Gainful Employment -- Hooray!

Sandy Leonard Hutchinson,

grossly underemployed if employed at all

for 3 years and 2 months,
humbly announces she has a job,
starting Thursday, July 30, 2009.

A real full-time job with a decent salary, health and dental insurance, a 401(k) with employer match, paid time-off, and free parking. It is with a progressive, stable Internet business, so what I learn will increase my marketability going forward. That was pretty much my entire list of requirements for the next job.

The transition from Greensboro to Charleston has not been easy, and this employment piece has been the hardest nut to crack. I would like to think that we can all live with flexibility and mobility and take time out to help family, travel, pursue dreams that may not immediately produce income, but I'm not sure I could, in good conscious, tell another woman approaching age 50 to go for it. I am so lucky that Duncan has been able to keep us afloat and insured. These are tough times and many people have no cushion at all.

I sent out a celebratory e-mail to almost everyone I knew and while I got back congratulations and good wishes, I also got back notes telling me how hard work is right now. One friend wants to retire and can't. Another is not ready to retire but is being forced out. Someone else has had to lay people off. And more than one tells me that because of laptops, cell phones and blackberries, the boundaries between being at work and not being at work have all but disappeared and the result is stress, doctors, medication, and therapy. Aye Yi Yi. What am I jumping back into?

I just know I've been missing the things everyone else complains about -- having to get up on Monday morning, going to the office, a department- a "team", meetings, a mission statement and a strategic plan with deadlines. I'm looking forward to being involved with someone else's projects again!

Good Eatin'

We had a cook-out at our pool this afternoon for the middle and senior-highs from church. They had a lot of fun crabbing with strings and chicken necks and were very successful -- so we added crabs to the menu. We just steamed them and ate them out of the shell. A little messy, but nothing better.

Today's paper had recipes for shrimp and crab dishes -- but nothing that sounded like it could beat this one from Kathy Wulf.

Hearty Crab Casserole

1 1/2 lb. crabmeat
4 shallots, chopped fine
4 tender celery stalks, chopped fine
8 oz. mushrooms, sliced
4 Tbsp butter
2 Tbsp flour
1 C. Milk
1/4 C. dry sherry
2 Tbsp. fresh lemon juice
2 tsp. Worcestershire
2 tbsp chopped fresh parsley
dash of red pepper
1 tsp. chicken bouillon granules
4 oz. grated Swiss cheese
Parmesan cheese
Dried bread crumbs

Preheat oven to 325. Place crab in well buttered 2 quart baking dish. Cook shallots, celery & mushrooms in butter. Stir in flour and add milk and sherry. Bring to a boil. Add lemon juice, Worcestershire sauce, pepper, parsley and bouillon. Remove from heat and stir in Swiss cheese until melted. Pour over crab. Cover top w/ Parmesan and bread crumbs. Bake for 30 mins. until bubbly.

I'm accumulating crab meat in the freezer now to make this one. Hmmm. . . . who will be the lucky dinner guests that night?

Happy 4th of July

Holidays are always good. D had Friday off and we tooled down to Seabrook Island and took a look at Camp St. Christopher as a possible place for a church youth retreat. I could just feel the summer church camp vibe emanating from those shack-y buildings and bunk beds. But what a pretty place right on the water. The sand had mica in it, so it sparkled and my feet looked like they'd been dipped in golden glitter. It was a beach you could walk for hours. I kept wanting to see what was beyond the next curve, but the sky was that washed-out blue color it gets when it's just impossibly hot so we kept it short.

My niece Laurel is getting married today at St. Simon's Island. She wanted to have the most private of ceremonies in a beautiful setting. I hope it fits the dream and I hope no one melts. I got married once on the beach in July. My memory of it is not all about how hot it was, but several years later we went back around the time of our anniversary and I almost died. What were we thinking?? Who knows, maybe global warming made its way to South Carolina between 1988 and 1994. Anyway, here's to Laurel and Brandon with best wishes.

We are going to a dinner tonight and taking potato salad. How did I get to be this middle-age woman who actually wears red, white and blue to cookouts on the 4th of July? I understand there will be young children and backyard fireworks. I'm going to hum Sousa snippets and enjoy.

Wanderings

Since I wrote last I have done some South Carolina traveling north and south. We spent one afternoon tooling up 17 with Jim and Vicki with no real destination since we started too late to go to Brookgreen Garden. We stopped outside of McClellanville at Hampton Plantation just before a big thunderstorm. This is a state historical site because it is an old rice plantation and former home of several prominent lowcountry families -- Rutledges, Horrys and Pinckneys. Families of freed slaves continued to live there for several generations after emancipation. There is a huge oak tree there that was slated to be cut down, but as he was passing through, George Washington suggested they leave it, so it grows on. It hosts lots of resurrection fern that was furled out and lush the day we saw it. We got chased away by a hard and fast thunderstorm which was a daily occurance around that time.

Closer to Georgetown we took a left on a dirt toad and determined we were on the King's Highway -- the original route 61 that went between Charleston and Boston back in the day. We stopped at St. James Santee Parish -- established in 1706 at the request of the French Huguenots, it was the 2nd parish in this area for the Church of England with the first being St. Philips,in downtown Charleston. The present building was built in 1768. (Vicki was once a Charleston tour guide.) The interior is very plain with beautiful pine worn smooth to the touch. The cemetery had many very old graves -- one was for an "overseer" -- but also some rather recent ones. One from the 80s, I believe, was for a journalist in Charleston with the inscription: "Raise a toast for Jack" -- or something along those lines.

I spent a day in Florence at an engineering day camp for middle school students (don't ask) and in the following week visited another in Aiken. The group in Florence was in a chemistry lab, doing all kinds of acid/base experiments that get dramatic results -- color changes, smoke, popping noises. All 12 year olds think dry ice is pretty darn amazing. I stopped by the Farmers Market and bought some peaches before I got back on I95.

The group in Aiken was building Lego robots. Each group had a box of parts and a booklet with the assembly steps illustrated. It reminded me of putting together a bookcase, but smaller and harder. I think some of the kids were loving it and some were pretty stymied by it.

I can't believe I have lived here this long and not made it to Aiken yet. What a pretty place, once you finally get there. I think "the haves" in Aiken live the gracious southern life. The "have-nots", not so much. The land started to roll as soon as I drove into the county. I checked out the downtown area and a residential neighborhood right behind it where a lot of yard crews were sprucing things up for the weekend. I didn't really see anything "horsey" so I guess we have to go again.

Driving along, I enjoyed the changing landscape. In some places it looked so overgrown and wild I could just imagine Francis Marion himself slogging through the swamp. In other places, lantana, crype myrtle and palm trees were profuse and gave the view a more inhibited look. Houses were old and big, with wide porches and big magnolia trees in the yards. It was the the picture of southern rural summertime beauty.

We are determined to overcome our enertia and get out and see a bit more of what is within a day's drive of us. We want to go to Congaree, but it's gonna be pretty hot at the swamp these days. I think a drink on the beach at Edisto would fill the bill, today.

Mom's Garden Spot

This is the view my Mom has created for herself (and for her neighbors) at Glenaire, the retirement community in Cary where she moved over a year ago. The wooded area out her back door was one of the selling points on this particular apartment -- and to get it, she probably moved sooner after Dad's death than she would have liked.

But, as things turned out, we are glad she moved when she did. It is good to have that big transition behind her and the house sold easily just before the economy completely collapsed last year. She has really transformed this little glade from underbrush completely overgrowing the azaleas and camellias that were there -- to this pretty little area where the plants have room to breathe and flowers offer spots of color as well. She has always had a green thumb.

Spoleto on the Cheap

I don't have much this week.

Duncan and I did Spoleto on the cheap this year by volunteering to usher and we will definitely do that again -- as we have realized many locals do every year. You don't have much control over what you see, so your experience is a little random, but that's sort of the point of Spoleto, anyway.

We ushered for Don John -- very interesting staging, but overall, a bit dark and gritty for our tastes, and Good Cop Bad Cop, which was a lot of fun. We took tickets at the Finale at Middleton Plantation Sunday night and that turned out to be a really nice experience. People went all out with the picnic dinners -- some carted in dollies with tables, chairs, china, silver candelabras, table linens, flower arrangements and cooler after cooler of food. (We took a blanket and chicken from the Colonel.) The program included no introductions, no speeches, no thanking the sponsors, no previews of next year. Just beautiful music for more than an hour and spectacular fireworks.

Otherwise, I have a new "client" for writing services and several projects stretching into the summer. Today is Debbie and Wilson's 25th anniversary -- a well earned milestone for them. The plan was to be on a walking tour in France. I wish it were so.

"You are clear to Hamilton and Godspeed!"

For some reason, my fascination has been grabbed by the Charleston to Bermuda (C2B) race that started from the Charleston Harbor yesterday. Five sailboats along with the 140' schooner, The Spirit of South Carolina, are expected to arrive in Bermuda in five or six days -- so Wednesday or Thursday.

The Spirit of South Carolina, sailing in an exhibition category, is going to participate in a tall ship event in Bermuda next week, so it is just going along for show. This is the7th run of the bi-annual race, and apparently, participation is down because of the economy -- 20 - 30 boats is what they hope for. The idea is to highlight the historical connection between the two places and boost tourism.

The racing boats are: Nova, a 56' Swan (pictured in front of the Ravenel Bridge and in the other picture, to the right of The Spirit of SC), Cadence, a 51' Able Apogee 50 (to the left of The Spirit of SC), The Spray, a 63' Little Harbor, Tohidu, a 43' Beneteau from Charleston, and Grateful Red, a 40' Tartan C&C. Pictures are from the Post & Courier.

The coarse is 777 miles. After a day on the water, the C2B website shows Nova with a nice lead.

In other news. Spoleto is in town, Jay Leno did his last Tonight Show last night, Duncan and I will be celebrating our 3rd wedding anniversary on Wednesday night and they really need a stoplight at the intersection of Henry Tecklenburg and Savage.