The Virginia Blogs: Fresh Air

It was a gorgeous weekend and we really needed to get out in the fresh air. Since I've been officially chained to my desk at work*, fresh air is rare and precious, and mostly available on weekends.

We looked at a few options and decided to try out a few paths in a place called the Great Dismal Swamp.

Brilliant!

We hop on the highway with some basic directions written down. Lesson 1-- get good directions. We managed to get all the way to the vincity of the swamp and just... cruise on by into what can only be called the deep south. It's scary out there. We didn't get to far before realizing that this was NOT the right place. and made a u-turn. We found some signs for the Great Dismal Swamp National Wildlife Refuge and followed those.

Here's a little something about back roads in the rest of the US-- people drive really fast. Really fast. I mean, I was doing 60 on this little 2 lane back road and there were people creeping up and passing me. Now, add in the fact that apparently the state of Virginia doesn't believe in placing signs further than about 10 feet from the intersection you need, well. Just be glad that there aren't a whole lot of prohibition on random u-turns in the state.

So after all these false starts and random U-turns, we finally reach the swamp. Except the entrance that I wanted to use is closed because of... well, who knows why. It's closed. So we head back to the other entrance that we saw on the way there and nearly miss that intersection as well. This time, I say, the hell with this and just back up on the road.

The road is a dirt path. With some gravel. Through a peanut farmer's field. Wonderful. So now I feel like I'm trespassing through peanuts.

Eventually we reach the parking area, and I realize that I really have to use the bathroom. With delight, I see facilities on the one end and happily trapse over there, pushing the door open.

*GAG*

It's an open septic system; they are great for the environment, but HELL on the nose. You basically pee in what looks like a giant hole with a toilet seat on it. There's no running water. If you drop something down that hole, it's gone. Gone. You do not want it back. I have encountered these before in Wawayunda State Park in NJ-- they seem to work better there; ie don't stink that bad. Thankfully, the NPS was smart enough to put a Purell dispenser in the bathroom. I had that stuff on my hands all the way up to my arms.

We choose the Boardwalk route, which as I understood it would be a meandering path that should take us to the lake in the middle of the swamp. The boardwalk was in the shade of some serious maple and cedar trees and it was slippery as hell. Every step was a danger, and not only was it slippery, but you know what happens to wet wood?

It rots.

I was terrified of stepping through the boards. There were some broken out, and there were some that were freshly replaced. The further we went along, the more I thought that this was a bad idea.


Dayglo orange mushroom scare me.

So we trapsed on a little while long and just about the time I was going to quit, turn around (another u-turn!) and go back, we saw the path leading to something. We emerged on to the Washington Ditch, about 10 yards from where we had started the Boardwalk path.

Meh.

So, instead of heading back to the car, we made a left and headed deeper into the swamp.



A little history: the Great Dismal Swamp, while HUGE at 112,000 acres, is only a portion of what they believe covered nearly 1 million acres of land at one time. Our esteemed General George Washington wanted to harvest the trees that stood in this swamp and create a canal to use the water in Lake Drummond. Swamps and wetlands were, until recently, considered a waste of space and were drained and filled to settlers' delight. Well, this swamp proved a little overwhelming to everyone and eventually the plans to harvest the trees was scrapped.

The road we were now walking on is the Washington Ditch-- the straightest path to Lake Drummond in the center, a 4 mile walk.

However, what lives in Swamps? That's right. Bugs.

Big ones, you can hear coming. Oh yeah, the grow them big down here.

We started walking and swatting. And walking and swatting. And Swatting. And SWATTING. And SWATTING!

"Ok," I finally said, "Tell me when you're ready to head back."

We walked a dozen more steps. "OK, I'm ready."

We turned around and headed right back the way we came. Perhaps if the road had been a little more winding and interesting we might have put up with the bugs. But when you looked a head, you saw:



and when we turned around to go back we saw exactly the same thing. *sigh*

So we marched back the mile we had come. The place was littered with butterflies:


and with this really cool looking bush:

I don't know if you can really see it, but the flowers looked like little trumpets.

We hiked and swatted our way back. We had seen neither the white tailed deer that were purported to live here, nor the eastern black bear who roamed these swamps. And our final conclusion was that 1. we had to come back after the first frost and try this again, and 2. the Great Dismal swamp was neither dismal nor great.

On a happy note we found the fair grounds for the Suffolk Peanut Festival.


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*if you don't smoke, you can't take a break. Do. Not. Get. Me. Started.

The Virginia Blogs: Cake Burger!

So, I made these cake burgers. I can't take credit for coming up with the idea-- it was originally a Bakerella creation. The original called for brownies as the patty, and I just felt that it was too dense. She also has sugar cookie fries and fancy containers. I do not; I think the burgers are bold enough on their own.

So here's my version.

What you'll need*:

1 box of white cake
1 box of chocolate cake
eggs according to the mix
butter/oil according to the mix
water according to the mix
icing (homemade buttercream or 2 canned white/vanilla)
yellow, red and green food coloring (Wilton gel is recommended)
icing piping equipment (bags and tips)

I used a Pillsbury Golden Buttery Pudding-in-the-Mix box mix, and I really liked it.

So, you don't want to use paper cupcake liners. Instead, grease (do not butter) and flour the cupcake tins. It's a bit of a pain, but it makes several steps easier later on.


Prepare the batter and oven according to the box. To get really fluffy cupcakes/cake, I whip the batter thoroughly. High setting on your hand mixer and move it quickly through the batter to get lots of air mixed in. I like fluffy cakes. Fill the tins 2/3rds full-- remember to keep the cake batter off the stove! If you sit it on the stove** it starts to cook ever so slightly from the ambient heat. So keep the batter and the cake tins off the stove***.

While your cakes are baking, color your icing.



Red is the hardest. I wound up using about 1/6th of the gel bottle to get the color as bright red as I wanted-- stealing from Bakerella, if you put a touch of violet in the red, you can get it nice and deep****. Scoop it up and shove it in your piping bag.



You're on own with that one. I can do the piping, but getting it in that bag is an art unto itself. I'm sure that with practice, it'll look more professional. Or, I'll get smart and buy lined parchment bags so can't see the royal mess inside.

Keep some of the icing white. You'll need to use it as some glue.

If you wanted to, you could make the icing before hand and refrigerate it, but remember to take out about an hour or so before you need it to get it to room temperature.

Let the cupcakes cool for about 20, 25 minutes, remove the cupcakes from the tin and let them cool completely. Repeat for the chocolate cupcakes. Try to make sure that you have the same amount of white and chocolate cupcakes. I never get the 24 the box says. I must make monster cupcakes.



Now, set yourself up here. You want the cupcakes and the icing nearby each other. Use a bread knife for the slicing. It's going to do the best job without pre-masticating your cakes.



Slice the cupcakes: the white cake should be right in half, the chocolate one should be closer to the top, but not too close*****.



Now, take some of that white icing and slap it on the bottom half of the cupcake.



Place your chocolate "patty" on top of the bottom half. Start piping on your "ketchup", "mustard" and "lettuce".





...and lastly, put the top of the cupcake on top and Voila!



You've got a cake burger! Now I know that one is crooked, but I think it makes it look more authentic if it's not even. I've never managed to get a hamburger bun to split evenly anyway. Even if it's pre-cut.



To get the sesame seeds on, dip your finger in water and touch the top center of each cake. then gently dip your finger in the seeds and press them on to the top.

Now, you're done+. Enjoy.




______________________
*Wine optional.
**I hate that stove. It's been a year and I still want my natural gas back.
***Trust me. I have less than 4' total of counter space; if I can do it, you can do it.
****I'm cheap. I didn't want to shell out the $1.60 for the violet for 3 drops of it. I dealt with the not-that-deep red.
*****My counter isn't pretty. I didn't make those cuts. I don't know how people do this cooking thing without a cutting board. I could go on a tangent about this, but we're already in a footnote.
+Well, except for the pesky bottoms of cupcakes. You can ice them with the rest of the frosting, but they make great little snacks without the icing. Or... uh... I think they would... um... Yeah. I think they might. *burp*

The Virginia Blogs: Look what I made.

Yup. I built it.

18 feet of 2x4
15 feet of 12x1 planking
15 3X3/8" bolts, nuts and washers
2 yards of 45 wide faux suede
7 1/2 feet of 3" high density foam
1 twin size piece of quilting batting
13 drawer pulls
13 2" screws
1 can of stain
and about 4000 staples.

Result, one really awesome looking headboard, and one REALLY sore Jenn.

And yes. That is stuffed wombat on the bed.

The Virginia Blogs: Sacre Bleu! Het is Sint Maarten!

See? I told you I would get back to it...

St. Maarten/ St. Martin is one of the most laid back islands. It doesn’t have a huge population, and a majority of those who have homes there, don’t live there. I believe that both Madonna and Richard Dryfuss were offered up as examples of a the island’s home owners.



We had visited several years ago when the dock we were currently at was state of the art AND brand new and they were excited that the ships no longer had to tender in to port. See that pile of rock and stuff there? Yeah, another new pier. This one is going to be big enough to handle the Oasis of the Seas.

Because it is laid back, there are about three excursions you can take on this island: the Island Tour, the Kayaking in Marigot Bay and the Butterfly Farm Day Trip to Orient Point.

Well, Orient Point was the one we wanted to go on. Of course it was, there were butterflies. We dig butterflies. And naturally, the night before, we got the call that the tour was cancelled. Because that’s the way it rolls for us.

Since Tom is NOT a beach person, we decided to take the Island Tour. I started to get angry with him because he kept falling asleep on the bus. However, half way through, I had to change my tune because it was hot, I was sticking to the seat, the AC wasn’t working and the tour was boring. The island is beautiful, don’t get me wrong, but this tour was just not doing it for us.

This is Marigot Bay:



The stuff of nightmares, according to Tom. See that undeveloped island in the middle of the picture? Last time we were here, we took the Kayak tour, and that was wear we kayaked too. Let’s just say that smokers shouldn’t try to keep up with someone who loves to kayak and knows how to paddle. There was a tow rope and cigarette involved in his return to shore.

Anyway, St.Maarten is made up of two sides, Dutch and French. The ships dock in Dutch St. Maarten and Marigot is the big town in St. Martin. A lot more happens on the Dutch side, even though the French side is larger. We were also told that the main language on the island was English or Creole, and that French and Dutch were spoken only very infrequently. This was the first time we were able to get over to the French side and it was very European looking. And naturally, anything with French Roots has something named Louis the Something somewhere.



And that Quartier d’Orleans is not where you want to head. Just head for Philipsburg.

However, our bus had an hour and half stop in Marigot, so Tom and I started wandering around. There was a “shopping mall” that they were very proud of that had about 10 stores in it. And we were there so early that most of the stores were still closed.

There was a mother yelling at her kid, in French. There were two gentlemen eating breakfast and speaking in French. There were signs everywhere in French. The ladies at the market we wandered over to all started to speak to us in French. The times for the taxis were called out in French, as well as the dock for departure was all in French. The information was written in French. So the guy who said that there wasn’t much French spoken on the Island must’ve never actually gone to the other side of island, and certainly doesn’t know the French love of their own language.

We boarded the bus and continued on our tour, and I was only too happy to end up back in Philipsburg. We were immediately assaulted by someone who wanted to try and con us in to a time share. We tried to be nice, but finally wound up just walk away from her.

We meandered through the town of Philipsburg. I should mention here that St. Maarten is one of the places in the Caribbean that still has actual jewelry deals. You can honestly get good deals on precious and semi-precious gems here, so we’re always interested in looking. Most things are guaranteed to appraise 30 to 50% more in the US, and you can get diamonds duty free; the only draw back is that they are NOT conflict free gems. Most of the are DeBeers. Hmph.

After some hunting we found two pieces- the most gorgeous of which you will get to see if you are going to be at Nicole and Brian’s wedding. Otherwise, wait for the pictures. Ha.

We walked around Philipsburg for a little while, waiting for the next water taxi to take us back to the boat.



There aren’t nearly as many moored boats in Philipsburg bay as there are in Marigot, but it’s still pretty.



We were back in plenty of time, and sat around relaxing mostly. We were treated to another gorgeous view, this one with a history.

The island you see in the distance is called Saba. There are less than 1500 people living on it, and the top of the mountain is 2800 ft above sea level, which is impressive since the island is only 5 sq miles. Now, if you’re a movie buff, you’ll know that THIS is Skull Island from the original 1932 version of King Kong. The island was used as background for the beginning of the film.

And if you’re SCUBA diver, this IS the place to go. The entire immediate shoreline is a marine preserve.



Next up, Antigua...

The Virginia Blogs: Um. We're homeowners?

I promise that I will get back to the vacation soon. Honest.

We're not moved in or anything, but we're well on our way to being such.

Ok, so this is one of the stories I need to write down. We've been thinking and trying and trying to save for a house for about 3 years. We've gone looking and driving by and talked to a realtor or two over those years. When we moved down here, I made a concentrated effort to start looking at houses. The problem has always been that what we like, we can't afford. What we can afford we don't like. What we like requires major repairs, or what we can afford is in the ghetto.

Been there, done that, got the hell out.

So, we found some townhomes in Yorktown that we liked. They were nice. They were new. They were still building. We decided to keep an eye on them for a while and perhaps in Sept., go talk to them. I would once in a while wander back to the website and stare longingly at the floor plan, and sometimes wander through the other site and homes they were offering.

It had probably been 2 or 3 months since I had been back to this website, still wandering about looking for other houses we might want to consider. Well, as I wandered I came across a new development name I had never seen before: Fenwick Hills. Hmm. Ok, I'm curious.

I click on and play with the first house that comes up. It had a fun little 'build your own' button, and you could adjust things the way you wanted. Then I looked at the price.

Bwah? It fell under my mark for any home we might consider. Well under. Like $10,000 under. I showed this little find to Tom and he liked it. He probably thought nothing more of it after that. I did though.

The next day, since we had nothing to do, I decided to take us up to these sites and check them out. Maybe get a little information, think about it sort of thing.

We wound up in the wrong damn development. The houses were HUGE and gorgeous and I kept thinking, "There's no way these are the houses in that online brochure..." Sure enough, when we walked into the sales office, the lady said that the houses start about $350 and go from there. She was nice enough to direct us to the proper place.

Well, I walked in and asked for some information. I poked around the decorated model for a few before the lady could talk to me. Being that I was actually going to school to be an architect at one point, I was noticing details and was pleased with what I was seeing. I had to pause to wipe the drool off the granite countertops...

The lady was nice enough to talk to me and give me some information. I asked for a slew of information, and she happily answered me. I finally decided that Tom had to come in and see this place because I was loving it-- despite that it was not the place we had come to look at.

I dragged him, a bit of kicking and screaming, and we wandered through the townhouse. It was simply gorgeous. It was also completely out of our range. However the house that we had originally come in to ask about was in our price range, in our square footage range, and had actual land with it.

We drove home and I would say that by the time we got home that night, we decided to go back and apply for the house. What was the worst that could happen? They laughed at us and said no. I've had worse happen. So has he.

Well, they didn't laugh and they didn't say no. And sometime between August 16th and September 16th, we will be closing and moving into our house.



Our house will have a garage where the window is on this one. We are also probably going for a greyish/taupe for the siding.



This is the floor plan we picked. Actually, the only thing that we added on was the bay window in the living room.

And here is where they are going to build it--


I'll have a picture when they put the sold sign on the lot. Because I'm excited and cheesey that way.

ADDED 2020: 

Through a series of miscommunications, bad credit, and a totally unreasonable request from the realtor, we wound up not building this house. I'm still mad about the situation, but I'm not mad that the house didn't get built. A year later we'd move back to Philly, and just a few months after that, the shipyard had massive layoff and nearly my whole former department was eliminated. We would have been stuck in James City County, VA with no job and massive mortgage. 

Things work out. 

The Virginia Blogs: Bubble Heads In St. Thomas

The first thing you learn about cruises is that they are not really as relaxed and laid back as you might think if you plan on actually leaving the ship in port. Ninty percent of the excursions leave within 1/2 an hour of clearance at the dock. We ordered breakfast as room service because... well, it was free. Heh.

Let me just say that St. Thomas is a standard stop on nearly all cruises from the US. We've been there before, so once you've done the Island Exploration tour, you have to start getting creative with what you're doing. This was our answer.

Today, like the next four, we had to be on the dock by 8 a.m. But this was going to be a really cool excursion, and we were very excited about it. Not to mention, the boat pulled right up next to our ship. Sweet. No sweaty bus.



Our excursion boat pulled up and the first thing we are told is that this is barefoot boat. You are not allowed to wear shoes on the boat at anytime, so there was a bucket for everyone to deposit their footwear in. This is actually a great idea in warmer waters; its much easier to feel the deck of the ship without shoes on and keep your balance better. When the captain got us going, we knew why. We were seriously hauling through the water.

This was the first chance I had to get a look at the Boss Underwater Scooters.



There are only 200 of these things in the world. They are basically just what the name implies. Underwater scooters. You sit on this thing, put your head in the bubble so you can breathe, and go. Technically.

We were divided into two groups, and Tom and I lucked out on being the second group. This gave us a chance to get into the water and get used to the temperature. Even in the Caribbean, the water is cold in the winter. About 70.* And it gave us the chance to watch the whole process of getting in and out of these things.



They are lowered into the water, and then floated out to anchor points. The mini buoys you see are meant to keep track of where you are once you drop your buoyancy to get under the water. They are sources of amusement, as I will explain in a moment.

As the first group is swimming out and loading up, the captain throws a cup of cat food into the water. Bwah? About a half a second later, over a hundred yellow snapper are in a feeding frenzy all around the scooters and the boat and several unsuspecting snorklers.

[photo to come**]
We both decide getting in the water while the others were out and about in the scooters was a good idea. We doned our masks and snorkels and jumped in. I’m extremely comfortable in the water, which was a good thing, because were in about 35 feet of water. Tom is not so comfortable in deep water. Still he jumped in. At least you knew you weren’t going to hit your head.

We could see the scooters in the distance under the water. It was just plain neat that there was no SCUBA equipment involved in driving around down there—it was very James Bond.



They started to bring the scooters back after about 10 minutes and we crawled back on deck to watch. Well, you could watch the progress of the scooters through those little buoys like the 007 above. One of them was going around in circles. Apparently, they had been going around in circles for the whole time. The captain laughed, and said, “Every time. There’s always one that just goes in circles.”

I kept that comment in mind as we got in to the water to do this.

So, I swam up to my little underwater scooter, and ducked in as they had instructed: grab the back edge of the helmet, take a deep breath and use that grip to pull yourself under the back lip and into the bubble. No problem. But that wasn’t where they usually had the problems.

I gave the OK signal to the guide and he let the air ballast out. Down I went. This was wicked cool. Breathing in the bubble is an art. You have to remember to do it. You swear that you’re not able to breathe because you’re completely surrounded by water. But you are because there’s an oxygen tank right there. Once you realize you can breathe, you realize you can’t hear. The pressure in the water goes up MUCH faster than the pressure does down in the air. So you have to swallow every 3 feet your descend to clear your ears. We were only about 15, 20 feet down at any time. Still, just a little up and down makes you have to clear your ears.

Here’s something else you need to know underwater. The OK handle signal means OK, the thumbs up signal means “get me to the damn surface now”. Don’t use the thumbs up signal.

[there are photos underwater, to come**]

We merrily putzed along under the water, and learned that there is a reason there’s always one that goes in circles—those machines are really hard to steer! Holy mackerel, are they are hard. No matter how hard you mash the power button, you’re underwater and it takes a few seconds for the scooter to answer. So you can hit that button, turn the yoke and still be head straight for the fire coral.

You don’t want to be heading straight for fire coral. Ever. It’s seriously ouchie, and the only way to stop the sting is to pee on the burn. I’m not kidding you. Pee neutralizes the sting. I really didn’t want to pee on my hand.

I mashed the control and turned the yoke the other direction and carefully brought it back to the direction I wanted go – not towards the fire coral. While I didn’t end up being the sucker that went in circles, I surely would have been stopped for a suspected DUI with all the bobbing and weaving I was doing.

So our 15 minutes were up and we had to move back to where we were anchored. And this is where my asthma situation sucks. I have about 15, 18 minutes underwater before, between the pressure and the oxygen mixture, the asthma starts to kick in. It’s not an attack per se, but more of a ‘holy crap I’m going to die’ feeling. I knew it was going to happen, and I was kind of prepared. But it took them an extra minute or two to get to me in the scooter. I was, at that point, into the ‘just breathe, don’t panic’ breathing pattern.

Finally, they got to me and brought me up. Now, here is where they have all the problems with people getting out of these things. You can’t just curl yourself up and scoot down, there’s not enough room. So you have to throw your feet out backwards and push yourself in the same direction. I didn’t really understand what the hell they were talking about until I was in the thing. It’s really the only logical way out; there just aren’t a lot of logical people out there.

We had a few minutes while they got the scooters back on board, which after my air thing, wasn’t good. I found out first that someone had yacked on my bag. Only a little bit, but it was yack and it was on my bag. Ew. I also remembered that I hated anchored boats in lightly tossing seas. You have to give me the big waves or no waves. I was absolutely miserable until still we started moving again. And once we were moving, I was fine.



We wandered around the little shopping area in St. Thomas, which was basically all part of the port. It was a tourist trap, of course. There were no real deals to be had, but we found a few T’s for Tom—who realized that he had only packed about 2 t-shirts. We were only there for about an hour. We did buy a soda each. They didn’t have my usual, so I got a diet 7-up. Never ever buy anything but a diet coke outside the US. I had to choke it down for a few sips because I was so thirsty. I then turned to Tom and apologized and threw it out.

It was the first of two formal nights on the ship, but I’m going to do an entire single entry on just the boat, so you’ll have to wait for that. But here, you can enjoy the sunset.




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*When you're used to going in down there at 85 degrees, that's cold.
** yeah, there were a LOT of pictures; these were on underwater cameras that I haven’t had a chance to develop. Yes, people still develop film.