Having dinner with George & Martha Washington

This weekend, the Dizzles went to Morristown, NJ, an American Revolution history hotspot, to have dinner with friends who were in town for work.  And what better place to have dinner than a restaurant named for Morristown favorites George and Martha Washington.

George and Martha’s served delectable American favorites with a twist.  After dinner, we strolled the Morisstown Green, reading various placards of American history.

For those of you interested in the history of Morristown, the area was occupied by General Washington and the Continental Army during the Revolutionary War from 1779-1780.  This was apparently the year of the “hard winter” that we were so often told of in elementary school.  But seriously, it was 70 degrees here on Sunday, I don’t know what those Continental soldiers were complaining about.

Filed under: New Jersey , george and martha's american grille, morristown nj, revolutionary war history

Quick trip to Charleston SC

The Dizzles hopped on a plane last weekend to Charleston, South Carolina for a friend’s wedding.  Mrs. Dizzle’s only knowledge of Charleston comes from the movie Gone with the Wind, so you can imagine her delight when people actually referred to the “war of northern aggression” when discussing the Civil War.  Charleston proved to be a delightful town with great food (grits galore) and sites to see.  Highlights:

Carriage ride through Old Charleston and the wedding, held at the William Aiken House.

 

The Hominy Grill

Mr. Dizzle got a lovely thing called The Big Nasty:

Filed under: Charleston SC, U.S.A.

We experience the grease trucks at Rutgers.

Yeah, you read it right- grease trucks.  Or Greece trucks as they are technically called.  The kind of trailor-esque vehicle that sells sandwiches in parking lots and on sidewalks during sports games.  Only these trucks are permanently located on the Rutgers University campus and available to drunken, hung-over college students year round.  Or to suburban, thrill-seeking young professionals who are looking for a challenge on a Sunday afternoon.

Our neighbors introduced us to this colossus of so-bad-it’s-good sandwich purveyors this past weekend, and we will probably go back a few more times during our stay in this great state.  The sandwich truck’s official name is RU Hungry? and features hoagie-style sandwiches piled with your choice of burgers, chicken fingers, gyro meat, cheesesteak, mozzarella sticks, onion rings, french fries, and a variety of sauces.

I had the Fat Mojo sandwich with chicken fingers, mozz sticks, french fries, and honey mustard sauce.  Mr. Dizzle had both a Fat Cat (2 burgers, lettuce, tomato, onion, french fries) and a Fat Philippino (gyro meat, chicken fingers, cheesesteak, tzatziki sauce, french fries, lettuce, and tomato).

Surprisingly, I wasn’t devastatingly full after this extravaganza, just pleasantly full.  Which cannot be a good sign for the stretchiness of my stomach.  Get ready to start drooling (or feeling nauseous if eating to the point of explosion isn’t your thing) as you browse this montage of RU Hungry? delights:

Someone’s even drawn up a handy diagram:

Other fun sandwich names:

Fat Sam, Fat Darrel, Fat Koko, Fat Knight, Fat Beach (which sounds a lot like Fat Bitch when the cook is calling out your order), Fat Moon, Fat Vastardi, Fat Romano, Fat Bedi-Boy, Fat Dat Bulls.

Filed under: New Jersey , fat cat sandwich, grease trucks, greece trucks, ru hungry nj

Fall in New Jersey

Happy Halloween!  After many years spent celebrating with the Brighton Dizzles, we’re on our own this year.  But apparently, not so much alone- we’re told by neighbors to expect about 60 trick or treaters.  Seriously?  Last year we had 6.  And they were all that awkward teenage trick or treat type, embarassed to dress up and go door to door, but still craving piles of candy.  This year we’re surrounded by approrpriately aged trick or treaters so we’ve decked out the entrance for the occasion.  And maybe because I just really like Halloween. 

Filed under: New Jersey , autumn, fall in new jersey

Highways and Bridges and Tunnels, oh my!

See, I told you I’d post once a week… nevermind that this is day 7 of that self-imposed deadline, it’s still on time!  This past weekend we ventured to Long Island for a friend’s wedding.  And what a venture it is to get to Long Island from here.  Only about 83 miles away, it takes well over 2 hours to get there.  What gives?  Highways and bridges and tunnels and a little thing called Midtown Manhattan.  On this particular trip, we managed to take the Holland, Midtown, and Lincoln tunnels at one point or another.

Lincoln Tunnel sound bite Elf sound bites

 

 

Aside from traffic, the wedding was a great time- we got to see old friends, eat a lot of great food, and dance, dance, dance.  And we even had a few Biggest Loser celebrity sitings, the awesomest (yes, that’s a word) of all being Bob Harper.

And yes, he was dressed just like this…

Filed under: New Jersey , bob harper, long island, weddings

Mrs. Dizzle gets #7 of 100 Best Blogs for Your Job Search

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention one other little thing- I write for a website called Ology, where I edit their jobology blog.  Over the summer we were awarded #7 of the 100 Best Blogs for Your Job Search.  Pretty freakin cool!  Full disclosure- I don’t think their list of 100 blogs was actually in order from 1-100, 1 being the best.  But I’ll take #7 anyday!!

Check it out here:

Filed under: U.S.A. , job search blog, job.ology.com

Summer in New Jersey, and I promise to post more often…

It hurts me to think that I’ve neglected this little blog since July! With so much going on, it’s hardly been possible to post, but Autumn seems to have brought with it a slower pace and a little more down time.  Here a rundown of our summer in New Jersey, and a pledge that I will post at least once per week from now on.

What we’ve been up to:

- Not being in Jersey. Seriously, this summer was a series of random events across the Northeast and it seems like we only had a few weekends in this great new state of ours.  Congratulations to our sister-and-brother-in-laws who are expecting their first baby in November, we went to their shower in Connecticut in August.  And Congrats to the Brighton, MA Dizzles who got married in September!  We’ve also been to NYC a few times to visit friends and Uncle Frank.  People actually wanted to visit us here so we had handful of weekends with awesome house guests.  And of course, we had to travel to Syracuse for the Great New York State Fair (#29 for the Mrs.).  It looks like this out-of-town trend is sure to continue well into the fall.

- Working. Mr. Dizzle’s loving his new job at AT&T and it took him to Dallas for a week in September, and Mrs. Dizzle is enjoying working from home for a company called Symplicity.  And yes, working from home is really work

- Puppy raising. Dizzle the wonder dog came to us in June and she’s now a 6 month old, semi-well-behaved pup.  Here she is around month 3:

- Celebrating our 1 year wedding anniversary! And managing to find a free weekend for it, ha.

What fun adventures have we had while living here over the past four months?

• Went to traditional Chinese dim sum in Brooklyn with another Boston to New Jersey transplant who luckily speaks Cantonese!  We were inspired to go by an episode of No Reservations on the Travel Channel.
• Explored the Delaware Water Gap area for hiking and some lovely views of the NJ/PA border.
• Ate LOTS of Jersey corn and peaches.  Seriously, bushels and bushels of Jersey produce has been consume by the Dizzles.
• Volunteering for the United Way of Somerset County helping folks without jobs become better job seekers.
• Visited Hot Dog Johnny’s in Buttzville, NJ on the advice of my high school guidance counselor- Hi Mr. Nick!
• Had a lovely night out at the 3forty Grill in Hoboken with our neighbors.  Seriously, people are really nice in our neighborhood!
• Went to the Jersey Shore (specifically to Ocean City) during our girls-only weekend and spent a lot of time playing in the huge waves and getting scolded by the lifeguards.  Undertow, schmundertow.
• Explored the awesome little town of Somerville, full of restaurants and bars, and the closest thing to night life near us.
• Avoiding the creepy farm-ish stand down the road from our house.  They offer $2 hot dogs with any topping, firewood, eggs, a petting zoo, and an assortment of other random farmy merchandise.  The place looks like a carnival, but the kind of carnival that you shouldn’t ever set foot into because you’ll never make it out alive.  If anyone lives in this area and knows what we’re talking about, please tell us- what is the deal with this place??  Is it safe?  Or is it a scary movie waiting to happen?  I’ll snap a picture and post it at some point.

I’m sure we’ve done a few more things that I can’t recall at the moment, but they’ll make it on this blog eventually.  So stay tuned for more updates, I swear they are coming once a week from now on.  Girl Scout’s honor.

Filed under: New Jersey

When in New Jersey…

Go to a diner!  There are 4-5 diners within a 5 mile radius of our house, and we’ve been to the Bridgewater Diner more than a few times.  It’s truly a diner, closing for about 3 hours in the middle of the night, but otherwise staying open and serving everything you can possibly imagine, from breakfast, lunch, and dinner, to Greek, Italian, Mexican, German, and something we like to call New Jersian.

What is New Jersian exactly?  Here are a few defining characteristics of the Bridgewater Diner:

1. Their website features the sound of a babbling brook.  Usually, if a website chooses to include a musical background, it’s some sort of music genre that matches their food. A Mexican restaurant, for example, would have some sort of Latin American musical background.  But a babbling brook for a diner?  Very New Jersian.

2. Their decor looks like it was created about 50 years ago, but is actually quite new.

3. They serve scrapple, an interesting mix of pork scraps and corn meal, fried to dark brown perfection.  And by perfection, we mean nauseum.  I’ve also been told that scrapple is actually the brains of the pork.  Pork scraps sounds much better.  This grayish meat is just about as unappetizing as you might imagine.

 (really, does the fresh parsley garnish help?)

4.  Their patrons are a mix of ages, from newborns to ninety-year-olds.  During the school year, it drew an awful lot of catholic school kids who had clearly just gotten their driver’s licenses and first Cameros.

5.  Everything (aside from the scrapple) is delicious.

Filed under: New Jersey , bridgewater diner, bridgewater new jersey, new jersey diners, places to eat in bridgewater nj, scrapple, what is scrapple?

Welcome to New Jersey!

The Dizzles have finally made their move to New Jersey and are kind of amazed at the variety of things they experience on a daily basis.  First, there is the wildlife.  Living in the town of Bridgewater is kind of like being on the set of National Geographic.  The Dizzles and friends first experienced a deer wondering through their yard on morning #1.  The deer and her fawn reappeared for mornings #2 and #3, but disappeard after that.  Today, the deer and fawn were back!   After some relaxing in the yard, they were greeted by a sly fox (this is not the plot of a Disney movie, this is real life folks) who quickly chased off the fawn after it gave out a YELP!  The fox reappeared later in the day and proceeded to trot right towards Mrs. Dizzle as she stood in the patio entry way.  Other sitings include bunny rabbits, squirrels, and random dudes riding segways that spit out lawn chemicals.

Just down the road from the Dizzle’s place lies another oddity- a sort-of farm, proclaiming on a roadway sign, “Hot Dogs for $2 – any toppings!”  After passing this place several times, the Dizzles noticed llamas and donkeys in a petting zoo of sorts, and eggs for sale as well.  Still have no freakin clue what this place is or why it exists, other than to lure unsuspecting newcomers to their ultimate demise (Mrs. Dizzle watches too many horror flicks).

Wegmans is the grocery store of choice, and their amazing wine shop gives away reusable wine totes- that’s right, a cute little reusable bag that can carry 6 bottles of wine in their own seperate compartments.  LOVE Wegmans.  Other people who’ve been to a Wegmans will tell you how awesome they are.

More to come when we actually start visiting places outside our immediate neighborhood!  But seriously, it’s hard to tear ourselves away when you never know what random animal will run through your backyard…

Filed under: New Jersey

Volunteering at the Boston Marathon

Mr. & Mrs. Dizzle got a chance to volunteer with the John Hancock Elite Athletes at the Boston Marathon.  JH sponsors the best runners in the race and needs a whole bunch of volunteers to help them.  We started the morning at 5am with breakfast at the Elite Athlete Village.  We were each assigned athletes to oversee, making sure they were up and on the bus before it took off to Hopkinton for the start of the race.

Mr. Dizzle was in charge of the #19 male athlete, Tekeste Kebede from Ethiopia, and Mrs. Dizzle was assigned to the #1 and #3 female athletes, Dire Tune (the 2008 marathon winner) and Bezunesh Bekele, both from Ethiopia.  The whole morning was spent much like we imagine the Secret Service, standing back, keeping an eye on our athletes, making sure they didn’t disappear or that no harm came to them.  Once we got them on the bus, it was off to Hopkinton for the start!

At the start facilities it was much of the same Secret Service-y type stuff.  We were able to accompany our athletes to the starting area, which was pretty cool.  Once the race had begun and our athletes were a few miles into the 26.2 total, we were back on the bus heading to the finish line. 

At the finish line, all the volunteers stood in line waiting for athletes to cross the line and be assigned to them.  The women’s finish was unbelievable, with Dire Tune getting nudged out in a 1 second difference finish by Salina Kosgei of Kenya.  Mr. Dizzle was assigned to an elite Russian runner by the name of Grigoriy Andreev and Mrs. Dizzle was assigned to Timothy Cherigat from Kenya.  While Mr. Dizzle’s interaction was pretty limited, Mrs. Dizzle got to accompany her athlete through drug testing which was an interesting process. 

Once all the hooplah was over with the Elite Athletes, the Dizzles returned to the finish line to watch a friend who was running the marathon for the first time come in for his finish. Congrats Dawg!

All in all, volunteering for the marathon was an awesome experience and we’d do it again if only we were living in Boston next year.  For those of you interested, you can find out about volunteering here.

Filed under: Boston MA , 2009 boston marathon winners, bezunesh bekele, boston marathon, dire tune, salina kosgei, tekeste kebede, timothy cherigat, volunteer for the boston marathon