After we left the Killer Lake House, we drove to Williamsburg, VA and spent a day and a half visiting Colonial Williamsburg and the Yorktown battlefield and Victory Center. Joey really enjoyed Williamsburg, as did Ed and I. We visited all the tradespeople and learned about basket making, brick making, barrell making, milling, wigmaking, and various other crafts that escape me now.

My favorite part, though, was visiting the Bruton Parish Episcopal church. It is one of the oldest continually used churches in America and is the very church where George Washington, Patrick Henry, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson and others of that age worshipped. It was so cool to walk around the church and think about all the generations who sat in those pews and trod on those floors. I loved it.

After leaving the historical triangle, we headed down to SC to pick up my MIL and niece. They were going with us to Florida. The niece (I hesitate to call her my niece though technically I suppose she is) is 2 years older than Joey and is also an only child. But she is a not-so-nice little girl. She continuously insulted Joey's intelligence by making fun of her for not knowing things that she in all her older-child-wisdom knew. She criticised Joey and her ways of doing things--the kind of nit-picking that drives you batty in about 20 minutes, like making critical comments on Joey's drawings as she was making them. She lashed out physically at Joey when she got angry or frustrated--little kicks and hits and bonks and whaps but Joey doesn't handle those kinds of bumps and bruises well not having siblings to knock her around. She was smart with me, trying to tell me how to do things in a way different than the way I do them, even arguing with me on how to do it. And then if you called her on anything, she immediately pouted, turned on the waterworks and withdrew from everyone, or just from Joey. She would punish Joey by withdrawing if I said anything to her, like "Don't hit Joey anymore" or something like that. And she has an extremely low tolerance for not being entertained at all times. She complained that Kennedy Space Center was boring even though her 7 year old cousin found it very interesting. She spent the days at my BIL and SIL's house in St. Petersburg complaining that there was nothing to do but then when we took her swimming, she spent most of the time sitting on the sidelines saying that swimming wasn't any fun. The only day she was happy was the day we went to Islands of Adventure. We cut our visit to Florida short by a day to get her away from tormenting my poor daughter.

I'm rather like the-queen in that I'm not really crazy about other people's kids. Well, I like plenty of children, but they are select children who are well-mannered, polite, nice and generally pleasant to be around (and includes the queen's and Marywa's offspring). But I do not like my niece. Not at all. I could barely stand to be in the same room as her. She just bugged the daylights out of me (and Joey). And it makes me sad because she used to be very nice to be around. And Joey has so few cousins, I hate to lose one, but neither one of us is too all-fire interested in seeing this girl any time soon. I hope she grows out of it!

Tomorrow I'll tell you about my BIL, SIL and their very fussy baby. I know you'll be waiting with bated breath.

But before I go, let me tell you about this great dinner I whipped up tonight. I'm calling it Sirloin Salad, though it's really Ribeye Salad.

I took a nice ribeye steak and put a dry rub on it (garlic powder, cayenne powder, Schilling's Mesquite Chicken Seasoning, lots of fresh-cracked black pepper, salt, allspice) and then grilled it to medium-rare.

While it was grilling, I put together the following items: iceberg lettuce and romaine lettuce torn into bite-sized pieces, thinly sliced yellow and green bell pepper, tomato chunks, thinly sliced Walla Walla sweet onions (from my garden), sliced carrots and fresh mango chunks (pears or papaya could be substituted).

For the dressing, I started with a prepared vinaigrette (Best Foods tangerine and balsamic vinaigrette) and added lots of fresh cracked black pepper and some tabasco sauce to give it a bite.

When the steak was done, I let it rest a few minutes then sliced it thinly against the grain and put it on top of the salad. I tossed the whole thing with the dressing and we gobbled it right down. It took me less than 30 minutes from start to finish to do the whole dinner. Ed and I both loved it. Give it a whirl.

Later...

--L