I found a recipe for a vegetarian mu shu stir fry that I wanted to try, which called for mu shu pancakes. And luckily I remembered about the Five Mile International Supermarket, a storefront grocery in the Chancellor 5-Mile Center (on Old Plank Rd. nea…
While traveling through North Carolina recently, I saw a billboard that looked something like this: Nothing on the board indicated who had sponsored it. But the sentiment echoes one of my personal philosophies. I know that we’re in hard economic tim…
Although it’s just a short drive from home, before today I’d never been to the historic Ellwood estate, part of the Wilderness Battlefield. In fact, I had no idea that it has been open to the public since 1998. The circa 1790 home was originally pa…
I didn’t know there was a Dog Festival at Hurkamp Park on Sunday, and if I had, I wouldn’t have gone out of my way to go (if you know me, that won’t be a surprise), but we were taking a stroll after church and that’s where we ended up. And I ca…
On Friday night, we went to the football game at James Monroe HS, and watched the Yellow Jackets beat the Orange County HS Fighting Hornets 42-15. Which brings up a very interesting matchup in my fantasy mascot showdown: who would win, a yellow jacket …
We’ll go to just about any promotional event that promises free food, so when our bank branch handed us a flyer advertising food and prizes at their “grand re-opening” last Saturday, we marked the date. There isn’t really all that much new abou…
We saw Stage Door Productions’ performance of Steve Martin’s Picasso at the Lapin Agile in the theater of the downtown library this past weekend. That’s a great venue for a play: if 40 people show up at a high school auditorium, the turnout seems d…
We spent early Friday evening at the Oktoberfest celebration at the Blue and Gray Brewery. Although this was the brewery’s 6th annual Oktoberfest, it was our first visit. When we first showed up, they were still setting up tents and food vendors an…
Last night, I got together with a group of friends for our almost-annual Ladies’ Poker Night, an item we all bid on at our church’s service auction. We had a couple of tables of poker going all evening, playing mostly for pennies and nickels. We were…
Our vacation last week started off on a shaky note, with Hanna blowing across North Carolina and into Virginia on the day we were supposed to leave for the beach. We hung around on Saturday just long enough to make sure none of the trees around our hou…
