Hello, And It's Nice to See You Again

I've been away for a while.  I realize that.  I guess it's a little difficult keeping up-to-date on a blog when you're busy living.  Trying to keep up with the holiday craziness, working a full time job, running a house, organizing your boyfriend's life... ugh.  And I don't even have any kids.  Being a responsible adult sucks.

I don't know what has been wrong lately.  I haven't been happy but for no good reason.  Time passes and I feel more and more like I'm just wasting it.  I'm not any closer to knowing what I want than I was 5 years ago.  So I've decided to make some changes.  Over the next few weeks, I'm going to finally get my resume together and start applying for a new job.  I've been complaining about my current job for enough years now that I'm sure all my friends are tired of hearing about it.  Why haven't I left already then?  Because it's hard.  Because it's scary and I don't really know what I'm doing.  I know that I am capable of great things, I know that I can achieve my long-term goals, but I also doubt myself.  And I don't know how to get back into it.  This was much easier in college when I had an entire institution to assist me and network of friends going through the same thing.  I feel alone in this, but I know that tons of people in their mid-20's are in the same predicament.  Where do I want to go from here?

I haven't held myself to the highest of standards over the past few years.   I just felt like I needed a break.  I didn't want to have to think about anything too much or work on anything too hard.  I have wondered often what our lives would be like if February 2009 had never happened.  But that is a dangerous line of thinking.  Nothing good comes out of those thoughts.  We're coming up on three years now and it still clouds my mind.  I think it will take a few more years to fade away.  Or maybe it won't.  Regardless, I can't use that as an excuse anymore and I never should have.  It's time to be happy again.

Following the job, we'll see what happens.  I've always wanted to go back to school but that doesn't seem to be within my reach.  I just can't get $70,000 of loans to make sense without a clear plan of what I'd even do with the degree.  But I do want to move forward in my career and climb the proverbial ladder.  I don't need to figure that one out right now.  I can take a break for just one more night :)

A lot of things have been on my mind lately.  And I'm certainly very sorry if you ended up on the other side of that conversation at one point or another.  I think I'm finally ready to start moving on.


Oh, and here's some pictorial updates from the past few months to make this post more exciting:

Ok, now we're about all caught up.

Down at the Bay

Last Saturday we packed up our crabbing gear and headed down to the Chesapeake Bay for the day.  Our intentions were to catch enough crabs for a delicious dinner, but the weather had other plans for us.  It was a beautiful day but the wind was against us and we lost a lot of crabs to the waves.  We didn't come home with any but we had a great time outside!

Alex was kind enough to do the chicken prep (ughh) while I took pictures and organized our supplies.  For anyone that doesn't know how to crab, there are a few different ways but we use the crab line method.  Chicken is left out of the fridge until it's a little smelly, then you tie it onto lines and attach the lines to a pier.  When the lines are tight or moving against the waves, you know that a crab is eating the chicken.  Then you slowly pull in the line and scoop up the crab with a net.  Usually the crabs have no idea that they're being lifted to the surface.  In our case, the waves were strong enough to disturb the crabs and cause them to drop off before we could net them.

We did end up catching a few crabs.  Our first crab was just a baby so we threw him back.  We'll return for you in the spring, crab, so eat up!  After that, we caught a huge crab.  It was much larger than any of the ones we caught over the summer.  There were no other people out crabbing so I guess the crabs have had time to grow since no one is out catching them.  We lost a bunch of crabs in the waves for the next few hours so we decided to take a break and come back a little later.  I'm the meanwhile, we headed over to the big pier to try to get a glimpse of the bay bridge in the distance.  No sighting.  Alex claims that it's there, but I think that's all a myth.

We went back to crabbing but after a while I got tired and we still weren't catching anything.  We decided to let our lone crab go because what's the point of cooking just one?  Plus, I was starting to feel a little bad for the guy.  He looked so cold in that cooler.  So we put him in the shallow end of the water to warm up before swimming out into the deeper water.  Once he had set off, we dropped the chicken into the water and cut off our lines.  As we were pulling out one of our last lines, what do you know, we caught another crab.  Another HUGE crab!  If only we hadn't let the other one go... but what are you gonna do.  I guess it was just their lucky day.

Crab #2 was also thrown back but you better believe that we'll be back for them soon.  We're hoping to be able to spend more time down by the water next year now that we have more free weekends.  Once we get some work done down there, we'd love to have friends come down for a barbecue and maybe i'll also be able to serve some freshly caught crabs!

Grape Stomp!

A few weekends ago, I planned a day out in the farmland of Montgomery County and I really wanted to include a wine tasting at Sugarloaf Mountain Vineyards.  Alex had never been to a real wine tasting before because he was medically not allowed to drink every time we went to vineyards over the past two years.  I was a little disappointed to find out that the vineyard was hosting their annual Grape Stomp event that weekend.   I prefer more intimate and in depth tastings where they don't have to rush you because of the line of people waiting.  However, we decided to go anyways.  I wanted to try the wine!

We had lunch beforehand at the Comus Inn restaurant right around the corner from Sugarloaf Mountain.  The lunch menu at the Inn is very small and I LOVE that.  Everything is done well.  You don't need a lot of choices because you won't go wrong.  A simple soup and grilled cheese combo was just what I was looking for, although I ended up taking half the sandwich with me.  Don't get me wrong, it might just be grilled cheese and butternut squash soup, but it's special.  You know they put more than just a little thought into it.  I've been to the Inn a few times and I'm pretty sure I've ordered the same meal every time.

From there we headed to the vineyard and were surprised by a booth that engraved your wineglass!  I've never seen that before and I thought it was pretty cool.  I thought long and hard, and came up with something really creative to write on mine.

Yeah baby, that was all me.  Except the grapes... that was the engraver's idea.

We did a few tastings of the red wines and I was more impressed by their offerings than I was by the Virginia wines I tasted at the Vintage Virginia Wine fest earlier this year.  Maybe I chose the wrong wines at that time, but I felt like they all had too much residual sugar.  If a red wine is sweet enough to chill, there is a problem.  I don't enjoy sweet wine which is why I don't really drink white wine.  The majority of the wines I tasted at Sugarloaf were not sweet so I was happy!  We spent the rest of our tasting tickets on a glass of Evo, their premier (most expensive) red wine.

I ended up buying two bottles to take with me.  The Comus, a Bordeaux mix, and the Cabernet Sauvignon.  I'm definitely a cab sav person, the more flavorful the better.  I think I've been a little spoiled by cabs from Napa Valley but this one is pretty drinkable at a decent price.  Besides, you can't go to a vineyard without buying some bottles, right?  

We finished up the afternoon with a hayride tour of the vineyard.  I missed harvest season again (grr!) but there were still a few grapes left on some vines that out tour guide let us taste.  I would love to do a wine tasting where they also let you taste the grape that the wine was made from.  I should probably actually find out when those kinds of tastings are offered so I don't miss them next year.  Do they even do them in this area?

If you look closely at that last picture, you'll see that there are some grapes on that vine!

Now we're all geared up for our trip to California in a few weeks.  You can bet that we'll be visiting Napa again.  Alex hasn't been there yet and it's always a must-do.  If you're ever in the area, you really should do a tasting at Duckhorn up in St. Helena if you want a really long and personalized tasting.  It's a bit out of the way but it's the best tasting I've ever been to.  You get your own table, snacks, and perhaps a 20% discount on any purchased bottles (if your umm... wine tasting person... happens to be from Maryland as well.)  They don't skimp on filling your glass and my tasting there was easily 7-8 glasses.  Keep them in mind!

Now, back to what I was originally talking about.  As we left the vineyard, we had to grab a cupcake!  We chose the red velvet one that was dipped in the vineyard's own STOMP red wine (it's a sweet one.)  It was delicious!

The Annual Pumpkin Farm Trip

Last weekend, Alex and I made our annual pilgrimage to the pumpkin farm.  This time we decided to return to the Homestead Farm for my FAVORITE trip of the year.  The drive was about an hour for us and we didn't intend on buying any pumpkins (we already cheaped out and bought the <$5 supermarket pumpkins) but there are a ton of fun things to do at this farm!

There are obviously a ton of pumpkins available for purchase... or photographing.  There is also a pick-your-own pumpkin field but I've found that those fields never really have anything good.  Or maybe I just get there too late.  The farm was decorated for the season and it was a beautiful day, so we were feeling pretty festive.

Homestead has a petting zoo so we spent some time checking out the animals.  They are constantly being fed by all the kids visiting the farm and yet they never seem to get full.  The goats formed a pile trying to get the food the kids were handing out and nearly stomped each other.  Crazy goats.

In the chicken coop was the fluffiest chicken I have ever seen!  If I ever happen to own some chickens, they will definitely be this breed.  My chickens won't have feathers, they will have fur.  The farm also had cute baby pigs and a turkey this year. Mmm, i'll be seeing you again in 1-2 months turkey.

Even though we didn't partake in the pumpkin picking, we did pick our own apples.  We missed the honeycrisp harvest but filled our basket up with plenty of pink ladies and some mystery apples that Alex had to climb a tree to pick from the very top.  I'm going to need to start researching some apple recipes after this.

Thanks for all the hard work Alex!

We ended the trip in the farmers market and invested in a few piles of vegetables.  The eggplant was so pretty that I really loaded up on them, including the weird orange ones.  The only problem is, I rarely cook eggplant and don't really know what to do with it.  What even are those orange ones? Time for more research!

I'm glad we were able to spend such a great afternoon at the farm!  I'm already looking forward to next years trip.

On an unrelated note, the leaves are starting to change in our backyard! Autumn is here!