Unofficial

My high school friend Craig was visiting last weekend, which led to more unofficial reunion-ing. Another of our classmates lives just down the road in Cary, and of course Janas is nearby as well. (In theory, Craig was here to give a talk -- in a room with a capacity of 500 people, and they had overflow seating as well!)

His visit was a nice excuse to explore some new places in the Triangle. One was a pastry shop/cafe called Guglhupf (especially apropos for Craig), which featured, among other things, very yummy chocolate croissants and a quite civilized brunch -- it improved my opinion of Durham. :)

Janas had us over for dinner one night, which led to some unofficial fencing in addition to the unofficial reunioning. (Really, in a group of seven people -- eight if you count the toddler -- what are the odds that two of them would be fencers? And no, Mike doesn't count as a fencer. Despite his expert-looking stance here, this was his first time.)






And we went to see the (unofficial) World's Largest Pumpkin Cookie. They baked it in a special outdoor oven that consisted of several layers of special metallic material, with heat pumped through it. Before the great unveiling of the cookie, the baker cautioned that because of all the wind, he wasn't sure how the cookie would turn out -- it might be more cooked in some spots than others. Despite the lovely cinnamon-y smell, that wasn't a particularly appetizing sales pitch, so we didn't stick around to pay $10 for a piece of cookie.

Allegedly the cookie weighed 500 lbs, which you have to admit is a pretty darn big cookie, but somehow it didn't look quite as impressive in real life as I'd imagined it would be. (I think I'd also imagined that blowtorches would somehow be involved in the cooking process. But no.) Oh well.

We also enjoyed the gorgeous fall weather. We went to the botanical garden, which was featuring a sculpture exhibition. (The sculpture was actually for sale, but all the cool stuff was sold already -- which may be for the best, since it wasn't exactly in our price range.) It was nice to have the art, since the nature wasn't so much in bloom. And we went down to the lake, too, but no swimming this time.