Ten for Tuesday

(since I didn't do my five for Friday last Friday, I figured I better make up for it!)

1. I ordered our Christmas cards today. How the heck is it only a month and a half until Christmas?!

2. Last weekend was super fun. My friend Mark was in town. We've been friends since 7th grade, which means there's lots of history to go over when we get together (he lives in Florida, so that's less often that I would like). There's also lots of giggles. And teasing. And laughter. And love. He just left Sunday and I miss him already. Sometimes I wish this country of ours wasn't so darn big!

3. Mark and I have this sort of tradition where we play Trivial Pursuit (the Millennium Edition, purchased in 1999, though... we attempted the Genus Edition once and gave up after about five minutes because neither one of us had a clue about any of the answers). Mark swears that I have never won Trivial Pursuit, that he has beaten me three times in a row. I think this is debatable, but I'll let him continue to make up these lies. Anyway, he beat me three times in a row... until last Saturday night. When I had a come from behind win to beat him and Brad. Victory, the sweet smell of victory my friends!

4. Halloween, while being Bradley's favorite holiday, was pretty low key at our house. We all went to dinner at one of our favorite Italian places here, came home, opened a bottle of wine, and I kicked the boys butt's in Trivial Pursuit. You know, just a normal Saturday night.

5. The weather has finally turned cooler. I think it's permanent this time (although it was 72 degrees on Saturday!). I love crisp fall air.

6. And I love fall foliage. I loved the fall foliage in Seattle so much while we were there and we're finally getting some of our own here. This made Mark especially giddy, since there is zero fall foliage in southern Florida. I think at least 50% of the pictures he took while he was here were of leaves... of course about 50% of the pictures I took in Seattle were of leaves, so who can really blame the guy?

7. Since the weather is so lovely today, Bradley and I decided to walk down to our polling place to vote this morning. If you haven't heard, we have a little election going on in Virginia today for Governor and a bunch of other statewide and statehouse seats. I was pretty undecided until I was literally standing in the polling booth this morning. Anyone who knows me, knows that's pretty unusual. But I cast my ballot, which is the most important thing. And I feel like I made an informed decision, which is almost as important as voting in the first place.

8. Mark and I played some mega tourist while he was here. We did more on Friday afternoon and Saturday morning/early afternoon than most people do in a week here. We did: the National Archives, Smithsonian Natural History Museum, Smithsonian Air and Space Museum, Smithsonian American History Museum, Washington Monument, White House (north and south sides!), Lincoln Memorial, Vietnam Veterans Memorial, Korean War Veterans Memorial, World War II Memorial, a tour of the Capitol, walked through Chinatown and Dupont Circle, Iwo Jima Marine Corps Memorial AND still found time to have some awesome pumpkin custard at the Dairy Godmother. Whew, I'm tired just writing it!

9. Last Friday, I was feeling extremely domestic and decided to make chocolate chip pumpkin bread from scratch. After an interesting start (including breaking open an entire cup of sugar packets until I realized we had a box of it in the cupboard), all went smoothly and I think the bread turned out great! We had some for breakfast Sunday morning, and also have been grazing on it. I brought it into work today for a meeting and everyone, including my boss, at least pretended to like it. I'm going to bake up another loaf on Thursday night in anticipation of my Dad's arrival on Friday. Since they don't have too many pumpkin-flavored items in Barbados (or really anything autumn), I'll send half the loaf back with him.

10. I was reading in a magazine yesterday about "Thanksgiving activities" (as if cooking, entertaining and cleaning weren't enough!) and one of them was to make a list of all the people you're thankful for and write them a letter telling them why you're thankful for them. I think this sounds like a neat idea and something I might try this fall. If you don't receive one, don't be offended... this good idea probably went uncompleted!