Summer's here! :-D

It's finally really and truly summer at the Elkhorn Inn- & it has even stopped raining! :-D

We've had a wonderful spring so far, with lots of great Railfan guests from places as far away as Florida & England (they love the "Pokey" in the UK, too!), & this weekend brought a return visit from our Favorite Trout Fishermen! (For them it was a "slow weekend on Elkhorn Creek"- only 30 some-odd trout between the 3 of them!) They came with the makings of their famous "Beach Grog", & after Chef Dan's dinner of Fresh Herb-Stuffed Cornish Game Hens, we all sat outside in the cool of the evening drinking Beach Grog, watching the trains, & yakking- a most pleasant way to spend then evening! Last week Dan and I made 3 1/2 quarts(!) of oregano pesto from the summer's first harvest (oregano being something that grows Really Well in southern WV...), and smeared on thin slices of toasted Italian bread, and served with chunks of Parmesan and a glass of dry, white wine, it makes a Fiiiiiiiiine appetizer!

The other great thing that's happened is that the Elkhorn Inn "officially" became a Destination Inn- we've had several guests who stated that came to stay with us ONLY because they'd heard about Chef Dan's wonderful dinners! I am SO proud of him I could bust! :-D

I haven't posted in awhile... basically because Duty (a.k.a. FEMA) Called, & I spent 3 weeks in Tallahassee, FL writing Community Relations reports for the flood disaster response operation. And while I spent three weeks basically eating one, endless plastic tray of Chicken Caesar Salad during and after 12 hour days on the computer, (followed by diligently running on the hotel treadmill in an effort to lose the $#!&%$! weight I put on 2 years ago on another FEMA disaster operation...), Dan was at the Elkhorn Inn taking care of guests and making them fabulous gourmet dinners... When I left for FL all the slacks I took with me were Dan's 32 inch pants :-P But I was a Very Good Little Dieter on this operation, (for once...), & by then end of my three weeks, (stress being good for me, apparently...), I was down to 130 lbs & wearing size 8 WOMEN'S slacks I'd bought @the Tallahassee Goodwill... & 130 lbs. is where I'm still stuck! :-( As you may recall from earlier posts, I am a hard-core devotee of thrift shops, & so instead of hitting the mall like a "normal" person might, I used the Garmin GPS Dan got me for Hanukkah to locate the nearest Goodwill to the office (right next to La Fiesta, a really nice little Mexican restaurant!), & overstuffed my suitcase with a complete summer wardrobe of Ann Taylor & Talbot's separates! I got to stay at the Hilton Gardens Inn in Tallahassee which has a great staff & was a Great place to come 'home' to each evening, and together we compiled a list of great restaurants in Tal I was hoping to get to (such as Chez Pierre) to do foodie "research" for Chef Dan, but I never had a chance! (Gotta go back...) :-( On our Sundays off, however, my coworkers & I did get to enjoy a bit of Florida (besides Goodwill!): we drove down to Panama City one day to sit for a few hours on the beach & eat some great oysters, & back in Tallahassee we found an excellent Cuban restaurant & went to Gill's Tavern several times for live music, whisky, & yummy crab cakes! Mother's Day happened while I was in Florida, and the Puppies (Tiger & Lady) got together with Dan & sent me (bless their little hearts), a gift box: a wonderful card, a lovely watch, some cute clothes, high heels, a carton of cigs, & a bottle of Bushmill's! Do I have good kids, or what???!!!

Who WAS the starlet who arrived @the Elkhorn Inn in a stretch???

One of the most wonderful things I got to do in Tallahassee was get to see a doctor who agreed to take a simple diagnostic skin test (unlike any of the doctors I go to in West Virginia who literally and categorically REFUSE to perform simple blood or skin tests), and thus learned I had yet another antibiotic-resistant staph infection. I mention this because given that I have had such infections in the past (and that a misdiagnosed e-coli skin infection became blood poisoning and nearly killed me in 2006), it continues to stun me that NOT ONE doctor I have seen in WV will agree to perform basic skin-swab or blood tests, so I literally have to leave the state (usually for Virginia, but in this case Florida) to have such tests done, and receive appropriate treatment. This, in a word, is NUTS. It's also criminal negligence.

While I was taking sulfa drugs, basking in the relatively dry warmth of a Tallahassee spring punctuated daily by the afternoon thundershower-from-hell, and listening to the locals regale me with stories of T's mind-numbing summer humidity, and my co-workers were fending off the rattlesnakes & water moccasins in Santa Rosa County, West Virginia was having yet another flood... and Federal Disaster Declaration. Dan pumped a few inches of water from our basement, but Landgraff, WV, where the Elkhorn Inn is, was fortunately spared; Logan and Man, however, were hard hit, and several hundred homes were destroyed; the picturesque waterfalls trickling down the mountain onto Route 52 turned into life-threatening torrents gushing across the highway, washing away roads, & creating mudslides! When I got home we had an Inn full of guests, but it was still raining like mad; the day of the Bramwell "Coal Baron Mansion" Open House we temporarily lost both power and water! But basically The minute I got back, rain or no rain, Dan & I had to finish planting the veggie garden, and we managed to get in a "field" of red and golden sweet corn, as well as tomatoes, the Tabasco pepper seeds I brought back from Louisiana, & all sorts of exotic peppers (I got tons of really cool seeds for things like Israeli Star of David Okra, Tree Tomatoes, Jamaican Hot Chocolate, Passilla Bajo, and Fezher Ozon Hungarian Paprika peppers from Trade Winds Fruit), onions, garlic, squash, pumpkins, melons, & herbs. I stuck all different kinds of basil & peppers in amongst the flowers (what is now trendily being referred to as "edible landscaping"!), sunflowers, beans, & peas everywhere I thought they might grow, & we planted two "bags" of potatoes, as well as red geraniums across the front of the Inn where we have the "spring tulip show" in April... Assuming we now get some serious sun, I have high hopes for "Kibbutz Elkhorn Inn" this summer!

The other fun thing we got to do once I got home was go to Gary Bowling's House Of Art in Bluefield for their Saturday Blues Night Out with C& S Railroad & Nat Reese! (There's a GREAT video of it on our Facebook page, so please become a "Facebook Fan" of the Elkhorn Inn! There's "railfan" videos & great trout fishing photos posted, too!) I can't Begin to tell you what a GREAT place Gary Bowling's House of Art is! We've waited 7 YEARS for a place like this, never really believing it'd ever exist- & here it is! Great music, great art, a fun place to eat, have a glass of wine or beer and hang out, and a truly great place to send our guests!

Father's Day (or as we call it at the Elkhorn Inn "DogFather's Day") was yesterday, and The Puppies got together and decided to get DogFather Dan a 3-month membership in wine.com's "Wines of the World"- what smart dogs! Yes, it was a rather extravagant present, but hey- he's our meal ticket! :-)

July 4th weekend we're having a Wing Ding at the Elkhorn Inn & Theatre in celebration of my "Big 5-0", with Alan Johnston & South 52 (and hopefully Alan's daughter, Stacy Grubb, who just cut her first album in Nashville!), playing again at our Theatre, and so at the moment we're trying to get Way too much done in Way too little time... I am also back to drinking 5 cups of Green Tea each day, still trying to diet off the last 15 lbs...

But the mountains are green, the orange and white lilies are in bloom, we're harvesting oregano out the wazoo, there's little bunches of grapes on our vines, the hummers are fighting at our feeders & the swallow babies are chirping from their nest on our porch, &, (to top it all), Dan made me Chicken Piccata the other night w/lemon, butter, capers, & white whine- & so all is right with My world! Trust all's right with your world, too! :-)

Thoughts On Spring... dieting, turning 50, & Luis M.

Our group of ATVing guests left the Inn this morning for home, happy w/their 2 days of riding, several armed with hand-made WV coal tchochkas for their wives :-) The daffodils & magnolia are in bloom, as are our 3 fruit trees, & Dan even set up my giant, new 7' tall inflatable birthday cake outside! I would like to be bubbling over with happiness- and should be, truly: happy guests, more bookings, gift shop sales, two great reviews on http://www.tripadvisor.com/ and http://www.bedandbreakfast.com/, and a gorgeous page on http://www.wanderingeducators.com/... But a young friend of ours is apparently dying & I'm broken-hearted.

Luis M., a FEMA co-worker and friend who is in his 40s, is in the hospital in Puerto Rico, apparently dying from prostate cancer. I say "apparently" because I cannot bear to say otherwise; I HAVE to hold out hope for an "extreme miracle", the "Hail Mary Pass" in the big football game of life, as it were.

Not having medical insurance, Luis kept working & put off going to the doctor until it was too late, and now his friends around the country are emailing each other news from our colleagues visiting him in the hospital in Puerto Rico telling us of his sickness during what seem to be the final days of his life. I have been posting "status updates" on my http://www.facebook.com/ page asking my 156 facebook friends to please send him their prayers, hope, love, good karma, healing wishes... because I don't know what else to do. I want to cry, but I can't even do that... But I also can't sleep. For Luis to needlessly die young from an illness that could have been successfully treated had he been able to afford to see a doctor, makes this all so incredibly tragic that I've been walking around pretty much in a haze now for days, & he hasn't left my thoughts for months.

Luis was (is? It is hideous to be talking about him in the past tense when his is alive!), bubbly, funny, smart, talented, good-looking, and full of life and laughter. He was, like me, a FEMA Community Relations Field Specialist and a Reports Tech. The picture I have in my head of him is all of us dancing and laughing one evening during a FEMA training @EMI in Maryland a few years ago... and how he howled and teased me mercilessly for slipping & falling on my way up to the stage to join the gang in singing "We Are Family"... When I heard how ill he was, I sent him an "Easy" button from Staples to cheer him up, hoping & praying that somehow he would get the life-saving treatment he needed...

But he didn't- or whatever he did get didn't work- and he was "sent home to die" several times, each time winding up back in the hospital, where he is again, apparently now being given nothing but pain medication to ease his suffering.

I am "muddling through" as they say, thanking G-d daily for the miracle of my life & going about the minutiae of day-to-day living- "putting a good face on it" as they say. From the emails I'm getting from my FEMA friends, they're apparently doing likewise... I'm striving to enjoy our guests & the antics of our 2 puppies, trying to focus on planning our summer garden & working on promotional writing projects for the Inn, and letting myself be distracted by Facebooking & Tweeting, and, of course, eBay- my "retail therapy" out here in the mountains... But my thoughts keep cycling back to death & dying, and the fears I have of both; & a lot of dwelling on the existence of G-d, & why humans have always needed to create religions, in great measure, I think, to convince ourselves that death is not The End & that there really Is "eternal life"... Yes, I need therapy! But not having a therapist out here In The Country (where every doctor's answer to almost everything is "take anti-depressant pills), I write; hence, this Blog...

Another issue factoring into my "mortality thoughts" is that my 50th birthday is coming up in a few days: 1 a.m. on April Fools Day. I always loved having that birthday as a child, first of all because no one could forget it, & second, because my mother always made it fun w/a gag gift of some sort. The party we are planning to celebrate it with friends isn't until July, so in theory I'll get to celebrate twice, which, again, should be making me happy: I'm alive & seem to be in good health, & I'm gonna be a half century old! :-P When I was turning 38 & depressed to be "pushing 40", (Oh, to be 38 again!), my mother told me it "was better than Not turning 40", which, of course, it was. This time she emailed me that "50 was good, 60 was good, 70 was good, & 80 was good" (she's 86); and so, please G-d, it shall be! But 50 happened so damn FAST!!! It truly feels like my 40th birthday party was about a year ago and I got out of the Army about 3 years ago... A lot of my friends are older than I, and think it's hilarious & ludicrous that I've gotten myself all worked up over turning 50, spring chicken that I am, but to me it feels so Odd to be- all of a sudden!- so damn Old... Yeah, "50 is the new 30", me & Madonna are both the same age as Barbie, etc., etc., but having not had kids I think I'm stuck in a kind of state of arrested development: I still feel- in my head at least- 19... No one's carded me of late (like they do my friend Cindy, the Ageless Beauty of NYC), but I don't think I look Too bad- just Fat. And so I have finally, really, started to diet- the first one I've had to do in decades. :-P

About 2 years ago my metabolism seemed to come to a grinding, screeching halt while I was working on a FEMA disaster operation in Kansas. I remember having to go to the Sallies to get new size 8 khaki slacks, after I'd "grown out of" all the size 4s and 6s that filled my suitcase. Having put on weight on FEMA ops before (the 3-meal-a-day-thing really packs the lbs. on me), only to have it come off w/in a few months of being home & "eating normally" (one meal & a lot of coffee, basically), I wasn't worried. But this time No dice. By the time we left on our honeymoon trip I was so fat I couldn't fit into any of the cute clothes I'd bought for it; I gained still more weight in Vietnam, to the point where I had 2 chins & had to have clothes Made for me there... And then last week I went to the doctor for a check-up & learned I'm almost 140 lbs., & nearly gagged. I am 4' 9 1/2" tall & should be 100 lbs. 110 is fine, even 114. But I have NO BUSINESS being Anywhere Near 140. Last year I tracked my food intake on www.Glamour.com, & discovered that I rarely go over 1000 calories/day- but that I was GAINING WEIGHT on 1000 calories/day! And so The Diet has begun: I'm on Day 4 & haven't cone over 650 calories/day- including my nightly 100 calorie 4 oz. glass of red wine! :-) I figure if I can keep this up for a month I should be back into my 4s & 6s before July4th... I found a sparkly little Bob Mackie spaghetti-strap mini number on eBay for a song- a veritable festival of sequins it is!- and assuming I can get it zipped & not look like a sausage in a casing, I intend to wear it- with suitably sparkly stilettos- on July 4th... I also have my Slendertone belt & a batch of new pads, & tonight I will start using that again. What I Should be doing, of course, is exercise, but I'm a sloth... & between mistressing the website & online gift shop, taking bookings, blogging, email, professional assignments, LinkedIn, eBay, facebook, & twitter, I'm almost literally chained to the computer! I'm Hoping once it warms up a bit more we'll be out there playing golf, ATVing, & gardening...

In looking for a way to 'treat myself' for my b'day (and focus on something really silly & thus distracting), I did a Lot of internet research & eBaying, & finally decided to get myself a few help-the-birthday-diet purchases: an order of my fave AminoGenesis anti-aging skin care products to both restock our Gift Shop & my vanity table, a pair of LG-XL (UGH!) ShapeFX Lytess leggings that promise to take off 2 inches if I wear them for 28 days straight, & a bottle of Ageless Fantasy, the perfume with clinical trials proving people think you're 8 years younger when you wear it. As expensive as it is (but I scored another eBay deal...), I want to test it; if it really Does work (I'll have to ask the check-out clerks in the Kimball WalMart how old they think I am...) I want to give samples of it to all my girlfriends in July! Does shopping ease depression? I don't know yet for certain, but I'm giving it the best shot I can...

San Diego, CA: the Sweepstakes Queen strikes again!

I should probably title this blog post "sex, sun, Segways, & sushi"! Thanx to Game Stop & finding wonderful Inn Sitters, Dan & I were able to have a 5-day (& sorely needed) "mini-honeymoon" in San Diego... Much as we love all 4 seasons in the mountains of southern WV, after enduring months of cold winter weather including some -7 degree days, 5 glorious 'free' days in sunny, 80-degree San Diego was truly FIIIIIIIINE!

Although I've been joking about it for several years, the Sweepstakes Queen of Landgraff, WV finally Did hit 'critical mass' in the sweepstakes dept.: right after I won the totally fabulous Mary Norton Swarovski crystal-adorned fur shoes from http://www.shuzsociety.com that I blogged about previously, I won the Grand Prize in GameStop's "Call of Duty: World At War" sweeps, with a trip to San Diego for 2 to attend their finals tournament on board the USS Midway- a place to wear the shoes!!! The depressing part was that I really thought we'd be unable to go, as we had no Inn-&-Puppy Sitter, but by a True last-minute miracle we found a wonderful couple- Carnation Inn Sitters - who loved on our puppies & looked after our home as if it was their own, & so were actually able to go! I'd never been to San Diego, & while Dan had (some 40 years ago), he'd never been on board the USS Midway; I'd entered the sweeps- which only had the one grand prize which I obviously didn't think I'd win- because Dan is U.S. Army Retired & an avid "gamer", esp. of military strategy games, & it seemed like an incredibly cool trip for us to try to win- & it was! Thank you GameStop! The grand prize included round trip plane tickets for 2 people, a bit of cash, the finals party on the Midway, & a hotel suite for 2 nights; I added 2 more nights so we could make it a "real" holiday!
We arrived in San Diego @lunch time- truly perfect timing as I was able to get my first SD "sushi fix" @Sushi Ito, right across from our hotel!

Game Stop put the 30 tournament finalists & VIPs (like us!) @the Sommerset Suites in the Hillcrest neighborhood, which, as neighborhoods go, is Truly restaurant nirvana!!! 8 sushi bars on one block?! I almost passed out from the sheer joy of simply knowing they were all there!! We only got to try a few of the hundreds of restaurants & wine bars in SD that all looked So good... & I hope we someday get to go back to SD to do a Real foodie tour!!!

Upon our arrival at the hotel, Game Stop gifted us w/a goodie bag of "Call of Duty" VIP tees, 1 gig thumb drives fashioned to look like dog tags :-), "energy drinks", snacks, & an "Army" water canteen; it was fun to feel like a bit of a VIP!
@3p.m. (it was 5 o'clock somewhere :-) we found a Great little neighborhood wine bar: Cafe Bleu, which, like many of SD's great dining spots, has an excellent (4 hour) happy hour!

That first evening we had a wonderful dinner @Blue Point Coastal Cuisine in SD's Gaslamp Quarter, where Dan had a great lobster pot pie app, & I had a truly scrumptious sushi-esque ahi tuna "duo":
pan seared yellowfin stuffed with local asparagus, ginger port butter sauce paired with a basil and nori wrapped yellowfin spring roll... They made me a divine Ginger Jack martini w/house-made ginger syrup, too :-)
After dinner we did a Gaslamp Quarter Pub Crawl, stopping @The Whisky Girl, Henry's Pub, & a few others before calling it a night- it was SO much fun to be out & about in a great, lively city downtown- the weather was Great, & everywhere we went in San Diego felt wonderfully safe, too...
Friday we lazily hung about the hotel hot tub, & got Dan his hamburger fix at the Corvette Diner, a clever '50s theme diner in Hillcrest (where the waiter showered our table with handfuls of Bazooka chewing gum in lieu of desert!), before getting all decked out (Dan wearing his official Call of Duty VIP tee, & me my gawjus Mary Norton shoes!) & going to the Game Stop "Call of Duty: World At War" tournament finals on board the USS Midway.

We got to play the game- which has truly gorgeous graphics- on an XBox 360 (me for the first time)- which is a Lot diff from the PC Dan usually plays it on- & watch the final 30 finalists (winnowed from 45,000 contestants!) battle it out for the $2500 grand prize- won by a rather amazing 17 year old!

For me, the best part of the evening was seeing, up close, on the deck of the Midway, the Hewey helo that Dan flew door-gunner on in Vietnam back in the 1960s- so tiny, esp. when compared with the "double-headed dump truck" Chinook!

When we got back to the hotel we discovered yet another great Hillcrest neighborhood bar: Number 1 Fifth Avenue, w/a fun, heated outdoor patio where you can smoke! YAY! This place was literally jumping until closing- & we noted over the course of 5 days that the ONLY places in SD that were jumping were places where you could smoke! Most of the non-smoking restaurants, cafes, & wine bars, however pretty or "Zagat rated" were empty... Is anyone listening, or is everyone still playing "holier than thou" & pretending it isn't true??????? Given the economic disaster the country is currently experiencing & the nationwide catastrophic drop in tourism, it is criminally negligent- and a ticket to bankruptcy, closed restaurants & bars and entertainment districts full of empty storefronts- to ignore, insult, & disrespect the few people still willing and able to dine & drink!
The first thing I did when I realized we could actually go on the trip was start hunting fine restaurants in San Diego on the 'net, & came up, of course, with hundreds; with a million restaurants in the naked city, how does one even Begin to choose? I wanted us- & especially Chef Dan- to have at least a few truly great meals in SD to give him inspiration & new ideas for the Elkhorn Inn. I finally called the PR firm that did SD's recent Restaurant Week, & they were nice enough to help me hone my short list of "foodie meccas"; I made reservations at the one I was told was an Absolute Must: Laurel- & we had a Truly splendid dinner there- as you can probably tell from my happy face! Dan had a delicious lamb dish, served over red cabbage & w/polenta & perfectly tart little goji berries, and got to schmooze their young & accomplished chef; I had cod with a trout brandade, & I'm still dreaming about my appetizer: scallops stuffed with lamb, on a bed of creamy barley-type grains... OMG was it good!!!! We shared a delicious butterscotch pot du creme, too... Interestingly, Laurel is extremely reasonable for such a fine restaurant- the entrees were in the $20-30 range, which is far, far less than I expected. It's also elegant and beautiful, & the staff both professional and charming; our dinner there was a Totally glorious experience & I only wish I'd had the time to work thru the rest of their wonderful menu!

This really was a "perfect day in San Diego", as we started it by going down to the seafront, walking thru the Greatest Generation sculpture garden & the National Salute to Bob Hope & The Military, past the USS Midway & Star of India, and then taking the ferry to Coronado & finding Segway of Coronado.

The group we met there was So enthusiastic that we decided to learn to ride Segways & spent the afternoon touring Cornado on them- great fun, & the perfect way to see a lot of the little island in the sunshine!

Had a glass of wine @Candela's happy hour (someday I hope to return & @least sample their appetizers which looked Divine....) before catching the sunset ferry back to SD for dinner.

After Laurel, we took our cab driver's advice(!) & went to Croce's in the Gaslamp Quarter for some great Latin Jazz by Agua Dulce- a perfect ending to a Totally GREAT day!
Our last day in San Diego we took the trolley to San Ysidro & went to Tijuana, Mexico- basically so I could say I did! We wandered about downtown T, past the cathedral (& down 'hooker row'...), had lunch (& some Truly great, fresh salsa) on the cute upstairs balcony of Placita on T's main drag, Av. Revolucion...


stopped for a cool drink to listen to strolling Mariachi musicians & a music festa @Plaza Santa Cecilia, bought some fine sippin' tequilas (Anejo & Reposado), a bottle of Mexico's famous 'aphrodisiac' vanilla, & a few pretty embroidered linens @Hand Art, had our requisite margaritas back @Placita, & then walked back across the bridge (over the "parking lot" of cars @the border...) home to the USA! (What I would Really love to do in Mexico is have a week or so to experience the Wine & Gastronomy Route that starts at Ensenada, which is about 1 1/2 hours from Tijuana... anyone know of a sweeps to win THAT holiday?! :-)

Truly tired from doing a stupefying amount of walking in the 80-degree heat, we had a delish (&, again. Very reasonable) Vietnamese dinner @ the elegant Saigon on Fifth back in our Hillcrest neighborhood, & slept like logs! Having to be at the airport @noon for our flight home, Dan humored me by dashing back into Sushi Ito w/me when they opened their doors @11:30am so I could indulge in one last, grand, San Diego sushi-saki feast, jumping into our taxi w/a takeout box of yummyness!
(& we were Both glad for the mellowing saki after enduring an idiotically harrowing experience w/United Air Lines' "curb-side check in" & desk-clerk incompetents. After having us remove 10 lbs of clothing from our one suitcase & jam it into my handbag to make the suitcase weigh less than 50 lbs (a Really bright concept, right?!), Mr. Curb-Side then charged us for 2 suitcases- but couldn't refund our $15 without 4 people getting involved & another half hour wasted! To make the experience completely delightful, United's charming check-in clerk made fun of me to another passenger, I assume to try to humiliate me into silence- a baaaaaaad idea (it's funny until it happens to YOU...), after which- when he noticed me squinting to read his name badge- he told me that I didn't need to write down his name, since the curb-side check-in nincompoops work for the airport, not United! The flights were fine, & yes, I know that that's the most important thing, & that one shouldn't "sweat the small stuff", but it's the stupid, petty, totally needless small stuff- like demanding you "redistribute" clothing or pay a $150 extortion fee!- so obviously deliberately done by people who have just enough power to make your life miserable & are determined to do so, NO customer service skills, & NO desire to even Try to help the people they are supposedly serving, that makes one want to "go postal"!)

But here's the real & happy funny: we arrived home @4a.m., safe & sound, thank G-d, to our puppies & wonderful Inn Sitters, & found 3 more prize wins: a great set of Hamilton Beach pots for Dan's winning Thanksgiving Side Dish recipe in Quick & Simple Magazine, a signed copy of The Pritikin Edge from SpaFinder, & a $100 Marshall's gift certificate for my winning "shoe story" on Brickfish! So yes, real people do win stuff! :-)
And now back- refreshed- to our regularly scheduled programming: Inn Keeping at the Elkhorn Inn! :-)

Trains in the snow... and other signs of spring...

It's been a Very busy train day at the Elkhorn Inn & Theatre...

Lots and lots and Lots of trains coming and going past the Inn thru the powdery snow... Dan,

with his militarily-honed hearing, can hear a train Long before I do, & yelled "get the camera!" early enough that for once I actually got out there in time! (I actually stood out there in the snow w/my camera muttering ''why?" for a good, cold several minutes until I heard it coming...)

I've gotten so used to ol' Pokey that I don't even hear her most of the time- I grew up in Queens, NY, smack under the plane-path 'tween JFK & Idlewild airports, & my father had an apt. right under the El in Woodside, so I have a long-standing & well-developed ability to tune out Really Loud Noise- I think it's called the "oblivious gene". (In July of 1976 I slept thru the planes flying low over our Kibbutz on their way to Entebbe... no one else did!) But today was truly a Railfan Day if ever there was one- and it continues thru the night as I write this. Tres picturesque, & I finally managed to get some decent pix with our 'toy' camera, at least in daylight... It's now dark, and when the trains go by in the darkness in the snow, the headlights making the wind-swept snowflakes sparkle in the blackness, it is Incredibly cool looking, but our little camera won't take any decent night shots :-( It is still snowing fit to beat the band, as they say, as it did all day; truly beautiful, esp. if you don't have to go anywhere! We have Inn guests arriving tonight, & hope they're okay out there in this picturesque snowstorm...

Segueing from holiday to holiday as we do, Dan deflated Valentine's I Love You Bear, & inflated Mr. Leprechaun, getting him all lit up & on display just in time for the snowstorm... I changed the Inn's tabletop decor from V-Day to St. Pat's, storing away the Valentine's teddy & red-&-white heart napkins, & festooning the green floppy-eared bunnies with rings of shamrock tinsel surrounding a pot o' gold (candies)... Disappointment of the day: WalMart had no green taper candles! ;-) (Believe me, I know- this should be the worst dis of my life!)

The finches have been flocking to our feeders all winter, but they are terribly camera-shy, & so I have yet to get a photo; Dan filled the big feeder w/thistle seed for the finches, as the fat, greedy doves kick the tiny finches out of the way to get to the sunflower seeds... Read a blog about the possibility of poisoning birds w/tainted peanut butter (shades of Tom Lehrer's "Poisoning

Pigeons In The Park???!) & so opted out of proffering suet-peanut butter cakes this year... The spring bulbs have sprouted (yay!), & we pruned back the butterfly bushes & Dan repaired the fence... This morning Dan discovered- just in the nick of time- that a fuse had quietly blown & shut down one of our freezers, & so we managed to save everything in it... but as a few things had defrosted, we had chili for lunch, and tonight I'm making Chicken Mole, Dan is doing a 10 lb. corned beef (& he makes THE best corned beef in the known universe- & I say that as a devout & drooling fan of the 2nd Ave. Deli), and we're both doing something TBD (FoodNetwork.com here I come...) needing several quarts of peach puree- the bounty of last summer's harvest... We've got a Truly roaring fire going in the fireplace AND one going in the potbelly railroad stove in the back of the building, and so periodically I hear the happy sound of Dan mitre-sawing giant hunks o' tree into manageable logs...

The new thing I do when it's too cold to do almost anything else, is to sit on Facebook... & it is fun, esp. when you set it to "Live Feed'' & all the things your friends are doing (or not doing- because they're sitting on Facebook, too...) pop up... We now have a 'fan page' for the Elkhorn Inn on Facebook and we invite you to join it, and share it with your friends; there's a coupon on the page that's good for lodging at the Inn or our on-line gift shop, & I've downloaded railfan photos and lots of other links and cool things... & when we get to 100 fans we'll have a sweepstakes for a nice gift from the Inn's Gift Shop!

Another sign that it's been a Really cold winter is that the dogs have taken to Totally Refusing to go outside when they deem it too cold; after enduring one particularly foul snarl from Tiger when I 'invited' him to go outside, Dan & I simply decided to let them lay in their beds until They decide it's time... And they do let us know, thank goodness... For two foundling strays, trolling the garbage cans for scraps in the cold, they've become awful soft, much preferring now to loll all day in their cozy, blanket-covered bed (preferably on their backs w/their tummies in the air)

in front of a heater... lucky dogs! It is fun to have these two dogs around us all the time, full of cuddles & puppy kisses, & to know that we've given them the Life of Riley... This giant building Truly had an empty, dog-shaped space in it after my old lab, Trapper, died, & one at a time, these two magically appeared on our doorstep & more than filled it :-) Tiger is sitting behind me in my chair as I write this, attempting to slather me w/puppy-spit- the 'Tiger Dog-Spit Facial" as I fondly call it... Nothing fixes depression or the winter doldrums better that puppy kisses!

Well & truly fed up w/winter, last week I jumped the gardening gun & planted the first of our spring veggie seeds in their little peat-pot, table top greenhouse, full of hope that come early April we'll be able to set them out in their Cozy Coats & so harvest veggies 1 1/2 months early! I started watermelons, cantaloupes, pumpkins, squash, herbs, & the Tabasco pepper seeds I brought back from Avery Island, LA in Nov.; we'll buy tomato & other plants as soon as they appear @the garden store... How you get thru the cold of winter w/out going totally ga-ga is by dreaming of spring!

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Preparing for spring: seeds & Jiffy Pots & Cozy-Coats- & coupons on Facebook!

Today Dan & I officially started preparing for spring @the Elkhorn Inn; we went to Lowe's and bought seeds! I've been shooting pix of the Pocahotas train sailing past the Inn in the snow, and reading myself to sleep with dog-eared Burpee & Park Seed Catalogs (and my wonderful sis-in-law Martha's gift pack of photocopied NY Times X-word puzzles), but today, when the balmy 61-degree weather finally enabled us to go out & prune back the bushes, we discovered with joy that the spring bulbs have sprouted, but also, to our horror, that the side fence needs drastic & immediate repair work. So we hopped in the Jeep & trekked to Lowe's to buy fence slats (that Dan has to cut down & re-shape- hence another *&%#$!! Project...), & I got side-tracked into the Gardening Dept., and so bought our first batch of seeds for Spring 2009: corn & beans & melons & herbs & radishes & squash & sunflowers & velvety, red celosia, & a seed-starter tray of the cool, water-expanding peat-pellets I've used since I was a High School FFA Aggie!

After my 'retail therapy' @ Lowe's (and who, seriously, ever thought this Louboutin-kinda-gal would get her shopaholic jollies in Lowe's????!), we stopped for a really good hamburger, steak sandwich, & fries at the Redwood Inn, a newly reopened restaurant in Bluewell, WV, & then came home to the Inn so I could go on-line to MyPoints.com & then to Gardener's Supply Company (for whom I did a cover watercolor illustration back in the '90's) & buy us red plastic tomato mulch & 'Cozy-Coats', which they call ''Red Tomato Teepees', which enable us to plant tomatoes & other veggies over a month before our May 15th 'planting date'. We've had 4'' of snow here in early May, so we take 'official planting date' stuff really seriously! A Cozy-Coat is a flexible, red, plastic-tube 'wall o' water' that you put around each seedling when you plant it; you fill the tubes with water which warms in the sun, and it holds in the heat, so you can plant tomatoes, peppers, etc. over a month early & harvest veggies all that much sooner. We've used them for over 3 years and they really work & they are Way cool! This year, in addition to my 'companion gardening', I'm also going to try the red plastic 'tomato much' I've been reading about for years- Anything to cut down weeding & make a less labor-intensive & more productive garden! Dan & I are planning "Elisse's Big 5-0 Party'' at the Elkhorn Inn & Theatre for July 4th, and I want tons of flowers & lots of veggies for us (and our party-hearty guests) to be able to pick! (I still have dreams of a giant sunflower meadow, if anyone wants to come & help till & sow on May 15th...)
I've got my Tabasco pepper seeds from Louisiana, bags of onion & garlic bulbs from Tractor Supply, & now my bag 'o seeds from Lowe's- spring must be just around the corner! :-D
I just set up a Facebook page for the Elkhorn Inn & Theatre on www.facebook.com with a coupon for a discount on lodging at the Inn and for our on-line Gift Shop http://store.elkhorninnwv.com. Please join us on Facebook and get the coupon- and share it with all your Facebook friends!

Ski WV! Glade Springs & Winterplace ROCK!

Newsflash! Elisse, at the ripe old age of 49 7/8, is still an Intermediate Skier! And she's apparently in far better shape than she thought she was!!!!












Elisse, a.k.a. The Michelin Tire Woman, in 6 layers of clothing...

Wonderful as "Dan & Elisse's Great Big House" is, I finally got SO fed up at being cooped up, that I put my tiny foot down & booked us a one-night Ski Getaway @Glade Springs & Winterplace Ski Resort, & it was WONDERFUL!

The last time I'd been skiing was @Winterplace some 5 years ago, & it wasn't much fun, as I'd felt Incredibly Guilty because Dan doesn't ski. Winterplace is only 1 1/2 hours from the Elkhorn Inn, & so we'd made a day trip of it, which wasn't a good idea either, as the driving made it a long & stressful day for Dan, & so I felt even More guilty. As I have no one else to go skiing with, I hadn't been back for 5 years! This made me Nuts, because one of the things that pleased me so much about moving to southern WV was that we were only 1 1/2 hours from a ski resort! In the last 5 years my feet got larger (!) and my ski boots didn't fit anymore- the Rossignol skis I bought at the AFRC PX in Garmish, Germany in 1989 when I first learned to ski at the age of 30... Last week we got some Serious Snow here in Landgraff, & I knew the skiing @Winterplace would be Great, & after 2 weeks of stewing & fretting & getting over the guilt, (& Totally ready to slam my head into a wall from from Acute Stir-Craziness), I finally said Wot The Hell, a la Mehitabel, & booked us a mini-ski trip. We stocked the puppies up on food & water, & drove to Glade Springs early in the morning, thru white-out snow conditions, which were truly very beautiful: the frozen waterfall icicles on the mountains alongside Route 52 glistening in the sunlight, the snow-frosted tree-covered mountains, the little houses covered in pristine whiteness... McDowell County in snow is truly a Currier & Ives illustration... The snow was coming down even heavier in the Beckley area, & we drove it R-e-a-l-l-y S-l-o-w-l-y... They checked us in to our "Executive Suite" @Glade Springs early :-) & I actually got on the slopes by 1p.m. I said "Wot The Hell!" again, & plunked down $50 for a one-hour private ski lesson with Toby to start off my one day of skiing- THE smartest thing! This was truly the dif between what would have been an "okay" day of skiing and a GREAT day! His one hour lesson (and we wound up spending about 1/3 of it on the lifts...) basically gave me 2 new, key things that enabled me to make speedy, parallel turns, and Really Ski those blue Intermediate runs for the rest of the day- until 9p.m. at night! (The "trick" for me is what I now call "C-down"- essentially shifting my weight onto the outside ski & carving my turn).

I almost did the Group Lesson as it's a lot cheaper, but I'm SO glad I didn't. As I hadn't been on a pair of skis for 5 years & had No Idea if I was still anything even Close to the Intermediate Skier I was back in Germany, I didn't want to risk either the embarrassment of being told I should be in a "beginner" class, or the waste of time a true "beginner" class with people who'd never skied before would be. A private lesson is tailored to where you are as a skier, & if I can ever get Dan out there on the slopes- something he even suggested might be possible- the First thing I'd do is get him a Really Good private lesson to start off the day. I rented equipment (and they have a "military discount" that is available to retirees and their families, which is GREAT), and got to use the new, shorter skis with rounded, uplifted tips; I was Really pleased with the control they gave me, & if I do decide to replace my ski equipment, those are the type of skis I'd get...

It was Evil Cold, & at times the wind was pretty rough, whipping the tiny ice-needles from the snowmakers into your face... I was wearing 5 layers of clothing & was Still cold! I never did take the lifts to the top of the mountain, simply because I didn't want to spend 30+ minutes on a lift in that icy wind! My hope is to get back in March before the season's end, and do their many other blue runs...

Dan had a nice day at the Glade Springs Resort, (they have a lot of stuff to do there, including a movie theatre & a bowling alley, and in the summer horseback riding, golf, & the lake...), and they have a shuttle bus that runs to & from Winterplace, as well as around the resort, so you don't have to worry about the road conditions or parking, AND you can have a drink at the bar! :-) Dan met me back at the Winterplace bar @6:30pm, I skied until 9p.m., & we took the shuttle bus back to the Glade Springs Golf Club Bar (Laphroaig! Yay!), & had a Great evening. In the morning we had breakfast & then an Excellent "Couples Massage" at Glade Springs' "Spa Orange" before driving home- & found that all the pretty snow had melted in the morning sunshine!

We were both Really impressed by Glade Springs; we'd had a lovely dinner there back in 2002 when we first came to WV & were living in Beaver, but we'd never stayed there, & it's truly Great. What made it great wasn't just the accommodations & services offered, or their reasonable "ski package" deal that includes lift tickets- it was the staff; everyone we encountered at Glade Springs had Great customer service skills! I don't write this lightly; we've been in the hospitality business, creating and running the Elkhorn Inn & Theatre, for the last 7 years, & prior to that we'd both lived in hotels for years on business; we know the diff between good & bad customer service, & how bad service can totally ruin even the nicest accommodations. (Who cares if the room is pretty, if the service is terrible or the staff insulting or cold or unhelpful?) Glade Springs truly exceeded our expectations.

We both slept great, & I woke up feeling Fine- no aches or pains at all! This pleased me the most, as I was expecting to feel like True Crap in the morning, given that I've basically sat in a chair in front of a computer since we got back from Vietnam last April. But I felt so great that if we could have stayed an extra night I would have happily spent the day back on the slopes!

Glade Springs at night: deer!

Our Executive Suite "Frat House" photo...

The skiing @Winterplace was very good- Much better than I remember it being in 2003- and so I had a Great day, but there is SO much that could be done there that would make it a REALLY great ski resort... Neither their outdoor cafe area nor their bar have fireplaces or firepits, so there's no place to warm up... there's no "real" dining available, only cafeteria hamburgers & pizza :-P There's no places to stop for even a warm drink anywhere on the mountain, so you have to keep coming back to the main lodge... there's no outdoor hot tub like I fondly recall from Germany... and the feel of the place is high school or college hang-out, rather than real ski resort... If Winterplace offered more "grown up" amenities it would Truly be a great ski resort... But that being said, it's still a 'bargain', & I do feel lucky we live only 1 1/2 hours from it, and I HOPE to get back out there (& back to Glade Springs...) before the ski season ends in March! My New Year's Resolution is to ski as often as I can- as often as we can afford to!- as long as I am able!