Barbecue, Bloodys, and a "Blizzard"

Three day weekends rock  (Happy Birthday George)!  Three days untouched by the pressures of work, or office stress in and of themselves are enough to bring on the beginnings of an actual feeling of relaxation by the end of the third day, if I'm lucky.  But, having a fantastic trifecta come together on what is just the second day of this three day weekend, is enough to inspire me to actually write something.  Well, kind of - I do have a lot of pictures, but we all know how lazy I am, and I do have to get back to enjoying my current trifecta (or at least two of the three) of, you guessed it - barbecue, bloodys, and a "blizzard". 


Here is my attempt at sharing a tiny slice of my happy Sunday with you, dear readers.  :)

First up, it's 'Grizzly Jay' and his new beard at Alamo Barbecue in Church Hill, RVA.  Did I mention this is an outdoor venue?  Did I also mention the wintery weather today?  

Next, the 'standard' -- pulled pork bbq with coleslaw on a toasted bun.  Pretty?  No.  Pretty tasty?  Hells yeah.

Then, the heavily decorated Pulled Pork Soft Taco.

And who could forget, the magical Cuban Pressed Pork sandwich?  Magical because although it looks like a dry toasted frisbee here, it tastes like a Cuban revolution in your mouth.  Or, for those of you that lean towards the less dramatic, it was yummy, and I would have eaten it all, if Jay hadn't been the one that ordered it.  

Finally, as a side, the Jalapeno Mac and Cheese.  Jay made me split it with him.  He is lucky that I have jeans to fit into.

Did I eat all of this food myself?  Regretfully no, and unfortunately, I even forgot to take a picture of my own entree because I was apparently so excited about everyone else's food.  (It's a curse).  So, what did I have?  I indulged in the Pulled Chicken BBQ Burrito Bowl, which is quite a tasty little alternative to the standard.  Oh, and of course ...

What's better on a snowy Sunday than an Absolut Peppar Bloody Mary made with Zing Zang?  Yeah, not much.

Also, because I did mention the first, and only, sign of winter weather that we have had all season, I present to you The "Blizzard" of 2012 ... from my front porch ...

... and from my back patio.  Awe inspiring accumulation, right?  Yeah, I know DQ probably has more snow in their Blizzard frozen treats, BUT since it's supposed to be 65 degrees again two days from now, I suppose I'll take whatever little I can get.  :)

Today I Learned ...

Today, I learned that one should move outside, or to the nearest doorway during an earthquake.  I had no idea.  I also learned that earthquakes might sound like a giant unbalanced dryer shaking the entire house, or an evil alien invasion and they can most certainly happen on the east coast of the US.  Who knew?  Lastly, I learned that I don't think I could deal with this as a 'regular occurrence' without wearing adult diapers, and probably would not do well living on the west coast or in parts of the Pacific without having some sort of head trauma.  I do, however, now understand why California has had no problems finding supporters to legalize marijuana.


Stay tuned for the next exciting installment of "Today I Learned" when I might have the exciting opportunity to tell you what new and amazing things I learn about hurricane preparedness from Irene's impending visit.  Ha!  And who said I wasn't an outdoorsy kind of person?   Stay safe everyone!

Time Out

After several attempts at starting to write, and then stopping abruptly because of outside influences, I figure I should just cut to the chase and get this going.  As I mentioned in my last post, you know that things have been a little shaken up around these parts, so after a few less than relaxing days this weekend was exactly what the doctor ordered.


Thanks to some wonderful friends who just bought a new boat, Jay and I were lucky enough, and extremely grateful to spend a large part of Saturday cruising the James River.  We couldn't have asked for a more perfect day to be on the water.  Starting from just below the City of Richmond we got to take in a lot of sites, including the estate of Jimmy Dean (as in the country music star and more importantly the king of sausage - not the rebel without a cause), and the recreations of the Nina, the Pinta, and the Santa Maria, on the way to our Jamestown destination to have some lunch then head back to Richmond.  

The late, great Jimmy Dean's estate.  

View down the James.

Jay couldn't wait to break out the brownie bites - his favorite.

The Jamestown-Scotland Ferry.

Look close (or enlarge the shot) and you'll see replicas of the Nina, Pinta, and Santa Maria.

All smiles.

I can't think of a more fabulous way to kick off the summer and forget about all of the daily noise for a second.  Thank goodness for friends who are there to help us take a 'time-out' in life when we most need it ... especially the ones with boats!  ;)  

PhotoHunt 256: Machine(s)

Machines are all around us these days, so it really wouldn't have been a difficult task to snap a shot of any random machine that most everyone comes into contact with on a daily basis.  Keeping that in mind, it really made me wonder why this specific picture is the one that automatically came to mind for this week's PhotoHunt.  I think part of the reason may have been the idea of wanting to know more about what "it" actually is, and the other part may have to do with the role that it played once upon a time in everything that has grown up around all it.  Both reasons actually leave a lot for thought on some level, so I can only assume that is why I hadn't completely forgotten about this photo altogether.

Have you figured out what it is yet?  Here's a better representation of the machine as a whole.

Still a little lost?  It's ok, just keep reading.

For me, I think the most interesting aspect of these photos, aside from the amount of information I uncovered just to satisfy my curiosity about what exactly I was looking at, came from the meaning in the composition.  If you look at the top photo, you'll see the old 'Lucky Strike' cigarette factory peeking through the structure - a direct result of it's forgotten surroundings.  In the photo that follows, there are a few things of note.  There is a tiered image of structures, quite possibly reflecting in chronologically descending order, with the machine that is the subject of the photo at the top; an old canal, whose primary usefulness has been all but discarded, supporting both the machine, as well as the modern skyline; and then, of course, there is that lone bird in the photo standing on the water of the old canal harkening back to a scene that those who were here before any of this engineering may have seen.  Through looking and learning about everything in this photo, I've thought about all of the amazing things that our machines create - cities, states, and countries, but I've also thought a lot about those who have created everything leading up to our machines.

So what is my machine?  The machine in my photo is an old train trestle drawbridge, known as a single-leaf bascule bridge, standing over a section of the James River and the Kanawha Canal at Great Shiplock Park in Richmond, VA.  It's said that sketches of these bascule bridges have been found in history as early as the 1500s, in notes by Leonardo diVinci.  The top shot shows you the counter weight inside the great big box that used to pull up the train trestle so the boats coming up the canal could transport freight to the warehouses along the canal into the city, and the rest of the state.  This canal was surveyed and planned by George Washington in the late 1700s, and construction was finally completed in the 1850s as part of Washington's plan to secure Virginia's economic success, which in turn secured the City of Richmond's economic success.  By 1877, the flooding and the Civil War had done a number on the success of the canal and it's funding, and the railroads eclipsed the efficiency of the canal system.  Rail was put in along the river by the canal to serve the same purpose of importing and exporting goods, like tobacco, to and from the many warehouses that sprung up along the route during the early years of the city.  The bridge you see above was built in 1930 by the Virginia Bridge and Iron Company for use by the Norfolk & Western Railway.  Though the track may still see sine occasional use, the bridge has not been raised in many years to accommodate the canal beneath.

Through digging around and discovering 'new' things in order to properly identify the  very cool machine in my photo, what I can't help but notice is how our human history is as interconnected as parts of a machine, constantly working together to achieve a purpose.  We are most likely to take for granted all that came before us to achieve that from which we take, create, and make new in order to help form our future, but like cogs on a wheel, everything we do now as a "human machine" is a result of someone or something that came before.  So, though we may at times think of ourselves as useless parts of a whole, we certainly cannot help but know that everything we do now will most certainly affect the foundation that our future is built on.  And, much like the evolution of our  industrial machines that depend on the function of their counterparts, we wouldn't be nearly as functional or productive in our own evolution without the support of each other .