My Weekend in Food

North Carolina was much better than Mississippi. For one thing, no one tried to steal our car. Also, the convention was not demonstrably different than we expected, although it wasn't great (not busy enough for the number of people there and the LONG FREAKING HOURS). Hanging out with Dawn of Plankiest was even more awesome than usual. We had some good chats, even more good rants, ate junk food for dinner, and she convinced me to cut her hair.

Everything else was closed, okay? We'd had a big lunch, alright? Doesn't the half-light make it a little classier? No?

We ate at a Sweet Potatoes (order the sweet potato fries - seriously), Mellow Mushroom (get the Great White pizza and their AMAZING hummus dip appetizer), as well as Cat's Corner Bistro, and Opie's Southbound Grille (order the creme brulee) which had a room-service agreement with our hotel. We stayed in the Brookstown Inn, a restored mill with plenty o'charm. Also, they had a milk and cookies hour for free. It was too delicious for words.

Not our hotel, but still lovely.

We wandered around the arts district which was adorable. At Urban Artware, I got this piece of original art for our house and it was pretty inexpensive, too. I was thrilled. The artist has a bunch of these prints which include what he calls "The Story People." Check his work out here. This is one I was tempted to buy because my mother always said this, but I didn't. Still at $30/print, it's a lovely splurge to buy a few.



During our twelve-hour shift on Friday, Dawn decided she wanted me to cut her hair. She and I went to Walgreen's, bought haircutting scissors and went to town in the hotel bathroom. We laid down a towel to catch most of the clippings, but as you can well imagine, it didn't work spectacularly well. After all, Dawn had a bob that was even longer than mine and I cut it back to this:

This doesn't do it justice. And if you don't like it when you see it then Dawn's supposed to say I did it while I was drunk anyhow.

Her hair has natural curl, but still. I DID GOOD, PEOPLE. It's nice to know I have a backup career in case I need it. I shudder to think the insults hurled at me by the housekeeping staff, backup career notwithstanding.

I got back Sunday. I showered and packed an overnight bag to go hang with Mr. T and S (and later JG). We hit Pizzeria Paradiso (DCFoodies review, they don't have a website) up for some amazing dinner. I had a random micro-brewed summer ale that I loved but whose name escapes me. They had a zillion beers available from all over the world. It was impressive. We also enjoyed our bottle of Il Bastardo Sangiovese. Perfect with gourmet pizza.

After dinner we got ice cream and wandered the Georgetown boardwalk. I got a chocolate-dipped waffle cone with coconut ice cream and MAN has a been a long time since I've enjoyed me some ice cream in the summer. I confess my inner child was miffed to find I noticed the heat and lost my appetite for the sweetness after a while (a thing I swore never to do when I was young), but there it is. I think the mortgage automatically trips that switch.

We slept like logs that night and got up in the morning for Greenberry's coffee (iced because HELLO, it was 90 DEGREES!) and some quality time with our books. Then I hit the pool deck for like four hours. I used the spray sunscreen like it was going out of STYLE, so I managed not to burn, but how weird was it that I enjoyed what amounts to hours of sunbathing? You might not know this, but I'm not very good beach bum material. My arms get tired of holding books over my head, I get overheated and then CRANKY, and I want to have moving and instructive conversations, undeterred by the presence of sand, soothing water, or, I don't know, comfortable napping positions. Still, the stars aligned and it was a really fun way to spend Memorial Day in that fashion.