The Epic Memorial Day Weekend

Sorry this post was a long time coming! But here it goes. The day after Garrison Keillor I went on a 22 hour epic adventure with my new friends. It was Keri's birthday, and she wanted make it count. And it did.

My day started at 12 when I got picked up from the metro. We went to a park in Laurel Maryland and had a picnic lunch, my second in two days. I brought more of my great pasta salad and we had a nice time and a ton of food.

From there, we hopped in the car and drove the Boordy Vineyard, (http://www.boordy.com/) which is the oldest vineyard in the state of Maryland. We got to go on a tour, and our lovely tour guide, Pat, also led the wine tasting for half of our group. Up until now my entire wine tasting experience has been in Walla Walla, where we have a million and a half wineries (140? Is that the current count?) but they are mostly small boutique wineries, however they are producing fantastic wine.

Somehow its become a thing in my family that I like white wine more than red, but the Walla Walla valley is best for red. So on my family wine tasting last summer, I think I was forced to try every bottle of white Walla Walla produces. And now I think my taste is actually moving towards those rich, flavorful reds. So the opposite was true here, I loved the white wines, but was disappointed in the reds, all except for their reserve red, that I payed an extra dollar to taste. It was worth it.

After the winery we went out to dinner and then the main even. The drive in. It was outside of Baltimore and they were showing four movies. From dusk to dawn. And they literally played movies from last light to first light. In order the movies were Coraline, Star Trek, Obsessed, and Knowing. The only one of those I wanted to see was Star Trek and I wanted to see it a lot, and was previously unable to get anyone to go with me. But I loved Star Trek as a kid, (it was the only thing I ever remember Nick and I agreeing on to watch together) and I loved this movie. It was a lot of fun. I don't see movies very often anymore, and I paid 8 dollars to see 4, which is amazing. Or as I like to think of it, I paid 8 to see Start Trek and got 3 free. I found Coraline very creepy, and not necessarily in a good way, which is interesting because its animated and I think its for KIDS. I was really disturbed by it. Obsessed was ridiculous and mostly fun. It was good to be a the drive in where you can yell at the screen. It was good that Knowing was last, as the end of it made absolutely no sense, and the lighter it go the less we could see it anyway. By the time Knowing was over, it was almost 6 am and the first movie started at about 8 pm. Woah.

I was dropped off at my front door at about 7 am. I promptly fell asleep and woke up in the early afternoon. At about 5 pm, when I was considering another nap, I got invited to go the Memorial Day concert on the lawn, with my housemates Deanna's visiting mother and grandmother. We brought sandwiches, and they had a blanket and I took a very brief nap there waiting for the concert to begin.

This concert was actually sort of star packed, although the quality and reputation of the "celebrities" varied greatly. We had Laurence Fishburne, who is currently on CSI, Joe Mantegna who is on the show Criminal Minds (also on CBS), we had Katie Holmes (with Tom Cruise sitting in the front row!) preforming a moving piece with Broadway actress Diane Wiest. We had former American Idol (runner up?) Katherine McPhee, singing my favorite song from West Side Story, "Somewhere." Most excitingly for me was Colm Wilkinson, the original Jean Valjean from Les Miserables, my favorite musical, singing "Bring Him Home." That was the highlight for me. While he is getting older, he still has a wonderful voice. I wasn't even aware he was a part of the concert until they announced him and I was beyond thrilled to get to hear him sign in person, especially such an appropriate and emotional song.

And on Monday we had a memorial day grill out in our back yard with Deanna's family, a very nice end to a busy 3 day weekend.