End of February

Grace has lived the life we all should have this February. Inside in the heat all day… Lounging around… Not a care in the world… Meanwhile, outside has been crap. Nothing but snow and wind.

My basil has started to sprout… Our extra bedroom is turning out to be a good room for growing. It’s easy to block off and keep this room at a slightly higher temperature than the rest of the house.

The Chives have also started to sprout, but they’re not quite as impressive as the basil. Sprouting chives just looks like grass to me. Meanwhile, this is what it looks like outside:

Snowy. Dreary. Grey. (Or is that Gray?) In any case, it’s still not looking too lovely outside. Every once in a while, we get a bit of sunshine peeking through the clouds, but it never hangs around for long.

We’ve still been cooking up a storm, with some winners and some… “Meh, they’re ok.” … However, the side effect has been that we always seem to have tons of leftovers around. Many of the things we make aren’t possible to make in smaller portions. But, coming soon on the cooking blog will be: Crab Ravioli, and some lovely chicken dish with country ham. Virginia made an awesome Thai dish last night which is documented on the Cooking Blog.  Hopefully March will bring better weather. Virginia will be doing an “Alternative” Spring Break in the beginning of March, so she should have some fun stories from that, and I’ll most likely be heading down to Atlanta at some point soon to have a bit of suspension work done. Until next time, Everyone stay warm out there!

I’m done with winter.

So, as the title says… I’m done with winter. Last night sealed the deal on that one. We got home, started driving up the driveway, and made it up the hill with no problem… As soon as we hit where the driveway levels out, the front tires weren’t touching the ground… the rear tires weren’t touching the ground… the CRV was sitting on it’s middle on a pile of the 3 foot high snow. Just so you know there’s no exaggerating going on here, I submit to you, the Ford Taurus:

Yeah. Next to Virginia’s shoulder, on the left of the picture is the antenna of the Taurus. We might find the rest of the car by the middle of March. … Well, Maybe. For further proof, our driveway:

Behind Virginia on the left side, about 18 feet back is where were got stuck. So, in order to get out, the only way was down. However, trying to go down resulted in the front of the CRV going to the left (Trees & Drop-Off) and the rear of the CRV went to the right (into a bank of snow). … We got it unstuck… but it involved multiple shovels, a 4 wheeler, a winch, and parking down on the road.

So, in light of all this, I’ve decided that I’m done with winter. To drive this point home, I figured… what better signifies the end of winter than planting the crops? So, I went to Lowes Hardware tonight…

Here we have 3 pots containing: Chives, Sweet Basil, and Flat Leaf Parsley. They came in a lovely little kit, with 2 dirt “tablets”… These dirt tablets are something amazing. They were about 1-1/2” in diameter, and maybe 1/2” thick. You add a cup and a half of warm water, and POOF! All of the sudden, you have 3 pots worth of luxurious, damp, warm soil.

I got the dirt ready, and labeled the pots, and Virginia put in the seeds and pushed them into the dirt with the eraser on a pencil.

Next up, was my own special project.

Yeppers… I’m growing my own Habaneros this year.

 

 

 

Same as the other pots, we have magical little soil pellets. This time, we have a dozen of them, and they’re in these interesting little pouches. So, add 1-3/4 Cups of water to the whole tray, and they expand… like so:

Then, just push a few seeds into the top of the soil, push them in, and put the lid back on the whole assembly. This makes it act like a little greenhouse.

So… we’ve planted our crops, and moved them into the cat-free room’s window and turned the heat on. So, hopefully, we’ll have sprouts within a few days, and growing plants in a few weeks.

Our next update will hopefully show new things sprouting… Until then, if you see old man winter, kick him in the groin for us.

Valentine’s Weekend

Amazingly, this weekend’s weather wasn’t horrible. Friday evening, we had a lovely steak night. That write up, with pictures and instructions is here: Cooking Blog . So that was lovely. Saturday, we woke up and Virginia made some lovely eggs and homefries… then it was off to the wineries with Josh, Michele, and Jessica.

How often do you get to see vines and snow? Well, if you lived here, you’d get to see it all the dang time. But, since the wineries were down the mountain, it was a bit warmer and pleasant. The first stop was at the Laurel Gray Vineyards. They had some rather tasty sauces and dips to go with their wines, and had a few wines that I really enjoyed as well. We bought a bottle of their “Nectar” wine; it’s a sweet wine, but it’s one of those whites that tastes like a mouthful of sweet grapes. I could really have a glass with breakfast every morning.

Next up was Buck Shoals winery.

They had some AMAZING things going on with their wines… They had several sweeter wines that were very interesting. They had a blueberry, raspberry, and one other sweet wine that were mixed with brandy… They were thick and full bodied… you almost had to chew them… we ended up buying one of these interesting sweet wines from them as well.

After this stop, we made our way to Shadow Springs Vineyard. We treated ourselves to a $8.00 sampling there… which consisted of all 12 of their wines, plus a special bonus.

They had Cabernet Sauvignon that I had to buy a glass of while we were there… it was outright tasty. Josh was a bigger fan of their Meritage, and the girls were big fans of their Chocolate Wine and their Strawberry wine (Called Dark Shadow and Shortcake respectively) If you mixed the two together in a 50/50 mix, the result tasted like chocolate covered strawberries.

After filling ourselves with wine at Shadow Springs, we made a quick stop at this nice little Amish general store. Let me tell you, these Amish people know how to make a sandwich. Also, they apparently have no problem using running water, electricity, cash registers, etc anymore.

The last stop was at Dobbins Creek Vineyards. They put on a lovely spread, and they had a fireplace. So, we had to sit and enjoy the fireplace for a bit, and I ended up getting a bottle of their Riesling.

Then, to round off the lovely day, we stopped at the “Coffee House” just outside of Wilkesboro, and grabbed some food. I had a breakfast sandwich… 2 eggs, 3 pieces of toast, and 8 pieces of bacon. It was a breakfast sandwich club with cheese. Wow.

For Valentine’s day, I woke up this morning and made some chocolate Belgian waffles, then we lounged around for a bit. Around 12, we wandered into town and saw the movie “Valentine’s Day” … it was a decent flick, and it was nice to have a weekend finally that allowed us to get out of the house on both days. After the movie, we met up with our exchange student Gaby, had some coffee, and then Virginia had a meeting with her “Alternative Spring Break” people. So, while Virginia was doing that… I took some time to take a few pictures around campus at night…

After taking a few shots, it was time to gather supplies for our actual Valentine’s dinner. Tonight we had: California Rolls, Chicken Caesar Salad, Lobster Ravioli, and Virginia made some Pumpkin Pie. Washed it all down with a glass of wine… and now it’s coma time. Overall, it was a lovely weekend. Which is a good thing, since the snow comes back tonight… and is supposed to continue through Thursday.

Until next time, enjoy a view of the entrance to the school library.

February… same old same old

It’d be nice to have some different weather… but no… we can’t get that. We get nothing but snow. All of the time. I’m pretty sure there has been snow on the ground since… December 12th or so.

The past few days have been fun. It started dumping snow late Thursday night, and Friday morning it turned to ice, then today, back into snow. So, we have a snow sandwich. We didn’t leave the house at all yesterday, it was just too crappy outside. But, today, we braved the snow and walked down to the mailbox.

You can tell that the State DOT makes our road a priority. Amazingly, there was less snow on our driveway than on the “main” road. The landlord’s son has been doing a pretty good job keeping our driveway passable.

The neighbors we outside the morning with their kids playing in the snow for a good long while… they built snow barriers on opposite sides of the driveway and I think had some sort of snowball fight. Hopefully, not with snowballs like Virginia was using.

Not much to report in other news… we made a big pot of BBQ and Virginia made an apple pie today. Both of those can been seen over in our cooking blog along with some other great food.

Hopefully this snow will clear off at some point… but right now, we’re skeptical.

More January…

Well, there’s not too much else that’s been happening…

Of course, it’s been snowing more… Although we did get lucky with this last snow… We were supposed to be getting something in the neighborhood of 17 inches… but got about 7 inches instead. So, we spent the day yesterday just hunkered down here in our apartment watching Netflix. We did get out today though to take the trash and hit the grocery store real quick. Also, I’m in the process of making a pound cake right now… Check the cooking blog for pictures and whatnot.

Even the kitty thinks it’s cold outside… but she doesn’t mind too much when she’s in her scarf…

February will hopefully bring better weather… and with better weather come more blog posts…

Enjoy the view from our front porch.

New Glass!

So.. just wanted to get on real quick and brag… I just got 2 new lenses today, a Canon 85mm f/1.8 and a Tokina 12-24 f/4 … here are some quick samples:

I’m willing to bet that most folks can guess which picture is from which lens…

The 85mm is RAZOR sharp… and the 12-24 ain’t too shabby either as you can see in the kitty’s face. So, the nice thing is, these will allow for some great pictures … bad news is.. there’s nothing to take pictures of… it’s miserable outside and supposed to snow a '”undetermined” amount this weekend.

More to come soon.

Brrrr… January

It’s cold.

Ok… really cold.

Class has started for me, I have a rather busy schedule for Mondays and Wednesdays, so Virginia has started with Zumba classes and will also be doing Pilates on the evenings I’m in class till after 6. For New Years, we stayed in Boone, watched some movies with Josh and just had a few drinks. Midnight came and went without much fanfare, and the only big difference is trying to remember to write 2010 on the top of my papers.

Virginia has been keeping warm in her big furry coat, but she’s not been too happy about it.

The past few days the temperature has made it all of the way up to 40 degrees, so the snow is finally starting to melt a bit. We spent last Friday evening / Saturday morning with Leah and Brian in Chapel Hill, which was a BLAST since we got good food, and got to play with their new dog Mia.

Other than that, things have been busy with school and whatnot, and the weather has been horrible, so there’s not much fun to report. However, since the weather has been horrible and we’ve been staying inside, things over on the Cooking Blog are going well. Be sure to look around on there and get some ideas… or, feel free to give us some ideas.

Hope everyone is doing well and we hope to have more interesting things to report soon.

You stay warm, we’ll try to do the same.

New for 2010

Well, obviously, we’re married heading into this year. We’re going to try to be better with our regular updating of the blog, at least once a week on this blog, perhaps more on the new blog.

Speaking of new blog… http://boone-cooking.blogspot.com/ I decided to start a new blog, as we like to cook, and of course, we like to eat. Problem is, we don’t remember what we make, for my part, I never follow a recipe, and I might make something, and then forget whether or not I liked it… So, to remedy this, I started the cooking blog where Virginia and I will post things that we’ve been working on in the kitchen. If there’s something you’ve been wanting to make, but you’re wondering if it’s worth making, perhaps we’ve made it and reviewed it. If we made something and it just didn’t work out, we’ll be sure to post that, and perhaps you, the readers of the blog could make some recommendations to let us know where we went wrong, or what we could do to fix a recipe.

In other news, Will and Meredith were in town, and stopped by for dinner Saturday night. I made some homemade pasta, Virginia made Shrimp Diablo… it was awesome, but I was distracted and didn’t take pictures…

Christmas 09

After the Honeymoon trip, we hit the ground in Charlotte, which apparently was the only place you could actually fly into on the entire East Coast. Rachel and Victor came and picked us up at the airport, and we immediately went to Bob Evan’s for breakfast. After taking a day to recover, Virginia and I grabbed out cat back from auntie Rachel and headed off to Lexington.

We had a Christmas tree back in Boone… but for some reason, Grace liked mom and dad’s Christmas tree much better.

Isn’t she just a little sweetheart?

Our parents welcomed us home even though we showed up with suitcases full of dirty laundry, and all of the gifts were in Boone where they were trapped by several feet of snow.

But while we were home, we got to hang out with Jonathan, Lisa, and baby Jade, as well as our families, so it was all well worth the trip. This should catch you up with us up to the end of the year. Hopefully 2010 will be a fun filled year full of great blog posts as well.

Honeymoon trip!

December 11th, exactly 3 months after our wedding, Virginia and I left to magical land of Boone and headed down to Charlotte with our lovely cat to my sister’s place in Charlotte. We dropped Grace off with Rachel, Victor, Turkey and Lady where she’d be on her own little vacation while we were on our honeymoon. Following is the story of our honeymoon… broken up into chunks as I see fit… not necessarily with any rhyme or reason.

Click Here for the entire Honeymoon picture album. There is also a link in Picture form at the last honeymoon post.

Starting off… San Diego

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We flew out of Charlotte, NC on Dec 12th at about 10:30 in the morning … with a quick layover in Dallas, we arrived in san Diego, CA at about 5PM local time. Virginia’s cousin Kelly picked us up at the airport, and took us to his family’s house outside the city of San Diego. Unfortunately, when we hit the ground, it was raining a bit, and it was also already getting dark, so the trip to the house didn’t exactly provide any great views. After a lovely spaghetti dinner, Kelly and Scott took us out to look at some of the local Christmas lights…

Several things stand out… for starters, people seem to love icicle lights… in a area that has most likely never seen an icicle. Also, Penguins, Polar Bears, and all sorts of snow-flake looking items.

Above is one of my favorites… Lots of lights, snowflakes, wreaths, and of course, who can forget the Christmas Helicopter. There was an entire street of amazing gloriousness.

The next morning, the rain had drifted off, and it was sunny and warm. Of course, the Mahon family thought it was cold… but to us, the mid 60’s weather was simply amazing. We went to church with Kelly and Aunt Liz, then a quick lunch, and off to the San Diego Wild Animal Park!!!!!!!

We started off with a walk through the petting area… Where Virginia was accosted by the deer. Meanwhile, Kelly had a deer who followed him like a puppy.

Here are some of my favorite pictures from the Wild Animal Park:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

From the top down :

• Birds were awesome, but the bird-keeper girl was weird. The girl would let the birds land on her finger.. which for some reason was next to her face. The bird would then reach out and bite her lip…or tongue… and she was absolutely fine with it, and allowed it to repeatedly happen.
• Next up a shot of the surrounding area.
• The next 2 are of some awesome deer. They were these long-necked things…that could stand on their back legs…and the male had some awesome horns.
• The cheetahs… these little kitties were awesome. 2 were sisters, and were born and raised in captivity. Interesting fact: Cheetahs have feet / claws like a dog… not like a cat. Their claws are not retractable.
• Giraffes – there were TONS of these guys… to include some “baby” giraffes. That were over 6 feet tall.
• Finishing up this post is a baby elephant. The little thing was awesome… it was playing around, pulling up grass, throwing it around…doing little dance steps… all sorts of awesomeness.