Friday, June 12, 2009

Herons Report:

- Fresh and refreshing.
- Delicious chilled soup with a variety of textures: foam, crunchy peas, burst in your mouth orange bubbles of char roe, lobster knuckles, and chilly fresh pea essence.
- Dean's salad was very fresh tasting and good, also.
- I like Prosecco.
- Dean says: We're on a mission to try all of their creative mixed drinks. (I didn't like the St. Margaret Rocks, but he did.)
- Vegetarian tasting menu which they brought out without our asking (knew from reservation).
- All my dishes had FOAM! Very best part = rhubarb foam drink in a mini tall-and-skinny glass that came on the side with Dean's dessert. I stole half of it.

Herons was excellent. We tried to think of excuses to come back to this hotel, but it's hard. We need more large family events in North Carolina! Umstead = highly recommended!

We had lots of fun at dinner brainstorming various seating arrangement permutations for the party tomorrow. There are going to be four round tables with five seats each, but only 14-15 people. It's exactly like a questionnaire I'd make up, trying to come up with the optimum-est (or silliest) combo. The rogue factor is not knowing exactly how many Robert will bring.

I love the bathtub here; it has really cool fixtures, and, as a bonus, a great spray-y wand. Plus it's super deep with nice wide edges around it. The beds are also optimus, with not-too-tall (and therefore not neck-breaking) feather pillows, fluffy white duvets, and a good degree of softness on the mattress, unlike a killing so-called Heavenly Bed. Also, the sheets are not as noisy as most. I hate how hotel sheets are always super loud when you move around. Anyway, I slept really well last night and my hurting nonstop even while just sitting still shoulder/back ache is all cured. Of course, I did sleep from about 6AM to almost 1PM, which is pretty ideal as sleeping time goes, so no wonder I slept well. Must go to bed a lot earlier tonight (and get up a lot earlier, too, natch), so wish me luck.

Here's the agenda for tomorrow's Gingers' 50th Anniversary Party: 1) nibbles and milling, 2) dinner with musicians, 3) cake and champagne toast, 4) fun and games! I am really looking forward to #4, since that's the part I masterminded. I loathe and despise games when other people make them up and I have to play them (always have, even as a kid at birthday parties) but I love being the hand behind the games and watching everyone else play while I act as guide. I noticed this about myself at the G's 70th birthday party two years ago. Anyway for the F&G portion of the party, we have 1) reading/identifying letters and cards (which I solicited by sending out a postcard to a select mailing list of the Gs' old friends and relations), 2) Mom and Dad trivia game (I'm the game show host, since I put the game together (with the Gingers' help brainstorming questions, natch) and therefore already know all the answers), 3) photo book!

Posted at 11:33:00 PM by Laura W. Petix.

After we finished dinner, Dean offered the maverick option of flying down to North Carolina last night instead of this morning, and I decided to take it! There were supposed to be a lot of thunderstorms today (not that their weren't plenty last night, but it sure was a lot cooler watching them in the dark!), and I was almost all packed and ready to go, and we like night flights, so why not? It ended up taking about two more hours to finish getting 100% ready to go (I was ready in an hour, but Dean also had to make the flight plan and redo our reservations), so we left around 9:30 PM and weren't in bed until 5:30 AM, but we're both night owls, so that was fine. It was a COOL flight, way more interesting than the normal afternoon flight down. It reminded me of the Sky Trip Adventure we did in the fall.

We stopped for fuel in Atlantic City because that was the only FBO that we knew would be open in the middle of the night. It was a nice airport and it was cool seeing the bright lights of Atlantic City close up, out in the middle of the darkness. While we were coming in to land, I took a closeup video of this crazy hotel/casino/? whose entire surface is a gigantic constantly-moving lighted billboard. One side is a huge American flag that waves and stuff, one side has 777s lining up on a spinning slot machine, followed by falling balloons... it's so giant that you can see the images way out, from the air. It must be blinding in person!

We beat a lightning storm that was encroaching on Atlantic City, then avoided another one after we took off, so the timing was exactly perfect and it was good that it took us two hours to get ready. In all, Dean navigated around three large thunderstorms along the way--over New Jersey, Maryland/Delaware, and Virginia. He monitored the storms throughout the trip using NAXRAD radar downlink to our on-board Garmin and requested amendments to our flight path from the controllers as necessary to stay clear of the storms. We had a couple of really great shows, though, especially of the storm after we took off from Atlantic City.



I cut out some of the waiting time between lightning strikes so the video wouldn't be too boring... in real-time, this was recorded over about 5 minutes. This particular "show" went on like this for about 30-40 minutes! It was SO cool to see from the air, especially the cloud-to-cloud lightning! Nothing blocking our view. No trees, no buildings, just black clouds. Really beautiful, amazing, and only a tiny bit scary. It was weird seeing all those lightning strikes but not hearing any thunder. I took off my headset at one point to see if I could hear it, but nope. All I could hear was Tango's engine. [Edit: Here are a few freeze-frames from the video, which were hard to get! Lightning is really FAST!! 1, 2, 3. I like how you can see the lightning zaps reflected on Tango's nose.]

This morning after falling to sleep around 6 AM, we slept until almost 1 PM, then hung around the hotel, relaxing and eating lunch in the lounge, etc. (Foiled once again in our attempt to have Afternoon Tea, but that was okay...) Lots of moss. We had a pizza with morel mushrooms and truffles, a cooling salad with lots of pickled items, and three very cooling drinks: a Pineapple Mojito (Dean's; I didn't like it), a Ginger Lemonade (mine, and it was fantastic, with fresh sliced ginger muddled with strawberries and a touch of simple syrup, fresh lemon juice, topped with club soda) and a Rangpur and Rosemary (Tanqueray Rangpur with fresh lime juice and French rosemary). That one was Dean's but I actually loved it too and stole some even though it had gin (which I usually hate since it tastes like perfume). It was so refreshing. Whenever you take a sip, you inhale the sprig of rosemary on top, like an exquisite form of aromatherapy. This was a fantastic thing, since we were sitting outside at that point, and it was about 90°. Too hot to do anything but sit still and imbibe cold drinks. The drinks also came with nuts and pickled okra. I ate a pickled okra and liked it!! Since it was pickled, it wasn't slimy. I think everything's served pickled here because it's so hot. It was relaxing. Dean said it's fun.

We also shared a rhubarb pie w/crumb topping and Chantilly, which wasn't bad, but my supposed cappuccino was a pathetic latte. I guess I can't expect the south to do hot drinks well. :-)

We like the Umstead!! (We keep calling it the Mmmstead.) Dean is an expert hotel picker-outer. Dinner rez tonight at Heron's.

Posted at 6:08:00 PM by Laura W. Petix.

Monday, June 08, 2009

Okay, for World Oceans Day, here are some of my favorite ocean photos featured in the past (pre-2009) on ALB. These are in chronological order, pretty much, but very anti-linear brained other than that!

1) My first visit to the ocean? Breton Bay, Maryland.

2) Hands full of brittle stars, at Wawaloli, near Kona, Hawaii.

3) Finding a upsidedown jelly, on our first visit to Grand Cayman.

4) Surrounded by golden sea, at January's beautiful beach wedding in the Florida Keys.

5) A long-spined sea urchin. I love urchins so much.

6) Wearing an ocean suit of seaweed, at Watch Hill, Rhode Island. Watch Hill is where I discovered my love of the ocean, with Dean, a few years before we were married. My family never really went to the ocean when I was young, since we had the Lake.

7) I became closely acquainted with the ocean in Block Island, Rhode Island. The rocky shores are wonderful even when it's overcast, especially my starfish pals. After the crown-of-thorns, I think asterias forbesi, the common sea star of the northeastern Atlantic coast, is my favorite star.

8) Brittle stars are so detailed, and all echinoderms are spiny, some more dramatically so than others.

9) This is a tunicate, back in St. John. It's very very delicate and beautiful. And these are Christmas Tree worms, on a brain coral. Yes, they're related to earth worms. Here's another kind of worm that lives in the sea: the fire worm (all bristled up!). And this is a sun anemone, a cnidarian, the same phylum as coral and some kinds of jellys. Here I am with the skeleton of another cnidarian, at my favorite St. John beach, Denis. Here's the same kind of gorgonian underwater, with a flamingo tongue snail. And this was my octopus pal, a fellow-mollusk relative to the snail.

10) In Hawaii, you can snorkel with sea turtles, or crowns-of-thorns.

11) This is my favorite kind of seaweed, codium fragile, common to the northeastern Atlantic coast. I ate a piece of this particular instance. :-) Here's some more great seaweed, in a Hawaii tidepool. Green.

12) The mouth and tube feet of a crown-of-thorns. Wow. And a sea urchin spawning. Also wow. Here's some ink. The octopus got away. This gorgeous thing is the egg mass of a spanish dancer nudibranch.

13) The ocean can be very dangerous. I liked these signs at a North Shore beach in Kauai. And this one, too. Be nice to the oceans.

14) I believe in touching the sea, but gently. Especially when you find the creature you've most wanted to see and never thought you would!

15) The ocean sure makes me happy, whether it's Hawaii, St. John, Grand Cayman, Rhode Island, or Maine.

Posted at 9:31:00 PM by Laura W. Petix.

It's a beautiful day! I went to Stew's to pick up some groceries, and got a dish of frozen yogurt (Stew's frozen yogurt tastes exactly like ice cream... I think they just lie and claim it's f.y. when actually it's i.c.), which I ate outside at the ice cream eating spot with my legs stretched out in front of me across the bench, admiring my new shoes (they came today and they sent the right ones, yay!), wearing my Milo in Maine jellyfish shirt and soft summery flowered skirt modded from an Uptown dress. This lady walked by with an ice cream cone and asked me if I was on summer vacation. I assume she meant from school, because Stew's isn't exactly a vacation destination. I wonder how old she thought I was??? Hahaha.

Oh and, it was so nice and warm that I didn't need my arm warmers, but I brought them with me in my bag and whipped them out in the grocery store when I started freezing in the cold food aisles. Arm warmers rule!!

Posted at 5:48:00 PM by Laura W. Petix.

Happy World Oceans Day! Touch the sea and let the sea touch you!

The United Nations has officially declared June 8th as World Oceans Day, beginning this year. I'll post some of my favorite ocean photos later today. As for now, we're supposed to wear blue to observe the day.

Here's some Pablo Neruda to give you ideas about what to celebrate:

...the pockets of the sea
full of hands,
the lamps of water,
the shoes and boots
of the ocean,
the mollusks, the sea cucumbers,

the defiant crabs,
certain fish that swim and sigh,
the sea urchins that exit,
the deep sea's chestnuts,
the ocean's azure umbrellas,
the broken telegrams,
the waltz of the waves...

Posted at 1:25:00 AM by Laura W. Petix.