BD at the CP

Come out to the Corner Pub tonight and help me celebrate my birthday! If you can't make it, maybe you'll enjoy these pictures from the beach.

And yes, we are a bunch of idiots.

Forty Days

It’s 40 days until Christmas. I already started doing some holiday shopping, but it’s getting harder each year to come up with ideas for what to get my parents. For the past 2 years, John and I have been giving our close friends GC’s to a restaurant. We stole this initiative from Sean & Val, who give us GC’s to Maggiano’s every year and we all go together. This year’s contender is a good one, but I want to try the restaurant across the street from it before we decide. So secretive, huh?

So, you want to know about what happened with the Nylon Undies?

It was a very tiring trip, but a nice getaway. The actual selection of stores at the VF Outlets weren’t all that great, but if you’re looking for cheap undies, bras, nightgowns or jeans, this is the place for you! If you like “mom jeans”, those can be had for $10.

Being a very cloudy Saturday and a bit weary from the 2 ½ hour drive, I wasn’t really in the mood to comb the racks for bargains. This was even more apparent when we discovered the kitchen and housewares mecca -- Reading China and Glass. Oh, how I could have spent the entire day in there! We cruised the small appliance section, looked for soup spoons and picked up our free gift (a small berry-scented candle).

After shopping, we headed to the inn and took a nap. For dinner, we tried to get into the OG. The OG (Olive Garden) is the bane of our society. I don’t know why I try to go there! It doesn’t seem to matter what day of the week it is, there’s always a 40 minute wait. The food is OK at best. We looked on our handy dandy map provided by the inn and decided to go to Nino’s, which was only a block away from where we were staying. Nino’s was a small little place with 15 tables or so. They didn’t serve alcohol but you could bring your own wine. The patrons all seemed like regulars. They all knew the wait staff by name and the wait staff knew them. I had a delicious Chicken Marsala and Johnny had a stromboli. I’m glad the OG failed us, because we ended up having a really nice meal.

Sunday, after learning the antiques places opened at 7:30 AM (it was around 8:00 AM at this point?) we got ready for the day. We headed down to breakfast. AYCE BACON! That’s right! All you can eat! I love breakfast buffets! We actually only hit two antiques places. Both were indoors with hundreds of vendors in each. The first place we hit was Renneger’s. Lots of glassware, coins, toys, jewelry. I saw some Looney Toons glasses for a good price, but I didn’t need them.

One lady was selling hand knit sweaters and ponchos. She was chatting with another customer and I don’t think she ever stopped to take a breath. I looked at some old knitting magazines, but she didn’t have them displayed in a way that would make it easy to browse. Had they been standing up in their bin so you could flip through them, I probably would have found a few things to buy. They were just piled flatly in the bin and I didn’t feel like emptying them out to look through them. Her loss.

The second place was Stoudt’s Antique Mall. This place seemed like it was mostly furniture. I didn’t see anything that looked like a bargain. We cruised through fairly quickly but managed to buy some little porcelain knobs ($1 each) for my new bookcases.

Prior to this trip, I scoured the interwebs for yarn stores in Reading. We headed back towards town and I left John in the car while I went fiber hunting. I think I was in the shop about 45 minutes. The ladies in there were very nice and if I lived in Reading, I think this could be the type of place I’d hang out. The surrounding shops looked really cute too, but we didn’t go in any of them.

Looking for lunch, we decided to try this place advertised as a must-see. Apparently, the town’s bars aren’t open on Sundays. So much for the Peanut Bar! We ended up at Smokey Bones BBQ and had a yummy pulled pork lunch. Afterwards, we hit the book store and Tuesday Morning. I found a few stocking stuffers there. I must go back to the one near us to get some more!

We headed back to the inn and watched some football and napped. Dinner was hot wings and Caesar salad at the hotel bar. It's odd to be in a place where you can still smoke. I've gotten so used to the bars here in Monkey and PG Counties being smoke-free!

As we were nearing home, we stopped off at the new Costco to look at their flat screen TV selection. A pack of NY Strip Steaks, a 26" HDTV and some Jamaican Beef Patties later, we were finally HOME! As much as I love to travel, it was really nice to be home. Hope everyone had a good weekend!

Land of the Nylon Undies

When I was younger, outlets and outlet malls weren’t as common as they are these days. At least once a year in the mid 70’s, my family would head up to Reading to the VF Outlets. It’s located on the site of a former hosiery mill and the original outlet was opened to get rid of surplus hosiery, lingerie, pj’s and robes.

I don’t recall how I occupied my time on these trips, because a 10-year-old really doesn’t have much interest in underwear shopping. All I remember about this place was miles and miles of nylon nightgowns and underwear. And Lee® jeans.

So, that’s where we’re headed this weekend... Reading, PA. It’s an anniversary present from my MIL. Not the “Reading” part, but a B&B getaway. We’d like to check out a B&B at Deep Creek Lake some time; it comes highly recommended by Sean. My MIL presented us with brochures from DCL, but also showed us a brochure about Reading. One of the main reasons I selected Reading is because there are a lot of antique shops near there and John loves to look at old, dusty stuff. Since it looks like John might be coming down with a cold, perhaps DCL would have been a more relaxing choice!

Other than antiquing, of course I want to check out the outlets. And... I’ve scoped out a few yarn shops near the inn and along the way. I even looked up one scrapbooking/stamping shop. It’s going to be such a fun trip for John, isn’t it? Must remember to load up the car with sudoku and crossword puzzles so he’ll have something to do while I’m in the shops.

Hope everyone has a wonderful weekend!

Oh, Internet Connection... How You Mock Me

Original Post 10/15/07:
I was going to blog about an hour and a half ago, but the internet connection was messing with my head. After rebooting several times, it started behaving and I started looking up yarn shops in the Reading, PA area (or along the route to Reading). See, my awesome MIL gave us a trip to a B&B for our 2nd wedding anniversary and we're finally cashing in. There were two options -- a trip to Deep Creek Lake (which looks beautiful) or a stay at the Inn at Reading. We chose the latter. Although S&V have raved about Deep Creek (and trust me, I really want to go there!), my MIL told us about all these antique shops

Today:
Well, apparently, Blogger actually kept the draft of this post I never finished. Today, it mocks me by not uploading my pictures. Damn the interwebs!

So, where was I? Ah, all the antique shops we'll be visiting. I'm actually looking forward to seeing the outlets. When I was little, my parents used to go to Reading at least once a year. We'd go to the Vanity Fair outlets where there were nylon undies and nightgowns as far as the eyes could see. I also remember lots of Lee jeans. I'm sure there were other things as well.

I scoped out yarn shops in the area, but haven't really found one within the route we're taking. I was also thinking of stopping by a few shops in the Baltimore area. More details on this trip later!