A Weekend of Thanks

I'm really bad at remembering to take pictures, so what you see above is my only picture from Thanksgiving day-- and it's a blurry iPhone photo.  Sorry guys.  But, let me assure you, the turkey in that photo tasted amazing.  We brined the turkey this year for the first time, and then topped it with a pomegranate glaze.  Yum yum yum!

I have had turkey to eat for the past four dinners, plus one lunch.

But about Thanksgiving itself!  I started out at home with my parents, where we cooked a lovely, too-large meal of turkey (obviously), mashed potatoes, stuffing, sweet potato casserole, green bean bundles, Brussels sprouts, and cranberry relish.  We watched the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade while we cooked, and I must say I felt very thankful to be warm inside watching it on television.

After lunch with my parents, I drove to west to spend the evening with Zan and his parents, his Uncle Neil, Aunt Jan, cousin Jen, and Aunt Donni.  There, I had my second Thanksgiving dinner!  We had a great time eating, talking, and being coerced into a slice of pecan pie.  I spent the rest of the weekend with Zan.  I skipped out on Black Friday shopping until late afternoon when we went to Target so Jen could get the new Zelda game for the Wii.  I got Epic Mickey.  We're pretty sure we blew the salesperson's mind: two girls, one guy, and the two girls got the video games while the guy sort of hung back watching.  Hooray for defying gender stereotypes!

And on Saturday I got to see Kay!  We met in Staunton where we both got vanilla chai lattes at Coffee on the Corner, walked down Beverley Street, got stationary for Kay, new shoes for me, and lunch at the Baja Bean.  We wandered through an antique store, went through some bags of clothes I had brought to Kay, and then got another round of vanilla chai lattes (they are so good, we couldn't help it!  Plus it was really cold.  It dropped from the 60s to the 30s overnight).  I'm so happy to be back on the east coast and able to see Kay once every month or so.

I feel like now I should elucidate to you what I'm thankful for this year, but there's really too much to even begin to try to list it all.  Well, I guess I can begin to try... I'm thankful for my family and friends, for my health, the health of my friends and family, and for food on the table.  I'm thankful that I'm home in Virginia, able to be near my family, my friends, and able to try for grad school take two.  I'm thankful for the people helping me make grad school take two possible.  I'm also thankful for all of my friends and experiences that I left behind in Seattle, and thankful for the internet so I can easily keep in touch with those that I love and miss on the west coast.  I'm thankful that things are looking up for my friend Megan's family.  I'm thankful for Zan and love and perseverance.

I'm thankful for sunshine and falling leaves and Christmas decorations.  I am thankful for my subscription to Southern Living, and the joy it brings to me and Zan each month.  I'm thankful I didn't have to drive on I-95 at all this weekend.  I'm thankful for warm beverages on cold days.  Those last few are little things, comparatively, but I really am thankful for them.

I think that's a good, solid list of thanks for now.

Hope everyone else had a wonderful Thanksgiving weekend!

The Farmers Market

I forgot to mention (mostly because I was too lazy to import the pictures until now), but last Saturday there was a special pre-Thanksgiving Farmers Market in Merchant Square.  The day was really lovely, bright and sunny and just a bit chilly.  We got little sweet potato pastries and leek and provolone tarts.  We got homemade raspberry linzer cookies and bacon cheddar biscuits.  We looked around the Craft House and ooh-ed and ahh-ed over Christmas ornaments and folk art.  I think there is another special market this Saturday, but I will miss it, so this past Saturday may have been my last farmers market of the year... unless they do a special Christmas market.

Photos: The College of William and Mary, DoG Street Pub and Farmer's Market, Cheese Shop and Farmer's Market, The Cider Stand on Duke of Gloucester Street, A View Down Duke of Gloucester Street with Autumn Leaves.  

(All photos by me, please do not use without credit back to this blog)

The Winter Tree

Last evening I went for a walk alone down Duke of Gloucester Street.  I like walking alone at night, and it's something I haven't been able to do since I left Williamsburg, really.  I started in Merchant's Square, where the storefronts were all lit with Christmas lights and the whole of the place felt cheery and I could see people eating their dinner through the big glass windows at the Trellis and the Fat Canary and waitresses tended to a few brave souls sitting outside at the new DoG Street Pub.  I crossed the street and walked down past the Armistead House, a 19th-century antebellum home which is now historical in its own right, but which looks so out of place next to all the 18th-century styled buildings.  Then by Bruton Parish which was brightly lit for the Canterbury High Holy Eucharist, and I wished I hadn't arrived too late to go to the start of the service.  Just past there I looked down towards the Governor's Palace and thought of jumping the wall as an undergraduate and working in Foodways and meeting some of my best friends at the orientation they held on the green years ago.  It was cloudy and the reflections off the clouds actually lit up the sky a bit more than the stars would have done, and I looked up and saw a perfectly bare tree silhouetted by the night.  I looked up and down the street and realized that in the past three days or so most of the colorful trees had gone bare or at the least had begun to lose their leaves.  The fall really must be coming to an end, and while that makes me sad, there was something irrepressibly beautiful about this winter bare tree.  A cold wind picked up, and it felt a bit like snow, though of course it was much too warm for snow, and I started imagining hot chocolate and the Christmas wreaths that will soon bedeck every door. 

Today I fell asleep in a patch of sunshine

Even though I haven't been writing here much, things have still been moving apace.  This past week Zan came to visit for four days.  We spent time with our cats, industriously working on our grad school applications while they purred on our laps or in a chair nearby.  I submitted my first application on Wednesday!  My goal is to have two more submitted by the end of next week.  Yay, future!  It was so nice having Zan here.  We made 'Spearean risotto, went to Aroma's and La Tolteca, watched The Pirates: Band of Misfits! (adorable) and an episode of Buffy, and went to trivia night at the Leafe with some of my friends from my MA program.  Now that Zan has gone back home, I miss him even more.  I know I will visit him next week, and so we're only apart for less than seven days, but going from living together to long-distance isn't fun.

But you know what is fun?  In between writing personal statements and editing writing samples for applications, I'm learning to do needlepoint!  I already love cross-stitching, but have never had a needlepoint kit before.  It's so fast and easy and beautiful!  And, a new shoe store is opening in Williamsburg tomorrow.  I am perhaps more excited about this than I should be.  I'm also planning on really concentrating on my piano music again.  I'd like to be able to play carols for the holidays without too much effort.  Finally, Felix the cat is currently looking up at me and purring, and I think he's trying to say "Quit typing and pet me instead!" so I think I'll oblige him.  I'll try to post a bit more often now that I'm settling in here!

my feet resolute found their root and brought me back to this place

I just spent a lovely 24 hours in Washington D.C. with some of the best people I know.  There's really no place like home, and no place like being with some of your closest friends and people who will quickly become your closest friends.  In that short span of time I got to see Brian (who conveyed a hello and a present from Kay, who could not be there in person), Mike, and Josh-- three of my best friends from undergrad-- and I got to see Kelsey, who I adore and love more each time I see her.  I also (finally) got to meet my "best friend," Emily, said hello to Davia, and met a new friend, Ben.  All around perfect time with perfect people.

I arrived in D.C. a bit before noon yesterday, met up with Brian and Mike at a Starbucks in Chinatown, then had lunch at the first Chinese restaurant we saw with a lunch special.  Too, too much food, but so incredibly tasty.  Then Josh and Kelsey joined us for an exciting time in the National Portrait Gallery where we had a guy sort of follow us around creepily for a bit, before we lost him in the modern art part.  We walked to Union Station so Brian could catch a bus home, Josh and Mike had call for the show that evening, and Kelsey and I met up with Ben to go to a really cool speakeasy in the city.  Greatest bar ever-- very expensive, but worth every penny.  It really, really feels like you've stepped back in time in this place.  I could've stayed for hours.  Kelsey and I both got champagne cocktails that were out of this world, and Ben was ordering these fancy drinks that I don't know the name of that had smokey aftertastes and spicy notes. 

Then the show!  Georgetown Law Gilbert and Sullivan Society was putting on The Mystery of Edwin Drood and it was so good!!!  Mike and Josh were fantastic, and I loved seeing them onstage together again.  Everyone had such good voices!  And the voting bit was tons of fun-- Josh was the cutest most unexpected murderer (I voted for him), and though I'm sad I didn't get to see Mike as Datchery like everyone else, he was voted as a lover, so that was good. 

This morning I attended St. John's, and I just feel so much happier after going to church.  Then my dad and I got beignets, and now I'm back home with plans for a nice bottle of wine with my friend Jason.  I absolutely love being home.  I just love being here, with so many of my friends a short-ish drive and/or train-ride away.  I love getting to see the shows they are in, getting invited to their parties, going for drinks.  I love the autumn leaves and the fact that it was 73 degrees and sunny today.  I'm so so grateful that I got to come back east for the fall.  My soul feels alive again.

Virginia, Home Again

There's a quote that goes around sometimes that says, essentially, that to be a Virginian by birth, marriage, or adoption is a benediction from God above.  I couldn't agree more.  After a long week of driving across the country-- and America is very wide-- I have returned to what I consider my native state, if only by adoption.  The leaves are still gold and red and orange, and this morning the sky is very, very blue.  I plan to have a Cheese Shop sandwich this afternoon, and some hot apple cider as I walk down Duke of Gloucester Street, just as I imagined.  I almost cried yesterday I was so grateful to be home at last, surrounded by all the things I love and that make me happy.

This road trip, from Seattle to Virginia, was much shorter than the one going out.  I have fewer pictures and made fewer stops.  Mostly we pushed through, with 14 hour days.  We made a short stop in my mother's hometown of St. Joseph, Missouri, and had Barbosa's Mexican food for lunch.  Then we stopped by the house my mother grew up in, my grandparent's home, just to see it, although they haven't lived there for eight years. The longest stop we made was in St. Louis, where I spent the day at the zoo-- the BEST zoo-- complete with the traditional helping of Dippin' Dots.  I love the St. Louis zoo, and how historical it is, built over the remains of the 1904 World's Fair.  I would move to St. Louis just for that zoo, almost.  And I had a lovely evening with two of my childhood best friends, Maggie and Christina, catching up in an English-style pub with cider and homemade potato chips and French onion soup.

Then, suddenly, we were in the Alleghenies, then the Blue Ridge Mountains, then home home home.  Is there a more beautiful state than Virginia, from the mountains to the coast?  Especially Virginia in autumn?  If there is, I have yet to find it. 


(Photo by me, please do not repost without credit)