Holiday Blowout Day 4 (or Road Trip!)

Today we went to Winston-Salem, which is about an hour and half from Durham. My mom wanted to go to a museum because they had a Georgia O'Keefe painting, and my sister wanted to take us to Old Salem, which is an area of restored colonial buildings dating from 1766. I wouldn't have minded doing both, but when forced to choose one since the group was splitting up I chose Old Salem. It worked out because my mom discovered that the O'Keefe painting was not currently on display.

The old buildings were really nice. There were several homes dating from around 1770 that I particularly liked. The weird thing is that a lot of them actually are private residences and have people living in them. I don't think I would like living there with all the lookie-loos tramping by every day. There is a bakery in Old Salem that we wanted to go to. When we first passed it there was this line out the door and we thought 'we'll come back later'. At first this looked like a good choice since the line looked shorter when we came back. What we didn't know is that the line snaked around through the bakery and was still quite long. Apparently at one point the cash register broke down, further delaying the proceedings. So, we ended up waiting around 50 minutes to make it through with our purchases. The piece of cake that I bought was good, but I'm not sure it was 50 minutes good! The hot apple cider was nice though since it was pretty cold today - the high was about 43 degrees (which is cold to me!).

I felt like a kid again riding in the car with my sister and parents (my brother-in-law was there too). Especially since my dad had the ol' cruise control locked in at 65. People were passing us like we were standing still! C'mon dad, at least go 70!

I have been downing echinacea capsules and sucking on Cold Eeze lozenges for the last 2 days. My throat isn't sore anymore, but today the coughing started in earnest. My voice sounds worse than Rita Cosby, and it is not very comfortable for me to talk. I looked up the Zicam that Karen recommended, and I saw that it has the same active ingredient as Cold Eeze, so I won't get that for now. I may look into that Airborne stuff that Kiki mentioned. I think I could definitely feel a lot worse at this point, though. I may have to start wearing surgical masks on airplanes!

Tomorrow my parents are heading home. My sister has to work, and the invitation has been extended for a return engagement of feeding the lemurs. I'm all for it since it's not something I get the chance to do every day. I may have to wear a mask to protect the lemurs from my diseased exhalations though! I can't have a sick lemur on my conscience!