baltimore, annapolis, xanadu, bloggers being awesome

baltimore was lovely. i drove down with a college friend of gina's. she was a senior producer at NBC but is leaving for france where her mother is sick and dying. but the conversation down was real and deep and funny and i genuinely think S is going to be a friend for life. gina and will are very earthy people. she's an acupuncturist, they're both into holistic medicine. their house has a hodgepodge of furniture and art on the walls and tons of herbal oils scattered about, a hippie laboratory with a couple cats roaming around.

their wedding was thrown together in a month. a huge tent (heated, thank god) in a large pasture across the street from the grooms' parents house. the grass had be up to their waists so the whole thing was mowed, weeds were pulled. hay was thrown down in muddy spots and paper bag votives place all over. artisan bread from a local bakery was in heaps at the center of the table. S and i made satchels of homemade tea as parting gifts: rose petals, calendula, lavendar, lemon basil, wheat buds.

all the guests showed up early in the morning to help decorate the tent and get all the tables and chairs set up. food was made via potluck. it was just such a peaceful, homegrown, absolutely gorgeous wedding full of so much love that it made my heart ache.

gina's dad is a huge wine importer in chicago and he shipped in the most amazing wines for the wedding. a rose champagne, a 2005 bordeaux...i was in heaven. and the dancing, oh, the dancing! swing was everywhere.

and i got a text message. flight canceled! and so i drove back the next day with S. we made a stopover in annapolis, where the married couple and S were students at st. johns. i've written about st. johns here and i'll likely get a second graduate degree there. maybe sooner rather than later as we stopped in to see a gree tutor (you see, they learn ancient greek and then read euclid and plato in greek. insane! amazing!) and we had the most fascinating, smart, wide-ranging conversation ever. we sat for hours and talked about modern medicine, immigration, life changes, the phaedo, his son who works at google, and before we left he told me that it was fate that we'd met and that he looked forward to having me as a student there. (note, that's two people in 3 days telling me that having met me was fate...i'm not sure what that means but i'm disinclined to disregard it.)

we then went to the most famous annapolis crab shack and got a huge tray of crabs piled with old bay and a few mallets and some knives. i'm not sure that i liked having to work that hard for my food, especially because we were starving by the time we ate. it felt a bit cruel to make us pull of layers of shell and pick out little pieces of meat from the legs. that being said, OLD BAY. is there any savory food that doesn't taste better with old bay? there is not.

i've organized a birthday for a friend. we're taking a yellow school bus to staten island where, in our best xanadu attire, we'll go roller skating. have i mentioned lately how much i love my friends? i mean, legwarmers! holla!

and look what jon did for cadiz: a treasure hunt, the prize? her engagement ring. sooooo awesome. jon: major props pour toi!