VA Wrap Up

I don't have a ton more to say about the VA trip.  We went to the fireworks in Cape Charles, VA on the 4th, spent a few hours in VA Beach the next day, and during the last full day in VA, we checked out Cape Charles and I also went to the beach (no splinters!) one last time.  So here's a brief list of a few memorable moments from the last half of the trip:

-Birthday dinner to celebrate Grammy's 80th birthday
-Playing Scrabble with my cousins and grandmother (lots of laughs!)
-My cousins trying to make up new words so they could get more points in Scrabble
-Peace and quiet on the beach
-Tons of mini crabs on the beach (just once, but it was quite a sight to see)
-The ginormous flounder sandwich at Stingrays Restaurant
-Watching the guys drive here, there, and everywhere to get Yuenglung (sp?) beer
-Lots of time to read
-Power outage
-The alarm system (you had to be there, but she--it had a female voice, was quite funny by the end of the trip)
-Koozies! 
-Beautiful sunsets
-Cribbage (and rummy)
-Trying to be British
-Silly beach ball games with the kids
-Vanilla milkshakes

A $2000 Storage Unit and An $11 Necklace

Day 4 in VA, the whole crew except for Grammy went to Chincoteague Island.  It was a cute place.  We went for a walk, saw a lighthouse, played minigolf (in 100 degree weather, b/c I'm smart like that), shopped, saw ponies, etc.  My 11-year-old cousin rode out with my fiance (at the risk of sounding like an idiot, did I spell fiane correctly, I know it's supposed to have that little accent mark above the e that I can't seem to do, but is it 1 e or 2 e's?) and me.  They both like that show, I believe it's called, Storage Wars.  Every time went by a storage place, my cousin suggested that my fiance should go get $2000 (not sure how he came up with this amount) and they should go buy a storage unit and try to be on Storage Wars.  Then he said he should get $4000 instead. I tried to point out to my cousin that my fiance didn't have an extra $2000-$4000 lying around and that we should be saving $ for our wedding.  He just didn't get why I would rather spend $ on a wedding than on a storage unit lol.  Later in the week, I went downtown with my uncle, my fiance, and two of my cousins.  My six-year-old cousin asked me if I had $11.  I told him I wasn't sure and asked why.  He said he wanted to buy a necklace.  I said, "Oh, am I buying it for you?  Is that why you need to know about the $11? " His clever response, "No,  you can just give me $11 and I can buy it."   Needless to say, we had a few laughs that week.

The Ocean, Hamburgers, and Cars

If you know me well, you're probably thinking, okay all the three things listed in the title, I know Cat likes one of them, but what's the deal with the burgers and cars? 
My first full day in VA Mike and, I visited our friend Matt and his girlfiend.  We spent a few hours at the beach and then went out to dinner.  At dinner, I tried funnel cake fries (first time ever having any form of funnel cake) and it was quite good especially with strawberry sauce.  Vacation tends to be one of the few spots where I try new foods.  In Belize a few years ago, I tried a new food every day (perhaps that can be a future blog when I'm having blogger's block--the equivalent of writer's block, but involving the blog).  A few other random things of note from that day:  strawberry lemonade (the kind you have to be 21 to drink) is surprisingly good and a nice summer treat.  Avocado is good on a sandwich.  VA ocean water is much warmer than the ocean around here.  It's quite odd really to step into the ocean and not be cold.  Four pound hamburgers exist.  I would never eat one, but at this restaurant we went to, if you were brave enough to try and more importantly successful enough to actually eat a four pound burger and chili cheese fries you got your picture and name posted, a gift card, and I forget what else.  Matt actually contemplated doing this, but passed.  Finally, what is the deal with boys and cars?  I just don't get it, probably in the same way they don't get girls and shoes or girls and purses, but all the car talk that boys did on Sunday, I just didn't get it.  I mean I guess I'll agree that it is cool that you can just tell your car to call someone and it does, but the whole big tires, lower or don't lower your car, put stripes on your car or not, extra speakers or not, etc, etc, I just don't get it.  As long as my car gets me safely from point A to point B, I'm happy.  Of couse, had I not had so many car problems in life, maybe I'd be interested in making my car cool, but in the mean time I'll stick with shoes and purses.  :) 

A Splinter and Some Chicken Parm

The third day in VA (or the second full day) started off well enough.  I did plenty of relaxing, reading, hanging out, played some Cribbage and Scrabble (I think I played those days anyway, they are starting to run together now) and made a trip to the grocery store.  It was my turn to cook dinner that night so I was in search of stuff for dinner, but I confess I also splurged and bought a 4th of July cookie cake.  SO GOOD!  It didn't last long (no, I did NOT eat all of it, I shared with everyone).  I think that is my new favorite dessert.  Anyway, after some shopping and some lunch, it was off to the beach, down those lovely 72 steep stairs.  The beach was fun, but the fun was slightly overshadowed by splinters, yes, splinters.  Let's just say the railing on the way to the beach "needs work" as both my cousin and I got splinters on it that day (my other cousin and my grandmother were "treated" to splinters from that same railing that week too).  He only got one, I managed to get four.  Mind you I have no tolerance for pain and I'm not a fan of needles so this splinter removal, though not as painful as I'd imagined was no piece of (cookie) cake.  So low and behold, I get back to the house and go see my uncle who is currently trying to assist my cousin in splinter in removal and tell him I need help.  I won't bore you to death, but let's just say it took nearly an hour, a lot of forced patience, a safety pin, some tweezers, and a bit of nausea before we got the splinters out.  And the next day I found I hadn't gotten them all.  Grr  Thank goodness my aunt brought her first aid kid because mine did not have tweezers.  Since I did not have gloves (because who wears gloves to the beach in JULY), I literally wore plastic bags on my hand the next time I went down those stairs to the beach because I could not deal with splinter removal again.  Yep, I'm a freak.  But as one of my dear friends reminded me the other night, at least it wasn't a fish hook.  On to other notes, dinner was good that night if I may say so myself.  I made chicken parm and served it with salad, pasta, and garlic bread.  For dessert I made chocolate chip peanut butter pie.  I have made this pie a couple of times before and it is good, but this time was unique because the beach house had NO measuring cups or measuring spoons so I had to estimate.  I was a bit nervous, but everything seemed to come out tasty even if the measurements weren't exact. My mother felt the need to take a picture of me cooking so it's included here.   

The Ride To and From VA

I recently spent a week in Virginia at a beach house with my fiance, my parents, my aunt, her bf, my uncle, his gf, my three cousins, and my grandmother (in other words most of my extended family aside from my brother).  We were there for vacation and to celebrate my grandmother's 80th birthday. I won't bore you with the play by play of every day, but here are a few thoughts from the first day and last day, which mainly involved sitting in a car for 10+ hours...
-If you are the navigator, you should really pay attention to the GPS
-Is there always traffic in New Jersey or is it just the times I go through it?
-If you want to test your patience (or someone else's) spend 10+ hours with them in a car.
-For a small state, Deleware takes a long time to get through (traffic!). 
-There are a lot of corn fields on the way to Virginia. 
-Auntie Anne's pretzels are an amazing treat when you've been in a car for HOURS.

My Four (or 5, 6, or 7) Moms

In case the title has you going, what the heck, let me set the record straight by saying technically I have one wonderful mother.  Sure we drive each other crazy at times, but she's a good mom and we're fairly close.  I could do without some of her letter-boxing and she could do without some of my complaning, but no one's perfect...Anyway, I just had to get that out there so you don't think the reason I have 4 or 5, 6, or 7 moms is because there's something wrong with my mom, there's not.  So anyway, biological wonderful mom is mom number one.  But I also have my work moms (or my former work moms since they had to go and retire on me).  For several years, I worked with two wonderful women who were old enough to be my mother.  In fact, one of them even graduated from high school with my father (small world!).  So I used to joke that they were my work moms and they joked that I was their work daughter.  I even went so far as getting a Mother's Day card for them once.  They constantly looked out for me, worried about me, listened to me talk about work problems, family problems, relationship problems, and house-hunting problems as well as shared my joy when I found a house, got engaged, and various other happy moments.  Since they've retired I don't see them as much as I used to, but we try to get together every few months to hang out and catch up.  And of course we e-mail.  Recently, I acquired a new mother.  Earlier in the week, I went out to breakfast and then shopping with some other former co-workers.  For several years the three of us worked together every July.  The program where we worked has since gone out of business due to lack of funds, but the three of us still get together and have a good time.  However, there is as bit of an age difference between us.  Since, I'm not sure they want their ages and names posted all over a blog, I'll just refer to them as S and K.  I am the youngest, K is 12 years older than me and S is 10 or 11 years older than K.  So yeah, kind of random to have such a big age difference between us and we're all certainly at different places re: life experiences, but we still have a good time.  Anyway, a couple of weeks ago, the three of us went out to breakfast and then decided at the last minute to go shopping.  While we were shopping, S was looking for shoes and the woman who helped her asked if she was shopping with her daughters.  Well, technically, I was young enough to be her daughter, but for K to be her daughther she'd have had to have her at age 11, just a "little" young to be having a child.  Anyway, since that day I've been jokingly referring to S as my mom whenever the opportunity presents itself--and by opportunity presenting itself I of course mean, I've sent her messages that I didn't need to referring to her as Mom.  :)  I'm a pain, what can I say.  Moms 5,6,  and 7 are a reference to my younger days when I'd be at certain friends houses frequently (and they'd be at my house too) so we joked that they were like second moms to me and in some instances my mom was like a second mother to them.  One of those moms used to baby-sit me regularly and through that I became good friends with some of her daughters.  So there ya' go, those are my 4 (or 5, 6, or 7) moms. 

You've Got Mail

I was sad to hear about the death or Nora Ephron.  I've enjoyed her movies (Sleepeless in Seattle, When Harry Met Sally, and You've Got Mail--more on that one in a minute).  I've also read two of her books and literally laughed out loud while reading parts of them.  After hearing about her passing, and seeing some clips of her and her movies on tv, I started thinking about, You've Got Mail.  Today if you asked me what my favorite movie is, I could honestly answer with "I don't know," because there are SO many movies that I like, but once upon a time it was "You've Got Mail."  I still like that movie, though it's been ages since I've seen it.  I can't pinpoint the exact reason.  I do like my chick flicks/romantic comedies/whatever you want to call them.  I also like Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks and the movie was funny so perhaps all those things combined to make it a favorite movie. So since I won't tell you a favorite movie, here are a few movies I've enjoyed that feature either Meg Ryan or Tom Hanks since I just mentioned them...
I.Q. (just a cute movie)
Forest Gump (such a good movie)
Philadelphia and Cast Away (wouldn't classify either as a favorite, but both were good movies)
When a Man Loves a Woman (tearjerker)
French Kiss (not a favorite, but cute nonetheless)
The Da Vinci Code and Angels and Demons (manily because I liked the books so I had to see the movies)
The Polar Express (enjoy watching this at Christmas time because I liked the book)
And gotta give a shout out to Toy Story
The Terminal (I remember that my friend had free passes to this movie and I didn't know a whole lot about it, but I went with her anyway and we got a kick out of it)
A League of Their Own (LOVED this movie when I was a kid, it was the first movie I saw more than once at the theater, the other two were Titanic and You've Got Mail).