the happenings

a lot of things fell through the cracks in the tragic summer of 2012, and i have slowly but surely been trying to reassemble the pieces and get back into a normal groove. i am always amazed (in a bad way) at how quickly good habits fall away, and how much work it is to get them back. but, i keep trying anyway.

so, here are a few of the things that are (getting) back on track.

1. piano. i was so sick and then so depressed (and then so in china) that i hadn't touched my keyboard in months. i've really enjoyed dusting it off (literally and figuratively). i feel like piano is one of the few things in life where i can match my effort to an outcome and see a result. that's really satisfying. i am learning christmas music right now, and i just might have a little living room rehearsal of some of the pieces i master. come, won't you? 

2. cooking. i wasn't sure how i was going to feel about "wifely" duties once i was married, given my aversion to traditional gender roles and all, but i actually really enjoy preparing meals for my little family. probably especially because AWD is always so grateful and says everything i make is delicious (it's not). and it's crock pot season again, which makes cooking even easier. last week we made mama bear's mushroom gravy, and we baked up an apple pie to boot.

3. adventuring. we have been having such gorgeous fall weather here, with soft, warm days, i hate the feeling of wasting them. sadly, there are always saturday chores and errands and tasks to be done, it seems, but we did manage a trip up to shenandoah national park, pre-hurricane sandy, to do some leaf peeping. it was lovely, as you can see for yourselves.

my next big goal is to get back on schedule with scripture reading and other matters of spirituality. it seems funny (not in a good way) that those are sometimes the first things to go just at the moment you need them most. but there you have it. i'll keep you posted. it's good to be back. 

the end of china

to take our minds off the election results (which are coming in painfully slowly, i might add), here are some more pictures of china!

our last stop was beijing and we were pretty wiped out when we got there, so we just stuck with the major attractions and ate our breakfasts at mcdonald's.

in an exciting/annoying/overwhelming twist, we were in beijing on national day. the upside of hitting beijing on a national holiday was that all the nearby factories were closed so the air quality was only terrible instead of deadly. the downside of being in beijing on a national holiday was that about 1 billion chinese people were there as well, so everywhere we went was really crowded. i mean, really crowded.

but, that's all part of the adventure, right?

tiananmen square was appropriately packed and decorated for the occasion.

{mao's masoleum, where the rumor is that it is actually a wax figure and not really the chairman on display. a rumor that's hard to verify since the building is only open for two hours every day}

the forbidden city was elbow-to-elbow. it was also the scene of one of the more interesting chinese phenomenons that we observed. chinese people love to gather around museum displays, shove people out of the way, take a photo of whatever treasure is in the glass case, and then rush off to the next display without even taking a very good look. it was weird. i made myself very unpopular by lingering in front of display cases and taking my time admiring. i did not care.

either way, the forbidden city was a vast and charming place. we closed it down, which meant we even had a few non-overcrowded moments among the splendor.

and, to get the whole imperial experience, we spent a morning in the temple of heaven park and made an afternoon escape to the summer palace.

other beijing highlights included street vendor cotton candy approximately three times bigger than my head and an awesome hotel housed on a compound that was once the courtyard residence of a high-ranking dynasty eunuch. i actually could have lived at that hotel for the rest of my life and been pretty content.

i'll admit that beijing wasn't our favorite stop, but it was totally worth it for the piece de resistance: a trip to the great wall. it has been one of my lifelong dreams to set foot on the great wall and it was so surreal to be there. surreal and awesome. we hired a car to drive us the two hours or so to the mutianyu portion of the wall, hiked our hearts out for three hours, and came home tired and happy.

and that, my friends, is a perfect trip to china.

cupcake politics

this made all the TV ads worth it.

sandy, can't you see, i'm in misery

the bad news about our hurricane sandy experience is that we lost power our basement flooded.

the good news is that we got our stuff out of the basement before anything was damaged and we had a hurricane day at EH's and a sleepover at bob and joyce's until the power came back.

which also means that we watched "dancing with the stars." i am not sure what category of news that fits into, so i'll just leave it neutral.

the aftermath is that this is our kitchen:

but, our power is back, the basement is dry and mold-free and now we have a reason to organize all the junk we had just tossed in the basement. so far i have uncovered letters from my old boyfriend, stupidhead john and my beloved hello, kitty alarm clock. who knows what other treasures lurk?

plus, i have an excuse to sing this song non-stop.

so, in the end, not a terrible hurricane.