North Carolina -- Part Deux

Tonight I'm going to finish sharing the mass of North Carolina pictures that we took on our vacation last week.

After we left Steph and Dave's house on Tuesday, August 15, we headed east and boarded a car ferry going two hours further east to Ocracoke Island, the southernmost island in North Carolina's Outer Banks. The island is only accessible by ferry. There are no bridges anywhere to the mainland, although it's only a 40 minute ferry ride going NE toward Cape Hatteras.

Here's a general idea of where it is:


And here's a map of the island, which is comprised of a tiny village in the NW quadrant (established in the 1600s and home to Blackbeard the Pirate in the early 1700s), and then 16 solid miles of National Park protected beach along the Atlantic shore. Since only a limited number of people can stay in the village, and the island is only accessible by ferry, the beach is in pristine condition and is largely deserted in many areas... my idea of a perfect beach vacation...



Here I am on the two-hour ferry ride from Cedar Island to Ocracoke:

If you haven't tried the new "chocolate lovers" Chex Mix, I highly recommend it.

Here are two pictures of the boat pulling into Ocracoke Village's port:




After checking into our tiny hotel, we hit the beach in full force later in the afternoon:



We took a two mile walk along the water... great leg work out!

The next morning we woke up early and hit the beach again...

I loved this cloud bank. It reminded me of the white city in one of the Lord of the Rings movies.

Self-portrait... (no one around to take it for us!)

(BTW, I'm wearing this dreadful red ball cap in every single picture from the vacation... but on a positive note, I was saving my skin from the ravages of sun-induced wrinkles.)

In the afternoon, we checked out Ocracoke's famous lighthouse:



Here are two more pictures of it later that evening...




When we woke up Thursday morning, it was raining cats and dogs so we hung out and had a leisurely breakfast. However, the weather broke around noon so we decided to hop on our rented beach bikes and check out the village.

These are our bikes (everyone rides them to get around town):



What we didn't know was that another massive storm was coming our way. And we got caught smack in the middle of it. Despite the rain coming down so hard that I literally could not see and being so drenched that I was literally wringing out my clothes, Miguel wanted to stop in a small clearing on the side of the road to try and preserve some semblance of dry-ness, but as you can see, it was pretty impossible...

I found it a bit more amusing than he.

Here's the view out the other side of the umbrella...



The early evening was gorgeous though, and we had to make another appearance at the beach...

Even the velociraptors enjoyed the seaside view.

On our final morning (Friday), we woke up early and beached again. Here I am flying our trademark kite, AKA our Jolly Roger.

OK, so it's a butterfly instead of a skull & crossbones, but we're nice people... or at least Miguel is.

Speaking of, isn't he so cute?

My attempt at an "artsy" shot.

Here I am trying not to think about returning to Tucson in two days...

Arizona, where what why?

Although my hand looks oddly frozen in space here, I am actually controlling the string of the kite, which had a habit of losing wind sometimes and crashing to planet Earth...



Miguel and I went a little crazy about shell collecting. We likened it to panning for gold. Although I went a bit more overboard than him in my enthusiasm, he was greatly entertained by watching me wade around in the water digging in hopes of finding an elusive conch shell. In the end, I never found one, but I did find this absolutely perfectly humongous clam shell, which I was quite proud of...



As for lodging, we stayed at Edward's of Ocracoke, which I am positive is the cutest place to stay in the whole village. Here is our bungalow efficiency apartment, with kitchen, screened porch, and clothes line (which is a total necessity for hanging out wet swimwear)...



And here's another self-portrait in front of our little place:



And here's the cat I called "Sybil" because she was totally psycho and attacked my ankle with her sharp little teeth and then stalked me outside the porch for the next few days...



And here is our only real picture together -- taken outside the Pony Island Restaurant -- where we had lunch before heading north to DC and the real world...


May I strongly recommend the hush puppies...

... which are absolutely worth an adoring gaze.

Here's Miguel on the ferry to Hatteras...



And the vacation wouldn't be complete without one final stop. After reading in our NC guide book that the somewhat highbrow Outer Banks town of Duck had a shopping area called "Scarborough Faire" (please note - that's FairE, with an "E", for posh pretentiousness), we took a 20 minute detour to check it out, just for the name.

Are you going to Scarborough Faire?... Parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme...

I'm doing my best here to look worthy of Scarborough Faire - "the" Shopping Village. Very posh indeed.

Just in case you need an audio cue, here are Simon and Garfunkel singing the old classic (admittedly one of my favorites)...



And on that note, good night bourgeousie. (God, I hope I spelled that right).

North Carolina -- Part I

I realized tonight that I took a shitload of pictures on our trip to NC last week. So this evening I'm just going to include photos from our visit to Stephanie and Dave's house in Havelock.

Our primary reason for going there was to visit one of my very best friends, Stephanie (who used to live in Turkey with me and was also in the USAF) and her husband, Dave (who she met in Turkey). I hadn't seen Steph in two years so I was dying to visit her and finally meet their children. They've lived all over the US for the past couple of years, and Dave just got back from a six month jaunt to Iraq... so I figured we should visit while we could!

Here's where Havelock is located:


There's pretty much nothing cosmopolitan nearby. Like, not even a Starbuck's. Apparently you have to drive two hours to Raleigh if you want corporate coffee... or real cream in your drink, as opposed to non-dairy creamer, which appears to be the standard in Havelock.

It's fair to say that Dave (who is definitely more of an urbanite than Stephanie, who is from upstate Minnesota, an hour from the North Dakota border, and is used to remote locations) isn't exactly fond of rural North Carolina. So why do they live there, you might ask?

Dave flies one of these for the USMC:

It's an EA6B Prowler (electronics/radar jammer), and the only place they're stationed is Cherry Point Air Station located in... yes, that's right... Havelock, where a day of shopping = Walmart. Poor Dave.

However, they have a cute house on base, and if you click on the picture on the left, you will see that they even have an official name plate in the lawn with Dave's rank. How hierarchical. Stephanie doesn't like living on base so she bought a foreclosed house about 10 minutes away that is in the process of being totally gutted and renovated. We visited it, but I forgot to take a picture. Just imagine a tan brick Colonial style box.


Here are Steph and Dave's boys, Thomas (3 mos) and Nathan (2 in September)...


I could never find a way to get a picture of Stephanie not involved in kid activities so here she is reading a book to Nathan one evening... and the first of many pictures of me holding Thomas, who at 3 months is like a cuddly little sack of potatoes, and I just couldn't get enough of him...


I forced Miguel to take Thomas here. He was much happier hanging out and drinking Hefeweizen with Dave than schmoozing around with the baby. But as you can see, I was quite fond of smothering poor Thomas...


Here's a Smith-Franklin family photo at Atlantic Beach. Havelock might not be NYC, but at least there is a gorgeous beach only 30 minutes away... here is one of the few solo photos of Nathan. He wouldn't sit still long enough to get many pictures of him...


Thomas and me... not only is the hat blinding him, but he might be getting boils from being held by me so much. He was so freaking cute...


Dave made him a little sun cave. Between Steph, Miguel and me, we snapped about 15 pictures like this. Here are the two best ones...


This is the next morning prior to our departure. More snuggling from Auntie Kit... and Miguel too. (Nathan had already strapped himself in his carseat and refused to leave the mini-van (yes, I did say mini-van, although Dave is still in denial and prefers to focus on its high-tech aspects, such as its built-in DVD player AKA "neglectavision")...


And that was that. We had such a good time with them, talking, catching up, enjoying the beach, sharing a delicious waterfront seafood dinner (sorry, no pics of that, but we were busy eating), and then hanging out late that night hearing Dave's myriad stories -- from going to Indonesia after the tsunami to life in Iraq.

We left last Tuesday morning, heading northeast to Ocracoke Island, which will be featured next time.

As one last note, I just had to draw attention to two photos that came up when I Google image searched for "Havelock North Carolina." The first is positively scary. Apparently there is some boondocks North Carolina dating site, and this man's photo popped up...

Grrrrr... you go, Tiger!

The second is this sign that really is posted outside the Marine Air Base... saying "Pardon Our Noise... It's the Sound of Freedom"... OK, I was in the military for four years so I'm allowed to say this, even if no one else will... THE MILITARY CAN BE SO FREAKING CORNY.

For the love of God, please someone stop this sappy schmaltz the military insists on doling out. It's simply wretched.

And that's my two cents for tonight. Toodles!

Cinderella in Tucson

I arrived back in Tucson last night. I sat from DC to Dallas sandwiched between two very large men who both insisted upon using the shared arm rests (resulting in a 2+ hour attempt by me to contort myself into a Cirque du Soleil posture for the length of the trip). Then I had the pleasure of enjoying a back row aisle seat -- with a view into the galley kitchenette next to the bathroom -- and a full window view of a jet engine from Dallas to Tucson. Thus, I was actually relieved to hit the ground in Arizona.

My friends Alana and Lindsey picked me up outside the baggage claim, and I think they regretted their decision to come get me after they saw me heading toward them hauling a 67-lb suitcase, a 45-lb bag, and three carry-on pieces hanging haphazardly off my sides.

This is what packing for three months looks like, at least when you pack like me...

Hey, you never know what occasion you will need to dress for... so my motto is pack everything.

After squeezing the cargo securely into the trunk, back seat, and on my lap, we headed toward my place. I, of course, had forgotten the number code to get into my apartment complex, but luckily Shauna was home so after hearing a rather hardy "hahaha!" on the intercom loudspeaker (Shauna's outward ridicule of my early stages of full-bore dementia), she came out to fetch me and my wretched baggage.

The first thing I found taped to my door frame was this note from my landlord (double click on the photo if you can't see the writing clearly):


AKA... Welcome home! You have to love Tucson...

And this lovely brochure was attached (please note that it's called the "Wastewater News"... do you think this is actually a monthly publication?!?), with the portion about American roaches -- also known as the sewer roach -- highlighted so kindly by my landlord as well...

Needless to say, my shower looked like a roach graveyard of dried up and dead baby sewer roaches, and it was filled with cobwebs too, which made me want to hurl.

In addition, my hardwood floor, kitchen counters, window sills, and everything else in my apartment exposed to open air (ummm, yeah, that would be just about everything except for a few pairs of old underwear) was covered in at least an eighth of an inch of grime, which turned my bare feet black within seconds, significantly increasing my gross out factor yet again...

However, it was going on 1 am East Coast time, and I was absolutely exhausted after taking my clothes out of my bags and shoving my suitcases out of sight. So this morning, I woke up at the crack of 6:30am (not my choice, mind you, but I am still on EST, where it is 9:30am), tore up an old college t-shirt that I used to sleep in, filled a bucket with soapy water, and literally scrubbed my entire floor, walls, shelves, knick-knacks, etc. until it was clear that I was no longer living in squalor.

I had a cameo appearance this morning as a poor young waif, scouring floors and cleaning up bug parts...

However, small and chipper birds and mice wearing babushka headgear did not figure into my reality. Nor did a peasant blouse and black flats. I mean, really, Walt Disney, who the hell would clean a floor wearing black Capezio flats?

So everyone, I'm back in Tucson. I should be writing more often again, and I promise that I will soon post the pictures from our vacation in NC, where we were last week, which was positively fabulous, by the way, and I'm even sporting some semblance of a tan now.

More later... time to go give myself a paraffin wax hand treatment -- my hands feel like sandpaper from all that watery scrubbing -- or at least just lay on my futon for a while reading the latest Us Weekly. (Who knew Kate Hudson was having an affair with Owen Wilson? Scandalous!)

The Photo Smorgasbord, as promised

I finally got the photos to upload so here is a couple of weeks worth of photos...

First, here are pics from my friend Melissa's wedding in Logan, Ohio last weekend (an hour southeast of Columbus, deep in the heart of Appalachia!). She and I lived in the same dorm sophomore year of college and used to drink gin together every now and then on the weekends, and at least once we streaked the dorm hallways before Melissa passed out in the middle of the corridor. Ahhh, fun times. Of course, the smarty pants graduated with a 4.0 in Botany and French. Then she went to the Peace Corps and served in Benin, West Africa before traveling around the world, living in Australia for a while, and is now a French teacher working on her PhD at Ohio University and living in rural Ohio, near where she grew up.

Miguel and I drove west on Saturday morning, went to the wedding that night, and returned Sunday afternoon/evening. We rented a car so as not to put all the mileage and West Virginia mountain stress on Miguel's little Tercel --- and check out the car Hertz gave us... a Mazda 6 sport turbo sedan with a V6 engine.

Miguel was in heaven behind the wheel...


Ummm, yes, I literally took a picture of him behind the wheel.

The car parked at the wedding site...

We aren't used to such nice automative machinery, seeing as we both normally drive jalopies.

Here's where Dave & Melissa got married...

The haybales were the seats, and the daisies mark the altar where they got married. According to a man sitting behind me (told to me after the ceremony), a large yellow spider emerged from the haybale on which I was sitting and crawled right across my hand during the ceremony, but he didn't want to tell me in case I freaked out. Which, ahhh, yes, I sure as hell would have...

Here's the view out over the field from the faux altar...

Melissa's dad owns a 300 acre dairy and cattle farm.

Here's Melissa and her dad right before the wedding...

She's so thrifty... she later told me she got her dress at Spiegel!

At the reception -- the Dance King emerged...

... because no rural Ohio wedding would be complete without him. (And please note the "Dance Queen" perched in her Chevy van throne as well). He specialized in music from Jimmy Hendrix, Bette Midler, Styx, and Lionel Richie. Throw in some "Lady in Red" and "YMCA" too...

Here's the reception site...

... the old hay barn next to the house where she grew up! It looked great with glowing candles, and the food was delicious... a Mediterranean grill with veggies.

Here is the cake cutting...

I love Melissa's face here. Reminds me of our gin drinking in college...

Here we are together...

Dave, Melissa, me, and Miguel.

No -- we are not lesbians...

She just wanted to plant one on me, I guess.

Old friends...

... we met in 1993!!!

The next day, Miguel and I went hiking in the Hocking Hills near Logan...

Here I am in Old Man's Cave.

Miguel too...

We hiked around here for a while before driving home.

I look a little annoyed here...

But I don't remember being crabby that day.

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Mary's Bridal Shower two Sundays ago:

Everyone loves bridal shower games (haha), but this one was actually really fun... why? Well, we got broken into small teams and had to create bridal gowns out of paper towels, toilet paper, and tissue. Sort of an amateur version of Project Runway. My team's creation is on the left, but the winning design is on the right.

And here was my team...

Definitely fashionable but not so crafty were we.

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Trip to St. Michael's on the Eastern Shore two Sundays ago:

Hanging out on the swings by the ferry landing. And no, those are not triceps... that is sheer flab.

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John Wilkes Booth Tour -- Eons Ago

A small sampling of our tour group. I love that one lady is taking notes. Very seriously too.

Dork!!!!

Me at my "fat point" this summer. I've lost 5 pounds!

Miguel vs Lincoln...

M is not quite up to Lincoln's stature. But note his fine upper body crafted at the gym. Grrrr...

That's all for tonight... more next time!

Weddings, Babies, DASH bus, and the Oval Office

First... my apologies for this entry's lack of photos --- after about a bazillion attempts to post (amusing) photos to my blog tonight, the blasted website keeps giving me an error message. Hello, annoyance...

Sorry I haven't been around much. Public transportation and the gym really cut into my personal life. Not to mention I have about 800 friends getting married or having babies, and you would not even begin to imagine how much time I have devoted to gift shopping and registry searching. Yes, yes, evil consumerism, I agree, but I don't want to be a slacker friend.

Anyway, the other day, after a long day of work, I stopped at the mall on my way home in search of cookie cutters (yes, goddamn cookie cutters for a wedding gift) at atrociously overpriced Williams Sonoma. Losing all track of time while in bake gear bizarro world, I realized that I missed the last shuttle bus home to Miguel's neighborhood. Since Miguel was late at work (thus unable to pick me up), I had no option but to take the evil DASH bus (recommended slogan: "happily turning your 10 minute commute into 30 minutes of hell!"). Hopping aboard, I found myself touring around the nappier sections of suburban Washington, including vast swaths of the Landmark Mall parking lot, with about 15 unruly black youth and one pimple-faced white teen. The bus also stopped in front of Red Lobster, and a fishy smelling, grease-coated cook took the seat next to mine. Lovely way to end an evening...

On a happier note, my last day of work is next Friday! On a sadder note, I must return to Tucson on August 20. But back to happy... my blogging will definitely pick up again (think daily, oh dear readers!).

Speaking of work, yours truly got a "behind the scenes" White House tour this evening as one of my graduate fellowship bennies. Unfortunately there were no photos allowed, but I am pleased to report that I did indeed see the Oval Office, and it's very large, very cream colored & gold, and frankly, a bit on the boring/stately side. You know, walnut colored wood furniture (blaaah), Federal style couches, and a number of little figurines and antique books that no one actually ever reads. The view out the large window looked lovely, but the interior of the West Wing is about as tan as it gets with all of those old style paintings on the wall of colonial Washington. Government designers are definitely lacking creativity. Tan and brown, tan and brown, tan and brown. Jeesh, can anyone get a little color in here, please?

Otherwise, life is racing by here. Went to a BBQ dinner with about 12 friends at Luis & Nichole's house last Saturday (margaritas, wine, wine, and more wine), then attended my friend Mary's wedding shower last Sunday (ummm, did I mention that everyone I know is birthing or marrying these days?) and caught up with some old friends I haven't seen in a while. Sadly I will miss her wedding b/c I'll be out in AZ. Last night, I met my friend Shane (who's departing for his posting at the US Embassy in Kyrgyzstan tomorrow) for a beer as a farewell, then went to dinner with mom's neighbors (an older couple who seem to have taken a liking to me), and finished up the night watching "Project Runway" with my mother. (Yes, I loved Angela's outfit). And am heading off to eastern Ohio this weekend for my friend Melissa's barn bash wedding on her parents' farm Saturday night. So you see I haven't had much of a chance to breathe lately.

I'm so annoyed about not being able to post photos tonight! I finally downloaded all of my digital camera's pictures and planned to have a photo smorgasbord this evening, but my plan has been stymied.

Bed is calling my name now. I'm knackered (as the Brits would say). Toodles.

ps - To my last commenter, Greg... sorry I ruined the ending of "Devil Wears Prada" for you. And to think I assumed you already had a copy of it in your vast book collection! Now you can just wait for it to come out on Netflix and you won't have to spend that crazy $10 those movie places charge nowadays...