Gooey Melted Cheese Goes with Anything

Friday night, my roommate Diana hosted a lovely fondue party at our home. It was a great group of girls and we had fun spending time together. She whipped up a pot of melted cheeses and we dipped to our hearts content, everything from bread, broccoli, and apples. Perhaps the most surprising of all was how good we decided dill pickles taste dipped in cheese! After lots of good chatting (and good eating) we put in a movie--"Joe Versus the Volcano." Classic Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan. I forgot how great this movie is!

Opera in the Outfield

Isn't that just a great event title? Seriously, what's not to love about that? Last night Karin Meilstrup and I took the metro downtown after work to the Nationals ballpark where they did a free live simulcast from the Kennedy Center of Puccini's opera, Tosca. It was a pretty cool idea. We sat on the lawn of the stadium and watched the tragic story. We packed a picnic and enjoyed our dinner while we watched the show and listened to the powerful voices of some incredible singers. While understandably the sound quality is significantly diminished by hearing it over stadium speakers, it was still really a fun way to see an opera.

I haven't had the opportunity to see very many operas before in my life, but I definitely feel like it is an under-appreciated art. (This may turn into a bit of a cultural rant.) For some reason I am a sucker for music in a foreign language. I think this happened to me when I was a freshman in college in my Humanities 101 class. The more I've thought about it though, I think one reason I really enjoy it is because it gives me the opportunity to enjoy the the sound of the human voice as an instrument without being distracted by the words of the song. It is absolutely amazing to me what the human voice can do. The expressive quality of the voice makes it one of the most versatile instruments and artistic mediums. Like other art forms which are "high brow" (a term which incidentally is derived from phrenology), I feel like opera has an ennobling quality because it demonstrates in a powerful way the mastering of human potential and total self-control in at least one aspect. So don't knock it until you give it a try!

Potomac by Moonlight

Camille Bushman, Karin Meilstrup, me, Meghan Morgan, and Laura Erekson outside my house, ready for the party.

This past weekend the DC 2nd Singles ward put together a Potomac Riverboat cruise party on Friday evening and invited singles from the surrounding wards. There were several of us girls that helped each other get ready. After I got off work I went home and met Camille Bushman at my house. She did a beautiful (and fast!) job on my hair and helped me figure out what to wear. A couple months ago I bought a beautiful black dress on an impulse buy because it was such a great deal, however, it needed some modifications in order for me to be able to wear it. I was trying to think of something I could wear with it, or else I'd just have to go with my second option. Turns out Camille had just the things I needed in her car: a black lace camisole and satin bolero jacket. It really couldn't have been more perfect for the dress.

This was the boat, but obviously this was not taken by me, seeing as I was on the boat.

We drove down to Old Town Alexandria where they were boarding the boat. Once on board it was quite the party. There was a dance in the lower level, one up was a cabin with food and tables, the third was mostly and open deck and a small balcony surrounded the captain's booth on the fourth level. It was a beautiful old time riverboat with the huge paddle wheel on the back. The boat cruised up the Potomac and it was a beautiful view of the area.

Curtis Seare, Me, Marin Arnell, and Marin's friend Arianne on the deck.

It was a bit chilly outside and I was just getting over being sick, but it was generally a beautiful evening. (I probably would have enjoyed the temperature more had I felt like dancing. I actually ended up spending a better part of the night wearing Ryan Nokes' sweater. When he decided to join the dancing, he didn't want to wear it anymore, so I gladly took it off his hands. I'm sure it went great with my black party dress!

Ryan Nokes (before I stole his sweater), Me, Trevor Redd, and Laura Erekson

Getting a Little "Boulder" on Old Rag

While Virginia may lack the large mountains of the West, it makes up for that with the dense, tree-covered hills of the Shenandoahs and my favorite mountain destination thus far: Old Rag. Labor Day weekend I joined some friends on a camping, hiking, and bouldering adventure in Shenandoah National Park. After work Friday I headed down with some friends and on the way caught a milkshake at Checkers for old time's sake. (Curtis is a fellow Floridian and was entirely supportive of picking up the value shakes and fries, even after we'd already stopped for dinner somewhere else!)

Me, Curtis Seare, and Tim Turpin enjoying Checkers value milkshakes!

That evening we got things set up and went to bed. Well, I actually stayed up talking and laughing with Jen Pike for quite a while, but it was so much fun! Saturday morning we got up and drove over to Old Rag. We had camped about 30 minutes away from the trail head. We drove through a kind of rural community and in our car we were discussing what it would be like to live in a "front porch" society again. Everyone here had a porch with chairs, and many were actually outside using them! It seemed like the kind of place where people know their neighbors and wave as they go by.

The crew part way up Old Rag

It took a little creative climbing to get up on top of this boulder wedged over the staircase.

The hike was beautiful, and then fog descended and settled all around us. I'm sure some of the views would have been incredible had we been able to see more than 10 feet out! Luckily, as the day progressed the fog burned off somewhat and by the time we were at the top we had a lovely view of the valley. I have to say, this is probably my most favorite hike I've ever done. It was so much fun! The terrain was really cool. It's about a nine mile loop and the first few miles are about like any hike it the mountains, but the last mile or so to the top and a little after that, were so cool! There was a path, but not a dirt path by any means. We were climbing boulders all the way to the top. This section of the trail is called the scramble, and I have to say it was aptly named.

Here's a glimpse of what hiking "the scramble" was like.

Emma Ransom, Steve Meilstrup, and me. Behind us is "the scramble" we just hiked!

 We returned to camp late in the afternoon and started prepping dinner. We were so hungry, so we ate as things finished up cooking, with the ribs last around 9 or 9:30. We had a great time around the campfire, (although next time I go camping, I am going to invest in a camp chair so I can actually SIT around the fire!) talking and making s'mores and banana boats.  Emma and I learned it's not the best to put m&m's in a banana boat. It tastes fine, but it creates a grayish goo that doesn't look very appetizing. This was a great weekend and probably my favorite adventure I've had in Virginia thus far!

Nectarine Kuchen

It's been a while since I had a post about food, so lest anyone think I have lost my interest in that subject, here is a picture of the dessert I made yesterday for a dinner hosted at my home. I had several nectarines and wanted to make a dessert from them so I adapted a peach recipe and made a nectarine kuchen. Kuchen is simply the German word for "cake." This particular kuchen was almost more of a pie, or a tart. It had a hard crust filled with nectarines and baked custard. Pretty delicious if you ask me! It's definitely a make again, and I think it could be good with almost any type of fruit.

Shakin' Things Up!

When I think of Virginia, I don't usually think "natural disasters," but that's what's been on everybody's mind here for the past week. It all started last Tuesday with the earthquake. While telling a friend about it on Facebook chat, she asked that I "use my humanities skills to paint a word picture" of the events. This is what I came up with on the fly:

It began as a low rumble, as if an overweight man was running down the hallway, or perhaps the beginnings of a new construction project in the building. However, all such possibilities were dispelled when the building began dramatically shifting forward and back. Co-workers looked at each other in disbelief--this was Virginia and earthquakes just don't happen here. After a moment of mental recovery, everyone quickly descended the stairs and congregated on street corners. All the while we were unable to send or receive text messages to loved ones.

Not bad for an impromptu narrative version, right? She liked it and I promised her I'd post it on my blog. There wasn't any major damage, but a few minor things happened. They found a crack in the top of the Washington Monument and some of the spires of the National Cathedral were damaged. Also, the tips of 4 of the spires on the Washington D.C. Temple broke and fell to the ground.

As soon as the shock from the earthquake began to wear off, the east coast began gearing up for the impending Hurricane Irene. It was blown so much out of proportion and catastrophic damage was predicted along the entire coastline, especially the Outer Banks of North Carolina and also New York City. While it did hit NC and some of the coastline fairly roughly, DC was pretty much unscathed. Saturday it rained all day and the night did get pretty windy, but nothing above 30-40 mph winds, if that. We were supposed to have stake conference this weekend, but because of the hurricane threat, all church meetings in our stake were cancelled! It was a bit weird to not have any church on Sunday, so I had the chance to study the scriptures for a couple hours, a la missionaire. It turned out to be a nice, albeit unusual Sunday.

West Virginia Whitewater

Dan, Me, Steve Meilstrup, Tim Turpin, and Michelle Chon in front of the New River Gorge Bridge

This weekend I went on the outing I'd been looking forward to all summer. Shortly after I moved to the area, a girl in the ward found an offer through one of those online deal sites for 2 nights of camping and 1 day of river rafting. Dan and I, along with Michelle, each bought one and planned our trip for mid-August. Two of Dan's roommates, Steve and Tim, decided to go in the end as well, so we had a nice group of 5 for the excursion.

We all took work off early on Friday and headed out. It was about a 5 hour drive to the campsite. It was a really beautiful drive. I couldn't help singing a little John Denver. The green hills of the east never seem to lose their magic for me. The landscape is so different from what I grew up seeing on car trips and I can't get enough of it! After setting up camp, we realized we really didn't plan much and so no one brought anything to do a fire, so we went up to the lodge and ended up watching most of Back to the Future II on tv. Yea, rough camping trip, huh?

The New River Gorge where we rafted

Saturday morning we were up early (partly because the group was so hard it was nearly impossible to sleep!),
had a quick breakfast and then headed out for the river! The guides were great. They were so a lot of fun, but also really knew their stuff. We were rafting the New River. Its supposed to be some of the best rafting in the east. It was fun, but it wasn't quite as exciting as the trip we did on the Payette River several years ago. But then again, how can you compete with Idaho?! Even still, there were some fun rapids and our guide let us get out and swim a lot along the way.

A great name for a restaurant, right?! We couldn't resist going, and they even had a drive thru window. We felt silly taking this picture, until another car pulled up and snapped a couple photos too!

The second night camping we were all pretty tired. That meant I probably got about 3 good hours of sleep, but the ground was so hard, I still found myself just waiting for it to be 6:30 so the alarm would go off so we could pack up and drive home. I will NOT go camping again without a mattress pad!! Even so, the trip was great--a fun adventure with fun friends!