Friday Wanderings

The nice thing about my Friday off under my compressed work schedule is that it is also payday. So not only do I have a day off, but I also have some money. So this morning was mostly spent paying bills and doing some Christmas shopping on line. We still have have some more to do, but with only six more business days before Christmas, we're put ourselves in a position of having to use express shipping in many cases. Procrastination gets expensive. We still need to d our cards as well.

After the bills were paid and skipping out on exercising, we headed down to Occoquan for lunch and some more shopping. The town of Occoquan has been around since there was a United States. The town of Occoquan sits on the Occoquan River which flows into the Potomac River about a mile downstream. Its now more of a tourist destination than anything else with lots of little antique and gift shops. Its a quaint little place. We had lunch at Madigan's Waterfront. Ann and I both enjoyed some crab chowder and crab cake sandwiches. After lunch we bought a gift or two for the kids. We then headed to the other end of town to Ye Old Dominion Wine Shop. That's its actual name. Its a wine shop that deals exclusively with Virginia wines. We thought while we were in Occoquan we would buy a few bottles. While its possible to get Virginia wines in most of the local grocery stores, their selection is often very limited. We also like to patronize local businesses when we can. One of the nice things about the shop is that they always have wine tasting going on. A nice way to broaden my very limited knowledge of wines and lets me taste wines I probably wouldn't try on my own if I had to buy a bottle to find out if I liked it or not. They also bring in representatives from the local wineries to host tastings on weekends, which is a nice touch. They had a spiced wine as one of their selections today. You could taste the cinnamon and nutmeg and other spices. I could see where it would be very tasty indeed warmed up while sitting in front of a cozy fire. We ended up buyng a Riesling and a red blend and headed home. Where we proceeded to take nap. We got up in time to watch the Virginia Tech men play in the NCAA soccer semi-finals. Unfortunately they lost 2-0 to Wake Forest. Still for them to go this far was quite an accomplishment for the team.

The Son had won tickets to a Capitals hockey game at his office Christmas party a few weeks back so he is off at the Verizon center tonight along with a very nice girl that he has reconnected with from his high school days. With him gone, I got to cook dinner again and we decided to take the easy route and just grill up some Brats. After walking the furry kids, we settled in to watch the Div-1AA football finals, but we just couldn't get into it especially with Appalachian State jumping out to a quick 14-0 lead.

Tomorrow evening we are suppose to get a significant storm. For us it means more rain than snow, but for Daughter#2 it could be 3 to 6 inches of snow with some ice thrown in for good measure. It sounds bleak for those traveling I-81 here in Virginia. Since she works for VDOT she is already on call for snow duty. It could be a long day/night for her. I keep telling her to let them train her to run a snow plow, but she doesn't sound too excited about the idea. She's content to keep track of the plows and the amount of sand/salt they use. Stay warm little one.