life in the fast lane

i never thought it would happen, but this weekend, my friend has made an honest woman of me. and all it took was a plane ticket to DC.

when i graduated college, i made a goal for myself to visit all 50 states. a year and a half ago i was in DC visiting my friend gidget. her fiance (at the time - now husband) was away on business and i went to keep her company for a weekend. we planned to go to west virginia because it was one of the states still left on my list. after our trip, which was great fun, i told her i had 5 states left to visit - alaska, oregon, utah, arkansas and oklahoma. she was excited that we got to cross of west viginia together. on the ride home she was looking at this little map that i keep in my planner which has all of the states i've been to highlighted. she asked me, "what about delaware?" i groaned. i technically had never been to delaware, but didn't include it on my list of places to visit because it is so small no one could look at my map and tell i hadn't been there. i explained that i actually had never been there, but i dont count it because you can't tell on the map that i have never been there. she gasped and was ashamed for me. we agreed that the next time i visited her we would go to delaware.

the next morning, we had brunch with two of her friends whom i had never met before. they were great gals and we're all having a great time eating and laughing and talking about gidge's upcoming wedding. we told them how we had been to west virginia the previous day so that i could cross it off my list of places to visit. then gidget starts telling them that technically i have six states left to visit, but i only tell people five. i was shocked! i had just met these two girls and they already hear about how i am a big fat liar. i don't think they really cared and didn't give it a second thought, but i felt slightly guilty.

a few weeks ago, i was telling alice, the girl i am training at work, about how i am trying to visit every state. she asks which ones i have left to visit and i pull out my highlighted map and show it to her. so she says, "alaska, utah, oregon, oklahoma and arkansas?" and i say, "yes." she tells me thats impressive. then she goes on to quiz me about what i did in such and such a place. i went to denver for a weekend by myself and visited my friend in new orleans, etc. then she asks, "what did you do in delaware?" of course. so i come clean and tell her i technically have never been there, but i don't count it... yadda yadda yadda. then i tell her how my friend introduced me to HER friends and basically told them i was a liar. she laughed.

well, i am proud to announce, ladies and gentlemen, i am now not lying! (at least not about that) i have now, officially, been to delaware. and had a fabulous time at that.

i flew to DC on friday night and stayed with my friend gidget and her husband, moondoggie in alexandria, va. friday night we picked up some food and went back to their place. we hung out a bit and then i went to bed. yesterday morning, gidge and i hit the road for delaware. we stopped in anapolis for lunch and i had a crab cake sandwich. take it from me, just order the crabcake. no need for the sandwich bit. we then headed across the bay bridge (did you know there are two bay bridges?? i did not) and over to delaware. we decided to do fun fall activities, so we found a small farm online and headed to it. we got there at 330 and they closed at 4, which was unfortunate. we paid our $7 and grabbed our free mini pumpkin. we saw the free face painting booth and headed over there, but there was a line of 4 people or so. we decided to make the most of our time before they closed and headed over to paint our pumpkins. but they had put all the paint away! so we ended up using markers instead. by the time we finished, we headed back over to the face painting place and they had closed! we weren't even markering for 10 min! i was disappointed - i really wanted paint on my cheek. gidge thought i should get lady gaga lightning bolts and i agreed that would be cool. we decided to hit up the corn maze. its a 5 acre maze cut into the corn. get it? it's a maize maze! they had maps and check points throughout the thing where you could punch your card with different punchers to prove that you made your way through it. it had been raining earlier that day, so part of the path was really slippery and i almost slipped a few times. it slowed us down a bit, but other than that, we finished the course in near-record time. by the time we finished, they were for sure closed - no pony rides or hay rides. so we walked over to the country store and stocked up on all sorts of natural homemade goodies - apple crisp pie, jelly, pretzel dip, etc. we got some hot apple cider for the ride home and headed back to DC where moondoggie had dinner waiting for us.

i had brought the movie, gidget, so my friend could see where she gets her namesake from. its a cute movie from 1959 where they say things like "that's the ultimate!", go "man hunting", and moondoggie's idol is kahuna. i love the movie and i think they did, too. then we ate chicken chili and had chips and salsa. i wasn't super hungry from the marshmallows we ate on the way home, so i missed out on the apple crisp pie. oh, we also handed out halloween candy to a lot of little kids. it was cute. we started watching a scary movie, and i was tired so i headed to bed.

this morning we got up and headed to a winery in virginia. it was really pretty and decent wine, too. i had an excellent time and was glad moondoggie came with us. we picked up food at balducci's before heading out of town. once we got to the winery, we had our wine tasting and then bought a bottle of wine to have with our picnic food. it was good fun.

on the way back to DC to drop me off at the airport, we stopped at the iwo jima memorial for the marine corps and then drove around looking at all of the memorials on the DC side of the potomac. dc is a really impressive city. i'm thinking about moving there now...

in any case, i'm heading back to columbus as i type this, and am now a little less of a liar....

thanks, gidge!

oh p.s. i flew out of washington reagan airport and TSA took my two jars of jelly - i was so not pleased! i told gidge i would argue with them - jelly is NOT a liquid. there were about 4 people standing there when they picked up my suitcase to go through. they asked if i had jellys in them and i said yes. i said, "it's not a liquid. thats foodstuff." and this guy starts rattling off the rules to me "no liquids, gels, aerosols..." and then the woman asks me if i want to check the bag. pay $30 (min) to check my bag for $15 (max) worth of jelly? no thanks. i told her she could just take them. so i lost the nice natural homemade jellies from delaware. i still have the apple-scented beeswax candle, though.