Ohio in October

You may have seen the post about Ohio last October - the one with the scary lodging we quickly ran from... Well, here's the rest of that trip.

Our lovely friends Jess & Jen live in Ohio and we're sad that we don't get to see them more often. This 10 days or so gave us the opportunity to visit with them several times. Our wonderful times together included several tasty meals, lots of stories and laughter, a wide variety of fandoms with a healthy proportion of Doctor Who, and a day trip to the Renn Faire. We had some tasty food, saw lots of fantastic costumes and crafts, avoided the loud noises as much as possible, and generally had a fantastic time together.

Jess & I started off the Faire with a selfie while our wives bought us drinks. This is the first photo of the two of us together - in five years of friendship.

Gandalf agreed to a photo on his way back to his carriage

group selfies - not easy

yay! all of us together

sometimes art is weird

Lovely stained glass art

I nearly bought this journal

So, Heather and I wandered into one of the little shops and walked along opposite sides of a shoulder-height shelf lined with journals (see below). A few minutes later, we turned to each other from opposite sides of the store and said (in almost perfect unison) "Sweetie, look at this one!" The store owner laughed as he saw that we were holding up the same journal, only mine was in silver and hers was bronze toned.  Take a look below and see if you can guess which one caught both our eyes.

If you guessed the one with the t'ai chi sign and bamboo, you've met us once or twice. ;P

This is all hand sculpted metal, hand painted, too. So beautiful - the photo really doesn't do it justice...

Constellations around the TARDIS

Yeah, there were a lot of wonderful crafts there, but finding other fandom geeks in the midst of the Renn Faire geeks was just a bonus.

Ohio - the Good, the Bad, and the Horrid Crack-house Lodging

We still have a bunch of Vermont stuff we'd like to post, but I'm skipping ahead to the 1st of October and a few days after, as we arrived in Ohio to visit people in the Dayton and Cincinnati areas.

We arrived Thursday evening to find that our temporary apartment wasn't ready for us (i.e. had no furniture in it, despite us making a reservation with security deposit so we could check in that day.) So, a trip to Red Roof Inn in Miamisburg it was. On the plus side, it was super close to friends Jess & Jen, so we were able to meet them for breakfast Friday morning before they took off to get paperwork to legalize their marriage of six years. They had a tiny little private ceremony & signing on Saturday, but I was just thrilled to find Sew Dayton, a wonderful small business owned by two ladies who were so sweet and welcoming to me. I got to go in there, use a sewing machine, cutting table, ironing board, etc. while I completed a wedding gift for this really sweet couple (who are essentially me and Heather, only younger, and one is left handed.)

Not the best of pics, and I had to fix a bit in the top left corner after I took this, but you get the idea. These are their fave colors, and the embroidery blends purple & green together in a variegation. I can see all sorts of uneven spots and crooked bits, but really, I'm quite proud of how it turned out. Oh, and the white bit at the top is a pocket so it can hang from a dowel or curtain rod on the wall. :)

 We ate at a wonderful little cafe during a Saturday visit to Indiana - www.cafepatachou.com, where they not only had a decent gluten free selection (rough to deal with sometimes when you're on the road) but even put a little flag in my sandwich to show that it was GF and that they had paid attention to my needs (i.e. changing gloves, cleaning work space, etc.). I was highly amused by these bathroom doors, too, especially the fact that they are considered unisex bathrooms, and people often don't get that because of the gendered images on the doors.

                                   

Horrid Crack-House Lodging (aka apartelusa.com, Dayton location) began on Friday, and ended early Monday morning when I reported that we still had bedbugs even after they replaced the infested sofa. I won't go into all the details here, but suffice to say I am covered in bite marks and it was gross and scary. While we were packing up and waiting to move to our new, non-scary lodging, there was a fight, a domestic issue, cops called, and a screaming match between a "crack whore" and a "bald bitch." It was like being in the middle of a Jerry Springer episode, and I've never liked his show.

Monday afternoon, we moved to Cathy & Dan's (found on airbnb.com, a much better option based on all our experiences) and spend the first bit of our time just lounging in the hammock and enjoying the wooded back yard.

                                            

Heather and Sandy, being cute.

So really, the first lodging was awful in many ways, and the second was amazing in just as many. The best part of our trip, though was visiting with the people of the area. Jess & Jen are among our closest Chosen Family, despite having only seen each other 4 individual times before this trip. I think we managed to get that number up to 9 with our various days/evenings spent together. The Renn Faire will be a post all its own, and there really aren't any photos of other times together, but that's okay. We shared many stories (old and new), and Jess & I worked with sticks and strings while our wives watched with grins (as usual).

We did also manage a visit to some Cincinnatti peeps we don't know very well but had a great evening with! Ocean & Skylark were incredibly welcoming, and again there were shared stories (some of mutual friends) and really good food (they make tasty Thai, which might have something to do with Skylark living in Thailand for a while).

All in all, Ohio was a good trip. It's kinda nice, but also kinda weird to be home again.

Visiting Vermont Friends

We had a total of 4 get-togethers with a total of 4 online friends while in Vermont. Bubbo & David have visited our house in Tennessee a few times, and it was so much fun to see them in their space, too.

First we got to have Bubbo, her hubby David, and another online friend (MTcup) come to our place and do group nachos of tastiness and talk about books and hiking and traveling and how awesome Vermont is and knitting and funny stories and all sorts of things. It was a very very lovely afternoon, but we were having so much fun together that we forgot to take any photos.

A week or so later, Bubbo asked us to come to her place for dinner. This was her first time hosting friends for a meal in a couple years, so she was super excited to have us there, and we were super excited to be there it it was all just super exciting.

See how super excited we are?

Bubbo made Indian food, Beurre Butter Chicken, steamed rice, Paneer stew (with homemade paneer), and mixed veggies. There was also a yogurt sauce, fresh tomatoes, and chai rice pudding for dessert. OMG delish!!

It looks a little blurry, but it tasted amazing!

We talked about a hike/picnic with Bubbo & David, too, but it got rescheduled a couple times, and then turned into homemade stir-fry at their place and watching the blood moon lunar eclipse. It was awesome, and there were photos, but not on my camera. :(

So, another thing that came from the visit with Bubbo was this: These signs for public picnic areas are fairly frequent along the roads in Vermont, especially in the mid-Vermont area we stayed in. When I first saw them, I was thinking "drunk trees" but Bubbo said they make her think the trees are leaning over, being interested in what the picnickers are having, and that stuck with me - the rest of the time we were there, I giggled every time I saw one of these signs.

"Hey, whatchya eatin'?"

And then, finally, on our very very last night in the state, we got to hang out with another wonderful online friend, Knittywriter. She was, in fact, living in France until a few months ago, and finally came back to VT just in time for our visit. :D She drove to our place that evening while we were starting to pack. The plan, I believe (on all our parts) was to have quick hugs and hellos and a bit of a chat, and for her to be on her way an hour or so later. She arrived around 8. She left at 1:30 in the morning and we all had sore muscles the next day from laughing so much. 

Knitty doesn't show her whole face. I'm used to seeing it with a wine glass in front. ;)

All these visits were just great, and I only wish we had more photos (and more time - because more visits with all four of these people would have been lovely).

Out of Touch in Vermont

So the trip from Virginia to Vermont was more of an adventure than we expected. We arrived in Wayne, PA around 5:30 Monday afternoon, discovered it was an adorable little town with lots of stone houses, friendly neighbors, great gardens, and a really close-by greenway where we went for a walk before dinner.

Discovery of a couple tasty local places for our dinner that night and breakfast the following morning put Tuesday off to a great start. 

Fresh Peaches & Vanilla Cheesecake in a GF Buckwheat Crepe!

Non GF Crepe with Sauteed Mushrooms, Bacon, and Cheese!

We were on the road before 10am and heading North again. Then, we passed a sign telling us how far it was to NYC via various tunnels and bridges. They were all in the 35 minute range, and I said “hey, want to see if Na’ama is free for lunch?” We fully expected this would add about 3 hours to our trip. It ended up adding about 7, and we wouldn’t trade a moment of it. It’s not often people from Tennessee can turn up in Long Island for lunch because “we were in the neighborhood.” 

This is the kind of friend you can't pass up the chance to see.

Oh, and the lunch we got! There are no pics of the food because it didn’t last long enough, but I had roasted beet tacos with mango salsa – so good! Heather’s gnocchi with pesto smelled amazing, and Na’ama gave me a few bites of her roasted beet salad, too. Everything at The Witch’s Brew was delicious, including the crème brulee we all had for dessert.

The rest of the trip was fairly uneventful (another tasty dinner find on our way up, and we got to compliment the chef personally, so that was cool), but long. We arrived at The Gathering Inn around 2:10 AM, and stumbled in to explore our new short-term home.

Some of you may have seen brief mention of a phone call from the innkeeper yesterday – she has a house next door to the inn, and offered us that 2 bedroom, 2 bath space, just for us, for the whole month, instead of the room in the inn we had previously arranged for. Those of you who’ve known me for a while, know how I really like having my own space. With Airbnb, we’ve so far been in the house with other people, but had our own room. I’m okay with that – I can go retreat to my room when desired, and if Heather is in there too, well she’s my Heather; it’s okay. But if I’m offered a 2 story place with our own living space, kitchen, and an extra bedroom for guests (yes, she said we can have guests visit), and it’s not going to cost me a dime extra? Yes, I’ll take it!

There is one sorta downside to the house. The wi-fi signal doesn’t reach us. We’re welcome to use the signal in the inn, and she said it will even reach the picnic table out back, but it does mean our access to social media will be severely limited this month. Add that to the fact we have NO cell signal here, can’t send texts or make calls at all, and we’re gonna be a bit more out of touch than usual. It’s a good trade-off, especially since we’ve both said we wanted to do more non-internet stuff (read more books, study our interests, practice our crafts, play more games, go outside more, etc.). This is going to make those things much more likely when we don’t have the familiar internet habits to slip into as easily.

So far today we’ve walked to a nearby hotel/restaurant for breakfast, and I’ve walked the 4-5 minutes to the White River to see the little trickles there. We had a couple busy days of travel to get here, and I don’t expect there will be anything else today but relaxing and possibly picking up groceries (and at some point, carting the laptop to the inn so I can actually post this entry for you).

Knowing us, we’ll be checking in with our usual internet communication every couple days, but I imagine we’ll have more to share in between those times. J