We planted our pole beans at the beginning of May, and they are already taller than the trellis and are blooming. See:
Bean flowers!
Meanwhile, the sugar snap peas are finally coming out. It has taken forever. I can't wait to enjoy these guys:
Today was a work day for me. I pulled out junky plants from the yard and pruned the tomato plants. The tomatoes really shot up in the past two weeks, and they are totally out of control. I'm hoping the pruning restores some order without hurting them (I took off quite a few branches).
Our squash plants are in desperate need for their trellis supports. Although we intended on installing these today, we were both too tired from other things. So, tomorrow, tomorrow.
After cleaning up and making dinner, we went over to South Grand and enjoyed dessert at the Gelateria. My dish of chocolate and coconut was delicious, and I plan to stop by a lot more often this summer.
A snack of gelato called for a walk in Tower Grove Park, which was packed with families holding events in the pavilions. And understandably so as the weather was perfect.
I hope tomorrow is just as nice. Porkchop is playing in an ice hockey scrimmage (yay!), and I imagine I will do more garden and yard work (it really is never-ending).
These are some of Porkchop's homegrown strawberries:
And these are the 28 pounds of strawberries we picked at Eckert's on Saturday:
We froze a lot of our strawberries:
And made jam out of the rest:
For our first canning venture, we made three varieties: plain old strawberry jam, lemony strawberry jam, and strawberry-balsamic vinegar jam.
Strawberries, strawberries, strawberries! I really don't care to see another one for a few days. (Sad, eh?)
Saturday was a day full of strawberry picking and processing, and going to Porkchop's brother's place for a birthday SingStar party. Unfortunately, I was completely exhausted by 11 pm, so we had to bail out early.
You'd think we would have slept in Sunday morning, but no, we rose bright and early to clean house some before leaving for Porkchop's parents' place outside of Rolla.
Our plan was to camp in her parents' yard (don't laugh, they live in the woods!). The rain cancelled that, so instead we put up our tent on their wraparound porch. Impressive, eh?
So, don't laugh when I say that we didn't even spend the whole night in the tent! That's right, we were too chicken to camp on a porch!
First off, Porkchop's mom's cat scared the crap out of us by sneaking up and clawing the tent. Then there was a seriously scary sound coming from the creek area behind the house. It was either a couple of crazy wild turkeys, or a mountain lion screaming. Finally, critters kept coming up on the porch and making noises. Raccoon or opossum, Porkchop grew tired of waking up to their thumping around. So we went inside for the rest of the night and stole back outside in the early morning. Listening to the rain was so pleasant as it hit the porch instead of the tent rain fly.
Monday went by too quickly, and we didn't find ourselves back in St. Louis until after 8 pm. Once back, we had to deal with more strawberries (didn't have time to finish them on Saturday). And today was exhausting because everyone at work needs something RIGHT NOW. Ugh! I'm having a little drinky-drink at the moment to relax (don't worry - not a habit of mine).
Tonight I harvested lettuce and radishes from the garden, and realized that I have a big slug problem! I would put out beer to drown them, but the rain won't stop long enough for this method to be effective. Yuck.
For dinner, I made this beef curry recipe. Yum! It would have been better had I cooked it for the full two hours, but I didn't read the recipe very closely before starting and didn't plan for a 2+ hour dish! Anyway, 1 hour meant it was still quite tasty (and I don't like beef that much).
Tonight I made two new-to-me dishes: tamarind orange glazed tofu and roasted kale. The tofu received two thumbs way up from Porkchop and me. The kale...was a different story. Porkchop took one taste and declined the rest of her serving. I was rather intrigued by it and couldn't stop eating it. Roasted kale is like a kale cracker, and kind of reminded me of papadum (a stretch, I know, but that's what I thought of while eating the kale).
The roasted kale was mainly a good way to use up the huge thing of kale included in our Fair Shares pick up. I love my vegetables, but I'm not the biggest kale eater.
On another note, we received beef stew meat in our share...any suggestions for it? I'm still not a big beef eater, so I've never ventured into beef stews.
BBC Asian Cafe Last night we tried this little eatery in the CWE. It has recently reopened since being closed for a remodel, a renaming, and a menu retooling, but since we never went to the original restaurant, I can't make a comparison. All I can say is that my unagi crepe was pretty darn good. Eel, avocado, cheese, and some spicy-ish sauces. Unagi is one of my favorite foods, so I was quite happy! Porkchop had a crepe with chicken, basil, and a creamy sauce...rather standard.
The red bean milk tea (sans boba for me) was pretty good too. However, I felt silly drinking it because it was served in the Biggest Chalice Ever.
Unfortunately, the summer rolls were a huge disappointment. The noodles were a big mushy mash, and the wrapper was super gummy. Overall, they didn't pack a lot of taste, save for the fresh mint leaves.
Of course, after experiencing Banh Mih So #1, it's hard to have other spring/summer rolls.
All in all, alright, but we probably won't go back unless there is a compelling reason.
La Dolce Via Is back! Okay, they reopened a few months ago, but yay! They're back!
We stopped in a couple of weeks ago for dessert.
Yum, yum, yum! I had the flourless chocolate hazelnut torte, which was kind of like eating a giant Ferrero Rocher candy, only a million times better. Porkchop had a piece of the Elizabetta cake: vanilla sponge cake infused with sweetened lemon juice, layered with lemon curd, and frosted with lemon cream.
I've said it once, I'll say it a million times, if you've never been to La Dolce Via...GO!
The title of today's staff and faculty meeting is "A Busy and Productive Summer."
I love that our meeting is titled! Seriously, I am amused to no end by it.
I can only hope for similar scintillating follow-up titles. Maybe "Fall: A Time to Reflect upon our Harvest of Grants" or "A Long and Lonely Winter as Everyone goes on Vacation except Me."
Time has just gotten away from me lately. I can't believe it's mid-May, commencement is over, and temperatures are climbing towards the 80s!
We've packed a lot into the last few weeks. This weekend we went to the Tower Grove farmers' market (basil, strawberries, and pain au chocolate), worked on the yard A LOT both days, missed out on a patio set on Craigslist (dang it), and I went a Rehabber's Club tour of some recently finished properties and works-in-progress in our neighborhood (also on the tour was a woman who was head of the student Senate when I was at Mizzou...very strange). Also, we cooked! A lot! Lemon-basil chicken with orzo and asparagus, waffles and bacon, grilled porkchops and potatoes, curried chicken-mango salad (for a work potluck tomorrow), and vanilla pound cake.
The garden is starting to take off. Here are the two big beds this morning:
(Porkchop and Keetah are also in the photo. See if you can find them.)
Porkchop's potatoes-in-a-trashcan experiment is also going well:
Wow, I am hitting a wall of tiredness, so I have to hurry the rest of this post.
Our biggest excitement of the month was flying out to Portland to see our friend Kathy before she moves to Peru (she leaves very, very soon!). While we were there, our friend Sabrina flew out from New York for the reunion trip (Kathy, Sabrina, and Porkchop were all MFA students at Wisconsin together...I was a tag-along).
Portland was beautiful and the company was fantastic! I haven't smiled and laughed so much in a long time. Oh, and our accommodations were vintage midcentury modern - truly fantastic.
In addition to spending a couple of hours in Powell's and hitting the PSU farmers' market, we went to the beach:
(Sabrina taking Kathy's photo.)
And we took a drive just east of Portland along the Columbia River Gorge. Pretty and pretty windy:
Along the scenic road, we stopped at quite a few waterfalls. All spectacular in their own way. This one is Bridal Veil Falls:
The whole area was covered in moss - very neat! And soft.
The day trip culminated at a fish hatchery where we saw a 10-foot, 70-something year-old sturgeon. It was huge!
Other highlights of the trip include eating crazy-good french fries and poutine at Potato Champion, and the world's best waffles at Waffle Window.
Seriously, you can't go to Portland without hitting the Waffle Window. It shares a kitchen with a larger cafe, but WW itself is just a little half door around the corner from the main cafe. You order your waffle at the window, and then there's a special section in the cafe where you can eat.
The waffles are spectacular. Sabrina and I both had the huckleberry waffle - a fluffy waffle coated in pearl sugar and topped with huckleberry jam and syrup, whipped cream, and lemon panna cotta. The panna cotta really made the waffle - yum, yum, yum! I also enjoyed tasting Porkchop's waffle topped with ham, gruyere cheese, and maple syrup.
We loved seeing Kathy and Sabrina again, and we hope the next visit isn't so far away (okay, Porkchop saw Kathy last year, but I hadn't seen Kathy in a few years, and I hadn't seen Sabrina since 2005!).
Okay, I'm tired and I have to check my laundry. Have a great week!
Although we didn't do many things from the Weekend List, we accomplished quite a bit this weekend. And made more work for later (awesome!).
Things started off with working outside for a few hours Friday evening. We planted the remaining raised bed with tomatoes, peppers, basil, tomatillos, marigolds, and other flowers. Things continued early Saturday morning with planting squash and melons, clearing weeds out of the yard, and cleaning up the junky stuff on our neighbor's retaining wall. We took the afternoon and the evening off for leisure activities such as reading and watching baseball.
Oh, we also made our magical rice and chorizo dish...will have to post that recipe someday.
Here is the newest raised bed:
And here are the melon and squash, safely tucked away in toilet paper rolls. I lost one butternut squash to a cutworm yesterday, and I don't want to lose any more. I know we have a lot of melons and squash for the square footage of this bed, but I plan on growing them up. The next step for this bed is to add on to the trellis.
This morning we slept in a bit, made waffles, and then went back to work in the yard. This time we planted along the previously junky retaining wall. Lots of flower and herb seeds went in, as well as purple coneflowers.
After a lunch break, we went back out for more. And things took a turn for the worse. I was clearing some weeds out by the garage in the hopes of planting more conflowers. This turned into us clearing off dirt from the long-away forgotten brick border around the garage. Could look nice again, eh?
Unfortunately, we found this at the other end of the garage:
That's not just a shadow, it's a ginormous hole along the foundation of the garage!! Those bricks in the foreground? They have nothing supporting them underneath!
Fortunately, this answered our question of what to do with all the dirt and debris that we cleared off the brick border. Unfortunately, this thing gives me a headache. The slope and drainage is really weird in our yard, and I wish it could just fix itself.
This is how we left the abyss today:
We took out the bricks that were just hanging in midair, and we uncovered more of the hidden brick border. But, geez, we're tired.
So, is this a sinkhole or what? We're even more convinced that our house is above one of the area's many caves.
On a happier note, Keetah loves the outside so much! The whole yard is her all-you-can-eat salad bar:
Keetah was also busy this weekend doing some calculations and watching TV:
Such hard work! She has also been hanging out with Porkchop:
Buddies!
Have a good week! I am sort of glad for work tomorrow so that I don't get sucked into neverending yardwork.
Y'all, I am STOKED for the weekend! The only thing that could make it better would be Porkchop and me not working today.
Here is our list of possible weekend activities:
Plant things. This is a for-sure activity. Tomatoes, peppers, herbs, and tomatillos MUST go into the ground tomorrow. We have had a sad development in our plant raising - it appears that the biggest tomato plants and many of the pepper plants have developed bacterial leaf spot. Probably because I didn't put a fan in the bathroom to allow for proper air circulation. It sucks. BUT, the squash and melons are sprouting like gangbusters. They are big and amazing, and I can't wait to plant them!
Bike ride! Also a for-sure activity. I want to bike somewhere for Sunday brunch, and Porkchop wants to bike downtown for a Cards-Cubs game.
Baseball game. See above. (I am dragging my feet on this one because I was just at a sporting event last weekend! And you know how I feel about these things!)
Make waffles. Because we received maple syrup in our Fair Shares pickup, and it would be a shame to not crack it open right away.
Eat more Salume Beddu's mostarda. This stuff is a revelation! It's described as an "Italian chutney," and it's full of dried fruit, mustard seeds, and chile flakes. It's spicy and not-too-sweet, and it's my new favorite thing. We also received this in this week's share. Fortunately, I'll be able to pick up more as needed once the Tower Grove farmers' market starts up (opening day is May 9!).
I'm sure I left off something! It will be a super-fabulous weekend! Enjoy yours as well!
There were outdoor plant-related things I wanted to do, but it drizzled throughout the day, leading to an idle afternoon. Rarely do I spend a Saturday afternoon reading and knitting, so it was kind of a welcome break. It's just hard for me to feel okay about sitting around.
However, with the work we did yesterday afternoon and evening, I don't feel too guilty.
Porkchop and I had doctor appointments in the early afternoon, and neither of us returned to work. It was too darn nice outside! Instead of going back to my drab office, we enjoyed treats from the CWE Gelato di Riso and then went home to do yardwork. Yay yardwork!
Last summer, I noticed that the hardwood mulch in the front flowerbed was....sick, not right, and gross. We could pick up large sheets of mulch; the individual pieces were stuck together with weird white stuff. For the past 8 months, the flowerbed was a blight in my eyes. In fact, I trained myself to not look at it because I hated it so much.
Yesterday after the doctor and gelato, I decided to finally get the mulch the eff out of here. It was more work than I anticipated! There was SO MUCH weird white stuff.
The stuff resembled a mixture of latex paint and mold. And, we think that's what it was! Our hunch is that the rehab people were painting the eaves and dropped a big paint bucket. Instead of cleaning it up, they just dumped a bunch of mulch on it. My theory is that mold then grew because the stuff couldn't dry out (or something like that).
Anyway, most of it is now gone! The bits that are left shouldn't pose a problem. After removing the grossness, we spread out new, healthy soil and compost. And we planted pretty little flowers, which we hope will stay alive and thrive.
I wish we had taken a before photo for comparison, but I didn't think about it.
Here is the work in progress:
The area in question is really small, but the new soil and compost make a big difference. We have two surprisingly healthy azalea bushes, and one that is struggling. We removed a lot of paint mulch mess from around it, so hopefully it will get better.
Keetah surprised us and came out on the porch to supervise our work!
This outing showed a lot of braveness on her part; she's very cautious in exploring new things. Her heart was pounding the whole time. Especially when she was on the steps and cars were whizzing by:
So, with all of the work done yesterday, I feel sort of okay about doing nothing this afternoon. However, we did need a break this evening. Since the rain had stopped, we decided to go for a little walk around our neighborhood. We ended up at the Map Room, where we enjoyed sparkling orangeade and snack-size cheesecake.
The people at the Map Room are super-nice, and they have a great selection of drinks and desserts. We look forward to going back! Indeed, once it is cooler weather again, I know I will be there for some spiked hot chocolate.
Earlier this week, I finally joined Goodreads. I realized that I'm starting to forget what I've read, so I appreciate having a place to track my books.
But I know it will be only a few months until I stop updating my Goodreads account. Just like my Ravelry projects page, I imagine I will abandon it at some point.
With Goodreads, Ravelry, and Facebook, I'm starting to feel overstimulated and overexposed. And I don't even Tweet or Blip!
The main problem, I think, is Facebook. There are so many status updates, and many of them annoy me. But I can't just skip the annoying ones and move on! I read them and my blood pressure goes up...my forehead frowns and I sigh.
So now I'm taking steps to alleviate the problem. If you only post about what your kid is doing, I've blocked you. Whenever you publish a quiz result, I block that quiz application (Hey people, do you know you don't have to publish your quiz result! I take quizzes without publishing my results because although I find it humorous to learn my Crayola crayon color is cornflower, I know other people don't give a rat's ass, and I don't want to overpopulate their homepage feed.) If you post updates every 5 minutes regarding what's happening on the Apprentice, I'm blocking you.
I only wish I could block ALL updates from some people. Because I don't really care if someone with whom I haven't spoken in 12 years becomes a fan of Jesus, yet it still shows up in the sidebar highlights feed.
Which brings me to a tangential point....
Jesus and God have Facebook pages.
I would like to know who took it upon themselves to make these pages...because I don't think it was divine creation.
Isn't that a bit presumptuous? Did someone ask WWJD, only to have the answer be "create a Facebook page"?
(By the way, God has more fans than Jesus. By nearly 300,000.)
Sometimes I think I should create a new Facebook account. To start fresh with people who are REALLY my friends and with whom I've had meaningful interactions, and leave the other account for all those people I never spoke to growing up and who have now donned rose-colored spectacles with which they view the past.
I wonder if Jesus and God feel the same way. Of course, they're probably a bit more forgiving than I am, a bit more ready to excuse others' transgressions and whatnot.
So, I'm waiting for Porkchop to return from a trip to Columbia. She and her brothers are there visiting their dad in the burn treatment center. You see, their dad had an encounter with some propane last night, and the result is second degree burns on his head and arms, along with a smattering of third degree burns. These are bad burns, but it could have been much, much worse.
It will take some time, but it seems like he will be okay. He might even go home tomorrow! Which seems crazy after looking at the photo Porkchop sent me of his bandaged head.
Poor guy. A bypass, a kidney transplant, stents around his heart, and now this. He can't catch a break.
Other Waiting To me, spring is all about waiting...waiting to realize the potential of carefully laid plans.
First, we were waiting to go to Chicago with Porkchop's niece. We hit the Art Institute, the Shedd Aquarium, the Field Museum, Mitsuwa Marketplace, and IKEA.
This was my first trip to the Field Museum, and I would like to go back. SO MUCH STUFF! My favorite section was the Plants of the World, especially after reading about how the glass and wax specimens were made. Amazing!
We saw Sue, of course:
And we saw the artists-in-residence...two brothers exploring their theory of a new optical reality. Which meant tracing things on curved paper. Like this:
Actually, it's a lot more complicated than just tracing. It's about splitting the focus of your eyes and capturing the "ghost image" on paper. It's pretty neat - there's an article and clip here.
Porkchop and I agreed the brothers strike one as being from the late 1800s/early 1900s. "We've got this new-fangled easel contraption..."
So, after Chicago, we were waiting on sprouts. And guess who peeked out of the ground late last week?
Spinach or lettuce (I can't tell at this stage).
And onions.
Then we were waiting on the Blues to clinch the playoffs. And guess what happened Friday night at the last home game? That's right! They won!
Porkchop and her younger brother were the happiest, especially after we got to shoot pucks down on the ice after the game.
Now I'm waiting to plant tomatoes, peppers, tomatillos, and basil. And for our trip to Portland to see Kathy before she moves to Peru! So many things to await!
I also look forward to baking more fun cookies this weekend. Monday night, I made these chewy amaretti cookies:
Quite tasty, although the almond paste makes me feel weird, as in allergic weird.
Hope your week is going well...Keetah says hello to her friends!
The Iowa news started me thinking about a conversation I had with a co-worker after the VP debates in October. I was complaining about how Biden was being totally unclear and weak about the gay marriage issue, and my co-worker said something like, "well, it seems like there should be some sort of compromise. I mean, if there isn't gay marriage, maybe there could be something else."
I looked at her with mouth agape as she nattered on about how you can't always have the full deal at the beginning, but maybe compromise is the way to start.
Let me be totally clear: I WILL NOT COMPROMISE.
As long as one group of people can have a certain set of rights, I will not settle for something branded under a different name with different rights specified.
HELL NO.
It's easy to suggest compromise when you're in the group that has FULL RIGHTS!
A lot of people ask if Porkchop and I have had a commitment ceremony and are often surprised to hear that we haven't. Y'all, a commitment ceremony doesn't mean a damn thing without the legal rights that accompany an officially recognized marriage. We are committed to each other already - we don't need a ceremony for it!
I'm not going to settle for a stupid-ass ceremony that won't do crap for me except maybe allow us presents like a mixer. A mixer doesn't stand up in court! A mixer won't give us legal protection over each other or tax benefits or parental rights!
I am glad for Iowa, and now I'm super-pissed at Missouri and the federal government and lots of other things. ARGH!
A few weeks ago, I had the urge to make chocolate chip cookies, and I used the recipe my mom always did...the one on the back of the Nestle Toll House chocolate chip package.
Unfortunately, the end result was nothing like I remember! The cookies I made were much too buttery and flat and generally not what I wanted. I still ate them, as did others, but I was so sad and disappointed.
Luckily, I can always count on the Smitten Kitchen to post exactly what I want. I made this recipe last night, and I'm so much happier! The cookies aren't flat, and the butter doesn't overpower the cookie-ness! Next time, I just need to make them smaller and I'll be back in childhood.
Smitten Kitchen writes that this recipe is much more akin to the original Toll House recipe, so I can only surmise that someone messed with the recipe on the back of the chocolate chip package. Stupids!
Anyway, I'm glad to have the chocolate chip cookie back!
Porkchop and I skedaddled after work and put dirt in our remaining raised bed, put up more of the trellis, and planted things. Here it is at the end of the day:
The bed with the trellis has sugar snap peas, spinach, lettuce, and radishes. We will add more to the trellis as we plant beans and squash. The 3x3 bed has onions, beets, and carrots. Porkchop also put strawberry plants in pots.
Quite unexpectedly, our beds now contain around 50 earthworms. Over the weekend, we noticed that earthworms were starting to invade our basement! There were dried up bodies littering the floor, and 4 or 5 huddled around the floor drain.
So, while cleaning leaves from the area outside the basement door, Porkchop found the motherlode of worms. This is a mere fraction of them:
Holy shizzle, Porkchop and I transplanted sprouts yesterday, keeping the strongest and composting the weakest (a moment of silence for those plants), and this is what we ended up with in our bathtub-cum-greenhouse:
Here is the transplanting action:
For the past month, the garden has been at the forefront of our minds.
We're either staring out the back window at the garden beds, or we're in the bathroom staring at the plants.
We keep Great Garden Companions handy, able to recite passages and open the volume at exactly the right page.
Porkchop decides to plant some strawberry plants, and I add spinach to my greens list.
We buy a trashcan for growing potatoes.
We are going crazy with planning things!
Tomorrow evening, we're finally going to actually plant things! Carrots, beets, onions, lettuce, spinach, and peas!
The onion sets came into our possession this afternoon from our neighborhood gardening store. Like many establishments in our neighborhood, it was initially difficult for us to ascertain the status of the store. Is it open? Is it closed? Is it closed closed? What the hell, is this how it always looks?
We finally figured out that this is how it always looks:
In some areas, this would pass for an abandoned building, no?
But, signs of life cropped up a couple of weeks ago!
Plants! Live! (As opposed to the layers of dead plants that litter the area.)
Onion sets are $1.75 a pound here, and the guy has red, yellow, and white. In addition to onion sets, you can buy parakeets.
So, by the looks of these pictures, you wouldn't guess that we had maybe an inch of snow lying about this morning! I would have planted things today, but the air was a tad chilly. Instead we purchased more seeds and a couple of strawberry plants.
I like it to be a little bit light out when I get up in the morning. And it was....UNTIL TODAY.
Stupid government changing the date of the time change!
This time change is always difficult for me, anyway, so I don't need it aggravated even more.
Yesterday, I felt like I had the biggest hangover ever. And the time! slipped away! so quickly!
It was 11:30 pm before I knew it, which means I'm starting this Monday with less sleep than normal!
Ah well, enough complaining.
Porkchop and I have started playing Mancala. That's one reason we were up so late. That, and we started watching Man on Wire at 9:00. A counting game and a vertigo-inducing movie...just what I need before trying to sleep.
Strangely enough, I didn't dream about either of these things. Instead, I had anxious dreams about dessert bars (as in desserts in bar form). I have no idea...
I was worried about the pita bread because it was so sticky and I had problems rolling it out. But, nonetheless, most of the pitas puffed up. Not perfectly, but still tasty...especially with the hummus.
By the way, I used dried chickpeas for the hummus and falafel, and I'm so glad I did. They are WAY better than the canned stuff.
So, our day started out bright and early with Keetah waking us up at 6:30 (an annoying habit she has developed). It actually wasn't so bad this morning because we intended to rise early anyway for yard work. Our goal was to install garden beds, and that's what we did.
Here's Porkchop with the first bed nearly finished (notice how the beds behind it are all super unlevel):
Here I am with the project finished (beds much more level, although we realize not perfectly level, with which we're okay):
We had to clear out so much swamp grass and chunks of concrete and other debris (a glass tube, wiring, fence collars, etc.). This is just a small portion of the stuff:
Needless to say, we'll be filling in the beds with some good dirt, compost, and manure. Because our yard is crazy underneath the swamp grass.
There's a lot more to do in our yard in terms of clearing out debris. Fortunately, we love yardwork.
We celebrated getting the beds in by going out for Sonic. Woo! After that, we hit Global Foods in Kirkwood and TJ Maxx, where I scored by finding Two Leaves and a Bud tea for cheap(er) and Dr. Kracker crackers (my favorite!). We were in Kirkwood to scope out the manure at O.K. Hatchery, where we also picked up some garden gloves for Porkchop and more marigold seeds. I LOVE O.K. Hatchery! It's packed with all sorts of good stuff, and there's no pretension anywhere. Just people picking up seed potatoes, bird feed, and cow manure.
OH, but our best find from this weekend are these cookies that Porkchop picked out last night from Jay International Foods:
We've been back in St. Louis since Wednesday...Porkchop has been busy having another cold, and I'm still trying to wrap my mind around having to work.
[I can't get through a workday anymore without being tuned into Pandora. Otherwise, I feel like I'll fall asleep.]
So...to wrap up our WDW stuff...
Monday Magic Kingdom day.
The worst day.
After riding Space Mountain and other things in Tomorrowland, there isn't much to do. The park gets crazy crowded by lunch, and it isn't designed to handle the number of people that pile in. You can't walk 3 inches without running into someone.
Save for the ice cream, the afternoon was not fun. But we stuck it out for the Spectromagic parade and the fireworks display. (Had we left the park after lunch, there was no way in hell I would have gone back).
Tuesday A much better day.
We spent the morning at Disney Hollywood Studios, where we rode the new Toy Story Mania ride twice. It was a fun time of playing 4-D carnival-style midway games! By the end of the first ride, Porkchop was just 500 points ahead of me. Quite unexpectedly, I totally dominated the second ride and edged out Porkchop by around 30,000 points.
After doing everything on our list, we left the park around 2:00 and rested at the hotel some. We rounded out the afternoon by playing miniature golf and taking senior class photos:
Porkchop looks cool here, but I won the game. 50-54...what's happening?! Am I becoming good at skill games, or is Porkchop losing her touch?
[I won't mention how I scored over 330,000 points on the Buzz Lightyear ride...compared to P-chop's 50,000-something.]
After golf, we used the Disney bus system to get to Downtown Disney for dinner. Since the waterpark by the golf place had already closed, getting to Downtown was a bit inconvenient. The only bus running went to Epcot. At Epcot, we had to pick a resort bus, take the bus to the resort, and then catch another bus to Downtown. In the end, we lucked out by choosing the Saratoga Springs bus, as there was a walkway from Saratoga to Downtown (no waiting for a bus, yay!).
Not so lucky was that we witnessed a woman fall off her scooter as she exited the bus! It was obvious that the woman couldn't steer her scooter very well, but no one expected her to fall off. As she rode off the bus ramp, she cut her wheels sharply, which caused the scooter to deposit her face-first on the sidewalk. And then the scooter fell on her.
I felt horrible for the woman and for the bus driver, who obviously felt quite shitty.
Anyway, where was I? We did some pin trading at Downtown Disney and had a good dinner.
Wednesday The day we'd been waiting for! And not because we were leaving that afternoon!
No, Wednesday morning was our Segway tour at Epcot!
After I traded my broken Segway for a functioning one, it was super fun! We had around 45 minutes of training and practice indoors, and then it was off to the World Showcase. Since the Showcase opens later than Epcot, it became our playground as we zig-zagged through the columns at Italy, cruised through the Morrocco bazaar, and traversed the garden bridges in Japan.
Here we are on our Segways:
And here's a little clip of Porkchop riding hers (listen closely and you can hear me exclaim at the end as Porkchop gets a little too close to me):
The Rest of the Week Blech. We returned to work right away, which wasn't fun.
But, we also returned to sprouting tomatoes! They're a little leggy, but otherwise okay. Oh, and the peppers are quite beautiful:
Other random things...
Friday night after work, I requested a chair massage from the "Chinese Exercise" place in the Galleria. I heard from a co-worker who heard from her dance instructor that, if you don't have time for a full massage, this place is pretty good. While my experience was just fine, Porkchop will tell you otherwise. To begin with, Porkchop didn't even want a massage, the woman there pretty much forced her to sit down. Then, after the woman had worked on P-chop for a few minutes, a guy took over and started punching her calves and quads. Finally, to top it off, the woman asked if Porkchop was my child and, I swear, proceeded to make fun of us in Chinese (newsflash: it's never cool to make fun of people, especially when they can't understand you). When we left, the woman told Porkchop, "I love you, baby."
Huh? We won't be going back.
On another topic, we received radish sprouts in last week's share, and they are amazing!! I love radish sprouts!
I also love the Mexican hot chocolate at Cafe Ventana!
I declare this the best hot chocolate in St. Louis. The cayenne pepper and orange zest make for an amazing drink. The beignets are also pretty darn good. A cinnamon sugar one came with my drink, and next time I'm going to try the chocolate one. Yum!
Porkchop and I are taking a little break from the day's activities to give y'all a little recap (because I guess we're so vain that we think others care about our Disney World trip). Anyway... Friday Night We landed in Orlando around 9:00 and made it to our hotel room shortly thereafter via the Magical Express. We're staying in the Pop Century resort again. This time in the 50's area (as indicated by the giant bowling pins flanking our building).
Although we knew we had an early morning ahead of us, we both had a difficult time sleeping (I dreamt of bugs in our bed and of being upgraded to a much more expensive resort, while Porkchop had a horrible nightmare that I traded one of my fancier Disney pins for a baby Minnie Mouse pin of much lesser value).
Saturday Epcot was first on our agenda, and the morning went well with two Soarin' rides, Test Track, Living with the Land, and a Behind the Seeds tour. The tour was a more in depth visit to the hydroponic greenhouses than you get when riding Living with the Land. The highlight for me was seeing the trellis structures up close, as well as getting a better look at the tomato and eggplant trees.
I also enjoyed seeing vanilla and ginger trees, and sampling a cucumber grown in the greenhouse (a special Mickey head-shaped cuke).
After lunch and seeing the 3D show, Honey I Shrunk the Audience (snoozers), we hit the World Showcase and hit our tired wall. We struggled to drag ourselves around the lagoon and were annoyed by all the people who go to the World Showcase to drink overpriced beer. Also annoying were all of the people who thought that Porkchop, who was wearing a Disney themed nametag on her pin lanyard, worked for the park. This included a German man who wanted directions to the free Coke pavilion, some Asian girls who were looking for the Maelstrom ride in Norway, and a couple of kids who insisted that we trade pins with them. (WDW Pin Trading 101: Cast Members are obligated to trade you for whatever pin you want. Other guests may not be as accommodating.) We felt a little bad for the kids, who were genuinely excited by our pins, and each ended up trading them one of our nicer pins for... you guessed it, a cheap little baby Minnie Mouse pin! Porkchop is a prophet.
In addition to being exhausted, we both suffered from sore feet. Despite being a Disney expert and knowing better than to wear new shoes while traversing the parks, Porkchop donned her new Keens in the morning and regretted her decision early in the day. She likened it to walking on broken glass, moaned and groaned around the World Showcase, and nearly lost it when she found out we had to STAND through the 15 minute movie in Canada.
So, we limped away from Epcot early without seeing Illuminations. At the hotel, I snoozed while Porkchop watched a Blues hockey game. Despite our promises to go to bed earlier, the Blues game went to overtime and Porkchop nearly missed the disappointing end to the game (Final: Blues lose 1-0).
Today This was a short day at the parks. We have an early reservation at the California Grill, so we scheduled Animal Kingdom for today. AK isn't as big as the other parks, so we can do everything we want by mid-afternoon. AK is my favorite park because of this, and because it's so shady. Seriously, shade is a must for me.
We started the morning big with Expedition Everest. Then it was on to Dinoland for a couple of rides, and then back to Expedition Everest to use our Fastpass.
Up next was a tea and snack break while we watched the Flights of Wonder show (an exciting time as one bird grazed our heads with its wings).
Afterwards, we pushed on to Rafiki's Animal Planet and then went on our two-week Kilimanjaro Safari.
Before lunch, we had our final Expedition Everest ride via another Fastpass. The final ride resulted in the best picture of Porkchop, her expression captured her authentic anxiety as we plunged down the side of the mountain (Porkchop doesn't like drops and usually puts on a fake face for the photo).
We wrapped up our day at AK with Festival of the Lion King. This time, the show included a fire handler guy who danced with a fire baton thingie.
So...now I'm just waiting for a tasty dinner at the California Grill!
