such a great weekend. tomorrow is my 40th birthday, so smartboy took this weekend as his opportunity to surprise me, and so did my secret pal 8 secret pal! it was great. pics will have to wait until i'm not so very tired, but i'll do my best to do some descriptions justice until then :)
the fun started friday afternoon, when smartboy arrived home from work early (which never happens) and brought in a big colorful gift bag from the porch for me. my secret pal had left it for me, and inside were two kinds of sock yarn (one bunch for me and one bunch for smartboy), two addi turbo circulars, some bath and spa things, some candy, and a card telling me to knit a swatch in the round and let her know the results--she's going to make me a custom pattern for socks for me and for smartboy! how cool is that?? i'm very jazzed. i had to google making a swatch in the round, because i've never done that before, and that involved learning how to knit on two circulars, which was a little challenging at first, but i think i have the hang of it now. i think i'm doing it a little tightly--like a lot of new knitters do, holding the needles snugly, since this is a new technique for me--but i have a few inches left to swatch. we'll see how i do. the yarn is lovely--she picked perfect colors for both of us. i will photograph them, i promise!
anyway, then smartboy swooped our bags into the car (he'd told me earlier in the week that we were going away, so i'd packed a bag already), and after a quick dinner at d's (veggie dog with brown mustard and onions for me), we hit the road. i was driving, as usual, but he just gave me directions--i had no idea where we were going! we ended up at newmyer house bed and breakfast in connellsville, which really was delightful. the food was particularly good for foodies like us :) we completely crashed out friday night, falling asleep by, seriously, about 7:30.
when i came out of the bathroom saturday morning, a perfectly wrapped little tiffany box awaited me on the desk. i've never received anything in a tiffany box before, and i was perfectly giddy. there were two cards--one tiffany enclosure card, and another "from all your dogs" that he got me "because he couldn't sign the tiffany one" (it was preprinted--isn't that sweet?). anyway, inside was this perfect, beautiful little frank gehry-designed necklace
that we'd seen in an interview with gehry on television weeks ago, and i'd oohed and aahed over it, never imagining that i'd ever *own* it. i totally love it and haven't taken it off since i made him put it on that instant (my hands were shaking too much to do it myself) (yes, i cried).
breakfast yesterday morning started with a cantaloupe soup with a bit of coconut milk garnished with raspberries fresh from their amazing garden. fresh orange juice and little mini banana breads and some kind of biscotti (i don't really dig biscotti, so i didn't pay attention) followed that. and the main attraction were crisp-fluffy waffles with walnuts and blueberries--not in the batter, but on top, big and whole. yum. and not drowning in butter and syrup--yuck. you could totally taste every flavor, just like you should be able to. really delicious. and they even had smartboy's favorite tea (stash lemon-ginger).
after breakfast, we headed to fallingwater for a late morning tour, an overpriced but tasty-if-not-homemade lunch (i swear i must have gained five pounds this weekend) of creamed chicken and biscuits and bread pudding (the latter may have been homemade), and spending lots of money in the gift shop. i've been hunting for cufflinks to enable me to wear this blue silk shirt i bought at the yard sale last month that has french cuffs, and found these
. then we bought some very cool mechanical toys for my nephews, whose birthdays are in late august--we always seem to find them things at museum gift shops for some reason. and i finally indulged myself in a copy of a field guide to american houses, 
a book i've wanted for about 20 years. and another book on architecture theory, the title of which escapes me at the moment. and a VERY cool book about making pop-ups--i LOVE pop-up books (like ridiculously--i've bought nearly every robert sabuda pop-up for the aforementioned nephews and own the america and wizard of oz ones myself) and when i saw this, i just couldn't resist.
after that, we pretty much crashed again at the b&b for a long nap until...the amazing dinner! what an incredible chef he is! i only remember one of the owners' names (dan) and not, unfortunately, the chef's, though we spent lots of time talking with both of them. shame on me. anyway, for dinner, we had thai vegetable rolls and sundried tomato and sunflower seed bread with dipping oil and butter, followed by a lemon-cardamom intermezzo. the entree was a chipotle grilled breast of chicken with a mango salsa, perfectly cooked sugar snap peas, and roasted garlic mashed potatoes with fried shallot shoestrings for garnish. then we had a salad course of a very good traditional caesar salad. dessert was a beautifully constructed miniature bed, made of a lime-white chocolate mousse, with dark chocolate scrolled head- and footboards, atop a kiwi puree, and garnished with fresh raspberries from the garden. fresh herbs and edible flowers were present throughout the meal as well. i wish i could remember what kind of soup it was...i remember gobbling it down :) i was stuffed at the end of the meal, though i only ate half of each course, to be sure i would have room to taste everything. i can't remember, but i feel like there was a soup as well at the beginning.
other than reading and knitting, much sleeping ensued. in the morning, another fabulous breakfast--this time of a great yogurt, berry, and granola parfait, followed by apple-cinnamon coffee-cake mini-loaves and chocolate-chai biscotti, and the best part--goat cheese and chive omelets, fabulous potatoes (thinly sliced and baked? not heavily sauced, just nice and light), and bacon--oh, there'd been bacon the previous morning as well, both times perfectly crisped. and orange juice. so, so good. and after both breakfasts, they wrapped all of the breads we didn't eat so we could eat them later, which they also did with a couple of truffles and cookies in the evening. they totally believe in feeding you at that place! a foodie's heaven :)
then we were off to kentuck knob, where we had an odd tour. the tour guide was good--they always are--but we had a family with four children and a noisily inquisitive older woman who never listened to answers in our tour group, the combination of which made for a pretty annoying tour. we were both glad it was our fourth, not our first, visit. we did pick up a few books in the gift shop--all of this reading in anticipation of a probable remodel of this or our next house. then we came home and got the dogs from the kennel and have since been recuperating. :) i've been trying to knit, but mainly i just want to sleep :) i'll try to photograph some of the new yarn and goodies tomorrow.
there is sad news on my front--not just that i have to work tomorrow and that smartboy has to work tomorrow NIGHT :( no, bigger than that. i learned this evening that one of our friends is suspected of having acute myeloid leukemia. son of a bitch. i lost my good childhood friend mcphail to leukemia when we were just 19. horrible disease. they're not sure yet whether that's it--there's a chance it's not, and they (he and his wife) will head to boston for a second opinion before beginning chemo or anything, but right now, this is what they think. i've had "register for marrow donor registry" on my to-do list for about a year, where it reappeared after having lapsed from my forebrain after a decade or so of chickening out after mac died. i think it's pretty much a mandate now.
but let me tell you--news like this makes me hard pressed to find reasons to get annoyed with smartboy. life is short. joe and karen got married only months before smartboy and me. that's how i got to know them--karen and i met on a wedding planning web site, got to know each other online, and eventually met in person and became real-life friends. the joy and passion these two have for each other is palpable--utterly impossible for anyone around them to miss. when we took ballroom dance lessons with them in the weeks leading up to our wedding, j+k would giggle so much at private jokes only they had understood that i would tease, "it's a shame you two are so dull and reserved, you know!" if anyone can kick leukemia's sorry ass, it's joe, with the help of his devoted beloved karen, and all of us friends behind them, cheering them on. meanwhile, if you know of some manly chemo cap patterns, send them my way :-{
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