Frog and Goat

I haven’t mentioned it before, but it seems Simon and Lucy are actually friends. I don’t know that they curl up together, but they spend quite a bit of time playing. Their favorite spot is the foyer rug where they get a long, slow patty-cake game going. Sometimes we see this odd game going on and we turn around and go the other way so we don’t disturb them.

Here they are this morning supervising my computer usage:

Speaking of cats, I’ve taken Jim off the About page. He doesn’t live here anymore. I don’t know where he lives but he’s always hale and hearty when he cruises past us. The last time we saw him he sat in the woods by the driveway and refused to pay any attention to either of us. So it goes.

This weekend we went to Annapolis to celebrate our seventeenth anniversary. We were able to purchase tickets to see this band on Saturday night (our actual anniversary). So we went fancy-pants on Friday night and had a great meal at Osteria 177. From the super-talented bartender to the fabulous waitress to the outstanding food, we couldn’t ask for a nicer dinner out.

On Saturday we wandered around town and had to stop for this:

While we enjoyed the Guinness, we ate fried oysters, fried corned beef poppers and crab cakes. The crab cakes weren’t fried so I can’t say that it was a total fry throw-down. But, it was close to that.

As we wandered around town, the better-half tried really hard to get a picture of the capital building. Like most cities that are from olden times (ha), all of the power lines are above ground. It was really difficult to get a shot that wasn’t a riot of electricity:

We finally came at the capital from a different direction and he got off a pretty good shot:

We decided that Annapolis is a high-speed collision between Williamsburg and Boston. There are tiny little colonial houses shoved in right next to large brick buildings. This is the view from our hotel room:

And, the house I called the scaly house. There’s one that’s similar in Austin right near the capital area there too. I really like the texture and the use of stained glass:

We went down to the harbor area a couple of times just to sit and look at the water. What is it about harbors that bring out every tacky t-shirt/ice cream/candy place?

The weather was sunny, cool and breezy but it was nice enough to wander all over the place on foot. The car was taken by the valet when we got there and returned to us this morning. There was no need to use it and the roads are built for horse and buggy so it was fine with me not to have to worry about parking or driving. No sooner did we get home than we saw snow flakes and now I think there’s a mix of rain and sleet. I’m glad the craptastic winter weather that won’t go away waited until we got home.

Last night we went to a a restaurant we like very much and sat at the bar. The place was packed and we had no reservations. We only intended to have a drink and some appetizers so sitting at the bar was perfect. This restaurant is much more than a pour some beers and uncork the wine bottles kind of place. They are part of the city’s new craft cocktail scene, but not in a hipster bartender way. I liked my drink at Heritage a few weeks ago, but coiffed mustaches, vests and bow ties and showy work with the boston shaker is not my thing. I asked the bartender if she could recommend an after dinner drink and she pointed me to two options. I picked the one with bourbon and sambuca. Yes. The two flavors were meant to be together. Oh my lord. So good.

After our snacks and drinks, we walked down the street to the theater. The Richmond Symphony started playing at 8pm and all was tightly zipped up there. Just a few security folks standing around in the lobby. We walked past the Carpenter Center entrance down to the sign that said “Performance Tonight: Gottwald Playhouse”. We picked up our tickets at Will Call and then went to stand in line. People were in high spirits in our line. It was not like going to the symphony. I like our symphony, but this was not the symphony crowd. For one thing EVERYONE in line was a minimum of 30 years younger than the people sitting in the big theater a lobby over. (Really, Richmond. If you want that awesome group of people to keep bringing great music to the community do something about including the 40 and younger crowd because the geriatric crowd is getting smaller every year.)

Where was I? Oh yeah, the line. Friendly, consuming beverages and dressed in everything from Oxford shirts to bowler hats to fishnets. We were in line for Those Freaking Weirdos Present Rule Britannia Burlesque Show. Yes. We saw women in pasties. We saw a guy juggle and an incredible fan dance that brought the house down. All right next door to the octogenarians listening to Mendelssohn and Barber and some other dead composer (as you know Barber is not my favorite). I think when the first woman stripped down to sparkly nothingness I clapped the loudest because of that very dichotomy.

But, the fan dance? Look up Lily Liqueur on the tubes. Holy crap she was good.