Gettysburg, PA

This past weekend Kyle and I went up to Gettysburg to celebrate our anniversary. We drove up early on Saturday and spent the morning exploring part of the park and listening to a ranger talk about the Battle of Little Round Top. It's so cool to get up close and personal with history. So so much better than any history classes that I have taken. I think it is one of those things that if I had known I enjoy history this much, and that it could be this exciting, I might have taken the history route in college. Oh well, part of me knows that I will be going back to school sometime in the future, so I guess I'll have another chance if I want.

Anyhow, we drove over to Hanover, PA and enjoyed the annual Dutch Festival. We bought a really room divider built out of old windows. So cool. After wrestling it into our car we drove to the B & B where we stayed that night. It was a beautiful, charming old brownstone. Our hosts were great and the breakfast we had was amazing :)

We spent Sunday back at Gettysburg exploring the museum there and then driving back home. Then I had to run to the grocery store so I could make dinner for a family in our Bible study who just got home with their newly adopted son. It was a rather exhausting, but wonderful weekend. Now it's back to the grind of looking for a job.

Planes, trains, and automobiles

We just got back from a wonderful and much needed vacation in J'ville and in the Ozarks. Coming back, Kyle had to be paged for his flight and during his hurry to the gate the strap on his bag broke. Oops! I spent most of my day in various airports, as my first flight left after Kyle's and had a lengthy layover in Atlanta on the second leg of my trip. Needless to say, it would have taken only 1 hour more to drive the trip as it did to fly...Maybe next time. The trip ended with me getting a phone call from Kyle saying that he couldn't come pick me up at the airport because the car was dead. Seriously? Well, that led to taking the train, waiting, and then taking the bus. At least I met a charming young boy who was pulling flower petals off of his sunflower and handing them to me.

The vacation itself was great. I mostly just hung out at home and enjoyed some wonderful food. My old neighbor got married on the 11th, so we went to the wedding and had fun with my family at the reception. It was fun to get dressed up, but I was mortified to find that my own choice in attire was almost identical to the bridesmaids dresses. Yikes! At least the bride didn't seem to mind and actually thought it was funny :).

After the wedding it was time to head to the lake for a couple of days of fabulous relaxing and fantastic food. Fishing, swimming, water skiing, and a couple of games of Agracola and Bohnanza made up most of our free time when we weren't sleeping or eating. It was exactly what we both needed. I think the rest of the summer can be spent searching for a job and decorating/painting our place without the chance of me loosing my mind. Yay.

Does Mr. Clean have a Mrs.?

So it occurred to me that a better name for this blog might be "Challenges Domestic," because it seems that most of the interesting things that happen to me seem to be related to the tedious tasks related to the domestic side of life. However, that would make this rather lame and tedious itself. So, instead I will maintain the current title.

That being said, have you ever cleaned a "self-cleaning" oven? It is a misnomer. There is no such thing as an oven that cleans itself. Even if you run the self-clean feature and subject yourself to the noxious fumes for 4 hours and 20 minutes, you will still be required to scrub the oven door and all the nooks and crannies around the door, which will require more elbow grease than any normal human being possesses. Well, I stopped the whole aggravating process once the darn thing became presentable, if not sparkling clean.

Of course, once I tackled the oven nothing was going to stop me from cleaning the rest of the kitchen. So I cleaned out the microwave, scrubbed the sink, wiped the counter tops, cupboards, and walls, and swept the floor. I ran out of steam before I got to the fridge....maybe tomorrow.

This whole process would not have been necessary if I hadn't managed to drop dinner in the oven yesterday after it had finished baking. It was a eggplant timbale that smelled delicious and looked rather impressive until it was dropped and splattered everywhere. This event was preceded by one almost as disastrous. My can opener needs to be replaced. I had trouble opening the can of tomatoes...lets just say there was a minor explosion.

Anyhow, things are okay for the moment. Next time I'll make my culinary goals more attainable...like PBJ.