How far will we travel for wine?

First of all, I just wanted to say thank you to everyone that commented on my last post. Your kind words meant the world to me.

Every week just seems to get away from me. I think I’m going to post something from the weekend and the next thing I know it’s Wednesday night (and Thursday by the time I post this). Oops!! Anyway, on Sunday I went with some friends to a winery, called Potomac Point, for a tour and tasting. Despite the fact that we were over an hour late, (stupid traffic on stupid I-95!!!), we had a great time! We had coupons for half off of the tour, but even this poor little grad student probably would’ve paid full price for the tour. The owner of the winery gave us the tour, which I thought was really impressive. I’m sure he had much better things to be doing.

The "Library" at the winery

Checking the wine color

He was so knowledgeable though! He taught us all about looking at the colors of each wine carefully. Also, if you take just a small sip of the wine first, it basically prepares your mouth for tasting that wine. My favorite thing he taught us was to suck in some air through our teeth as we were tasting the wine. It makes the flavor much stronger. It really blew my mind how much it changed the flavor of the wine. He also talked to us a lot about wine pairings, which considering most of us hadn’t eaten lunch yet was making us really hungry. This guy really knew his stuff. Plus, Mike pointed out that he looked like an older, moustached Will Forte. Bonus!!

We tried at least 8 or 9 wines and even tried  half-fermented wine. It tasted like carbonated juice. It was pretty good! Afterward, we all headed out to the patio to share a few bottles and get some lunch. A few of us got this amazing chicken salad sandwich that had curry and mango chutney. Yum!! The weather was beautiful (finally) and we had a great time sitting outside for a few hours eating, drinking, and laughing. I am definitely ready for more Fall days like this!

awesome ceiling fan I want for my house when I grow up!

Wine!

Enjoying some lunch on the patio

T.G.I.The Weekend.

So I actually wrote half of this yesterday, but never finished it…so here’s to some weekend blogging….

Finally. The week is over. What a week it has been…I won’t miss it one bit.

For most of the summer I’ve been obsessed with iced coffee, but this morning I had a bit of a brisk walk to the metro and my office has been even chillier than usual, so I opted for a nice cup of hot tea. I think part of me just wants to believe that Fall is closer than it actually is, but that’s okay.

Fall in a mug

That’s my trusty work mug. I love it. I bought it in Atlanta while I was on a work trip. While we were there, we went on a tour of the CNN studio. Ever since it has been my “work mug” and has even come to my new job. It makes me miss traveling for my old job, we had a lot of fun on those trips and we’d always manage to find a really good steak, mmm! (I skipped breakfast, can you tell?)

This past week hasn’t been all bad really. Last weekend was fantastic. My best friend, Jess, was in town from Colorado again…well technically she was in Williamsburg with her parents, but they invited me down for the weekend and I was more than happy to go. It had been years since I spent a weekend with the Lunsfords and her parents are amazing. Plus they’re all really into history too, so they’re my people

We went to Fort Monroe down in Hampton on Saturday afternoon. I had never been there before and really didn’t know anything about it, but they had all been there and thought I should check it out. It was beautiful! It’s a fort right along the Chesapeake Bay that was built in 1819 and used during the Civil War. It became a safe-haven for slaves during the war because slaves would escape from Virginia and go to the fort and the soldiers at the fort wouldn’t return the slaves to their owners in Virginia since Virginia was a foreign country to them. I thought that was really cool. Also, after the war, Jefferson Davis was held prisoner at Fort Monroe for about 2 years. The exhibit they had on Jefferson Davis was really interesting too (they hung a giant American flag in his room!) I could’ve stayed there all day. The area was gorgeous, there were plenty of picturesque buildings, an old lighthouse, and everything was right by the water. I didn’t take as many pictures as I would’ve liked, but I can definitely see myself going back and spending more time there.

Jefferson Davis' Cell

Then we went to a Norfolk Tides game and ate some good ballpark food and drank some beer…made for a pretty great evening. It was a great weekend with the Lunsfords and reminded me a lot of high school (minus the beer).

The other highlight of my week was meeting up for dinner with my friend Harry. He left for Somalia today for the next year and I’m so glad I got to spend a little time with him before he took off. I’m so excited for the adventure he’s going on (working at a school there) and I can’t wait to hear all about it, but I’ll definitely miss him being here. Harry is one of those people who I know I will have fun with no matter what we do. I talked to him some about blogging and I hope he’ll start one while he’s there, it’d be a great way to keep up with what he’s doing over there. Good luck buddy!!

Harry and me

Other than that, I spent most of the week being stressed out about work and not feeling very well…not the ideal way to spend my last week of “summer vacation.” Not that I had any kind of vacation. Classes start next week though, and I’m pretty excited about them, I think it’s going to be a great last semester!

Well, time to get some work done and get ready for dinner, it’s Restaurant Week in Alexandria! I’ll leave you with a picture of the “art” Mike created with our purchases from the farmer’s market the other day.

Have a great weekend!!

Times, they are a changin’

Oh my, I have got to get better about blogging regularly. Otherwise, I end up with 5 or 6 things I want to talk about at once. I’ll catch up eventually though. I don’t really have an excuse, I’ve been pretty lazy and kind of in a funk and I’m not sure why, but I’m working on getting out of it. I think a big part of it is this ridiculous heat! I’m really anxious for Fall to start, it always seems to put me in a good mood, so hopefully that will help lift my spirits for good. Admittedly it’s been a very rough summer, so to be where I am now, I feel like that’s pretty good. In general I’m usually a pretty happy person though and I haven’t always been feeling that way lately and when it starts affecting people around me, I know I need to change things.

Matt, me, and Jess

Last weekend, we had friends in town from Colorado. My best friend Jess and my old roommate (and her boyfriend), Matt. I loved having them in town, but in a way it helped fuel my funk (not that I regret them being here for a second!). I arranged for a big group of our friends to meet up Saturday night to hang out while they were visiting and it reminded me so much of the parties at our old house on Oak Street. What memories! I was talking to someone there who asked me if I was sad seeing everyone together again, and I said no, I was really happy to see people and catch up, but afterward I realized that it did make me sad. It took our two friends visiting from Colorado for me to see some of these people who live only 15 or 20 minutes away. I’m sad for friends that aren’t as close as they used to be and how much things have changed over the past year or two. It’s been 4 years since college and things are bound to change I know. People are getting married, having kids, moving; I just miss that tight-knit community that we had.

(I’m realizing this post is going nowhere near where I had intended. I guess I just got really reminiscent. Oops!)

It really was a fun night, I had so much fun catching up with people I hadn’t seen in a while. I loved getting to spend time with Matt and Jess, I hadn’t seen Matt since I was out in Colorado last August, so it was fantastic seeing him and his crazy face again I even got to spend an extra day with Jess since she couldn’t get a flight out of Baltimore on Sunday as planned. So as sappy as I got later in the week, it really was an amazing weekend with amazing friends!

To get out of this funk, I think I just need to get out and be more active, but please, Mother Nature, just chill out a bit, because you’re not making me want to go outside. The sooner Fall gets here (and Halloween), the happier I’ll be, not to mention, it’ll be my last semester of grad school! Hooray!!

I’m not sure what I was setting out to accomplish with this post. I guess, first, friends who I don’t see often: let’s change that. I miss you. Let’s grab some dinner, some coffee, go to a museum, anything. Second, this is me saying I vow to be more motivated to not just sit around and do nothing (that should be easier now that I’m done watching Veronica Mars!). I want to get out and be more active, go exploring, exercise, cook…blog! Wish me luck!