Walked out of a restaurant (I use the term loosely) this evening, all because of the cheese.  We went over to town for dinner craving Philly Cheesesteaks and had been told by several people that Skinny Pete’s was the place to go.

Well, we walked in… and the place was empty.  We walked up to the counter and looked at the menu and began to order… then I asked that crucial question:  ”What choice of cheese do we get?”   The answer was a disappointing: “American”  Ugh.  Then she added, “It’s white American.”  As if that makes any difference.

So we left and went next door to Five Guys and got burgers instead… all because of the cheese.  I know there is always much debate on what really  should go on a cheesesteak.  But for me: Provolone!… no American cheese, I don’t care what color it is.

I’m still perplexed by this traffic circle under construction at the entrance to St. Simons Island.  While I’ve already voiced my complaint but after driving through this circle some more over the past several weeks, I have this to say…

Now, consider that a good chunk of the residential population of St. Simons Island live Mid-North to North on the Island as it is not as developed commercially as the South end… and consider also, that since the South end of the Island is indeed more commercially developed than the northern parts of the Island, there is less residential traffic but more business related traffic and therefore, commuters from the Mainland on the south end of the Island.

So now imagine the evening rush hour… as people who work on the Mainland come home across the 4 mile stretch of the Torras Causeway… they approach the end and must now veer right onto the circle and then eventually veer left.  At that point, the circle (which is down to one lane right now due to on-going construction) meets up with the very critical road by which anyone leaving work in the Village area (the business/tourist heavy part of the Island) will invariably approach.  Right now, it is just a back up… it took us 20 minutes just to get our way through this last Friday around 3:50pm from just past the Golden Isles Marina. Folks leaving the Island must yield to traffic coming on the Island… it backs up both in-bound and out-bound… all because of the light at Demere Rd.

So, once this other lane opens, imagine this:  Out-bound traffic comes westbound and veers right onto the circle. In-bound traffic comes eastbound and veers left into the circle.  Now, they are both northbound, out-bound on the right lane, in-bound on the left. But… now, each side of traffic must effectively switch places… Out-bound traffic must move to the left lane to catch the left turn light and get off the Island… and In-bound traffic must get on the right lane to either go north through the light or make a right onto Demere.   Am I making any sense here? Boy,  I think I need a dandelion break… sigh.

Hence, I’m still really confused by the whole thing.

Saw the movie District 9 last week… didn’t know a thing about it prior to going.  I would think theaters would consider it in their best interest to post a warning as people are about to buy tickets for a movie.  This warning should read something to the effect of: ” Warning:  This movie has a lot of jiggly camera work and may cause mild to moderate motion sickness.”

Being in real estate gives me enviable flexibility as far as my schedule goes.  With laptop and cellphone, I can really conduct business anywhere and with good reliable co-workers, I can even ensure that anyone wanting to see my listings can get into them while I’m gone.  But my husband is another story.  Tied to a more traditional sort of business, he works all the time and has deadlines which must be met… so getting away is not always easy.

This past Friday, he called from work mid-afternoon and said “I’ve got some time, let’s get out of town!” So out of town we went… after my initial hesitation since I had pork souvlaki marinating in the fridge and I had planned to grill it for dinner.  ”You’re going to pass up a chance to go somewhere because you have pork to grill?”

Market at Marion Square

We drove up to Charleston – a 3.5 hour drive from St. Simons Island.  Perhaps it would have been faster, but we hit a massive storm as we got into Savannah and it persisted most of the way up so I couldn’t drive at my normal lead-foot speed.  I got a good last minute deal at the Francis Marion Hotel on King Street and once situated, we walked down King Street, all the way to the Battery and then up E. Bay Street… by then, it had drizzled some more and we were tired, hot and sticky (and grumpy! don’t forget grumpy!) so we began looking for a place to eat.  We felt too gross to go into a nice restaurant so we ended up at the Crab Shack where we ordered beers and reluctantly ordered dinner.  Once the beers came and we had a sip or two, we came to our senses.  So, we cancelled our dinner order and after we finished our beers, left in search of a ‘real’ place to eat.  We eventually opted for dinner at Slightly North of Broad  where we sat at the ‘Chef’s Table’ – basically a low counter facing the open kitchen – and had good wine and a delicious meal.

Queen Street Grocery

The next day, we did more walking… off the beaten path into more residential areas just looking at houses… you would think I’d be sick of looking at houses but these were just so charming and interesting, I couldn’t help taking pictures.  We stumbled upon a little grocery store on Queen Street in an old building and were surprised to find they made organic crepes – so we had lunch of ham & cheese crepes and went on our merry way.

At one point, we turned down a street to find ourselves in the midst of government housing… odd juxtaposition to the wealth and charm just a couple of blocks away.  But we came upon this huge old walled property with an enormous run-down building with massive bars at the windows.  It was really fascinating and we discovered as we came up to the front gate that it was the old city jail being renovated (for what, I have no idea!)… so I was glad we took that wrong turn because otherwise, we would never have seen that building, which was really cool…

So I suppose  what I take away from all this… if you don’t take a wrong turn now and then… you may never stumble upon cool things you might otherwise have missed… is that the Doogie Howser lesson for this episode?  I think it is… Oh and that it was hot… really HOT… and humid and that next time we decide to go to Charleston… it will have to be late fall or the dead of winter.

Without realizing it, I have been on search for a really great blueberry muffin.  I really miss the ones I used to get from a place called The Market, Market Street or MarketPlace or something like that.  I just remember it being across the street and one block up from my first job, on the 40th floor of 1 Dag Hammskjold Plaza in New York City (49th & 2nd Ave).  It was one of those gourmet markets that used to make fantastic sandwich platters when we had those big lunch meetings… and even better muffin, danish platters for those pesky breakfast meetings.  Of course, that was back in 1990…  Their muffins were oversized, with these huge crusty muffin tops sprinkled liberally with chunky, coarse sugar.  Inside, they were light, fluffy and moist, tinged with blue and full of berries.  They melted in your mouth and then there was that satisfying crunch from the sugary topping… ah, bliss.

Since then, my experience with the blueberry muffin has been somewhat lackluster.  In Atlanta, muffins were usually relegated to those purchased as an after thought in a (more…)

Apparently, I haven’t overnighted anything is a long time. Took an envelope by UPS the other day to overnight some papers and discovered that I had three options for overnighting…

1) Delivery by 8:00am – $50 something dollars

2) Delivery by 10:30am – $27 or so

3) Delivery by sometime later in the day was like $20 something…(at this point, my brain was busy calculating whether it was worth it to overnight this small envelope in my hand and the words of the guy behind the counter was but a mere distant buzzing noise)

Am I revealing my age when I say that I can remember overnighting things for under $20?  Something like $17?  I suppose most of my overnighting was for work purposes, therefore, I simply filled out the form and sent it off to the mailroom and let the company deal with it…

So in the end, I took my little envelope… drove down the street to the good ol’ US post office where I went ahead and sent it via certified mail – so it will take perhaps 2-3 days to get where it needs to go and I sent it certified to make sure I had a record of it.  All for just over $3.

Then I went and treated myself to lunch.

Just spent the weekend in the mountains of North Carolina… I had driven up straight from Atlanta after my meeting had ended and Ryan drove up with friends from the Island. I have to admit, packing for a weekend while it’s 100 degrees outside, I packed nothing but shorts and t-shirts… when I got to the cabin, I realized I had nothing warm enough to wear. What a concept. Here I was in July wishing I had packed flannel… (more…)

The weekend was basically going to be a working one… we’re heading up to the family cabin next weekend so my husband is trying to get ahead at work so he can take off Thursday.  But we got a nice invitation from friends to come over for dinner with their kids who were in town for the 4th.  Jimmy absolutely makes the best ribs in the world… and all the veggies were picked fresh in Tatnall County (the U-Pick Capital of Georgia) or home grown so everything was delicious. (more…)

The traffic circle construction is under way and we’ve finally been able to see a drawing of the plans. They actually started the construction a couple of months ago beginning with the tearing down of the beautiful oak that used to stand at the entrance to the Island… probably a couple of hundred years old, it was said that it was dead… word had it that the power company ‘somehow’ placed a pole or something right near it’s root and was subsequently hit by lightning which then killed the tree… awfully convenient huh? A landmark tree dying RIGHT before plans for a new construction project gets approved. In any case, nefarious plots aside… (more…)

Just came back from spending the day out on the water… I do live on an Island afterall. Not many people can say they live 4 miles away from the mainland. Lucky for me, I have generous friends who occasionally invite us to join them for a day out on their boat. Sometimes we go fishing… other times, like today, it’s simply a boat ride to have lunch at Mudcat Charlies in the Two-Way Fish camp on the Altamaha River near Darien. (more…)