Typical Day

It's been a pretty usual day here at Melrose. We were a little short on people again todady, so Angie manned the Johnson House while Gerald and I gave tours up here at Melrose. It was pretty busy this morning, but things have settled down a bit this afternoon. I'm in charge of taking care of Scully and Regis while Nathan, Kate, and Tim are in New Orleans, so I'll go check on them after work. Other than that, everything is really normal and I can't thtink of anything really interesting to inform you about--maybe tomorrow I'll have a good story!

Best "Weekend" Ever!

Hello everyone! Sorry that I didn't have a chance to post something yesterday, but today I will catch you all up on my fun "weekend." I call my Wednesday/Thursday days off "weekends" in quotation marks because it's not the actual weekend--Saturday/Sunday. :-) I had soooooooooo much fun with Matt and Angie!! First off, the white chocolate bread pudding was a HUGE success. Doesn't it look tasty? I did a photo shoot of it in front of my kitchen. In the oven it rose about an inch above the baking dish, and it was just the perfect consistency. We decided that, though Magnolia Grill had previously been the solo holder of the title for the South's best bread pudding, Tiffany's white chocolate chip bread pudding is a definite contender for the title. Angie, Matt, and I ate the bread pudding warm with vanilla ice cream on the side--it was heavenly, if I do say so myself. On Wednesday, in addition to eating bread pudding, Angie, Matt, and I had dinner at the El Ranchero restaurant--Vicksburg's version of La Fiesta. I think that the same guitarist who sang "Happy Birthday" to me at La Fiesta last month was playing the guitar at El Ranchero. Maybe he makes his rounds among all of the Mexican restaurants in the area (which are pretty much just La Fiesta and El Ranchero, although there is a place called El Potro in Natchez that's pretty good too. Maybe he plays the guitar there sometimes). We had a fun dinner and then just hung out at the house for the evening. The three of us have great Civil War conversations.

On Thursday morning, I woke up with a cat on top of my face :-) Angie and Matt's newest kittie: Cali, is one big bundle of love, and she decided to come keep me company in the guest bedroom. She has quite the little purring motor inside of her, and she was making me laugh because she was purring so loudly. We had a relaxing morning, then we had the ultimate Mississippi lunch experience. We went to the Bovina Dina!! It's actually called the Bovina Diner, but you can't say "Bovina" without pronouncing Diner as "Dina." Bovina is a little speck of a town between Vicksburg and Jackson. Angie and Matt had told me about the good ol' home cookin' they serve, and we decided to stop there for lunch. It is this funniest little restaurant out in the middle of nowhere (although Matt informed me that the area around Bovina was critical during the Siege of Vicksburg--that's where General McClernand brought his regiment of Illinois troops as they were coming in from the east). It reminded me a lot of the Fourth Street Cafe that Mom, Dad, and I enjoy in Keokuk, Iowa, where they write all of their choices up on a white board, and erase things as they run out. I had some fried catfish, black-eyed peas, lima beans, creamed fresh corn, and cornbread. It was divine. But, the very best part of the entire meal was dessert: HOMEMADE SWEET POTATO PIE!!! Talk about a little slice of heaven! Sarah would have especially loved it--because she loves sweet potato/yam eats. It was probably one of the best things I've ever eaten. After our great lunch, Matt went back to the Burg, and Angie and I went on to Jackson for our shopping extravaganza. We literally shopped 'til we dropped. We started out over in the Lakeland area by the airport and hit some furniture stores there. Angie is working on decorating her house, and we found some great stuff to put on her walls. I was glad to stop at Bath and Body Works to load up on some of my favorite lotion.

After Lakeland, we went over into the downtown Jackson area to the big mall there. We also went to this cool shoe store where I finally bought some Crocs. I've been meaning to buy Crocs for a while, but haven't done it yet, so I found some cool blue ones that are super comfy. I also found my new favorite shoes in the whole world--they're some brown and blue Rocket Dog shoes. They are totally awesome! We decided to eat dinner at the mall before going over to meet Matt at the Western Sizzlin'--so as to save ourselves from the possibility of an upset stomach. It's a good thing we did that though, because we called Matt on our way over to the Civil War Round Table meeting, and he said that instead of having a Civil War discussion, it ended up that they were just going to have a business meeting to discuss the affairs of the Jackson branch of the Civil War Round Table club. So, Angie and I avoided the Western Sizzlin' all together and went back to the mall to find Angie some awesome shoes. We grabbed some smoothies and got home at about 9:30 that night and were happy about our great day. Probably the funnest part was just hanging out with Angie and chatting all day long. It seriously seems like we've been friends since birth.

This morning we got up bright and early and drove down to Natchez for a busy day of work. It ended up just being Angie and me holding down the fort at Melrose this afternoon because Nathan, Kate, and Tim took off for New Orleans for the weekend. Angie had so much work to get done, so I volunteered to give several tours in a row which worked out just great. As we were closing up this afternoon, some black clouds blew in. I couldn't believe how fast they were moving. Thankfully they weren't green, or else I think that would have been the sign of a tornado coming! Angie and I could tell that a nasty storm was brewing, so we hurried and closed everything up and ran to our cars. We made it out just in time--before the heavens opened and the rain started coming down in buckets. Luckily my car wasn't parked underneath the pecan tree at Routhland during the storm, because when I got home, there was a gigantic branch--similar to the one that bashed my windshield, only this one was much heavier--that had crashed down in about the same spot as the other. I am sure to park out away from the trees these days. I think sometime I should go outside in the middle of the night and chop the self-pruning pecan tree down. It's nothing but trouble. Speaking of trees, Tim showed me this morning that there is a fig tree right outside my door at Routhland! I didn't even know about it, but boy--I had some yummy figs today! I think figs are my new favorite fruit.

The Next Iron Chef America

You know that show "Iron Chef America" on the Food network? Well, I think if there's ever a bread pudding cook-off challenge, I should compete in it--and I would totally win with my new version of white chocolate bread pudding! You see, I'm heading up to Vicksburg today to spend the night at Matt and Angie's and to go shopping with Angie over in Jackson tomorrow, and since her birthday is coming up, we thought we'd celebrate tonight. So I thought I'd make some birthday bread pudding, and I think it's going to be the best bread pudding ever!! I used Sister McClure's bread pudding recipe, but I added my own flare to it. I think it will be thicker than Sister McClure's, and I sprinkled white chocolate chips on top, which I think will be a yummy addition. It's in the oven right now. Mom and I didn't quite know what to think about my oven--it's a little scary, and it really needs to be cleaned out, but it's kind of past the point of being able to be cleaned out. So, I just thought I'd stick the bread pudding in and hope that the house doesn't catch on fire, and so far so good. Between this bread pudding and last night's gluten-free pasta dish that I made for Bailey and Abby, I feel like quite the gourmet chef. When I was leaving the Wesselman's last night, Abby said, "Dinner was fantastic as usual!" :-) I thought that was cute--especially since I've only made dinner for them twice.

Tomorrow should be super fun. After Angie and I go shopping in Jackson, we're meeting Matt at the Western Sizzlin' (comparable to Chuck-a-Rama--scary!) for this month's Civil War round table discussion, where older Civil War scholars meet to discuss various aspects of Civil War history. It should be very interesting, and I'm glad Matt and Angie asked me if I wanted to go. We think that we might grab dinner someplace else before it starts though, because the last time I ate at Chuck-a-Rama, I lost everything I've ever eaten since I was born, and Matt and Angie have had similar experiences at the Western Sizzlin'. So we might show up at the round table having already eaten.

Maybe I should move to Sweden. I had a really cute, young couple on one of my tours yesterday who were from Sweden. When we were upstairs, there was this little family of gigantic cockroaches sitting in front of the back door. They freaked me out, but they especially freaked the couple out. They said in their cool Swedish accent, "Oh goodness! Vat er dose?" I said, "Those are cockroaches--which I strongly dislike." They told me that the cockroaches they have in Sweden are teeny tiny things and don't look anything like that. After having chased a large cockroach around my room the night before, I thought, "Hmmmm, maybe I should move to Sweden where the cockroaches are not so disgusting." Just kidding--I don't want to live that far away from home. After the tour, I went back up and swept the roachies off the back balcony. This lady was sitting in a rocking chair on the porch of one of the other buildings, and she wondered what I was doing. "Cockroach duty," I said. That kind of grossed her out. Well, I'm going to go check on the bread pudding, then head up to V-burg in a little while. If I don't have time to post something tomorrow, I'll catch up on everything on Friday.

Lunch at the Castle

Today Angie and I got to eat like queens at the Castle Restaurant on the grounds of the Dunleith estate. It's a fancy schmancy restaurant, and since Angie hadn't been there before, I thought it would be fun to take her there for an early birthday lunch. We had some yummy food, and of course, bread pudding for dessert. Their bread pudding was really yummy--it had walnuts and apples in it, and some tasty sauce. Angie and I both had some pan-seared tuna--hers was on top of a salad, and mine was on top of pasta with artichoke hearts and asparagus. I don't think I'd ever had real tuna before (that didn't come from a can), and it was really good, except that they're all gourmet-ish there at the Castle, and I guess that the gourmet way to serve tuna is to have the outside cooked really well, but the inside is hardly cooked at all. It was what you would call quite rare tuna. It grossed me out a little, but it was pretty good. The pasta and veggies were really good. Angie and I both liked the bread pudding the best though!

We had a tour group of 56 kids from the Boys and Girls club roll in this afternoon. It's been a little crazy, and I kind of messed up the cash register when trying to ring in the group total, but Angie has helped everyone remain calm. Kids are running around outside as we speak. Gerald told me that when they were taking a big group of the kids through the house, two of the kiddies started crying for unknown reasons, but everyone seems okay. Well, I've got to go close out the cash registers, then it's off to the Wesselman's tonight. They called this morning and wondered if I could come hang out with Abby and Bailey while they go listen to one of the Area Authority Seventies speak over in Alexandria, Louisiana. Abby said she wants me to make more of that spaghetti that I made once upon a time for them. :-)

Lunch on Uncle Sam

You will all be happy to know that your tax dollars went to good use today--buying me lunch! :-) Just kidding! Well, I guess I'm only sort of kidding. Today I was working at the William Johnson house, and Melissa was there as well, so she asked me if I wanted to go have Uncle Sam buy my lunch. She's still on her per-diem budget, and she hardly ever uses the money for food, so I said I would love to go to lunch. We went to Cock of the Walk, and I had a tasty catfish po' boy sandwich. We were sad that they don't serve fried pickles at lunch time. Tomorrow I'm going to be taking Angie to the Castle at Dunleith for lunch to celebrate her birthday which is coming up next week.

We got some good news--Melissa has been officially hired as part of our full-time permanent staff here in Natchez! Hooray! She's going to be heading back to South Carolina to pack up all of her stuff, put her house up for sale, and move everything out here. She is really excited, and I know it's a relief to everyone here, since we're a little short on employees right now. The sad news for me is that I won't be here much longer to enjoy working with Melissa, Angie, and everyone else. In fact, my last day of work is three weeks from tomorrow (loud sobs and many tears!) :-( It is going to be really, really, really hard to leave and go to a whole new set-up in Illinois. Then I'll be homesick for everyone in Utah and everyone in Mississippi! But I need to just remember that there will be more cool people and fun adventures in the future, and I can still keep in touch with everyone at home and in Mississippi. I'll try to make the most of my last three weeks here, and I'm excited that Mom will be flying down here on August 8.

Last night I went over to the Wesselman's house for a farewell dinner for Elder and Sister Hansen from Orem, who have been serving as missionaries here in Natchez for the past year. I got to know them a little bit last summer and fall while I was here, and it was fun that they were still here when I got back. They will be heading for home on Thursday. We decided that it was quite funny that we're from the same city, but it wasn't until we came to Natchez that we even met each other! Pretty much the whole ward was at the dinner party, so it was fun to see everyone. Bailey was excited to talk with me about the Civil War. I really like the Wesselmans a lot. Well, that's all for today. I think I'll go have some dinner, go running, read, watch TV, and head to bed.