July 11, 2009
About two weeks ago, all the new interns arrived in town and we’ve been having lots of get to know you activities. Last Tuesday, one of the new interns emailed the group to invite us to get together at Filling Station. Apparently every Tuesday night, FS has a Shrimp Boil and features a cosmo and coronitas special and beach music.
Now I’m no stranger to Filling Station’s special: every Wednesday night my senior year of college my five girlfriends and I would get together for dinner at Filling Station and HALF-PRICED WINE BOTTLES. I know, right? By mid-year, we’d arrive to find our table set and two chilled bottles of Kendall Jackson ready for us. (This is where the name “winos” had originated from.)
But I had never known about their Tuesday night Shrimp Boil, and we were excited to try it out. Three things we love: seafood, beach music and cosmos. Or coronas, if Matt was writing this entry. A trio of happy things.
Nothing disappointed, except perhaps the choice of table location (right underneath the speakers) and we had a great time getting to know the new interns. It’s funny how people brand new to your town can introduce you to things you’ve never known was right under your nose, perhaps because you just start to become so comfy in your own town you stop seeking out new things.
Low-Country Boil: Shrimp, Sausage, Corn, Potatoes, YUM.
Have you ever felt like a tourist in your own town? It makes me inclined to seek out some new experiences in our town – I’m sure there’s many other nooks and crannies in Winston I have yet to discover! It makes me even more excited to know that we’re here for the next three years of residency, because I’m sure there’s much more in this town I have yet to find.
February 27, 2009
Bah duh da da da da da da GO DEACS… bah duh da da da da GO DEACS…. (Or at least that’s how it sounds in MY head.) This has been a roller coaster basketball season. First, we were amazing. Unstoppable. Steam rolling over both Duke and Carolina. Then, we start losing should-be-easy games – games against Miami and GA Tech. In my 9 years as a Deacon, we have ranged from being #1 and Cinderella-storied all over the place, to being most commonly confused with a small liberal arts school in Chicago until a Tim Duncan reference is made. Oh Wake Forest, they’ll say. One thing I can say about Demon Deacon basektball though, is every game is exciting because you never know what you’re going to get. Classic Wake Forest: unpredictable, at best . Unpredictable at their best.
Thanks to our friends, Emily and Wiggy, we got to enjoy an in-person win at the Joel. Beating State doesn’t cause quite the same ruckus as Duke or Carolina win does, but every Wake fan probably has a half dozen State fans in their inner circles of colleagues, friends and family and a little Friday morning bragging rights is always fun.
Go Deacs!
February 17, 2009
My parents are here visiting now, back from being with my sister down in Charlotte. For the last 24 hours, my dad has had the same GI bug that Matt and I fell victim to a few weeks ago. I think my sister feels a little jipped – that I had him healthy on Saturday, he spent the day in the bed/bathroom on Sunday and Monday, and now that he’s healthy he’s headed back up here. Oops… sorry sis? While I’ve been toiling at work (slash blogging), they’ve been roaming the aisles of Harris Teeter, stocking me up on soy sauce, Frosted Mini Wheats and toliet paper. All the essentials. Sigh – they are some generous people. I’m anxious to finish up work and go hang out with them, so I suppose I should work instead of blog. I think the game plan is to go to Milner’s tonight – my fave WS restaraunt. Southern gourmet. Yummmmmers. Last night we had a dinner for the my research study staff at another new restaurant called Ombu which is also super good and way cute/trendy. I’m getting way overfed this week, but I can’t say I’m complaining.
November 9, 2008
Ingredients for a perfect weekend:
- 6 best friends
- husband/fiancees that tolerate (adore?) our obsession with another
- a late warm spell coupled with gorgeous foliage on an already picture perfect campus
- a winning football team
Welcome to Wino Weekend. If I took the time and wrote out how I feel about these girls, we would be here all day. Suffice it to say, there has been nothing like the friendship of this group of girls for me. We love each other unconditionally, support each other unanimously and go above and beyond the challenges of long distance friendships to make time for another. Having all six of us in one place – especially the place we were “born” 5 years ago this fall – is perfection.
Friday night, half the girls arrived and we met up for drinks with Sigma Pi alum at Fox & Hound. Saturday we packed the show on the road and tailgated for a few hours, before enjoying a sweep of a football game against UVA. The afternoon was sunny and unseasonably hot, with the backdrop of gold and reds as the only reminder that it was still fall. The afternoon was filled with eating, chatting, drinking, laughing, cheering and just a general feeling of fullness.
By dinner time, our age had started to catch up to us. We convened at an old Favorite, the Mexican restaraunt on University that we’d chow down on chips and salsa and ‘ritas before many a lounge party. After our 4-table party had taken in an abundance of chips and Dos Equis, the carb coma set in hard, and we opted for winding down at our house instead of going out downtown.
This morning, we topped off a perfect weekend at “our” place – 4th Street Filling Station. There were six of us crammed into a both, just like every Wednesday night, senior year. (But, I confess 2 winos were on the road and/or sleeping, and the six-some was completed by 2 Wino Husbands.) There were no KJ bottles ordered, but the feeing of absolute contentment from a good meal shared by good friends was ever the same.
I felt nostalgic for so many reasons I pulled off in the direction of I-40 West to go home while my friends departed to the East, to catch planes to New York and Boston, to return to the other side of the state to Raleigh or to head up north to Charlottesville. We returned to our separate lives, together always.
October 5, 2008
One thing Winston-Salem is well known for is it’s tremendous variety of places to get some good grub. However, we keep finding ourselves repeating the same places over and over again – because they’re close (Kimonos/El Dorado), they’re a good price (Kimonos/any mexican place/east coast wings), or we know they’re tasty (Village Tavern, Village Tavern, Village… you get the point.) So the other day, we got a coupon for $10 off at Texas Land and Cattle. I have to say, generally I am not a huuuuge fan of steakhouses. My dad is a whiz on the grill and Matt has deftly picked up where he left off, and it’s hard to justify going out and paying for steak when the men in your life can serve it up at home just as good, if not better. But, I’m a coupon-lovin‘ gal, so we thought we’d give it a try last night. My expectations were low. I was anticipating the environment of Texas Roadhouse (which Jamie loving refers to as the Wal-mart of steakhouses) with the cheesy “meals with alcohol flavors” theme a la Chili’s based on their online menu.
I was wrong and I’m happy for it. The atmosphere was way nicer than I thought – just a small step below Riverburch caliber – and the food was delicious. No nutrition information posted online, which is about the only thing that disappointed me. Definitely a new one to add to our rotation.
Better yet, I am thinking of dishing up a new challenge for me and the hubby. Rather than rotate through our standard four (maybe now five), I am thinking that as our time may end here in Winston, we need to step up our dining experiences. I found this list on the WFU student homepage. From my best guess, it looks like there are close to 300 restaurants on there. Think we could knock them all off? We better get hungry…
September 21, 2008
There is nothing like a street festival or fair to bring out the finest in any community. Last night, we went downtown to the Rock the Block festival. There was a huge outpouring of people in the streets and bands played on 4 different corners. I just kept looking around wondering where all these people were all the time. Does our wonderful city really and truly contain this many people? We got drinks at Foothills and headed outside to hear a band that vacillated from challenging Don Henley/Eagles vibes to pounding out some hard Seether/Nickelback. Good, if you could pry yourself away from the following distractions:
*Two young girls behind the drummer dancing with such violent hair whipping I wonder if their latissimus required RICE treatment the next day
*A strikingly bald fellow with a navy blue polo tucked into the most hiked up navy blue khakis, complemented by a little blue pinging light in his ear (yes, this gentleman apparently found it neccessary to wear his blue tooth the entire concert. Just in case he got that oh so important call, he could shout over Freebird…”What? I can’t hear you! I’m at a concert! I do have a life!… oh…. I came alone.”)
*An extremely unkempt middle age woman in a dirty jean skirt and bare feet dancing with a small tow headed child who was delirious from regular pop and staying up past her bedtime, and who quite obviously belonged to the man in a torn sleeve tank top and jorts who was busy hitting on the lady with the gypsy skirt and “all I need’s a glow stick” hand motions
*And then there were these fellows….
A scrappier bunch could nar be found. (Thanks goes to Jamie, the picture is hers.) Who says you can’t have fun in med school?
We had a great time though, and it was nice to get to do something a little different from our usual weekend routines. Winston is growing up quickly and it’s exciting to see it’s nightlife and it’s population growing and shifting as it discovers what kind of city it wants to be.
