You’re invited to a blogger bash!

I’m organizing a blogger bash with my friend and co-worker Wayne Sutton, and you’re invited. Here’s the deal. We want to meet and mingle with everyone who blogs and/or reads blogs in the Triangle.

So we’re inviting you all to a blogger bash from 7 to 9 p.m. Wednesday, July 30. The bash will be at Edge Office, an awesome showroom in the heart of Raleigh’s Glenwood South, 400 Glenwood Ave.

And it really will be a bash! Big Boss Brewing Company will be on hand to serving the delicious Angry Angel, a pale German-style Ale. There will be some tasty BBQ from The Pit, a Raleigh restaurant that is so good it was recently featured on the Today Show.

The BEST PART is that Wayne and I will have an exciting announcement that you won’t want to miss.

So, even if you can only drop by for a little bit. Please do so. I’d love to meet you. And remember, you don’t have to blog to attend.

If you know you’re coming, drop me an e-mail or post a comment so I know to expect you. But if you’re like me, and it’s hard for you to plan that far in advance, then just show up. Just be sure to flag me down and say hello if you make it.

Blogging, Big Boss and BBQ, oh my.

A tour of the Durham food blog scene

If you’re looking for some restaurants to try out, your best bet might be to explore the Durham food blog scene. Every time I catch up on these in my reader, I’m always left hungry and eager to head over to the Bull City for a meal.

On the Carpe Durham blog, you can see mouth-watering inspiring photos of the scallion pancake, beef congee and the spicy dry bean curd with shredded pork ordered off the “secret menu” at China Palace, aka Magic Palace.

On Delicious Durham, you can find out whether the famous Nana’s really lives up to its reputation. You can also find out how to put local peaches to tasty use by following Kelly’s peach crisp recipe or find out how you can blend your own peanut sauce to pour over stewed collards or as a standard satay sauce.

Over at Eat at Joe’s! you can vote on the best place to grab a burger in Durham. Or save the Google map he created highlighting the “Ethnic Grocery Trail.”

But wait, there’s more.

The Newlyfeds, a Durham couple with a passion for cooking who explore Durham’s dining scene, explain why you just have to go to Chubby’s Tacos on Ninth Street.

Another Durham couple reviews two downtown establishments, the newly-opened Five Points Cafe and Rue Cler on their blog: CookingEatingDurham.

And you must check out Lenore’s blog called Eclectic Glob of Tangential Verbosity. It’s not a straight food blog, but as an epicurean, you can always count on Lenore to post beautiful pictures and descriptions of her frequent dinners out (all these photos are courtesy of Lenore’s Flickr). Here’s a sample from her latest post on Serena Restaurant and Bar:

I ordered the gnocci, which I’d been looking forward to after examining their menu on-line about a week ago. It had applewood smoked bacon, dried cherries, loads of garlic, spinach, a thin slice of parmesan and potato gnocci pasta. It came with a piece of garlic bread. It sounds perfect, right?

Find out if the gnocci was a delicious as it sounds.

I’m sure there are several other Durham & Triangle-area food blogs, if you know of some that I’ve left out, please clue me in.

Ginny from the Blog gets a makeover

I took my blog to the stylist, resulting in the changes you see here. I’m jazzed about the new design, which is a little cleaner than my previous three-column blog. I’m still having a few things tweaked, but this is pretty much what my blog will look like for the near future.

You’ll notice the featured photo to the right, which I hope to swap out every day or so. If you click on the photo it will take you to my Flickr page, where you can see even more of my photos. Below the photo is the featured video, which will likely be a video that I’ve already included as part of a blog post, but you never know. Special thanks to Wayne Sutton and Graham Hensley for all their help.

I’m working on updating my blogroll, which somehow got lost in the shuffle. My Twitter widget doesn’t work yet either, but hopefully it’ll be fixed soon.

Other than that, I’m open to suggestions. Hope you like the new look.

I’m not going anywhere …

But my hosting is. We’re in the process of upgrading hosting of my blog, so it’s slightly possible that ginnyfromtheblog.com may go dark sometime during the next few days. If it does, don’t freak out. Don’t call my boss and say: “Dude, where’s Ginny from the Blog.” Instead, just wait patiently or access it by typing http://blogs.wncn.info/gskalski into your browser.

Thank you kindly. Most Sincerely, Ginny.

Triangle tweet-up review in incomplete sentences

More than 50 people gathered Thursday for the second Triangle Tweet-Up. If you still don’t know what Twitter is, check out this video. Then start following me. Here’s my take on the tweet-up.

Pick up @girloncamera. Take a wrong turn. Follow the paper signs to the pillow room. Thanks for hosting, Capstrat. Greet @waynesutton as he sets up. Climb the benches and position myself overlooking the room. Tweeple begin streaming in. Friendly banter with @kitch about his bicycle blog. Picture time. Wishing I understood camera settings. Blurry photos of lots of Tweeple. Log on to Twhirl. Room full of mostly white guys. Tweet about lack of diversity. @Critter teaches us about the g-spot. Debating the merits (or lacktherof) of Brightkite. It’s getting hot in here (pretend I sound like Nelly when I say here). Thirsty for a sprite. Settle for a ginger ale. Time to meet some Tweeple. There’s 50+ Tweeple in the room and I know almost 20 of them. Meet some new Tweeps including @davecrist and @lockjaw. You’re Ginny from the Blog. Why, yes, yes I am. So nice to Tweet you. Twitter Diva photo time. Thanks for the Seesmic invite. Now all I need is a Mac. Locked doors make it tricky to get in and out. Love for Twitter is affirmed.

*Tag* you’re it

I haven’t played tag since I was a kid. But I’ve been challenged to an Internet version of the game by the lovely Lenore who writes the Eclectic Glob of Tangential Verbosity.
The rules are simple:

• Post 10 random things about yourself
• Choose five people to tag and a reason you chose them and make sure to tell them
• Don’t tag the person who tagged you

OK, so this may sound like one of those MySpace bulletins we all groan at. But I think it’s a cool way for you to get to know me better, and in turn for me to get to know you better. I’ll follow the rules and tag five people, but I want any and all of you to post some random things about yourself in my comment section. Let’s all play along.

Me first.

• I actually enjoy ironing. I even iron my jeans.
• If it has raspberries in it, I’m eating it.
• I collect magnets (feel free to send me one).
• I get chills when I say the Pledge of Allegiance.
• I take my coffee with cream and two Splendas
• When I was about 6 or 7, I was bit by my friend’s doberman. I still have the scar. I hated dogs until a couple of years ago because of it.
• I like taking pictures of my feet in the random places that I go. It serves as a cool place marker when I look back through my photos.
• I love to plant flowers, but half way through the summer I usually flake out on watering them and they all die.
• The first concert I ever saw was Hootie and the Blowfish. I won tickets on the radio when I was in high school. I saw Hootie again last summer, because I had to cover the concert for the newspaper I worked for on Hilton Head Island.
• The only office I ever ran for was student council in high school and I lost.

OK. Now all I have to do is pick five people to tag, but I think I’m going to break the rules and only choose three. I pick:

• Mike from absent.canadian because he always shares fun, random details on his blog.
• Brandy from My Life on Camera Phone. She’ll probably answer in pictures instead of words.
• Ashley Sue from Green Grounded. Who knows what she’ll come up with.

And I’m not making this a one-sided game. You can all play along. So tell me something random about yourself.

How I introduced Cheerwine to a Canadian

The first time I ever heard of Cheerwine was in September 2005. I had just moved to Durham, NC, and a co-worker took me to The Q Shack for lunch. And there it was, Cheerwine mingling with the other fountain sodas. It was so foreign to me, but when I finally tried it I fell in love.

Cheerwine is a sugary, cherry-flavored soda that comes from Salisbury, NC, and in my experience is stocked only in the South.

About a week ago, I went to Cook Out (a North Carolin a-based burger joint) and saw they had Cheerwine floats on the menu. So, while waiting in line, I posted a tweet on Twitter about it (see below).

  One of my followers on Twitter (Mike of absent.canadian fame) saw the message and asked me more about it. And before I knew it, he posted his first ever video blog displaying his first ever sip of Cheerwine goodness.The best part is that Mike is Canadian and has this thick accent (I love when he says “about”). And he blogs about what it’s like to be a Canadian living in the American South.So, if you want to see a Canadian take his first taste of Cheerwine, click here.

Have you ever tried Cheerwine? What’s your review?

Ginny from the Blog debuts a one-time only video show

I’m so jazzed to be presenting you with this fun video I made today after finishing a video blogging class.

The only catch is I don’t have any of this software, so who knows if I’ll ever be able to produce anything like this again. But it was fun scouring local blogs, writing a script, playing with incredible software and getting in front of the camera. Let me know what you think:

UPDATE: Here are the links to the Websites I featured …

• Girl on Camera
• Bull City Rising
• Bull City Mutterings
• The Raleigh Connoisseur 

Nothing like a half-pound of pork to get you energized

I am ashamed to say this was my lunch today:

I was in such disbelief when the waitress delivered all this meat, that I had to take a picture. Co-worker Wayne Sutton thought this was funny, so he took a picture of me taking a picture of my pork:

So then I had to take a picture of him because I thought it was funny that he was playing with his iPhone while his pork was right in front of him:

We’re in Charlotte, and this BBQ was OK. But I’m always interested in good BBQ. Any suggestions of places I should go when I get back to the Triangle?

Ever wonder what happens when a bunch of gnomes play poker?

This is just the beginning. Blogger and co-worker Jeremy Baker spent a little too much time photographic his beloved gnomes, resulting in a pretty funny sequence of gnome photos. You can see how this scene played out on his “Gnomadic Gnome” blog.

In case you missed it and are confused about Jeremy’s love of all things gnomes … check out this video I made last month. It explains it all: