I know. You don’t have to say it. Erin and I have been extremely neglectful keepers of the blog as of late. In our defense, it is a holiday week. That makes it easier for us to justify other things – things like eating, sleeping, and eating – as more important than blogging.
And I have actually been keeping pretty busy. I have about a million and a half recipes to share with you, I took Christmas photos of my neighbor and her family, I put together a gift package to send to our friends in Costa Rica, I ate 2 thin mints and a baby carrot at the same time (I’ll let Erin tell you more about that one), I vacuumed up a GIANT monster spider this morning without soiling myself, and I’m thinking about painting the office (the room is cleared out and everything). All of this has been interspersed with sporadic, semi-desperate attempts to bring my hard drive back from the dead.
No, I haven’t yet disposed of the carcass. Psycho, anyone?
I’m also dreading the fact that I have to venture out into the world today. It’s about this time of year when I like to hole myself up in my cave – not just to stay out of the chilly air, but to avoid all of the absolutely insane shoppers out there who come crawling out of their usual 9-5’s to wreak havoc on the outside world, shoving and clawing and scrambling to get the absolute best deal on the next tickle-me-sponge-bob doll while trampling Wal-Mart employees to death.
To death, my friends.
On the plus-side, I had an absolutely ethereal cup of coffee this morning. I mean, I couldn’t recreate this if I tried.
Now. If I can just make it through the next few days without getting trampled to death in a Wal-Mart, I will consider this yet another holiday success.
Man, do I suck at this whole commitment thing or what?
I just realized that I took off for several days without even telling you guys that I’d be gone or where I’d be going or what you said to make me leave. (Seriously, you guys owe me a huge apology. That shizzle was spiteful.)
Chuckles and I have been in North Carolina since Friday having an early Thanksgiving with the extended family and I’d meant to keep posting all the while but I’ve been gorging mercilessly on the top of the Food Pyramid (Hello? Sugars and fats? Did anyone pay attention in P.E. class?) for three days straight without exerting any physical effort whatsoever and now my fingers are too chubby to operate a normal-sized keyboard.
So there’s that, plus the fact that (a) I forgot my camera cable so I can’t upload any pictures and (b) Chuckles just bought a new laptop and everytime I try to move the cursor using the mousepad, the *$#*?@ thing mocks, literally mocks, my efforts by either scrolling wildly to the very bottom of the screen or somehow shrinking the text size down to, like, microscopic and if I have to deal with this much longer my heart is going to stop busying itself with the task of trying to pump out the lard I’ve been feeding it and start doing the angry warehousedance Kevin Bacon does in Footloose and then I’m going to keel over and die from a bad 80’s flashback and coming in to your living room to find someone on your couch keeled over a greasy laptop with a deep-fat-fried drumstick still hanging halfway out of her mouth is just not a pleasant Thanksgiving Day memory for any host to have, even if it did kind of serve me right because I’m the kind of crappy houseguest who doesn’t replace toilet paper rolls and eats the rest of the sweet potato casserole without asking.
So like I said. It’s hasn’t been the best circumstances to work under here, folks.
And this is just the first Thanksgiving. Chuckles and I will be packing up our stuff Wednesday morning and heading back to Maryland for Thanksgiving: The Sequel at our friends’ house on Thursday.
So, in between traveling and packing/unpacking and stuffing my face, I’ll try to crank out a few posts. Don’t give up on me just yet.
But in the meantime, hope everyone’s getting geared up for their own awesome Thanksgiving plans.
After much careful consideration and over 4 weeks home from Costa Rica, I’ve come to the conclusion that my friends must hate me.
I mean, why else would they be constantly bombarding me with environmental job listings, certification programs, grad school opportunities, and questions like, “What are you going to do now?” and, “Soo… what did you do today?” (always said with a sly grin because they know the answer is not, “Oh, I had a productive day at the office.”)
And really, there is nothing more humiliating than having to answer, “I’m not sure what I’ll be doing next – I’m still weighing my options” and, “Oh, you know… laundry, cleaned the house, cooked dinner…” when the truth is that I have no frickin’ clue what I’m going to do with my life and I spend my days trying to figure it out, writing, researching, weighing my options, and why are all of you rushing me??!!
Okay, in reality I know my friends are actually being helpful, giving me that nudge they know I need because they’re my friends and I deliberately surround myself with brutally honest people because I can’t stand it when anyone’s like, “Oh, you have all the time in the world to figure out what you want to do!” because we all know I don’t have all the time in the world because I’m 28, which isn’t old, but it’s kind of about that time where I should be figuring my sh*t out, you know? So I know they’re on my side here. They don’t want to see me fail.
Which is comforting.
And also a lot of pressure. I mean, I created this opportunity for myself – this blank slate – and so far it’s been like I’m swimming against a rip tide of “shoulds” and “have tos” in search of the ever evasive “wants.”
Making the transition from a fairly successful, decent-paying job that fit my educational background to… whatever I end up doing, is easier said than done. But let’s face it – now, when I no longer have that bi-weekly paycheck coming in – is not the time to freeze. It’s time to press on, put myself out there, and avoid the need I feel to apologize for my self-invoked economic status every time it seems like someone looks at my apparent flounder with pity.
Because it’s important to remember that this isn’t flounder. This is… something else. It’s like my dad always told me – I might appear to be procrastinating to everyone else, but on the inside I’m constantly formulating plans, playing out hypotheticals, moving the chess pieces around. It’s important to think before I act, because we’ve all seen how hard it is to jump the tracks once we get going in a certain direction. I don’t want to make a habit out of this. I want the next move to be right.
So bear with me, friends. I haven’t fallen completely off the edge. I just need to dangle here a bit before I take the plunge back into reality. I’m lucky I can do that.
I am confident that I would make a highly-qualified addition to your dynamic team because I have spent the last 29 years being a foul-mouthed, mean-spirited, judgmental shrew who frequently makes fun of strangers and anyone else I deem unlikely or unable to retaliate. I also can’t be left alone with cookies that aren’t mine, I talk loudly on my cell phone in public and I giggle when I see people trip. I believe that all of these qualities prove that I am the unparalleled choice for carrying on your company’s proud name.
Oh, and something about family planning or reproductive health. Or whatever.
You may have heard that I recently lost the contents of my hard drive and have effectively been working my way through bottles of red wine at a fairly alarming pace.
IT’S ALL LIES!
Okay… I actually did lose the contents of my hard drive. Which sucked. And I am going through bottles of red wine at an impressive pace. But that’s not unusual. In fact, I think I’m handling the loss remarkably well. It’s like I’m on the losing end of a one-sided breakup, and I have to work my way through the stages of grief. Plus, the red wine therapy contains loads of antioxidants, so it’s really a win-win situation.
First, I was in denial. What? You’re leaving me? Yeah right. I’ll call your bluff. Go ahead and leave. See what it’s like to spend a night alone. You’ll be back.
Once the shock wore off, the pain arrived. In waves. I might’ve cried a little. You’re really gone? You just took all my pictures and left? I miss your smell. My world is so EMPTY without you in it.
But once I realized how ridiculous it was to cry over a piece of electronic equipment, I got angry. Very, very angry. I blasted the angry chick music. I paid for YOU. You owed me at least the courtesy of a WARNING before you went off and took EVERYTHING I LOVE away from me.
And I might’ve bargained a little. Okay, okay, I’ll tell you what. Just give me back my pictures, and I promise I won’t put you in the freezer again. Just a FEW of my pictures at least? Or maybe a page of my writing? Anything? Just give me something and all this torture can stop for both of us. Give me just one picture of a monkey in a tree and I’ll give you a nice, warm bed in the TRASH CAN WHERE YOU BELONG. (I wasn’t quite over the anger stage at that point.)
And now I’m entering the stage of reflection. I’m only just realizing the magnitude of my loss, and I’d be lying if I didn’t say it hurts a little. A lot. And nothing you can say will make me feel better. It’s just gone.
It’s times like these when I do what any normal woman does for comfort and support. I’m turning to food. The air is starting to turn brisk and the skies a little more gray. Warm, chunky comfort food is the only cure-all – the only thing that will bring forth a warm, chunky Katie.
And since I just made chili this season, I started perusing the web for some more options. Sausage. Anything with sausage. And I found this.
And like any war-whithered woman post-breakup, I had to have some. Now.
Here’s what I needed to make it:
You Oughta Know by Alanis Morissette blasting background music
1 pound Spicy Breakfast Sausage (I use Jimmy Dean’s Hot sausage)
1 whole Medium Red Onion, diced
2-3 slices Bacon, diced (I used 3 slices. If you need me to explain why, then you really don’t know me like I thought you did.)
3 cloves Garlic, minced
3 whole Medium Potatoes
1 quart Warm Water
3 cubes Chicken Bouillon
¼ bunch Kale, roughly chopped (I have never used kale before, either. Don’t be scared. And I actually have another recipe I’m going to try for the remaining kale from the bunch.)
½ cups Heavy Cream (This is breakup food, remember! Go with the good stuff.)
Salt And Pepper to taste
1. Get your sausage cooking in a pot on the stove. Once it’s brown, use a slotted spoon to remove it from the pot and set it aside. If there’s a lot of excess grease left in the pot, dump most of that out and dispose. (Whatever you do, do not dangle your hard drive by its USB cord over the pot of hot grease and threaten to drop it if it doesn’t surrender your pictures immediately. People will think you are crazy.)
2. While the sausage is cooking, dice up the red onion, 3 slices of bacon and 3 cloves of garlic. And SING that angry chick music. Just don’t close your eyes – that’s not a good idea when you’re holding a sharp knife. Add the onion and bacon to the (now empty) sausage pot over medium-high heat. When the onions are cooked (translucent), add the garlic and cook for about another minute.
3. While the onions are cooking, scrub your potatoes (you can peel them too if you’d like, but tater skins don’t bother me so I left them on). Cut them lengthwise and then chop them into 1/4″ slices. You can cut them even smaller if it floats your boat.
4. Then add the quart of warm water to the pot with the onions. See all those yummy brown bits on the bottom? Adding the water will “deglaze” the pot and get all that tastiness worked back up into the soup. And if you’ve lost all of your pictures from Costa Rica, you need those brown bits. Also add the 3 bouillon cubes and the sliced potatoes to the pot. Let everything simmer for 15-20 minutes until the potatoes are soft-ish, but not quite fully cooked.
5. Finally, add the sausage, chopped kale, 1/2 cup of heavy cream, and salt and pepper to taste. It NEEDS salt and pepper. Don’t skip this. Just dip your special tasting spoon on in and don’t stop tasting until you get it the way you like it. Even if you have to taste and taste and taste. Let cook for another 5 minutes until the potatoes are soft and the kale has wilted.
Done! Now eat it.
This hit the spot. You know, that place on the inside of my upper thighs? That spot. And my love handles. But it’s no big deal, because it’s almost winter and I’m getting over a loss. I know this soup won’t bring my hard drive back, but it helped bring me to a place of peace and acceptance.
Since Chuckles has his private pilot’s license, one of the perks of being married to him is that sometimes, if you’re a good girl and eat all your vegetables and don’t throw a tantrum in public that day, he’ll take you flying.
And yesterday was just such a day. He’d come back home Saturday night after spending the last three weeks in California for work, so we decided to take advantage of a perfect blue-sky, 60-degree Sunday afternoon to head out to Frederick Municipal Airport and take the Cessna Skyhawk for a spin.
To me, it’s always a great opportunity to sing flying-themed songs and make totally hilarious Airplane! references.
Which is probably why I don’t get to go flying more often.
Anyhoo, this is how it usually goes: First, Chuckles does a pre-flight inspection to make sure nothing important like the wings or prop fall off mid-flight. ‘Cause how embarrassing would that be, right?
Keep up the good work there, buddy.
“Hmm, the passenger door latch appears to be broken. Good thing that’s not my side. Heh-heh.”
Next, Chuckles puts on his Serious Pilot Face and commences to fiddlin’ with lots of knobs and switches and button, all while trying to explain to me what each one does. You know, just in case we’re ever in an emergency situation where I have to land the plane by myself.
Riiight. Appreciate the effort, but I’m thinking “Scream bloody murder until we crash broadside into a barn” is going to be my go-to emergency landing strategy.
And away we go!
And it’s usually at this point that I realize I really have to pee.
“Seriously? Now? You’re just going to have to hold it, sister.”
And then I make a mental note to invest in a Shenis. [Warning: Link slightly NSFW, unless your boss is cool with you scoping out pics of giant gold phalluses (phalli?) on company time when you’re supposed to be filing TPS reports or whatever.]
And we’re off!
Views of Frederick…
From this distance, I bet I could totally spit on that silo.
“Can you fly this plane, and land it?” “Surely you can’t be serious.” “I am serious… and don’t call me Shirley.”
Last night a girlfriend of mine took me to a Festival of Trees.
The wha?
Festival of Trees. It was an event located in the haughty-taughty area of North Carolina known as Pinehurst. If you know anything at all about golf, you might’ve heard of it. If you don’t know anything about golf, all you need to know about Pinehurst is that it’s home to several über prestigious golf clubs and even über-er prestigious-ier multi-million dollar homes.
Needless to say, I don’t find myself frequenting this part of the state very often. But Christie, my girlfriend (that is – friend-who-is-a-girl – not lesbian lover), really wanted to see the Festival of Trees at the Pinehurst Resort, an event that raises money for the Sandhills Children’s Center by displaying and auctioning a multitude of beautifully decorated Christmas trees, wreaths, and other holiday-type décor.
My social activity list hasn’t exactly been bursting as of late, and although I (needless to say) don’t feel like an “insider” in Pinehurst, I was already jumping at the chance to go out. Plus I heard there’d be wine. So I put on my bestest pair of jeans (the dark-ish ones that only have a few frays along the bottom but fit so perfectly that no one really cares about a couple of love frays anyway, right?), a white button-up shirt, black boots with heels, my gaudy-but-beloved Ganesh necklace, and a pair of diamond stud earrings – it IS Pinehurst, afterall. People there dress up.
When we arrived at the resort, I felt… um… a little out of place.
Photo courtesy of Pinehurst.com.
After wandering down an immaculate hallway with no less than what I estimate to be 5,837 white columns and 432 gold and crystal chandeliers, we stumbled into a bar area full of women in ball gowns and men in tuxedos. Dear God, this can’t be the right place.
Moving on.
We ambled down another hallway and a set of stairs, and there, finally, was the Festival of Trees. We still might have been the only people wearing jeans, but at least we were no longer in Tuxedo Ally. Like any good friend of mine would, Christie steered us immediately towards the cash bar so we could each get a glass of wine. While we knew we wouldn’t be able to afford any of the $300-$6,000 auction packages, a glass of cabernet was certainly not beyond our budget. Even in Pinehurst. And hey – it was for the children.
I’m not the type of person to spend a lot of money on holiday décor – hell, I don’t spend a lot of money on regular décor since I prefer to surround myself with photos or art that I love and acquire over time. But I did enjoy looking at all of the creative tree ideas. They had everything from under-the-sea themed trees to trees made entirely of wine bottles (my kind of tree).
Blurry photo courtesy of my phone’s camera.
I also came away with an interesting ornament idea that I could easily make myself – and let’s face it – already have the major component on-hand:
Blurry photo courtesy of my phone’s camera and 1.4 glasses of wine on an empty stomach.
After an hour of counting the number of Mr. Rodgers sweaters that crossed our path looking at decorations and well into our second glass of wine, Christie asked me to hold her glass while she used the ladies’ room. So there I was, in a semi-buzzed happy place and double-fisting some ruby red while hoping no one noticed the button dangling from one precarious string off the sleeve of my peacoat, when a guy in a suit and tie approached me with a big smile and a jovial, “Where do I know you from?!”
“Um… maybe around Fayetteville?” He seemed nice, late 20’s, and it was entirely possible we’d met somewhere, though I seriously doubted we swam in the same social pools.
“No, that’s impossible. I never go out.”
Huh?
“Or, if I do go out,” he continued, “I usually get way too plastered to remember anyone I meet.”
Charming.
I gave the appropriate on-cue laugh and tried to figure out where we possibly could have met. Eventually he asked if my husband and I lived in the area, and I explained that we lived in a town about 45 minutes away. He seemed flustered for a second, but quickly recovered and mumbled something to the effect of, “Well, I’m still not going to pass this up. Here’s my card. Call me if you ever want to get together.” And with a smile, he was off.
I was stunned.
Was I just hiton? By a person in a suit with a grown-up business card?
I know, I know. I should have realized this from the very beginning, but the approach, while completely cliché, was so convincing! Is my cluelessness a result of the fact that I’ve been off the market for almost 8 years, or is it simply because I’m used to the forward, abrasive drunk guy at a bar asking my boobs if they want to go home with him tonight – not the guy with a suit and a business card, for crying out loud.
And here I thought the fact that I almost never get carded anymore was the only major indicator that I am, in fact, getting older.
For what it’s worth, I have the number for an apparently-eligible Assistant Golf Professional with an airtight approach if any of you single ladies out there are interested.
“Say what?” you’re asking yourself. “Erin’s writing this post? I didn’t even think she had a kitchen.”
And I know, right? Everything about this seems to fly in the face of conventional logic. It’s like we’ve suddenly been thrust into some crazy alternate universe where plants eat people and cats chase dogs and I know anything about food preparation beyond how to read the instructions for microwaving.
Yet here I am, about to give you folks a recipe.
Ok, it probably doesn’t hurt that this is just about the easiest, most foolproof recipe on the face of the planet and requires absolutely no use of the oven, which is good, because that’s where we keep our board games.
Katie introduced me to these dessert balls when she brought them in for a work potluck and a fistfight almost broke out over them (okay, so I started it–but I can’t help that I get territorial about food). And since I’m going to an honest-to-goodness slumber party tonight, I decided that it would be the perfect occasion to share the disgustingly decadent wealth.
The original recipe can be found on Tasty Kitchen. But my version comes with witty commentary. So there.
Anyhoo, hang onto your panties, people, cause away we go…
Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Truffles
You’ll need to somehow procure the following ingredients. Go to the grocery store, steal ‘em from your neighbor’s house, whatevs. I’m not here to judge:
2-½ cups All-purpose Flour
1-½ teaspoon Baking Soda
1 teaspoon Salt
1 cup Butter (at room temperature)
¾ cups White Sugar
¾ cups Packed Brown Sugar
1 teaspoon Vanilla
⅓ cups Milk (or Soy Milk, if you’re feeling funky)
1 cup Mini Semi-sweet Chocolate Chips
14 ounces (weight) Dark Chocolate Candy Coating
Waxed Paper and a Baking Sheet or two (this recipe makes about 70 truffles)
A few Toothpicks, or some other stabby device
Got everything? Ok, let’s do this.
1. Dump your butter, sugar and brown sugar into a large bowl and mix with an electric mixer on low to medium speed until everything’s well blended.
It should look like this:
By the way, this is an egg-less recipe so feel free to eat all the dough you want while you’re making it. Not that the threat of salmonella has ever stopped anyone before, amiright?
2. Add in the milk and vanilla.
3. Then stir in the baking soda, flour and salt.
Expert Tip: If your bag of flour still doesn’t open after the third attempt, feel free to go all Hulk Mania on it and accidentally punch a hole in the side of the bag. It won’t help anything, but it’ll relieve some stress.
4. Put your bowl in the kitchen sink to contain the mess and mix all that nonsense on low speed until it looks like this:
I get to lick the beater now, right?
5. Dump in the chocolate chips and spoon-stir until they’re well mixed.
6. Here’s where you’re going to get a little ‘handsy’ (in a good baking way, not a creepy-stranger-on-the-bus kind of way). Form one-inch balls of dough and place them on a baking sheet lined with waxed paper. It may help to lightly coat your hands in flour before trying this.
7. Now stick those suckers in the freezer for 30 minutes and take some time to contemplate the crazy world we live in where I’m doling out useful recipe advice. Hah! Insanity, right??
8. Also during this downtime, gets to melting your Dark Chocolate Candy Coating according to the instructions on the package. I used Log House Chocolate CandiQuick Coating, which just so happened to come in its own microwaveable tray. Um, fewer dishes to wash? Holla’!
9. Once the chocolate is nice and gooey and thoroughly melted, resist the urge to plow face-first into it, pull your balls out (huh huh) of the freezer and get to dipping! I used a toothpick because, well, I’m just fancy like that. But you can use a fondue stick, fork or whatever sharp, stabby utensil works best for you.
**A Word of Caution: If you’re anything like me, this part will get extremely messy so I recommend treating your kitchen like a murder scene. Put a heavy-duty tarp down on the floor, cover everything on your counter in saran wrap and put on a shower cap. Go naked if you must. (Just don’t tell anyone you did until after they’ve already tried them.)**
10. Dip each cookie dough ball individually, tap the excess chocolate off, and return it to the lined baking sheet.
My balls started getting soft (huh huh) and unmanageable halfway through, so I just popped them back into the freezer for another 15 minutes and reheated the chocolate a bit.
11. Once they’re all done, put the tray in the fridge and chill them until the chocolate coating’s nice and firm. Transfer them to an airtight container and store them in the fridge for up to one week.
And I shall call you “Breakfast”.
Voila!
Now go forth and make as many ball-dipping jokes as you can.
* By the way, I had a way nastier title for this post but it made even me blush so I decided to keep it to a clean Old Skool rap reference.
To all the impressionable children reading this blog: You’re welcome.
Yesterday I lost everything. Well not everything, everything. I still have my health, my family and friends, and all of my material possessions. Except one. My external hard drive. Actually, I still have the hard drive – or rather, the piece of plastic shell with an attached USB cord that you would look at and say, “Yep, that’s a hard drive.” Except it’s not. Because yesterday it decided to eat my life.
It had things on there – important things, at least to me, that I will never be able to replace. Photos from my trip to Costa Rica and paragraphs I added to my 9-page novel in bouts of drunken inspiration. Those kinds of things.
Before you say anything, I realize the perils of using a backup system as my primary means of storage. Now, more than ever. So that’s fine. Blame me. But do we ever get to question – just every once in a while – why a $100 piece of electronic equipment can’t even last AN ENTIRE F*CKING YEAR WITHOUT GOING TO SHIT?!??!??!?$!*#&(!*!*&@^!(@&*~)
I’m just wondering.
But I’m actually not as upset as I feel like I should be. I’m freakishly numb about the whole thing. Maybe it’s because I’m still holding out hope that the information can be saved. Maybe Justin’s stick-it-in-the-freezer trick will work on the 8th try or my mom’s super computer-savvy boyfriend can figure it out. If not, I can just defrost it and boil it up for dinner tonight – the makings of my soul served up on my favorite white platter from Bed, Bath and Beyond. It’s low-cal, too.
In reality, there are many worse things that could happen. And punching my fist through a wall – which is what I’d like to do but its such a guy thing to do and I kind of like my knuckles anyway – just isn’t going to fix it. I was reminded of this when I wandered into a sculpture garden off to the side of the pedestrian mall in front of the capitol building in D.C. last Tuesday.
It mostly had strange statues…
And one I wouldn’t mind being for a day…
(I only still have these pictures, by the way, because I’m about as neglectful at deleting things off my memory card as I am about backing up my hard drive. Maybe if I’d spent as much money on memory cards as I did on the hard drive, I’d still have my Costa Rica pictures.)
But the garden also had a tree. A wish tree. (I’m willing to overlook the fact that this tree is an art installation by Yoko Ono, the woman who could arguably be blamed for the breakup of the Beatles. Because the tree is cool.)
Theoretically, spectators are supposed to whisper their wishes to the tree. The sign didn’t say whether the wishes were supposed to come true – it just said to whisper them. Apparently some people didn’t feel that was enough, so they scribbled their wishes on pieces of scrap paper and stuck them on the branches of the tree.
Some wishes were straightforward, general pleas for survival.
Some were a little more specific, a little less necessary for survival.
Some were simply a sign of the times.
And others were hauntingly cryptic.
But the point is, not one of the scraps, as far as I could tell, asked for a magically repaired hard drive. I suppose it is a little shallow. And definitely not worth the paper.
But if I were there right now, I still might whisper a little wish to the tree. Nothing as ridiculous as asking it to magically repair my hard drive, of course:
Dear wish tree,
Please help me rewind time and have the sense to back up all of my data like everyone always said I should before my hard drive inevitably crashes, effectively destroying months of hard work and memories. Thank you.
Several days ago we packed up the in-laws and my cold germs and struck out on the road for our nation’s capital. Not one of us had ever been, and considering Justin and I live a ridiculously-close 6 hour drive from D.C., we decided that now, while the air is brisk-not-cold and the leaves are golden-not-gone and the sky is blue-not-gray, would be the perfect time to lay eyes on the sites that until recently I’d only recognized from high school history books, the occasional news story, and rerun episodes of the Simpsons.
We took a night tour of many, many of the landmarks for which D.C. is known. Here are my gut reactions to a just few of our Capitol’s most famous monuments:
Abraham Lincoln – Cold, intimidating, foreboding. This is the guy who was supposed to be the chummy, honest Abe? I realize that many people – especially Americans – especially male Americans – equate size with grandeur, but really. This nod to our nation’s 16th president strikes me as almost… overcompensating. You know, like the 52-year-old man with a comb-over driving the cherry red T-bird through rush hour traffic. I mean, he abolished slavery, for crying out loud. He doesn’t need a T-bird to prove his accomplishments. It just seems to me that the Abe I knew – the one I learned about in elementary school – would’ve wanted to be more… I don’t know… approachable?
Taken with my phone’s camera. Sorry.
Taken with my phone’s camera. Sorry.
World War II – Beautiful, peaceful, symbolic. Fifty-six pillars stand in 2 semi-circles surrounding a large fountain. It represents the 16 million people who served in the military during the war, as well as the 400,000 lives lost. I’d like to have lunch there. You just have to see it.
Taken with my phone’s camera. Sorry.
FDR – Touching, quiet, understated. This was my favorite memorial. It’s like walking through a timeline strewn with his quotes and different symbology and statues representing the tough times through which he led our country. It was a truly moving display, and I’d like to see it again in the daylight.
Taken with my phone’s camera. Sorry.
Taken with my phone’s camera. Sorry.
Washington Monument – Phallic. Need I say more?
If you’ve never been to D.C., I highly recommend a visit. It helped me appreciate some of the things I learned in my history classes so long ago. I just have 2 pieces of advice if you do decide to go:
1. Don’t visit the Holocaust museum first thing in the morning. It will definitely bring you down.
2. Do ride the Metro – it’s public transportation at its finest, and the best way to study the locals in their natural element.
