put some records on while i pour

last night, mom, laurel and i went to the woodstown candlelight tour. we had dinner at sweet tomatoes cafe, walked around town and toured the old 1800s houses, listened to my old high school's strolling strings group playing at a church with hot cups of wassail & homemade cookies, shopped at the ten thousand villages "store" set up in the bottom of the quaker friends meeting house, listened to an awesome celtic band play old, traditional carols and warmed ourselves around a fire with civil war actors in full uniform. it was a pretty amazing night.


today, i drove into philly and celebrated ten years of friendship with some of my absolute favorite people in the world - joe#1 (who is temporarily "home" from chicago), adam and kara. we went to brunch at sidecar and had good beer and excellent bloody marys and somehow, two hours went by like nothing. we went back to adam and kara's place and just hung out until kara had to leave for jersey and take joe with her. i stayed a little longer until i realized it was starting to snow outside...

and then i sort of freaked out (mostly on the inside) because the ride home from the city is about 40 minutes in PERFECT driving conditions. so yeah, i was a bit of a nervous mess and was definitely that person on the highway that you hate to be behind when it snows. and i get it - it's annoying as hell, but come ON - it's a two lane highway and you can totally go around me WITHOUT tailgating me and flashing your high beams at me. and yeah, if you do that to me, i AM going to give you the finger and call you an asshole as you drive by me.

really, it just gets me very angry, mostly with myself. because i really am a GOOD driver. i drive with confidence and love to do it and am pretty great with directions. but let me tell you something - it's really hard for me to drive in any sort of winter weather. i didn't grow up (and don't live) in a place that gets a lot of snow and i never learned how to properly drive in winter weather. add to that the fact that nearly four years ago, i totaled my first rav4 by doing a full 360 across two lanes and hitting the median HEAD ON before spinning back into my original lane when it WASN'T EVEN SNOWING thanks to a giant patch of black ice. so yeah, i get nervous.

but i'm home now and i'm hoping that the roads aren't frozen over tomorrow because i really want to go get a tree and do all my decorating. for now, i'm willing to admit that the snow does look really pretty outside the carriage house since i'm all warm and cozy here on my couch. i've got harry potter on the tv (thanks, abc family!) and a big cup of hot spiced cider and lots of knitting to keep me busy for the night.