Tuesday, August 28, 2012

Fishing (I couldn't come up with a witty title)

Wonder what he caught?!
I went fishing once as a kid on the North Shore of Long Island but I was annoyed the entire time.  I got to use a lame-o bamboo fishing pole without a reel on it.  Honestly, it was useless.  Even as a elementary school age child with no prior fishing experience, I knew that I was being gyped and my older brother had the nice rod/reel combo and I was very bitter about it.

I have the worst memory but I can totally remember so many details about that day partly because I was so frustrated.  I wanted to be offered the same fishing experience as my brother even though I was so tiny and weak. Didn't matter - I wanted equal treatment.

My boyfriend has taken me fishing several times and I get to use the big girl/big boy rod and reel (yay!).  Perhaps this adult fishing experience will lead me to finally get over my childhood fishing anger issues.  It's possible!

What I like about fishing is how relaxing it is.  Even if you don't catch anything you can just enjoy the water and the landscape... Plus, you never know what is going to happen and that keeps it interesting.  I never thought that a fish could successfully take a worm or minnow off of a hook and hoodwink me.  It happens all the time.  I like that the fish aren't all that helpless or dumb.  Otherwise, I'd feel guilty.  But, I don't because we throw them back.  Actually, my boyfriend does that part because I am still a bit of a little girl I guess. The wiggly fish makes me nervous.  Go figure... ;-)

Monday, August 27, 2012

The Library Comes With Coffee & Concierge Service

I needed to check out some books from a local university's library and I went on-line to see if they were even available late last night.  What was weird is that they had a little shopping cart next to each book I found and each time I added a book to the shopping cart I really had no idea what the purpose of the cart was.  It's a library ~ I need to go check out the books when I get there, right?

Apparently not.  This university library takes your e-request and pulls the books off of the shelves for you and will have them ready for you to pick up at the circulation desk.  If you are a professor or staff member of the university, they will deliver your books to your office!!  I can't get over the fantastic customer service this university library provides.  Besides the library being gorgeous and relaxing, it essentially has concierge service.  That's amazing.

One of my county public libraries is brand new and comes with its own coffee shop attached.  You can either drive thru or stop in to the Mill Mountain Coffee and buy some homemade sandwiches, coffee, or a scone (cinnamon scones ROCK!) and you are allowed to eat and drink throughout the library.  Yes, that is quite something.  No one will give you a dirty look if you are drinking coffee and munching on a kick-ass cinnamon scone in the large print book section.  That's amazing too.

Cherry Coke!!
I wasn't feeling too good tonight so my boyfriend brought a small bottle of my favorite beverage, Cherry Coke, with him to cheer me up when he stopped by for a visit.  He's the best!!  I know people love to drink beer and wine but how can they compare to the deliciousness of a Cherry Coke??!  I'm sipping away while I read Gone Girl.  Good stuff...

Saturday, August 18, 2012

No Popcorn Necessary

I much prefer to watch a movie in a theatre than at home.  A lot of people complain about the crowds and people with big hair sitting in front of them which I totally understand but I like the experience of watching a story unfold on a big screen with a reacting audience.  The best theatres are the renovated historic ones that have a ton of character, don't you think??  Blacksburg has The Lyric and Roanoke has The Grandin, where I was last night.  My favorite historic theatre, though, is in Milwaukee ~ The Oriental.

I went years ago when I was visiting my college roommate in her new hometown and we walked downtown to see Murderball.  The Oriental has a grand entrance with ceilings about two stories tall.  It is decked out and full of glamour.  The best part was sitting inside waiting for the previews to start because a very loud and impressive pipe organ started to play.  I was thinking to myself, "Where the hell is this organ?  I feel like I'm at church" and then it slowly rose up from the floor.  This giant organ with a nerdy white guy playing it rose up from nowhere and took centerstage.  It was a total surprise and pretty awesome, I must say.

My first-ever job was working concessions at a now defunct movie theatre called the UA Cinema 150.  Now, it's an Equinox gym.  I was never a fan of popcorn but after working concessions I learned to hate it for several reasons:
  1. I came home smelling like wet, stale popcorn every night I worked and that stank was gross to me
  2. The popcorn machine isn't cleaned very often or very well
  3. There were ants swarming in the popcorn bin one night and my manager expected us to keep serving it until I had a shit fit right there and then in front of him and the customers.  I got the job of cleaning it out as punishment.  He later got fired for stealing money from the place.  Shocker.
So, to summarize: historic theatres = yay! and popcorn = no thank you



Wednesday, August 15, 2012

Who Doesn't Like Vinyl?

I'm not talking about vinyl pantsuits which aren't so great.  I'm talking about good ole 45s and LPs.

I treated myself to an orange, vintage-looking record player recently and I love the damn thing.  Every time I use, it my mood elevates.  I bought it on-line and have some new and used LPs to play.  Tonight while my boyfriend and I were eating dinner we listened to Bono and the gang serenade us on my little orange machine.  Soooo nice....

Back when I was a kid my family had a beige record player in the basement and my dad would play his Herb Alpert & the Tijuana Brass albums while my brother listened to Phil Collins and Weird Al Yankovic.  I vaguely remember my sister having a Saturday Night Fever record.  I'm sure there were other albums but those are the ones that stuck in my mind.

Saturday, August 11, 2012

Yes, the West Virginia State Fair is awesome!!

Today was the nicest summer day we've had in a while.  Sunny but low humidity and in the low 80's.  I love the heat but it's so nice to be able to enjoy being outside without sweating through your clothes and feeling like you are going to pass out.  So nice!

My man treated me to the West Virginia State Fair today and drove us up to Lewisburg, WV (voted the coolest small town in the USA last year).  I'm so glad we went!  The fair was on some very large fairgrounds and was organized really well.  There was a large section for carnival rides and games that we bypassed and several long rows of food vendors that we checked out first.  Any kind of carnival food that you could possibly want was there: funnel cakes, elephant ears, cotton candy, fried candy bars & Oreos, burgers, hotdogs, pizza, chicken on a stick, Philly steak sandwiches, ribbon fries coated with cheese and ranch dressing, and even salads.  Yep, salads.  That made us laugh a bit... 

My view while I ate a slice of pizza.  From a NY subway, perhaps?

After walking through the maze of food and beverage vendor area, you got to a large horse racing track and a smaller horse track where show horses were strutting their stuff for blue ribbons.  We watched them for a while and then headed off to see all the livestock shows.  Ribbons were awarded to the best llamas, sheep, goats, hogs, cows, horses, and rabbits.  Honestly, I think my fav were the rabbits - so CUTE!!  It was also really fun to watch small children wrangle their goats in the show ring.  Not an easy task, let me tell you... 

Pig Love
The draft horses were gigantically tall and mostly napping.  I would have loved to have seen them out in the ring but they did their thing before we arrived.  We saw some cloggers dancing on a stage and, if we had stayed late tonight, we would have seen a singing act and fireworks.  Somewhere there was a pie judging contest that we weren't able to locate but we ate so much junk food that this might have put us over the edge anyway.

By 3:30, we were totally wiped out from all the sunshine and sugar and headed home.  It was awesome...  Definitely one of the best times I've had since moving down to VA!

This is a WV bunny but a bunch of NJ bunnies were there too...

Friday, August 10, 2012

When Wrapping A Gift...

Zombies I've known and loved...
...make sure to add zombies.  It makes it better.

Thursday, August 9, 2012

Hopefully, I Won't Kill Anyone


Preserving tips from BallĀ®
www.freshpreserving.com

Last night, I took a class through the Virginia Cooperative Extension on how to preserve fruits and veges by canning.  You know ~ putting yummy things in glass jars and doing it right so no one dies of botulism.  The 2-hour class was only $5.  You really can't beat that, right?!  I'm going to try my hand at this at some point.  I think I'm going to stick to the hot-water bath method because the other method calls for using a pressure canner.  If you've never seen one, a pressure canner is a giant pot that has a lid that clamps down and fills with so much steam pressure that there are emergency valves so the thing doesn't blow up and burn you to death with steam.  It's awesome but scary as hell.

Why would anyone use a pressure canner, you ask?  Yes, I asked that same question.  Apparently, any low-acid foods that aren't canned at a high enough temperature can kill you with botulism.  So, if you want to jar some green beans or corn or meat, for example, you might kill yourself or someone else if you don't use the steam pressure method.  It's safe to "water-bath can" high-acid foods like pickled anything, tomatoes, fruits, jams...  Stuff like that. 

Apparently, yellow squash doesn't like to be jarred and you should just freeze it.  It's low maintenance.  I learned that last night too.  Another reason to like yellow squash ~ it says "Hey, don't go to any trouble... Just freeze me, baby."  Okay!

On the other hand, I could just go to one of the dozens of farmers markets in the area and just buy jarred yummy food items from them but I'm trying to be all independent and creative and stuff.  We'll see if it leaves me dead or not.  Between the roaming bears and rabid coyotes and botulism I'm shocked that I've lasted down here so long.  ;-)

Monday, August 6, 2012

Rabid Foxes & Hungry Bears & Humping Skunks - Oh My!

I got an e-mail notification last Friday at work that a bear has been roaming in the area looking for food.  "Please don't feed the bear" was the general message.  Um, I won't be.  I just can't picture myself approaching a wild animal that weighs hundreds of pounds and is HUNGRY.  That just won't happen.  The squirrels at my job are frisky and freakish enough that I avoid them...

Today, the Roanoke Times had an article about a woman in Blacksburg that got attacked walking from her car to her house by a presumably rabid fox.  It bit her, wouldn't let go, and it took her husband kicking it off of her to get the attack to end.  Their cat ended up being put down due to injuries from the same fox.  "The fox is still at large."  They make him sound like Al Capone or something.  Get out your gun and shoot the damn thing already!

Underneath the building I work in, skunks live.  They love to stink up the place in the early morning right before I go to work.  The INTENSE ODOR will permeate the entire first floor and make you want to vomit.  My boyfriend says they are frisky and mate in the spring AND the fall.  WTH?  Stop humping and spraying your STANK all over my workplace!

So, that's my Roanoke nature roundup for today.  If I don't ever post again, it's because a horny skunk stunned me with its stank, I got bit by a rabid fox while I stumbled around after the skunk attack, and then a roaming hungry bear ate my ass.

Saturday, August 4, 2012

Ahhh, Memories...

If everything goes as planned, I'll be going to my first state fair and I'm totally excited about this possibility.  West Virginia's annual state fair is coming up and is only a little over an hour and a half away so it's an easy drive.  Livestock!  Contests!  Fair-y type events!!  I'm totally psyched.  The good thing about growing up in NY is that I'm used to crowds and traffic so I'm not worried about having to deal with slow-moving lines and tons of people.

Last month, I went to the Salem Fair which was mostly about rides and people watching.  It was my first time on a ferris wheel in ages and I got to watch some trained pigs race and eat a fried Oreo.  I think the highlight of the evening was watching a 'Dunk the Clown' clown rip people a new one as they tried to toss balls at a target to drown him.  A plump 20-something blonde was having a go and he started his taunts: "I hope that's a DIET drink in your hand!" "You could be a runway model....at LaGuardia airport!".  And so on.

Every summer, I grew up seeing ads for the Westchester County Fair on tv and wanted to go but never bothered asking my parents to take me since Westchester seemed a million miles away.  Actually, anytime you have to drive through Queens to get anywhere it seems a million miles away even to this day - LOL!!  Anyway, I went to YouTube and watched the old 80's commercial for the fair and then saw this gem: an 80's PSA from my local county ~ this video is what gave kids the idea to start abusing meds.

My hope is that the WV State Fair is everything I imagine a fair to be.  Pie contests, lots of giant produce, and livestock on display.  Maybe I need to go to Iowa for that but I'm hoping not...  If I still lived up in Winchester I could go to the Clarke County Fair in two weeks and enter into a cupcake making contest sponsored by King Arthur Flour.  But, alas, that's not going to happen due to the fact that I have to work and Berryville is too far away.

Today = Roanoke's annual Peach Festival in Elmwood Park.  Peach shakes, peach cobbler, peach shortcake!  Yes, all I do is eat.


Thursday, August 2, 2012

FIRE IN THE HOLE!

I drove over to my boyfriend's house last night to hang out for a little while and watch some tv.  A nice quiet Wednesday night activity after a busy workday.  After about 10 minutes of chatting we decided to go get some sweet tea at Bojangles and noticed that the street that branches off from his, directly across the street, was blocked off by a cop car.  The officer standing outside his patrol car didn't appear too concerned and so off we went.  By the time we came back with the tea, the local CBS news station folks were set up in his neighbor's yard filming and getting ready to tape some news.  Bizarre...

A little while later, the cameraman knocked on my boyfriend's front door and asked him if they could set up on his front lawn to get a better view of what was going on.  "Sure!", he said.  "What's going on, anyway?"  The cameraman responded "Bomb".  Uh....okay?

There wasn't much news of what was going on on the internet at that point.  There had been a pipe bomb explosion in Blacksburg earlier that day so we joked that maybe it was a false alarm or someone mistaking an errant coffee can for a bomb.

We heard a loud thud and the best boyfriend ever remarked "Well, I guess they blew up whatever it was."  I totally didn't believe him. Well, he was right.  Apparently, ATF agents or state police arrested one of his neighbors, a young man in his 20's, and charged him with having bomb manufacturing materials and have connected him with the Blacksburg bomb incident from earlier in the day.  On the news, the cameraman on the front lawn caught voices yelling 'Fire in the Hole!' and then a flash of light and a thud.  Not sure what the cops blew up but apparently it was something in the basement.

So, instead of watching the Olympics we watched Chris Hurst from WDBJ 7 broadcast live from the front lawn.

Wednesday, August 1, 2012

Walkin', Walkin', Walkin'...

River's Edge Park in Roanoke
I absolutely love Roanoke's Parks & Rec department.  I could gush about how awesome they are for days ~ and no, I don't work there.  When I first moved to Roanoke and didn't know anyone, I really appreciated how many cool classes they offered, what a good job they did in marketing them, and how affordable their classes and events were.  For instance, I signed up for pottery classes, guitar lessons, tennis lessons, and Zumba classes.  Those classes helped me make friends and meet really fun people.  Plus, it kept me from being lonely and bored in that first transition year.  In the other places I've lived, I can honestly say that few community Parks & Rec folks did even half as good a job as Roanoke does in promoting their classes and offering such a great and affordable variety of things to do after work and on the weekends.

The one offering I really didn't try was exploring all of Roanoke's greenways that the Parks & Rec folks write about all the time.  Apparently, there are miles and miles of walking/biking trails that connect all throughout the city and county.  I love to walk and wanted to explore them but didn't know if it was safe to go alone.  So I just didn't go at all.

Yesterday, my buddy and tennis partner, Peg, who I met through the tennis lessons I took through the Parks Department, went on an hour-long walk on one of the greenways.  Peg goes a lot with her family but this was my first time checking it out.  It was great!  We walked alongside the Roanoke River and passed a lot of cyclists and runners.  It was a nice scenic walk!  On my left was the river and on my right were a lot of backyards since the greenway seems to back up to residential neighborhoods.

I took two cell phone pictures of the Roanoke River at the start of our walk when we were crossing over a bridge and I'm sharing them with you.  I was impresssed by how clean the water looked ~ crystal clear and really beautiful.  According to my boyfriend, the river has some mercury and other chemical pollutants in it so it's not as clean as it looks.  That's a shame.  At least it's nice to look at!

View from the bridge - look at how clear that water is!  You can see the rocks on the bottom!