
Now I have been a fan of Leah’s since we were in the same sorority at UVA. We lived together in a house with 15 other girls… and somehow we survived that and stayed friends! Leah and Nicole and I were The Hellionz in college and we had many a wild night.
Aaron and I have been fans of Brian since we got to meet him for the first time. Leah and Brian visited us in Boone. Brian walked a mile in the snow to go get us groceries and make us breakfast. We were totally won over.

So clearly Brian and Leah are awesome and they are an awesome couple.

That’s the happy couple at the rehearsal. They asked Aaron to take some pictures and he definitely did! He had a blast capturing some awesome moments, like this one of Leah looking demure and pensive…

You can see she’s really excited to be getting married.
I was also honored to be part of the wedding. So I kept busy rehearsing…

And eating…

The rehearsal was at this amazing restaurant called Posana in downtown Asheville. We all had a blast.

Here are Nicole and Ramey making a toast. And Leah and Brian enjoying themselves…

The nicest part was getting to hang out with friends. But, I particularly enjoyed the slide show Brian had made for the wedding with multiple awkward photos. After that we went back to the hotel and partied with some of the out of town guests.
Then, oh so quickly, it was the big day. We started with a bridal breakfast, then hair, then to the venue, which was Claxton Farm, was so beautiful.

Now I’m going to leave you in suspense for a while about the wedding. More photos to come!

Back at it….

2011-05-23T19:08:00.001-04:00

Yeah.. it’s been a while once again… but.. let’s catch up…

The weather has turned around… and instead of crappy cold weather all of the time, we now get…

… crappy, rainy, wet nasty weather all of the time…

… and fog….

and tornados.

But… on some decent days, we’ve managed to get to the farmer’s market….

It was a good showing for the first farmer’s market.. not a lot of veggies quite yet… but we were glad to have our farmer’s market bread and meats again…

I really love this time of year in Boone… if the weather I decent. It’s that magical time of year where the student population has significantly decreased, but the Florida people haven’t gotten here yet…

Also… graduation was at the beginning of May!

So… our parents came down from Lexington.. and my sis came from Richmond… we had some good times… ate some good food…

There’s another update coming soon… the updates should be more regular in the coming months…

A Blog mostly about Josh fighting ninjas

2011-03-20T20:11:00.001-04:00

So this weekend we did something pretty cool. Our friend, Josh asked us to come take pictures of his Aikido Workshop (and by “us” I mean Aaron).

Josh has been doing this Aikido stuff for a while now, and I knew that it vaguely had something to do with martial arts. However, I must say, I was unprepared for the awesomeness of this sport.

I discovered this weekend, that all this time Josh was actually learning how to save us from Ninja Attack.

Evidence Number 1: We all know ninjas are sneaky, and thus more likely to attack at night. Josh wears training uniforms that are very pajama-like, so as to be prepared for a night-time attack.

Evidence Number 2: Ninjas are known to attack using hand-to-hand combat, swords, knives and poles, but never guns. Aikido involves fighting hand-to-hand, and with swords, knives, and poles… but isn’t so good defending against guns.

Evidence Number 3: Ninjas are badass. You would need an army of ninja fighters to conquer them. Well, Josh has an army of Aikido people. They actually came from all over the east coast to train.

Evidence Number 4: Ninjas have sweet moves. If you were fighting ninjas you would need sweet moves as well.

Need, I say more?!? I even got to learn some beginning ninja fighting tricks.

So, I want to send a big thank-you to Josh, for keeping us safe from the ninjas. I can tell that it takes a lot of work and practice.

In other news, I have been working on my comprehensive exam for my Education Specialist degree for the past couple weeks and I am finally finished! So keep your fingers crossed for me. I should get the results back in a few weeks.

Virginia goes to Denver!

2011-02-27T21:43:00.001-05:00

So last weekend while Aaron was taking artsy pictures, I got to fly to Denver and visit with Nat and Erin. This visit was prompted by an excellent suggestion from Martha that we try to meet up while she was at a conference in Denver. Luckily Nat and Erin had a few days off for President’s Weekend, so it worked out perfectly.

When I flew in on Friday I got to see the Rockies. They are pretty impressive.

Nat picked me up at the airport with the faithful Oliver dog, Jethro. Then we got to pick-up M from her hotel in downtown Denver. Nat and Erin live in an ‘up-in-coming’ neighborhood not far from the downtown. It has some amazing Mexican restaurants. One of the best treats of Denver was Nat’s breakfast burritos made with green chili and insanely good flour tortillas. The tortillas were so good that I had to bring some back for Aaron.

As for green chili, if you are a east-coaster like me, you may think of chili as something made in a Crockpot with meat, beans, and tomatoes. But green chili is more of a sauce that goes on anything and everything from eggs to french fries. Here’s a website I found with more info. for the curious foodies out there: http://denvergreenchili.com/default.aspx

After lunch with Nat and M we got a quick tour of Nat and Erin’s house before going to pick up the lady of the house from work.

The entrance

The kitchen

Awesome polka dot room.

Fairy princess guest room.

TV room.

Nat is a woodworker, so they have converted the garage into a shop for him.

They also have an awesome backyard and patio where we soaked up the Denver sun.

Besides being awesome friends and green chili eaters. Nat and Erin have the whole outdoorsy, gardening, composing, good life going for them. Erin made sure that we at least went on a walk every day, so we balanced the delicious Denver food and beer.

On Saturday, sadly Erin had to go to class, but Nat took us to Red Rock for a little hike.

It’s a beautiful place and we were lucky enough to have beautiful weather too.

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On Saturday night, Mom and Dad Page treated us all to a belated birthday dinner for M. We went to Jonesy’s Eat Bar in downtown Denver. They have amazing fries and sliders. We got thai chili fries, mac and chese fries, buffalo fries, and truffle parmesean fries. As for the sliders: shrimp po boys, falafel, lamby joes, and traditional blue cheese and bacon. DELICIOUS!

After dinner we played pool. Because every classy restaurant should have a pool table.

That night a giant snow storm hit Minneapolis, so lucky for us, Martha got stuck in Denver for an extra day. We spent Sunday lounging around and since Nat and Erin didn’t have school on Monday, we got to play a bar quiz game, Geeks who Drink. I definitely recommend.

So those are some of the highlights of the trip. We also watched a lot of Buffy and gave Jethro lots of love and attention. I have to say, Denver was a pretty fabulous place and I’m looking forward to hopefully seeing Martha, Nat, and Erin again sometime soon.

Mid February quick update…

2011-02-22T21:20:00.001-05:00

Well, the month is still going on strong…. between the newspaper, classes, the internship, and various other commitments, time really doesn’t exist… so, I really haven’t gotten to do any fun shooting for a long while.. so, this past weekend, while Virginia was in Denver (She’ll do a blog update later) I finally got to go out and do some shooting… well… first I had to go shoot a local “Tough Man Competition”

So… the above is about what I was thinking… I was thinking that a Tough-Man competition would be a mouth-piece and some tape on the hands / wrists…. then, they’d get out there and beat each other senseless…. I was picturing sweat and blood flying.. broken noses… good old American fun. However, I was mistaken.

Now… yeah.. that guy is getting punched in the face… but they’re wearing 16oz gloves and headgear…. not to mention the groin protector… I’m not saying that boxing isn’t tough… boxing is hard-core, and it takes someone who’s in great physical condition to last more than a few seconds in the ring.. but… I wouldn’t call boxing a tough-man competition… Also, you may notice that the above pictures are.. horrible… well, the “Arena” was the local National Guard Armory… which was horribly lit… and, we “press” members had to sit at tables that were pushed up against the ring… meaning that we had to attempt to shoot through the ropes, and that’s never fun.

There were a few opportunities for some tighter shots… but not very many… and while there’s a little blood on this guy, I wouldn’t exactly say that there was a lot of blood flowing outside of the bodies…

There were a few decent hits though… some that were enough to make people take a little nap on the mat for a while…

So, after the boxing, Zack and I hopped in the car to go take a few pictures… of course, at the time, it was dark.. so, that made for some interesting pictures….

It was a full moon… so I couldn’t pull crazy long exposures.. for most, it seemed that the magic number was somewhere between 4-10 minutes….

The moon made some pretty cool shadows… and the clouds made some cool streaks in the sky…

We ended Saturday night by spending some time shooting this awesome old bus.. I think that the bus has been converted to a home.. or, it may possibly be the start of a hippie commune… note the stove-pipe coming out of the front window, and the plywood replacing the front windshield… So… another short note on the bus.. this bus is off the Parkway a little bit… over a few fences and a hike up a hill…. now… this was a decently steep hill…. you can stand on top of the hill, look around 360 degrees, and it’s like you’re above everything… you can see for miles and miles… but, the hill is steep.. on all sides. There’s no way this thing was driven up the hill under its own power. So, I have no other logical explanation other than to say that the bus was dropped on top of that hill by aliens. So… after a few shots of the bus, I ended up back at home at about 3AM.

Saturday, I woke up at 7… got a shower… and drove in to pick up Zack. We then headed up to Shady Valley, where I was helping out Zack with some motorcycle photography… It was supposed to be in the 70’s on Saturday… but that didn’t happen. What did happen is that I got sunburned. It got up to about 50. So, we only saw half a dozen motorcycles in about 4 hours… so, I drove Zack back to his dorm, and went out to do a little Recon for the shoot we wanted to do Saturday night… This found me up on the Parkway again… but after a short time, I found what I was looking for (More on that below) So, I gave Josh a call, and he agreed to come meet me at the intersection of 221 and 421… so, since I happened to be driving past the Park and Ride at the time, I pulled in, put the car in park, and absolutely passed out. Josh says he had to beat on the window about 3-4 times to get me to wake up and unlock the door for him… it was only a 10 minute nap… but man… it felt amazing.

So, then Josh and I grabbed a quick meal… picked Zack up again… and by about 6:30 we were on our way out to the Dark Sky Observatory, which is an observatory owned by the University. We have been planning on doing this for a long time… and finally got around to it, even though the conditions weren’t the best… Sure, it was decently warm and the sky was clear, but this past weekend was a full moon. So, we knew that the moon was going to rise at about 9:30.. so we got there around 7 and figured we could beat the moonrise…

So, pointing at Polaris gives those nice tight circles over about a 30 minute exposure…. however, we realized that perhaps we weren’t at “the” observatory… so, we went for a quick walk… we discovered a much larger building up the road just a bit, and I came back down to the above shot and cut the exposure short….

I had this awesome shot lined up… right through the center of the dome… and the dang thing moved in the middle of the shot…

And the same thing happened here…. but… I think the effect on this one isn’t as bad, since it’s not such a tight shot on the dome itself…

Here’s another challenge of shooting during a full moon… in the foreground, you can see the shadow of my tripod…. once again, it doesn’t bother me too much… but I’d prefer if it wasn’t there….

There were all sorts of interesting photo opportunities at the observatory…. but we really wanted to be there for the star trails… so once the moon made that no longer an option, we headed out towards other places….

Is there any better place to be at 10pm than a graveyard during a full moon? I think not… here you see the headstones directly ahead… the shadows created by the full moon… and behind the fence, a bit of evening traffic coming through….

The church really had all sorts of interesting shots… and it was a neat looking church in general…

So.. all in all, the weekend was great for some non-required photography…. I had a blast out shooting… and a I learned some great techniques… Until next time…. ….

Also… a quick update of just pictures….

2011-02-22T21:15:00.000-05:00

I forgot to mention this.. but on campus, we recently just did the polar plunge as well… and by “we” and “did” I mean “we photographers” “took pictures” …. so..without further ado… Pictures.

Ahhh February…

2011-02-13T22:28:00.001-05:00

So… the blog has been a bit… we’ll say… “lacking” lately… but, in our defense, Boone has been sucky lately. It’s been cold, and snowing, and horrible. And cold. And snowing. So, since the past few blog posts were about the horrible snow, I didn’t think adding more about the snow would do anyone any good… plus, those may be memories that we’d just as soon forget. …

So, on to today… we decided to go for a hike! It was in the lower 50’s… so after a little internet searching, we decided on a place to go, and took off… there’s got to be no better way to enjoy a sunny day than with a hike, and with only the faintest remnants of snow remaining, what better way to celebrate the warmth?

Well crap. But, the hike was still rather wonderful… the air burned my lungs… and the ground was soggy in the sunny areas, and covered in snow in the shady areas….

But… we were actually kind of hoping for these conditions… because the main purpose of the trip was to visit the Crab Orchard Waterfall.

The waterfall looked pretty awesome with the snow and ice all over it… so, to add a little more awesomeness to the mix, I set up the tripod and did a 25 second exposure of the lower section of the falls…

I tried to get a similar long exposure with Virginia in the shot… but… she has a problem standing still for much more than 2 seconds….

but… I did manage to get a few decent shot with both of us…

You can see here…. even though there is snow on the ground… Virginia is in a light jacket…. and … and….. she even has it unzipped!!!

Finally…. tomorrow is Valentine’s Day… in celebration, Virginia and I had some friends over for dinner Saturday night… since… for some unknown reason, Valentine’s Day is on a Monday… what kind of horrible idea is that? I was talking about holidays falling on useless days of the week with my mother today… Valentine’s Day should be one of those floating holidays like Thanksgiving… it should always be on a Friday or Saturday… but… in any case… have a nice Monday.

On another note… I ‘m a big fan of certain seasonal candies…. Candy Corn, Jelly Beans, Candy Canes, and of course… Conversation Hearts… but… this year… conversation hearts are a bit difficult to find… why? why can’t I find these magical, chalky little hearts with cheesy saying written on them??? well… here’s why: http://www.newser.com/story/111315/12-year-old-shocked-by-naughty-conversation-heart.html

Snowed in.

2011-01-13T19:23:00.002-05:00

I’m beginning to dislike this weather…

How deep is it?

Well… it’s about as deep as a Buick. …

So.. we’ve been stuck in the house for the past few days… I made some awesome chicken for dinner the other night… and made some bagels this morning, that you can see over at the cooking blog… but other than that… there hasn’t been much going on… a lot of Netflix… Virginia had to work from home today… and while she was doing that… I played around with some water droplet photos….

So.. that’s all that’s been going on here… we’re starting to get back into the swing of things with the Spring semester.. but this weather keeps being a pain.

Quick kitty update….

2011-01-10T21:28:00.001-05:00

So… just had to share these for all of the people who don’t like cats that follow our blog…

Look at how cute OC is….

And grace got in on the action…. so.. 2 cats… 1 rope…

…the resulting tug ‘o war…..

So… for the people who don’t like cats… tell me that these two aren’t just precious…

Beginning of January …

2011-01-08T12:12:00.001-05:00

Well, the first big news from January is related to the cooking blog… we got a new mixer….

It’s an amazing machine… 575 watts of pure kitchen bliss…

Then… we’ve been having some interesting weather… below is Wednesday of this week…

You can see that there’s some remaining snow.. but for the most part.. everything is clear… you can even see the ground!

Above is Friday morning…

And the above is this morning… right now, we have probably right around a foot on the grill… … you might be wondering why I would care about what’s on the grill… well.. the answer to that is quite simple…

That doesn’t tell you anything? How about this one?

Beginning to see it?

Grace knows what’s in all of those maroon boxes…

Yes… that’s a road of meat…

But, as you could see above… the grill is… well… buried in snow. While it is tempting to go ahead and stand out there and grill…the possibility of frostbite can’t be overlooked… plus there’s the issue of the ability of propane to flow in artic temperatures… so… I think grilling is not an option… but I’ve got a few filets thawing in the fridge for dinner tonight… so.. it should be ok.. and there are worse situations to be in than being stuck in the house with a freezer full of meat.

We’ll try to keep warm… and full of meat.

Happy New Year!!!

2010-12-31T23:59:00.000-05:00

The last photos of 2010

2010-12-31T23:58:00.000-05:00

Here are the last shots that my camera took in 2010… we went for a quick jaunt up to Abingdon and Bristol yesterday… nothing like a good walk and some Cracker Barrel to really make the day…

and… it helped that it was 65 degrees in Abingdon… it’s funny.. the people there were walking around with jackets on…. Virginia was ready to strip down to a bikini….

Or course.. there were still a few signs that it had been cold recently…

So… that’s it for the pictures from 2010…. we’re looking forward to more adventures in 2011…

Christmas in Lexington!

2010-12-28T20:46:00.002-05:00

Well… we were at home in Lexington for the last… 10 days or so… had all sorts of good times.. good food… lots of good food… and time with family is always good as well…

So… blog updates will be broken up accordingly.. food will land over at the cooking blog… other stuff will end up here..

The trip started with me heading up to Northern VA with Newhall to play with some fun cars….

The above would be the heart and soul of a Porsche 911 Turbo … very clean, very fun car.

This… well… this is a Nissan Skyline GTR … and it’s.. amazing. I was lucky enough to sit in the passenger seat for a little drive in this thing… and it blew my mind. It’s wicked fast. It handles like a dream… and the sound… well.. the sound of the car is worth the price-tag by itself.

So.. while Newhall worked.. I got to drool. It was totally worth the trip.

Then, it was back to Lexington… where I discovered that all of my shirts that I made sure to wash, dry and hang on hangers…. had been left in Boone. So, I called Virginia and she had to go shopping for some new shirts for me… But, all of that done, we went to church.. then to lunch… and overall good times.

At the Page household, Virginia worked on decorating the tree.. and there was cookie making… which will be on the cooking blog…

and Virginia added an ornament that she made in Boone…

Then.. after lots of cooking… it was off to the Trovato household… we had dropped off the cats there when we first got to town, so we were anxious to get there and check in with them again… Poor OC doesn’t get along well with other cats.. and Grace and Tyger teamed up on her and confined her to the upstairs… so she got a little special treatment… her own room…. catered / delivered meals… and her private litterbox…. meanwhile… Grace had the run of the house…

So, Grace used her freedom to climb the Christmas tree… and set up camp there…

Back to the Page household, it was time for Martha to experience her own little bit of fun with Gingerbread. She gave it a valiant effort, but she was having issues with the frosting as well…. so… I blame the people at Domino Sugar. … I’m sure it has absolutely nothing to do with them… but… its easier to explain that way.

Then, it was back to the Trovato house…. Rachel showed up, and brought stuff to make buffalo chicken dip…. which was rather tasty… and there was more cookie making…

We “had Christmas” at the Trovato household on the 23rd.. Dad had to work on the 24th and 25th.. so, the evening of the 23rd worked like a champ… then, it was to Church on Christmas Eve.. and Christmas morning found us back at the Page household… Virginia’s mom was happy as a teenager with her new iPod Touch.. and she picked up the usage of it amazingly quick…

Before long, she’ll be downloading apps and accessing Facebook just like all of the rest of the cool kids.

Christmas evening found us at the Oliver’s house, where we stuffed our faces… sang carols…played games…

and had some great times and good laughs…

For the record though…. Settlers of Catan … two thumbs down. BORRRRRRING.

Amazingly… this is about all I have for non-food related pictures… out of the 160 pics I took… most were of food apparently…so… it likely won’t happen tonight… but a new update over at the food blog will be coming decently soon…***EDIT*** I actually did manage to get it up tonight!! So go check it out...

We did also get to spend some time with the NJ Trovatos who were visiting with my Grandparents… but… I didn’t take too many pictures there… so.. until next time.. here’s my cousin Vince.

Merry Christmas from Boone!

2010-12-16T18:58:00.001-05:00

Death by Gingerbread.

2010-12-13T18:19:00.001-05:00

So… I had plans today to make a Gingerbread apartment building… so, in preparation, we stayed up late last night making plenty of dough… then pressing the dough into the forms and baking batch after batch of gingerbread… of course, the down time was spent watching quality TV and drinking quality wine.

About midnight… we stopped cooking and climbed into bed. As expected, today was an apocalypse of snow and wind.. generally, blizzard conditions… high winds… snow from all directions… so.. the University was closed today, giving both Virginia and I the day off. So, after a quick breakfast… we got back to cooking more gingerbread. But, eventually, we had collected all of the pieces that we’d need to make the “Apartment Building” …. or so we thought.. we actually ended up a little short.. so, we fired up the mixer for one last batch of dough… while mixing, all of the sudden, the mixing bowl went off to the side… the mixing bowl is metal, and locks into a plastic rotating doohickey on the base of the mixer stand… well.. the rotating doohickey sheared clean off…. so… no more attached mixer bowl = no more functioning mixer. … There’s a local place that sells refurbished Kitchen Aid mixers though… so.. I might have to go take a look at those… or, see if I can find a replacement base for our current mixer…

In any case.. due to the mixer going down, I couldn’t get the icing to properly mix.. it wasn’t as stiff as it should have been… and it wasn’t as structurally strong.. so… the gingerbread building was falling apart as soon as I started to put it together… So… mixer.. you’ll be missed…. you lived an honorable life until taken down in your prime by a batch of gingerbread… worry not though… you will be avenged… or.. repaired. I think I can find a replacement base.

so.. not much else went on today… I felt that a blog update was in order though to describe the reason why the proposed construction didn’t get completed. …

I did play around with some neat camera stuff though… I took a piece of foam that I had leftover from making a flash bounce card and cut it down to fit inside of my 35mm lens threads… then cut a tree into it.

Like so.

Now.. why would I do this? Well… to get pictures like this:

Yep… that’s all it takes to make the lovely out of focus “Bokeh” turn from just colorful dots… to festive shaped little blobs… I thought it was pretty neat… and made it from things I had just lying around…

Grace has gotten more interested in the tree lately… so… we’ll end with a video from Simon Tofield that explains pretty well what’s been going on around here….

Oh… and I meant to add this earlier…. but.. I’ve ben playing with star trails again lately…

Gingerbread Houses!

2010-12-11T15:40:00.001-05:00

So, those that are readers of the cooking blog know that we’ve been making some parts for gingerbread houses….

If you didn’t see how it’s all made.. you can go check that out… but… after it’s all made… it’s time for some assembly. Now, we use that industrial strength frosting that we made earlier to hold everything together… and we invited over a few friends to share in the construction.

Courtney started by laying out all of the parts involved with making the tower….

While Virginia jumped right into making a foundation of frosting and starting to stand up walls.

They continued working for a good bit…. you could tell that they’re not construction professionals… but we won’t hold that against them….

The best thing about working with gingerbread? When the side of your house breaks in half…. you toss some frosting on it and stick it back together… easy as pie…. err…. bread?

After Virginia was working on the house for a while… Victoria showed up, and we put her to work… starting with installing the roof…

She did okay…. although there were a few tense moments….

But… she did pretty good….and Courtney was making good progress on the tower… but she had to leave early…

After several hours of fun and decorating though… the house and the tower both came out rather lovely…

So… that was it for the gingerbread houses… … .. …. … so far …

But… we’re supposed to have horrible weather this weekend…. Ice… snow.. just general nastiness… so… I think I’m going to build a gingerbread apartment complex… it should be fun. and I’ll be sure to post pictures if I manage to make it work out decently…

Beginning of December post…

2010-12-09T20:48:00.001-05:00

Well… I know blog updates have been a bit few and far between lately…. but things have been really busy here in Boone lately… Virginia seems to have something going on every night of the week after work, and I’ve been having photo assignments for the newspaper and meetings and whatnot…

so, here’s the summary of all of that you can pick and choose to create your own sentence: We had to stay late tonight because Aaron / Virginia had a meeting / a presentation / to shoot football practice / to shoot a basketball game, and we didn’t get home until 10pm. For my part of having to stay late… I can toss in some cool pictures for you to glance at….

But… we went home for Thanksgiving…that was a good time.. these trips always seem too short… but, we made it up there with 2 cats… we ate ourselves silly for days on end… and generally had a good time.

We also went to the last Farmer’s Market here in Boone… and unlike last year’s final Farmer’s Market, it wasn’t freezing cold this time…

They had some decent produce left… and good meats of course… but typically, these final few Farmer’s Market days are for selling crafts and gifts…

I think that about ties up the end of November… since December has started… well.. it’s been NASTY cold. We got somewhere in the neighborhood of over a foot of snow up at our house…. of course, the actual town of Boone may have gotten 5-6 inches.. So… we’ve been having to bundle up… and keep the cats inside…

Grace doesn’t know anything else… but OC… well… she went outside in the snow once, when we had about 2-3 inches… she didn’t seem happy… but I think she needed to get away from Grace for a little while…. in case we haven’t introduced OC to everyone… here she is:

OC is a sweetheart… but she acts like an old cat… and Grace wants to play… and OC wants nothing to do with that…

Also… we went and got a Christmas Tree today!!

We somehow either don’t have a tree skirt… or we forgot about / lost it. But.. Virginia was glad to get a tree.. and I got her a nice wreath…. so… she’s been in a Christmassy mood tonight… (Note: “Christmassy” apparently exists in spell-check) and she took care of all of the tree decorating…. while wearing a red ribbon Ninja Decorating Headband.

Also, Virginia has some Gingerbread going… it’s amazing what goes into making Gingerbread.. and how it’ll take over your entire kitchen. So…. be looking for Gingerbread baking on the Cooking Blog soon…. the actual making of the houses… well… that might end up on this blog… with some pictures of the completed gingerbread houses on the cooking blog… but.. we’ll see how that pans out.

But… we should be able to make some awesome Gingerbread houses…

We’ll try to keep the blog updated more often… with winter rolling in at full strength.. expect some pictures of snow.. and complaining about the same… for us… we’ll try to remember slightly warmer days….

Holeeee Moley

2010-11-13T22:43:00.001-05:00

It’s been a while since I’ve updated this part of the blog….

So.. let me fill you in… last time, we had just gotten back from Gatlinburg…

October was a time to try to get out and enjoy the weather as much as possible before things turned horrible in that department…

So… we took a few trips hither and yon… but… let’s talk about the most memorable trip of the month of October.

Virginia and I took a trip to Abingdon VA… where there was a “festival” of some sort going on… at this point, I’ve forgotten what they called it… but it was something like “Downtown Madness” … in fact… that might have been the name… so… we were expecting outright awesomeness… you know… dancing in the streets… maybe a band… some traveling performers… people blowing fireballs… I mean… we’re talking Madness right? not lameness… however… lameness was what we got… We talked to a guy from the visitor’s center… got a map of where the local businesses were that would be participating… and we were off… first stop was the Barter Theater… which was supposed to have refreshments… not only did they not have refreshments… the people who were working there looked at us like we were trying to rob the joint… so.. we continued on our tour… we walked around town… guided by my Google GPS… so we could actually find the random businesses… some weren’t open… some didn’t exist ( a brewery that was on the tour.. that was supposed to be doing a tasting… but, the building was empty… it was still under construction… ) Overall… the festival was disappointing… we still had a great time walking around.. and ended up going to Bristol..for dinner and a trip to Best Buy… speaking of dinner… let me tell you a funny story….

Virginia and I ended up going to Cracker Barrel… because we’re apparently a senior citizen couple.. But anyhow… we went to Cracker Barrel in Bristol… Virginia was in a breakfast-y mood… so she ordered the Blueberry Pancakes… I… ordered the Chicken Livers with Collard Greens and Mac and Cheese… say what you will… but I actually like chicken livers, and I never get to have them / don’t know how to cook them,,,, so… our food comes out.. everything looks and smells wonderful… I get a top-off on my sweet tea… and we’re ready to chow down… This is where the story takes a turn… apparently… some people like to put vinegar on their collard greens… I wasn’t introduced to collard greens until I was stationed at Ft. Knox, so I was unaware of this fact… well.. apparently, so was Virginia… oh.. I should probably mention that the vinegar came in a small plastic pitcher looking thing… like syrup may come in… at this point… I’m sure that everyone is online as to where this story is heading… so… let me go ahead and say it… Virginia grabs the mini-pitcher of vinegar… and pours it all over her pancakes… after a few tentative bites… she gets an odd look on her face.. and starts asking questions about if / how syrup goes bad… I’m unsure as to exactly what is going on at this point… but at the same time.. it hits both of us… Virginia grabs the little pitcher again.. gives it a whiff.. and realizes exactly what happened… so… moral of this story.. the waitress took away the vinegar cakes and brought Virginia a freshly prepared blueberry pancakes…. so… Cracker Barrel… you get our seal of approval.. 1 for serving breakfast all day… 2 for bringing out a 2nd set of pancakes even though the employees of the restaurant had done nothing wrong to them…

Also.. we recently spent a weekend in Charlotte… Virginia had a housing / res-life conference to go to… and I was on fall break, so I decided I’d drive Virginia around… it was a good time… but I really just spent a much of time hanging out in the hotel.. I did a bit of walking around town… but since I didn’t know the area too well.. I didn’t stray far from the hotel.. However, that crazy mirrored parrot doohickey above was about 3 blocks from the hotel….

Moving on… we seem to have ended up with another cat…

Meet O.C. … OC came to us all on her own… we think perhaps when a neighbor down the hill moved out, he left poor OC behind… Virginia named her OC for “Outside Cat” because at first, OC would just show up at feeding times.. then, as it got cooler outside, OC started coming inside… so Outside Cat was no longer applicable… but, since she wore the name well… we just changed the meaning.. to “Other Cat” … yeah… we’re inventive and imaginative…. So… yeah… she comes and goes kind of as she pleases… I think mainly because she doesn’t like Grace…

Also.. I picked up a little job to take up some of my free time… I’m now a photographer for “The Appalachian” … which is the newspaper for the school… it’s a good time …. most of the time… even though it’s turning out to take up HUGE chunks of time… but.. I’ve shot my first college football game… which can be seen at http://www.svpics.com/football/ … not bad for my first attempt.. and it was a night game, so my then current 70-200 f/4 wasn’t really made for shooting night games… so… that lens has since been replaced by Canon’s new 70-200 f/2.8 IS II…. and it’s…. awesome….

We had a lovely Thanksgiving here in Boone… which can be seen over on our cooking blog at http://boone-cooking.blogspot.com ….

Today, we went out to shoot something for the paper… a story about the ski season starting up…

You’ll notice that this snow cat… well.. isn’t sitting on any snow… It was cold last weekend… in fact.. it snowed last Friday… but, all week, it’s been in the 60’s… so.. there might be 3-4” of snow on the ground… people were skiing… and there was grass showing through the snow in many spots all over the slopes…

I’ll be bringing home a stack of newspapers I’ve been published in so far this semester when we come home for Thanksgiving in Lexington…in case anyone is interested…

Wow… I think I’ve covered all of the important parts of what’s been going on since our last update… I’ll try to be better with the updates in the future months… if it’s been too long… someone drop me a line and tell me to get with it.

Gatlinburg!

2010-09-19T16:59:00.001-04:00

Before embarking on this trip… we were having dinner with some friends on Thursday evening… and I asked Angel’s husband, Todd, what he thought of Gatlinburg… he said “It’s Myrtle Beach, without the beach.” … What a perfect description this was.

For those that haven’t been to Gatlinburg lately.. let me fill you in. There are certain things that Gatlinburg is a Mecca for: Airbrushed T-Shirts, Custom / Novelty License Plates and frames, NASCAR Memorabilia, Beef Jerky, and Fudge / Candy.

The reason for our visit to Gatlinburg was none of the above… our visit was to visit Arrowmont.. to see:

Jennifer. She’s at Arrowmont, doing a residency… she seems to be having a good time…

The above is a quick look at Jennifer’s studio. She appears to be getting a lot of work done… With us to distract her though… she didn’t seem to get as much done…

Friday evening, we walked up to a lovely steakhouse for dinner and a little preview of what was around town. The remaining time Friday evening was restful.. we just hung out.. watched a movie… went to bed at a decent time…

Saturday, we started off with breakfast at one of the many pancake “Cabins” in the area… I’ve got to give them credit.. they made one heck of a breakfast… the place was PACKED as well… it was a good start to the day for a little people watching… After packing ourselves full of food, it was a short walk up the hill to the Salt and Pepper Shaker Museum.(Click on that link to go to the website, and you can even go on a virtual tour of the museum)

For those who don’t click on the link, at this museum, you’ll find over 20,000 pairs of salt and pepper shakers. That’s right… over 20,000 pairs. They’re categorized by type to include: Christmas, Wood, Food, Alcohol, Cats, Dogs, Monkeys, Cities, Cows, Chickens, etc, etc, etc.

It was rather amazing. Personally, I was a bi fan of the salt and pepper shakers that looked like something you would ever use salt or pepper on… like Ice Cream… or Bourbon bottles…. or other oddities. Best of all… if you’re interested, the entire museum is for sale.

After the museum, we noticed a “winery” up the hill from the Museum, so we went to check that out.. it was the typical wine for this area… mainly sweet stuff. nothing that falls under the realm of normal wines…

After such a busy morning, we went back to Arrowmont to get the grand tour there… There’s definitely some interesting stuff going on around there… lots of workshops and classes offered… in the above picture, we stopped at the Arrowmont library for a little break…

Then, we were off to the Ripley’s Aquarium.

These folks at Ripley’s had all sorts of stuff all over town… the Aquarium, the Ripley’s Museum, Ripley’s Mini-Golf…. a little bit of everything.. But for an aquarium located 500+ miles from the nearest Ocean… it’s amazing what they had… really the whole 9… sharks, fish, rays, all sorts of stuff!!

After a walk around the aquarium, we headed up the street for a Moonshine Tasting at the Ole Smoky Distillery . They had some corn liquor, some white lightning, cherries soaked in white lightning, and “Apple Pie” … which was their White Lightning with apple juice, apple cider, cinnamon, and sugar… it was the only one that really went down smooth, but given the ratio of the mixture, it wasn’t too surprising… it’s roughly 1 gallon of apple juice, 1 gallon of cider, 2 cups of sugar, some cinnamon sticks, and one quart of 100 proof white lightning. But, the tasting was free… so, totally worth stopping by to check it out.

This got us up to lunch on Saturday, at which point we stopped at a Greek restaurant with live bluegrass musicians playing… a few gyros, and a few glasses of iced tea, and we were recharged and ready to go…. … Sort of… … more like ready to go back to the house and take a nap… Which we did with gusto.

Jennifer made some burgers for dinner topped with mushrooms and muenster… accompanied by twice baked potatoes, and grilled corn on the cob… These artsy folks know how to eat…

Virginia and I didn’t last too much longer after dinner… so we packed it in early, and got some good sleep for the drive back today…

We woke up this morning, packed up… Jennifer cooked us some egg and cheese sandwiches for breakfast….

Then, we came back to Boone via Maggie Valley and Cherokee… It was a nice trip… I wish I would have taken more pictures… but I’ve been trying out a new lens… and I’m not the biggest fan of it… hopefully there will be more blog updates in the near future before the weather turns all crappy…

Today is our anniversary!

2010-09-12T20:48:00.001-04:00

Believe it or not… it’s already been a year. With that in mind, I decided that it was time for a new look for the blog. So, hopefully, everyone (all 4 readers) like the new layout.

So, being our first anniversary of actual marriage… the decision was made that one day of celebration was not enough.. so, the celebration kinda lasted all weekend.

To start things off, I had to enlist the service of our good friend Josh. I needed both his muscles and his truck for the gift I had decided to get for Virginia.

See, Virginia always likes to climb into the recliner with me…which isn’t too surprising because I tend to exude a good amount of excess heat, and as anyone who’s ever come to visit us knows…. the futon in the TV room isn’t the most comfortable place in the world to sit.

So enters “The Cuddler”

Yes… it’s really that big…. let’s take another look…

So… finally, it’s a recliner that we can both share…. The only problem is that it’s pretty difficult to close the thing up by yourself… Also, parents be warned… the next time parents visit, they made be made to share the cuddler….

So, after Josh and I snuck this monster into the house and set it up, it was time to start thinking about dinner… so, I didn’t take any pictures, but I made some hot bacon dressing with some salad; chicken breasts stuffed with ricotta, mozzarella, and parmesan; and finished it all up with a Gooey Butter Cake… Let me tell you now.. the Gooey Butter Cake will make the food blog at some point… but it might be a little while before I make it again. You arteries harden just thinking about the recipe. But, it’s really dang tasty.

After the feast, we rounded off the night by trying to sit in the cuddler and watch TV… next thing you know, we woke up in front of a TV that had been idle so long that it shut off. So… is the chair comfortable? I’d say yes.

Saturday morning, we rolled out of bed and decided to head to a festival in celebration of the Blue Ridge Parkway’s “Birthday”… there was to be music, crafts, and all sorts of information about the Parkway. So, after driving up to Cumberland Gap on the Parkway, we finally got to the Music Center where the majority of the music was happening… Now, at this point, I suppose I should mention that it was raining when we left Boone. But, we turned on the radio, listened to NPR and kept heading North. But, it was still raining when we got to the music center.

We parked the car in a field and headed over to an information tent to see what the deal was. Apparently, there would be a “shuttle” showing up to take us to areas where things were actually happening, as the field we were in wasn’t exactly a happening spot. But, here’s the catch… all of the music stuff was in the amphitheater… which is outside… in the rain. So, we looked over at the group of people standing in the rain, anxiously awaiting the shuttle, just so they’d get a chance to hear the wonderful bluegrass music… and got back into the car.

We were a bit bummed, but at the same time, we weren’t about to sit in the rain to hear some bluegrass. We might have another trip up there on a day that isn’t outrageously crappy weather. So, we hopped onto the Parkway heading back South, and hopped off at Galax. At this point, we were getting a bit hungry so I whipped out the Droid and asked it where to eat. (For some readers : The Droid is my amazingly smart Google Powered phone.. it does a bit of everything, including telling me where to eat based on my GPS location… with reviews of local restaurants) So, the Droid told me that I should head to Flossie’s for lunch, as apparently Flossie’s is outstanding.

As we got close to Flossie’s the road was blocked off… dang… another setback? No! This time, it was a street festival. As we parked the car, bluegrass music filled the air. We rounded the corner, and saw people flat-footing and clogging to the music. We continued into Flossie’s and immediately upon looking at the menu, we knew that we were in the right place. Virginia got a hot turkey sandwich on Texas Toast with mashed ‘taters and gravy, and I got a country fried steak with gravy, mac n’ cheese, green beans, and hush-puppies. The food there was AMAZING!! (With the exception of the mac n’ cheese… it wasn’t horrible, but compared to the rest of the food, it was sub-par) We finished everything off with pecan pie accompanied by home-made ice cream.

We walked around Galax for a little bit, found cute little book store… but it’s all really just a blur.. what really happened in the afternoon was a herculean effort to stay awake on the way back to Boone since we were both packed with enough food to feed a small city. So, we got home, layed around… fell asleep…

We woke this morning, on the actual day of our anniversary with no real plans… until I watched the news… Who would have thought… but there was a Greek Festival in Charlotte today. So, once again, we loaded into the car and took off. Upon getting to Charlotte, we realized that the event might be a little bigger than we anticipated…

The place was PACKED. Think… Busch Gardens… in May… with 50% off coupons… that’s how busy this place was. I forgot to mention, today was the 3rd day this celebration was swinging… But, apparently, the people hadn’t gotten tired of it. … … For the most part… one of the Spartan Warriors may have had a bit too much.

He tried to take on Virginia… little did he know that she was all full of food and ready to rumble…

The food there was typical Greek Festival food… meaning AWESOME!!!! We shared a dinner of chicken, spanakopita, salad, a meatball, and some pasta / rice stuff… and for dessert, (which we had before dinner) we had Baklava Sundae… Other fun for us in the day included a tasting of Greek wines… some god walking around… and watching the little Greek kids dance.

Now… it’s time to relax and spend some time in the cuddler again… but, we also saved a bottle of wine from our wedding that we’ll be having tonight…

It’s been a great first year, with many more to come. We’ll try to keep things updated here as much as possible. Until next time… Take it easy.

Nicole’s baby shower and our awesome lake trip.

2010-08-10T20:28:00.001-04:00

Okay, well that kind of brings us into August. We made a trip home this past weekend to see our folks and for me to go to my friend Nicole’s baby shower. If you follow the blog, you may remember her beautiful wedding from last June. She’s expecting a baby in the end of September, so I go to visit her and see her all pregnant and nesting. Here is her nursery. It has a cutie monkey/jungle theme:

They even made the cake at the shower fit the theme. It was so cute and amazingly delicious.

That’s the momma, enjoying her cake!

After the shower, we went down to Smith Mountain Lake on Sunday to visit our friends the Olivers. You may remember them from our wedding. Nat and Will were the twin groomsmen.

Their folks had rented an awesome 5 bedroom lake house and were generous enough to let us tag along on their family vacation. One of the best parts was going out on their boat. Smith Mountain Lake is gorgeous and neither Aaron or I had been there before. It was enough to make me think I could become a lake person.

This is the view from their house. You can see the boat dock behind the trees.

Nat and Erin in the kitchen. You can see that Erin is hard at work on a yummy diner of pork chili concoction. If we were smart we would have taken food blog pictures.

Here’s Erin’s face-side from the boat.

We spent much of our boat time tubing. I had never been tubing off a boat, and let me just say, it ROCKED!

Although I am a bit sore today…

And some fancy people went wake boarding…

This is Will looking very extreme…

After watching Will, Aaron and I decided we were too lazy for wake boarding. Although Aaron actually had one of the best tube-wipe-outs of the day, but unfortunately no one was around to record it.

Erin was great on both tube and wake board. This is moments before her plunge into the lake.

Needless to say a fun time was had by all. That’s it for now…

Although, since these last posts have been a bit Virginia-centric, if you are wondering what Aaron’s been up to check out www.svpics.com to see all his fancy new motorcycle pictures.

Virginia goes to the beach.

2010-08-10T19:06:00.001-04:00

While Aaron was hard at work in Boone, I got to go to the beach with my family. Now, don’t feel too bad for Aaron. He was invited to come, but he doesn’t really enjoy the beach, especially the way the Pages do it which is without central air.

I don’t have too many pictures from the trip because I was only there for four days, and while we did have a great time there, my memories are a bit tarnished by the fact that I totaled our Honda CRV on the way back. I’m fine and thankfully no other cars were involved. The Honda was a valiant car and protected me from all harm, but it was still quite traumatic.

Luckily Aaron was around to come pick me up in Greensboro (it happened on I40 west). And also our insurance kicked in, but I still feel really bad. I just took my attention off the road for one second to try to block the sun and a swerved into the median. No fun.

So enough about that! Here are some pictures from the beach.

Martha and dad. I’m not sure why he looks so confused in this pic.

Silly one of me running out to rescue the car from the rain.

Me and mom, and of course me and M (who had to fly down from Minneapolis).

Long Over-due post for July… and maybe some August too.

2010-08-10T18:51:00.001-04:00

Aaron and I have been pretty busy or at least all over the place this past month. We started July by heading home to Lexington for our birthdays and got to spend some quality time with our families and see fireworks.

I had an eye-infection which is why I look especially squinty in these pictures. But Aaron did take some beautiful fireworks photos…

But first we went to the hometown bike parade, a local tradition involving youngsters on bicycles, not the usual photos of motobikers Aaron takes.

That’s Uncle Sam leading the pack on a super-tall unicycle.

In the evening we gathered at the parade ground to watch fireworks and hot air balloons.

Here you see me modeling my lovely birthday gift, a Jennifer Wells original, www.jennwells.com.

The balloons are quite lovely, no? Also there was a light-saber battle royal.

And fireworks.

Visit to Martha in Minneapolis

2010-06-20T21:25:00.001-04:00

Last weekend I got to go visit my sister in Minneapolis. This was my first trip to Minnie-SOTA, so I had quite an experience. Martha got to take a few days off from work and for me, it was like visiting a fairy godmother – she took me to get my haircut, we bought clothes, we went to fancy restaurants. It was like a whole new me.

First here is the Good Day Café Bad Day Bar and our gigantic apple-cake-soufflé thingy. Doesn’t it look big enough to feed to a dinner party?

Then we went to Martha’s cool stained glass shop. Minneapolis is full of specialty stores like that. In addition to the stained glass shop, I saw a cupcakery and a tattoo remover parlor. Lots of niche markets to cater to.

Martha has promised to make me a stained glass window featuring this cool swirly glass:

Then we went to the Global Market in Midtown which is an up-and-coming area of the city. The Global Market featured food from all over the world. We had some delicious Italian ice, and Martha posed with this giraffe.

In the afternoon I got my haircut and we ate cupcakes. Then we went for dinner at Crave, where I had a lovely fresh ravioli with bolognaise – see what I mean by being spoiled?!?

In the evening we met up with some of Martha's friends and went to a beer garden. They even had “Das Boot.”

On Saturday Martha took me to visit the Walker Art Museum. It’s famous for its huge sculpture garden.

There were all kinds of super cool modern and contemporary exhibits. One of our favorites was called “The Talent Show.” You could be part of the art by making yourself a human sculpture.

There was also an artist who wanted to draw people together into the artistic space. One whole room was full of hammocks and they played Jimmy Hendrix and projected pictures onto the walls.

Then we went to eat soup and pie at the Turtle Bread Company.

On Sunday we went shopping for a raincoat for me. We had a great time.

I think my favorite part of Minneapolis though was the outdoorsy stuff. Now Boone is pretty outdoorsy, but for a big city Minneapolis was very impressive. Martha actually lives in walking distance of three different lakes. Lakes are a very big thing there. Each lake has a different personality and all have walking and biking trails all around them.

There was also this really cool downtown area with waterfalls where the flour mills (like Pillsbury).

For my last dinner we went to Burger Jones, a really nice burger place where we got a tower of fries (parmesan waffle, sweet potatoes, and traditional) and some awesome sliders.

Until next time, here’s a fun picture of me in a giant chair outside Martha’s apartment.

Welcome to June!

2010-06-15T19:51:00.001-04:00

Well… I’ve been a bit slacking with the updates lately, but there’s been a good bit going on. My folks came to visit… or maybe that was the end of May… But.. in any case… we made ribs, we walked around the parkway.. went on top of the Rough Ridge Overlook…

Here’s Virginia and in the background, you can see the Linn Cove Viaduct… So, after getting down from Rough Ridge, we went under the Viaduct on the hiking trail there.

Other than that… it was a lot of eating and relaxing.

The next weekend started off with Leah and Brian coming down. They just got engaged, so to celebrate… we ate. Friday was the Parisian Chicken … Saturday, we did some nice thick rib-eyes and our awesome 3 cheese mac and cheese topped with caramelized shallots… and there was pound cake… and pie… and Leah and Brian brought us some chocolate covered bacon …

This stuff is pure evil… awesome… but pure evil…

Sunday, Leah and Brian took off… but we sent them on their way with a belly full of tasty waffles.

Sunday afternoon, Virginia’s parents came into town after pending their weekend in Abingdon / Damascus seeing plays and riding bicycles. We relaxed a bit, and then were out walking around again.

This is a bit further up the trail that goes under the Viaduct (we went there on Monday)… so is the following sequence of pictures:

After taking a nice walk, Virginia had to stop by her office for a while… because she’s not good at this whole “taking a day off” thing… so, while she was doing that, Virginia’s folks and I took a nice walk around campus looking at the artwork. We also had a nice little stop at the new frozen custard place in town… that stuff is rather tasty…

Last weekend, Virginia went up to Minneapolis to visit Martha. She tells me that visiting Martha is like visiting your fairy godmother… she makes all of your wishes come true apparently… But… I’ll let Virginia tell that story… I’ll just be a fly on the wall…

Up to NoVA

2010-05-26T08:39:00.001-04:00

Last weekend found us heading north. Now, many of you readers may know, I typically don’t go too far north. Northern Virginia, as far as I’m concerned, is north of the Mason-Dixon. I think a lot of the folks that live up there would agree. So, I typically don’t go north of the Mason-Dixon, but Virginia wanted to head up there to visit some friends and I haven’t been there for any sightseeing since high-school. Thursday evening, we headed out towards Lexington and made it there in time to watch the season finales of Bones and then The Office and 30 Rock. … and then we stayed up to talk with Virginia’s folks for a while. Friday, we had some tasty cheesesteaks with Virginia’s folks and my mom for lunch before leaving town, and then got on the road again.

Traffic heading towards DC wasn’t bad for a Friday afternoon, and we actually ended up getting there a bit ahead of schedule. So, since we were running early, we decided to stop at the Air and Space museum next to Dulles.

This place was awesome for so many reasons… for starters, we got there at 4:02pm and apparently after 4pm parking is free. (Before then, it’s $15 to park, then admission is free) But, after seeing the inside, I’d gladly pay the $15 to park, and then spend all day there. It closed at 5:30, and an hour and a half really wasn’t enough time to really take things in.

You might remember the above from Transformers. They had a TV over to the side that showed the transformation from what we see here into the CGI that was displayed on screen. Pretty cool stuff. There are a ton of pictures in the picture gallery, so I’ll give some quick highlights, but I recommend you click on the link in the text above for the full gallery.

So… awesomeness was had there. Then, we made our way to Will’s house in Arlington. That journey was also rather easy considering where we were. We really only got stuck in traffic once on the way there but what made it worse was that the Metro tracks were right next to the highway, so you could see other people heading towards where you wanted to be.

We made it to Will’s in time to walk a few blocks and grab some tasty margaritas and fajitas for dinner, followed by a quick game throwing bean-bags in the front yard.

From there, it was over to Abby’s house outside of Alexandria. We checked in over at Abby’s, met her boyfriend, David, then fell asleep.

NoVA Day 2

2010-05-26T08:39:00.000-04:00

Thursday was travel. Friday was travel, then a few things later in the afternoon / evening in NoVA. I’m calling this day 2, but I suppose it was really just the first whole day in NoVA.

We woke up at Abby’s, she made breakfast of bacon, eggs, and crumpets. Then, it was time to be off. First up, we went to the National Zoo.

It seemed that for the most part, the animals there were a bit more social than what we’re used to. They were out in plain view for the most part, so that was cool.

Above, we have pandas, a big gorilla and baby gorilla, a lion “spraying”, and the little rodent…

The zoo was also free admission, but was another attraction that I would have paid to see.

After the zoo, we headed to get some food … … …

That’s Ethiopian food. Yeah. They got me to eat Ethiopian food. I’ll say… it’s not horrible. The spices used reminded me of Indian / Middle-Eastern food … but everything was prepared as one form of stew or another. The picture you see is food for the 4 of us. All on one plate, and all of the food is on top a piece of the “bread”. I say “bread” because the “bread” is what seems to be a cross between a crepe, and a wetsuit. The texture is very very interesting. Like I said, all in all, it’s not horrible… but I don’t think I’ll be running out to get it again anytime soon. However, if I’m with a group of people, and thy all want to go get Ethiopian food, I know I don’t have to be too scared about it.

After lunch, we went to a nice coffee place for a bit of dessert and coffee, tea, Tom Collins, etc. Then, we were off again to head towards the Lincoln Memorial / Mall area.

After feeding the meter, we were off to see the sights.

First up, we visited Einstein. That guy was cool, but he hardly would pay attention to anything except his book. If you look at the ground in front of the statue, you’ll see some markings. If you stood in the center of the circle, and looked at Einstein, when you talked you could hear an echo. Pretty interesting.

From Einstein, it was off to visit with Lincoln. He also didn’t have much to say, but looking at the guy, I think we human-folk are shrinking as we evolve. That guy was HUGE!

It was a bit overcast, which made for interesting contrast-y pictures, but it also seemed to keep the crowds down a bit. From the Lincoln Memorial, we made our way around the area with stops at the Korean War Memorial:

and the FDR memorial:

After the FDR memorial, we walked down towards the Jefferson Memorial (Take THAT Texas!! Jefferson still totally matters!!!) but at this point, it had started to rain so the picture taking stopped.

The evening consisted of going to “Scion” which is a restaurant in the Dupont Circle area that is owned by one of Virginia’s Sorority sisters. We met up with Allie at this point, and a friend of hers from grad school who was in town for a conference. If you’re going to be in the area, I’d highly recommend Scion. The place makes the BEST Mac and Cheese with crumbled prosciutto on top. The stuff was so amazingly creamy and wonderful … I really can’t describe it in any other way than it seemed like after they made the best mac and cheese in the world, they put it into the serving dish, then poured a pint of heavy cream over it, added shredded cheese on top of that, some prosciutto, and finished it off in the oven, turning the heavy cream into gooey wonderful creaminess.

Day 3 in NoVA

2010-05-26T08:38:00.001-04:00

The next day in the area, we woke up and Abby had a yoga class she was teaching up by Dupont Circle. So, we drove over to Abby’s bellydancing studio, parked there and then walked to the Metro Station. From there, we took the Metro towards Dupont Circle and then walked to the Yoga studio. While Abby, Virginia, and Abby’s mom did Yoga, I had some time to walk around the area on my own. I had a good time walking around, and stopped for some Krispy Creme Doughnuts straight off the conveyor belt. Also, there are a bunch of consulate type places around the circle, and there was even a farmer’s market going on.

After that, I sat in the little park / fountain area in the middle of Dupont circle and did some people-watching for a bit until the ladies got done with yoga.

After Yoga, we hopped back on the Metro and went back to the bellydancing studio where we met up with Virginia’s cousins, Ashley and Allison, to go have a nice lunch. I forget the name of the place, but they made an awesome salad. Virginia got the salad which came with chicken, walnuts, dates, olives, an all sorts of other flat-out awesomeness.

After lunch, it was getting to be time for us to head to Chantilly for the “Bellydancing Expo” that Abby was dancing in. This shindig was held in a local Middle Eastern restaurant / hookah bar and had a surprising amount of dancers in the show. Here are the highlight photos from that.

The show was a good time, but as far as a picture venue, it was less than ideal. Restaurants typically don’t have the best lighting, so I had to resort to using the on-camera flash… one of these days, I need to get my hands on a better flash that I can bounce of the ceiling and whatnot… and learn how to use it…

After the show, it was back to Lexington for the night, then Monday, back to Boone. The trip was uneventful except for the fact that the highways were lined with State Police for the new seat-belt enforcement in VA… but, on the way back, on 91 between Damascus, VA and Mountain City, TN I did see my favorite church sign again…

In other Boone news, the weather has been crappy, the internship search has not been going well, and the bike has been sitting in the driveway collecting spider-webs. But on a few decent days, I did head up to Shady Valley and grab some decent pictures. We’ll end the blog update with pictures from that area.

First Farmer’s Market!!

2010-05-15T14:35:00.001-04:00

For us anyhow… There have actually been two Farmer’s Markets already, but the first week, I was studying for finals, and Virginia was in Lexington. Last week, we had planned to go, but with company in town, we got side-tracked and didn’t quite make it. So, today was the day finally, and the Farmer’s Market didn’t disappoint.

There were all sorts of fresh plants there, so we had to stock up our pots at home. So… we got:

Lemon Thyme

Pineapple Sage

Chocolate Cherry Tomato Plant

Flat Leaf Parsley

and of course, Basil

There was also some entertainment at the Farmer’s Market, namely, a kid doing magic, a guy playing violin and banjo, and 2 cowboys, complete with their six-shooters.

This has been a good start to the weekend, and there’s more good to come. Virginia is about to start to work on some spinach balls for a little get-together tonight… It should be a good time. The spinach balls will be on the cooking blog, and perhaps pictures from the get-together tonight will make it on this side of the blog.

Baby Jade visits, baby Dodge leaves…

2010-05-12T20:25:00.001-04:00

Jonathan and Lisa came to visit with their lovely daughter Jade last weekend. We really just wanted to hang out with Jade, but I guess the parents still come with the kid as a package deal until a certain age. She, of course, is an awesome kid. Very quiet, very happy, and amazingly easy to please.

Look at how cute she is… I have no idea where she gets it from…

But, she’s a good time. She likes to laugh, and smile… she really doesn’t cry much at all, and when she does, Lisa has it figured out to exactly what she needs. Although, it seems like a pretty simple rotation… food, sleep, poop. In that order… and just repeating. But, Lisa was very good at staying on top of each of these functions before it was really an issue, so the result was very little crying.

Lisa gave the Snuggie some love … (for some reason, they thought 60 degrees was chilly… I suppose they’re not used to these Boone summers …) and then later on taught Jonathan how to tie his shoes.

We took advantage of a weekend full of nice weather and went on a walk on the Greenway trail. The trail, of course, is always a good time, but it’s amazing how many people love to stop and ask about the baby… I suppose it’s like having a cute puppy… I’m willing to bet that the same people that make “gootchie gootchie” noises at babies are the ones who wag a finger in dismay when the children hit two years old and become non-stop screaming terrors.

Here we all are on a bridge on the Greenway trail. We had a good little walk, and then came back to the house for some nice beef and veggie kebobs.

In other news… the truck left us… It said it was tired of the neglect, and just didn’t have to stand for this nonsense anymore. So, it grabbed its lugnuts and drove off into the sunset.

Actually, it’s going to a better place. A place where it’ll be driven. A place where it can dip its tire in saltwater, and watch the sunrise over the sand. It loaded itself onto the trailer and is heading off to sunny Myrtle Beach. If you happen to see it around that area, pet it softly, and feed it a set of platinum spark plugs. It always loved those.

That’s all for now, but the weather has been staying mostly nice, so we’ve been venturing out and taking afternoon walks and whatnot… Until next time… … …

Yay! May!

2010-05-02T19:50:00.001-04:00

May is here. With the beginning of a new month, we’re finally getting some nice weather. So, as the school year is grinding to a halt, we took a nice little break today to go to Hebron Colony Falls; It’s one of the many areas around here that is just gorgeous. After a long, hard winter we needed a good reminder of some of the good points of this area. Below is a little taste of what it’s like at the falls. As always, click on the pictures for a larger version.

Looking at the scene as a whole, it really just looked like a mountain of rocks… but if you looked closely, in several spots, you could see waterfalls emerging from the rock. It was really a pretty amazing sight. So… we had a lovely little hike…

Climbed on rocks…

Played in the water…

Virginia soaked up some sun…

I hid from the sun…

And Virginia even chased a duck!

All in all… a very good day.

Beware visitors to Boone… the weather has turned nice again. If you come visit, we won’t just keep you in the house and fill you to the gills with food… We might make you go for a walk… or even a hike… But, it’ll be worth it. This is the time of year to stay up to date with the blog, as this is when we go out and enjoy the local sights… Hopefully, we’ll have some visitors to enjoy them with.

Another week of fun…

2010-04-25T22:16:00.001-04:00

It seems like a lot happened this week… even though it really didn’t. The beginning of the week was normal as always…

I sold off a few camera lenses that I really didn’t use much, (50mm f/1.8 and 85mm f/1.8) and replaced them with a 60mm f/2.8 Macro lens. Above is a picture of some freshly ground coffee… on a butter knife. I’m enjoying the new lens, and for food photography, it’s been letting me get a lot closer to the food. But, it also works rather well as a normal lens, not just a macro.

In other news, it was time to start getting ready for our weekend cookout. We had invited over some friends for a weekend cookout, but the weather decided it wasn’t going to cooperate. But, I already had 10 pounds of chicken and three racks of ribs in the fridge… so, we weren’t about to let the weather out-do us… it was time for some ingenuity.

2 - 5/16” hooks, a 8x10ft tarp, and some 1-1/2” PVC pipe and fittings. So… we then had a covered porch… for a while. Let me go ahead and tell you, PVC might be great for water drainage… but for wind… well, it doesn’t hold up too well. So, the wind blew a bit, and the PVC came crashing down. Luckily, the tarp was a bit shy of the depth of the porch, so we were able to just tie it to the railing, which still gave us a nice covered area to cook under.

Here’s Virginia all decked out of the party… It kind of had a theme, and that theme involved outfits that were purchased at Roses. Yes, there’s still a Roses department store around here. The place is amazing. You walk in the door, and leave modern day behind. The bestseller book section in Roses has “The man who would be president: Dan Quayle”. For real.They also had “The Heart of the Internet” … given the publishing date on that one… I’d be interested in seeing what it has to say. Looking for tacky outfits for a good prices? Roses. Looking for children’s toys with lead paint? Roses. Looking for glass topped furniture that was outdated in the 80’s? Roses.

But, the cookout / party was a good time. We ate, we laughed, we drank, we talked. Totally awesome.

The rain cleared off after a few hours this morning, so we decided to make the day productive by installing new brake pads and rotors on the Honda. Virginia helped with the whole process, and she says that if someone needs instruction on how to replace rotors and pads, she could totally tell you how to do it.

So, the CRV got treated to a set of Brembo cross drilled rotors and Hawk HPS pads. Virginia’s mom had just gotten the pads replaced not too long ago, but living up here in the mountains, the rotors saw a bit too much heat and were warped pretty bad. Slowing the car down resulted in the wheel shaking rather violently from side to side, and shaking everything else in the whole car. Also, because of the massive amounts of heat the rotors saw, the pads were overheated and cracked down the center. (Also, when you do rotors, you do pads. It’s just good practice.) So, the thought is that with the drilled rotors, they’ll be allowed to dissipate the heat a bit better than the stock solid rotors. First impressions, we’re impressed. After the initial “bedding-in” of the new pads a rotors, we did a few simulated panic stops from highway speeds, and the new brakes can bring the CRV to a VERY quick stop.

The month is winding down. I’ve got the truck for sale on eBay, and the auction on that ends Tuesday. I think I might shed a few tears when someone actually comes to pick up my poor neglected truck. We had a lot of good times together. This semester is also coming to an end. I’ve applied for several internships in the Charlottesville, VA area, and will hopefully hear from someone in that neck of the woods soon. I’ll keep you posted on what’s going on there…

Mid Month Update

2010-04-18T21:44:00.000-04:00

The weather has stayed rather nice for the first half of the month… Even though Virginia and I were expecting some sort of insane storm to ruin the lovely start of spring. Something along the lines of the 12” of snow we got last year on April 16th… But, it’s been sunny and warm.

This past weekend, we went to Jennifer’s show at East Carolina University in Greenville, NC. Jennifer was in fine form, her artwork was outstanding as always, and those art people know how to have a good time.

The above is at the reception following the show, I didn’t manage to take too many pictures during the show… But you can view some of Jennifer’s work at her website. Feel free to contact her, and purchase everything she makes. We have a house full of Jennifer Wells originals, and we’re dang lucky to have them…

So, this was Friday night. Saturday, Jenifer made a lovely breakfast of bacon, eggs, bagels, etc.

After a bite for breakfast, we were on our way back to Boone.

Saturday evening was uneventful, mainly just recovering from the drive. Today (Sunday) started off slowly. We woke up late, lied around the house a bit, then decided to wander into town. The school changed out some of the artwork this weekend, so we decided to go see what was new on campus.

So, this was a taste of the new exhibits around campus. To see more, bring yourself down to Boone.

More Mid Month Fun!!

2010-04-18T21:43:00.000-04:00

Also today, we met up with Victoria while on our walk around campus. Victoria’s boyfriend, James, apparently does a bit of artwork in one of the tunnels on campus about once a year or so. (This is allowed. People paint in the tunnels all of the time)

So, we stuck around and watched that for a bit. … James’s buddy was also there doing another piece of the wall. We didn’t hang around until the very end, but when we left, this is what they had going on…

So, that was pretty cool. Watching them work was kind of mesmerizing. We didn’t intend on staying in the tunnel and breathing fumes for too long, but the more the more they painted, the more were became amazed… It might have been the fumes, but either way, it was fun to watch.

In other news, construction is still going on all around campus… They’re still working on the steam plant return lines, working on the location of the former dining hall, building a new Education school … all kinds of awesomeness.

Catch you next time…

Early April Update

2010-04-08T09:54:00.001-04:00

Well, this month has finally ushered us into some decent weather… We both we up in Lexington for the long 4-day Easter weekend, and got to get out and enjoy the weather a bit. I put about 1700 miles on the bike, and Josh came up with us for some riding as well.

Josh and I left Thursday evening, and spent a few days at Jonathan’s house changing tires on the bikes, doing some maintenance, and playing with baby Jade.

Jade’s getting big, and getting vocal. She’s not talking quite yet, but she sings to herself, and she’s absolutely sure that she can stand up on her own, so when she’s on your lap, she’ll grab you by the shirt collar and pull herself up to standing.

Friday was the work day on the bikes, then Josh and I went for a quick ride to try to remember how to ride. Saturday was the main riding day, and some rather impressive things happened. We had a good time, put on a lot of miles, and Josh managed to drag about half of a footpeg off of his bike, AND drag a hole through his shoe and sock, but somehow had no marks on his skin.

Above is about the most natural that you’ll ever see Lisa. With a knife and a smile. She made up a pot-roast for us one night for dinner, and we sat around and did a good bit of talking.

Easter Sunday, we went over to Virginia’s folks’ house to hang out, and took a nice walk down a local trail where the flowers were blooming.

We did take a little time to stop and enjoy the playground for a bit though… For some reason, Virginia loves these bouncy things…

First thing Monday morning, the Taurus went to Jonathan for a oil change and adjustment to the transmission cables… I love taking the Taurus up there as the other mechanics tend to gather ‘round and marvel at a 1996 Taurus with 193,000 miles that really needs nothing.

Monday evening found us at Kendal, having dinner with Virginia’s grandmother, where we found this little gem of a sign on the way in. Really? 19? I could see how 20mph would be dangerous… but 19mph is just worlds safer. But, once inside for dinner, Kendal puts on a pretty amazing spread. We had fish, cous-cous stuffed quail, and some good assorted veggies. I was rather impressed.

In other news, with the warm weather settling in, we went out and got a grill yesterday. You can read about it on our Cooking Blog… but let me say… the guy who designed this thing… well… he should be punished.

Until next time… enjoy the nice weather.