They Did, They Did

The last weekend of October, I flew to Philadelphia for a close friend's wedding. Everything went well until Hester Prynne announced that she was pregnant with Reverend Dimmesdale's baby. Oh man, was that awkward. Seriously, though, the ceremony itself went smoothly and the bride was beautiful. There was an open bar at the reception, and the flower girls performed some traditional Irish dances. Oh, and there was a swan sculpted from potato salad, which I thought was neat. All in all a lovely event.

Maybe you'd like to know what kind of bra I wore with my dress? Well you see, the bridesmaid dresses were sleek and fitted (with spaghetti straps and a fairly low back), so it was a bit of a challenge to find something that provided support without being too obvious. (In my opinion, if your bra is showing at all, you might as well be wearing it over your clothing like that woman from Splash.) Originally, I was planning to wear one of those Nu-bra things with the self-adhesive cups, but I didn't like the way it looked under the dress. And besides, I was worried it would come unstuck during a critical part of the ceremony and slingshot across the room, perhaps landing on a statue of the Blessed Mother. That would have been bad. In the end, I opted for the standard strapless bra and left it at that.

I'm sure you were all dying to know this information. And that's what I'm here for ... to provide you with the details you care about.

On the morning of the wedding, my friends and I ate at a diner for a bit of local flavor. This is where we discovered a lovely little dish called scrapple. Scrapple is a regional specialty, and it is most often eaten as a breakfast side dish, in lieu of bacon or sausage. It's a salty blend of ground pork and cornmeal that is sliced and then fried, and it looks sort of like a loaf of banana bread. I thought about trying it but didn't. After we left, one of my friends did a little research into the composition of scrapple and discovered that "pork" in this case actually indicates a whole lot more than just your most oft-eaten pig parts. According to Wikipedia, scrapple includes "everything but the squeal." Yes, we're talking skin, tongue, heart, and brains. Classic. My instinct served me well in that instance. (It's been known to let me down in the past, as evidenced by the time I tried a beautiful brown pinwheel thing from a buffet in Israel. What I felt sure was chocolate turned out to be whipped liver paste.)

Sunday, a bunch of us took the train into central Philly. Up until that point we had spent our entire trip in the suburbs and we were aching to see something besides the standard sprawl of Bed, Bath & Beyond stores. The problem was, we only had about 40 minutes, so once we disembarked we decided we had time to visit a single historical site. The Liberty Bell was the lucky winner, by virtue of being the closest. Once we got there, of course, we still had to go through security, and by that point we were already past the 20-minute mark. Our time was pitifully short. Here's how the conversation with myself went.

"Wow, I'm actually standing in front of the Liberty Bell."

(we're going to miss the train)

"This was the actual bell that was rung on the first public reading of the Declaration of Independence."

(screw the founding fathers, we're going to miss the train)

"It's interesting when you think about how some of our historical landmarks came to be of such cultural importance. I mean, the Liberty Bell didn't really gain epic significance until the abolitionists appropriated it as a symbol for their cause. It's almost as if legend and symbolism have more impact on our perceived national identity than the literal historical truth."

(ARE YOU FOR REAL? JUST SHUT THE HELL UP AND GET MOVING BECAUSE WE'RE GOING TO MISS THE TRAIN!)

We did not miss the train, nor did we miss the plane, although the latter was a very close call. Still, I'm glad we did it. It would have been a shame if my mental image of Philly looked just like my mental image of Olathe, Kansas.

Halloween

By the time I got back from the wedding on Sunday night, I didn't have much time to devote to pulling together a costume. What I ended up doing was converting a plain ringer t-shirt into a "Camp Crystal Lake" shirt. I drew some happy little trees on it, and the lettering looked ... well ... campy. Then I took a red sharpie and made a large blood stain on the left side. It looked pretty cool, if I do say so myself. I wore barrettes in my hair, just like one of the campers in the original. To be entirely in character, of course, I would have had to run around in my underwear, screaming. But the evening was a little too chilly for partial nudity, and our neighbors would probably have objected to an entire evening of blood-curdling shrieks.

Reading Comprehension

I made an apple coffee cake a few nights ago. It turned out reasonably well, although I seriously botched my first attempt at preparing the crumbly topping. The recipe read "fold in 2 Tbl firm stick butter into dry ingredients," but for some reason, I read it as "fold in 2 firm sticks of butter." As you can imagine, the result was disastrous. I spent a very long time straining with the wire whisk, grinding the materials into a hideous gray-brown mush, before concluding that the contents of the bowl were never going to be crumbly. The laws of physics simply wouldn't permit it. Once I re-read the recipe and reduced the volume of butter by about a thousand percent, however, the topping turned out quite nicely. Note to self: recipes require at least a modicum of attentiveness. Which reminds me. Thanksgiving is coming up, and I'm debating about whether to make another turkey. Some of you may recall my exhilarating experience from last year, in which I tried to remove the wire kegelmaster thing too early and nearly succeeded in flinging the poor bird across the room. Good times, good times.

Well, that's about it.

What's going on with you?