Hawaiian Poge

Seriously. My burger was made of moose. It was awesome. On so many levels.

A coworker’s family is in town and they’re from Alaska so they brought some of the ground moosemeat they had from the last hunt and made a feast for everyone in the office today.

I was all prepared to be polite and pretend to like it, but it…was….delicious. I couldn’t believe it! It was leaner than beef and had this subtle added flavor. Best burger I’ve ever had.

But it’s weird to think I ate moose. Another coworker doesn’t eat beef and we weren’t sure the reasoning, so we asked if he could eat moose and he thought for a minute and said, “No. Moose are cute too.”

Which I thought was really funny (though not if I think about it too much). He determines which animals he can eat or not based on their cuteness factor. He eats some pork so we determined that it must be on a pig by pig basis. He confirmed that he would not under any circumstances eat Babe. (Tug: “That’ll do pig, that’ll do”) Or Wilbur. But some others are up for grabs.

 (Chris:1, Karyn: 0)

David and I went to Atlanta to spend a week with his family after Christmas and then we all drove together to Alabama for New Year’s to see his extended family.  It was really fun. I’d never been to Alabama before.

David always says that Upstate New York reminds him of where his family in Alabama lives, and I must admit, I was skeptical. But it really does look similar.

It was really cool to meet (or see again)  all his cousins and aunts and uncles and grandma. They’re all so nice. I was worried I’d be grilled but I think I’ve been around in the background long enough that they knew most things about me in advance.  No 20 questions at all.

It’s kind of neat that so much of his family all live right around one town and very close to his grandma. They do stuff together a lot, always get together for holidays, and have some really cool traditions they do every year. (I got to eat fried okra and black eyed peas.) It reminds me of my Mom’s stories of when she was a kid. There was a lot of family in New Jersey then too and everyone got together all the time.

One of the COOLEST things about this town in Alabama was that it’s 1 mile from Helen Keller’s birthplace. 1 mile! I could not believe how excited I was about that fact.  So close to where she was a bratty little kid. So close to where Ann Sullivan came to help teach her. So close to the water pump where she first learned the connection between the motions on her hand and the meaning of the words.  It literally felt like climbing into my favorite book from when I was a kid. It was pretty cool. (Yes, I loved biographies. Yes, I’m a dork.  I would’ve been just as excited if I saw Ben Franklin’s birthplace.)

I asked David if we were close to Maycomb so I could visit Scout, but apparently that’s not a real town. Ah well.

So, um, it’s been a long time since I wrote in my blog.  Ahem… sorry about that.  Well I’m back. You’re stuck with me again.

Somehow Notre Dame got into a bowl and somehow they ended up in Hawaii. So David snatched up some tickets and Mom, David, Chris, Ryoko and I ended up going on Christmas Eve. So fun!

And then we won! That just made it that much better. And I won a lunch from my coworker Nate.  It tasted sweet (though not literally- it ended up being Indian food).

And I ran into an old friend of a friend from campus. (Erin- it was Karen Pahed’s old friend Brandon) That was pretty neat.  It did, however, add credence to David’s theory that I know everyone and run into someone whereever we go.  I’m turning into Mom.

David and I flew out two days later to Atlanta to see his family and who should be on our plane but a lot of very large Notre Dame football players.  That was pretty funny. Flashbacks to freshman science class though.