Tuesday, January 03, 2012

anyone out there?

Are you there blog? It's me...Carroll.



So I've been a little absent. Like, non-existent on here. Oops.

I went to New York, then it was Thanksgiving, then it was Christmas. Now I'm working on something special for my sweet baby nephew...who should be here in the next few weeks.



Here are some of my pictures of NYC. I went with some of my favorite traveling buddies. Please be a pal and ignore the lingering steroid face:



We walked on the Brooklyn Bridge, visited Ellis Island, and walked through Central Park.

I spent a few hours in Times Square, like a good tourist (I really could have stayed there all day)...



I hit the observation deck at Rockefeller Center, showed amazing self control at FAO Schwartz, and took a few minutes for breakfast at Tiffany's.



An apple counts as breakfast, right?



Of course, I saw some shows. Mary Poppins was great. And we were on the 4th row.



My favorite was definitely Anything Goes. I've been a Sutton Foster fan since Thoroughly Modern Millie...and to actually see her in a show was awesome. I want to be her when I grow up.



We had a 4 hour layover in Chicago on the way home...so I made everyone take the train into the city. There was just enough time to pick up a Giordano's pizza and stroll through Millenium Park before we had to be back at the airport. It turns out that you CAN bring a pizza through security. The guards will all threaten to confiscate it, but they will be secretly impressed that a girl from NC knows about Giordano's.

So that's about it for exciting news...for now. I really need to be better about updating this thing...


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posted by Carroll @ 8:38 PM 5 comments

Tuesday, October 18, 2011

chow time



I'm going to the fair with Lydia tonight. You know what that means.

If I survive, I'll tell you all about my trip to New York. It was amazing. And then I got pizza in Chicago (See? Now you KNOW you want to hear THAT story...).


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posted by Carroll @ 10:40 AM 2 comments

Wednesday, May 04, 2011

DC - Part Two

So, on day 2, we didn't even go into the city.

And we certainly didn't go anywhere that had anything to do with spies.


And we didn't have to disguise ourselves.


And we didn't break into teams to do a spy mission.

But IF we HAD, Sydney, Emily, and I would have beaten Meredith, Benjamin, and Eli. By a good ten minutes.


Just saying.

While I'm denying things, I should mention that I did NOT hang around at the Hoover waiting for Special Agent Seeley Booth to come by.



(**editor's note: I have done everything I know to do to turn this picture around, and it just won't load right. Tilt your head to the left and behold the awesomeness.)

After we didn't do anything spy-related at all, we stopped by the White House.


These goobers are so much fun:


After a short metro ride, we found ourselves at the Library of Congress. I wouldn't have chosen to see this on my own, but I was awfully glad we did. I was really struck by the beauty of the building.



And there was a Gershwin exhibit in the basement! This crowd LOVES some Gershwin!



We strolled past the Capitol:


And then Meredith went all Trip-Nazi on us:



So we saluted.

This was the point where my gimpy foot went from stiff and sore to kind of numb...which...believe it or not, made all the walking a little easier.

I got really good at bringing up the rear and counting heads. 1-2-3-4-5-6. Yep...all here!



Off to steal - I mean - see the Declaration of Independence:



And we finished up the night at the Lincoln Memorial. (Which is nowhere near a Metro Stop. If someone tells you it is, they are lying, and you will walk 2 miles each way to see it. ON A GIMPY FOOT. This concludes the Public Service Announcement.)



The last time I was in DC, I was eight. Our family went, and we brought Me-ma and Pa-pa with us (who, had never really been anywhere in their lives). Everything seemed so huge and wonderful when I was little. Don't get me wrong, there are still a lot of grand things in our nation's capital, but nothing was as grand as I had remembered. Except the Lincoln Memorial.



The few days that followed the trip are a bit of a blur. What should have been a 5 hour drive home on Saturday took 10 hours. When we finally got close to home, a tornado was IN OUR TOWN and we had to drive away from the storm before coming back home. Fortunately, everything at my house was OK.

Meredith's family, who lives in the woods, couldn't even get up their driveway for the fallen trees, and had no power. So, they all came home with me and stayed for a few days. It was fun...mainly because I had 4 people who wanted to play Playstation with me.

So that was our trip. What an adventure!

Meredith's talking about doing Europe next. I'm all over that...



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posted by Carroll @ 11:59 AM 0 comments

Tuesday, May 03, 2011

D to the C



My good buddy Meredith invited me to go to Washington DC with her, her mama, and her 4 kids.

(The jury is still out on whether she was crazy to invite me, or whether I was crazy to accept.)

We got off the metro at the USDA...I was REALLY tempted to go in and tell them exactly what I think of their Specialty Crops Program:


Then we strolled down to the Bureau of Engraving. It turns out that I'm $1,537,800 tall. Who knew?


After taking some nice tourist shots with Benjamin and Emily


we headed to the Smithsonian.



First stop, American History. I got to see Dorothy's ruby slippers, an AMAZING exhibit on America's wars, and was completely star-struck when I saw Kermit the Frog.

I made a special trip to check out Julia Child's kitchen...


...where I found my new favorite quote:


That's my new mantra.

On the way out, I saw C-3PO and totally geeked out on them.


This is the costume from Return of the Jedi, in case you were wondering. I wonder if it still has sand from Tatooine in the joints...

After lunch, we were off to the Natural History museum. How about that elephant (and Emi's pretty cute, too)!?!


We went through the skeleton exhibit. Here, at the buffalo skeleton, Benjamin, Eli, and Emily show off their best buffalo faces:


Since I'm mildly obsessed with Bones, we went through a forensic anthropology exhibit based on skeletons found at Jamestown. This boy died from an infection after he was shot with an arrow. See the arrowhead (in his left femur)? It was found with the skeleton. Fascinating.


Somehow, I ended up taking the boys through the gem exhibit. They wanted to see the Hope Diamond. For 20 minutes, all I heard about was the Hope Diamond.

Then we saw the Hope Diamond.


Eli steps up, peeks in, shrugs his shoulders, and says "It's kinda small."

Talk about anti-climactic.

We HAD to go to the gift shop (Benjamin's goal was to leave no gift shop unbrowsed). I found a kitty that looked a bit like Oozey!


After a snack, we were back on the mall and on our way to the Air and Space Museum. Sydney, Eli, Benjamin, and Emily took part in a paper airplane-building contest


while Francine modeled the very latest in aviator fashion:



I was eager to see the World War II memorial, so we walked down the mall...with a break for some Funny Girl, of course:


Funny girls, indeed.

The WWII memorial was amazing. Beautiful. Sad.




I sure wish my Grandaddy could have seen it.



It was late, and my gimpy foot (which - all things considered - did VERY well) was starting to throb. So we headed back to the hotel.





Stay tuned for the adventure I can't talk about...



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posted by Carroll @ 12:18 PM 2 comments

Friday, November 05, 2010

500



Wow. We've made it to 500 posts. I'd like to start off by thanking everyone for reading this foolishness...and by apologizing that I haven't updated in quite a while. I've been a bad blogger. I'll reform. I promise.

Lydia and I went to the fair two weeks ago. We ate everything and made poor Amy come along to document it. I think she ended up eating more that Lydia and I when it was all said and done. OK...on to the pictures.

The first stop: Fried Cheese. I got introduced to this last year...and it's fast becoming a favorite. The only drawback? I can't eat a whole order by myself. We split this 3 ways and it was still almost too much!



If a tree falls in the forest and no one hears it, does it make a sound?

And if you eat a ham biscuit at the fair before Lydia gets there to see you eating it, does it count?




Of course it does. That ham biscuit (which was purchased here about 2 hours before this picture was taken) was delicious.

So was the fried Milky Way:



And the Al's Fries. I'm really focusing on my ketchup to vinegar ratio here:



It was at this point in the evening that my gimpy foot got the better of me. I spent the next hour hobbling around and poor Lydia and Amy had to practically carry me out of the fair. I whined a lot. I think I might have even cried at one point.

I rallied for NC State ice cream though. That always seems to bring me around. I didn't make it to the free fudge in the craft booth. All of our aches and pains caught up to us at that moment. I think I was begging for an amputation as I was clutching my milkshake:



So that was the fair. Next year I'm bringing a wheelchair. Or maybe a Hoveround.

I'll definitely be bringing Amy and Lydia.


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posted by Carroll @ 12:30 PM 3 comments