Courtyard at the American Art Museum and National Portrait Gallery

Wizards versus Cavaliers

Waiting for the best brunch ever. (I had the charbroiled oysters, blackened tilapia, and beignets with chicory coffee sauce.)

Mmm...beignets at Cafe Du Monde

I don’t know how anyone works in a city where there’s so much live music available all the time, and most of it is free. There’s no way I would be able to sit in an office when I know that’s going on right outside. In three days, we managed to see four bands. After lunch on Saturday, we wandered into a little music store and found Ellis Marsalis doing a show to promote his new Christmas album. Crazy!

St. Louis Cemetery

And Bourbon Street….I compared it to Khaosan Road in Bangkok. We ventured over at 2 in the afternoon on a Friday and it was already packed, happy hour was on, and the music was thumping. One of the guys outside a gentleman’s club assured me I would have a great time inside, but we passed that one by. I was on the search for some live Zydeco music and found a band playing another block down. We ended up with 4 beers (2-for-1 happy hour! We were glad we hadn’t gone to a bar with a 3-for-1 happy hour, particularly since we hadn’t eaten since breakfast…) and enjoyed the show.

Steamboat Natchez

We did a jazz dinner cruise on the Mississippi one night. Shawn was pretty excited to ride aboard the Steamboat Natchez, particularly since he had convinced me to read Fevre Dream before our trip. (Vampires on a steamboat is really all you need to know…)

Lunch in the French Quarter - We quickly figured out that sharing a sandwich is the way to go.

I definitely want to take a trip back at some point. Preferably when the weather is warmer, but I think I’ll avoid Mardi Gras. From the number of beads we saw still hanging on the trees along the parade route, I think it might be too much for me to handle!

Two weeks ago, I headed to Florida to meet up with members of my Nassau quilting guild to attend the World Quilt Show. There were some amazing quilts there. I tried to soak up as much inspiration as possible, and, of course, bought some “inspiration” in the form of new fabric. I also had the opportunity to take a class on hand quilting, taught by the author of this book. She was a great teacher and I hope that her technique will help me avoid some of the wrist and hand problems that I sometime experience while quilting. Now I just need to practice… Besides the show, it was a great weekend of catching up with friends.

Last weekend, we had tickets to the Redskins/Cowboys game at FedEx Field. I had never been to an NFL game before, so it was pretty amazing. And even though the Redskins lost, it was an exciting game. Shawn managed to get us great seats on the club level:

I’m hoping to catch my breath this weekend before the events of December begin. Somehow my schedule already looks full!

I don’t really remember how I found the cabin that we stayed at, but it was amazing! The Shadow Mountain Escape property is right on the edge of the park, so you feel like you’re in the middle of nowhere (in a good way). It’s so quiet, with deer randomly wandering through. Shawn was hoping that a bear would wander through, but I was okay with not seeing one up close. The cabin itself was a great place to hang out between our area excursions. We enjoyed some bonfires, complete with marshmallows to toast, and Shawn took his telescope along to do some stargazing. Because it was darker than dark at night.

Our cabin, the Butterfly Loft (above the garage):

Take a close look to the left of the sign:

And what was there to do? More than we realized. We checked out the caverns in Luray. I found them kind of gross and kind of creepy (I should have never let Shawn convince me to watch The Descent). But most of all, I think it’s really funny that they were discovered because of two local gentlemen that were trying to find a tourist attraction to boost the area’s economy. Well, I guess it worked.

We toured the Copper Fox Distillery in nearby Sperryville. We got there early for the tour, so Rick, the owner, let us assist him with spreading out the soaked barley for drying. It reminded me why small businesses are the best — this unexpected experience made the whole tour more enjoyable.

And, of course, we did some hiking in the park. It was a long way up, but worth it:

On the Appalachian Trail:

I knew that the Reflecting Pool is currently under construction, but it was still strange to see it completely gone!

We finally got to see the MLK, Jr. Memorial. Both of these pictures are from the other side of the Tidal Basin — as you can see from the first one, it was very crowded and we didn’t feel like spending much time with the crowd.

Shawn’s goal for the day. Can you believe that today was the first time he visited the Jefferson Memorial?

Some guys playing frisbee on the Mall. You can see that some of the trees are changing. Exciting!

I feel like I’m slowly readjusting to American culture. It’s an overwhelmingly good change, although there are a few annoyances that I had forgotten. For example, how is it possible that we’ve had a phone line for only three days and have already had 6 telemarketer calls? We haven’t even given the phone number out to anyone besides our families yet!

Until I feel like writing more (or have anything exciting to write about, for that matter), I thought I’d do a little photo summary of the past few weeks:

One last boat ride in Nassau, courtesy of friends. (Foreign Service tip: It’s good to make friends with boat-owners when you live on an island.)

The theme of our home leave seemed to be waterfalls. Here I am at Bushkill Falls in the Poconos.

We also got close to nature. Of course, we saw another deer just a few days ago on the walking trail in our neighborhood. Maybe deer are going to be a new theme as well.

Guess who picked out the rental car?

I think this was the point in Vermont that I decided I wanted to just chuck it all and move to a cabin in the woods. What a quiet, beautiful place.

And for the grand finale: Niagara Falls.

My first roller coaster experience was when Shawn insisted that I go on the one at the New York-New York Hotel in Vegas. I was not amused. When we got off the ride, I was so angry that I swore I would never go on another roller coaster. That was probably about 9 years ago.

Last month, when we got to Disney World, we hit the ground running. Our goal was to get to all 4 parks in about 2 1/2 days, so there was no time for thinking. This is the excuse I give myself for getting into the following situation. We headed for Hollywood Studios first, since it was closest to our resort. As we were entering the gates, a couple of guys came up to us and said that they were leaving for the day, so did we want their Fast Passes for for the Rock ‘n’ Roller Coaster? (If you go to that link, take special note of the position of that car….) Shawn thanked them and took the passes, and told me that we should head straight there to do that first. Looking back, I kind of think he was taking advantage of the fact that I was overwhelmed by the situation.

I won’t go into detail about how halfway through the line I decided this was a bad idea. And how when we got close enough and saw the car take off, I decided this was a terrible idea. I rode the stupid ride and survived. (Although my arms were actually sore the next day from clinging desperately to the handles on the shoulder harness.) When we were getting off the ride, Shawn was talking about how awesome it was and I was telling him that I had kept my eyes closed for most of it. Then we entered the area where they post the pictures they took of you during the ride and Shawn started laughing hysterically and pointing.

So Shawn’s one souvenir from our trip to Disney World is a photo of me looking absolutely terrified:

I’ll start with Charleston: what an amazing city! I definitely have to get back there when I’m not stuck in training for 8 hours a day. I have never seen so many great restaurants in such a small area. I very well may have eaten my body weight each day, particularly if you count locally produced beer in that total.

There was a group dinner at Bubba Gump’s Shrimp one night. This is about the cheesiest place ever, but I highly recommend experiencing it with a group of non-Americans who are: 1. totally excited just to be in America (There was an epic trip to Walmart on the first evening after our training class.); 2. super into Forrest Gump (They made us Americans look like we’d never even heard of the movie during the pre-dinner F.G. quiz.); and 3. eating shellfish for the first time (I lost count of how many photos were taken of people holding lobster claws.).

Another group event was a ghost tour of Charleston. I have always wanted to do one of these and I was totally into it. We had great weather for the walk and I found myself feeling pretty uneasy at a few points as our guide told us stories about Charleston history and hauntings. I’m sure all of these things can be explained away, but it was fun to get lost in the stories for a couple hours.

As I said, I was in training for 8 hours a day, so the only photo I have as proof that I was in Charleston is this shot taken from my hotel room:

Oh, wait, here it is a night, so I guess I have two photos as proof:

I returned to Nassau just in time to spend another Saturday working at the quilt show. This show is put on by the Stepping Stone Quilters (my quilt group) and all members show the work that they have done during the year. So there’s a wide variety of skill levels on display. And one of the highlights is that the quilts for our group challenge are all on display together. As I mentioned, before I left for my work trip, we had an open house for friends and family of the group members. Here’s most of the group:

Since I worked at the show two Saturdays in a row, I had a good chance to examine everyone’s work up close and picked out a few of my favorites here to share:

And here are all those challenges. It’s hard to believe that all of these quilts are based on Log Cabin Blocks!

This afternoon, we all worked together to take down the show. It was a little bittersweet because this is not only my first quilt show, but also my last one in Nassau. There’s another member of the group that will be moving away (because of her husband’s job) and also won’t be here for the show next year. We found ourselves standing off to the side as the other members divided up the supplies to store for the next show. I guess I’ll have to wait and see what the next year brings — maybe I can come back as a visitor to the 2012 show.

1. I started a new job. It’s not quite full time, but it’s more hours per week than I’ve spent working for at least the past five years. Bye, bye free time.

2. I went on vacation. Sixteen days in Indiana and New York City. There was a lot of much needed relaxing during that time. But also some time spent weeding, resulting in some lovely blisters. (You’re welcome, dad.)

3. The last week has been recovery time from vacation. Why is it always so hard to come back? And Thursday was the official Embassy Independence Day celebration — 8am to 10pm spent working. Mostly standing. I must be getting old because that wiped me out. I apparently slept through a doozy of a thunderstorm last night, complete with the dog running back and forth over my legs in bed. I remember none of this.

4. I’m currently preparing for the in-laws’ arrival on Monday. They’ll be here for six days. So, yeah, the blog is going to be quiet for a little longer.

But for your patience, here are some pictures to prove that I really was on vacation:

Wind farm in northern Indiana

I love New York!

With some giraffes at the Bronx Zoo

Sheesh! I get the feeling that I’m going to be completely tired of this holiday by the time it actually gets here.