Thursday was pretty well food and lazy related. almost everyone was between vaguely and really tired, since no one had slept well - the hazards of putting 10 people into a 2 bedroom house. we did the breakfast-for-an-army thing, and then some of us worked on getting dinner started and some of us lazed and read and did homework. my cousin, who is a Baltimore county cop, stopped by on her way to work, and it was good to see her for a bit. the last time i saw her was 5 years ago, and my brain is still adjusting to the fact that she's a cop now. :) dinner went on about 4, and was the traditional Thanksgiving spread - we ended up saving the seafood for Friday night, unlike the last time i was down there. turkey corn mashed potatoes gravy rolls carrots broccohli stuffing. it was crazy good, and after the dishes were done, we started in on dessert and visited.
Friday, we got up and did leftovers for breakfast. this was the only time that i can remember recently that my mother has given us dispensation to eat dessert for breakfast. pumpkin roll and peacan pie, num. :) we packed up shortly thereafter and headed out to the farmer's markets in Pennsylvania, where you can get treats that are difficult to get anywhere else or that you can get elsewhere, but that are much better from there. mom stocked up and we got a little bit of stuff, while threatening to come back next year with a list and a cooler. we got pot pie squares (which are these odd noodle things that make up excellent chicken and dumplings), more noodles for chicken soup, really good cherry apple cider (which yes, i can get here, but it was really good and really cheap), turkey jerky and beef sticks, and raspberry jam, poppyseed dressing, and apple butter. oh, and i, um, procured a whole case of birch beer, which i will hoard fiendishly.
Friday night was the seafood feast for dinner. they made Jeff a steak, and he sat there and watched us inhale. shrimp and clams and king crab legs and soup and scallops. there were leftovers vegetables in there somewhere, too. :) more dessert, more visiting, more playing Settlers with my sisters. i even did some homework too.
Saturday, we all woke up and packed up pretty early. we were out of my grandmother's hair by about 930. Mom and Dad and my sisters went ahead and took off to home, but Jeff and I wandered south to The Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center, which is a relatively new branch of the Air and Space Smithsonian out at Dulles airport (the road to the airport, by the way, was filled with tolls. tolls to get on the road, and tolls at each exit. sheesh. at least it was 50 cents to get on and 35 cents to get off, as opposed to the two dollar toll on 95 three miles before my grandmother's house). it was huge and wonderful and gorgeous. :) instead of your typical museum construction, it's built like a huge airplane hanger, with planes and other things hanging everywhere, and walkways that get you up into the air to look at them. best of all, there was the space shuttle Enterprise. i was astounded at how small it was - i expected something that went up in space to be a lot bigger. i was also astounded at the size of the Gemini and Apollo modules ("they space walked out of that?! that's smaller than your car, honey.") overall, it was just spiffy, and i think that i might be slowly blossuming into being a space geek (much to the pleasure of Jeff, Tonya, George, and Chris, i'll bet.)
we stayed a couple hours, and got some Subway for lunch - they don't have a real food court yet, just Subway boxed lunches, which was actually decent, but next time we'll bring a picnic. we headed back down 95, running into some nasty-assed traffic where the commuter lanes ended and ran back into 95, and for awhile after that it was stop and go, depending on whether people had something to rubberneck at. that eventually cleared up, and we got home about 720.
it was a really good trip, and we had a good time. Jeff is an excellent person to road trip with, with good taste in music, good conversation, and patience with me when i got tired of being in the car by the end of it. he also didn't bitch about bathroom stops, like a lot of guys (including my father, on occasion) would. :) he's also a good person to go to museums with, particularly ones that feature subjects he knows something about. so, it was a good trip, but it's also good to be home. today is slated to be housecleaning, homework, and lazing.