We took a trip up the coast to Rockport, Mass. and stayed in the perfect seaside retreat.

The house has 10 bedrooms and 12 bathrooms; a good thing when 21 relatives are reuniting in it for four days. Here’s the view from the lawn:

Two working lighthouses on an island in the bay, one beach in walking distance and another, sandier beach a short drive away.

We had some lobstas:

And some steamas:

and stopped pronouncing our “r”s, especially when we went into Glousta, er, Glouchester.

The girl wrestled with and ate her own lobster, filling us with pride.

It was a great family reunion in a perfect vacation spot. We had a great time visiting with family, eating tremendous amounts of delicous food and relaxing.  

I’ve been away on a several-city tour including Newport News, Williamsburg, Virginia Beach, Norfolk in Va., Clifton Park in N.Y., Rockport, Boston and Glouchester in Massachusetts and now we’re home.

Much reading to do and catching up before returning to work on Monday.

I’ll fill you in on the travels as soon as I’ve recovered from the journey. Looking forward to sleeping in my own bed tonight.

Get it? Pie Ate Us = piatus = pie hiatus? A lotta late night time burned thinking up that one.  The Life of Pie experiment will continue; to date I have created eleven pies. For those of you playing the at-home game, the pie posts are linked here:

Oh, My: Pie! In which I buy a book and decide to bake. Obsessively.

In which I search for The Lard.

My first pie, Fancy Sweet Potato, which made Benticore fall a little bit in love with me.

Where we named the pie blog Life of Pie — thanks to Maya.

Then there was the utter disaster we called Banana Cream Soup. Splooosh.

Chocolate Chess Pie. It’s a Southern thing.

In a rush, I made two “cheater” pies for the band banquet.

I made Stuff I Had in the House Pie. I don’t recommend this.

I then made my most beautiful pie to date, the Blueberry Lattice Top Pie, which sent Dwight out onto the streets of Cleveland in search of pie.

Ignoring orders to knock off the pies for awhile, I made two graduation pies, a sugarless berry apple and a bourbon apple.

Last weekend, I made a Cheddar Cracker Apple and a Chocolate Brownie Pecan for a picnic.

So I have to knock it off for a few weeks to accomodate some family time and to lose the three pounds I’ve gained back. (The Chocolate Brownie Pecan was irresistable.)

When I get back to it, probably in July, I would like to make one of YOUR pie recipes. If you have a favorite, send it to me. I won’t make anything with walnuts or bananas but those are the only rules. I’d love to know what pies you like or what pie you challenge me to create.

Thanks to everybody who commented in an attempt to win a Grill Daddy.

I hate to say it, but ya’ll are just not that funny. I really thought I’d be like Ree, holding my sides and guffawing my way through the comments, or at least completely grossed out by your grimy grill descriptions, but no, not really.

A couple of you did make me wrinkle my nose or chuckle a bit, and these three are the WINNERS:

Zuzu said: “We were cooking hamburgers and my husband noticed that the top rack was really dirty. He absent-mindedly scraped the top rack with the grill spatula and watched as a little shower of rusty METAL powdered our hamburgers. He thought he could get away with blowing it off the burgers, but when he blew, all the scrapings of a hundred previous grillings billowed up from the coals onto the bottom of our burgers. Not willing to admit defeat, he served the burgers, displayed prominantly next to bottle of seasoned salt that looked conveniently rust colored.”

OMG — I can’t believe your husband served metal studded burgers to your family — that’s a winner.

Stormy made me snort a bit when he said: “When summer rolls around and I want to experiment with fruit on the grill, it takes a ton of cleaning or my grilled peaches taste like peach flavored hot dogs.” Mmm. Peach hot dogs.

Suzanne B. said: “When we smoked, we used to put all the cigarette butts in the grill when we were done with them. Well.. it kinda got full. When summer rolled back around and my other roommate went to grill something… well.. needless to say we got another grill.” That one made my jaw drop. I could just imagine somebone cooking with all those butts burning down below. Gross!

Congratulations to Stormy, Zuzu and Suzanne B.!

I was born on a Friday the 13th. I consider them my lucky days. My mother actually chose to have me on that day, given the choice with a scheduled C-section she was asked, are you superstitious? She said no, and the date was set.

I look for lucky things to happen to me on Friday the 13th. But today might be YOUR lucky day. There are 15.5 hours left in the Grill Daddy Giveaway! You could be a winner!

 Time’s UP! Winners to be announced shortly. 

A few days ago I told you all about my favorite As Seen on TV product, the Grill Daddy. I included a note to the Grill Daddy peeps, just in case they were reading and lo and behold, they came through.

WELCOME TO THE GRILL DADDY GIVEAWAY!

I have been authorized to give away THREE FREE GRILL DADDIES! Whoo hooo!

Here’s the deal: by midnight, Friday, June 13, leave your most descriptive, disgusting and/or funny comment about the crud on your grill and I will choose the three winners and publish them here. My call. Winners must supply a valid mailing address to receive the Grill Daddy. Whille this makes a great Fathers’ Day gift, it’s unlikely they’ll get there in time, so you might want to go ahead and BUY your dad a gift.

OK — go! Good luck. Make me laugh. Or gag. Whatever!

The boy has been looking for a summer job. He’s applied to a dozen jobs and had a few interviews. In the meantime, he’s done several odd jobs including babysitting, lawn mowing and, perhaps the coolest of all, assisting Sean Tubbs with recordings for the Charlottesville Podcasting Network. These are all great jobs to have, but too few and far between to assist him with the pain of his oncoming life as a poor college student.

He interviewed for a sales job, which turned out to be that time-honored appointment-driven scheme to sell Cutco Knives. What funny about this is that in 1989, my husband had the same interview, was presented the same earning structure, had the same “convincing” conversation with me about taking the job. He sold knives to several friends and we still have his sample set; the best knives we own. The boy made a list of all the people he could imagine coercing to buy knives from him. He came up with 10 names. Then he decided he’d better let that opportunity go.

He’s a good kid; smart, reliable, has his own wheels and is willing to work hard. For money. That’s the important part. Let me know if you have a dog sitting, lawn mowing, filing, binder assembly, podcast recording, ditch shoveling, telemarketing, table-waiting, coffee-fetching or other menial job for him. You’ll be saving his hide because his dad’s going to wring his neck if he doesn’t get a job soon.

I hope he does get a non-terrible job, although I think everyone needs a truly awful job at some point, hopefully early in their career. Everyone needs one demoralizing, insulting, disgusting, offensive job to reminisce about when their work-life improves. Think of the opportunities to play that negative one-upmanship game comparing past work lives with current coworkers.

My friend Jim had a bad job when he was in high school. He worked in a pickle plant, driving a forklift. It was hot and smelled to high heaven of pickle brine. Just talking about it, his nose wrinkles with the memory of a smell he was not rid of from May till August.

One of my husband’s first jobs was in the Chrysler plant, attaching hood ornaments to minivans, working on the line during the night shift. The plant was hot; the work, mind-numbingly boring. Charmingly, he presented me with a hood ornament in lieu of an engagement ring when he popped the question. Luckily, a ring came later.

I worked as a waitress for two weeks; till a construction worker slapped my butt and my fellow waitress creeped me out by reading the Satanic bible and telling tales of her extensive drug use. I also worked at a mall McDonald’s and vividly remember scraping off the remains of a cheeseburger that had been plastered to the wall.

Everyone needs THAT job, the one that makes you never go back, to work hard, study harder and believe that there’s a better place for you one day; that you deserve it and will do anything to get it.

What was your worst job?

Despite the heat index of 105 on Sunday, I spent the afternoon at a picnic with some of my Leadership Charlottesville friends, including NBC 29 alumni Mark O’Brien. I baked two pies to bring, although only one of them made it out of the house. I gave careful consideration to what pies would not spoil or wilt in the extreme heat and humidity. I came up with these two: Apple with Cheddar Cracker Crust and Chocolate Brownie Pecan.

For the apple pie, the cheddar cracker topping, made with white cheddar Cheez-Its, butter and sharp cheddar cheese, was a pretty mild flavor atop the Granny Smith apple pie. It held up well to the heat and got rave reviews.

The Chocolate Brownie Pecan pie never made it to the picnic because those three words, chocolate, brownie and pecan, are some of my husband’s favorites. I can’t tell you the others.

The pecan pie is one I will definitely make again. It has a great texture and flavor.

I double pie-d this time, again, baking two very different pies simultaneously, which can be tricky. There was a moment where I had to pause and think, OK, now which filling goes into the pre-baked crust and which goes into the freezer-chilled crust? I got it right, but don’t really recommend the confusion of multi-tasking while pie baking.

This is not a product review blog, nor is this a paid endorsement but I just have to tell you about the coolest item I’ve bought in YEARS. I was watching some late night goofy TV when on came one of those commercials for products that are rarely tempting and look like they’re mass produced in some off-shore factory where all the employees are nine years old. It was for the Grill Daddy. My ears perked. I hate cleaning my grill. There is not, in my mind, a dirtier, more thankless job. Not only that, but as soon as it’s clean, I gunk it up again with burgers, cheese and drippy marinated chicken. The commercial stuck with me. $19.95, I thought, is not going to kill me if it doesn’t work and just provides me with a rather expensive grill brush.

So the next day I went online to investigate. I can’t call an 800 number to order something; that’s just beneath me. As soon as I saw the tagline I was sold: “Cleans like a mother!” Best. Tagline. Ever.

It arrived a few days ago and lo and behold, this thing WORKS. The technology is beyond simple; it’s just a great grill brush with a handle you fill with water. Fire up the grill and when it’s hot, open it up and scrub away. The steam works with the brush and all that crud gets whisked away. Unfortunately, I was wearing a light khaki skort when I went to town with the Grill Daddy the first time out and ended up with tiny flecks of char and grease all over myself, but it was totally worth it. A completely clean grill in minutes flat. I’m in barbecue heaven.

But wait: there’s MORE! Not really. I’ve just always wanted to say that. I have never bought anything As Seen on TV before this. Now I’m wondering what other goodies I’ve been missing. Have you ever bought any of those infomercial products? What did you buy? Was it any good?

Hey Grill Daddy people — you didn’t pay me for this, but I’d totally be willing to give a few of your amazing products away to my readers. Whaddya say?

This month I’m featured in an Abode article by Erika Howsare about my home office and working at home. (Side note: check out Erika’s beautifully written feature about photographer Mary Ellen Mark.) Abode is produced by C-ville Weekly, the same pub that made me one of the C-ville 20 last year. All of this made me feel a bit famous, at least on a local level. But today, Book of Joe picked up on my personal descriptive spin when Abode arrived as an insert with his New York Times. While Joe might be part of the circle of C’ville bloggers, he’s also one star-powered blogger; as in one of the top 5,000 blogs.

So I’ve made it. Look out Kathy Griffin and Flava Flav.

Thanks for the link, Joe.