All this thinking about the fire made me think of a story…

I don’t think I’m singular in this experience but being the oldest out of my siblings (there are three of us), I always kind of felt like I was a guinea pig of sorts for my parents. We joke about it now but even my parents will admit it. My parents were much stricter with me in a few different areas. I drove later than both of my sisters because my mom was scared. I had an earlier curfew in high school than my sisters ever did.

Being the so-called guinea pig, I suppose you could say that my parents tested some of their parenting techniques on me only to later abandon them before trying them on my sisters. One of the most infamous of these failed parenting techniques happened when we lived back in Texas. I would have been about 3 and a house behind our house caught fire. My parents decided to use that as a teachable moment. They took me over to see the house while telling me “this is why we don’t play with matches”

Needless to say, I did not ever want to play with matches and for the next few years (probably until I was 8 or 9), I had a bag packed with my worldly possessions (or just about as worldly as a kid’s possessions can be) in my closet.

Also, it’s pretty safe to say that my parents dropped that parenting technique like a lead balloon. Oh to be the guinea pig child…

On Saturday, we went apple picking with another couple. We went with this same couple last year to pick pumpkins and cook dinner together. This year we decided to get a little more ambitious and pick apples and make a bunch of apple related goodies and then cook dinner together.

We went to a huge orchard about 45 minutes from our house. We picked 3 kinds of apples: Matsu (green and tangy), Empire (red and semi-sweet), and Magnolia Golds (yellow and perfect for apple sauce). It started to rain a little bit but we picked up a few more goodies from the farm: huge green peppers, an apple corer, cider, and pumpkin butter.

We made a trip to Whole Foods (this has also seemed to become enforced tradition when this particular couple comes over). When we got home, we started making the goodies while watching college football.

Here’s what we made:
- apple pie
- apple sauce
- apple cake
- apple turnovers

We took most of it up to distribute amongst the families that came to our engagement party.

Here’s the Architect with our goodies!

I realized that in all of the craziness of the past couple weeks, I never posted any Boston pictures. With the events of last night, I’m going to focus on happier things and post a few pictures from a really wonderful trip.

Here’s my handsome fiance enjoying a traditional Boston breakfast. I have never seen more Dunkin Donuts in my entire life than when I was in Boston. I would venture to say that there’s even more DDs than Starbucks up there.

The T (the Boston Subway) has a mascot named Charlie. Charlie shows people where to go in the T stations. I kind of wish that Metro had a mascot although at this point the mascot would probably have to be a beat up man or something.

Here’s the waterfront at the harbor (or the hah-bahr as the locals say it). The big clocktower used to mark the water line. The water was actually behind me as I was taking this picture so you can see how much the water front had been built up.

Here’s us at the waterfront. I love this picture!

I’ll have to see if I can pilfer some of the Architect’s pictures from the whale watching trip…

I came home from our engagement party tonight only to find our front door absolutely busted. There were maintenance guys out in front of our apartment and they told us that there had been a fire in our building and that the firemen had to bust our door down to check to see if anyone was inside. Sighing because we knew that it was going to be a pain to get our front door replaced (the force from the firemen had busted the door frame), we walked in only to discover the door to our laundry/utility room was busted as well.

We couldn’t figure out why that would be considering the fire was in the apartment catty corner from us. I had to call the fire chief and get really mad about the door. He came out here tonight to take a look and was pretty nice about having to come out and take pictures of the utility room door.

We asked him what the fire was and he said that it was bad oven fire. It kind of scares me a little bit especially because our kitties were here while all of this was going on. They were probably scared… or not… nothing seems to bother them. Totoro fell in love with the fire chief and was rubbing all over him when he came in.

Anyhow, not really how I wanted to cap off the day after having a nice engagement party but we’re fine. I’m staying home tomorrow in case the contractors come back to fix the front door. They’re going to have to fix the entire frame and everything so I’ll have to wrassle cats so they don’t decide to walk out the door. Grrr! Bottom line: we’re all okay, there’s just a few more busted doors around here.

It’s dark here today. The skies have been threatening to open up all day but they have only drizzled on us a little bit so far.  I was a bit early coming into the city and so I decided to pop into Starbucks and sit for a spell and try to read some more of my latest obsession. These are the mornings I love. Coming in a little early affords me the time to get a cup of coffee and get lost in my books for a few moments before rushing off to my next affair. Whenever I go to this particular Starbucks, I try to get a seat by the window so I can watch the world rush by. Yes, it distracts me from my reading but I love people watching.

I had gotten to a really gripping part of the book this morning when someone said, “How are you liking that book?” Now, this is a particularly dangerous question to ask me especially if you are simply trying to make niceties because I always have a lot to say about books. Yes, yes. So I started rattling a little bit to this woman. She offered me the name of another author that I would probably like. How awesome is that? Anyone that can recommend a good book to me is my hero. She recommended an author named Diana Galbadon (sp?). For some reason, it just kind of tickled me that a random stranger came up and offered me a book suggestion. I love this place!

Anyhow, tonight we’re going out for Greek food and then shopping and then home to clean the house for our guests. What guests you ask? Well, tomorrow one of the Architect’s friends and his girlfriend are coming over and we’re going to pick apples. Then we’ll go home and make lots of apple related yumminess. I’m not sure what’s on the menu yet but it’s sure to be wonderful.

Sunday is our engagement party. My parents are holding it. It should be fun!

What are you doing this weekend?

Ah yes, this is why Stumble Upon can both be wonderful and dangerous…

I had a little time tonight to play with Stumble Upon tonight. SU is a wonderful tool that will take you to all of the crazy corners the internet has to offer. Most of my stumbled upon sites seem to either have something to do with architecture, history, or cute animals (if you know me at all, that’s not really shocking). So I was totally miffed when I came across this website in my stumbling.

The site is called Doodle Bra and like it sounds, it peddles bras that you can draw on. I’ve gotta ask why on earth someone would want to draw on their bra. Also, you can kind of draw on any bra if you really wanted to I guess. Most of them are simply cotton or silk or the like. Grab the super jumbo pack of Sharpies and you’re pretty much set if you really want to draw on your bra.

I’ve gotta say this is not the product for me; I know I’m personally really happy when my bras simply stay the same color as when I bought them

What’s the strangest product you’ve ever heard of? Would you draw on a bra if you had the chance?

Woo, this week needs to be over soon. It’s been pretty busy. For brevity’s sake, here’s a list of the going ons for me this week.

-          I already hate statistics. I understand the concepts but am totally lost when it comes to using the computer to figure out what the heck I’m doing. My awesome, awesome fiancé had to save me from crying on Tuesday because I was so frustrated and lost with homework. I hope eventually I will hit my stride or otherwise this is going to be a long semester for the Architect and I. I cry about school work. It gets ugly.

-          The other two classes are going fine. One of the classes is kind of a review for me since I took a very similar class at Hood, the first grad school I attended but the new school wouldn’t take my credits. Boo. I have a lot of work in front of me but I think that I can get through it. I only have about 21 weeks of school left in total. In the scheme of things, that’s not a lot.

-          I had dinner with Beef this week. She’s leaving for the Peace Corps this week. She’ll be in Ukraine for 27 months. I’m going to miss her but I really want to go over and visit, probably in Spring 2011.

-          I’m making lemon chicken again tonight so the Architect can taste it. I’m excited! I love that recipe. I should share it here. Anyhow, I at least need to write it down since I modified it from the original recipe that I found.

-          I tried some of my Lush lotion today. It’s called Vanilla Delite and it smells amazing. I’m going to be the creepy kid smelling my hands all day long (haha).

Wedding Stuff:

-          We reserved the nursery for September 19, 2010 for our wedding. I’m getting really anxious to start planning the aesthetics of our wedding. Now that’s going to be the fun part.

-          I think we have a caterer too who makes bangin’ crab dip. As a rule, I think that if you get married in Maryland, you have to serve something with crab in it otherwise the state just doesn’t allow you to get married.

-          We started talking to photographers and we found a really awesome one that we’re going to meet with next week. She suggested meeting for coffee; I think I like her already

-          Because we reserved the place, I was finally able to start asking my bridesmaids if they would be in my wedding. I’m still waiting to talk to two of them (my cousin and the Architect’s sister).

How is your week going?

Byron Travers had worked at the Sudshine Laundromat for five years. It wasn’t that bad of a job but it certainly was not glamorous. It was necessary though.  It paid for all the necessities including the mortgage on the cape cod-style house that he shared with his ailing mother. He liked the repetitiveness of the job. He greeted customers, made change for customers, said goodbye to customers and fixed the washers and dryers whenever they broke. That’s it and it was the same each night. Byron always took the night shift: 11pm to 7am. Everyone was surprised that there were actually customers coming in so late. Well, usually customers would come in at night but not this night. Tonight a hard, steady rain poured from the sky and no one ever came when it rained.

Byron sighed contentedly. He’d be alone and although he enjoyed the customers, it meant that he be uninterrupted. One year ago, Byron bought a laptop. 11 months ago, Byron learned how to use the laptop. 10 months ago, Byron fell in love with his laptop. 5 months ago, Byron decided to write a book. This happened on a whim. Byron loved telling stories; the more outrageous, the better. He had never written any of his stories down before. When he got his laptop and realized he now had an easy avenue to write all of his tales down, he was unstoppable. Everything he wrote, he wrote during a night shift like this: rainy where no one would come to bother him.

Writing had become sort of a catharsis for him. Whatever frustration he was feeling, he’d write down and the frustration would suddenly dissipate.

He could’ve written every night shift if he wanted to but he never liked to write in front of the customers. He believed it took some of the magic away. On the nights that he could write, he felt entirely free and not being able to write every night made it feel like a real pleasure.

“It’s just me, the washers and the dryers now,” he thought, smiling to himself as he opened the laptop.

After my dad’s surgery (he had brain surgery for anyone that didn’t know) in the spring, my mom suggested we try to go camping, like real tent camping, as a family. B, KT, and I thought this was kind of strange that she would suggest this seeing as how my mom’s usual idea of roughing it is spending the night in a Motel 6 or the like. She’s not really into the outdoors but after Dad’s surgery, she had started to go on a real ‘carpe diem’ type kick (although it seems to be more than just a kick, which is pretty cool). It’s sad but still very cool how sometimes it takes a really bad situation to make you begin to see things differently but in this case, this is exactly what happened.

 The Architect in his infinite wisdom suggested we use his family’s cabin in the backwoods of PA. The cabin is pretty much a house in the woods. It has a full kitchen and running water and bathrooms and beds. It isn’t really roughing it at. Mom agreed that this was probably a good way to test out our collective camping legs.

On Friday, the Architect, my family, B’s boyfriend, my aunt, uncle, cousin and I headed up to the cabin. We had a really good time together. I think everyone, my mom included, had a lot of fun. We didn’t do much. The cabin is a good place for not doing much. It was a lot of resting and talking and eating with each other. It was wonderful. There was even talk about making this an annual thing.

One thing that I think I took for granted before my dad’s surgery is the idea that we were always going to be able to spend time with each other. My immediate family is all within the state so I get to see them a lot. I probably see my parents about every two or three weeks on average. When you see that much of them, it’s easy to say “Oh, this is how it’s always going to be.” It doesn’t seem special or unique or different. When you have access to something so frequently, it’s hard to think that it could be gone …. just. like. that.

What do you take for granted?

Last night, the Architect and I went out for dinner before going to a lecture at the National Building museum. We went to a restaurant called “Founding Farmers.” We had never been there before and wanted to try it. The cool thing about this restaurant is that the food comes from farms that the restaurant has partnerships with so you know exactly where your food is coming from. They’re also into supporting farms that are sustainable, which is really, really cool to me. It’s nice to be able to feel like you’re contributing to solutions by eating someplace. It doesn’t hurt that the food is really awesome.

We started out with Arnold Palmers to drink. We’ve both been obsessed over these drinks this summer. If you don’t know, it’s a mix of iced tea and lemonade. It’s good and refreshing. For dinner, the Architect had steak (nice and juicy), French fries and cauliflower. I had barackwurst (seriously, that’s what they were called; others may know them as bratwurst), cabbage, French fries, carrots and green beans. What was unique about the green beans and carrots is that they were pickled but served warm. It sounds strange but it was really good actually. The pickling was light enough not to be overpowering and simply to give a little kick to the meal. For dessert, we split a white chocolate pecan bread pudding. It was soooooo amazing. It melted in your mouth and was such a perfect dessert to kick off fall with. We’ll definitely be going back!

Tonight, I’m cooking dinner for two friends. I’m making baked lemon chicken (new recipe; we’ll see how this goes), wild rice, and asparagus (baked with lemon and olive oil).

PS: The album I’m listening to is awesome. Do yourself a favor and listen to it!