Crowder, and Other Weekend Adventures

I can only assume that the Redskins are losing, as the last few bellows I've heard from the basement have not sounded encouraging. Poor 'Skins, I think we doom them by watching games. I've been perched on my favorite living room chair (see last entry), putting the finishing touches on my cultural essay due tomorrow. This essay has been mounds easier than the last--less deeply personal, but much simpler to write and edit. Relief.

We have two weekends of activity to catch up on, yikes! The highlight from both weekends was the David Crowder Band concert at the 9:30 Club last weekend. The 9:30 Club is a dingy, intimate place where you sit on the floor or stand, surrounded by rusty fences topped with barbed wire. What a cool place to pack people in to worship! It was amazing, awesome, we actually watched the concert in North Carolina on MySpace just to relive it a couple days ago. I wish you'd been there. Also, we were surprisedly please with Phil Wickham, the opening act, who rocked the place with his band of Gibson and Taylor.

We had a long weekend for Veterans' Day last weekend (go government workers), so on Saturday, after an impromptu lunch with Ryan of the Oxford Days, we headed out west about two hours and spent part of the weekend with Rob and Taiya at their farm. First of all, it was gorgeous weather, that perfect moment when the trees are at their most brilliant, and their horse farm was really cool. They spend their weekdays in the city, but on the weekend they trade their suits and blackberries for cover-alls and boots, building barns and cooking up delicious grub. Their house was built in the 1850's, and we got the gorgeous balcony room to wake up in, looking out over the mountains. Jason even got to ride Thunder, Rob's new draft horse!

On Tuesday we decided to buy some new dining room chairs so that everyone can fit around the table at Thanksgiving (Jason's parents and grandmother are coming on Wednesday), and, after calling around to find a way to get the ones we liked at the sale price without having to pay shipping (and risk them arriving November 26th), we somehow found ourselves parked illegally on M Street, the insanely-busy-at-all-hours main drag through Georgetown, outside of Pottery Barn loading four wrapped chairs into the Eclipse. This, my friends, is living in the city.

Fast-forward to this weekend. This afternoon we went to the Shakespeare Theatre to see Taming of the Shrew. I am never sure how I feel about Taming, I try really hard not to be offended but somehow always am. It was brilliant, though, and well worth waiting for (we've been trying to find discount tickets since the beginning of October!). Plus, Dawn went with us, and I have missed her. Otherwise it has been blessedly uneventful. I don't have to work this week, and I'm already trying to figure out how to divy up my time between making pies and polishing off the last of the grocery shopping and cleaning house and working on my next essay and relaxing... okay, so I've got to work a bit on that last one...

Musings

The Rotunda
Originally uploaded by jmsmall2005.

It is raining outside and my office closed at 2, making it a perfect day to curl up next to my fireplace with a book and a cuppa. Of course, we haven't cleaned out our fireplace to prepare it for winter or bought any firewood, and anyway I couldn't tear myself away from my desk until 4 (an appallingly bad habit I've developed on Fridays). No matter. The heat is working, the candles in the fireplace are lit, and the last bits of tea are getting cool in my cup as I sit here, listening to the sounds of a wet street and Nickle Creek.

Not bad for a Friday, even if I left two hours late.

I love everything about autumn--sweaters and jeans, colored leaves, soup, sifting through recipes for Thanksgiving--but this year it seems to have flown by and I've only had a hurried, fleeting glance at it. I think the small space of this Friday afternoon is just what I need, so I want to share it--and our fall happenings--with you. Just a few random things.

Belgian chocolate. It's really good, by the way, a fact to which my coworkers can all attest, since Jason brought back enough from Brussels to share with the whole class. He has been on a traveling spree, spending one day (and two days traveling) in Stockholm, San Antonio, and Brussels during three of the past four weeks. For the most part his sightseeing has been limited to the inside of a conference room, but in San Antonio he did get to have dinner with our good friends Jackie and Jason, who moved there last summer, in spite of the fact that Jackie and I had bonded over "Anne of Green Gables" AND "Persuasion." Sad. While he's been gone, I have accomplished...absolutely nothing. The fact that he came home yesterday and I had taken the trash out the curb was worth noting.

"Getting my trash kicked." I've gotten really into this step class at the gym, and I pretend that my legs have become very powerful and recently dreamt that someone asked me if I could run a half marathon and I confidently said yes. In real life, however, my legs are just really sore, and the idea of running a half marathon makes me want to lay down on the floor and kick and scream like a two-year old. Indeed, as my coworker Kaylyn says, the class "kicks my trash" twice a week. I am getting pretty good at it, though, if I do say so myself, and I wonder if perhaps this will fulfill the "take a dance class" resolution that I made for 2007. Thoughts?

Final draft. The past month or so I've spent frantic minutes and hours crafting, then recrafting, then recrafting a personal essay for my nonfiction writing class. The essay was supposed to be 1500 words, and somehow my final draft rang in at about 4079 words. And my professor says I'm not wordy enough... It has been quite an experience, actually. I wrote about Oxford--mainly our trip back there in April--and I fell right into the essay, remembering this particular Saturday afternoon at the library, writing a paper about Richard the Third, and how the misty, grey feeling outside seeped through the stained glass windows in front of my desk and mingled with the lamplight at which I studied, and how comfortable and happy I felt in that space. I've been looking for that space since I moved to Washington, DC, and I think I've finally found it again, right here in this little chair by my candle-lit fireplace.

Trader Joe's. Andrea encouraged me to check out Trader Joe's amazing cranberry sauce, so last Saturday I bravely gathered my grocery list and donned my baseball cap and made a trip to the Trader Joe's by our house. There are only, like, four aisle at Trader Joe's, but they are all confusing to me, and I admit to being there much longer than I intended. But I came home with my favorite dark chocolate covered almonds and these awesome branches of mini-pumpkins (Jason thinks they look ghoulish, I think they are adorable), as well as some tasty groceries, and I think I might be converted. Thanksgiving is less than two weeks away, and for a little while I was panicking about the fact that I haven't bought a turkey (Jason's family is coming here for the holiday, yay!), but the new Foodie Friends website has inspired me, and I've finally compiled a nice list of recipes, ingredients, and timelines so that I feel prepared. Well, sort of prepared. I'm sure a few panicked, last-minute calls to my mom and sisters will still be necessary.

Face of Paint. I'm not sure what possessed me to pull out the old Point of Grace "The Whole Truth" cd on Sunday, but I've been harmonizing to it on the commute all week. Ah, the memories. I talked to Jenny this week and told her I had found it, and without my even finishing the sentence she said, "Ah, and you've been singing your part, right?" In high school, Jenny, Shaanti, my dear friend Laura, and I broke out the four parts to Point of Grace's "The Great Divide" and sang it in church. We jokingly called ourselves "Face of Paint," and I have to confess that I probably took our brief musical career a little too seriously. Still, I have every intention of putting a few of the songs on my ipod and taking it to the cabin this Christmas to see if Shaanti and Jenny can remember their parts.

Dome Tour. Yesterday the Simpson staff ventured to the top of the Capitol Dome. It's tough to get a dome tour, since you have to be escorted by a Member of Congress, and most of the staff had never been on one before. It was an interesting comparison--this year's tour with my current coworkers, and last year's tour with the Otter folks, which marked the end of our time together. There are so many similarities between my new job and my old job (same building, same issues, same gross cafeteria food), but there are key differences, and sometimes it is hard to put my finger on them. Today I tried to call our Boise office and accidentally dialed the old Otter office Boise number--thankfully Rep. Sali's staff was out, because that would have been way too confusing. Actually, it was confusing anyway. Weird.

Ride 'em Cowboy!

So, Halloween was last week, but we still have a few pieces of candy left (particularly the Dove dark chocolate pieces that, um, did not find their way into the bowl of trick-or-treating candy) so I think this post is still timely. And mostly I think this little fella is the cutest darn wrangler in the West. Dad said he was their first trick-or-treater in ten years or so, and when they opened the door he walked in with a mile-wide grin like he was bringing law and order to the place.

The Van Allens!

The Van Allens!
Originally uploaded by jmsmall2005.

So, I know that Bob basically looks like a head and a tie in this picture, but, with my battery dying (grrr...), this is the best I could do as far as photos went. I would highly suggest looking here for much better (and funnier) pictures of Bob and Erin's wedding. (And a quick shout-out to Andrea for not posting every picture that Telfer snapped while we were on the dance floor. There had to be a few incriminatingly scary ones when it was all said and done.)

Apparently blogging is not my calling anymore, as over a week has gone by since Bob and Erin tied the knot--and we held a small but delightful NNU reunion--but nary a word from me. Weddings are really so nice for that type of thing, and I appreciate Bob being so obliging (I missed out on the last wedding-reunion, since I was the one in the wedding dress). We had a great time together. It was especially poignant to eat greasy food at Denny's at 11:30 p.m. clad in sweatpants and glasses, playing "would you rather." It was a moment right out of college.

It is amazing how much you can squeeze into a weekend, especially when you consider that the flight between DC and Spokane, WA, is 6 or 7 hours. But squeeze in I did--I arrived around noon and had lunch with Andrea at a cute little place with delicious sandwiches, then drove straight down to Moscow to visit Casey and Kim. I got to see where Casey works and their cute little apartment, then Mom and Dad, who had picked that weekend to visit them, too, arrived. We had a really delicious dinner (coconut shrimp, mmm...) and wonderful visiting time before coming back to Casey and Kim's, turning on a movie, and falling directly asleep. It was soooo wonderful to spend time with them, what a special, stolen-away moment! And, to top it off, now I can imagine where Casey is sitting when I talk to him on the phone (green striped chair, of course!).

I was exhausted when I got home (still haven't fully recovered, actually--apparently I am too old for this!), but it was worth every second. And, of course, I arrived home to find planted tulips, apple pie, and our utility room floor. I have just the best husband.

Things to Do While Missy is in Spokane

1. Plant tulip bulbs - The soil is much easier to work with when you finally get rain after 33 days of drought, and you have the proper tools. Oh, and buy some planting soil to mix in with the unforgiving Virginia clay.

2. Unpack the basement - Now there is room for the inevitable projects dad and I will get into when the family comes for Thanksgiving. Oh, and now one can get to the laundry without tripping over boxes of junk.

3. Bake an Apple Pie - Proving that one can succeed at cooking by following the directions in the Williams Sonoma baking cookbook to the letter.