We slept in til about 8:15 Eastern... heh! It's easy to adjust to the East Coast after a long travel day. There were bagels and bananas for breakfast, along with a long bit of our customary after-meal conversation. I don't know when we finally got up and cleaned up... it must have been an hour or two. I briefly checked my email to make sure my boss had got the document I sent (and she did), and then I worked on the puzzle of the 'black lab on a dock looking at a great big bass' in the
living room for the greater part of the day... interrupted by lunch, when we had turkey sandwiches, grapes and crackers. After this we watched an Olympic event that was on... men's cross country skiing... and that was incredible. How much power they had to use going up hills... holy cow! Two Swedish guys won, taking gold and bronze.There was a bit more puzzling, a bit of reading in my Navy book, and then my Aunt and Uncle came over for dinner and brought french bread and a lovely salad to accompany the lasagna. Yum! At first our conversation at the dinner table felt a little forced, but it gradually grew to a regular fun one. They didn't stay long after dinner though... I guess everyone was a bit tired, and we shall be seeing them again tomorrow... hmm.
I'm missing my friends tonight though... it's chat time as I type this.
Sunday, February 21:
Before I went to sleep last night, I read a Word document I created of all my favorite Bible passages. It calmed me down and helped me to remember what is important... that being the Lord.
This morning my Aunt and Uncle arrived after we ate a quick breakfast in order to visit the Biltmore Estate all together. I drove with them while Mom went with my grandparents. We arrived at the house just after 11 am and went over a bit of the house. My grandparents had free tickets, since they are season ticket holders, and I had just been all over the house in August, so we only looked at what we wanted to instead of seeing all 5 floors. I went up to the third floor to look at the newer rooms again (the wall fabric and curtains are incredible) with everyone, came back down to the ground floor on the 125 year old original elevator with my mom, and then went around the first floor by myself. I enjoy the great hall and the library best of all. They are the most impressive to me at least. The banquet hall is shrouded in five gigantic Flemish tapestries from the 1500's, depicting scenes from mythology, and the high cement walls are adorned with ten elk heads and three moose heads, various flags from early America, and tall windows. On one end of the room is a mammoth, three-way fireplace and at the other is an ornate wood carving that makes up huge shelves with old pots and kettles that rises in carved pillars with lion heads at their tops that form the base of a giant pipe organ that played music by an automated computer system while I was there. It was much bigger than the one at the Seattle Symphony. There are statues of Joan of Arc and one of the medieval Kings of France on top of cement columns and medieval armor and weapons hanging at each of the four corners of the room. The great table had 22 chairs around it. My other favorites are the tapestry gallery and the library that it leads to. So much carved wood, including a twisting wooden staircase in the library. The three-foot globe has a manufacturing date of 1899 printed on it... and there is a chess set there once owned by Napoleon Bonaparte himself. The tapestry gallery has smaller fireplaces with a medieval hunting theme and many cozy chairs and sofas meant for reading books.
After this abbreviated tour, we all headed out to the winery, about four miles away from the house. The driver of our van said that the main gate was seven miles away... wow. Anyway, we went to “The Bistro” restaurant, where I had “mushroom ravioli” and a tomato basil soup. It was all incredibly tasty and quite fancy! At the wine shop afterwords, I got a bar of Godiva chocolate that I shared with mom... and it was the perfect afternoon! We also stopped by the petting barn to pet the goats and sheep and laugh at the silly chickens.
Upon returning home, I worked for a second on the puzzle and then picked up the part of Meg's dissertation that mom had already finished. And I found myself quite engrossed: I almost made it to the end of chapter two (page 48) in one sitting before we put on a movie. I brought Miss Potter with me, in case my grandparents hadn't seen it before, and they hadn't. I know it would be the sort of thing they would like, so we all enjoyed it and watched all the special features as well. They were surprised that they had not even heard of the movie before.
As we turned it off, we watched a bit of a masterpiece theater production of “Persuasion” on PBS before we turned it to the Olympics and saw the very end of the US/Canada hockey game and four performances in figure skating. I really loved the dances I saw, and agree with the first placing of the Canadian pair... they were... wow! The teams were doing cultural dances. The Americans did an Indian dance (from India) and the Canadians did Italian. Very neat! I had just recently watched a modern version of Persuasion, though, and thought the modern one much better. I do still need to read the book though.
But as for me tonight, it is time to sleep with peaceful thoughts about a Monday with no work.
Jp
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