Getting Historical
Met up with a friend of mine yesterday. For blog purposes, I’ll call her Agnes. She’s one of the three going with me to Eastern Europe this year, so I’ll probably be mentioning Miranda, Lucky, and her quite a bit in the coming months. Anyway, Agnes, Miranda, and I met on a trip to Germany because we were all German majors (allll the way back in 2004). Agnes double-majored in German and Historic Preservation.
We hit up Cheese-o-logy, which is all macaroni and cheese, for a late lunch. I had the spinach and artichoke macaroni, which was mind-blowingly awesome. It came in its own individual tiny skillet with a red potholder. Agnes had the Philly cheesesteak, which was pretty good, too. Less awesome was remembering later that I had set aside some of the mac’n’cheese I made on Thursday for Sunday night dinner, so I had it for two meals in a row, but that’s another story for another day (for the record, I am not good at béchamel cooking).
It was neat because we had a full hour just to talk about our upcoming trip, and to sketch in some details. I showed her my Evernote notebook in which I’ve been collecting scraps for the trip. I think she was only mildly terrified. We discussed how to travel peaceably, which included finding shopping alternatives for Miranda (who doesn’t seem to be interested in much) and me occasionally toning down the mania. It’s best if I make a concentrated effort to be on my best behavior and learn to compromise when I need to.
That said, if Miranda gets into the mode where she doesn’t want to do anything (which happens a lot), I won’t have a problem simply handing over the group travel phone and going off and doing something I want to do by myself since I’ve already decided to take my phone with me. Before, I’ve been stymied by lack of transportation and ways of communication if I’m not interested in something the group wants to do or they’re not interested in something I want to do. I am determined not to let that happen on this trip. I will compromise, but I will not sacrifice an entire trip to shopping at Hard Rock Cafés and drinking coffee in cafés.
Whew. That rant felt good.
Anyway, after lunch, we set off in search of the source of Agnes’s gift card, which is a place called Jilly’s Cupcake Bar. Thanks to Siri, we learned it was two miles away, not the two blocks we hoped, and were spared a lot of cold walking. At either rate, we were a little skeptical about it (the gift card had come from a ditzy aunt, apparently), but holy crap!
They had quite the selection of gourmet cupcakes, including ones that looked like they’d been dipped in gold lamé. It was hectic inside, but we picked our poisons and fled to the museum (I got the Chocolate Thunder, which was chocolate, with a dark chocolate ganache filling, topped with milk chocolate buttercream, vanilla buttercream frosting, chocolate shavings, chocolate bark, and a healthy dose of diabetes. It took me two different sittings to eat it, and I still gave half of it to my sister).
Mine is in the middle! The one on the left is Reese's Peanut Butter Cups.
Today is actually the last day for the George Washington exhibit at the History Museum, but Agnes and I decided to just wander the free exhibits and save money. The really neat thing is that a classmate of Agnes’s actually designed one of the exhibits currently at the museum, the Women’s Underneath It All, which examines the progression of women’s undergarments from the Victorian era to modern times. Between having just finished a fic set in 1745 to writing some Downton Abbey fanfiction to adoring Miss Pettrigrew Lives for a Day, it was kind of the perfect exhibit to see.
Things I learned:
We also wandered through the 1904 World’s Fair exhibit. Insert your own alien jokes here, I guess. Last night was possibly the last Fringe podcast I’ll do, which was a little sad, but I’ll be glad to get my Sunday nights back. Still, rather just have the show back and on for five more seasons of Walter, Olivia, Astrid, and Peter being awesome.
I really should get back into writing something. It's been a couple of weeks and I think I'm getting antsy.
We hit up Cheese-o-logy, which is all macaroni and cheese, for a late lunch. I had the spinach and artichoke macaroni, which was mind-blowingly awesome. It came in its own individual tiny skillet with a red potholder. Agnes had the Philly cheesesteak, which was pretty good, too. Less awesome was remembering later that I had set aside some of the mac’n’cheese I made on Thursday for Sunday night dinner, so I had it for two meals in a row, but that’s another story for another day (for the record, I am not good at béchamel cooking).
It was neat because we had a full hour just to talk about our upcoming trip, and to sketch in some details. I showed her my Evernote notebook in which I’ve been collecting scraps for the trip. I think she was only mildly terrified. We discussed how to travel peaceably, which included finding shopping alternatives for Miranda (who doesn’t seem to be interested in much) and me occasionally toning down the mania. It’s best if I make a concentrated effort to be on my best behavior and learn to compromise when I need to.
That said, if Miranda gets into the mode where she doesn’t want to do anything (which happens a lot), I won’t have a problem simply handing over the group travel phone and going off and doing something I want to do by myself since I’ve already decided to take my phone with me. Before, I’ve been stymied by lack of transportation and ways of communication if I’m not interested in something the group wants to do or they’re not interested in something I want to do. I am determined not to let that happen on this trip. I will compromise, but I will not sacrifice an entire trip to shopping at Hard Rock Cafés and drinking coffee in cafés.
Whew. That rant felt good.
Anyway, after lunch, we set off in search of the source of Agnes’s gift card, which is a place called Jilly’s Cupcake Bar. Thanks to Siri, we learned it was two miles away, not the two blocks we hoped, and were spared a lot of cold walking. At either rate, we were a little skeptical about it (the gift card had come from a ditzy aunt, apparently), but holy crap!
They had quite the selection of gourmet cupcakes, including ones that looked like they’d been dipped in gold lamé. It was hectic inside, but we picked our poisons and fled to the museum (I got the Chocolate Thunder, which was chocolate, with a dark chocolate ganache filling, topped with milk chocolate buttercream, vanilla buttercream frosting, chocolate shavings, chocolate bark, and a healthy dose of diabetes. It took me two different sittings to eat it, and I still gave half of it to my sister).
Mine is in the middle! The one on the left is Reese's Peanut Butter Cups.
Today is actually the last day for the George Washington exhibit at the History Museum, but Agnes and I decided to just wander the free exhibits and save money. The really neat thing is that a classmate of Agnes’s actually designed one of the exhibits currently at the museum, the Women’s Underneath It All, which examines the progression of women’s undergarments from the Victorian era to modern times. Between having just finished a fic set in 1745 to writing some Downton Abbey fanfiction to adoring Miss Pettrigrew Lives for a Day, it was kind of the perfect exhibit to see.
Things I learned:
- A lot of times, women’s underwear was peach in the ’30s-’50s because peach hid the discoloration from lots and lots of washing.
- Corsets are freaking terrifying.
- In 1870, St. Louis passed something called the Social Evil Ordinance, which meant that bordellos could register for proper permits with the police department. St. Louis seemed to realize that outlawing something didn’t mean it was going to stop it from happening. In other news, St. Louis is also home to the Anheuser-Busch factory, which outputs quite a bit of the world’s percentage of alcohol and is the only brewery in the world to keep an archivist on staff. We’re quite familiar with the concept of “outlawing it ain’t going to keep it away,” aren’t we, Prohibition?
- Women started getting a lot more options for underwear in the ’20s. Including girdles!
We also wandered through the 1904 World’s Fair exhibit. Insert your own alien jokes here, I guess. Last night was possibly the last Fringe podcast I’ll do, which was a little sad, but I’ll be glad to get my Sunday nights back. Still, rather just have the show back and on for five more seasons of Walter, Olivia, Astrid, and Peter being awesome.
I really should get back into writing something. It's been a couple of weeks and I think I'm getting antsy.