Cackalacky of the Northern Variety

So now to talk about vacation. It was a great vacation, I think because I really needed a break and a change of pace, even for just a few days. I did a lot of stuff, but I got to catch up on sleep too.

I pretty much covered everything that happened on Thursday, with one exception. I awoke after my 10 hour slumber (it was so choice) and stumbled into the kitchen to find a pumpkin pie with a large gouge scraped out of it. Appalled, I asked my sister why there was a gouge in the pie. Apparently my mother didn't realize that the recipe called for sugar. I think she's used to making it with sweetened condensed milk, and this recipe called for evaporated milk and sugar. So the pie had no sugar. It was deemed unfit for human consumption, so my sister decided that the lemurs could have it. Another pie, with sugar, was made.

Friday was my sister's birthday (the big 3-oh), so we did a bunch of things that she wanted to do. We had tickets to go to a Monet exhibit at the North Carolina Museum of Art, which I was looking forward to because I love art museums. I think my expectations were not all that high for some reason, but I have to say that this was a pretty good exhibit. It was more crowded than Hooters on payday, though. And no cameras allowed in the museum. Pfft.

After the art museum we went and gawked at the North Carolina state capitol. The building was kind of cool, but nothing to write home about. Lots of statues. We saw a pecan tree, and I gathered some nuts to snack on while waiting for dinnertime. Some of those boogers were hard to open sans nutcracker. With the last nut I finally hit on the idea to use the power windows in my parents' rental car to crack the nut. Worked like a charm. I'm classy like that.

The original G-Dub.

Yes, Johnny, cherish your blade more than the flesh of any of womankind...


Thus may it slayeth many a carpetbagger.

My sister's choice of restaurant was in Chapel Hill so we headed in that direction. Before dinner we went to this store called, snootily enough, A Southern Season. It's actually pretty cool, they have tons of coffee beans, unusual food items (spotted dick, anyone?), a decent beer selection, a great wine selection, and the biggest candy selection I've ever seen. Lots of weird candy from all over the world. My brother-in-law can't stand more than about 20 minutes in there, but that's just not enough time for the rest of us. We sent him to the pet store next door while we shopped. I bought some coffee, beer, and a fancy-ass chocolate bar for my sister. Um, they have $13 chocolate bars.

For dinner we were planning to go to this place called Patio Loco. It sounded pretty good to me (scores points on name alone). We got there about 5:30, and it was closed. My brother-in-law went up to the door, but he didn't see any hours posted, which seemed odd. I thought it was weird that it would be closed on a Friday night. There was a car waiting in the parking lot with a family in it, too, so there was a suspicion that maybe it opened later. Being the patient people that we are, we decided to go somewhere else. My sister's next choice was Crook's Corner, which looked like your typical diner-dive from the outside. However, when we entered and I saw a Brussels sprouts & blue cheese salad on the menu, I figured we were entering a place with a little more ambition. Just check out their menu. I had the shrimp and grits, which was excellent. My sister had the curried butternut squash soup. I think my brother-in-law may be the most culinarily unadventurous person above the age of 5 in America. He had a hamburger. My mom had the aforementioned sprout salad, and my dad also had the shrimp and grits. I really wanted to try one of their desserts, but by the end of the meal I was stuffed and we had birthday cake at home (store-bought, non-descript). As we left Chapel Hill, we passed by the now open Patio Loco.

Nothing says class like a pig on a pole.

Some of the Crook's Corner "ambience"

I spy the caps of a Thunderbird and a '67 Mustang. Not kidding.