How cool
is this?
All of this is becoming inexorably real . . .
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is this?
All of this is becoming inexorably real . . .
I thought I had blogged about this last June, which was the first official Really Expensive Restaurant Month (last year it was Maestro, Laboratorio del Galileo, and Vidalia), but I guess I was too fat and happy to do so, so I can't track back to that blissful (non)entry. This June is the second annual Really Expensive Restaurant Month, which will see meals in the coming weeks at Palena, and Colvin Run Tavern.
But neither of them (and none of last year's, as remarkable as they were) will likely compare to the meal Ann and I ate on Friday evening. Regarded by many as the best restaurant in DC metro, and by some as the best in the nation, The Inn at Little Washington lives up to the hype (and that website is worth a visit, too).
I will spare you all the gory details, but a few of them couldn't hurt:
* I had fois gras at two different courses (and could've had it for a third)
* Ann was "not disappointed" by the trio of chocolate desserts, which hasn't happened in a very long time.
* When they didn't have any aged gouda on Faira, the cow-shaped cheese trolley (whiched mooed as it was wheeled out), the Frommager whispered something to our server, who shortly came out with a plate of the best aged gouda I'd ever had. in addition to a full cheese course. which was also the best I've ever had. no extra charge.
Now this last point may seem like faint praise, since this was not a cheap meal (birthday, father's day, and official new-job-taking-us-out-of-the-area celebrations were needed in conjunction to justify this trip), but last year at Maestro, they charged us a great deal for every bottle of water they opened, and tap was never offered as an option. when being nickeled and dimed translated into five- and ten-dollar bills, there's a problem. Here we knew we were paying a large sum, and all the little extras were just part of it. period.
Anyway, not every course was the best thing I'd ever eaten, but with the underlying sense of whimsy, the precise-but-not-stiff service, and some of the best things I've ever eaten (did I mention the glass of vintage port as old as my sister, this was the best meal I'd ever had.
July: No-Going-To-Restaurants Month.
At three and a half hours each way, not counting rush hour delays on the beltway coming and going, doing the back-and-forth to the new house in Morgantown is a bit grueling.
I've been up and back six times so far this year: for the on-campus, two trips to look at real estate (plus one that Ann took without me), one for benefits and writing orientation, one for the settlement, and today to get the utilities turned on. during the last two, we've also loaded up the minivan full of stuff to get heavy/expensive-to-pack-professionally stuff up so that we're not paying movers to do work that we can manage ourselves. So far, 31 boxes of books, which is most of them actually--probably three more floating around, plus the ones we're trying to sell used or donate.
Anyway, I've been sitting in a driver's seat for 8 hours today, so sitting here is less than ideal. And so I'm off for the night.
If we remember that the new millenium really began in 2001, we must also acknowledge that today begins my fourth decade (Is that right? It can't be. . . oh, you tell me).
I had a long entry prepared on Catalyst Theater's very compelling (although not always great) take on Macbeth, entitled shkspr prjct. Then my computer cut out, so here's the Post's review.
Just to give you a picture, think modern dance with a narrative and Hieronymus Bosch as the choreographer.
The discussion has begun on Donald Hall's primer for the new academic, The Academic Self (Columbus: Ohio State UP, 2002).
The discussion is exciting to me in part because the author was on the search committee that hired me, and really helped convince me that this new position will be a good fit. But name-dropping aside, most of my readers know the degree to which I espouse the notion of identity performance, one that Hall leans heavily upon. Moreover, given the new start that I'll be embarking upon (am embarking upon?), I feel like some attention to how I craft my academic self--how I perform that role--in the next year will be crucial to any career as an academic Imight be able to carve out for myself.
I have been track-backing Claire a lot lately, in part because she's someone whom I admire a lot, and also because she's going through a similar uprooting. This post in particular feels familiar, and gets at a lot of things I have been feeling, or rather wish I've been feeling.
It's been hard to process what's going on beneath the making of lists, signing of reams of paper, calling around, running the credit card, etc. because there's been so much to do.
I know I'm supposed to be, need to be, even want to be, feeling really sad about our impending departure, and blogging honestly about this intermingling of excited joy and longing sadness for the life we're moving west of. But these moments are buried in an absolute panic of deadlines, details, and to do lists. This space has been one of the few where I can clear out a little room and my head and ask, "What am I thinking?" This is a role that's gotten more crucial of late (hence the more confessional tone of the writing here), and one that I hope will continue, even after the urgency has dissipated.
But, thinking of what Claire writes (and her daughter Zoe advises) I'm trying to be just a little bit sad now, sad about the Costco that we won't have access to buy cheap bunches of roses, sad about not having Caris, the toddler next door, sad about not being a stone's throw (or heave) from Erin, Dave, Natalie, Jason, Lisa, Leslie, Christy and heather and Mark and Phyllis and Cayo and Rachel at GW, whoever; and also feeling the loss of friends who are already gone: Brian, Greg, Larry, Erin Kelly, Nora, the whole pack of friends who we see less than we'd like, whose lives intersect with ours more sparsely now, and even more sparsely soon. I'm sad about not taking DC's great Metro, about Spring Mill chocolate chip oatmeal cookies, about leaving the beltway, for god's sake, that snarl of traffic that taught me how to really drive.
We're going soon, not soon enough to really mourn, but too soon anyway.
First the details.
After a lovely drive into the mountains, Ann and I pulled into Morgantown (the hip kids call it Mo'town--I'm not so sure), and ducked into a discount furniture store that our realtor had recommended. With all this new space, we need some more furniture, somehitng to weigh us down, I suppose. Like an espresso-finish bedroom suit will keep us from floating into the space between the floor and ceiling.
We walked out of the store very happy (we got some excellent prices on furniture, and the delivery and set-up will all be free), proceeded into town, and checked into our hotel. We had dinner with Cari Carpenter (last year's rookie Americanist) and her husband Eric at the brewpub, and I for one really started to feel more comfortable in my Morgantown skin; most of the time on other visits--with realtors, benefits, 102 orientation--I've felt like I was still on my on campus, and was wearing my metaphorical interview suit. This is slowly starting to change.
Anyway, we got up on Tuesday, had some breakfast in the hotel, went to the very sparkly new Target to pick up some basic supplies for the new house, stopped in a nifty wine store just down the road for our new place for a bottle of celebratory bubbly. (The wine store is in the same shopping strip as the independent and used book store, and both are just down the road from our house: very dangerous).
We met Anna Marie, our realtor, and did a final walkthrough. The place was immaculate, and bigger than I had even remembered; that will change once all this stuff arrives, but that's another post.
We arrived at the settlement attorney's office at 2, expecting a 1-hour paper-signing session, after which we could grab lunch. At 3:30 as we were reaching the last couple of pages in the inch-thick stack of documents, the attorney hands Ann a sheet of paper and says, "I haven't looked at that; I got it by fax today, and the mortgage company needs you to sign it.
The document is, to the outsider, a note from Ann dated 5/20, eleven days prior. It laid out a scenario about her employment situation that was patently false, and suggested that she'd be working here in MD, staying with her (non-existent) sister, and coming to WV on the weekends.
There were some phone calls, some exhcnages, our lawyer was brought into the conversation, but long story short (or a little less long), we walked out of the settlement without a new house (it was left in escrow) and a ticket on the van.
This story has a happy ending. A revised version of the memo (in Ann's handwriting) was accepted by the mortgage broker, and the house was ours as of about 45 mintues later. The parking ticket was just a warning(!!--College Park could take a lesson--!!), and the first bits of furniture that were in stock arrived at our new home.
We uncorked our champagne as we sat on our new sofa (ziggy-grey with elephants on the throw-pillows), unpacked the van of the books and office stuff we had hauled west, and hit the road for home. It had been a long, long, day.