We started off the holidays with about 15 people over our house for Christmas Eve, then driving up to Carole's Mom's senior facility on Christmas Day with a portable feast, followed by a house full of Carole's relatives on the day after Christmas. Carole was pretty much kitchen bound the entire time, while I made sure Giant Foods, Harris Teeter and the Montgomery County Liquor Authority all had very profitable end of year revenues.
After the Christmas craziness, Carl and I did the Maryland Heights hike near Harper's Ferry. This is basically a loop that goes up for 3 miles, then down for 3 miles. On the way up you have a sad view of the Hilltop House hotel, a landmark above Harper's Ferry that is apparently closed indefinitely and in a state of disrepair.
A few more miles of slogging up hill to the old gun placement areas at the top of the mountain and you are rewarded with the traditional beeyootiful view of the Potomac River looking towards Brunswick. That is Sugarloaf Mountain off in the distance. On the drive back it actually started to snow and continued to flurry for the rest of the day.
The rest of the week was planning for our New Year's Party. We had about 20 people over, 7 of whom stayed overnight, despite all of our efforts to explain that all the concern over driving after drinking was just media hype. We split the attendees into three teams and (after a few hours of eating and drinking) each had to design a marketing campaign for a new wine, based on some blindly chosen attributes, such as "Bouquet", "Origin of Grapes".' "Essence" and "Celebrity Spokesperson". The three teams ended up having to deal with selections such as:
- Stinkbug, rutabaga, Perth Amboy, Charles Manson
- Gym clothes, liver, Dundalk, Amy Winehouse
- Chicken coop, Brussels sprouts, Chernobyl, Elmer Fudd
The Amy Winehouse team seemed to really, really need a trip to rehab (yes, yes, yes) The Charles Manson team had the most impressive campaign and the most artistic label, but the spokesperson (June) for the Elmer Fudd team was the cutest of them all, and the What Would Donald Trump Do criteria steered the ultimate decision to award first prize to the Elmer Fudd team.
After finally getting to bed at about 0230, at 0830 I got all the Things That Wouldn't Leave moving for the traditional New Year's Day hike, this time on the Wincopin trail in Savage, MD. From there it was off to Jim and Jacqui's house for an elegant New Year's Day brunch, where Jim showed he could get a high paying job operating the waffle iron at a Hampton Inn.
Rick and Maggie turned into The Things That Really, Really Wouldn't Leave and somehow managed to follow us home once again. So, New Year's Day evening Carole cooked them up a fine meal of manicotti made from Angelo's authentic light and airy Italian crepes. The next day (finally...) Rick and Maggie headed back to Columbus. After all that cooking and entertaining, Carole was fresh as a - well, a picture is worth a thousand words:
Comments