North Carolina

I was a bad blogger on my most recent out-of-town adventure. I try to post daily, with lots of pictures and fun stuff about what I've done, but on this last trip, I did nothing of the sort. But I was with half the people who read my blog, so I guess I probably didn't offend too many people. Anyway, for the offendees, here is my effort at an apology and recap.

Tuesday, 11/23: Lesson of the day: gate checking a bag can be a good idea. Sometimes it is a bad idea. If they are going to send your bags to the baggage carousel rather than return it to you at the jetway, it is a bad idea. Lesson learned.

Wednesday, 11/24: the first of a handful of very similar days. K, E, and I went to yoga; K and I went for a jog; we ate a lot; we built a fire; we read books; we played digital scrabble on K's iPod. Not a bad day, all told.

Thursday, 11/25: happy Thanksgiving! We went to yoga again, gratis! E brought her roommate J over for the day. He's from France and it was a long way to go home for the holiday. And when he got there, he would discover that Thanksgiving is an American holiday, and he would have had to turn around and come right back. So probably better that he didn't go at all. We all ate a ton of food. Mom made the usual suspects: a turkey, stuffing, gravy, sweet potatoes, three (3!) kinds of cranberry sauce, a salad, and three (3!) desserts! I feel like I'm forgetting some of the food. K and E will fill me in. We also started a wickedly challenging jigsaw puzzle which we didn't even finish before we left! Thankfully Mom has a nifty thing that she can roll it up on in case she needs her table ever again.

Friday, 11/26: we worked lots on the puzzle, but didn't make much progress. This is a tough one!

Molly, Mom's perrito, staying out of trouble

I went for a jog on Friday, but did not go to yoga. I left that to K and E. Although as I was sitting at the ballet on Friday night and watching how delicate and graceful the dancers were, I decided that maybe skipping yoga was a bad idea. And that brings us to the end of the day - we went to see the Carolina Ballet! It was a two-part show; pre-intermission was Pinocchio and post-intermission was a movement-by-movement interpretation of selections from Bach's work, The Musical Offering. Pinocchio was quite enjoyable (although Neptune and The Pearl sort of stole the show); the interpretive pieces were hit-or-miss. Some I loved. Some were less than exciting. But thankfully some of them were also very short, so often the lack of excitement didn't go on for too long. And for a Friday night, it wasn't too crowded (which is bad for the ballet, but good for those people who happen to be there!). It was lovely.

Saturday, 11/27: as a group, we finally decided it was time to leave the house during daylight. We headed to the NC Museum of Art to see a special exhibition on the art of Norman Rockwell. And you know what? It was fascinating. I'm too young to have lived through any part of the Rockwell era - which spanned many, many decades - so I didn't fully appreciate (a) the impact of his art, (b) how he developed as a social critic through his art over the years, and (c) how well you can follow the events of a lifetime through his art. Fascinating stuff, truly. He was a chronicler of a generation, sometimes as it was, and sometimes as he wished it.

The Thinker outside the NCMA

We returned home for another evening in front of the fire, this time with good old-fashioned Scrabble! Even Surya seemed to enjoy himself immensely, both in front of the fire and participating in the game!

Sunday, 11/28: the big excitement of the day was that my friend BK came to visit. He and his wife are currently living in Virginia, so he hopped in the car and headed down to chill for the day. Despite (and not because of) his later-than-expected arrival, we were still off to a terribly slow start. We had talked of going to brunch, but instead noshed on miscellany we found in the kitchen until we finally managed to drag ourselves out into the fresh air in the early afternoon. We went back to Raleigh again (third time in as many days), this time to hit up the NC Museum of History. We skipped the special exhibition on George Washington (although I did see how I measured up), opting instead to spend our time learning about NC's military history and David Marshall "Carbine" Williams (a famous weapons inventor), experiencing a 1920's pharmacy, and ogling the hand-carved furniture of Thomas Day.

George and me

BK and me
(Both slightly fuzzy - sorry!)

We stopped for an early dinner at the Mellow Mushroom, where we said adios to BK and shortly thereafter to K, whom we dropped at the airport on the way home. Mom and I watched The Hunting Party to finish out the day.

Oh, and I almost forgot! I saw my first real Christmas lights, by which I mean they are not ones that are left up all year! Hooray!

Monday, 11/29: despite my good intentions while sitting at the ballet on Friday night, I slept too late to go to yoga, so instead I went for a short jog. Nothing too serious, but enough to make me feel slightly less bad about the copious amounts of leftovers I was consuming. Then Mom and I headed over to E's house (where I met another roommate of hers whose name starts with a J, and saw the J I had already met also), picked her up, and went for lunch at -- shoot, I forget the name of it. E, I need your help again.

After lunch, mom dropped us off for E's class, a nutrition class, during which we were supposed to talk about beverages. Instead, we tasted two types of coffees and cakes brought to class by the lovely employees of the local Starbucks. Then we talked a little about beverages. I guess. Mostly I read my book. A lot of the people chatted, seemingly oblivious to the fact that there was a professor lecturing. But the professor continued to lecture, seemingly oblivious to the fact that half the class wasn't listening to him. (E was.) Then it came time for the cooking. The class is split into four kitchens, and each kitchen has an assignment. E's kitchen's tasks were to make pumpkin ice cream and hard candies. I helped. A little. But I took a picture to prove to T that she really does go to class.

E - wearing her apron and working on pumpkin ice cream - in Kitchen #4

And that, ladies and gents, was basically the end of my trip to NC. Mom picked me up early from class (haha, I was in class!) and took me to the airport, where I was only mildly terrified that I was not going to make it home. Due to delays, I had 10 minutes to make my connection in Atlanta - and the last thing I wanted was to be stuck in Atlanta again. But I made it. Got home an hour late, but that's better than a day late :-)