Christmas Time

Click on the tree to see our Christmas pictures.

Christmas 2007

Hair

Item 1: I chopped my hair.

Love. It.

I actually cut it about a month ago because my hair was driving me insane. I put off cutting it for a long time so I could wear it up for the wedding, and that taught me that I no longer deal well with long hair. It just looks too scraggly and gets in my way. According to my hairdresser, she cut off somewhere around 6 or 7 inches. She was so nervous and kept asking me if I was sure. I used to be really anal about my hair, but for the past few years my attitude has been, whatever. As long as I trust my hairdresser, that is. It's hair. It grows.

Item 2: Jason's beard is officially out of control, as evidenced by this furry picture of him from Williamsburg.

Arrrr, me mateys.

And this picture of us dressed up for the fancy wedding in New York.


I prefer this level of face hair, if we must have the face hair.

As soon as he gets home I'm attacking him with the beard trimmer.

Back to the Grind

Went to Williamsburg for Christmas and had lots of jolly olde colonial fun. More details with pictures to come. I got two cookbooks for Christmas - the Jane Austen cookbook and the Williamsburg cookbook - and am trying to decide whether to try to make an Austenian or Williamsburghian feast first.

Jason, his parents and his sister are still down there while I am back in Massachusetts, toiling away. I thought maybe I could finagle another day, but last Thursday one of the partners said we would hammer out some details on a project today so here I am. I flew up from Richmond yesterday. We left late from Richmond and I had a really long layover in Newark because apparently Continental routes all its flights through Houston, which had a storm. The Richmond gate agent enthusiastically wished everyone a happy new year and told us all he knew we could get on the plane in 15 minutes and make it out of there only 20 minutes late. Once we all boarded, he came on the intercom, thanked us for our cooperation and told us we beat the time by two minutes. Contrast that with the Newark gate agents who just really looked like we could all die and they would be thrilled. Jason said he doesn't trust the forced niceness of the South, but frankly I like exchanging real smiles with people and having them say a genuine "thank you" when I patronize their establishments. However, I do not like waiting 15 minutes for a soda because the super friendly counter lady is helping out the eight-year old customer by listing off all the hamburger toppings for him multiple times. Um, his mom couldn't do that before they got to the front of the line? Also, I had no patience for the screaming baby on the Monticello tour yesterday. I officially declare that one and a half is too young for Monticello.

Anyway, thanks to storms in Houston, I missed the 10:25 train to Providence and had to wait for the midnight one, which meant I got in around 1:15 AM. However, I am glad I came into work since everyone is here today (to which I think, if I was a partner, I would take Christmas week OFF).

Last night was the first night that Jason and I weren't together since we got married, which, you know, I feel like should have some sort of dramatic impact on my psyche or something, but I was on my own for 31 years so I guess I'm pretty okay with the whole concept. Although I did miss my morning kiss good-bye as I headed off to work. However, Tiny, who has been alone in the house for 5 days, kind of made up for it by writhing around in my lap in ecstasy and butting my head and purring like crazy any time I sat down for a few seconds.

I will be celebrating the husbandless state of the apartment tonight by watching a couple of period pieces that I received for Christmas.* It will be more pleasant to watch them without Jason moaning and whining and asking inane questions about "Mr. Darby" in the background.


* Seriously, my mother-in-law has my tastes nailed (probably because they're similar to hers). Give me some British accents and romance all wrapped up in period costume and I'm happy.

The Big Apple

Last week we went to New York City. Jason's cousin got married to this New York society girl. The wedding was at a very fancy place and the food was AMAZING. The food served during the cocktail hour consisted of things like caviar, salmon and creme fraiche on toast points, fried oysters with salmon eggs, duck and shumai. I was shamelessly diving for the trays whenever a waiter walked by, belying the classiness of my fancy cocktail dress and pearls. Jason had bison for dinner, I had scallops. Then there was this HUGE dessert buffet with chocolate covered strawberries, key lime tarts, mini brownies, piles of cookies and a flourless chocolate cake, accompanied by giant white cotton candy puffs on every table. Oh yeah, and the wedding was lovely too.

This was my very first trip to New York. Yeah, I know. I've lived on the East Coast for 5 years so that's pretty ridiculous. Kind of like how I lived in Arizona for 17 years, but never made it to the Grand Canyon.* I have tried a few times before to go and it just never worked out. We bunked with Jason's parents in their hotel in Times Square and the wedding was on Park Avenue so we were right it the heart of it all.

Wednesday night we went to the Radio City Christmas Spectacular. It was spectacularly cheesey, which was exactly what I was hoping for. The Rockettes kicked and danced their hearts out and it was so fun. Then we went to go see the tree in Rockefeller Center.

Thursday, Jason, Marissa and I went to a lessons and carols service at St. Thomas's church, which was lovely. Then we lunched at a pub and met up with Jason's parents at Macy's. You know, the big one on 34th Street. As in Miracle on 34th Street!** The guys left and we three girls shoe shopped, because you know, we were in the biggest Macy's in the world at Christmas time. The shoe department is huge and the sale racks actually had nice shoes in my size, which never happens. I've been looking for new black and brown heels and I found them. Comfy ones, even.

So how did I like New York? I loved it! Honestly, it reminded me a lot of downtown Chicago on a busy night, with it's big city energy. Even at midnight on a Wednesday it was still humming. That energy sort of flows into me as I dodge through the people who don't know how to city walk and make my way down the street, soaking it all in. I can't explain it, but I felt it the first time I went to Chicago and loved the energy.

There is so much to do and to see and to buy. If I lived in New York, I could see myself succumbing to the siren call of materialism. The beautiful dresses and bags and shoes, all with fancy names. I would max out my credit cards and have to go into hiding from the collection agencies and escape to Mexico under cover of night. But at least I would have pretty things.

It was a short trip, and I'm already planning what to do the next time we go.

* However, I would just like to point out that Tucson to the Grand Canyon is no day trip.

** I tried so hard the whole time to look all city savvy and not like a total rube because I have lived most of the last 10 years in big cities, but I admit to being a little starstruck by it all. Like, LOOK it's Times Square! With the big TV's! Just like in the movies! And look! The Tree! And the ice skaters!

Pumpkin Trifle

Jason's parents came into town yesterday and I made a holiday feast for us all since we're going to be in Williamsburg, Virginia for Christmas and aren't really sure what Christmas dinner will be. Plus, I bought a turkey at Thanksgiving when they were cheap because Jason loves turkey and since we were in Chicago for Thanksgiving we didn't get any leftovers.

I made turkey, stuffing, sweet potatoes with crunchy pecan topping* and a pumpkin trifle. Jason made cranberry sauce. I am especially proud of the pumpkin trifle, which I put together as a mishmash of a couple of recipes I found, and I even threw a couple of sugar-free and lite things in there to counterbalance the unhealthy. See, I care.

Pumpkin Trifle
First layer:
Spice cake mix, baked according to directions and crumbled

Second layer:
3 packages sugar-free cheesecake pudding, prepared according to directions
1 can pumpkin
1 t. cinnamon
1/2 t. ginger
1/2 t. nutmeg

Third layer:
1 cup toffee bits
1 cup chopped pecans

Fourth layer:
Thin layer of whipped topping (I used Cool Whip Lite)

Layer in trifle bowl twice, reserving a little of the toffee/pecan mix to sprinkle on the top of the final layer of whpped topping.

You may only want to use 2/3 or so of the cake because it's puffy and makes the trifle bowl really full. REALLY full.


* For those of you for were in the Longfellow Park Ward a few years ago, the sweet potato recipe is in the Longfellow Dishes recipe book.

8 Hours

That's how long it took me to get home from work last night, a distance of 50 miles.

Yes, EIGHT HOURS.

We had a blizzard yesterday dumping about 2 inches per hour on New England. I left work at 1 PM, as soon as the flakes started falling. I got home at 9 PM.

Because of the speed of the snow and the fact that there were so many cars on the road, no plows or salt trucks could get through. So not only was the traffic bad, but the highway (I-95 to be exact) was covered in snow and the street was littered with cars mired in snow and unable to get out. I have to give kudos to my little Elantra who got through it all, even though she slid around quite a bit and at two points I really did think we were stuck. But we got out of it.

2 hours in, I stopped at a service area to get some lunch. The service area was 6 exits down from where I started. Yeah. That was when I started to realize how bad it really was.

The first hour I was really, really angry at the whole thing. The second hour I was resigned. The third hour I got a little angry again, but by the fourth hour my attitude was pretty good. Last weekend I downloaded a bunch of podcasts of Agatha Christie mysteries, so those kept me entertained the whole way. A good story is a good distraction.

By the time I got home, I was starting to feel a little hysterical. After I passed the halfway point of my drive, it got much better. Visibility was down but there weren't as many cars and I was moving along at about 25 miles per hour, which felt absolutely decadent. However, right before the Massachusetts state line all of a sudden traffic stopped. As I passed exit 2 and then exit 1, I started to realize why. I passed at least 3 cars and an 18-wheeler stuck in the snow and parked in the middle of the highway. I thought I would be home by 7, but by 8 it had taken me an hour to go about a mile and a half. I figured that there must be a hundred more cars littering the highway ahead of me and blocking us all. My exit was several miles away.

So I called Jason, told him where I was and asked him to find me a way home off the highway. The side roads were not well plowed yet, but there were hardly any cars out and I made my way through Pawtucket into Providence at a good speed. Thanks to a turned sign, I wound up on the wrong street, tried to turn around, and got seriously stuck. I wiggled around, turned my steering wheel and finally got unstuck, although the smell of burned rubber makes me wonder if I hurt my car. Then I got behind a plow and the plow stopped and the guy waved me around to which I thought, Are you crazy, I can't climb that mountain of snow. But I did.

After all of that, two hours from when I thought I would be home at the worst moments, getting stuck and lost on the back roads of Pawtucket, I was close to tears.

And I think that pretty much counts as one of the worst commutes ever for me and everyone else who was stuck in it. Thinking about it now, it feels completely surreal. How could I have been stuck in traffic for 8 hours?! As Jason pointed out last night, I could have driven to DC in that time.

Yesterday was one of the better days to be married, I have to say. Jason called me consistently throughout my ordeal, offering encouraging words and mapping out a new route from the highway so I could get off the parking lot that was I-95 coming into Providence. He shoveled me out a place to park. He had yummy warm soup waiting for me that he and our friend Matt trekked out into the snow to pick up for all of us. And finally, he gave me a huge hug when I got home and told me it was okay to cry - which I didn't really, even though I felt like it.

Observation: BMW drivers are big jerks! I'm sorry if anyone who owns a BMW reads this, but I stand by my statement. Let me illustrate. There was a sense of camaraderie in our misery. Everyone on the road yesterday encouraged each other and was patient as people jumped out to clear off their windshields because since we were more stopped than moving the snow accumulated almost as if we were standing still. At one point my windshield wipers completely froze up and I leapt out of my car to free them. A man in an SUV slowly crawled by and called out his window, "You okay?" I said, "Yeah, my wipers just froze up." He laughed and said, "You need to be able to see!" I said, "Exactly." Then he told me, as the traffic continued winding by, "Well, be careful!"

Two separate people at the service area where I stopped wished me good luck as I headed back out. Everyone was tired and annoyed, but still managed to encourage each other.

Then I got some gas and a BMW cut me off as I was waiting to leave (and one had already not let me in as I was trying to get on the highway in the first place). There was a car in front of me who had stopped while its driver ran inside. I was kind of annoyed, but was waiting for him to get back. This BMW came weaving around me, I guess thinking he could get by the car, which he couldn't. Jut like I couldn't. THEN when the driver did come back, the BMW sped up and cut in front of me. Because, you know, being that one car in front of me is going to make SO much difference at this point.

Add to that the four or five times when I was changing lanes and BMW's sped up to not let me in. You know, sped up to eight miles an hour versus six. This is including times when I changed lanes to get around a stalled car in front of me. Every other time I changed lanes the cars slowed down to let me in. And I let in my fair share of cars. Beamers were the only ones who didn't. I'm just sayin'.

Nano

If I'm a very good girl this year I might have an iPod Nano waiting for me under the Christmas tree.

My 40GB iPod has finally and officially bitten the dust. Actually it most likely just needs a new hard drive (apparently a common problem with that generation of iPods), which will cost about $150. The thing is, the iPod has been a great companion, but I think I want something a little more compact now, particularly when it comes to taking it to the gym.

The question is color. I haven't made it to an Apple store lately and am not sure when I will have a chance to in the next couple of weeks. I thought I might want the green based on the pictures on the packaging on the Nanos at Costco, but then I looked on the Apple site and the green is all in your face bright pastel seafoam green. It looked more subtle on the package.

So I think red might be the thing, but on the website it looks like a kind of pinky red, which I don't want. Can someone who has seen the red Nano in person tell me if it is a good, true red?

Santa thanks you for your help.

Day Four

We're just going to ignore the fact that it's been over a month since we got back from the honeymoon and I'll keep trekking through the days for you all. K?

On Day Four we woke up and headed out to explore points northward a bit more. Actually I was kind of wondering what we would do that day since we were planning to head up to Acadia on Day Five and (I thought) had exhausted the charm of Camden on Day Two. Au contraire, says Jason*, who took us to the Camden Hills State Park just past Camden.

But first, we stopped in Rockland for breakfast. I had noticed The Rockland Cafe on our way through Rockland a couple of days before and had a feeling it would be a great local diner with amazing greasy food and waitresses who call you "Hon". I was not disappointed.

Even though we arrived at 10:55 and they stopped serving breakfast at 11, they still let me order some bacon and eggs. And on the side instead of toast I got a blueberry bagel that I think they just flat out dipped in butter and grilled because Oh. My. Gosh. I have never had such a divine bagel.

After filling up on grease, we drove to the Camden Hills State Park and spent the rest of the day hiking and gazing at amazing views. At the top of a hill I did a little jumping cheer when we reached the marker at the top. Jason snapped a picture and then said, "Ok, do that again, only this time reach your hands up even higher over your head." I did that and then realized just as he took the picture that he was really focusing in on my exposed midriff when I raised my arms over my head. Yeah, you all won't be seeing that picture.

However, here are a few.

We ran into another honeymooning couple who had also been married the Saturday before and we all took each other's pictures.

After our hike we drove to an overlook and watched the sun set over Camden below. Then we drove back to the cottage, stopping at the grocery store to pick up something for dinner. We got a major deal on a big bag of Prince Edward Island mussels and some chopped clams.

Note: plug in electric burners do not heat up giant pots of water very quickly. It took about an hour to get the water to boil for the pasta, and then another 20 minutes to get it to boil again for the mussels.

* Not actually. Just in my blog. He's not that pretentious.