Monday, September 15, 2003

Weekend in New Jersey

Life is collapsing back to normal ... I hope. The contact publishing piece is finished, at least for the most part. Questions still surround two advertisements and how they may or may not play havoc with some pages, and if a judge's schedule changes then one story needs to be rewritten, but other than that, things look okay. Now we just have to wait for part two of this project -- the actual trade fair -- in a few weeks.

To escape some of the stress of things, Evelin and I ran away this weekend for a short holiday to Cape May, New Jersey. We left after work on Friday and ended up driving through the remnants of Hurricane Henri for most of the trip. Since we were booking things last minute, we didn't end up in one of the historic Victorians in Cape May proper; instead, we ended up the shore a little way in North Wildwood. The B&B was nice and quiet, and it was close enough to drive down to Cape May, but parking there was a pain and slipping out for dinner proved to be a bigger task than we'd hoped. For the most part we did a low-key day trip, visiting the lighthouse and Cape May Winery, and getting sunburned on a whale watch.

Despite the predictions for rain on Saturday, it turned out to be a fairly warm, albeit humid, late summer day. The lighthouse was really cool and gave us a good view of the Atlantic and Delaware Bay. The winds at the top were incredible and it was obvious the ocean was pretty choppy.

From there it was up to Cape May Winery & Vineyards, which changed owners earlier this year. The wines were decent, but not spectacular, but after talking to the person in the tasting room, it sounds like the new winemaker has some really interesting ideas and the vintages in another year or two may be pretty good. We got a bottle of cabernet franc for the cellar.

After a quick lunch, we moved on to the whale watch. We'd originally tried to go on a 9:30 a.m. watch, but that one was cancelled, so we came back for the 1:00 p.m. one. The choppy seas kept us on the alee side of the cape for the most part, although we did turn out into the Atlantic and found a good-sized group of dolphins who did some jumping and surfing and roll and other behaviors. After that we pushed into the mouth of the Delaware Bay and cruised around a bit allegedly looking for whales, but it mostly was just to get a good sunburn.

For dinner, we decided to walk around Wildwood to see what was on the boardwalk or in the general area. Last weekend was the New Jersey Firefighter's convention in Wildwood, so the town and boardwalk were packed with firefighters. Nothing on the boardwalk looked too appealing, so we ducked the crowds and headed into town to find ... not much. We ended up deciding that it was late and we weren't that hungry anyway ...

Sunday was a quick drive back with a stop for a few pumpkins to put on the porch; we had to leave early because I had panda watch that afternoon.

This morning was the appointment with the IVF PGD doctor. It was interesting, but I want to read back over things before I blog about it ...

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