I'm still getting caught up on the weekend and other various tasks, as yesterday was interview day (went really well) and prep-for-the-DC-con day. And here I was hoping I'd actually get some writing done this week. Sheeyit...

Elizabeth and I went up to Richmond this weekend to see some old friends -- Elizabeth's UNC classmate Siobhan and Siobhan's fiancee Esteban, as well as my old classmate and fellow writer Lee and his wife Louise. It was a lot of fun. Richmond is an interesting town, in parts very industrial and working-class, while in other parts quite lovely, with some nice, obviously pricey neighborhoods of old row houses all fixed up (in "the Fan" part of town) as well as a downtown area with fancy restaurants right next to the tracks and interstate.

We met up with Siobhan and Esteban (we hadn't seen Esteban since the mid-90s, as he and Siobhan have both traveled extensively for grad school and their jobs), and we went apple-picking in Charlottesville. The drive was beautiful, and the mountains crept up on us as we drove west. At the top of a bluff are the orchards, and of course we had to rent out the proper reaching tool to get those hard-to-reach apples:


The weather was nice and cool, with a brisk breeze that blew away any weariness we may have had from getting up early and driving for 3 hours to get to Richmond. Though I was sorely disappointed in the dearth of Granny Smith apples:


We found lots of Pink Lady apples, and I scrounged around and found two intact Granny Smiths. Luckily Esteban brought along his digital camera to catch us reenacting this pivotal, modernized version of a scene set in the Garden of Eden:


We had a fun time with the apples, grabbed a couple hot apple donuts and a slice of pie, then hung out in the ped mall area of Charlottesville, a nice, crunchy area with lots of used bookshops and old movie theaters and hordes of kiddoes dressed in their Halloween costumes. LAter that night we had dinner at a chi-chi Richmond restaurant, Europa. We had a long, leisurely dinner, fittingly done European-style:


We had a great time catching up with Siobhan and Esteban Sunday morning over some strong-ass coffee, and overall Elizabeth and I realized that we need to travel more. Siobhan and Esteban have both crisscrossed the globe more times than I care to count (Esteban is from Brazil, originally, and has family in Spain). We both felt like simple small-town folk as our friends discussed Prague, Ireland, London, Australia... Sigh... Someday.

On Sunday we met up with Lee and his wife Louise for lunch on our way back home. We had a great chat, and Louise is really cool -- Lizzie and I hadn't met her before. I must remember to urge Lee to move back to the Raleigh-Durham area. He's a great writer and has given me some stellar input on my own writing. I know I could hook him and Louise up with some jobs... nudge, nudge. And I'm looking forward to reading his novel. Nudge, nudge...

Traveling is good for me -- it puts life in perspective. Sometimes I resist it (Elizabeth would say I always resist it, saying it's too expensive, time-consuming, etc.), but the experiences and the new knowledge of the world is priceless. And as an extra added bonus, traveling always makes me appreciate coming home again (even if our cat did leave a couple of barf-gifts for us in the ol' house). Though there's way too much to see in one lifetime, the world gets a bit more smaller with each trip.