Spring Vacay part 4

After lunch in Columbia, SC, we cruised down to Charleston, SC.



This is an old southern city that is very charming. The entire drive, even from Charlotte to Columbia earlier in the day, was very green. Lots of lush trees lining the highway. It made for some nice driving conditions.

When we got into Charleston, we checked into our campsite and set up our tent.



We were happy to be setting it up and getting settled in during the daylight hours!



We liked this campground a lot more than the previous one, even though we had some interesting neighbors.



There were turkeys and geese at the site, and unfortunately, we had to put Lilly in the car a while when we first arrived because she pulled and whined so much to try to get to them. There was one nesting in the bushes about 15 feet from our tent, and we just didn't want her to get to them. She calmed down after awhile. That night, we headed downtown (about a 20 minute drive from our site) to eat dinner.

A friend at work had recommended a seafood restaurant called Hyman's, and once I started looking for reviews online, it sounded like it is THE place to go when you visit Charleston.



Amy and Josh, who we visited in Asheville, had gone there during a trip to Charleston too. Amy has a very funny story about her visit there that you'll have to ask her about next time you see her. So we headed there for dinner. They had this bench outside where we waited for our table that kind of bounced up and down when you sat on it.



They had them in other places down there too but I can't remember if it had a certain name. It was kind of fun to bounce though.



There have been tons of celebrities that have eaten at Hyman's. All of the tables there have plaques that tell you who has eaten there before. Most actually have several plaques. Our table had Neil Young, Kevin Costner, and a couple of other people that I can't remember. When Amy and Josh went, they were seated at Phish's table which is really cool because Josh is a big Phish fan.

Chris and I have been trying to eat responsibly and not eat fish that have a negative impact on the environment. So this limited our ordering but luckily we have an app on our ipods that helps us figure out which fish we can eat in good conscience. He had pollock, which is listed as having "healthy populations, minimal environmental impact, and minimal contaminant levels." I ordered the crab legs, which was the special. The crab was listed as "enjoy in moderation". I don't eat a whole lot of crab so I figured I was being moderate. But that was before I saw the plate. I don't know if I could call this moderate...



Anyway everything was really tasty. This is getting long! Guess I will continue our trip to Charleston in the next part!

Spring Vacay part 3

We drove from Asheville to Charlotte on Tuesday.



It was a relatively short drive, about 2 hours. We checked into our hotel and then drove around a bit. We briefly checked out downtown Charlotte, and then headed to an arts area that we had read about in a tourist magazine at the hotel. There was a store that had a huge variety of handmade stuff, along with several artists studios where some artists were working while we were there. There was a kid there who looked about 10 years old that was sketching a polar bear and he was really, really good! It was fun to look through the studios and see works in progress.

We headed to meet cousin Lindsay and her husband Mark for dinner.



We went to a bbq place which was really great. We sat on the patio and it was another beautiful evening. I haven't seen Lindsay for years, and hadn't met Mark. We had a great time chatting and catching up, and they actually had Tommyknocker on draft there! That is the brewery in Idaho Springs, we served their brew at our rehearsal dinner. We each had a couple of those.



The next morning, we had the breakfast at the hotel. Unfortunately, it was a little chilly and too cloudy to swim, so I never got to enjoy the hotel pool! It looked really nice, though, and we enjoyed everything about the La Quinta we stayed at. Before leaving town, we stopped by Lindsay and Mark's house to meet their baby Mason. Lindsay was at work but Mark was there to introduce us to the little guy, and Lilly got to play in the backyard with their two dogs for a little while before we hit the road again to head to South Carolina.

We were going to spend the next two nights in Charleston, but on the way we stopped in Columbia to have lunch with cousin Tyler. He had class in the afternoon but we timed it so we could meet him at school and have lunch between classes. He took us to a restaurant that had been featured on the Food Network show Diners, Drive-ins and Dives. We thought that was pretty cool because we love the show, the host makes everything look so delicious! We each had a burger, which was yummy. I still have to search online and see if I can find that segment about the place we went to. After lunch, Tyler showed us around the campus briefly. He was a law student - I say was because he graduated a couple of weeks ago! Congrats to Tyler!



The campus was beautiful, of course it was a lovely day and flowers were blooming everywhere. The buildings were all really nice too. I don't know much about architecture but it just seemed like a pleasant place to be.

Next, we headed down to Charleston. More to come!

Spring Vacay part 2

On Sunday around noon, we arrived in Asheville, North Carolina. The drive down there was beautiful. We headed to the home of our friends Amy and Josh with the assistance of google maps - don't think we would have found it any other way! Thank goodness for gps.



After showers and a Fat Tire (they recently started selling it in NC, and Amy and Josh luckily had a few bottles on hand!) we headed to lunch at the Mellow Mushroom. This place was so great! They had tons of beers on tap and tons of delicious looking items on the menu. We had a really tasty pizza and some yummy salads, along with a couple of pale ales. They have Mellow Mushroom in a few other cities in the area, I so wish they would come to Manhattan.

After lunch we went for a little hike in the Blue Mountains. It is so beautiful there.



We had to stop at a scenic overlook to get some photos.









Later that night, we headed out to a brewpub in town, Lab. It is a neat place where the entire front wall/windows opens like a garage door so we were inside but it was open to the air. I should mention that the weather was really amazing all week, we lucked out and had sunny days and nice nights with the exception of the first night. After the Lab, we had to make one more stop to play some pool.





The next day, we went to breakfast at a place called Sunny Point. Delicious. I had huevos rancheros, along with grits, and it was awesome. Later, Amy and I went to a pilates class while Chris and Josh went to play frisbee golf. Then in the afternoon we continued our brewery tour of Asheville with Wedge, where we sat outside next to a river and enjoyed a beautiful sunny afternoon, and Asheville Brewing Company. After the brews, we took Lilly to a dog park that she loved. It was huge and she had a great time running, playing, and wearing herself out! For dinner, Amy and Josh made us lasagne, which was so tasty. Then we relaxed for a while before heading to bed. And we got to get our laundry done, which was a huge bonus!

Tuesday was our last day in Asheville. Amy and Josh went to work in the morning, and Chris and I got ready and packed the car. Then we met Amy for lunch at a Thai restaurant downtown.



It was good but I wish we had gone back to the Mellow Mushroom instead!

We said good-bye to Amy and headed to Charlotte for the next portion of our trip.



The time in Asheville was way too short and I am really looking forward to our next visit down there!

Spring Vacay part 1

Chris and I went on an awesome road trip for our vacation last month.



We got to do a lot of fun activities! For some reason, I didn't take a ton of pictures but I did get some.



We left on Saturday April 10, and had our longest day of driving.



I had picked out a brewpub to stop for lunch.



As usual, we left later than we had hoped and it was about 4 by the time we arrived there. So we had a late lunch at Cally's in Harrisonburg, Virginia.



The food was good, the beer was good, the bartender was friendly, and they had wifi so we could check in with our ipods!



Can't go wrong. We had a great lunch and then we were on our way again.



We headed down to Virginia to our campsite for the night. We got there after dark and it was getting chilly. We set up our tent in the dark. We had food that we were looking forward to cooking over the open fire, but since it was dark and we were tired, we debated about just using our camp stove. Unfortunately the entire dinner plan was thwarted when we realized we didn't have any lighters or matches. DOH! We figured out later that we could have used the car's cigarette lighter to get it started but since we'd had a late lunch it wasn't that big of a deal. I did munch on a few cold s'mores. They were almost as good as the hot ones! I love s'mores!

That night, it got cold. And I don't just mean a little chilly, I mean COLD. We were both shivering all night and neither one of us got much sleep! I think it got down to about 40 and maybe colder - there was frost on the ground in the morning. We are mean doggie parents and don't let Lilly sleep in the bed with us, but that night we coaxed her onto the air mattress with us so we would have some more heat and keep her warmer too. (Our goal of keeping her off the bed was reaffirmed when we woke up and the two of us were in about 1/3 of the mattress and Lilly was taking up the other 2/3.) The next morning when we broke down the tent it was difficult as we couldn't feel our fingers. I couldn't even tie my shoes. We shoved everything in the car as fast as we could and headed to the first diner we saw for a hot meal and hot coffee. That really hit the spot!

Then we were on our way again. We headed out to Asheville, NC. See you soon for part 2!

I was late to work this morning because...

I had to grab some footage of this guy! He was banging on our windows, trying to get in, and wasn't the least bit scared of us knocking on the window back at him!

I love lists!

This is my to-do list for the evening. I'm doing pretty good, eh? Checked off a lot of the list so far. I even write things I would have definitely done anyway, like shower and yoga. It just feels nice to check things off the list.

Here's more about some of the items on the list.

Laundry. Just one load, washed and now hanging on the line. Thank you to my wonderful husband for doing another load yesterday. Now we are just about caught up.

Look for sheets. I am really too embarrassed to even post a picture to explain this one. We have a set of sheets that was starting to get thin. Yes, just one set of sheets. Chris suggested that we get new ones, but I said, no, no, we don't need them, we have a brand new set waiting for us with the rest of our wedding presents to use next year when we have a bigger place. Then the next time I washed them I saw a small, barely noticeable snag in the bottom sheet, and acknowledged that we might want to think about new sheets. A couple of days later, I turned over in the night, half asleep, and put my elbow through the snag as I turned. Now it is a huge, gaping hole. So I need to look for sheets online. Haven't gotten to it yet.

I made mac and cheese for dinner! At the request of someone who I hope is looking forward to gobbling it up when he gets home tonight.

My mom wants to video chat with me online on skype. That sounds fine with me but I need to investigate how it works. We have a program called ichat on our computer that I had a little trouble with the one time I tried to use it, but if I could get that to work, maybe we could chat on that instead. And I got a new google voice account so I have to set it up. I will have a new Denver phone number! Cool!

I finally mailed in a form that has been just sitting on the counter for several days, just because I wanted to cross it off the list. This is why lists are wonderful.

I have been looking forward to editing photos all day. I got to take a bunch of portraits with Curt, Katie and baby Ev this weekend, and I am so excited to work on editing! Now it is 8:30 and I haven't even had a chance to look at them. That's what I am doing next. And hopefully later this week I'll have a blog post up with some of my faves!

The list says blog posts, not blog post. I had hoped to write a couple of posts so I would have some saved up for later this week. But now it is getting late and I want to edit photos (see above). So I am going to close here and open up photoshop!

HA! You've wasted several perfectly good minutes reading about my boring evening. Hope you have more excitement in your life today!

The Next Big Move

I got some good news recently. I've been accepted to a fellowship program for pediatric anesthesiology. In Denver! Chris and I are very excited to move back to Colorado a little over a year from now. I love living in New York City, but I'm not interested in living here indefinitely.



But this will not be our "next" big move. In other news, we found out today that our lease will not be renewed by our landlord at the end of May when it expires. BOO!



So I guess we are heading back to this:



We'd hoped to stay in our current apartment until I finish residency next year. But this wasn't a complete shock. About 3 months ago, we found out that they have to remodel our apartment. The short story: there used to be a really awesome deli downstairs, which was one of the first places we went when we moved in.



The owner was named K and she was super sweet. She used to smoke in the backyard and we would see her out there when we took Lilly. She loved Lilly - she told me once "she like me, I not speak good English and neither does she!" And she received packages for us, which made her one of my favorite people in Manhattan. Anyway, she closed her deli in November after they raised the rent and she decided she couldn't stay open anymore. She had a closing night, and tons of people from the neighborhood were there. Everyone was sad to see her go after 17 years in the same spot. When I was there, I found out that she actually lives uptown in the EXACT same building that I lived in for 3 months when I was in medical school! WEIRD!

Okay, so this is not such a short story. Anyway, she closed the deli and a "For lease" sign went up in the window. When they started looking into renting the space out, apparently they discovered that the entire building would be inspected and that they would need to change the fourth floor (our floor) - something about only being allowed to have one apartment on the floor, currently there are two. I don't really understand it all because the apartments do not look the least bit haphazard, it seems to be a reasonable setup. We both have access to fire escapes. Well, they didn't ask me.

So they told us they would keep us up to date. Originally they mentioned renting it to a bank (bo-ring!) and Chris heard them recently showing the place to people who were talking about opening a bar or restaurant and using the backyard as outdoor seating (a bit better). We didn't hear anything else until we called them today to get the scoop. Since our lease expires at the end of May, we figured they should have an answer for us. And they did. :(

At least moving is nothing new to us, and it is always a good opportunity to get rid of stuff we don't use. Hopefully we'll be able to get into a place with more space. Our calculation today was that we have about 380 square feet in our current apartment. Our landlord has lots of apartments in this area, and they've offered to show us any that are available right now. That would be nice - no new application, no waiting to get our security deposit back while we still have to send a security deposit to the new place, we know they're pet friendly. And we definitely plan to stay in this area.

I'll keep you updated!

I'm back!

Okay, I have been terrible about blogging for the past few months. But now I'm motivated to pick it up again, for the time being, at least! I made a couple of changes to the blog front page. I eliminated the brew update section since we are no longer actively brewing. Such a bummer! But in a year or so we'll be able to brew again, with more space!

I added a link to Carrie's blog.



She is traveling through New Zealand and Australia and blogging her adventures. I'm excited to read about all the fun, exciting, new things she'll be seeing and doing. (I hope she is better about blogging than I am!) A few weeks ago, Chris and I helped her load up her moving truck.

Can't leave Teddy behind.



But she did leave the loft bed - she's ready for a real bed when she comes back!



I'm so excited for Carrie.  She quit a job she was unhappy with and decided to move to Philadelphia.  She hadn't found a job yet in Philly, and decided to travel for 3 months!



 So we loaded her studio apartment into the moving truck and she headed to Philly where she stored everything in a friend's garage.



 Then she headed down under!



Chris insisted on taking a picture of me even though I had been at work overnight and then headed to Carrie's first thing in the morning. And then had been up and down the stairs a few times, carrying stuff, and arranging it all in the truck. Yet I'm still posting this photo on the internets. Brave.

Chris and I decided this was the best move ever.



 It was only a 3rd floor walk-up, and she didn't have that much stuff - very different from our last move.  Plus, we didn't have to pack the stuff, and we didn't have to unpack it!  A couple hours of work on a Sunday morning was all we had to do.  I wish our next move would be this easy!