I do so love to sum up an entire weekend in one title, even if the order is a bit out of sync.
I am back from Spain and have survived. Had an awesome time, but this is not the Spain trip blog. That one requires more time and effort than I’m willing to put in right now.
I had a busy (free!) weekend. On Friday, I went to the Annapolis Irish Festival’s free evening concert. Men in kilts banging on big drums and playing the pipes excite me, so it was a perfect evening. We spread some blankets on the lawn, albeit unknowingly on an ant hill. (luckily they were the tiny kind that you don’t mind finding wandering around on your body even after you’ve gotten home, which was an hour’s drive) The evening started with Irish dancers and then we listened to a few variations of “celtic” music by The Rovers, Barleyjuice, Albannach and The Rogues. If you click on each one, you too can hear what I mean about how different they all are. (Albannach is my personal favorite)
While I was sitting on the blanket collecting ants, sipping a beer and waiting for friends to arrive, I asked Hubby if he would mind going to get some kind of a deep fried dinner for us at one of the festival vendors, preferably a crab cake. (this is MARYLAND, after all) He was gone for an hour, surely trying to find me something that didn’t have an onion in it, and when he returned he handed me a wrapped bun, which I believed had my crab cake in it. I was kind of right, although it wasn’t what I expected. As I unwrapped the paper, I saw what looked like, to me, legs! Deep fried and breaded legs akin to those on a spider…. uh…. I peeled back the bun and looked askance at my husband, who after 31 years of partnership should know that I don’t eat anything other than fruits and vegetables that look like they did when they were alive, so the deep-fried spider looking thing on my bun was not going to be something I was having for my dinner.
“You brought me a deep-fried spider?”
“It’s a soft shell crab!!”
“Since when is a soft shell crab and a crab cake the same thing? Here, you get the fried spider, I’m eating your clams.”
Luckily, my husband loves me more than what he puts in his tummy, so we traded dinners. I don’t even want to THINK about him eating all those legs…. (I’m retching a bit… hold on….)
On Saturday, I was invited by Jenny to go to an Orioles game. The company she works for had rented a suite at Camden Yards for an Orioles vs. Tigers game. We had decided that we should be ecologically responsible and ride the light rail into town. After 20 minutes and at least 20 miles of wandering around trying to find the light rail, the two-blondes-who-need-GPS-to-find-their-way-out-of-a-paper-bag finally found their way onto a train and from the train to the suite, collecting a commemorative Jim Palmer statue replica on their way. Neither of which understood the Jim Palmer statue, even when they were wending their way past the freshly unveiled statue (drapery still on the ground) and the furious clicking and flashing of photos. To them it was merely a traffic jam on their way to the ultimate reward of free food and air conditioning!
Some may not know this, but I am allergic to all things onion. Even the fetid stench of onions, which closely resembles the smell of serious body odor released from a sweat-drenched teenager who hasn’t bothered to wash in days, but has had some serious track workouts in 90+ temperatures, can make me sick and cause some breathing issues. As soon as I opened the door to the suite, the miasma of onions whacked me in the face, causing what Jenny thought was a terrified-recognition-of-someone-from-my-past kind of reaction. No.. it was just me trying to breathe. We dumped our stuff and checked the food (which was all looking quite yummy, but was rife with the enemy) and decided that for me, a beer (or three) would have to suffice as the majority of my meal. (Poor me… lol)
The game was actually very good. 13 innings later, the Orioles pulled out the win with a two run homer. Can’t beat that when you are sipping free Stella Artois and Landshark. Even having to wait for our train home wasn’t so bad because between the overly warm (and overly large) gentleman who wanted to display his distended abdomen for all the world to see and the extremely height challenged gentleman that kept giving Jenny the eye, we had things to chat about. (yes, at times I can be *that* shallow as to remark on such things, but they were right *there*!)
On Sunday, I went to a graduation party for a former chorus student who has now made her way through Northwestern University and is working in journalism. Awesome! Even sitting in the rain didn’t dampen the conversations. I did have some uber-yummy carrot cake there (’cause there aren’t any onions in dessert!!) but otherwise I had to pass on the noshing. Still, they had….you guessed it…. beer!, so I was yet again able to sustain my liquid diet. It was nice to sit with her and hear her memories from the student side of the chorus and made me realize, yet again, how much I love what I do and what I’m involved in. The others at our table were also musicians or teachers, so we had a great time throwing around names and experiences that in some ways either interacted with one another unknowingly, or had a common person involved that we found we mutually knew. Eerie, yet comforting.
So, to sum up… music, food I couldn’t eat, beer and friends. What more could a girl want for a superfantabulous weekend?
Nuthin’. :0)
Snippets and Tidbits 