Say Goodbye to Hollywood*
Moving on is a chance that we take every time
Your new friends try to stay together
Say your words; out of time and you find
That the new friends we just met are gone
Forever, forever
So many faces in and out our life
Some will last, some will just be now and then
Life is a series of hellos and goodbyes
I'm afraid it's time for goodbye again...
* Excerpted and amended from Billy Joel's song Say Goodbye to Hollywood.
The picture above was the posted speed limit at the RV Park we stayed at near Charleston. It's an interesting choice, but we understand that there are people, especially little kids and that the park wants to ensure their safety. We've found that there have been some campers who completely ignore the speed limits that have been posted and don't seem to care that they're driving really fast. Enforcement? We've yet to see it. Oh well...
We packed carefully with the idea that this time nothing would get broken or need repair. We were getting a lot better in breaking down a camp site.
Travelling Route 17 South towards Savannah, the roads are straight, boring and you crisscross lots of bridges that span over little creeks. Yeah, Low Country. The bridges are seemingly easy affairs as they're not long, not much higher than the main roadway. The only thing high was the Puffin starting over and ending back on the highway. We kept jumping up in the air like a pro basketball player leaping for the slam dunk! So no, not everything was right in place by the time we started to unpack. Makes you wonder how the bridges in the northeast have smoother transitions when the expansion and contraction issues due to cold weather (things like frost heaves), happen every season. I put back the kidney that lodged in my neck.
We stopped along the way to a roadside business called Carolina Cider Company. A good call, as the pictures reveal; fresh baked goods, coffees, a lot of different and delicious ciders, which were sold by the nicest people!
OOOh Noooo,The CrockPot is leaking!
We are an educated couple. Yeah, it's true. We know so much. We are worldly. It's a drag sometimes to carry the heavy burden called knowledge. If someone needs advice, we seem to be on speed dial. We're happy to help.
Julie loves cooking new recipes. Often times, she'll snag a magazine at the supermarket check out and say things like, "This looks great, let's try it". I'll admit that I like cooking too and we have a lot of stressful fun cooking together. The picture of Julie details that joy we feel cooking together. The warmth of her smile tells it all, doesn't it?
A few minutes earlier we were warming up a Vietnamese stew recipe we picked out of our most recent edition to the vast catalog of cookbooks. We'd made the stew, a complicated recipe of beef short ribs, minced ginger, anise, onions and beef stock, along with other interesting ingredients like cinnamon. It sounded, smelled terrific. All of this was to be served over Asian noodles.
We put the crockpot on the stove to warm up this expensive, delicious meal. On the stove, heating by GAS. Let me say this again. WE WERE USING A CROCKPOT LINER ON A GAS STOVE.
Our former educators are pondering coming to our current location to revoke our credentials.
Let me explain. By the time we finished the eight hour cooking time of this incredible food, it was too late for dinner. We'd had wine, cheese and grapes earlier and were not hungry. We opted to warm it and have it for dinner the next night. We actually discussed how to warm the stew, never once giving any consideration to the cooking vessel. It's meant to be used as a crockpot, not to be used outside of the aluminum heating container. Yeah, we were well on our way to culinary jail.
And then, we noticed the leak.
But not worry, I know what to do. I'll save the stew and the educators would not come; we'd keep our CV's. All would not be lost! With a pair of oven mitts, I would pick up the crockpot and transfer it to the kitchen sink. We could then ladle the stew from the crockpot to a large bowl. Just give me five minutes and we'd be dining and enjoying a culinary masterpiece.
As I picked up the crockpot, the bottom fell out. That's right, it simply dropped to the top of the burner grate, spilling our meal all over the stove top. The tidal wave of Vietnamese stew filled every inch of the stove top. Every ounce of my my calm and education was summoned to spring into action. I screamed like a cat in heat. Julie did too! Screaming things like "the crockpot broke", "the stew is ruined", "we're going to smell like a Vietnamese stew for months", "we've wrecked the stove" among other spiced phrases. We got a text the educators were on the way and were pretty upset.
Well, the stove top is completely sealed and aside from the initial splatter, the stove was not ruined. Julie was able to bail the stew from the stove top into a large container. Two hours later, with an awful lot of paper towels and elbow grease we enjoyed out stove top concoction.
We hadn't laughed that hard in an awfully long time.
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