Happy "Friday!"

Hello all,
Now that bridesmaid madness has settled, I'm spending today - my "Friday" - getting ready to head out on vacation tomorrow with one of my favorites, Andi, to see another of my favorites, Christina, and her husband Justin in Oakland! I can't wait. Those two bought a house quite awhile ago now, and I have yet to see it or their new city. They are East Coast to San Francisco to Oakland transplants.
Today's topic is going to be garden progress! I've been seeing a few more local veggies pop up in our local market, Ellwood Thompson's and admiring the progress of my friend Carver's garden. She has a fenced in garden at the back of her sunny yard where she's growing a million tomatoes, among other things. I can't wait to see what she yields, and I'm hoping we can do some trade-offs when we both have productive gardens!

Progress at my house is kind of slow. I have to note, first, that my mother corrected me from my first post on my raised beds and I have to mention that they are not 3x3, but 4x4. Moving on... the little seedlings above are my arugula (arugulas?). I am thrilled to see (knock on wood) that the squirrels are leaving the gardens alone for now. They have disturbed the seedlings I had in pots on the deck, but those were leftovers anyway. Fingers crossed they leave these beds alone!

Also found around the yard right now:

A beautiful azalea bush that came with the house. The one I planted on the other side of the house last summer is not nearly as lovely. And these guys are blooming:


All the irises (many many many of them) came with the house, but I had to dig them up from all over the place and get them into one spot. I have more than 20 plants showing leaves at the moment, but very few are blooming. These two are blooming, and two others look like they will shortly, but the others are either slow or hibernating. Thoughts? Am I doing something wrong?

I'm going to keep this post short, as I don't have anything else too exciting happening before I fly out tomorrow morning. I'll report back after I return from the West Coast! Happy weekend everyone!

Wedding Weekend!

Hello everyone! It's been a crazy weekend. One of my besties and her beau got married here in town this past weekend and I had the honor of being in the wedding party. This has been so fun, helping to plan a big fancy Catholic wedding. I can't say I did a whole lot - she was the anti-bridezilla and Suzanne and Pete took care of nearly everything themselves. The final product was beautiful and we had a blast. I have to say, I was a little nervous - the church was pretty intimidating and I never did like an audience, but I figured all eyes would be on the happy couple anyway!So, here is the run down, with pictures included when available. I have no pics from the rehearsal dinner or ceremony, but I'm sure I can get my hands on them later. They had a fantastic photographer, and friend take the photos for the weekend - Vladimir Chaloupka. I can't wait to see what he came up with!Thursday, I stopped in at Carver's (one of other 'maids) to help her and another friend, Jenny, with flower arrangements:

Ranunculus, Kermit Mums, Gerbera Daisies. So spring-y and fresh! The ranunculus (the little yellow and white round ones) opened up to 2 and 3 times the size you see here.


Friday afternoon, we met for the rehearsal at the Cathedral of the Sacred Heart. What an amazing church! The pipe organ (sorry so dark) is below. It's nearly as wide as the whole building.


We ran through it once and then headed over to Arianna's in my old neighborhood for the rehearsal dinner. This was the first place the happy couple celebrated their engagement the night it all went down.

Saturday morning, we all met at the Hilton Garden Inn downtown to get ready together. Pictured above from left is: Momma of the Bride, MoH Avory, Suzanne-the-Bride-to-Be, B'maid Katie, B'maid Carver and myself! We had a toast before getting the bride into her dress.

She was stunning! I think this picture does no justice to the dress or the girl in the dress. It was sparkly and beaded and had a V in the back as well. Amazing!


The ceremony was an abbreviated mass and it was just beautiful. I didn't get a pic of the bouquets, but they were bright green and looked awesome with the dresses. Between the ceremony and the reception, we went around town so the bride and groom could get some photographs near the river and some historic spots.

While the rest of us had veggie wraps and watched the US Triathalon National Championship runners go by.


Then, obviously, came the reception. It was held at the Renaissance Virginia downtown on Broad Street. A very cool, historic building that used to be a masonic temple. I didn't even know it was there before this wedding. I have a few pics from the reception. We also had a photobooth available. So fun!


My two boyfriends, Scott and Melissa.


We four went to middle and high school together. So awesome to see these ladies all together! From left, Joie, Melissa, Suzanne and myself.


My boyfriend's boyfriend, Brent. (please ignore purple wine lips)


And the quintessential last-photo-of-the-night that probably never needed to be taken!

Suzanne & Pete: We had such a fantastic time, and I wish you all the best! Enjoy St. Lucia and the rest of your lives!

whirlwind week

Hey everyone!

Okay, here's the run down: Sunday evening, we watched Treme on HBO at Carver's house. Super awesome show! And my manfriend has ties to the show, having played with the main character, Davis Rogan on an album of his while in New Orleans a few years ago. The show begins 3 months after Hurricane Katrina and follows some of New Orleans proprietors, musicians and their families as the recovery and rebuilding commences. The show has some great actors and features many real, local musicians as well. I'd highly recommend it.

That being said, New Orleans is still highly depressed, post-Katrina. For a city whose primary income is tourism-based, if you've ever thought about going to New Orleans, there's no time like the present. Much of the French Quarter is (I've read, anyway) alive and kicking and many of the old acts are available for your entertainment pleasure once again. Go to New Orleans Tourism for very basic information on festivals and hotels, but take the time to Google some more unique, smaller spots. I'm dying to go! If I whine about it enough, I'm hoping Scott and I will get down there!

Monday, Scott and I met up with Andi and The Boy (host of WRIR 97.3 A Party of One on Tuesday nights from 11pm to 1am!) for a baseball game at The Diamond to see our city's new team The Flying Squirrels. Yikes, what a name. The mascot's name is Nutzy and I think the "nut" theme leaves a little too much to the wild imaginations of the beer swillers in the crowd. And the non-beer swillers also. Let's just say there's a section in the stadium called the "Nutshack." Enough said. But it was a super fun time and awesome cool spring weather. Here are a few snaps of the evening:


For some reason, we missed the costume memo. The beer/peanuts guys were all dressed in odd merlin/robin hood/wizard/weird costumes. We weren't entirely sure what the theme was.


And while the boys were off buying us presents, Andi got to pose with Nutzy himself! Nutzy is the red and black one, in case you were wondering.


And, Dad, before you ask, the Squirrels won. And we played the New Britain Rock Cats. Though, we never did figure out where exactly New Britain is and the definition of a Rock Cat.

Yesterday, my supervisor and I headed up to Chantilly for a super boring conference. I was so bored, I took pictures to show you exactly how boring a trade show can be. I prefer the conferences that are more specific to our industry - you know, the ones where we actually see people we know.

Boring people, doing boring things:


And here's our boring booth. Sorry for the blur. I didn't want to startle any of those boring people with the flash.


After that we headed to the office up there and then over to PJ Skidoos in Fairfax for a dinner meeting/presentation hosted by ASHE Potomac Chapter (American Society of Highway Engineers). Very informative presentation on all the great things Arlington County has been doing to improve pedestrian and bike safety while maintaining the integrity of all major automobile and mass transit arteries. They are also still in negotiation for two different light rail lines at this point, in case any Arlington County residents out there are reading and wondering. It's something their planners are very excited about the prospect of though.

This morning, I realized I'd left my camera in my supervisor's car last night. She was on a field trip with her daughter at Lewis Ginter Botanical Gardens, so I sweettalked my way in to meet her to grab the camera and snuck a few quick pics on the way out! Enjoy...

what a week

Sorry for the lack of posting! I have been to Chantilly and back twice in two days and last night I left my camera in my supervisor's car, so all my pictures are being held hostage until she and I can meet up. Look for updates real soon (that one was for Juanita).

Happy Suzanne & Pete Wedding Weekend! I can't wait to see them this afternoon!

Weekend Fun Times

Hi everyone!
This weekend has been nice and low key, just like I like my weekends to be. Friday, I left work a little early to find a dress for Suzanne's wedding rehearsal and dinner next week. I'm lucky enough to be one of her chosen bridesmaid's and I can't wait to celebrate with her and Pete! I also got a killer salad at Whole Foods and a side of seaweed salad (I know it's not everyone's cup of tea, but I especially love WF's seaweed salad because they don't put any Yellow or Red Dye in it).




















Friday evening, my friend Andi and I went to our new favorite class at the gym, Body Pump, in efforts to regain our summer bodies for the fancy vacations we're both planning (this time independent of each other - with boys! Real boys!). Afterward, Scott and I met up with his buddy and went to see Hot Tub Time Machine over at Richmond's Bowtie Theater on Boulevard. We're big fans of that place. Nice not to have to drive to the suburbs for movies anymore, for sure. But I digress.. I really enjoyed the movie. It was a little more touchy-feely than I had expected, but the funny parts were super laugh-out-loud funny. I'd recommend.
We went over to Carytown to Babe's to see my friend Susan's new band Girls Night Out play. They were fantastic and they seem like they have a blast playing together. I can't gush enough about how talented a singer/guitarist Susan is. We went to college together in the music department at VCU and I always admired that she was so good at both guitar and vocals. I certainly don't have that ability..
Yesterday, I had a bridal shower for my good friend Alice, so I headed out to Glen Allen and got very lost in the suburbs before finally landing at her future sister-in-law's house. The shower was beautiful and Alice had her "perma-grin" on, as she called it. She's so excited! And it's totally infectious!

A few snaps from the shin-dig.

Alice's sister-in-law-to-be made all the table decorations and flower arrangements and a wonderful friend of hers made all the food. The house was nothing to sneeze at either. I think my whole house and Scott's combined could have fit in the downstairs of it! I'm super jealous of the natural light they have, most of all.













The beautiful bride!
































So sweet!













After the shower, Andi and I played Ladder Golf in my yard with wine for awhile. New favorite yard game!

Today has been a lovely day of relaxing with Scott and getting a few things done. He's been nice enough to do a little (okay, a whooooolllle bunch) work on my terrible car. Today's phrase of the day, brought to you by Mazda, is "I hate working on this piece of s*** car, but I love you!" Nice. Everyone needs to be loved! I definitely owe him on this one. And I'm putting it here in writing because you can all hold me to it, on Scott's behalf.




















And last, but not least, I leave you with a photo I have entitled "Azalea with Bumblebee" taken today in Scott's yard. It has been a perfect spring for Richmond's azalea crop.

Western Virginia Travels Part 2

Heyo! I've returned from the booming metropolis of Blacksburg! Yesterday was a long day. Woke up early to get a couple miles in on the treadmill (the Blacksburg hills scared me too much!) in the tiny hotel gym. If you're ever in need of a hotel in Blacksburg, I'd recommend the Courtyard Marriott on the I-81/460 end of town. It was very clean, the staff was friendly and gave us a great deal. Also the fruit at breakfast was sooooo good. This was the scene outside my window when I got done in the gym:




















I spent part of the morning downtown near campus making some copies and leave-behinds, where I spotted this cutie sign.
















While waiting to make our presentation, we saw the Oscar Mayer truck which is always funny. I think my coworkers thought it was strange that I took a picture, but I had never seen it in person before!



We made our presentation to the Town and on the way out of town, I totally stopped at Our Daily Bread again to get the tuna sandwich that my coworker raved about. It came on cheddar/jalapeno bread and I got a vegan lemon-lime sugar cookie to have with it. It was every bit as good as I was promised. The tuna salad had very little mayo (yay!) and even had a couple of capers hidden in there.

I also picked up a loaf of seven grain for Scott and a loaf of spelt/sourdough sundried tomato bread for myself.



On the way home, I decided to break up the trip with a quick stop at Rockbridge Vineyard in scenic Raphine, Virginia. The vineyard is about a mile off I-81 just south of Staunton. The staff was very knowledgeable and the scenery was lovely. I'd like to go back and make use of the porch swings they had on the property.

I only sampled a couple because I still had to drive pretty far and it was also nearly closing time for the vineyard. But I did buy a bottle each of the Blanc de Noir and the Pinot Noir.










And that concluded my trip! I got home in time to clean up a bit and hang with Scott, eat some Chipotle veggie tacos, watch bad tv and go to sleep!

Travels to Western Virginia

One of the fun things about my job has been getting to see all the different parts of Virginia that my family/school/social life has never taken me. Really, as a child and young adult, I traveled in and out of the country, but not really much around the Commonwealth. We have family in Maryland, visited DC often and I worked in West Virginia during college, but that was pretty much the extent of local travel in my realm. Since working with my current company, I've visited Hot Springs (waaaay out there), staying at a favorite of many presidents - The Homestead, and passing through the breath-taking Goshen Pass (Google image search it, just amazing). We've spent a lot of time in Roanoke, I know the Hotel Roanoke like the back of my hand by now! Roanoke has a great short hike to the Roanoke Star perfect for the busy business traveler sick of hotel gyms. We also head out to Virginia Beach and Hampton Roads fairly often (avoid the budget "oceanfront" hotels - they are scary and generally not really oceanfront) and I love getting to stick my feet in the ocean while on a business trip.

This week, I'm in Blacksburg for the first time in my life, preparing and delivering a presentation to the Town for a local streetscape and road improvements project in the heart of this college town. I left home at about 8 and headed down the highway without any coffee or breakfast. I made it all the way to Lexington before I had to stop out of boredom, hunger and fatigue. I stopped at the first bakery/coffee place that grabbed my attention. Barb's Bakery (111 West Nelson Street Lexington, VA 24450, 540-463-2531) it was! I'm not sure if it was Barb herself that served me, but she was very friendly and the place smelled amazing. I have to say the coffee was so-so, but the fresh bagel was AMAZING.

After that, I stopped for a quick photo op in the window of the antique/music store next to my parking space:

("fight crime, shoot back" if you couldn't read it)

And another photo op on the way out of town:

That's Virginia Military Institute way in the background. Lexington is also home to another fantastic school, Washington & Lee.

After the quick stop-off in Lexington, I continued South to Blacksburg where I met my coworkers just in time for a bit of catching up and then lunch! Just in case I hadn't gotten my fill of homemade breads for the day, we headed over to one of my coworker's favorite lunch spots, Our Daily Bread. I actually managed to put the wonderful bread smells out of my mind and had the ratatouille (vegan) and the fresh fruit salad (also vegan) with a soy cappuccino. I saw a couple of steak sandwiches ordered among my self-proclaimed "country boy" coworkers from Salem and another one had the tuna salad sandwich that he said he highly recommended. We may go back for lunch tomorrow. It was THAT GOOD. I might stop and buy a loaf of bread either way!

After lunch was a quick tour of Virginia Tech's campus. Sorry to all you Hokies out there, but I seriously don't get what the big deal is. It's a campus. It's pretty gothic and everything looks the same! I totally would have gotten lost all the time, had I gone there. But, to each his own! It's a great school regardless and I think it's really neat that they have lots of biking/jogging trails through the fields. Here are a couple snaps of my tour.

A Hokie Stone building on campus:

I'll let you in on a secret: Hokie Stone is locally mined limestone.

The football stadium (Sorry about the horrible pic taken out a car window! The stadium is much more impressive in person):

So far, a very pleasant stay in Hokietown. Looking forward to tomorrow! Blacksburg and Western Virginia to be continued next time!

Gardening Weekend!

Hello and Happy Monday! I’m feeling Alive, Awake, Alert, Enthusiastic today! I had a huge coffee from Ellwood Thompson’s this morning where I ran into my new Gold’s Gym trainer, getting me in the work-out frame of mind right from the start. I generally don’t stop anywhere for coffee, but Scott and I had a particularly late and unsettling night last night, which I’ll get to in a bit. Anyway, here’s a brief on the weekend’s comings and goings.

Friday, I braved a class at my new gym, which I thought was going to be Body Flow, but turned out to be Body Pump. Very different things. It was tough, but awesome and the instructor was so motivating! I can’t wait to do it again! And it was extra fun taking it with my good friends Andi and Daisy. Those two ladies and my Manfriend Scott are the main reasons I have switched from the YMCA to Gold’s. Those of you who haven’t tried Body Pump, I highly recommend it. You can tailor the class to fit your needs, based on the amount of weight you use on the barbell. Barbell…is that the right term? I’m a weight-lifting-newbie and don’t know if I call anything by the correct word!

After the class, I drove up to visit my mom in Winchester. Those of you Loudouners wondering, yes, the XXX Video place is still alive and kicking. In fact, they have added a much more permanent sign, claiming to be some sort of “grocery.” Yeah…


Saturday, Mom and I had breakfast (the prettiest blood oranges ever from Ellwood Thompson’s.


If you love citrus, I’d recommend grabbing one of these from their cooler case over toward the dry goods. Get the slightly squishier ones, they are the best. After breakfast, I drove over to see this girl…


…who happened to be in town to shoot a wedding! Exciting surprise for sure! You’ll be seeing/reading more of her when I go visit her family in California at the end of the month.

Got back to Mom’s and started preparing tiny egg salad, chicken salad and shrimp/cream cheese/cucumber sandwiches for the tea party we had with my little cousins and my aunt Karin. The girls were in town to see Shenandoah University’s Cinderella on stage. We’ve been to a couple of plays with the little girls and they always do a great job catering to the younger audience.

After the show Saturday afternoon, I headed back to Richmond to meet up with Scott and have some dinner and a glass of wine at Sidewalk Café, an old favorite (2101 W Main St – best nachos EVER). Sunday, we ran to Lowe’s and the Great Big Greenhouse to get a bunch of dirt and hauled it home. The dirt was for my new raised beds! I’ve been dying to populate them ever since we put them together a few weekends ago. My mom gave the parts to me for Christmas this year since my yard has crappy soil for gardening and raised beds are so neat and easy to take care of. For information on raised bed gardening and other types of gardens, go to The Gardner’s Supply. That’s where I got info on how much and what kind of dirt to use for my beds.


So the process was pretty interesting. I started my seeds in an extra room (in other words, cat-proof) in my house in little bio-degradable pots.

They might be a little small to put outside, but I’m taking my chances because the anticipation is killing me! I have more seeds if this doesn’t work, otherwise I can run to a plant store and buy bigger plants. But I’m giving my seedlings a shot.

So each bed (I have two) is 3 feet by 3 feet (9 cubic feet each). I used the following (for each bed):

• 4 bags (1.5 cubic feet) Organic Gardening Mix (Miracle-Gro was the brand Lowe’s had and I had a gift card, so I felt like I should just use that)
• 3 bags of Topsoil
• 1 (3 cubic feet) bag of Peat Moss
• 2 bags of organic, dehydrated cow manure (stinky, but effective)

I got scared that those numbers weren’t enough when I saw the bags on the cart at the store, so I bought two extra Organic Gardening Mix, but they ended up being, well, extra. I put one on the ground in another, regular bed and dumped the other in this abandoned water feature in my yard, where I plan to plant my mint.


So here’s the before and after of the beds. It was a tiresome process, but I can’t wait to see what they yield! And I shouldn’t complain – Scott was the one who made the three trips with full carts of heavy dirt from the front yard to the back. I owe him!




















Here’s what I planted in the beds:

• Carrots
• Lettuce mix and arugula
• Broccoli
• Bell peppers
• Yellow pear tomato

In the spot where I dumped one of the extra bags of dirt, I planted cucumbers and zucchini. And in some pots on the deck, I planted various herbs.

If you have some garden space and you’re wondering what/how much to plant, you can plan your garden by the square foot at Gardner’s Supply.

And to end an awesome weekend of family and yard time, Scott and I joined our friends Carver and Jay for dinner at Carver’s house and watched The Pacific. Pretty good show, but not exactly bedtime-friendly!

Upon arriving home, I was greeted with police cars and ambulances. Evidently there was a fatal shooting three doors down! And another potentially related shooting about a half mile away. Sometimes I forgot I live on the very edge of downtown Richmond, previously ranked 5th Most Dangerous City in America, but more recently dropping to the high 40’s (according to Wikipedia). Scary!