33 posts tagged “friends”
The last few weeks have been crazy busy-- lots of stuff going on, including my hitting the road for work once again. Just got back last night from my first multi-day out-- the first of many to come. In the midst of all of that we had to say au revoir to our dear friend Carrie.
I've been busy making stuff, too....
And we took in what is prolly the last harvest of the year. (I had planted peas for fall, but the bunny ate all the sprouts, so no peas for us :( )
Tomatillos and sweet red peppers...
And hot peppers. I put them all together for dinner the other night....
Tomatillo and Corn soup with sweet red peppers (and a few hot ones, too). Delicious!
In the meantime, Mr. P has been busy building a person out of wood. :)
Got my film back from my trip to Massachusetts. Did I mention it was a lovely trip? It was. I think this kind of encapsulates it:
Heading for Massachusetts tomorrow to see friends and family-- looking forward to it! Just wish Mr. Dr. Birdcage could come :(......
Of course, I didn't get everything done I was hoping to (not even close), but we did have a fun weekend, so who cares? P and I went to an abandoned mall in Richmond and shot some photographs (large format for me, so may be a while before I get them back). Found a wild blackberry patch and ate tons of blackberries (yum!). Went up to Charlottesville to retrieve my fixed cameras (yeay!). Had lunch at the Blue Moon Diner (yum!). Went to a crazy antique place where P got something that he's using in his new work (come see it at Irvine Contemporary this fall!). Had ice cream, and then came home and watched a movie. :)
Never got around to the garden tasks I was hoping to do this weekend.
But things grow with or without you....
Today I shot some pictures for our friend Carrie, who is being featured as applicator of the month for American Clay. She does super beautiful work, so if you are looking to redecorate or just beautify your house, you should give her a call. It was great to see her, and super fun to go out and shoot some pictures of her work and some puuuurdy houses.
Last night was First Friday in Richmond (I mean, it was the first friday of the month everywhere, but it was First Friday in Richmond), so we went to a couple of openings. The first was at the VMFA Studio School, where we got to chat with friends and look at art (some very nice prints, and I managed to more or less sell the one I liked best by someone I know to someone else I know). Then we headed on down to VCU for the opening of a neat show that includes two friends of ours-- Tiffany Glass Ferreira and Richard Garrett.
It's a small show, only a few artists, of which Tiffany and Richard are two. (Tiffany on the left and Richard on the floor).
Friends! We like friends! Today I got to see friends I don't get to see too much, staring with friend Tiffany. Phil made a portrait of her, which, sadly, did not come out as well as he'd hoped. On the upside, this means she might be coming back! yeay! She brought her brand new daughter, who was quiet as a mouse, and cute as a button. With so much hair and big big brown eyes. She will cause her parents trouble when she is a teenager, what with the boys who will be mooning after her. It was so very good to see the Queen of Real Small Art... we hope to see more of her!
We also had friend Carrie and her pooch Sky and friend Dave over, and P made a portrait of her. This came out better, and will surely be posted soon. It was good to see her, and I got a chance to give her the hyssop seedlings I'd grown for her. Sky chased squirrels and sniffed a lot. It was very good to see her, although the squirrels and chipmunks were traumatized.
My main accomplishments for the weekend included doing laundry and baking bread, which came out pretty good. I am here for a whole week. whoo! and then on travel next week.
Sadly, my garden has cutworms, I think, which would explain why we are having no bok choy this year, as the cutworms seem to like them very very much. As Phil tells me, this is what you get for not spraying everything with chemicals. Too bad, I dislike chemicals more than I like bok choy, which says a lot, since I love bok choy.
Also, go Molly go!
Okay, I did not go to the Mall to watch the inauguration.... if inaugurations were held in June, I might've done, but, erhm, it was like 17 degrees out. And since I did not have tickets, I woulda been back with the jumbotrons, so, you know, watching it in HDTV in my friends Rebecca and Eric's warm living room in Alexandria seemed like a perfect solution. We watched, we cried (well I cried-- what a speech!), we drank champagne.... (and just in case you're trying to remember why the End of the Dark Time and the Departure of the Vapid One is such a celebratory occassion, check out the top 25 Bushisms over on Slate. I am particularly fond of number 11. Make the pie higher! Make the pie higher!)
For a lot of friends much of the change coming is going to be in the form of diapers. A significant number of dear friends are busy doing what my dear friend the Fabulous Mrs. A (due in May, incidentally) calls sprogifying.
So I've been busily making baby quilts for everyone and their expanding families.
In the meantime, big doins this week for the country, no? Makes me wish I was still living in the District. It would be great to be able to go down to the mall, see the festivities and then skip the Foggy Bottom metro station (which sounds like it was a disaster yesterday) and walk home. Weirdly, I have to be in Northern VA this week for work, so I'll be closer to the District tomorrow, but not early enough in the day to contemplate watching the inauguration anywhere but on TV. It's kind of wild knowing that we're all watching history.
We went to Massachusetts to see the family for the holidays, and had a great time. We got to see my parents, brother, and niece, as well as aunts, uncles, family friends, and my grandfather. Aaaand, we went to see my dear friend the fabulous Mrs. A and her lovely husband the fabulous Mr. A, as well as friends in the Berkshires. A great trip all around... makes me wish we were living on that goat farm in Vermont we always talk about....
We went to visit P's friend Matt and his wife, Laney, who made the Most Fabulous lunch... oh my GOD, was it good. I mean, when was the last time you had chocolate lava cake AT LUNCH? We went out for a walk in the woods with them afterwards with the dogs, including dear Mister French. Who is famous, having his own page on a social network and a portrait having been published in ArtNews a month or two ago.... He is rather photogenic.
I'm waiting for the publication of Matt's images of those crazy gnomes....
And of course we got to see my family.... my niece has some serious ideas about princess-ness. She was much taken with the princess dress my mom got her and insisted that she needed to put it on that.very.second. She wore it the rest of the weekend, althought clearly, the responsibilites of royalty were weighing on her.
So. Being that P and I are entirely broke, having earlier this year lost 60% of our income, we've made a number of adjustments. I wear a hat in the house (as I am doing right now), we car pool when we can, and I decided that everyone was getting a gift of the heart (and garden) rather than a gift of the (empty) wallet this year for Christmas. And here was my plan: I was going to give everyone the gift of dried herbs from my herb garden. I grew thyme and sage, mint and oregano this year, so what better gift than something that I grew?
Apparently the caterpillars decided to get their gift early this year. I guess they didn't realize they weren't on my list. I came home from work the other night to find P hovering over the herb plants I brought in to overwinter. Apparently, the warm indoor weather prompted the ravenous little bastards to hatch, thinking it was spring (yes, I'm inadvertently conducting a global warming experiement as well). They are incredibly desctructive- mowing down entire plants overnight. They've gotten into everything. P and I spend a chunk of time each evening inspecting plants and pulling the well camouflaged little nasties from plants we'd just looked at and had found nothing. But the short story is: not going to be much gift-giving this year.
In the meantime, I've been learning how to make bread, which was something I never bothered with before, but with bread clocking in at $4 a loaf for anything with fiber in it, it's all old skool round these parts for the foreseeable future.
Sadly, things do not look good for finishing Nanowrimo this year. :( sad clown. I've just passed 25K, but sheesh, there's only a week left and I'm not sure I'll be able to fit another 25K words in. We shall see.....
