L.A. can have its freeway-side houses. Me? I'll take a flock of wild turkeys crossing about 15 feet in front of me.
Taken along Skyline Drive in Shenandoah National Park a couple weeks ago. Was too slow on the draw to get the baby bear we saw darting into the woods, and was afraid I'd scare the deer off if I rolled down the window. Suffice to say, not something I saw much of in my old place.
So yeah, we've been busy. Lisa has been hip-deep in promoting civilized debate in society, and I, well, I watch a lot of television. And yet we've still managed to go on drives like this one, and last weekend -- oh, it's a country life we live -- apple-picking. For reals. (Oh, and more wine-tasting. We have like 23 bottles on the rack now.) (And also, we saw Lucinda Williams at the Charlottesville Pavilion last night. She puts on a really fine show.) So I guess things aren't so tough after all.
We have, at least, been taking pictures of some of our little adventures. You can see the latest bunch over here.
September 26, 2007
Turkey for me and a turkey for you
September 9, 2007
Moving pictures (or, pictures of moving)
Pictures, we got pictures -- a photographic chronicle of our 3,726-mile odyssey across America is now up on the photo page. You can click on the thing over on the right rail that says "Hey -- pictures!" or not move your mouse as much and just go from here.
Not much from my home state, for some reason. But if you're interested, here's a pretty shot of downtown Datyon (not taken by me).
September 7, 2007
I think I'm becoming a foodie
As soon as Lisa gets home this evening, we're probably going out to the Market Street Wine Shop in Charlottesville for their free weekly tasting. We did that last week too, and it's fun. And I mentioned free, right?
We've also made a habit of hitting the weekly farmers market that sets up shop down the street on Saturdays. It's tomato season, and we've been going a little nuts with the heirloom varieties -- probably spending a good 50-60 bucks on tomatoes alone in the past three weeks. We also invested in a new wine rack, because, well, we had too many bottles for the other one to handle.
Which leads me to wonder:
Have I become a foodie?
The answer, I think, is a qualified yes -- qualified because I had Wendy's for lunch yesterday, and sometimes I just want to sit on the couch and eat potato chips out of the bag.
But I also get excited by the prospect of cooking dinner a couple times a week, and by the idea of trying a new restaurant -- which, let's face it, is one of the good things about moving. The restaurants are almost all new.
The wine thing, too, is a recent development. Five years ago I probably would never have ordered a glass of wine with a meal. I was a beer snob, sure (and still am), but wine was a little outside my realm of experience.
Funny what a couple trips to Santa Barbara will do for that, though. Now, we have 20 bottles from all over sitting in our new wine rack, and if we try something at a restaurant that we like, we write down the name so we can find a bottle of it later. We spent an afternoon last weekend on part of the Monticello Wine Trail, drinking some surprisingly good (and a couple of really not very good) local wines.
Twice, we have stuffed dates with blue cheese, wrapped pork products around them and baked them.
A lot of this -- including the blue cheese-stuffed dates, which we had during our stopover in St. Louis -- started on the trip. We made a conscious and pretty successful effort not to eat big-box food while we were on the road, and that idea has pretty well carried over once we got here. Charlottesville also seems blessed with an inordinate number of good restaurants for a town its size, so there's probably no need for us ever to set foot in an Applebee's.
So now, I guess, the trick will be keeping this all in check, remaining a food lover while not tipping over into nose-in-the-air territory. I suspect that won't be too hard -- we both love our cheez-with-a-z too much to become true snobs.
Continued ...
We've also made a habit of hitting the weekly farmers market that sets up shop down the street on Saturdays. It's tomato season, and we've been going a little nuts with the heirloom varieties -- probably spending a good 50-60 bucks on tomatoes alone in the past three weeks. We also invested in a new wine rack, because, well, we had too many bottles for the other one to handle.
Which leads me to wonder:
Have I become a foodie?
The answer, I think, is a qualified yes -- qualified because I had Wendy's for lunch yesterday, and sometimes I just want to sit on the couch and eat potato chips out of the bag.
But I also get excited by the prospect of cooking dinner a couple times a week, and by the idea of trying a new restaurant -- which, let's face it, is one of the good things about moving. The restaurants are almost all new.
The wine thing, too, is a recent development. Five years ago I probably would never have ordered a glass of wine with a meal. I was a beer snob, sure (and still am), but wine was a little outside my realm of experience.
Funny what a couple trips to Santa Barbara will do for that, though. Now, we have 20 bottles from all over sitting in our new wine rack, and if we try something at a restaurant that we like, we write down the name so we can find a bottle of it later. We spent an afternoon last weekend on part of the Monticello Wine Trail, drinking some surprisingly good (and a couple of really not very good) local wines.
Twice, we have stuffed dates with blue cheese, wrapped pork products around them and baked them.
A lot of this -- including the blue cheese-stuffed dates, which we had during our stopover in St. Louis -- started on the trip. We made a conscious and pretty successful effort not to eat big-box food while we were on the road, and that idea has pretty well carried over once we got here. Charlottesville also seems blessed with an inordinate number of good restaurants for a town its size, so there's probably no need for us ever to set foot in an Applebee's.
So now, I guess, the trick will be keeping this all in check, remaining a food lover while not tipping over into nose-in-the-air territory. I suspect that won't be too hard -- we both love our cheez-with-a-z too much to become true snobs.
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