Well, I apologize for not chroncling our voyage sooner, but I had started to write a long post and then grew tired of the narrative technique I had chosen. I thought it was clever at first--sort of Lord of the Ringsy--but then I decided it was just dumb. So here's the story, simplified and without specialized narration, because I wanted to post the pictures and tell the story, but I couldn't make myself finish it the way I had started it at first. Sorry if it's more boring this way. =) And my apologies go out to those of you with dialup who probably had trouble loading this page. I just had too many good pictures not to include them!

Jack and I had been to the public library to look for a book on CD before we left, and we got Chocolat by Joanne Harris (like the Juliette Binoche/Johnny Depp film) and a Dave Barry book that we never really got into. Chocolat was fantastic, though, and now we want to see the movie to see whether they messed it up or not. Listening to the book made the time in the car pass much quicker, and we didn't finish it until we were driving from Raleigh to Charlotte on the return part of the trip.

Another thing that helped us pass the time was taking note of the license plates we passed on the road. Here's our completed map: 44 states and 2 Canadian territories, but no Washington (state or D.C.), Wyoming, Alaska, Hawaii, Vermont, or Rhode Island. I could have sworn that I spotted a Rhode Island license plate just before we got to Winston-Salem, but we had found our exit and Jack didn't want to risk our lives by flooring it to catch up with the car. So maybe we saw it, but I can't confirm it.

Our first stop, besides the Panera in Birmingham (for lunch) and various gas stations and travel plazas, was Jack's parents' house in the Virginia mountains (near Blacksburg). We got there late Friday evening, and on Saturday, they took us to a street festival in Blacksburg, where a bunch of local artisans were displaying their crafts. For lunch, Jack and I made our very first trip to a hookah bar; one of Ron's co-workers had taken him there, and he loved it and now goes there fairly frequently for yummy Mediterranean food and a nice atmosphere. We didn't smoke any hookah, but they had a list of about 30 different varieties on the wall. Apparently, it's a pretty hopping place at night, but it was just like a regular local restaurant when we were there. I had the best panini of my life there (it had mozzarella, fresh spinach, tomatoes, cucumber, yellow peppers, and onions). Before we went back to their house, they took me to my first LYS (Local Yarn Store, for all you non-knitters), and I found some fabulous celery-colored cotton yarn (suitable for the mild climate here), which I plan to knit into my first sweater as soon as I'm done with Ellis's quilt.

The next day, we got together with some of Jack's high-school friends for bowling and a cookout. Bowling was an embarrassment for me; basically, I hit my peak as a bowler at the age of 10, and it's been downhill ever since. I get especially nervous around others, because they have all these expectations that I'm going to blow them out of the water since I have my own ball, and it's all a mind game for me, anyway. The cookout was way fun, and Jack got to catch up with his buds and hear some stories about people he hasn't heard much from since he graduated.

Being around the other cats made us feel a little better about leaving ours at home. You wouldn't know it to look at this picture, but Cog, Jack's former cat, actually played with me for about fifteen minutes, marking the first time she's said more than two words to me (figuratively, of course). In fact, all three of their cats were extremely friendly to me, which means one of two things: (1) They've finally accepted me, or (2) They're up to something. I tend to believe the former, though I'm cautious in my optimism. =) Cats are tricksy.

On Tuesday, before we drove down to Winston-Salem, we ate a huge and filling breakfast with Ron and Ann at Gillie's, a vegetarian restaurant that Jack has always liked. Once we got to Winston-Salem, we visited with Granny for a little while, and then we headed to my aunt Irene's house so that I could raid her fabric scrap collection. I now have an enormous box of fabrics for future quilts and other projects, and there are a few I'm particularly excited to use! I loved being able to get my hands on fabrics that I've seen in other projects my grandmother has done, like other quilts she made for family members, and a particularly loud and ridiculous print that she used to make me some shorts back in the 80s. I'm saying it's ridiculous that I wore them, not that she made them. She was trying to make me happy. The 80s were strange. Granny also taught me how to make a pillow cover with a zipper, so I've made one of our four throw pillows and will get to the others after Ellis's quilt is finished. Do you sense a recurring theme yet?

On Thursday, we had a nice afternoon and evening with my friends from home. Tucker wore a t-shirt that cracked me up, though you can't really see it in the picture; it says "This is my party shirt."
We swam and grilled out at Nicole's parents' house-- you can see Jack enjoying his chance to relax in the sun after a whole summer of being cooped up in his office (except when he mows the lawn, which I gather isn't nearly as fun as swimming).

The party then moved to Nicole's apartment, where we played games and listened to music and generally became unruly and uncouth. Pictured here are Alice and Nicole, doing their best to look unruly. Anyway, we had much fun playing Trivial Pursuit (90s Edition), which the Nicole-Erica-Jack team won with little competition from the other side. Hehehe. We also played a new game of Nicole's called Loaded Questions, which is really good for a group of people who know each other well. In each round, one person asks a question from one of the game cards, everyone writes down a response, and then the person who asked the question has to figure out which person said which thing, and s/he gets to move forward one space for every correct match. Then there are some times when everyone has to guess what answer the question-asker would write down instead, and everyone who gets it right gets to move forward on the board. The one that was easiest for everyone was when Jack asked the question, "Which part of the newspaper do I read first?" and everyone except Katie, Tucker's friend (who was getting to know Jack for the first time), knew that it was the sports section. I think I came in last place overall, but the funness of the game made it okay. It didn't really feel like a competition-- just an excuse to ask each other questions and get silly.

On Friday, we left Winston-Salem and drove to Raleigh to spend the night with Joanna (my sister) and her family. We had met Nicholas in May, but we got to see him in his element, and he's a little older now, so he's doing stuff! He was laughing and smiling and wiggling a lot more, and we brought him some cute clothes (onesies from The Gap and a hat I knitted for him).
Of course, in this picture, he's sleeping, but he's a baby. He's allowed to get in some good sleeping time. He's growing fairly rapidly, so I hope the stuff fits him for a little while, at least! We also got to visit with more cats, since they have three, but only one of them (Grayson) was really sociable and insistent about being petted.

While we were there, we also watched the Lemony Snicket movie (A Series of Unfortunate Events). I've read all the books, and the movie covered the first three books. I had been sort of worried that the narration, which is my favorite part of the books because of the author's dry wit and great descriptions, wouldn't carry over into the film, but Jude Law played the narrator and did it really well. As the books progress, the narrator himself becomes more involved in the story (and the children age, meet new people involved in the plot, etc.), so I'll be interested to see what they do with the next movie(s). There are two books still to be written as well, making a total of 13, and they've been coming out at roughly the pace of one per year, so those, like the Harry Potter franchise, will soon be over as well. Anyway, the movie gets a thumbs-up from me. I was not disappointed.

The penultimate stop on our voyage was a lunch and quick visit with Annie Beth, a good friend from college who went to Nice with me, and her family. Their first-born, Ben, was catching up on his rest when we arrived, and so he missed the first portion of the photo chronicling. Annie Beth and Brad just adopted a little girl, Anna, who's pictured here with her parents.

We brought presents for both of the kids, which Ben was more than happy to open after he woke up from his nap. Annie Beth had told us beforehand that Ben loves opening presents, and he doesn't much care whether he gets to keep what's inside, as long as he gets to do the opening. Here's Ben tasting the plastic packaging that came with the stacking blocks we gave him. He liked the toys themselves, but he was also fairly fascinated with the packaging until we decided it was probably a bad idea for him to chew on sharp edges. =)

The last stop on our way home was Atlanta, where we stayed with Emily. When we got to Atlanta on Saturday evening, she whisked us away to Starbucks (her favorite hangout), and we played this really fun card game called Set that my mom learned from her AP friends and subsequently infected me with, so I turned around a few years later and got all my friends addicted to it. Jack and I don't actually have a set of Set cards, but we've decided that we must get some before Thanksgiving, because I can see us having a lot of fun playing with his family. It's a good game for people to wander in and out of if there's something else going on, because once you learn how to spot the sets, you can grab a couple and then walk away if you get bored or have to suddenly go cook something for the Thanksgiving meal, for instance. Anyway, it could be a fun addition to the traditional Mah Jong/wine tasting we do with Lisa and Joel's friends. =) We grabbed breakfast with Lisa and her mom on Sunday morning before we headed home, and we made tentative plans to visit Atlanta's new IKEA store at Thanksgiving. Apparently, the first time she went, she didn't think she'd need a cart, but she ended up filling one up before she left. We spent a rather tiny amount of time at the IKEA in Baltimore about a year ago, so it'd be fun to visit another one, since the closest one to here is in Houston.

Anyway, on Sunday evening, we finally got home! Driving had been really fun until we got most of the way through Mississippi, and then we started to go a little bit crazy. For the last hour and a half, we played the game where one person names someone famous, and then the other person has to name another famous person whose first initial is the same as the previous famous person's last initial (e.g., Grace Kelly --> Kiefer Sutherland --> Sal Mineo --> Marlee Matlin, etc.). I played a few times with my sorority sisters on various trips, but never for an hour and a half. After 30 minutes or so, we got to the point where I was naming fairly obscure movie stars Jack had never heard of and he was naming fairly obscure baseball players I'd never heard of. Fun times. When we jumped out of the car and flung open the door, we were very pleased to find that our cats had behaved well for Matt and Steph the whole time we were gone (or so they've led us to believe, anyway), and we ate some dinner and then crashed into bed. The next day, Jack went to work, and I set about packing for my trip to Lancaster, which I'll blog about later. This post has been way too long for me to continue it with the next chapter of my August visits!

Labels: eating out, family, felines, friends, IKEA, travel, Virginia, what to read, what to watch

• posted by erica 8/15/2005 08:34:00 PM
•