“Look. It looks like ‘Star Wars.’ Twin sunsets.”

“I don’t see any twin sunsets.”

“Well, those silos? Those silos look like the moisture farm near Tatooine.”
(Starts humming the ‘Star Wars’ theme very quietly).

“Unbelievable.”

At the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, where I got to see - in person - that Jean-Paul Gaultier cone bra outfit Madonna wore during the Blond Ambition tour:

Sitting here in the Days Inn in Macedonia, Ohio, just outside Cleveland, having just realized I’ve already lost my hairbrush, meaning I’ll have truly radical hair when we visit the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame later today, I thought I’d take a moment and write a little about the first day of our road trip.

We were sent on our way yesterday at my grandmother’s house in Bryn Mawr, PA, by my aunts and my uncle, a cousin and, of course, my wonderful grandmother, who stood outside her house waving goodbye to us as we started the engine and drove off.

Literally less than a minute later, we’d pulled over to the side of the road to fix a problem on our TomTom GPS navigation unit. So, you know, a little anticlimactic. But better, I guess, than getting horribly lost in the first 20 minutes.

We spend most of the afternoon driving with a few stops. Driving through beautiful farmland and along mountains and through many tunnels, our ears popping every now and then due to the altitude. We’ve both visited Pennsylvania on numerous occasions, and so driving straight through the state wasn’t really anything new, but it was still somehow thrilling to be off the roads we’re become so accustomed to driving the past few years. From North Carolina to DC and Connecticut and back. This was a change of pace. And we could do whatever we wanted on our own schedule.

We’ve basically got a library going in the back of our car – guidebooks on the entire country, books on specific parts of the country, books about wildlife and books about food. So when we checked out the expert advice and read about this place called Primanti Brothers in Pittsburgh – open 24 hours a day – we decided to stop in for a late dinner before driving a few more hours and calling it a night.

The restaurant was a small place in this area called the Strip District. It only took a little bit of driving around the city to find it and we enjoyed checking out the Pittsburgh downtown area, which I’ve only had the chance to visit on extremely brief trips in the past. Pittsburgh is really nice looking, with cool architecture, and is also really easy to navigate, which is great when you’re hungry and sort of tired.

Primanti Brothers specialized in Pittsburgh-style sandwiches. Despite the fact that it was almost 10 p.m. and they had the two televisions in the restaurant on a channel playing the movie “Old School” instead of the World Series (Yeah Red Sox!!!), it filled up with other hungry people like us very quickly. J and I got roast beef and cheese (for me) and pastrami and cheese (for him) and when the sandwiches were delivered to us only minutes after we’d ordered them I pointed excitedly and exclaimed the one truth I know about Pittsburgh from my very limited experience here. “They put fries on their sandwiches!” I said. “Right on them.”

And with that useful piece of knowledge under our belt, we ate, and observed, and returned to our car to get back on the road, happy and full and ready to go to Ohio.

When we decided to drive cross country rather than do something else with our time off, like go to Europe or spend more time at the Bay or even do something really outrageous like, say, look for a job, I knew there would be one major advantage to our decision. I would be able to write on my blog during the trip.

I know sitting down at a laptop and typing away in the midst of a vacation might not sound like fun and, sure, there will probably be a few times where I’ll really have to force myself to do this, but I think blogging about our adventures will be good for me. A sort of modern-day travel journal.

And, of course, the other major benefit - thanks to the awesome power of technology - is that I can invite you all along for the ride, so to speak. And instead of feeling obliged to read the incredibly lengthy emails I’d be bound to write if I didn’t have this blog, you can choose whether or not you want to hear all the details regarding the totally retro diner we found in Wyoming or whatever.

I had J make the new cross country-inspired header that I’ll leave up while we’re on the road. We start tomorrow - we’re leaving from just outside Philadelphia, where we’re currently visiting my grandmother and attending a friend’s wedding - and we figure the trip will take around a month, although we’re willing to give or take a few weeks.

At first I was a little nervous about putting the new header up, replacing my normal green and pink header, which I think suits me and my personality. I don’t know, I thought maybe the new header, with the map and all, makes me look like some kind of super-outdoorsy, brave soul on a mission to conquer new lands or something, instead of someone who likes to make fun of her father or write about a day at the mall and then call it a day.

But I decided it was important. If I’m going to write about our cross country trip, our journey as we set off to look for America, I might as well do it wholeheartedly, with my blog looking the part.

Besides, if anyone who doesn’t already know me happens to stumble upon this site and thinks I’m the courageous type who’s not afraid or bears and who likes to go camping in, like, ten feet of snow, well, they’ll get the real picture soon enough.

J and I are different in a lot of ways. He likes bird watching. I like red wine. Stuff like that.

One of the most marked differences between us, I think, is the way we plan for major events. While I’m good at scheduling the details of daily minutiae - dinner, for instance - my reaction to more monumental undertakings can be, well, more relaxed, shall we say.

Like when we moved, I didn’t understand why we couldn’t just throw all the stuff we owned in the truck really fast, and just have it over and done with. J, on the other hand, wanted to organize everything in an incredibly specific manner, and then pack it into boxes, then into the truck. I’m pretty sure his way was better. In fact, I think his way was the reason we were able to get the 343,873 tons of books we own into the U-Haul. Because, you know, they were packed nicely. Not in garbage bags.

The thing is, of course, that for a person like me, watching a person like J get ready for a big trip can be difficult. Not because he’s doing anything wrong - not at all - just because I don’t enjoy the process like he does. It’s like how he doesn’t like shopping at Nordstrom with me, even though it will greatly benefit him in the end and he knows it. Nobody’s at fault. That’s just how it goes.

But I knew this upcoming road trip would be a good chance for him to enterprise on his skills as a Highly Organized Planner and that, thanks to the fact that we don’t have a strict schedule to adhere to, he could do this on his own time and I wouldn’t even have to know about it.

Furthemore, a road trip, to boys, means gadgets. And because I know boys, I know that they think gadgets are AWESOME.

So I was only mildly surprised when J told me I should come check out the Prius yesterday and the car had basically been turned into some kind of space station.

Our new, portable GPS unit, which gives us ridiculously detailed directions in a female, British voice, was suctioned to one corner of the windshield. Our iPod was fastened to a vent and our XM radio was sticking up out of a cup holder, attached to a plastic contraption.

Which means we spent about 20 minutes sitting in the car in the driveway before we left to go out last night while J turned everything off and on, and punched in the final destination address on the GPS, even though we knew perfectly well how to get there, and then when the unit started talking, telling us to “turn right at the end of the road,” like we’d done in order to get anywhere a thousand times before, he looked at me with a satisfied smile as if to say, “You see? We have arrived.”

I walked upstairs yesterday to find J busily looking up information on cross country trips, as we’re about to embark on one of our own in just a few days.

He’d discovered a couple checklists he really liked, with reminders to do things like pack a first aid kit, and travel games and toilet paper.

Then I looked over his shoulder and realized the checklists he’d gotten so excited about were courtesy of Oprah and Gayle’s Big Adventure.

He asked me if it was ok that he was printing out checklists written by Oprah Winfrey, and I explained to him that that was totally fine, but he should know that I was definitely going to write about it on the World Wide Web.

I haven’t written much for the past few days - and apologize for that - because instead of sitting around doing the semblance of work, and then some real work, lately, we’ve been out doing actual things that involve talking to the locals and being outdoors.

I was glad for the change of pace. Not that we’ve been taking living rent-free on the Chesapeake Bay for granted, not at all, but I did feel that sort of tense I-am-on-vacation-vibe. You know it. Like, unless you’re doing the whole Ernest Hemingway in “A Moveable Feast” thing - staying up all night and into the dawn eating local fare and drinking wine, hobnobbing with minor celebrities, and spending your days skinny dipping in the ocean or something - you’re not really making the most of your time.

Back to back shrimp and oyster festivals this weekend, however, did the trick. My parents, Justin and I ordered a three-pound Ziplock bag of seasoned shrimp at the Shady Side Kiwanis Club annual Shrimp Feast Saturday night, sat down at a card table, and dug in, while listening to a local blues and rock band. We talked to our parents’ friends who know all the dirt on everybody in town. We ran into this guy who had us over to his place for beers a few weeks ago after a group of us drank way too much wine and then sang karaoke at the local bar, the Snug Harbor Inn. An 80-year-old in suspenders asked me to dance, and I graciously accepted.

Point being, I felt like part of the community. Like I was truly experiencing this place and having a great time while doing so.

This feeling continued the next day at the Oyster Festival, where we listened to bluegrass - including the band that played while I walked down the aisle and during the reception at our wedding two years ago - ate fried oyster puffs, ran into many of the same people we had the night before, and drank $3 glasses of wine, or $2 beers, while watching the boats drift by, enjoying the perfect fall weather.

Too much? Too annoyingly cute and ridiculous, like a bad novel? I can’t help it. It’s true!

And it gets worse - because yesterday J and I decided to go on a day trip (I’ve stopped working completely for a while - a decision I feel both very good and kind of guilty about) to Calvert Cliffs State Park, where we took a hike through the woods to the shore and the feature attraction, the fossil-filled cliffs, rolled up our pants legs, and waded in the water looking for millions-of-years-old sharks’ teeth. We talked to others who’d make the trek and were doing the same thing, or who were simply enjoying their days off, and the amazing weather.

And then guess what happened? We saw a Bald Eagle soar from the treetops above and down to the water, where it grabbed a fish in its talons and headed back to shore. Then another. Then, like, three more. Bald Eagles everywhere, flying over our heads and along the cliffs.

I’m not naming any names or anything but someone who happens to like birds was extremely pumped. Even started pointing them out to strangers. “Bald Eagle,” he’d say, pointing upwards, smiling, his just-used binoculars swinging around his neck.

You get the picture. It’s been an unforgettable few days, days that, I think, upon looking back, will really shape the memory of our sojourn here.

Or, at the very least, I think we’ve surpassed our reputation as simply “those drunk out-of-towners who sang ‘Glory Days’ and ‘Son of a Preacher Man’ at the Snug couple weeks ago,” and the next time we join the locals, drinking at the bar, hey, they just might know our names.

“Cara, will you look at that guy? What’s he doing? Watering the tree?”

“Yeah, Mom said that because of the drought she wants to make sure…”

“Unbelievable! We’re spending God knows how much money to have ‘tree experts’ come to the house every other day, and put down mulch, and sing to the plants, and God knows what else, and…”

“But Dad. How much did you spend on that painting you saw in the gallery down town the other day?”

(Brief silence.)

“But that’s art. That painting - that painting is going to appreciate. Look at that tree. Is that tree going to fucking APPRECIATE?”

Glaceau Smartwater: I know it’s not very environmentally correct to drink bottled water. In fact, lately, it seems like it’s downright bad form. Perfectly good water comes out of taps and if it’s drinkable, well, then you should drink it. And not drink the same product out of disposable plastic bottles. I get that, and I preach that too. But the other day I was out, wanted some water and decided that if I was going to commit the sin of buying water, I might as well buy something special so I bought some Glaceau Smartwater. Now, I don’t know exactly what they do to that water, what “vapor distilled” means or why I need electrolytes added to anything I drink, but this water hits the spot if you want some super cold, clean, crisp water that tastes like, well, nothing. Which is sometimes exactly how water should taste.

The drums on the Okkervil River songs “Our Life is Not a Movie or Maybe” and “Unless It’s Kicks”: There’s no use in my trying to explain to you exactly what I like about the drums in these two songs, and how much I love these two songs in general. My friend Kristen (who introduced me to the band, by the way) recently explained to me how the drums for the album, “The Stage Names,” were recorded in some cool way, but we were at a wedding reception at the time and I’d had a couple of glasses of white wine and, well, I don’t remember. Anyway, you’ve just got to listen. But I can tell you this - it’s been a while since I’ve heard music that makes me feel so pumped, like I want to run a marathon, or just go rule the world.

Facebook: I know. Ridiculous, right? That I love Facebook? It’s true. I’ve had both Friendster and MySpace accounts for awhile, and sure, they’ve been fun, but I joined Facebook recently at the insistence of some of my friends and this social networking site, in my opinion, is far superior. First of all, I like the way Facebook looks - it doesn’t visually and aurally assault you like MySpace with tons of ads and music and videos all over the place. Also, even though I’ve only been a member for a few days, Facebook seems a much more useful networking tool. I don’t know exactly what I mean by that, but basically, I’m getting in touch with people that I’m actually enjoying getting back in touch with. We’ll see how I feel about it in a few months I guess, if I’m still so enamored, but for now I’m a fan.

The fall weather: We woke up today to cool temperatures after a week of highs in the nineties and blaring sunshine as though it were still mid-August. Finally, it feels like fall. I can only hope the season (my favorite) will stick around.

Yesterday was our second anniversary and although wedding anniversaries are normally a chance for a couple to ruminate on their love for one another, I think J and I are the kind of people who would really prefer to treat them as another birthday. So our day yesterday was punctuated by us saying things like, “Well, it’s my anniversary, so I’m going to eat whatever I want,” or “It’s my anniversary, I’m going to buy this even though I normally wouldn’t.”

I tried to get my parents in on the idea, too, like by telling my father Sunday night that I would really appreciate it if he would bring me coffee in bed the next morning because “it’s my anniversary.” This is something he tricks me into doing quite often. He lies in bed yelling at the top of his lungs, “Hello, hello, hello, hello, hello,” until someone, usually me, yells back, “What?” and then he says, “Come talk to me, I’m lonely,” and then when you do that, he’s sitting there with the newspaper holding out a coffee cup. At this point he states that, “If you really loved me, you’d get me some coffee,” and inconceivably, this works every time.

J and I actually have dinner reservations in DC tonight since the place we wanted to go isn’t open Mondays, so we decided to spend our day yesterday hanging out together, getting lunch at a good deli and walking around Annapolis.

Before we left, however, we had to deal with some things.

It was after I’d finished cleaning up a pile of small-ish turds I’d found on my parents’ bedroom floor, left undoubtedly by Mina, and was proceeding to get ready for the day that I noticed Cecilia, our big pit-bull mix, was acting kind of funny.

Normally a happy-go-lucky, goofball type, she had retreated under the dining room table and was not engaging in her normal tongue kisses with the Labradoodle, and I had, literally, just said aloud, “Huh, I don’t think Cecilia feels good,” when I heard a bad, sick sound and turned around to discover she’d puked all over the carpet.

I know that some of you are going to say “just wait until you have kids,” but I’ve been around lots of babies and children and I’ve also been around lots of dogs, and I’ve got to tell you - dog puke really takes the cake. And this was seriously unreal. Cecilia has a sensitive stomach anyway and since we’ve been living here she’s been heading gleefully down to the water and eating her fair share of dead fish that wash ashore, and, I mean, you get the picture. I don’t want to trigger any gag reflexes or anything, just know that this was above and beyond.

I threw her outside and started calling wildly for J, who’d headed down the driveway to check the mail or look for a bird or something, “The dog threw up! The dog threw up! Cece threw up! I can’t believe it, it’s so much,” while I grabbed an entire roll and a half of paper towels, some soda water and starting cleaning with a speed and intensity I reserve for true emergencies.

In the meantime, she puked on the porch, and I started to really lose it. It was my anniversary, damnit! My day! What was wrong with her, didn’t she know?

It took some serious time to recuperate from the incident, but J helped talk me through it, helped me forget some of the more intimate details, and we proceeded to have a great afternoon. We both admitted we hadn’t gotten each other presents and so we picked out things in stores and “bought them for one another” using our joint checking account. We stopped on our way home and got food to grill out and a bottle of French wine for dinner.

And I did get coffee in bed that morning, although not from my father despite my lying there for a while yelling “Hello,” at the top of my lungs for an extended period until someone came to my rescue, which will definitely come into play the next time he claims he wants me to come talk to him, but really wants me to be his slave.

It was instead my darling husband who brought me a mug of coffee as I rested in bed, before getting up, before the chaotic events of the day unfolded, and when he placed it on the bedside table he told me that he’d “put a secret ingredient in there, see if you can taste it.”

I couldn’t - only tasted the coffee with milk, the way I like it - and so he explained that he’d put a little chocolate syrup in there, at which point I started laughing, and he said, yeah, yeah, he knew putting a little chocolate syrup in doesn’t make it a mocha or anything, but that it was sort of a mocha.

I thought about J’s special coffee the rest of the day. It got me through spraying Resolve carpet cleaner around the dining room in a maniacal manner and I smiled about it while walking around town.

It just may have been my favorite thing about our anniversary - the kind of gesture you can only give to someone you are comfortable enough with to know they will be pleasantly surprised, and not angry, when you add chocolate syrup to their regular coffee lineup. The kind of thing you do when you want to do something nice for somebody you love to make an everyday experience a little extraordinary. It’s both hilarious and heartwarming, and it’s why cleaning up seriously ridiculous amounts of puke on your two-year anniversary is only a minor pitfall on an otherwise wonderful day.