We are having incredibly beautiful weather. I wanted to go camping this weekend while the kids are in Santa Fe for Emma's Bar Mitzvah (E's best friends) but they said it is below freezing every night. By just a stroke of luck, I was on the phone with one bed and breakfast guy after a million calls (most of them laughing politely that I thought I could find a place to stay jut 10 days before peak leaf season) and he said Hey Try Berry Patch Inn--she just had a cancellation. So I called and we got the room. They have three--we are in the Bear Room. I hope it's fun. Usually, I am so maxed from my work that I prefer to be with my sweetie alone but I am somewhat lonely so I think I might enjoy a host.
We rode our bikes both days. The bike paths here are incredible and my tread mill broke and Martina's parents are here so I don't have a walking partner. Hence, lots of time on the bike. Saturday, I had a day of lost things. This is one of my worst nightmares. I couldn't find the title to Camp. He is very unhappy with me because now that I have said it's time to get another car he has bad karma and little things are going wrong ie a flat tire and no jack in the car. Anyway, Cris and girls went to get a book or two and I looked. Who knows where it is. Then I couldn't find the receipt to pick up an order at Penny's so that errand is not done.
Anyway, we got dressed up and saw Twelve Angry Men at the Kennedy Center. George Wendt Norm from Cheers was Juror One and Jon Boy from the Waldons had a big role. It is 90 minutes straight through. It is great showing Democracy at it's best. We have also been watching Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. All of our congressmen should watch it. It also makes you proud that you are American and have this incredible life. We tried for ice cream after the theater piece but didn't have much luck and just ended up at 31 Flavors.
Sunday Cris took E to her jazz piano lesson (she really likes this man, finally but it is so hard to get there and it's on Sunday so don't know what we will do) and I went to see 9 Faces of Desire. It is written and performed by a 1/2 Iraqi and 1/2 Minnesotan woman and is a composite of 9 women in Iraq. It was quite wonderful as well. it certainly puts into perspective our challenges compared to theirs. It was very intense near the end and the end so maybe it would have been too much for the kids.
We had a nice easy dinner and watched Ugly Betty. We are just beginning to enjoy having the girls watch shows with us. Very nice.
Marilyn
Thursday afternoon Marilyn put the girls on the direct, non-stop United flight from Dulles to ABQ. This was Elizebeth’Äôs first trip without her parents, though Susie has traveled once all by herself. United allowed Marilyn to take the girls out the gate, including the ride on the ’Äúroom on wheels’Äù at Dulles that goes between the entrance terminal and the various terminal buildings where the gates are. Marilyn was trying to let the girls find their way themselves. Elizebeth couldn’Äôt read the gate number on the boarding pass, and started fretting they didn’Äôt know where to go as did Marilyn, but then Susie said, ’Äújust look at the monitors’Äù and they did and everything was fine and Marilyn was much less worried about the trip. They got to the gate really early (we are still scarred by the near miss in June at BWI) and soon the girls got Marilyn to leave them and let them enjoy the adventure themselves.
The plane took off on time, but the web site soon said it would be 11 minutes late (probably extra jet stream wind). It arrived about 15 minutes late and then it of course took the girls about 10 more minutes to get off the plane and out through security, all which our dear friend Paula turned into 40 minutes in her mind with concern. But they connected, and the girls have been having a fine weekend in Santa Fe. Paula threw a big dinner for Dad and Sean Friday night (with Natalie joining them for dessert), and Dad will take everyone (including MargEllie and Sean and Natalie) out to Adiamo’Äôs on Sunday. I hope Susie is taking lots of people pictures!
So meanwhile Marilyn and I have gone away for a romantic weekend. I wanted to get out of the city and into the mountains, so Marilyn tried to find us a B&B in the Blue Ridge Mountains or the Shenandoah Valley. When she started calling two weeks ago, everyone laughed at her --- this weekend, peak weekend for leaf viewing, has been booked by many people for two years! But after about 50 calls, just as Marilyn was about to give up and try the Days Inn, somebody said, ’Äúwe’Äôve been booked for two years, --- hey, but Michelle over at the Berry Patch Inn just talked to me, and she said she had a cancellation.’Äù So Mar called the Berry Patch, and by a miracle we got into the Brown Bear room for the weekend.
I did some work Friday morning, doing some necessary computer security stuff on my Lab laptop. Marilyn took me over to the ’ÄúHeritage Institute’Äù (it should be called the ’ÄúHairitage Institute’Äù) which is a haircutters school and you can get $8 haircuts from young girls in training, and I got a trim. A little scary, but turned out O.K. We made photocopies of stuff, downloaded the necessary forms and filled them out, and sent in all the paperwork to finally get our title to Camp (our Honda CRV). The Los Alamos Credit Union and their lousy service --- when we paid off the loan in 2004, they ’Äúforgot’Äù to send us the title! Hopefully the New Mexico Motor Vehicle Department will like the 3 forms and several other pieces of paper and send us the title, so we can shop for a new car and get a trade in. We got down our little list of chores, and suddenly realized it was already 3pm on a Friday and we weren’Äôt out of town, oh my!
So I-66 was of course horrible. Fortunately, we were together on our vacation, I had a lot to tell Marilyn about work and she wanted to listen, we had water, and the stop and go was bearable. The worst part was they were not enforcing the HOV 2 lanes going out. (For those of you who’Äôve never lived in a high density traffic area, HOV means ’Äúhigh occupancy vehicle’Äù which means only cars with that many people or more in the car may use that lane.) Wherever they were enforcing the HOV lane, it moved along, but in most areas they were letting regular traffic use it and everybody was slow. Eventually we got way out and the freeway got down to two lanes and people weren’Äôt commuting any more and we got up to speed. Out to I-81 at Front Royal (and a potty break at gasoline that was $2.0199 a gallon! And next door it was $1.9999!! All I can say, is thank god for gay Republican congressmen or maybe people would be back on Bush’Äôs side despite the god forsaken war. Sorry, can’Äôt resist the rant: I’Äôm reading a History of the Cold War, I’Äôve gotten to Vietnam, and it is depressing/scary/insane/awful to read the words said by Democratic leadership in favor of the Vietnamese war in 1967 and just replace ’ÄúJohnson’Äù with ’ÄúBush’Äù and ’ÄúVietnam’Äù with ’ÄúIraq’Äù. Remember Santayana: those who forget history are doomed to repeat it.) wow that parenthetical phrase got out of hand. Anyway, down I-81 to New Market, back east up over the New Market Gap of the Massanutton Mountains (that form the west boundary of the Shenandoah Valley while the Blue Ridge and the National Park are the east boundary) and voilˆÝ there we were at the Berry Patch Inn.
It was a side of the road gift shop restaurant at one time. Michelle and her husband bought it after it was empty for five years and have fixed it up very nicely. It is way out in nowhere on the side of the mountain (well, it is somewhere right on the main U.S. Highway 211, but it is 8 miles from the main little town of Luray) but it has perhaps the best view of any B&B in the area. We wanted to walk after three hours in the car --- Michelle sent us right back to a little road along the mountain ridge that then had a really nice half mile walk to an overlook which we did all by ourselves at twilight. We called the girls from up there (the cell phone tower was a long ways away, but we had a straight line to anything in 40 miles).
Then back to our room to unpack, and we did a picnic on our bed while watching ’ÄúPrime’Äù with Meryl Streep and Uma Thurman and some cute young man actor. Very honest, real, movie with a good love story --- good romantic movie to watch. Later, I finished ’ÄúMr. Smith Goes to Washington’Äù which Marilyn had done while exercising on the bike at home while she read her Lois McMaster Bujold book. We need to give a Bujold book to M’Äôie to read.
Saturday our breakfast was bagels and cereal, but at least with some nice local preserves and apple butter. We stopped at the Wal-Mart Supercenter in Luray and I bought Marilyn a Christmas present: her own digital camera and memory card. It was noon by then, so we stopped at The Artisan Grill for lunch, a good recommendation from Michelle with ’Äúnatural food’Äù (Marilyn had a Portobello mushroom and roasted red pepper sandwich, and I had a lovely very thinly sliced steak and blue cheese salad along with some buffalo meat chili.) In one of the many tourist brochures found around here I found a sort of map that seemed to have little roads in the valley, and we drove a little ways out of Luray, found a safe place to park, and took off on our bikes.
It was a great day. I estimate low 60’Äôs, not a cloud in the sky, a tiny wind to keep you cool when you sweated from the work, but not enough to slow you down in any direction. There were hills (and we embarrassingly had to walk our bikes up a couple of them), but you make such great time going down you don’Äôt mind crawling up in low gear. We did a big loop, stopping and taking pictures, and the roads I picked were very little traveled. Until we got to 616, which seemed to be quite busy and was kinda scary to ride with cars zooming past us and no shoulder. We took a nice break and sat on a rock wall and talked, which is the one thing you can do better when you are walking. I made a good guess about a road that wasn’Äôt on the map (639) to get us off 616 (rule of thumb --- roads in the Shenandoah Valley with a stripe down the middle are bad for biking) and we managed to cut back to the car with only a tiny amount of riding on the even scarier US Highway 340. Our butts were sore, but my feet were not which was great.
As I write this, there are now 9 ladybugs around our room light. Apparently the government bombs the National Park forest with ladybugs to eat and kill the caterpillar moths, and right now there are shall we say a lot of ladybugs around. But they don’Äôt bother us even though the room has several in it.
We drove back to the Inn, went potty, went back up to the overlook this time with camera and sunlight and took pictures. This time it was not deserted, it had at least 25 people milling around it. Then we drove to Dan’Äôs Steak House which was only a quarter mile past our Inn but very popular on a Saturday night. We took a chance on a corner booth in smoking and lucked out, no one was smoking, and had a good meal ( famous Virginian ham for Mar, ribeye for me) and great Amberbock beer. Then home and watched another romantic comedy ’ÄúOnly You’Äù from the library at the Inn. Marilyn finished her book, and we got a good night’Äôs sleep.
Today we got up for breakfast (the Berry Patch will not be famous for its food, but the view is great) and were out by 9:30 so Michelle and her husband could go to church by 10. We drove back along Skyline Drive of Shenandoah National Park. It was a tiny misty, overcast, cool and even cold --- we were very glad we were not trying to bike today. But the palette of leaves was just perfect. As we drove north out of the Park, the traffic jam of Sunday drivers from D.C. to come see the leaves was beginning the other way and we were glad we were getting home early.
We stopped for lunch at a vegetarian Indian place we’Äôve found for a cheap very tasty buffet --- lots of families with three plus generations eating together! And then home to watch the Eagles on TV (loosing by a last second field goal ’Äì boo hoo) and do some chores.
This is why you have to run away from your home. There is just so much to do here. We should feel good that we accomplished a lot of stuff and now we can vegged a bit before we head into another week. I will pick the kids up at 3:30 tomorrow. I hope they are not too exhausted and hope they can finish their homework. E's audition for Cinderella is Tuesday after school so send good thoughts. A vacation also allows you to talk a lot about your family and friends. You were all in our thoughts and we send you our love (Marilyn)
---Cris
Elizebeth and Susie flew to Santa Fe for the weekend, staying with their best friend Selina (with whom they shopped for Halloween eyeware) and E going to her best friend Emma Raker's bar mitzvah.
We had a nice Halloween. Cris was in Philadelphia for the APS/DPP
meeting, but when he got back we threw a party for Elizebeth and her
12 closest friends from school.