Riding in the Motor Car...

My Dad has always loved trains, ever since he was a little boy.  Some years ago, he started volunteering with the SC Railroad Museum where they have real trains and track and run tourist trains most every weekend.   For his retirement, he bought a "motorcar".  When I first heard "motorcar"...I thought about an old style car from the 30s.  This type of car is a car that can ride on the rails and check track to make sure all is well.  Today, we met some friends of my parents and their kids to ride on the motor car and have a picnic.

My Daddy in front of his Motorcar

The whole fam

Daddy barking orders (just kidding!)

Heading down the track

A little further...

Motorcar driver in action...

After the motorcar ride, we sat down and had a picnic in front of the station.  It was another lovely day, if a bit cool.

Tomorrow, I get back on a plane and go home.  Oh well, it's been a lovely holiday!

Giving Thanks in the Holy City

My Thanksgiving this year was one of those days that will likely stick in my mind forever.  The day was stunning, and we spent the bulk of it in Charleston.  Temperatures were in the 60s, and the skies were clear and blue.  After 3 or 4 straight days of cold, gray rain in Maryland, 60s and the sun were rather welcome!

We started the day with a walking tour based on Pat Conroy's novel, South of Broad.  I finished the audiobook this weekend while roasting my turkey breast.  The tour was fantastic and hit a lot of the sites mentioned in the novel such as St Michael's church, the four corners of law, some of the residential areas "South of Broad", the Battery, and more.  Here are a few photos I snapped that show how gorgeous the day was:

St. Michael's

Four Corners of Law at Broad and Meeting St

Looking down the Battery on East Battery St

Me in Battery Park in front of the Cooper River

After the tour and a little more wandering around, we headed to Magnolia's for Thanksgiving dinner.  We met my Godmother and her travel friends, and we proceeded to have a lovely meal.  My Dad and I split a bottle of Pinot Noir...and then had some Fried Green tomatoes.  I had the "Carolina Carpetbagger", twin filets topped with fried oysters and madeira sauce.  Yummy!  Creme Brulee was dessert.

As the sun was setting, we were headed out of the city headed towards Columbia.  I felt so at peace after such a lovely day.  I highly recommend visiting Charleston for Thanksgiving!

Downtime is Delectable...

I have to say, this weekend was quite lovely.  For me, it was the perfect mix of busyness and downtime.  I spent some time with J, got 2 training runs in, had my planned early Thanksgiving dinner with friends, sang a few Christmas carols, and spent Sunday on the sofa watching football, continuing to acquaint myself with my MacBook, and reading.

Even though cooking my early Thanksgiving meal was work, it was very enjoyable.  Friday night, I went to the grocery store and cleaned the house from top to bottom.  Saturday, I went for a 5 mile run in the AM, had grits casserole with J and watched College Gameday.  My turkey went in around 11, and then I started working on the dressing and broccoli spinach casserole.  It was a lovely fall day outside, which added to the enjoyment of cooking inside for some reason.  My Linner companions came over around 2, and the food was on the table by 2:30.  It was certainly a modest Thanksgiving meal...3 dishes and no sweet potato anything, but it was tasty, and I didn't need to have tons and tons of food leftover!  A friend brought a yummy pumpkin mousse pie (that I am still enjoying out of the fridge!), and after an enjoyable afternoon, we headed out to sing Christmas Carols at a holiday lighting ceremony.

Once the carols were sung, I headed up to Baltimore to hear a concert version of Donizetti's Don Pasquale.  It was a good performance, and I even managed to be home in bed by midnight!  Unfortunately, Marcello seems to be suffering from an ear infection (I took him to the vet yesterday), so he was restless and waking me up all night shaking his head and scratching his ears.  I was worried about him, and didn't sleep very well.  I was up at 6:30 AM anyway to run the Cold Turkey 10K race.  It was a fun race...so fun, in fact, that we decided to run it again when we were done!  Ok, ok, we did have 12 miles on our schedule for Sunday. :)

After I got home from the run, I ate some leftovers, took a nice hot shower, and crawled into bed for some football and a nap.  Di-vine, I tell you!  I managed to rouse myself about 3 PM, blow-dry my hair, and head downstairs to veg on the couch in front of football.  I haven't had an afternoon like that in a long time.  Everything that needed to be done was taken care of, and I just relaxed.  I did make turkey tetrazzini with the leftovers to stick in the freezer, and got to finish up listening to Pat Conroy's South of Broad in the process.  Since I didn't sleep well the night before, I was in bed by 10 PM.  All in all...a great weekend!

Tomorrow, I head to SC for a Homeland Thanksgiving.  As I've mentioned, we are headed to Charleston on Thanksgiving Day.  We'll start off with the South of Broad walking tour, and then have our Thanksgiving meal at Magnolia's.  Sounds like a great day to me! Let's all say a quick prayer that my flight tomorrow night is not cancelled and is relatively on time!  I'm bringing my MacBook, so look for some blogs from the Homeland.

Quick Update

Today, I feel the need resort to a bullet-point post.  Please forgive me...

• Last weekend's concert was quite enjoyable.  Good music, a decent performance, fun "hang-out" time...that's what I remember always loving about concert weekends.  While there was drama...this time I was not involved.  Thank goodness!
  
  
• I also went on the 19 mile running tour of DC.  It was a hilly, tough run...but a lot of fun at the same time.  And confidence-building...it was the first of 3 major back-to-back runs in preparation for the Goofy Challenge.  9 miles on Saturday, 19 on Sunday.  See my running blog for more details on the run if you are interested...
  

• I have a good plan in place for my mini-Thanksgiving feast this weekend.  3 friends, good food, and leftovers.  Ironically, after we finish eating our "Thanksgiving Meal" 5 days early, we are then headed off to sing Christmas Carols.  A sign of the times...
  

• I finally bought my MacBook!  After 8 months of coveting it...I finally was pushed over the edge when my 7 year old desktop stopped connecting to the internet and decided it didn't want to have anything to do with my external hard drive (where all of my music and video files reside).  I generally am the type of person to not replace something until it dies (cars, hair-dryers, etc.)  So, when I started coveting the MacBook, I guess I was waiting until I "needed" it.  Which happened last week.  So far, I haven't had too much time to sit down and explore it, but I do have all my music files transferred over and my iPods (all 3 of them) synced up.
  

• My roommate heads to Paris today, so I'm all alone for a couple of days.  Well, alone except for Marcello the kitten (almost cat).  I forgot that one of the perks of having a pet is their company when there are no other humans around.  Marcello is good company, and tends to keep me entertained, so I think I will be ok.  Hopefully we won't need to test out his guard-cat skills.

I think that's it...look for some photos from my Thanksgiving Dinner on Saturday!

Lots and Lots of Music...

My roommate and I have season tickets to Washington National Opera.  We got a sweet deal through their Generation O program for folks under 35.  I was on the fence all summer about subscribing for the season, and then got the email with the ticket prices for Gen O...and immediately got tickets for every opera of the season.  We saw Barber of Seville back in September, had tickets for Falstaff in late October (my stomach buggy self had to give my ticket to a friend), and then managed to schedule a Thursday Ariadne Auf Naxos closely followed by a Saturday performance of Wagner's Gotterdammerung.  I didn't notice the proximity of those two until a few weeks ago.

Ariadne was....meh.  I was entertained, and I enjoyed the opera...but I wasn't blown away.  And the tenor who sang Bacchus...was...well....bad.  Like... Maureen and I kept looking at each other and rolling our eyes bad.  I know they had some tenor disasters...this was the 3rd person scheduled to sing the role, but still.  I could have listened to Irene Theorin sing their duets by herself and been happy.  So on to Saturday...

To be honest, I was not looking forward to Gotterdammerung.  I knew the back story of the Ring cycle, Wagner, why it was being presented in concert instead of a full production, etc.  The performance was scheduled for 5 hours.  5 hours of opera in concert...I wasn't sure if I'd make it!  My ADD roommate figured she couldn't sit still through it, so she gave her ticket to a friend of ours who is a singer.  Honestly, if J wasn't singing in the chorus...I probably wouldn't have gone.  What a huge mistake that would have been!

Wow.  The music, the singing, the power...it was just amazing.  I did get tired of sitting, but I could have listened to that music and almost all of those singers for 5 more hours!  Wagner operas seem to be a polarizing force...people either love them or hate them.  I wasn't sure which I'd be...until the orchestral interludes in Act I grabbed me and took a firm hold on my emotions!   It really felt like being transported into another world.  The singers were so animated without real staging, that I really forgot it was just a concert version of the opera.  I enjoyed Irene Theorin' voice in Ariadne, but she was phenomenal in Gotterdammerung.  I also loved her dress...black and sparkly, and yet, understated.

Anyway, it was a great night.  Since there were 2 intermissions, I had champagne twice. :)

**In other news, this weekend, we have our own Chorale concert...with a little opera thrown in, so I've been in rehearsals all week.  I'll also be embarking on a 19 mile running tour of DC on Sunday.  Stay tuned for a report on that one...

Gobble, Gobble...Thanksgiving Turkey

For the past 12 years or so, it has been my responsibility to cook the turkey for my family's Thanksgiving dinner.  Believe it or not, even with my mom being the accomplished cook that she is, she has never cooked a Thanksgiving turkey!  Until they passed away in 1996, one of my grandmothers always cooked the turkey.  So, for the first Thanksgiving without them,  my mom declared we would not have turkey.  I balked at this, so she said, "Well, you cook it, then."  So I did.

I went online and found Martha Stewart's recipe for roasting a turkey, and bought a turkey from the grocery store.  I followed her instructions and got a 12 lb turkey.  Sounds reasonable, right?  Well, apparently since my family is small (only 4 of us at dinner that year), we usually got a turkey breast instead of the whole turkey!  Consequently, we had turkey leftovers, casseroles, and soups for weeks after Thanksgiving!  The turkey was fabulous, though...juicy and tasty, so I was nominated as "turkey chef" for the remainder of my days.  And, believe it or not, all of them have been pretty good.  There have been a few fiascos of course...one year we almost had "Thanksgiving Chicken" instead, but all in all I've been pretty proud of my turkey-roasting skills.  I actually look forward to cooking the turkey each year.  Since '96, I think I've only missed a couple of years...traveling one year, and my first Thanksgiving here in Annapolis that I spent all by myself and ate chicken fingers.

This year, I'll be flying into SC late Wednesday night, and back on Saturday.  Since I can't take leftovers on the plane and my parents can't eat that many leftovers, we decided to forgo cooking dinner.  Instead, we're going to spend the day in Charleston and have our Thanksgiving meal at Magnolia's.  Not too shabby, eh?  The culinary snob in me is certainly looking forward to that meal!  They do have turkey on the menu for Thanksgiving, but I doubt I'll be ordering it.

While I'm ridiculously excited about eating at Magnolia's, part of me is a little sad that I won't get to cook the turkey this year.  I was reading all the Home magazines with info about cooking turkeys, Thanksgiving meals, etc...and I got nostalgic and a little sad.  I thought about how much I'd miss the basting process, the turkey sandwiches afterwards, having turkey tetrazzini in the freezer for rushed pre-rehearsal meals during the crazy Christmas singing season, the turkey noodle soup...and I decided that I'm going to cook my own Thanksgiving meal the weekend before Thanksgiving!  It's the only time I have time to cook, and even then it will be a bit pushed with running, a singing gig and opera to attend that evening.  I will perservere, though!  I may end up having the meal by myself...which sounds sad but really isn't since it's not actually on Thanksgiving, and my whole point of cooking the turkey is for the leftovers.  My roommate will be in Paris (very jealous!), but perhaps I can find some other friends in town to join me.  If nothing else, I'm sure Marcello the kitten will be quite happy to sit at the table with me and snack on some turkey!

To document the process, I'll try to take some pictures and post them here for your enjoyment!