Thankful for...

Hello All. Its Thanksgiving day. Tonight we go to bed in Charlottesville, but we woke up in Virginia Beach! Our thanksgiving day consisted of waking up, going on a little walk, petting kittens, going to the beach, Jeremy surfing, Allyson taking pictures with a mini camera (think keychain), going home, eating cheese and crackers, feeding all the cats we were house-sitting for at Mom's, going back to the beach, driving Home home, and then at 8:30pm watching Jeremy whip up Thanksgiving dinner in 20 minutes. I am not kidding. You can tell that he had some years in as a short order cook. And it was not a slouchy TDay dinner either... Here's our menu: Baked Rockfish with ginger, cooked Cauliflower (from our garden!), japanese sweet potato, homemade stuffing (he made stuffing in 10 minutes), hot spiced apple cider, and I made apple crisp while he was doing that. Seriously the man is a cooking machine. I couldn't believe it. He also unloaded the dishwasher while he was doing all of this. If I wasn't already married to him I would totally marry him.

What else... well this week we welcomed some time off. Next week is the last week of classes so it was a good chance to regroup before the craziness. Of course, we didn't totally relax until a few days in. We had a shipping deadline for Cinders who is taking work of ours to Art Aqua in Miami. So I was away from home and trying to finish art and get it shipped while also trying to vacation. Jeremy was also making work with me, which is nothing new except for the fact that he had a huge wound on his head! Earlier that day while surfing, his board came back and clocked him in the eye. He came out of the water and like a trooper got some ice and just kept on doing stuff. I was worried, I thought I might have to cut him like Rocky. Whew. We also went to Nag's Head for a couple days this week. That was nice, but VA Beach was nicer! It was just so warm everywhere, its hard to believe that we live in the same state, its at least 20 degrees colder in Cville & Hburg.

Surfing was good this week. Jeremy got to surf 3 days in a row at VA Beach. Winter is the best time for bigger waves here and he had some nice bigger waves and some sweet knee-high peelers. It was so clear and blue and nice. I got in on the first day and dorked around in my wetsuit. It feels like such a luxury to be able to get into the water when its cold. I had fun. We saw dolphins...the usual ocean magic stuff. I didn't get in the other two days because I have a wounded knee and getting into my wetsuit was hard! Its so pathetic. We were on a dune in Nags Head looking at the ocean and I was crouched down searching for shells. I leaned over the wrong way on the dune and my knee made three distinct popping noises, then I cussed a whole lot. This is probably not good...

Anyhow. here is a list of things we are thankful for this Thanksgiving 2008:
eachother, our home, our garden, our cat, our families, our friends, the ocean, our jobs & health insurance,and some other things I can't think of off of the top of my head right now.

Hope everyone is safe, warm, and full of good food!

xo,

Allyson

HALLOWEEN BOO O O O J!

Hey it is Halloween and I have to say this was a pretty good evening. Usually Halloween is kind of weird at times. Like you are having fun and something alway fucked up happens. Anyhow Allyson and I dressed up like lion tamers to hand out candy. This served a dual purpose: to keep the cat from escaping when the door opens and shuts and the whip/cat toy to entertain her and to have a half-assed costume for Halloween. I made this make shift Jack-o-lantern out of a vase that I drew on with a sharpie and stuck a flash light underneath. This was slightly lame, but served us to allow the trick or treaters to know we are home. Once we were pretty much out of candy we (Me, Allyson, and TD) went next door to our neighbor's house where they were having a neighborhood party. It was crazy! Our neighbor, Pat goes all out on Halloween with amazing creepy moving statues, food that looks like body parts, and a small graveyard in the front yard. They are so cool. I feel like a lot of their friends thought we were weird... but our neighbors were totally sweet to us as usual. (It may have been Allyson's fake moustache!) After that we went to Chipotle. Anyone wearing a costume (or part of a costume) made out of tin foil got a free burrito. So people were passing out their extra bits and handing them out to people in line once they got their food. We were able to get our veggie burritos for Free! I made a beret, Allyson made another moustache propped up with a straw, and TD had a tiara. We also met a really nice lady in line. We gave her some of our tin foil so everyone ate for free! Once we were done eating Allyson gave TD a haircut and put in her one last bid to get him to go & early vote! Pretty nice Halloween. Especially compared to other years, like when we were in graduate school in Chapel Hill and we were getting ready for an art show so we couldn't go out like everyone else. While we were driving from the art building to the art lab (about one mile) somebody bombarded our car with a paintball gun and scared the living shit out of us, almost causing us to crash our car. Yeah... this was better.

Other than our eventful Friday, this is our first real weekend off together in a while and it is a welcome change from our busy month of October. Our garden is slowly closing down and we are in the composting and harvesting mode. We turned our beans and tomato greens into the soil, ripped out the dead squash plants and planted a few low-maintenance winter plants. It is getting too cold to spend a lot of time out there and its getting REALLY cold at night so only certain tough plants can survive. We currently have radishes, carrots, cabbage, beet sprouts, spinach, chard, cauliflower, lettuce, and brussel sprouts going. But this is the time of year where you have to throw your hands up and just say, "whatever grows, grows". Everything slows down- but many of those plants like cold weather so we will just have to see what we get. We have turned our attention indoors to organizing the house, growing a few things inside as an experiment, and most importantly paying attention to each other. That garden was a harsh mistress! I am posting some pictures of our first radishes and carrot. They are not quite ready but one of the Taylor's is impatient (Can you guess who she is?)

Anyhow... Happy Halloween! And don't forget to vote!!! (for Obama)