Georgia In Front Of My Mind

I'm in Georgia. Here are some things I saw last year.

Seriously

Seriously. Will someone please tell me how I can get my links and such back to the left sidebar...I reverted to my old template but the suckers are still down at the bottom in a way that offends me deeply.

Indy, The Borrowed Dog

So we're dogsitting this dog while its owners are in Massachusetts (or at least I think it's Massachusetts). We don't actually know the owners which is kind of funny. Indy's a good dog for the most part. She likes to bark at things we can or cannot hear. She likes it when we kick the orange ball and she gets to catch it. Stuff like that.

It's Getting Foggy In Here

One of the things about being on top of a mountain...or I think it is because of that...is that fog comes rolling in with some regularity. It's particularly lovely when it's still relatively warm. As it was on our way back from the Chinese restaurant.
We stopped at 'the pig'.

And then Fred's.

Friday Chinese Buffet

There aren't many options for dining out in the area around Sewanee. Or, rather, there aren't very many super appealing options. There used to be a truck stop/diner in Monteagle. In the last year, or so, the truck stop was converted into a Chinese buffet. This was my first time at Shan...though I guess I'll have to go back to try out their showers.


It wasn't as bad as I expected. The new owners totally reworked the space to make it almost impossible to remember what it used to look like. Pretty standard buffet complete with gross cheese sticks and meat, meat, meat.

Lunch and Dinner at Home

On Thursday my mother made a lovely oyster stew for lunch.
And for dinner with a couple of my parents' friends, we had some delectable roast chicken with yams, cranberry relish and scrumptious salad.

Christmas Types

We decorated the tree a few days ago. The ornament directly below was a gift to my mother in honor of the baby she was about to have (me!).

Mr. Mustachio

Since Thanksgiving I've insisted that the boyfriend grow facial hair. This insistence was born out of a certain curiosity...the curiosity of what the boyfriend would look like if he let a beard grow more than three days. He, I'm pretty sure, was not very into it and kept threatening to shave the whole thing off before I felt the experiment was finished. He did, however, shave a majority of it off the day before we left Chicago. But, once again, at my insistence he left a mustache...I thought it looked quite dashing...the boyfriend thought it made him look like an adolescent from the seventies. I say potato he says stupid...we've called the whole thing off.

Loverly Lobster

Yesterday the boyfriend and I stuffed his car with his belongings and then he drove me to the airport. I had a shitty time in the airport which involved a quick check-in and security process but then a lengthy amount of stupid. A few keywords that sum up the stupid: broken switch, deplane, new plane, waiting, no idea, Miami, delayed bags, bitch and moan, longer delay, takeoff imminent, waiting, urgh. But I finally did arrive in Nashville and had two parents and a van full of food waiting for me. The food included lobsters (something hard to come by in Sewanee and its surrounding area) and other things...like avocados and paté. We drove back from Nashville and hung out. I recounted Scrubs episodes and my parents recounted their weird run in with some guy and his friend. We were waiting for the boyfriend to arrive...we were his halfway mark (generally speaking) between Chicago and Georgia and the parents even had a lobster with his name on it...or, rather, a lobster named Roger (my mother named the lobster Roger...she named mine Priscilla). Finally the boyfriend arrived and then we feasted.

I am a lover of lobster. I just am. It's a thing about me, okay? Yeah. Don't mess with me. What am I talking about? So I'm in the library using their wireless internet. The library will be closed tomorrow through Christmas, so we'll see if any posts get posted by some sort of industrious method (sitting in a car outside of a university building probably). I got my license renewed today and I look like a very unattractive person in the photograph. Or not very unattractive. Less attractive than I actually am, how about that? I want a cat. Or a puppy. I should go.

Hama Hama

Since the boyfriend will not be returning from this going away we had quite the sushi blow out on our last night in Chicago...Hama Matsu style. We basically shared the old standards plus a few new things. Tuna tar-tar:
Sushi mold with white tuna:
Salmon skin maki:
The Shogun special roll (which blogger, of course, refuses to post vertically) full of eel, ikura, asparagus tempura and other such yummies...I actually didn't like it as much as I thought. I realize I am not a huge fan of large amounts of eel sauce.
Close up on the Shogun:

Back To Back Gluttony, But No Matter

She-Who-Has-No-Blog gathered some of the troops together (me, the boyfriend, mousehead and exploded viewer) for one last meal before holiday departures (or, in the case of the boyfriend, a permanent defection). We went to M. Henry, a restaurant I have read about in terms of brunch but have never quite gotten around to visiting. I had heard it was very good but also very packed on weekends. I assumed, wrongly, that it was a weekend only spot and so it was a pleasant surprise to learn that one could dine there on a Tuesday afternoon. There were many intriguing meals on their menu (birds in a basket, bean cakes, sandwiches etc) but I went with their breakfast special...this is where the back to back gluttony comes into play...the crabcake benedict.
The hollandaise sauce was better than Ann Sather's though still could have had a bit more bite to it. I guess my preference for the sauce is thick, buttery but with a definite lemon undertone. It was good. But since I recently made my own killer crabcakes I was a little unimpressed by their's. But that's my own fault. I should have gotten pancakes. The boyfriend got pancakes and they were delicious. Yummers. Yummers? Shhhh.

Sunday Breakfast at the Lakeview Ann Sather's

I had the hot chocolate and traditional eggs benedict. The boyfriend had the eggs benedict florentine. I was happy with the way my eggs were cooked and the ham was damn thick, but both the boyfriend and I wished for a Hollandaise sauce in greater quantity and thickness.

Cookie Party

After the solstice party we went to a cookie decorating project thrown by a girl who used to have a blog but hasn't updated it in forever and her boyfriend who has a blog but I don't know what it's called. It was dubbed a cookie decorating project, but we got there too late to partake in that part of the evening. M.Lady made rum balls...and they were good.
Cookies we didn't decorate. There was also spiced cider with the option of rum. I had assumed that the rum was in the cider, so my first glass was sans alcohol.
Some boys went out to the basketball court near the friends' apartment to shoot some hoops (the obvious thing to do after midnight). I shot two hoops and missed both.

Then the boyfriend and I walked back to the dogs' house (oh yeah we were dogwatching this weekend) which was a nice walk on a really balmy December night. And then took the dogs on a pretty good walk so they wouldn't wake us up at six in the morning (they didn't, it was brilliant).

An Unexpected Invitation Leads To A Lovely Evening

So two weeks, or so, ago, I was invited to a solstice party by a reader. This was, of course, very cool to me. Very cool because this dude reads my blog regularly and found the blog interesting enough to invite me to a shin-dig he was throwing. I have a pretty good concept of who the people I know in the real world read the blog. But I have less of an idea of who reads the blog for the blog's sake and not out of knowing me. And so this invitation definitely functions as encouragement that the blog can, potentially, appeal to people who don't know me. This invitation was also encouraging because I was permitted to invite a few friends. And since I get super scared of new situations if I don't have a few familiar faces, this was the perfect addendum to an already exciting prospect. Alls to say that the boyfriend, mousehead, exploded viewer and I went to this solstice party and had a very lovely time.
Our host works in the wine world and had many wines on offer. I found myself sticking to champagne because, well, I love champagne. And this champagne, Roederer Estate, was quite bubbalicious. Though I also tried the Goose Island XXX Porter which was surprisingly tasty to a non-dark/porter beer lover (the boyfriend didn't like it because it tasted too much like coffee for him). Their spread was enviable and I wish I hadn't been so flustered...the photographs could be better.

This is one of their dogs, she was way busy trying to get people to give her tidbits from the food table to stay still for a photograph.
There was also a wine game that involved four unmarked carafes (bottles?) of Syrahs (the boyfriend would phrase it: wines based on the syrah grape). The game was to guess, as close as possible, the geographical location of the wine. The boyfriend and mousehead/exploded viewer played the game. I started, but got impatient with my lack of wine knowledge...though I do think the first wine was from California. This game lead us to think about a similar game we could play where the goal would be to figure out which wine was the $2.99, the $6.99, etc. Fun!
We also talked to a prosecutor/law guy who had an interesting and first hand perspective on the war against drugs.

Thanks again to our host and hostess and canine hostesses as well. It was lovely and we were all glad to meet y'all.

An addendum: It seems that the boyfriend (and I, though he did all the guessing...I was wrong about the first one being from California) won the wine game! He got 2.75 points out of a possible 6.25. The prize? A bottle of the wines that made up the game. Very cool.

Thanks, Chicago Public Radio

A while back I donated a little money to Chicago Public Radio (it only seemed fair, what with the advanced copy of This American Life dvd). Last week I got an envelope from CPR and inside was a coupon to Chipotle, good for any burrito, fajita, salad or bol. On Saturday I cashed that sucker in for a massive Chipotle burrito...which I could not finish (though it was good).

Sad Sushi

At my insistence the boyfriend and I went to Bentonara for a little new sushi experience. It started off well enough...the Age-Doshi tofu was good. But generally speaking I do not think that the dinner was a success.
I had the maki combination which included a full california roll and half rolls of tuna, salmon, cucumber and shitaki mushrooms. This was an impressive amount of food, especially for the rock-bottom price of $10. But the quality of the makis were not up to par. The California rolls were dry. The tuna and salmon rolls were over stuffed with shoddily cut pieces of fish. The wasabi roe tasted nothing like wasabi, it was just green. The boyfriend said his Chirashi was fine. And the ikura and white tuna I had tasted like they should. But overall, way disappointing.

The Semester Ends

On Friday my short prose class and I went to our professor's house for one last go around. Our afternoon included a nice spread of cupcakes, Einstein's bagels, Martinelli's apple cider and fancy beer.

Yarn

I try, every once and a while, to put order into the chaos which is my yarn stash. This latest round ended with four different bags of yarn separated on the basis of full or partial skein and the likelihood that I will ever use the yarn for anything.
Below is a little something I started knitting when I still worked at the farm/yarn shop. The yarn was dyed by my boss and myself...that was a lot of fun, choosing colors and whatnot.

Hot Wassailin'

Player with words girl had a nice shin dig featuring wassail...a delicious warm whiskey fruit punch drink.
The spread runneth over with cheese, veggies and sweets.

Simple Salad

I had a nice dinner a few days back. Turkey broth with corn and pastina and then a salad full of avocados, black olives, tomatoes, blue cheese and lettuce, of course.

Dim Sum c/o Furama Part 32

She-who-has-no-blog, the boyfriend and I went to Furama and had a good helping of all our favorite things. Shrimp dumplings, sesame balls, fun noodles and so much more.

You Live In New York?

If you live in New York, you should go to this event. My friend Kate will be there with her specially designed muttering hats and who knows what else (probably a bunch of extremely tech saavy artist types).

Scrabble Party

On Saturday the boyfriend and I hosted a little scrabble party. We had a little under twenty guests and a little over ten scrabble participants. I wanted to do a real tourney, complete with Wimbledon like flow charts and a grand champion. But then I realized that I didn't know how to seed people, people like coming two hours late to things even if they should know better (this is only in regards to a scrabble party...lateness in all other parties is accepted and understood), that I have no idea how to make a graphy type thing and that I always get worried that people are getting bored of what I'm enjoying. So there was no tournament, exactly. But there were three rounds of thirty minute games. I was gratified to see that a few people kept playing even after they were no longer required to. Overall success.