Results tagged “Travel” from ScottandMargo.net

Laura Tsaggaris is starting a tour of the US this week.

Just in case anyone reading this is going to be in the area, she's going to be in the southwest in February and has a few stops on the way back in the midwest in March.

I saw her perform at the Digital Freedom U thing in October at AU with some other singer-songwriters and really enjoyed her music. She signed my copy of her CD, Proof and chatted for a bit after the set which was cool.

She has the tour schedule posted on her Myspace page along with music and some other stuff.

Check her out, if you can.

We went to up to the beach last weekend to go to the Sea Witch festival in Rehoboth. It rained Saturday morning so the crowds weren't so bad, but there was still enough going on to be interesting. I took some pictures.

Here's a weiner dog. They have a parade of costumed pets. We missed it, but some were wandering around after.

Here's the bandstand on the boardwalk. The beach is in the background. They have bands play there in-season. The rain hadn't completely cleared yet when I shot this.

The famous Dolle's sign. I still think this is what the "Lolly, Lolly, Lolly, Get Your Adverbs Here!" store was modeled after. Next door is Thrasher's French Fries, Kohr Brothers, and Ibach's. All three of which are staples of our beach visits.

Go Fish and a Thrasher's across the street from the other Thrasher's. I've never been to Go Fish but it's an intneresting looking place.

So I finally actually saw Samantha Murphy Wednesday night at a free concert hosted at American University by the Digital Freedom Campaign. Traffic sucked and it took hours to get there and I ended up not getting to the 7:30 show til 8:30 so I missed most of if...but I made it!

When I got there I was surprised to see that Laura Tsaggaris, Michael Jantz and Josh Read were onstage with Samantha. Laura and Josh have been on the SMTV podcast. They all played in a round-robin style so while I only got to hear 2-3 songs from each of them, it worked out better than it could have been with my late arrival.

Laura Tsaggaris was pretty intense. Michael Jantz was interesting in a way I have a hard time describing and understanding. Josh Read just sounded huge up there and had some great songs.

Samantha Murphy was fantastic. Between the podcast and having had her CD for a couple years I'm already pretty familiar with her music so it was great to see her do a couple of her songs live as straight-up acoustic. Great stuff. Very dynamic and engaging onstage. I promised myself that I wouldn't gush, so moving on...

After the show, I bought some CDs, of course. I don't think Josh had any, but I bought "Proof" from Laura that she signed for me and "Snapshots from the Universe" from Michael. I already have a signed copy of "somewhere between starving & stardom" but Samantha had a free 2-track sampler with a track that isn't on her album. I'm looking forward to digging into all this music in the next several days (it takes a while the way I have my iPod playlists set up).

After the show, I chatted with Laura, Michael and Samantha for a while (trying out my new "I'm an introvert, but I'm not shy" mantra). They were all very nice even though they had stuff to pack up and I wasn't an AU student.

I took one photo while it was Michael Jantz's turn to sing. I was too far away to get a good shot with the camera I have and I didn't want to get up into their faces for a better shot. Laura Tsaggaris is on the left, half of Samantha Murphy is on the right. Josh Read was out of frame to Samantha's left.

I love good fudge but for some reason, I don't really get into eating it unless I'm at the beach. I have no idea if there are any places to get good fudge around the DC area (feel free to let me know) but I'll mention one of my favorite places in Delaware...

The Seaside Country Store is in Fenwick Island. It's an interesting store with a lot of antiques and hose decorations and nick-nacks and the like, but the front of the house is all about snacking. There are sauces by the front door, and cheese. The candy's by the register, as one would expect. Not far from there is the fudge counter. It's all made there in the store...you can watch if you get there at the right time. The fudge is quite good and they have something like 40 different kinds. You can order fudge from the website and get it shipped.

Technorati Tags: Food, Travel

Went to Planet X like we always do. The decor is fun and funky, the cocktails are fantastic. The food is still the highlight of the experience. The menu has an interesting mix of styles. I don't like eggplant, but I go nuts for the stacked eggplant appetizer. I've had everything on the entree menu but my main go-to's are the red Thai curry or the filet. They started taking reservations this year, and this summer if you didn't make a reservation, you're not getting in.

We discovered La La Land last year. It's on the other side of Wilmington Ave from Planet X. This is another place with a fun atmosphere with great food. The golden lump crab bisque is to die for. I had the seared rare yellowfin tuna. Fantastic stuff. There's also a starlight back bar that's cozy, has great drinks and starts to fill up when everyplace else in Rehoboth is closed.

The Cultured Pearl is our favorite place for sushi. Sometime since last summer they moved from Wilmington Ave to Rehoboth Ave where the hardware store used to be. The new space is gorgeous. Inside gets a little loud and doesn't have the intimacy of the old place, but the rooftop dining is beautiful. This is another place that you're not likely to get in during the summer without a reservation. The sushi and sashimi is top notch. They have a cream of crab soup that's also outstanding.

New to me this year was Dangerously Delicious Pies. They're tucked into the back of Bethany Town Center, and I noticed them by accident. It's a small place with record covers stuck to the walls and wonderful pies under glass. Lots of attitude here (in a good way) but there's not anything to get in the way of great pie. I walked out with a tart key lime slice and I look forward to working my way through the rest of their pies.

I was looking forward to visiting Udder Delights this summer, but it isn't where it was. I'm not sure if they moved or just closed. The website's still there. If I find anything out, I'll follow up here. Also, if anyone else out there knows anything about it, comment or track back here if you want.

Technorati Tags: Food, Travel

Or, “What a difference 10 years makes!” We went to King's Dominion on Saturday. It wasn't until after I got there that I remembered that Margo and I went there almost exactly a year ago on my birthday. Below is a pic from the Outer Limits: Flight of Fear ride that we got that day. the whole trip was a lot of fun. We got there early in the day and went around and rode all of the thrill rides with no problem.

Fast forward 10 years. I've been having back pain since we were on vacation. We arrived after 2pm. Went on Volcano and then [The Italian Job and I started feeling sick to my stomach. I really enjoyed the rides, but physically, I wasn't up to it...and my back was starting to hurt more. We tracked down my sisters so that Margo can ride the Rebel Yell and the Grizzly with them while I took a break....I knew those were going to make me hurt. Eventually I felt better and got on the log flume ride, Flight of Fear (and I didn't buy that picture), Hypersonic XLC and the Hurler. By the end of the night, I was tired, my head hurt and my back was killing me.

I felt so old and broken down when I got home, it wasn't funny. It isn't like it was when I was in my 20's when I was young and indestructible. Will have to go back and try to prove it was just a bad/off day.

I'm not going over that hill gracefully.

Update: Fixed the formatting problem.

Technorati Tags: Travel

I've been gone the last week and a half or so. Will have another couple posts in a bit but I have some catching up to do.

At least I have decent mail filtering.

Technorati Tags: Blogging

It's been a couple years now since I got my XM Roadie2. It had a lot of use over 2004 and 2005. I really enjoyed the service...no commercials on the music stations, lots of different music stations to enjoy, and I didn't have to worry about finding new radio stations to listen to on long road trips.

During 2006, it seems like something happened to XM. Commercial music stations came up. I didn't listen to those stations anyway, but Margo did. Then it seemed that the playlists at drive time for my mainstay channels (Squizz, Boneyard, Fred, Ethel, Lucy) started getting really short and repetitive. Then the DJs started coming out to jabber more. This is the kind of stuff that got me to stop listening to FM radio.

In response, I started listening to my iPod a lot more. There's a bunch of podcasts that I listen to now, and with some playing around with my playlists, my music rotation is a lot more interesting. Around summertime, I noticed that I hardly ever even turned my XM unit on anymore. That continued through Saturday when I called XM to cancel and I removed the Roady from my car. Margo hates what has happened to XM too but I don't think she wants to mess with hooking her iPod up to the car yet so XM still has one customer in this house yet.

The funny thing is that when I got the Roady, I was trying to decide between getting it and an iPod. I figured that XM had better access to more music than I do, so I went with the XM. Eventually, when I finally got an iPod it took over my music listening in the car and at work. I could have probably saved myself a lot of time and money ($10 a month?) if I would have just gone with the iPod in the beginning. Oh well.

Update: Just to be clear, in the car, I have the iPod plugged into my car's stereo system...I don't drive with the earbuds in like I see some people do around here. I'll describe my at-work setup in a future post.

Technorati Tags: Gadgets, iPod, iTunes, Technology, Travel

It's been three weeks or so since I got back from my week at the beach and I still haven't posted my book reviews. I've been thinking about why I haven't posted them over the last couple of days (thinking about why you're not getting something done is easier than actually working on getting it done, I guess) and I think I figured it out.

I wasn't writing the reviews as I was finishing the books, so I was looking at writing six book reviews all at once. It started to feel more like a school book report than something fun to post to the blog. What I'm going to do is drop mini reviews on this posting and try to do a better job next time.

Just a short not on the links that I'm posting with the titles of the books. The only reason I'm linking to Amazon is out of convenience. Ecto has an "Amazon" button that I can use to search for and automatically put the link for an item at Amazon in a blog post. I don't get anything from linking there. I didn't get all of these books from Amazon either. Don't get me wrong...I love Amazon, but the only relationship I have with them is that I send them a lot of money and they send me a lot of stuff. :)

"Does Anything Eat Wasps?: And 101 Other Unsettling, Witty Answers to Questions You Never Thought You Wanted to Ask" (New Scientist)

This was an interesting book. I'm a big fan of collections of odd and ultimately impractical knowledge. Does Anything Eat Wasps? was right up my alley. The book is a compilation of questions and their answers as published in New Scientist, and is organized into areas of interest as follows: Our Bodies, Plants and Animals, Domestic Science, Our Universe, Our Planet, Weird Weather, Troublesome Transport, Best of the Rest. While the categories cover a wide range of areas, questions about alcoholic beverages seem to be over-represented but that's not a bad thing. It was definitely an interesting and entertaining read.

"The Long Hard Road Out of Hell" (Marilyn Manson, Neil Strauss)

All of the reviews I've read of this book spend a lot of time talking about how terrible and depraved the activities in the book are. My problem in reading it is that I read "The Dirt: Confessions of the World's Most Notorious Rock Band" several years ago. I'm not really surprised at reading rock star tales of debauchery, and it was kind of expected...it is Marlyn Manson after-all. What I didn't expect so much is how much this is really a biography of a loser kid who became a rock star with no punches pulled...it's a graphic story of bad sex, bad drugs and bad rock and roll until Mr Manson and the rest of the band figured out how to make it work. The timeline goes from childhood through the completion of the Antichrist Superstar album, which is the main problem I have with the book...it was written too soon, being after a successful second album. I think it would have been more interesting if the biography was written 10 to 15 years from now instead of what was essentially the end of the launching of their careers together. I did enjoy reading the book though....I thought it was funny, sad and sickening in equal measure, which makes a good celebrity biography as far as I'm concerned.

"Fluke: Or, I Know Why the Winged Whale Sings" (Christopher Moore)

This book's going to be hard to write about without giving away the surprises in the story. It's a story with a simple message: "Save the whales." Haven't heard that since the 70's. The book is about a whale researcher that's tracking and recording whales to try to figure out what whale song means. When he gets close to figuring it out, things start getting weird. It was a fun read.

"Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell: A Novel" (Susanna Clarke)

One of the review quotes on the back said something about the writing making the 800-page book seem short. Having read it, I don't know if I agree with that. It was a long book and the old-school spelling of words (sofah, shewn) and the gentlemanly conversation didn't help any at all. The book follows the story of two English magicians, Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell, who differ in how they mean to accomplish their shared goal...returning the practice of practical magic to England. Mr Norrell's style is to study and horde information and publish his opinions on how magic should be. Jonathan Strange is more of a public magician...preferring wild displays of the practicality of magic, like conjuring roads for the English army to use while fighting Napleon's army in the wilds of Spain. Long, dense, but interesting. I enjoyed it.

"Beach Road" (James Patterson, Peter de Jonge)

There's not much I hate reading more than a murder mystery that gives no clues to the identity of the killer through the whole book, and then at the very end pick someone seemingly at random to be it. Beach Road was one of those books. I hear a lot about how good James Patterson is supposed to be, but there wasn't any evidence in this book. It starts out as a murder of three white Hampton's locals murdered on the basketball court of a black star's mansion. The prime subject is a young black local high school basketball star. He's promptly arrested and put on trial in a cliche'd burst of racist mob action. Most of the book follows the trial and a local lawyer's cliche'd underdog attempt to keep the kid from being convicted by investigating on his own to try to find the real killer. There's even the cliche'd big city attorney who's the local lawyer's ex-wife who quits her job to help the underdogs out. After the trial, the authors reveal the killer, then there's the cliche'd final showdown. Blah. What a waste.

"Dark Harbor" (David Hosp)

I'm drawing a blank on this one for some reason. It was another murder mystery. Serial murderer this time. I remember liking it. Will read it again sometime and get back to it.

Technorati Tags: Books, Review

They opened the September 11th memorial that's inside the Pentagon yesterday to the public in remembrance of the fifth anniversary of the terrorist attacks. At the last minute, Margo and I decided to go and see it. I'm glad we did.

We got to the Pentagon about ten minutes before the scheduled closing at 2pm (it was opened at 10am), and it looked like we were in the last group let in. We were escorted by an Army Honor Guard Sergeant who explained things as we went...and acted as the first line of security too, I'm sure.

The closest doorway to the memorial was immediately to the right of the hole that American Flight 77 put into the building. There's been some changes to that part of the building in the construction but this photo shows the door...right in the middle of the image above the top of the orange crane. To the right of the doorway (behind the tree in the photo, the tree isn't there anymore), they left one block scorched as it was on the day of the attacks and they carved "September 11, 2001" into the block as a reminder outside. Behind that wall is where the memorial is, and beyond that is a small chapel.

It was a very simple and elegant way to memorialize what happened that day for the people that were in the building, and for those that work there after. It was quite beautiful in its simplicity, actually. I knew going in that there was no photography allowed in the building so I didn't bother to bring my camera. When we were outside though, the Sgt said we could take pictures of the outside of the building...so I snapped a shot of the flag that was hanging where they hung it on September 11th with my cruddy cell phone camera.

I haven't been able to find any pictures of the chapel, but here's a couple of the memorial area:

Defenselink
QTVR of the area

Technorati Tags: Travel, Washington DC

While I'll never be as prolific a reader and book reviewer as Duffbert is, I do get quite a bit of reading done while I'm at the beach. While I'm beaching it pretty regularly in the summer, I tend to think of what I get through on my week there as my summer reading list. No particular reason, except that it reminds me of school for some reason.

I'm listing the books I read last week while I was out. I was averaging 300-400 pages a day for the 8 full days which is about average for a beach trip to me.

• "Does Anything Eat Wasps?: And 101 Other Unsettling, Witty Answers to Questions You Never Thought You Wanted to Ask" (New Scientist)
• "The Long Hard Road Out of Hell" (Marilyn Manson, Neil Strauss)
• "Fluke: Or, I Know Why the Winged Whale Sings (Today Show Book Club #25)" (Christopher Moore)
• "Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell: A Novel" (Susanna Clarke)
• "Beach Road" (James Patterson, Peter de Jonge)
• "Dark Harbor" (David Hosp)
• "Microsoft SharePoint Products and Technologies Resource Kit (Pro - Resource Kit)" (Bill English, Microsoft Corporation) (300 or so pages of 1200)

One of the many things I want to do in the coming year is to increasing the speed of my reading...without affecting my retention of course. I'd like to be able to get more reading in when I'm not at the beach.

Technorati Tags: Books

I should have expected it.

Sametime 7.5 dropped on Friday the 18th, as reported by Ed Brill and others. I downloaded the server, client and dev kit this morning and will try to get a test server up this week. Started the process of getting the client into the software testing/approval cycle.

Looks like the first test accounts started getting issued for testing NCES' Sametime installation while I was gone too. I pre-registerest for the testing and they're rolling the accounts in small groups, and I didn't get one on the first set.

I'm looking forward to a couple different things with the NCES Sametime setup. With the 7.5 client, I should be able to connect to my local community and the DISA one at the same time. I'm also hoping that there will be the possibility of connecting existing Sametime communities to the main NCES community. Some orgs in the DoD prefer to own their services, so something like registering their users with NCES and only using that might not be doable, but if they can connect the Communities the the collaboration is still there without making the local IA guys too nervous.

Technorati Tags: Lotus, Sametime, Travel

Well, I'm back from a week or so of vacation. Typically we spend a week in Fenwick Island, DE where the family has a condo on the beach, spend the days in the sand and spend the nights in Bethany Beach or Rehoboth. While I wasn't "off the grid" like bloggers are talking about lately. I was online a bit thanks to a nearby open wifi connection. I've been mostly in read-only mode though. Except for the bacon ice cream post.

I forgot to bring my camera along this time so there's no photos. Won't make that mistake next time. I have some blurbs to post about some of the places we ate and drank at this week. I also have a set of book reviews coming for the books that I read while I was out there.

I use the time at the beach as a review of where I am in life and think about where I want to go and how to get there. I have some projects to work on this year. Some I'll talk about here, some I won't. I don't really consider myself a "blogger". I think of myself as just a guy that blogs (I like that sticker I got at Lotusphere from the Advisor people..."I.blog"). Some things just aren't going to make it here. I'm going to try to get what I have to get out from the beach trip over the next few days.

Technorati Tags: Travel

Well, I did it. I dropped in at Udder Delight on Saturday night after dinner and was ready to do my duty as I posted on the 6th. Unfortunately, the camera didn't make it on this trip for some reason so I don't have any pictures. Maybe next time I'll get some pictures of my ice cream in the orange glow of the Hooters next door.

I didn't see cucumber anymore which was my favorite of their odd flavors. I didn't see Memphis BBQ out either and I wasn't going to make them make a batch just for me to taste.

(They have a ColdStone style cold marble slab behind the counter that they use to mix together the ice cream and the fixins that you want, and I expect that some of the odd flavors might be made up on the fly that way)

I did luck out (?!) and there was a batch of the bacon flavor out front and center. I asked for a taster of it, braced myself and had at it. Oddly enough, it wasn't that bad. You mostly taste vanilla ice cream and a little caramel up front. There's a little bacon taste that comes up behind it, but it's definitely not the dominant flavor in the ice cream. It was actually rather tasty in an odd way.

The only problem I had with it is probably my normal weird relationship with food and texture. There were little meat chunks mixed through it, and I really had a hard time getting around the little meat chunks being where meat chunks shouldn't be and it got to be kind of a turn off. So while I enjoyed the taste, the texture kind of blew it for me and I know that's just me being weird about food.

The normal ice cream flavors at Udder Delight are fantastic, by the way. I stop by there for a couple scoops of whatever whenever I'm out here. I ordered a scoop of chocolate chip cookie dough and a scoop of cake batter after I tried the bacon, and was quite happy. The flavors are quite tasty and ice cream itself is smooth and silky. They have a lot of different toppings and things to add to your ice cream Coldstone-style as I mentioned earlier. I wish I'd been able to get a picture of that. Oh well.

At least I'm not at work, near the ocean and the weather's been good. :D

Technorati Tags: Food, Review

Back on July 19th, Slashfood posted an article about a place in Vancouver called the Amato Gelato Cafe which makes a Viagra-flavored gelato. It reminded me of a place that I visit regularly when I'm up by Rehoboth, Delaware:

1. There's an ice cream shop in Rehoboth, DE called Udder Delight that has a Viagra ice cream flavor too. They have a lot of other odd flavors too like bacon, Memphos BBQ, and cucumber (which is actually quite good).

http://udderdelighticecreamhouse.com/Icecreamflavors.html

Posted at 8:48PM on Jul 19th 2006 by Scott Gentzen

Today, they posted an article about Udder Delights today. It made my day.

Bacon ice cream is an Udder Delight - Slashfood

If I had known that they were going to do an article on this, I could have helped out with some research. I'm up that way quite a bit during the year so it's not much effort for me really to try out a bunch of the weird flavors and report back. I had the cucumber and really liked it. The bacon one has bacon in it so I haven't tried it, but if I was going there as a reporter, I would have given it a shot.

Actually, I think I'll do that. I'm going to be going back up there next week sometime. Will be brining the laptop so I should be able to post before I get back. I'll try out some of the odd flavors and give a report back. Will be interesting...their regular ice cream is fantastic.

Their flavor list is here: Udder Delights Ice Cream Flavors. That isn't everything (I've had the cucumber and it's not on the list) but it's all I can point to for now. I'll check out the menu when I'm there and try some stuff out. If anyone's curious about anything else on the list on their website, let me know and I'll make sure I try that too.

Technorati Tags: Food

I spent Friday and Saturday in Blacksburg, VA to watch my sister graduate from Virginia Tech with a degree in aerospace engineering. Way cool.

I've never been to Virginia Tech campus before. Interestingly consistent architecture. I didn't see the whole campus, but most of the buildings were faced by rocks that they call "Hokie Stone". For some reason, I never got around to actually taking any pictures of those buildings, but they're pretty common probably.

The first ceremony took place in the new-ish Lane Stadium which is a beautiful football stadium. I never would have though that they'd have something that nice down there.

Overall, even with a lot of driving it was a fun weekend. Good to see all of the family together, except for Nathan who's still in Thailand, I hear.

No pics of me and my sister, but here's a couple from the trip..

Technorati Tags: Blogging, Travel

We were downtown for the St Patricks Day parade today. On the way back, I was reminded that I'm walking by where our government works. The government lives in Georgetown and McLean. Might take some pictures out there sometimes too.

Sometimes it's hard to remember what's down there when you live so close. When I worked in DC I was up by the old convention center and Margo worked at the USDA South building. The only time I ever went into any of the monuments or museums was when I went to visit Margo...it was easier to walk through the Natural History Museum than it was to go around it.

Technorati Tags: Holiday, St Patricks Day, Washington DC

While it's still the 4th of July, I thought I should post my pics from this evening. We went to Washington, DC to see the fireworks on the Mall this year. We set up at the special event on the lawn of the Department of Interior South Building. Good stuff. My camera's not too good for taking fireworks pictures though.

Pictures over the fold...

Technorati Tags: 4th of July, Holiday, Independence Day

...or how I was reminded that it takes more than a love of beer to make it through events like this. Or maybe I'm just getting old.

This weekend was the Old Dominion Beer Fest at the Old Dominion Brewing Company in Ashburn, VA. Since I'd heard that it was going, I was excited about it. 50 (mostly) craft breweries all in a row ready and eager to sell a taste of their wares.

Of those that I remember, I liked Rogue's Dead Guy Ale and Delirium Tremens the best. I had other great beers...whose names escape me at the moment. I intentionally avoided breweries that I was familiar with so I didn't try anything from Old Dominion, Sweet Water, DogFishHead, Brooklyn Brewery, and some others.

At the beginning of this post I mentioned that the Fest was a reminder. As good as the above sounds, you're still wandering around in 90 degree heat with 80-90% humidity in the sun and heat. In weather like that, drinking beer and dehydrating myself, my endurance wasn't what it should be.

It definately put me in the mood to go out and try some new brews...so maybe it was Mission Accomplished anyway. Good thing July is American Beer Month.

Technorati Tags: Beer

Technorati Tags: Technology