end of my 4-day weekend

today was st. patrick's day. savannah is shut down! you can't get anywhere, so most businesses, except bars and restaurants are closed. i didn't really think i was going to do anything, but a coworker called and asked if i wanted to see the parade with her. it was fun! savannah's st. patrick's was created to rival mardi gras. there's not really a lot of irish heritage here, i don't think, so most of the parade stuff has little to do with irish-ness. there's mostly a lot of drinking! but we stayed at the beginning of the parade and out of the drunken revelers, so we had a good time.

leprechauns...

shenanigans...

and mardi gras music!

and it was such a beautiful, picture-perfect day in savannah today.

but the best part was lunch. jennifer and i went to the sentient bean after the parade, where i had a delicious bbq tofu wrap. and we started off by sharing this wonderful jalapeno cheddar scone!


thanks jennifer :)

spring break and the start of my 4 day weekend

ah--spring break. and i took off monday, because we have st. patrick's day off down here. lame... but i have a 4-day weekend.

and last night, i kicked it off by finally seeing slumdog millionaire! it was such a fantastic movie! i don't even know what to say about it because it was sooo good, and i waited to see it for sooo long because this is savannah, and it didn't really play down here until it started winning all those awards. the soundtrack was also just great, and i think i might buy it on amazon or itunes or something.

sidebar: it was a much better ending to my week, because i found out at the beginning of the week that a box i shipped to lee that contained my favorite dvds (edward scissorhands, the princess bride, and beetlejuice) and my nancy drew books, oh--and my tiaa-cref account information--was lost by the post office. i am irrationally upset about the nancy drews...

back to my 4-day weekend...

i really didn't do anything today. it was cold again in savannah. okay, not cold for the north, but cold for down here. and it was 85 and disgustingly humid since last sunday, and today it was 50. i had my air conditioning on when i came home from work every day this week, and today i turned the heat on. i don't like this weather when it can't make up its mind what it would like to do. so, i stayed inside and made a new pair of earrings and a pendant.

then i baked cookies :) they were vegan peanut butter banana sugar cookies. they are pretty yummy!

pechakucha

pechakucha is a japanese phenomenon that is sweeping the world. or so we were told... anyway, the idea is that people have 20 slides of their work, something their interested in, whatever, and they have 20 seconds to present each of the slides. my friend stephanie is the course reserves coordinator at the library. she is really a photographer. she's putting together a body of work right now about a hunting preserve in northern georgia and was showing off some of it for this. it was an interesting night, though it was clear that several of the people there were just interested in getting buyers for their paintings. and it's also clear that scad does not teach students how to talk about their work. a couple of students presented work, theses, that sort of thing. but they only speak a bunch of po-mo babble. "oh, this is my work. it's all about the concept." what's the concept? "it's about me and it's kind of a secret, but you can see it in my work." um, okay...

anyway, here's stephanie. and i guess she was so nervous about presenting that she drank all the way to the sentient bean...

carousel

this reminded me why i don't like musicals. but it was $5 and a student that i helped with research at the library invited me. i couldn't turn it down.

so jessica, stephanie and i saw carousel. none of us really liked it. but for me really--i've decided that i don't like musicals with morals of the story. i've also decided my old boss's husband is right: musicals are like porn. in porn, people stop what they're doing and have sex for no reason. in musicals, they stop what they're doing and sing for no reason.

anyway, it was good to get out of the house on a sunday. i don't normally go anywhere on sundays except the grocery store.

tomorrow, pecha kucha at the sentient bean.

i heart librarians

i had so much fun last night! remember kate? she's the simmons alum that my friend eugene put me in touch with. we met for coffee about a month ago and i brought along co-workers hunt and jessica. well, kate was inspired after our meeting to put together a young hip savannah librarians group. last night was our first meeting.

we met at lulu's chocolate bar, where i had a pineapple upside down cake martini and a lime tart. i've also had the chocolate orange martini there, but honestly, i have a hard time turning down the pineapple upside down cake. it really tastes darn good!

there were about a dozen of us--representing libraries from savannah college of art and design (that's me, and a few others, of course), armstrong atlantic state university, and the georgia historical society. they were such a cool bunch of people! it's really great that kate put this together so we could all meet and greet each other. i even met a woman from rhode island who moved down here in september like me. we're hoping we can me once per quarter or so and just hang out and have a good time :)

lee way down yonder on the chattahoochee...

sorry, it's the only georgia song i can think of... the chattahoochee river is actually near atlanta--but it's close, right?

anyway, lee came to visit for a nice long weekend and we had a good time. he arrived on thursday afternoon and left later monday evening. it was nice! thursday was very lovely and warm, and spoiled the rest of the trip because then it was cold the rest of the time (and the paper mill smell was sometimes overpowering...). but on thursday when he arrived, i took him for lunch at the savannah tea room. tea is big down here, and savannah has several tea houses. i had the blackened grouper sandwich and lee had a chicken and bacon panini. lunches come with tea, scones, fruit, and sweets. it was yummy!

then lee was on his own on an "architectural walking tour" of savannah that i put together for him. he saw the juliette gordon low house, where the founder of the girl scouts of america was born. (in case you didn't know, the girl scouts were also founded in savannah and the place is often over-run with traveling troups of them!) he also saw the sorrel-weed house and the green-meldrim house. the sorrel-weed house is supposedly haunted, like everything else in savannah. and of course, the mercer house was part of his tour--yes, of "midnight in the garden of good and evil" fame. please, don't waste your time on the movie--it doesn't follow the story from the book really and the book is really quite good. and yes, in some parts, savannah is still like that... anyway, lee just did a walk and picture tour. most of the houses are rather over-priced and are just full of period furniture, so not really the kind of thing either of us are interested in. but i'm glad he had fun seeing savannah while i finished up at work that day.

then on friday, we went to the telfair museum and the jepson center for the arts. the telfair was the first art museum in the south. i kind of like it because it has similar collections to my old job at the boston athenaeum. they were contemporaries after all. and both times i've been to the telfair, they have had special exhibits from boston. it's a sign, i know.

the jepson is the contemporary art wing of the telfair. the building was done by moshe safdie, but i wasn't that impressed with it or the collections.

lee did make a rather nice corinthian column, though. this was in the children's educational area.

then we had lunch at paula deen's restaurant, the lady & sons. this is not good for your health. i had a pretty upset stomach after lunch from the sheer quantity of grease and salt. it was way too fried--especially the french fries! see below, with my tasty and good asparagus sandwich. the bread was also very good, but the rest i could live without.

after lunch, we went to the owens-thomas house because this is one house that is part of the telfair museum complex and so it's included in your museum admission. it was nice, but again, mostly just period furniture. i guess it's cool that marquis de lafayette stayed there, though!

on saturday, we went to tybee island with scott and jessica. tybee is about 11 miles east of savannah. it's a barrier island and it's where all the rednecks and southern bubba's live. observe the rebel bikini... and this was only the beginning of the rebel material we saw. my favorite saying i've spotted is "i love g.r.i.t.s." (i love girls raised in the south.)

but the beach was lovely, as usual, and we also ate at a delicious seafood restaurant called stingray's. lee had the traditional low country boil.


and of course, we stopped at the crab shack to see the gators. i have blogged about the crab shack before when my friend amy took me. we did not eat there. once you go there, you do not need to go again.

sunday and monday were pretty low key. i didn't realize until sunday that i had plum run out of things to do. savannah isn't really a bustling metropolis. but lee has a spot in his heart for wet willie's. this is new orleans-style alcoholic slushy drinks--i think i may have mentioned this when lee came for thanksgiving. anyway, he got another one and enjoyed it on a walk. this one was monster melon flavor.

and then on monday, before lee left, we had lunch at my favorite pizza joint in town--the mellow mushroom. it might be some of the best pizza i've ever had. but i had the tofu sub instead this day, and i was equally amazed at the tasty food there.

then lee went home and i was sad, but we'll see each other again soon in d.c.! we're planning it now, and i'm greatly looking forward to it. :)

book club

so we met on friday night to discuss "the virgin suicides." i really enjoyed the book, and so did most everyone else. it's so voyeuristic and charming--despite the morbid subject matter. but you really feel like you're in the attic with the boys spying on the girls. and it just really reminded me of growing up in the suburbs in ohio!

despite this, no one was really interested in talking about the book. our conversation was rather stunted and boring. jessica and i feel like we're the leaders and no one will do anything without us. that's kind of sad because we were hoping to really get to know some people and chat about some good books. but these girls are pretty boring. i've realized that southern girls are A LOT different from northern girls. southern girls rarely speak their mind, they put up with a lot of crap from men, and being polite is far more important than being honest. oh, and none of these ladies drink, so they make jessica and i look like lushes when we enjoy a bottle of wine. oh well. i highly recommend "the virgin suicides" to anyone who's been thinking of reading it. the author's voice is just fantastic!

our next book is "the bride price" by buchi emecheta.