Run Kami run!

After many, many months of training and I can't even begin to imagine how many miles run, Kami completed her first marathon on Sunday!!  This was originally supposed to happen back in December before the Icy Disaster swept through and cancelled the race, so here we are almost three months later with a baby road trip over to Fort Worth for the Cowtown Marathon on a beautiful spring-like day (a million times better than the ice and snow!).  The perfect day for a run!  You know, for you people who like to do that kind of thing...

Check out the awesome medal - it's a spur!  I love you, Fort Worth.

Go Kami!  Winnie the puppy dog was not cooperating on the picture-taking, but I promise she was very supportive.

I have absolutely no desire to ever run a marathon in my life (I probably wouldn't even wake up for it...), but I'm happy to support my friends who do.  It gives me an excuse to create inspirational craft projects that look as though they were inspired and executed by a seven year old (giant bubble/block letters!  pink glitter paint!).

So proud of you, Kami!  And just watching her run 26.2 miles made us hungry, so Carolyn, Eva, and I had frozen custard from Curly's and delicious brunch at Cafe Brazil in her honor.  You know, we had to walk a little bit from where we parked to the finish line...there was even a very small hill involved.  Definitely exercise.  And then I promptly went home and took a nap.

Hi y'all. Life happened.

I'm back.  Fresh start.  Let's do this thing.

It's been a long summer, parts of which I'd love to just file away neatly and never experience again, parts of which have been just amazing.  I GOT A NEW JOB (put that under amazing), and Craig's in Houston all week every week for work until quite possibly the end of time (less amazing), and after just four short months from his diagnosis with cancer, we lost Craig's dad.  It's been a long summer.  A very long summer.

But today marks the official start of fall, a new season, time for a change.  And back to the blogging, because it really is something I enjoy and it bugs me when I let it slide.  New season, new start.  Too bad it's going to be 94 DEGREES this afternoon while we're out Oktoberfesting, enjoying biers of the world and some tasty German food.

Oh, and it's football season - we're all pretty excited about that around here.

Party on the patio

It's here.  Spring.  Dallas has been hit with a stretch of gorgeous 80-something-degree days, and we're soaking up all the patio time that deserves.

Preferred spot?  Deck in my very own backyard.  Although it's lacking the friendly waitstaff that refresh your water glass and bring you tasty things to eat.  Harrison also sits at the glass door and meows at me to come back in.  Poor little guy.  Still weird being in an actual house.

Patrizio's.  I always feel poor over in that privileged part of town, but I can certainly afford a baby bellini and plate of pasta to buy some time on that pretty patio with my dear Sarah.  Plus Anthropologie is right there and perfect for post-dinner wandering and dreaming.

Dashing out of work at 4:45 to meet friends at Times Ten, where we proceeded to hang out on the patio for the next four hours while sipping a lovely sauvignon blanc (it's white wine season!) and enjoying pizza from Scalini's.  I love that they deliver to that patio.  It's the perfefct combination.

Common Table for brunch.  The sky threatened us with a few clouds, but then it cleared out and was just lovely.  Any Sunday is better with mimosas and something that's been Benedict-ed.

Although any Sunday is not better with a SUNBURN.  I met Kami and Carolyn this morning for brunch at Taverna, which was delicious and wonderful in every way as we enjoyed the patio and people-watching and catching up on life, but I had my back to the sun.  My delicate Casper-like skin shrieked in horror and promptly turned a rather bright pink.  It's only MARCH, for crying out loud.  Guess I'd better go ahead and bust out my SPF 80 for daily outings.  It's kinda frightening what can happen to my skin with an hour of sunlight.

I feel like this kinda became an advertisement for various Dallas establishments with patios...but DC deprived me of patio time.  First of all, the weather is generally not this cooperative there this time of year, and patio space = valuable real estate = minimal patio space.  And I loved my rooftop time, but it's just not quite the same.  Good to be back in patio land.

Fall-tastic birthday celebration

Birthdays are...well, maybe not quite as exciting as they used to be.  However, I suppose this last one was landmark in its own way because I've now found myself at that mystical age that people seem to call on for a while..."oh, you're 29 again?" - hardy har har.  Landmark or not, for this one, nothing epic - I did a mini-celebration in Dallas and then spent the rest of birthday weekend here in DC hanging out with the boy.  My request for birthday adventures?  We made a journey through the countryside (full of beautiful fall leaves...

...and ridiculously expansive, likely expensive, country estates...these were not mere homes, no...estates is really the only way to sum it up) to Homestead Farm in Poolesville, Maryland. 

Why??  Erin, you grew up out in the boonies!  What's so fascinating about a farm?  Well, the acres of land present in my youth never afforded the opportunity to pick apples!  I'm not sure why I'm so fascinated with the idea of picking my own fruit. Maybe it's just something I'm destined to like.  I was a little sad that we were at the bitter end of apple-picking season...

...but there were still enough clinging to the trees to make it worth our while.  The farm was also all cutesy in its fall/Halloween-ish festivities with a pumpkin patch and scarecrows and cheesy wooden cutouts to ensure that I got a costumed look in for Halloween.

After searching out the apples and making the rounds, we headed out with a bag of apples, sack of peppers, acorn squash, and some tasty canned goods - pumpkin butter, apple butter, blueberry jam.  Yum!  I love food.

In the interest of education, I present to you some apple facts:

• Apples are a member of the rose family.
• Apples ripen six to ten times faster at room temperature than if they were refrigerated.
• Fresh apples float because 25% of their volume is air.
• The crabapple is the only apple native to North America.

Fascinating, I know!  So I came home with these...

...which I'm resisting eating as plain apples, because that's just dull, and am instead turning into a lot of baked goods and random dinner items.

And don't worry, there was more to my birthday than just apples.  All of this was preceded by an amazing dinner on Saturday night at 2941 and generous gifts and then homemade chile rellenos (remember that sack of peppers?) after the apple adventures on Sunday.  That pretty much does it for me.

These are a few of my favorite things

I love...my friends. 

Autumn and its colors.  Even in beer form.

Trinity's crazy t-shirts and general antics.

Hanging out at Common Table and Twisted Root with all of the above.  Perfect.

The heat sucks all the fun out of life

I started writing this a couple of weeks ago in the midst of an agonizing stretch of hot hot HOT here in DC.  Well, what do you know?  It's cooled down just a touch (we're talking nineties here instead of 100+...not exactly a cold front or anything), but the heat has still sucked the life out of me.  And tomorrow I'm headed to Dallas...where tomorrow's anticipated high is 104 degrees.  Oh, vomit.  But at least I'll get to see my friends!  Regardless of that, I haven't exactly been motivated to go out and explore all that DC has to offer.  Right now pretty much the only offer I'm interested in is the power of my air conditioning here in my comfortable apartment.  And the fact that I started this post two and a half weeks ago and am JUST NOW getting around to wrapping it up in the most boring manner possible lets you know just how powerful a foe this heat is.

I have no energy to do anything besides stretch out on the couch and watch endless loops of Mad Men and America's Test Kitchen (I wonder how often those two shows are mentioned in the same sentence...probably not so much).  I get home from work and just want to SIT.  You know, after I peel off my sweaty clothes from walking home in the bomb of humidity and beaming sun rays.


DC used to be considered a hardship post for diplomats...where's MY extra pay for surviving this ridiculous summer?!?

In spite of the heat...I realize I only have about six months left here (WHERE does the time go??) to fully explore and appreciate my current city.


So, I'm going to get out and do stuff.  The air-conditioned stuff.  And pray for autumn, a real autumn with pleasant temperatures and beautiful leaves, not some flash-in-the-pan "oh, look, it was seventy degrees for a week between the circles of hell and the return of the Abominable Snowman" kind of season that lingers for a while.

I realize I haven't been very exciting lately as far as embarking on blog-worthy adventures, but I'll get back on track.  I have to take care of my DC list!


Now, if you'll excuse me, I need some ice cream.

Ci-tay day in the NYC

As part of the moving adventures from the forest of North Carolina to the concrete jungle of New York, sissy and I took a good chunk of Saturday and played tourist in Manhattan so I could indulge in various passions - photographing everything, checking items off a list, and eating really tasty food.  After our morning explorations of Brooklyn, we zipped over to Union Square and emerged from the depths of the subway to find ourselves right in the middle of the Greenmarket, which made both of us pretty happy - fruits and veggies and yummy deliciousness and artsy things and kittens for adoption (squeee, so cute!!) as far as the eye could see.  And you know what else is right there in Union Square?  Whole Foods.  Amanda was happy to find a totally familiar grocery store just a few subway stops from her home.  I also kept hoping for a minor celebrity (to me, anyway) sighting in the form of Smitten Kitchen Deb or Amateur Gourmet Adam, both of whom frequent said Greenmarket in search of star ingredients, but no luck.  I did find some really tasty mint tea, though!

My memory actually served me correctly as to where something was (also, my memory may or may not have been assisted by the magic Google machine I carry around in my purse at all times), and after a little wandering around the pretty food and flowers, we headed in the direction of Strand, prepared for an overwhelming literary selection.  I ♥ books.  We didn't actually buy books, though - just a remarkably handy map (for Amanda - really for both of us this day as we were all over the city) and an adorable stripey bag for me.

By the way, I'm looking through these pictures and realizing just how long my hair was...I chopped a lot of it off in Dallas last week.  Phew.

With the help of our handy little map and my recollections of burger deliciousness, we walked over to Madison Square Park and joined the always-long line for Shake Shack.  A THOUSAND TIMES YUM.  And yes, the line is perpetually lengthy, but we put the time to good use and figured out how to shoot video with my camera, and we got our food before we died of hunger, so all was well.  I mean, just look at that fry joy:

And we continued to enjoy a state of burger/fry/shake-induced bliss on a beautiful spring afternoon...until a dive-bomber pigeon attempted to steal my burger directly out of my hand.  Dis-gus-ting.  Important lesson learned - hold your food in close to protect it from those burger-stealing rats with wings.

There are only about eleventy billion awesome things to do in New York, and since we'd knocked out a lot of biggie tourist things on our sister adventure to the ci-tay about four years earlier, we headed a little off the beaten path to make a stop at the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum (pretty much only so I could check it off my Smithsonianity list, but then it started looking like the museum would actually be kinda cool).  Now...maybe it's just the D.C. Smithsonian museum part of me that's grown to expect Smithsonian = free...because the Cooper-Hewitt is most definitely not free.  And we didn't want to spend the whole afternoon wandering through this thing - definitely more in the mood for a quick jaunt through the niftiest exhibits.  Which in my mind didn't exactly justify the cost of admission.  So...we spent that quick jaunt going through the gift shop instead, which is kinda like going through the museum...right?

I'm totally counting that as a visit, which means I only have four left - woot woot!

Oh, and in another instance of enjoying a museum's exterior more than the interior, we captured the Guggenheim since it's right there by the Cooper-Hewitt.  Cool building.

A quick stop in Central Park for some lovely views and people watching (and pizza watching - bungee-corded onto a bike basket - very innovative)...

...and we continued with a lovely stroll through the park on a beautiful, beautiful afternoon where we witnessed sunbathers, picnickers, engagement picture takers, players of "the Viking game" Kubb (which we saw again in the park by Amanda's apartment!  never heard of this thing before, but now I really want to play it...perfect summer lawn activity...), sleeping old men (don't worry, parents, not of the homeless variety), remote-control sailboaters, carriage riders, rock climbers, and partiers of the all-white variety (I'm not being racist, promise - they really were having a "white party"...in a park...I see visions of grass stains).

One park bench break with a restorative Diet Coke later and we were off to find sissy's work building...and we found it in the middle of some random street fair that closed off Avenue of the Americas, giving us the opportunity to take some middle-of-the-street shots and wonder why they were selling the same thing block after block after block.

More wandering - Greenwich Village, Washington Square Park, a little coffee pick-me-up, pondering the plethora of flavor options at Rice to Riches but not indulging so we could eat something more closely resembling a real dinner in Little Italy, and coming to end of an exhausting but delightful walk-fest through the streets and parks of the NYC.

Check out the full haul of photo goodness over on Picasa.  As always, more there than you need - feel free to fly right through.  Although if you fly too fast, you might miss our new friends Jim & Joe, saddlebags for little dogs, and the easiest way to move from one apartment to another in the city...so enjoy.  How very city.