Category: cville

Snow on the Mountains.

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 While the Eastern Seaboard was pounded and the nearby mountains got snow, we were spared the worst of the great storm Sandy.  Nevertheless, everything around here pretty much closed down as we had no idea what to expect.
 We hunkered down and enjoyed the quiet time with just the three us at home, nowhere to go, nothing to do.  It was much needed.  Our days tend to be pretty packed, some days I feel like all I do is go from this activity to that activity to another with some cooking thrown in the middle.  It felt so good to get a break from that.

We have been spared the worst brunt of the storm, but we have seen clouds from this system for almost a week.  The clouds in these shots, taken yesterday as I headed west of town, are still lingering from Sandy.  This morning there were still some clouds out there, but I also got a glimpse of that elusive thing called the sun peeking through as well.

 

It never fails to amaze me at how different the weather can be between two areas so relatively close, how we are 20 minutes from snow – you can see it from town on the surrounding mountains, and we’ve yet to have that first good hard freeze.  Nature is quite amazing and never fails to let us know we’re really not the ones in charge. 

Once in a Lifetime.

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So while most of my weekend was spent doing boring house chores like cleaning both bathrooms in a single day, I did have one interesting event of note.
I worked a catering job Friday night with a friend’s catering business.  It was a dinner thanking the supporters of the University of Virginia Marching Band, in their rehearsal hall. I drive past that building quite a bit, as I cut through Culbreth regularly, so it was neat to see the inside.  I hadn’t been wowed by it before, but having been in it, I can say that I am now.  Clean lines, warm finishes and lots of big windows with a great view of Lambeth Field behind it. 
While we were setting up Friday afternoon, we got to listen to the entertainment for the evening do a little warm up and sound check, running through the majority of their show for later on.  While they weren’t in costume for this performance, I think it was the better one of the two I saw.
Although their costumes definitely added something to the later performance.
That, dear friends, are The Temptations.  I took the photo on a friend’s phone.  They were dressed all in pink, right down to their shoes.  Warming up, they started their rehearsal with a few acapella gospel numbers before moving on to all their hits, including my favorite “Papa was a Rolling Stone”. Tell me you don’t find yourself moving to that beat. And “Ball of Confusion”, another favorite of theirs, although I was in my thirties before I discovered that they did the first version.  I always thought it was a  Love and Rockets original. I am an Eighties New Wave child through and through. 
Definitely a once in a lifetime experience, watching them warm up in a room of less than 20 people, although seeing them in a room with less than 150 folks later in the evening was a once in a lifetime experience as well. Pretty hard to top that, so yeah, other than seeing The Temptations, the highlight of my weekend was cleaning both bathrooms.  What an exciting life I lead.

Mom Hooky.

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The Fourth Grade had a field trip to DC yesterday.
 
Over our knitting a few weeks back, my friend Bonnie & I decided we wanted to go along.  Where exactly in DC they were going we weren’t sure, but there was a security clearance involved and as there is a classmate who’s family has a few connections in the area, we thought it might be a fun field trip to chaperone.  Also, there was no call for parent chaperones, which intrigued us. 
We are those moms. 
Bonnie is the mom friend who calls me to ask about the upcoming holiday party in our kids’ classroom and when I say I think the teacher has it under control, by the end of the call, Bonnie makes me realize that we should offer to help, we should just put it together ourselves and besides, I’m good at that.  This is what I do.  Which really is true you know.
So, our kids were going on a potential kick-ass field trip without us?  No way, we were so going along. 
There may have been wine involved when this conversation took place.
There was a point Tuesday, the day before,  in which I thought this wasn’t actually going to happen.  Bonnie threw her back out again and wasn’t sure she could do it.  I have a million different things going on and really didn’t have a day to devote to a road trip.  But, Tuesday late afternoon, we decided we were game. 
The kids were leaving at 6:15, A.M. On the schedule given us, there was a scheduled White House tour (hence the security clearance) at 11 that parents weren’t invited on (because we didn’t have it), but, if we wanted to meet up for lunch and then do the Monuments on the Mall with the kids, we were welcome. Also, there wasn’t room on the bus for any parents, we were going to have to drive ourselves, but that was my plan anyway.  I never ride the bus on field trips.  I love that time in the car for myself and I’ve learned that roadtripping on these things with a mom friend is a darn good time.   So, Bonnie & I decided we’d meet the kids for lunch and the afternoon, leaving a few hours after the bus.
We were exchanging text messages with staff members on the bus via Bonnie’s phone, keeping up with where they were.  There was a schedule change and their White House tour got bumped, so they were going to lunch early, they’d meet up with us after their tour.  Which was great,  because it’d give us time to find a parking space and fart around on our own.
I have never, ever driven in Washington, D.C. and not gotten lost and circled the monuments in an seemingly endless loop.  I also have a problem with always ending up at the Pentagon. (I think it might be the magnetic north of my internal compass.) It doesn’t matter where I set out to go, I end up at the Pentagon and circling the monuments. Always.
Our plan?  Drive past the Pentagon, head straight to the monuments and find a parking space.
A free one, on the street.
Bonnie came prepared with a map.
A real DC street map.
We found a parking space, a three hour parking space, on Constitution Ave, NW, which was exactly the time frame we needed, on the street.  Free.
Across the street on the driver’s side was the Washington Monument.

And directly across from that was the The Ellipse, the Presidental Park and the White House itself.
We ended up with time to kill, so we sat in the park.  We had no where to be, nothing to do and so we just sat.  And chatted.  And people watched. 
There was a group of men playing a soccer game that we watched, older men schooling some middle aged ones, with some fancy footwork.  There were some good tourists to be seen as well, but somehow the soccer was the entertainment. 
I really hate that I’m a soccer mom.  But I am.
We knew the kids were touring the White House and it seemed to be going long.  As we sat in the park, we watched men appear on the roof of the WH and walk around, surveying the scene.  All but one were in dark suits, one was in a white shirt.  We saw black SUV’s pulling up in front of the entrance, we saw people moving around.  We kept thinking we saw our kids, so eventually we left our bench and walked across the park.
Right after we took this picture, security came down and started clearing everyone on that side of the park.  Clearly, someone was either coming or going from the WH and the fact that our kids were inside was really sort of exciting.

So we sort of dawdled on our way back from the front line.  When the very handsome and nice gentleman on the bike there came up to us, I told him our kids where in there and that’s why we were taking our time moving on and for a second, I could tell, he was considering following up to see where they were for us. 
Eventually, they finished their tour and we met them up at the Lincoln Memorial.  There were protesters at the WH that morning, and that’s what got their tour bumped to a later time.

They were given matching hats to wear on the field trip.  I had no doubt that when we caught up with the kids, mine would not be wearing hers because well, it’s my kid.  If everyone else is doing it, she’s not going to do it. 
She did not disappoint.
I assured her it was way better than the neon t-shirts we’d seen other groups in.  When she saw them, she agreed.
See what I mean about the neon t-shirts?
The Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool is currently under construction, hence the concrete instead of water in the pond.
While we standing at the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial we saw a WH helicopter fly overhead.
That’s Edie and her classmate Shaniah, a little girl I’ve gotten to know this year on my weekly volunteer gig in their classroom at the MLK Monument.  As I looked through my photos, trying to choose one to post, I realized that two little girls of different skin colors standing together at the feet of a man who devoted his life to making that happen, well, that was it.
On the drive home, we stopped for slurpees.   
We’d have gotten Corn Nuts, but they had no BBQ and everyone knows, you only eat the BBQ Corn Nuts.
We felt like we had played hooky yesterday and we loved it.  The highlight of the day was definitely sitting in the park, people watching, with absolutely no where to be, no one to keep up with, just sitting somewhere that was out of our usual path. 
And for the first time ever, I didn’t circle the monuments.  I didn’t get lost.  Heading straight for the Pentagon is the way to go.  As is bringing Bonnie along.

Life in Wine Country.

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One of my favorite things about living here in Charlottesville is the local wine industry.  Virginia is one of the top wine producers in the country, far behind California, but it’s still roughly a  $750 million industry.  Not too shabby.  The nearby Monticello Wine Trail accounts of over half the state’s total acres planted in vines and is the largest AVA in the state.  There are 29 wineries listed on their website.  I’ve read you can do the entire trail in a weekend, but I don’t see how that’s possible.  You might be able to visit all of them, but no way can you possibly enjoy all of them squeezed into a few days.

Over the last week, I’ve had a number of invites to go visit some of these wineries with various girlfriends.  I’m declaring it the new mommy playdate trend.  We must all be getting nervous about the hiatus in the big yellow angel coming by in the morning, whisking the children away to a better place for the day.  Clearly the best way to prep yourself for that is to head out to some of the local wineries for the afternoon.  Visiting a number of them in such a short time period allows one to appreciate how different each winery along the trail is. 
Kate invited me to come along on a visit to  Glass House Winery one day last week.  We grabbed some sandwiches on the way out at the Hunt Country Store and made a picnic out of it.
Glass House is by far the most eclectic winery I’ve visited.  It’s contemporary architecture, with a large glass conservatory that I imagine would be a wonderful place to visit when the grey days of winter start getting to be a bit too much.  Planted in front of the building are a number of tropical looking plants as well as some interesting metal sculptures, some of which are depicted on the labels of their wine.

The retaining wall in the parking lot included glass tile mosaics.  Everywhere you looked, there was a treat for the eye, whether it be the natural landscape or the uniqueness of the man made structures.
We didn’t spend time in the conservatory, I just stepped in for a few quick shots.  It was way too nice of a day outside for me to be inside, even if it was a tropical paradise.

I think this was my favorite detail in the whole building.  The entire hall to the restrooms and beyond was made to look like a large wine barrel.  The winery hosts regular music events in the glass house.  It has a funky, fun vibe that I haven’t seen in any other winery in the area.  The tasting room is full of natural light that showcases the beautiful scenery surrounding the winery.
All their bottles use a glass cork, which is a closure I had not seen before.  It’s an elegant alternative to screwcaps and plastic corks.

We tasted three white wines, a Pinot Gris, a Viognier, the Vito Signora (made from Traminette grapes), a rose, a red, “The Twenty First” (named in honor of the 21st amendment which repealed prohibition) and their signature dessert wine, the Meglio del Sesso.  It’s made of Norton, Chambourcin, Cab Franc grapes and real chocolate.  After the wine is filtered, the cocoa is then used to create the winery’s hand made line of chocolates.  When you taste the dessert wine, you are given a bite of chocolate to go with it.   I can only use one word in describing what that was like – YUM.   I may need a few bottles of the Meglio del Sesso to go with my next chocolate cake. 
As for the other wines, the red wine I tasted, “The Twenty First” is the one that stood out the most. It’s a blend of Cab Franc, Cab Sauv and Merlot that had a nice depth.  It’s the type of wine that while highly drinkable now, could be aged for a few years and then I think it would be even more spectacular.  The rose was made of cab franc grapes and was my choice to sip on while we  sat on the patio overlooking the pond, with the vines and mountains in the background.  It was a beautiful day in which I thoroughly enjoyed getting to know some new ladies.  Thanks Kate, Jane & Val for having me along!
A few days later, my friend Kelly and I went out to celebrate her latest degree, a milestone on her path to her next two (another BS and an MS).  Toasting her accomplishment with a glass of wine became a ‘let’s go visit some wineries’.  We headed out to Barboursville Winery. It is one of the best known and most respected wineries in the area.  They can boast they make the house wine for The Inn at Little Washington, that little 5 star restaurant you may have heard of that’s widely considered to be one of the best restaurants in the world.  Barboursville has one countless awards over the years and for good reason. 

It was the first Virginia winery since Thomas Jefferson’s failed attempts to plant Vitis Vinifera, a species of grapes native to the Mediterranean and other parts of Europe and Asia. 

Of the twenty three varieties they offer for sale, we were offered tastes of twenty two of them, including ones listed that generally aren’t available for tasting.  My perennial favorite Barboursville Wine is their Brut, a sparkling wine.  Other standouts were their Sauvingnon Blanc, with crisp citrus notes that I’m a complete sucker for.  Their Riesling is also delightful, more dry than sweet, just the way I like them.
As for their reds, I liked the Sangiovese, an Italian grape that is traditionally the backbone of Chianti.  Although it was listed on the tasting sheet that the Petit Verdot Reserve was not being poured, we lucked out and managed to get a taste.  I’m glad we did, as it was hands down, my favorite of their reds. 
Other wines that stood out were the Cabernet Blanc, a blush wine that was a little sweeter than I like my roses, but light enough that it would be a bottle for a nice afternoon with friends.  The Malvaxia Reserve stood out as well – it’s rich, luscious and while it’s listed as a dessert wine, I could easily see pairing it with a nice cheese plate.
No visit to Barboursville is complete without checking out the Ruins.  I shot some pretty cool black and white photos of it as well.
Just down the road from Barboursville Vineyards is Horton Vineyards. With over forty wines in production, their tasting sheet was two pages.

At Horton, we were told up to twelve tastings are free, so we kept our tasting to that number.  You don’t get a souvenir glass, but as I’m running out of room for them in my closet, I chose to just snap a quick shot of them.  Take a picture it lasts longer is definitely true when it comes to me and wine glasses.
Although now that I look at them again, I may need to go back for some.  They were commemorative for the 150th anniversary of the Civil War.  Horton is in Orange County, not too far from some of the historic battlefields of the Civil War, the closest being Wilderness Battlefield.
Horton is the winery that first experimented with Viognier here in Virginia, a grape that has taken well to growing in Virginia, so well that it was named the official grape of the state in 2011.  Of all the viogniers I tasted at all of the wineries, Horton’s hands down is the best.  Not too sweet, not too dry, it’s a wonderful wine that pairs beautifully with food. Horton’s Late Harvest Viognier dessert wine is also worth mentioning.  It’s rich without being overly sweet.  Horton was also the first winery in Virginia to make Norton, a varietal that is a native Virginia grape.  I am quite fond of Norton, it’s fruity without alot of tannin and Horton makes a good one.  The Cab Franc, another grape that does well in Virginia as well as the Nebbiolo, a native Italian grape, were the other two red standouts. 
Three different wineries, three very different experiences.  While the tastings at both Glass House & Barboursville were the same price and came with a souvenir glass, I got far more wine for my money at Barboursville.  The most personable, knowledgeable pourer was at Barboursville – he was far better skilled at juggling the different parties along the bar than any of the other pourers I came across.  Glass House is a boutique winery while Barboursville and Horton are producers on a much larger scale.  Horton appears to experiment far more than any other winery, with several fruit wines on their list.  Curious as to how they would taste, I chose the Peach, which is blended with a small amount of viognier.  It wasn’t overly sweet, but it didn’t taste like peaches either.  I might try another one or two of their fruit wines in the future, just to see how they taste.  The pourers at Horton didn’t offer much information as far as the wines or the winery were concerned.  I realized how important the personality of the pourer is in experiencing a winery.  Wine tasting should be fun.  You can tell when a pourer has a pat speech they offer with each pour and you can tell when your pourer has a knowledge, not just of the wine they are pouring, but of the process involved in getting that wine to your glass.  
There are exactly 17 days of school left.  I really want to hit up Trump before the big yellow angel stops coming.  Blenheim is literally just up the road, so we have the makings of a good mommy playdate field trip.  Who’s in?

Best Of Cville

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C-ville, a local weekly paper, is currently accepting nominations for their “Best Of” contest.  There is a local blog category.  Voting closes in a week, but let’s see if I can’t make it to the next round.   If this blog makes it to the next level, we will have a party to replace the May Margarita bash we didn’t have this year.  I know that’s incentive for a good number of folks.  So please, go vote for me, now.  And when I make it to the next round, we’ll throw down.
Thanks.

Scenes from the week.

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 It’s been a busy week around here.  Here’s some of the highlights.
Playing around with the settings on my camera, I finally figured out the b&w one.  
The Planting Seeds Festival

held at the Buford Garden, had a fantastic turnout and was a success

despite the fact that Mother Nature didn’t fully cooperate.

The whole shebang was moved into the cafeteria at Buford when the skies opened up and the children took over the face painting stand. 
Face painting became full body painting.
Apparently this is what a gang of girls will do when left with a stand full of face paint.
When the headliner, Dar Williams, took the stage
there was dancing and sing-a-longs.  A good time was had by all.

Anniversary dinner of shrimp and grits.

This bug paced the top of my monitor literally all day Wednesday, back and forth, for hours. 
Please ignore the dust.  He did.
My Mother’s Day gift to myself.
A variegated leaf geranium. 
There’s practically a rainbow on every leaf!
My winning streak lately has not been limited to just new fly rods. 
I won a seed giveaway thanks to the Eco Women.
That’s a cosmos popping up from seed.
I also won some apron patterns from Lesa , but I’ve used my rainy days to clean around here, instead of sewing, despite what that picture of the top of my monitor tells you.  Sewing when your hands are covered in poison ivy is not ideal anyway. Neither is cleaning really.
While I was at the nursery, I spied a tag for Becky Mix. 
Of course it came home with me.  They are now planted in the back yard.

Near my new patchouli plant.
Who knew it was a plant?
It has a much softer scent than what you  remember.  There’s no second note of uhm, well, you know.
I was listening to the Dead as I ran errands that day and as I’d already bought and planted my scarlet begonias for the year, I thought why not?

One of the roots of that pesky muscadine vine I’ve been digging up from all over the back yard. 
It’s huge.  I need to take an ax to it.  It’s the size of my foot, maybe bigger and
I wear women’s size 10 shoes.   
I may have underestimated it’s ability to not die.  It’s the energizer bunny of invasive plants.
I threw the hibiscus in a spot of dirt a few weeks ago and despite the neglect, it’s thriving.
I guess it’s earned a weeding and mulching session, hasn’t it?
Just as soon as I dust off that computer monitor and finish hacking away at that muscadine root.
I finally found myself some new canvas gardening gloves so I am going to try to stop ripping roots out of the ground with my bare hands.  Wish me luck.

Currently…

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I finally finished getting the garden in this weekend, although I still have some raspberry bushes in a bucket (Pat & I are debating their placement) and the landscaping plan in the backyard has changed somewhat (Pat wants to add a pond or some sort of water feature.  I think he’s realized I need a new digging project.) and weeding is never-ending.  All this rain the last week or so has brought back weeds I thought I’d dug up already.  I just walk around with a shovel in my hand these days, attacking weeds and vines.  Which is how I got poison on my hands again.  I hate when I get it on the palms, really makes it hard to do stuff.  One of these days I’ll learn to wear gloves, but that won’t happen until I find gloves that fit just right.  I have been looking and tried some on the other day when I was picking up netting for the blueberry bushes, but the ones I really liked they didn’t have in my size.  All I ever seem to find these days are the type of gloves with the rubber on the fingers and palms – I don’t like these gloves at all, what happened to the good old fashioned canvas ones and why are they so hard to find?

The Planting Seeds Music Festival is tomorrow at Buford.  It’s a music festival celebrating all the Charlottesville elementary schools gardens.  I’m the food chair for the whole shebang, so today I’m wrapping up loose ends, dotting my i’s and crossing my t’s.  I got the rough draft for the flyer for the class picnic out today too.  I’ve put Edie’s class picnic together since kindergarten.  It’s really quite easy – I can pretty much tell you who’s going to bring what, who’s going to help and who’s going to call me the morning of in a panic. When you do the same thing 5 years in a row, you learn these things.  There’s also prep for the upcoming swap going on.  I’m really excited about some of the responses and what people are bringing. 

Last weekend’s bug seems to have faded into just another huge allergy flare-up.  I woke up feeling crummy yesterday, with that lovely racking allergy cough I get that just hurts.  I don’t like the stuff the doctor gives me for the cough – honestly, I can’t take anything stronger than a tylenol without some horrible reaction.  But, at least Pat was home so that I could lounge all I wanted to.  Also, it was Mother’s Day, so I had full cart blanche to lounge.  I got myself caught up on the NYTimes Book Review section. I had like 3 months worth of Sunday’s piled up.  It was heavenly.  We went to Mono Loco for dinner, where I realized the tequila in my margarita made the cough stop, at least for a while.  I think I’m going to need more medicinal tequila.

We officially have the fattest squirrel you have ever seen in our yard.  I’m going to see if I can’t get a picture to show you.  Seriously, it’s huge.  When Pat got a good look at it on the back porch today, he wondered if maybe it wasn’t a small groundhog with a bushy tail.  It is that fat.

We are hosting one of Pat’s coworkers this evening.  I had totally forgotten about it.  Honestly, since I came home from the gym this morning (which totally kicked my butt.  I definitely was aiming too high after taking most of the last week off with the ick), I have been lounging in my bathrobe coughing and answering emails about the festival.  I have exactly two hours to get the first floor of this house in presentable condition.   I want to make a better impression than I did the  last time we hosted his coworkers.  At least I have no where to go but up, right?  

New Swap Date Set!

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Mark your calendars gang.   Cville Swaps is back and we are planning our next event on Sunday, June 3.
RSVP to cvilleswaps@gmail.com for details.  You can swap your homemade goodies like jams and pickles and granolas and soaps, as well as fresh homegrown items from your garden.  You can swap some of those plants you need to thin from your garden, you can swap eggs from your chickens.  Think homegrown, homemade.  Hope to see you there!

Chickpeas two ways, gardens and more.

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It started with this recipe.  Mock tuna salad made with chickpeas?
Had to try it.  You should try it.  It’s good.  I was surprised at how much the flavor resembled tuna salad.  Texture not so much, but flavor, yes.  I made it the way I make my tuna, right down to chopped pickles.  In this case, pickled okra. So good.  You should try that in your next whatever salad you make.  I am definitely thinking of trying my lemon basil green bean pickles in my next batch.
Up next was something that caught my eye over at E.A.T. (Which incidently is fast becoming one of my favorite food blogs, I’ve gotten a few great ideas from there recently and since it’s a Richmond blog, that’s practically local!)  I digress…
Spicy Carrot Sandwich– That had my carrot loving girl’s name all over it. Only, as I was making the hummus to go with, I added too much liquid. Necessity being the mother of invention as they say, I had to get creative with the sandwich idea, as my hummus was just a little too thin to stay on a sandwich.
I borrowed a trick from the first chickpea recipe and made the spicy carrot sandwich in rice papers.  I added sprouts and romaine and we feasted.
They liked it.
And no one complained we had chickpeas for dinner two nights in one week. 
That’s pretty huge. 
Especially when you consider it was chickpeas in rice paper wrappers, twice.
I represented Edie’s school at a meeting of the city elementary schools with the schoolyard garden folks at Buford Middle School yesterday afternoon.  It seems all the elementary schools here in Charlottesville City are in different stages of starting up gardens.  There was a group of students from the University of Virginia who are involved in different aspects of some of these schoolyard gardens, including a group that is helping to develop curriculum that ties what the kids are doing outside into things like S.O.L.’s, Virginia’s standardized tests.  Some of them are headed to California this summer, to see Alice Water’s Edible Schoolyard and gleam some ideas from there. There is going to be a celebration/fundraiser for the city elementary gardens in May – I may have volunteered to help with that.  I also asked about a garden at Walker Upper Elementary.  With every elementary school now developing a garden as part of the curriculum, as well as Buford’s garden, there is a two year gap for the kids in 5th and 6th grade at Walker.  I was told there is a plan for that and so I may have offered to help with that as well, since I will be a parent there next year.  Yes, I may have a problem with volunteering for too many things, but this is something I believe in so much – teaching kids about food, how to grow it, to think about where it comes from….it’s so exciting to be a part of and make change happen.  This is one of the big ways I truly think we are going to change our food system.
Speaking of schools and food, you might want to check out this month’s Chew on This potluck. It’s my friend Ivana‘s latest initiative, to get us talking about food issues.  This month is a conversation on her recent visit to the DC Central Kitchen and is it possible to bring something like that here.  Sadly, Wednesdays are my jam-packed days with things like Girl Scouts and piano lessons and I won’t be able to make it. But you should go, definitely.
And on a completely unrelated note, Pat superglued my glasses yesterday, so they are a little more stable than just the duct tape fix.  I do love that man of mine.

Being Me.

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My rhinestone dollar store readers, the ones Edie calls my rock star glasses, had one of the arms snap in half as I was taking them off the other night. 
So I borrowed some of Edie’s tye dye duct tape and taped them back together for the time being.
I am that cheap.
I also didn’t have time to run out and by a new pair that day.
My family is of course, slightly horrified and bothered by the new look. I’m pretty sure they won’t let this last, although we do laugh about it.
Thursday night we met up with some of Pat’s co-workers and other guests (supporters of their organization) at Miller’s before a lecture at the Paramount.  It was my first time meeting some of them.  There was beer, nachos, wings…. 
I grabbed a wing, dipped it in blue cheese, took a bite and realized I had just dripped a huge amount of dressing on myself.  You know how when you try to wipe something off with a paper napkin and it just deteriorates and makes everything worse?  Yeah, that’s what happened here.  Smack dab in the middle of my chest.  Of course I was wearing black.  I spent the rest of the evening trying to politely cover it  – having a drink in my hand worked best. And while I did have a jacket with me, because of the prominent location on myself and the fact that the jacket has no buttons, well, that was no help at all.  Plus it was too warm for a jacket.
I did however, exercise restraint around the nachos. 
After the lecture, Pat’s coworkers, who work at the Richmond office, stopped by as his boss had to pick up the projector for a presentation the next morning and decided to stay to watch the end of VCU game.  I’m pretty open about my lax cleaning skills and my house was definitely not in a presentation for strangers state, especially a group of people I had just met with a glob of blue cheese and paper towel remnants in the middle of my chest.  We were about 2 minutes ahead of them and it’s really amazing how much you can pick up in 2 minutes flat when you know you need to.  It wasn’t until everyone had left however, that I noticed that the downstairs bathroom had absolutely NO linens in it – I had taken up the bath mats and all the towels in there to wash them and hadn’t put any back in.  Sigh.
No towels are better than dirty ones, right?
The lecture was Richard Louv, who wrote “Last Child In The Woods”.  It is hard for me to answer what I thought of his talk – his book, “Last Child” was about connecting kids with nature, although he has a new one out that follows up on idea of Nature Deficit Disorder.  My husband was an environmental educator for 17 years, until he switched jobs last spring, becoming a Riverkeeper, so the idea of connecting kids with nature? That’s our lifestyle.
When I’m not wearing blue cheese and duct taped dollar store readers.  It’s just how we roll.