ch-ch-ch-ch-changes

You hopefully have noticed a couple of changes.  After taking a completely unintended three month break from posting, I logged back in to the old blog last week and realized there were some definite changes I wanted to make:

The name/title. The whole “south by southwest Virginia” was cute and catchy, I guess, and, maybe if I’d written about more Southern things, more Virginian things, and thrown in some techy/musicy things (for the SxSW play) it would have worked.  So, first challenge: find a better name.  A couple of friends use song titles for their blog names, so off I went to iTunes.  The most played song (on my computer, not the iPod): Dave Barnes’s “Nothing Fancy.” Which seemed appropriate.  Name change: done.

Layout. I wanted something different than the layout I was using before.  I’m not over the moon about the template I picked, but I wasn’t all that impressed with WordPress’s options.  Which makes me think maybe it’s time for a hosting change or something else (my own domain?). Layout change: done for now; more changes pending.

Posting frequency. When I started this blog 18 months ago, it came after a lot of thought and consideration.  I’d been thinking about blogging for a long time, but wanted to make sure I could truly stay committed.  Coupled with my 101 things in 1001 days project, it seemed like a great time to start blogging.  As any long time readers know (and you can tell by combing through the archives), my blogging definitely happens in fits and spurts.  That’s about to change.  I’m publicly committing to blogging at least 3 times a week for the next month.  If I can stick to that, then I can re-address my layout/design issues.

Your help. I want to engage my few readers/friends a bit more.  So please, let me know if there are things you think you’d like me to write about.  Following me on twitter (@gwenbeattie) might be a good start to see what I’m doing, thinking, reading, and could lead to some good blog topics.

Thanks for sticking around. Catch y’all later this week (assuming I don’t expire trying to dig out from the snowmageddon!)!

 

sorry

Friends, if you’re still out there,

I apologize for this long gap in posting. I have plenty of excuses, but I won’t bore you with them. I also have a ton of news to share and random thoughts that I can ramble on about. I’ll be back in earnest starting next week. Hope to see you then!

Gwen

 

make this

In my search for new Thanksgiving recipes (more on that coming soon), I actually took the time to read the current issue of Real Simple this weekend while I was on the plane.  Which led me to this recipe for Pasta with Brie, Mushrooms, and Arugula.  Which you should make. Right now.  Seriously.

I made it exactly by the recipe, so I’m not copying here, but you could easily throw some meat on top of it or maybe even toss some other vegetables in it.

 

lucky

I went to Vegas this past weekend for a staff retreat.  It seems an odd place to retreat, but retreat we did.  Till all hours of the night and in various forms.  It was my first trip to Vegas and only my 3rd time crossing the Mississippi, so I had a lot to look forward to.  Opinions were varied as to whether I’d fall in love with the Vegas and never want to leave or whether I’d hate it so very much and be ready to leave immediately.  While I went to bed Friday (err, Saturday morning) feeling the former, Saturday left me very much in the later category.

Nothing had necessarily gone wrong, but Vegas had failed to impress me.  So I boarded my flight yesterday afternoon in a fairly cranky mood, wanting nothing more than to be back on my beloved east coast.  I missed my friends, my family, my bed.  And, I’m sure some of this crankiness had to do with the fact that I’ve been on the road for the better part of the past month and, even when I have been at home base, I’ve been running in forty eleven directions.

So, there I sat, folded into my seat on the budget airline of my choice with 150 of what I was sure were the world’s most annoying people, willing the plane to skip our stop in Milwaukee and just. get. me. to. DC.  Then, about an hour or so into the flight, God managed to jerk a knot in my tail, when I looked out the window and saw the (snow covered) Rocky Mountains for the first time in my life.   Which made me realize what a spoiled brat I’d been and how truly lucky I am.  I can’t preach the too blessed to be stressed nonsense (seriously, my to-do list has to-do lists this week) and I’m always losing perspective, but for just a few short minutes (and when I needed it very badly), I was quickly and abruptly reminded that I really need to step back and be thankful for just how lucky I am.

What no one should be thankful for is the picture I attempted to take of the view from the plane, which ended up being a picture of the airplane wing:

pretty sure this was God reminding me not to get cocky...

 

oysters

As anyone who has spoken with me for more than 10 minutes knows, my Grandmother makes the world’s best fried oysters.  It’s an absolute truth and has turned me into both a connoisseur of and snob about fried oysters (verdict: no one makes them like Grandmother).  She learned how to fry oysters in home economics class in high school and has been making them for over 60 years.  Our entire family fawns over them when she makes them and we treat them like gold, taking our announced allotment and waiting to see what scraps might still be in the kitchen.  Our entire family has also been scared to death to try to make them.  Seriously, how do you even start to attempt a recipe that has 3 ingredients and whose main instruction is “fry until the right color brown on the wrong side?”

In honor of Grandmother’s 80th birthday and after the crowds had gone home, the grandkids, in matching aprons and with tremendous help from our mothers, cooked a birthday dinner.  Which included fried oysters.  All four granddaughters rotated through the dredging station – dipping each oyster in the precious cracker meal (Grandmother has always used Nabisco, which apparently has been discontinued), then in eggs mixed with some water, and back in another pile of cracker meal.  I ended up in charge of (or maybe commandeered?) the frying pan.  The key, Grandmother, said, is that the oil has to be hot!  375 degrees her recipe said (which was impossible to tell since the temperatures were long ago rubbed off of her electric fry pan).

It took far longer than any of us anticipated.  My green apron is covered in grease stains still.  We had to rig up a warming oven to keep the first batches warm, while I just kept frying.  We fried oysters and we fried mini-oyster flavored cracker mill fritters.  Grandmother and our parents were incredibly patient and at the end, we had oysters that tasted pretty close to the gold standard Grandmother set for us.  I take our true victory in the fact that, after dinner, we caught Grandmother picking the fried cracker mill crumbs out of the frying pan.

 

376 days

November 1st marked day 365 of my 101 things in 1001 days journey.  While I really feel like I’ve been chugging along, making decent progress, the fact that I only have a little over 1.5 years left (I wrap up July 30, 2011) has me a bit freaked out – there are some ambitious things on the list!  Some highlights of the first year:

I did get a new job! And I love it!  I paid off a credit card, got life insurance, and start saving on a more regular basis.  All this seems very responsible and big kiddish, which is appropriate, I guess, since I’m 30 now.  The weight stuff seems to be 2 steps forward, 2 steps back.  I’ll cross a new milestone, then fall off the wagon, get remotivated, cross a different new milestone, rinse and repeat.  By the end of this week, I’ll have visited another new state (Nevada!).  I took a short trip to Smith Mountain Lake with some friends.  I went to multiple Nats’ games this summer and saw my first NHL game 2 weeks ago (Go Caps!).  I got a library card, I’ve been to NY more times this year than is normal, I backed up my pictures and music on an external hard drive.  I went to a couple of McDonnell for Governor fundraisers and had my first FAIL when I never managed to get into a regular volunteering schedule for Bob’s campaign (thankfully, he won anyway!).

It’s been a good year.  I think, especially when I first started out, I let the list drive me.  Now, it keeps me accountable, it keeps me calling and writing my grandmother, it keeps me in touch with friends, it keeps me thinking of things to do.  I don’t know what year 2 of this little project is going to hold, but I’m excited for the adventure.

See the recently updated list here.

 

80

My Grandmother turned 80 last month.  As I may have mentioned a time or 20, we all think she’s a pretty special lady (as any family should feel about their matriarch).  She’s the only grandparent my sister, cousins, and I still have with us and has been playing the role of step-in parent for my mom and aunt for a while now.  We pretty much had to sit on her to convince her that we needed to have a party to celebrate this truly momentous occasion.  She did concede and we welcomed 100 of her nearest and dearest friends into her house for a celebration in her honor.  While that wasn’t a surprise, we also managed to orchestrate the arrival of over 130 birthday cards and well wishes, which stretched her birthday into a nearly 2 week long celebration.  When I spoke with her on her actual birthday, her absolute glee at the way this all worked out (and I think all of our relief at her overwhelming excitement) was palpable.  We are all so blessed to have her.

Grandmother has taught me a lot, some of which I didn’t even realize until the past year.  She taught me how to make drippy sandcastles and to enjoy the theatre.  She encouraged us to be creative (the 5 of us vividly remember spending one summer week wallpapering a refrigerator box, which then served as a fort, a puppet theatre, a house, a hiding place, and God only knows what else).  She endured over a decade’s worth of gingerbread house making at Thanksgiving, complete with sisterly and cousinly bickering, collapsing roofs, falling walls, and vanilla wafer shortages.  She taught me how to be a good friend, a good member of my community and my church.  She is truly a good citizen to our Commonwealth and country.  She taught me how the smallest gesture can mean the world to someone.  She’s taught me the importance of knowing who, knowing where, knowing how you came from.  All of these are things that quickly come to mind, that lots of other people think about when they think of Grandmother.

There’s one more thing though.  It’s not a secret, it’s just not fun to think about.  My Grandfather died in March 1978, 14 months before I was born and only 4 years or so after he and my Grandmother uprooted their lives and moved to Chilhowie (where my Grandfather grew up and where Grandmother had only been a frequent visitor).  Instead of returning home to Glouchester or back to Richmond, she, instead decided to stay.  She made a brand new life for herself.  And while even now she’ll talk about missing living on the water, she fits so perfectly into her life now, people assume she’s a native.  That type of bravery is often overlooked and I’m lucky to have a real life example of it only a phone call away.

 

37. Visit RMWC (without being bitter)

As most of you know, I graduated from Randolph-Macon Woman’s College in 2001.  RMWC was the perfect place for me to go to college – small student body, small campus, lots of tradition, lots of red bricks (including some made in Chilhowie!), small classes, good professors, good food, good friends.  As it should be, going to RMWC remains one of the major defining markers of my life.

So, in August 2006 when it was announced that it had been recommended that the Board of Trustees vote to begin admitting male students and when the board did so that September and when in August 2007 the first male students arrived on campus, heartbroken only cracks the surface of how I and my sister alumnae felt.  I was lucky in that in addition to 4 years of wonderful memories and countless friends, my last visit to campus had been for my 5 year reunion (a year early) in May 2005.  We stayed in the dorms and, being just 4 years post-graduation, it was almost like we were just back in school, even if just for a few days.

A year ago, when I set about making my 101/1001 list, I thought visiting the former RMWC, now Randolph College, would make me mad.  That I’d be filled with bitterness and anger.  And I knew that I needed to go back and not feel that way.  That I needed to find space in my heart and my head where I could come to peace with the changes my dear RMWC had undergone and be grateful for the time I had there and all that it had given and continues to give me.  So, on Monday, while driving back from a weekend at Smith Mountain Lake, I stopped by campus.  I wasn’t mad.  I wasn’t bitter.  I was just sad.  Sad when I saw boys coming out of Main Hall unescorted by their female hosts.  Sad when I saw boys in the dining hall eating lunch on a Monday (and not just brunch on Saturday or Sunday). Sad when I went by the (new) Bookshop and the only RMWC items they had were license plate frames and glassware (nevermind being told it must have been a “long time ago” when I told the student working there that I’d worked at the Bookshop when it was in the little house).   While Frank Baum (via Dorothy) had us to believe that there’s no place like home, more often than not, I think it’s more likely that you can’t go home (or at least the home you place on the pedestal where you keep your most precious memories).

As I tweeted, R(MW)C is one of the only places that can both make my heart swell and sink at the same time.  And, I wouldn’t change that for the world.  I will love you Randolph-Macon evermore.

... where voices serenading in the night, sing of loyalty and love