Month in review

I’m sure it would be overwhelming for both you and me if I tried to cover all the intricate workings of my life in the past month, so permit me to simply skim some of the highlights (or you can just check out some photos), which will most likely primarily involve weekends, because that is when I do more interesting things. (If you are truly interested in hearing me drone on about Composition Theory, workshop-speak, why I’ll probably never write another sestina, or the challenges of working with English-language-learners or unmotivated freshmen in the Writing Center, buy me a drink or something and I’m sure I’ll have plenty to say about any combination of those things. But this doesn’t seem the place for that.)

A couple of weeks ago Ben and I decided to go check out Colonial Williamsburg. We drove out there, found out it costs $37 per person to get in, and decided we could get a similar experience by watching The Patriot or something. Instead we went to Williamsburg Winery, had a picnic on Jamestown Island, got attacked many teensy spider-ish bugs which turned out to be flea ticks (as evidenced by the dozens of itchy red spots on both our bodies the next day), then drove the Colonial National Historical Parkway from J-town to Yorktown. Saw lots of seriously OLD stuff. When we came back to town we decided to celebrate Ben probably getting a promotion by eating an extravagant and delicious dinner at Mamma’Zu. Good times.

The next weekend, some of our best pals from Kentucky made the 12-hour drive to visit us. They brought their bicycles, so we spent a good 6 or 7 hours on Saturday riding around Belle Isle and James River Park — we covered something like 20 miles that day. Later we tried to check out the Italian Festival in Church Hill, but by the time we got there they had stopped selling drink tickets (I still don’t understand Virginia ABC laws), so we wandered around sadly for a few minutes watching staffers pack up wine bottles, then went to Patrick Henry’s Pub, where I tasted some of the best eggplant parmesan of my life. We got up super-early the next day to cook our friends biscuits and gravy before they hit the road. I never managed to take a nap that day, so I decided being groggy was as good an excuse as any for not getting started on writing my comp theory paper.

This week we were graced with a visit by two friends from Florida, and we had a great time taking them to a couple of our favorite Richmond restaurants and scavenging a couple of thrift stores. (I scored some cute Ikea curtains for our front room — four panels for 10 bucks!) We also toured the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, which I think we would have enjoyed much more had half the exhibits not been closed for remodeling — none of us get particularly excited by Faberge or British Sporting Art exhibits.

Which brings me to yesterday, part of which I spent drafting a paper for comp theory (ugh times infinity), being amazed that gas had “plummeted” below $3/gallon, and getting ridiculously excited to discover a new Ukrop’s and Target within 2 miles of our house. Other parts of the day were spent cooking up some unbelievably good vegetarian chili and jalapeno cheddar cornbread with my hubby, then bicycling over to Brown Island for the Richmond Folk Festival. We caught shows by Liadan (lovely) and the Dan Tyminski Band (super fun, but I was sad he didn’t play the dobro).

And now back to my paper-procrastination methods of drinking gallons of Emergen-C, reading, messing with my photos on Flickr, eating kiwi, and trying to upload a video of Dan Tyminski to MySpace. Hope you had a great September!