Junebug B

Homemade Gifts

2011-12-27T15:41:00.008-05:00

Now that Christmas has come and gone, I can fill you in a little bit on a project that's kept me busy since August. I've been making preserves from home-grown and farmer's market produce. I've been making cucumber refrigerator pickles since last summer when my cucumber crop went crazy, and this year I decided to step it up a little bit and move into hot water bath canning. This makes the food shelf-stable instead of having to keep it in the fridge. This is helpful since there's only so much room in my fridge and at the end of the summer about half of it was taken up with pickle jars!

So on to what I made, and gave as gifts, this year. I didn't have the forethought to photograph the process or the finished gift baskets before they were opened, but here's an idea of what my family got for Christmas this year:

Pickled Beets! This was especially for Jill. She is the resident beet lover in the family and I thought she would like this new way of having them. And they're SO pretty! This photo doesn't even do it justice. The color of the beets is just outstanding.

Another brightly-colored concoction was the Curried Cauliflower. I love curry spices with cauliflower and this just appealed to me, and again, the color is outstanding.

Both the Pickled Beets and the Curried Cauliflower recipes came from a book titled Put 'Em Up! My friend Trinity used a few recipes from there and I thought they sounded good, so I looked for the book at my public library and didn't see it. So I requested for them to purchase it for the collection and lo and behold, they bought it! Yay!

Something that I made just a few days before Christmas was this Holiday Snack Mix. It's basically just nuts and pretzels with a salty/sweet/spicy glaze, but it's SO good, and super easy to make, if you have the ingredients on hand.

I put it in these cute little jars I picked up at the Crate & Barrel Outlet with snowflakes and snowmen on them. It made for a nice presentation and even as a stand-alone gift.

Another recipe from Put 'Em Up! was the Corn Salsa. This is a perfect way to preserve end of summer tomatoes, corn and peppers. The corn was from the farmer's market, but the tomatoes and peppers were from the garden.

I've already eaten some of this that I saved for myself and I have to say, it's quite tasty! I also got a review in, the day after Christmas, from my nephew who gave it an enthusiastic thumbs up! That must mean it's good.

And some notes on the packaging: I got all of the fabric from the Crate & Barrel outlet. They sell remnants of very expensive Marimekko fabrics for 99 cents a pound! These fabrics normally sell for $35 a yard! And a pound of fabric is more than you might think.

I used colored business card paper from the Paper Source for the tags and the "Handmade By" stamp was also from them. The twine is good old baker's twine and the jars are mostly Ball jars except for the snowflake ones from Crate & Barrel, which were not suitable for canning. It was fun to decorate all of the jars, but more time consuming than I imagined! But I was happy with the end result.

I also made Pear Chutney with a lot more than just pears.

It's a chunky, tangy, savory, sweet mix that's quite appealing. This was a bit of a stretch, but I hope the people who got this as gifts find a good use for it. I would try it with just about anything and see what fits. It's a unique flavor and could add a little zip to an otherwise boring plate.

With an abundance of pears, I also made Pear Butter. I had no idea how many pears go into so little Pear Butter. I got four of these teeny jars from a whole pot full of pears. It's pretty amazing. The result is a smooth spread with a concentrated pear flavor (with some other spices included). It's really nice, but holy cow did it take longer than I thought it would. I'll have to budget some time if I decide to do this again.

The tomato crop this year was especially nice. This was a great way to use up some of the San Marzano tomatoes that I grew in my garden this year. I had made quite a bit of tomato sauce for the freezer at this point, so I decided to try something different and went with this Bruschetta in a Jar. It's kind of dangerous to can oily or dairy-based things, at least in hot water bath canning, so this requires a little work to make it great. You just have to add some olive oil and a little bit of fresh mozzarella to make it just the perfect thing to spread on little toasts or crackers. I've already gotten a thumbs-up review of this as well. I'll have to keep it on my list of things to make again next year!

My community garden had an abundance of abandoned late-summer jalapenos, so picked some and pickled them! I didn't pick a peck of peppers to pickle, but I got enough to make a few jars. They're great on nachos!

The peaches! Oh, the peaches this year were just amazing! I can't go on enough about how much I loved this year's stone-fruit crop. Every week they were in season I bought enough to have one almost every day. At the peak of the season I bought more peaches than I thought I could ever use and yet again discovered that it takes a lot of fruit to make jam. It also takes the effort of peeling all of them, which I'm still figuring out the best method to use. But the result was pretty outstanding if I do say so myself. This jar was one I gave my parents and it was opened on Christmas morning to accompany our breakfast. I love it with cottage cheese and of course it's great on toast or an english muffin. Yum!

Also, the week of Christmas, I made a couple batches of Molasses cookies. These made it into each gift basket and I also filled another of the snowman jars with them to give to my 94 year old grammy, who has a huge sweet tooth. She approved whole-heartedly and kept complimenting my cookie-making skills, which I know are far inferior to some people I know. But I'm glad she liked them. She had already taken the jar home by the time I got around to taking photos, but this was the fabric and tag that went on the jar:

Here are the elements that were included in the basket I gave my parents, all lined up in a row.

And here it is in the basket. I also got the baskets at the Crate & Barrel Outlet and to finish wrapping it up, I got a roll of clear cello and put the bow on top. I was really happy with the end result and I think everyone was happy with their Christmas gifts!

And to anyone who thinks that homemade gifts are the easy, cheap way to go, I have to heartily disagree! I put way more effort, time and energy into these gifts than I would have if I had gone out and purchased something. But the end result is totally worth it! Already looking forward to trying new things next year.

Prairie Home in NYC and the Phaal of Fame

2011-12-09T08:34:00.010-05:00

Mac and I headed into NYC for a fun-filled day on December 3rd. The main purpose for going was to attend a taping of A Prairie Home Companion, which was a late birthday/early Christmas gift for Mac. But before going to the show, we squeezed in a few hours of metropolitan fun. Our first stop was Celsius at Bryant Park. It's a restaurant that overlooks the ice skating rink and it was a great place to grab lunch. And after eating we wandered around the Christmas market for a bit. There's always something interesting going on in Bryant Park. The above photo was taken while the ice was being Zambonied, that's why no one's skating.

While walking around to the front of the library building we came across this wonderful little view of the Chrysler Building with the moon right above it. It's funny, it was one of those things where you see someone taking a photo, so you look up and then think "That is a good photo" so you lift your camera and before you know it everyone is stopped on the street taking a peek at this scene. Sometimes it's hard to look up when you're in the city, you don't want to trip or step in something, but I'm glad we got to see this little moment.

When we got to the front of the Public Library there was a cute little group of kids caroling. I really do love Christmastime in NYC. We also enjoyed the "Best Of" exhibit in the library. It was like a greatest hits show of their treasures to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the building.

We also stopped in at The Princeton Club of NYC. We happened to be walking past it and just popped in to see what it was all about. And it's all about flaunting your Princeton pedigree. Super posh, members-only, etc, etc... But it was a trip to go in and see it, especially when they gave Mac info about becoming a member. We read it on the train ride home, mostly in disbelief that such a place exists.

We also stopped at the International Center of Photography, which is conveniently right around the corner from the theatre where Prairie Home was happening. We stopped in for some art and a snack. It was a perfect little break before the show.

Then on to Prairie Home! We had very good seats and thoroughly enjoyed the show with musical guests Nellie McKay and Heather Masse. And of course, Garrison Keillor is just such a great storyteller. It was a great way to spend the afternoon and a perfect excuse to go into the city. Here's the outside of Town Hall:

And a shot I snuck in at the end of the show:

And Mac and I outside the theatre after the show:

Our second mission (or at least Mac's mission) was to go to Brick Lane Curry House to eat what is supposedly the hottest curry in NYC. Read the description below to get an idea:

Mac has been excited about trying this since he saw it featured on Man v. Food on the Travel Channel. I was more nervous about this than he was. When I asked if he was ready for this he said, "I was born ready." Here he is trying the first bite:

And here's the last bite. He polished it off in about 10 minutes. No Naan. No Water. No Rice. Just straight up hot, hot curry. I was thoroughly impressed.

And here he is, proud of his clean plate.

This is his expression after the waitstaff congratulated him:

And our server presenting him with the official "Phaal of Curry" certificate:

He's a Phaal Curry Monster!

After dinner we walked back to Penn Station via Rockefeller Center and all the craziness of seeing the big Christmas tree. It was too crowded to go inside, but we walked down the block and got a couple photos.

We also walked through Times Square just for fun. It's always an experience to see all the lights and hubbub.

After a very full day, we got back on NJ Transit and headed home. It was a great way to usher in the craziness of the holiday season and something fun to do together. For as close as we are to NYC, we don't find ourselves going there very often, but when we do get up there we always try to make the most of the (kind of expensive) train tickets and cram in as much fun as we can. I think we were successful in this, yet again.

Tiger Trot 2011

2011-11-23T10:00:00.002-05:00

This year I convinced my co-workers to join Mac and I for a 5K being held on campus. It was a pretty easy sell: the "entry fee" was a canned good, it was on a Friday afternoon and the starting line was about 100 yards from the front door of the library. We all did well, even though it was a bit of a chilly day and the route definitely had some hills on it. I ran my best 5K time yet, and all of us finished without heaving too hard. It was great to get everyone out of the building and doing something fun together.

And because we had 6 people on our team, we were awarded "Intramural Champion" t-shirts because we had the biggest departmental team at the race. So for one canned good we got two t-shirts and an afternoon to remember.

Mac ran this race as well, but he was running for Wilson College where he's a Residential Graduate Student, so he didn't count as part of our team. He finished faster than me and actually ran back to meet me for the end of the race and cheered me on to the finish line. It was fun to cross together even though he had already finished.

It was a great day and for a good cause. All of the food went to support a local food bank in time for Thanksgiving.

Pumpkin Carving 2011 - in the dark!

2011-10-31T10:33:00.004-04:00

Right as I was leaving my parent's house on Sunday afternoon, Mac called to let me know that the power was out in my apartment. That was around 3pm, and people were showing up to carve pumpkins around 5pm. So, I headed back to Princeton and sure enough, when I got to my apartment there was still no power. In fact the power stayed out through the entire party, but we still had a great time carving pumpkins, and got some wonderful results! Here's me, Mac, Kim, Nicole, Tyler and Kim after carving:

With the really long exposure that's needed for the dark conditions, I had the camera on a tripod and someone took this ghostly photo while everyone was getting ready to go:

The original plan was to have dinner at my house, but we ended up going out to get sushi instead. This was certainly a memorable way to celebrate my 12th annual pumpkin carving party!

End of October Family Birthday Fun

2011-10-31T09:35:00.001-04:00

On Sunday, after the snow, everyone came down to Mom and Dad's house to wish Dad and Dan Happy Birthdays. It was a fun excuse to get everyone in one place, which the kids especially love. We had a little cake and ice cream and sang Happy Birthday, and John played along on his saxophone:

And did a really great job!

Here are Dad and Dan blowing out their candles. Unfortunately, Mac wasn't able to make it, otherwise he would have joined them.

This year, I got Dad a headlamp. The idea came to me after they were without power during Hurricane Irene and I told them how much Mac and I liked having headlamps in a power outage and Mom thought it was a good idea. So here's Dad and I with his headlamp:

I hope it comes in handy!

It was also the day before Halloween, so I had to bring treats for the boys. Here they all are with me and their goody bags. I promise, they're all in there somewhere...

Everyone else stuck around for dinner, but I had to leave in the afternoon to get back up to Princeton to host my Pumpkin Carving Party.

October Snow!

2011-10-29T22:44:00.001-04:00

Of course, the day that we have a big family birthday gathering planned, it decides to snow! This was a freakishly early October snowstorm on Saturday the 29th. Princeton got about 5 inches of the white stuff, but the biggest problem was that many of the trees had not yet lost all of their leaves, so this heavy wet snow stuck to the leaves, weighed down the branches and snapped limbs on many trees in town. In the photo above you can already see that there isn't too much snow, but limbs from the huge pear trees on Witherspoon had already snapped.

And a little tree outside my apartment building didn't fair so well either:

In order to save the trees in the courtyard of my building, Mac and I went out and shook the snow off the branches a couple times and watched them spring back up once the weight of the snow was off of them. Here's another view of Spring St. with some of the damaged trees:

Thankfully the next day was much nicer and most of the snow on the roads had melted. We were able to reschedule the family birthday fun AND I got to squeeze in my pumpkin carving, too.

Mac's Birthday weekend

2011-10-24T10:24:00.001-04:00

Mac's birthday is October 25th, but this year he had to be at a conference that day, so we celebrated the weekend before. It was another beautiful fall weekend in NJ, so we took advantage and did some outdoor things along with some fun indoor things, too.

One of the highlights of the weekend was going to the Howell Living History Farm during their "pick your own popcorn" event. On our way out to the popcorn field, we came across this lovely scene of one of the farmers using a team of horses to plow a field.

Once we got to the field with the popcorn, we were pretty much given free rein to go through and pick any ears that we thought looked good. Mac and I found a good trove in the middle of the field. Mac didn't seem to have any problem getting his ears off the plant:

I, on the other hand had a little more of a struggle. Here's me posing for a photo:

Here's me after having to yank so hard on the ear that my sunglasses fell off:

Here's me laughing about the whole scene:

And here I am, finally victorious with my sunglasses in the right place and a big ear of popcorn!

We also got to see a demonstration of how to pop popcorn over an open fire (you need a popper to put it in), and learned about how popcorn is a specific type of corn that can't be eaten like a sweet corn because the hulls on each kernel are so hard. They said even the deer don't like to eat the popcorn growing in the field. But it's this extra hard hull that traps the steam inside and makes popcorn pop. On the flipside, you can't just dry out any ear of corn and try to pop it. It will basically just steam and never actually pop. We also walked around the rest of the farm and picked up a nice big pumpkin before we left.

On Saturday night we went to a student production of MacBeth on campus and Sunday morning we saved what we could of this half-moldy pumpkin:

It was a pumpkin that Mac had brought back from Maryland at the beginning of October and a teeny little spot on the back blossomed into quite a large moldy area, so we did a little surgery and cut off the entire back half of the pumpkin to end up with this guy:

It was quite a project, but I'm glad we saved what we could. Mac really wanted to dry it out in the oven to make it more of a shriveled pumpkin mask, so he took it from there. You can see the results of his efforts in the photos from the Pumpkin Carving Party.

Also on Sunday we went to a curator-led tour of an exhibit of Hogarth prints that's up at Firestone Library and after that we had a wonderful dinner at a local Indian restaurant. It turned out to be a wonderful, cultural, indoor, outdoor adventure of a weekend. I'm bummed I couldn't celebrate Mac's birthday with him on his actual birthday, but I think we did a pretty good job of making him feel special before he left for his conference.

Fall Camping in the Pine Barrens

2011-10-17T10:23:00.001-04:00

Last Friday Mac and I packed up the car with firewood and camping gear and headed to Brendan T. Byrne State Forest in the Pine Barrens for an overnight camping trip with Mac's friends Jen and Rich. It was kind of a dreary day, and we hit some sprinkles on the way out of town, but by the time we got to our campsite it had stopped raining and because the ground there is so sandy, it was relatively dry at our site. We got there before Rich and Jen and set up our tent and got the campfire going before they had even arrived. It was a beautiful starry night and so enjoyable to sit around the campfire. Jen and Rich made a great gumbo for dinner, some with veggie sausage for me and then we had s'mores around the campfire. It was a lovely evening.

In the morning we made breakfast at our site, enjoyed another campfire, and then packed up our stuff and headed to one of the parking lots where we could pick up a trail and do some hiking. We took about a 6 mile hike, the first half was on an ADA accessible trail, which meant wide, clear paths. The second half was on part of a much longer and much more rustic trail that lead us a little deeper into the woods and felt a little more like hiking. It was a beautiful day to be out and about. After our hike we ended up having a picnic lunch by the lake in the photo above. It was a quick overnight trip, but lots of fun to catch up with Rich and Jen and a great excuse to get some fresh air. Looking forward to doing it again sometime soon.

Wildflower Walk at Bowman's Hill

2011-10-12T10:17:00.002-04:00

On Tuesday, Oct. 11th, my friend Karen and I played hookey for the afternoon to get a guided tour of the Bowman's Hill Wildflower Preserve. It was a bit of an overcast day, but it was still fun to be out and about in a beautiful natural setting.

While it's not exactly prime blooming time for most wildflowers, we did get to see some pretty things along the way. And these asters were happily in bloom for us:

Karen, with her eagle eyes, also spotted this little snail on a twig, which was cool:

And who knew that these prickly pear cacti are actually native to NJ?

Here are the two other women on the walk and our docent walking ahead of us. It's really a beautiful place and I look forward to going back in the spring when more flowers are in bloom.

Wheaton Arts Craft Fair

2011-10-02T10:12:00.002-04:00

On Saturday, Oct. 1, my mom, sister-in-law Mo and her mom all went down to Wheaton Village to see their annual juried craft fair and glass pumpkin patch. Wheaton Village has been a glass-blowing capital for centuries and most recently houses a restored historical village, a glass museum, folklife center and artist studios. Every fall they have a craft fair and the highlight is their glass pumpkin patch. Hundreds of pumpkins are on display and for sale in all shapes and sizes and colors. It was really fun to see.

It was also cool to see the glass blowing demo from the father/son team:

The dad has been doing it for decades and is now apprenticing his son to take over at some point. It's an impressing skill, that's for sure.

It was a beautiful day to be out and about and enjoy the sunshine, some beautiful crafts and good company.

Road Trip, Part 4: Heading Home

2011-09-29T09:52:00.001-04:00

Mac and I drove out of Chicago early on Saturday morning, Sept. 24th. We had two days of driving ahead of us before we made it back to Princeton, but we still had folks to see along the way. Our first stop was in Lansing, MI to see Mac's friends Joanna and Mark and their baby Edward. We stopped by their house in Lansing first and then we followed them over to East Lansing to get lunch at this great Thai place. Along the way we saw M.A.C Ave. and when we asked Mark and Joanna about it, they said that Michigan State used to be Michigan Agricultural College and that the name of the road never changed. We also realized once we got into East Lansing that there was a home football game for Michigan State, so we got to see a lot of tailgaters and Michigan State pride since they had already won the game. There were lots of people in town, but we still got a seat at the restaurant and enjoyed catching up. After lunch we took a little stroll around campus and got to see some of the sights. After spending a few hours there, Mac and I got back in the car and headed toward Cleveland to stay with his Aunt Chris and Uncle Nick who live just East of the city.

We got in after dinner time, but still enjoyed some amazing baklava that Mac's aunt had made. It was fun to get to know some more of Mac's family. After a long day of driving we went to bed fairly early and then the next morning we were treated to an amazing breakfast spread. Aunt Chris sure knows how to cook! Then we spent some time talking about gardens and getting a tour of their thriving backyard vegetable and herb garden before packing up and getting back on the road.

We drove a little south and picked up I-80 all the way across Pennsylvania. It was a trip neither Mac nor I had been on before, so it was a little bit of an adventure, and we got to see the start of some fall color in the mountains:

We also drove past an amusing exit in the middle of nowhere PA for a town called Jersey Shore:

The rest of the trip involved a detour through Jim Thorpe, PA and then a fairly direct path home. We were both pretty exhausted from over a week on the road, but it was all worth it for such a fun trip! Now the only question is where will we go on our next trip?

Road Trip, Part 3: Chicago, Part 2

2011-09-28T16:38:00.002-04:00

On Friday, Mac and I took the Green Line to the Garfield Park Conservatory. It was a bit of a cloudy day, but it only sprinkled on us a little bit while we were walking to the train. The Garfield Park Conservatory is one of my favorite places in Chicago (there are so many favorites!) and I was sad to hear that earlier in the summer they had suffered considerable damage due to a hail storm. Parts of the glass houses were still open, but many areas were closed with ongoing repairs. It was a little sad that Mac couldn't see all that the conservatory has to offer, but I was glad to go and show my support while they're still recovering. And the parts that were open were still beautiful as always! I just love this little pineapple:

All of the outside parts of the Conservatory were open as well, including the labyrinth, which is one of my favorites to walk, and the beautiful lily pond:

We enjoyed walking around the meadow and chasing grasshoppers off of the path and following this beautiful butterfly:

You see some of the damaged windows in the background here. All of the darker spots are holes in the glass roofs of the nursery greenhouses:

Here is one part of the conservatory where all of the glass has been removed and it's now ready for replacement glass.

After the Conservatory we headed downtown for a quick trip to Millennium Park. And when you're there you have to take a few photos at the Bean (officially titled Cloudgate by Anish Kapoor):

Mac wanted to make sure his moustache was looking good:

That's one happy handlebar moustache!

Can you find us here?

We enjoyed a nice stroll through the rest of the park and then headed back up to Mike's apartment to pick up the car, and Mike, and head up to Andersonville for the rest of the day. We took Lake Shore Drive straight up and got off at the Foster exit. Instead of going left and heading into Andersonville, we stopped at the Foster St. Beach since Mac had yet to get a good look at Lake Michigan. It was a beautiful greenish-blue color and a just a lovely day to be by the lake:

Another moustache fix:

And a cute shot of Mac and I with the skyline behind us.

And these two good lookin' fellas:

And beautiful Chicago:

After finding a parking spot on Balmoral in front of my old apartment, we walked down to Huey's Hot Dogs. It just happen to be Hot Dog Happy Hour, so we all got a dog, fries and drinks for $5 each. And these are some real Chicago hot dogs: charred (not steamed), mustard, pickle spear, huge tomato slices, celery salt, onions and hot peppers on a poppy seed bun. True Chicago-style goodness:

I cheated a little bit and got mine as a veggie dog with no onions or hot peppers, but holy cow it was good. Even just looking at this photo again makes me want to go back and get one! I think Huey's should open a second store in Princeton!

After hot dog eating, we wandered around Andersonville poking around different shops, seeing what's new (a lot!) and what's still there from the good old days. Lots of my old favorites still exist: Kopi Cafe, Middle East Bakery, the Persian grocery, Andie's, Women and Children First, and CAS hardware, among others. I spent some time (and money) at Women and Children First while Mike and Mac got some caffeine at Kopi. I met up with them for an awesome Mango Jet Tea and was surprised when the server asked me if I wanted vodka in it! One new addition is that Kopi got a liquor license! I opted out of the vodka option, but we always said it would be so great if we could get beers at Kopi and now you can!

We also stopped at Middle East Bakery to pick up some snacks (I love those little savory pies!) for the drive on Saturday and some other treats, too. We then headed to Hopleaf and actually found a table on a Friday evening (miracle of miracles) and enjoyed a few pints before heading to the Neo-Futurarium to see Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind, another old favorite. Here are Mac and I after the show:

It was such a wonderful way to top off our trip to Chicago. I was so happy to be able to show Mac my old neighborhood and revisit so many of the wonderful places that were a part of my everyday life from 2000-2006. Can't wait to go back!!

Road Trip, Part 2: Chicago, Part 1

2011-09-27T15:55:00.002-04:00

On Monday evening we rolled into Chicago and before stopping at Mike's apartment I took Mac on a quick tour downtown and then came back up Lake Street to Mike's place on Canal. He greeted us with open arms and we unloaded our stuff into his apartment. What a view!! We got there just as the sun was setting and it was just awesome! Here are Mac and I on Mike's balcony after our long drive:

After putting our stuff down we all went to dinner at one of my favorite places in the city: Bite Cafe. The food was amazing, even better than I remembered it! Mike and Mac were also blown away and the most memorable part was that Mike ordered a lamb shank it came out like a caveman cut of meat, still on the bone with a ready-made handle. He didn't even use a knife and fork. Mmmm.... SO good!

When we got back to Mike's apartment this was the panoramic view from his balcony (click the image to make it larger). I just couldn't get enough of how awesome this view was. And totally different from living on the north side in Andersonville.

We didn't stay up too late since Mike and Mac had to leave fairly early for their conference on Tuesday morning. They woke up before I did, but I was out of bed by the time they were getting ready to go. Here's Mike on his balcony with his "Good Morning, Chicago" face:

And Mac was actually smiling in the early morning, which rarely happens, so I had to get a photo:

The went off to their conference at Argonne and I got to have a lazy morning enjoying the view:

My day started when I met my dear friend, Nisara and her husband Ryan for lunch. Nisara and I went to both high school and college together and then both lived in Chicago for a bit as well. It was great to see them, but especially fun to see Nisara since she's pregnant! We all went to lunch at one of Rick Bayless's restaurants called Xoco and it was amazing! Ryan had to head back to work, but Nisara and I enjoyed catching up over some wonderful churros after a delicious lunch.

Then we took the train north a few stops and got off near DePaul and walked down toward the Lincoln Park Zoo to hang out in the Lily Pond that's there. It was a beautiful afternoon and just a great chance to hang out with someone I rarely get to see. Here's a couple fun shots of a very pregnant Nisara:

After saying goodbye to Nisara, I went back to Mike's apartment and packed my overnight bag since I would be staying that night with Matthew on the North Side. I drove up to his apartment and got to hang out with him for a bit and then we met up with Mac for dinner at Fountainhead in Lincoln Square. It was a tasty meal and a good chance for Mac and Matthew to get to know each other better. Matthew gave me a key to his place and headed home to continue packing since he's moving shortly.

Mac and I headed over to the Grafton Pub next to the Old Town School to enjoy an evening of folk music and catching up with folks. Unfortunately, not as many folks as I was hoping were able to meet up there, but I did have a chance to catch up with Sarah, now an awesome 20-something who used to be in the Girl Scout troop that I helped with when I lived in the city. It's amazing how these kids grow up! It was great to see her and eventually Mike made it all the way up there to hang out for a bit and drive Mac home since I was heading back to Matthew's place for the night.

On Wednesday I headed up to Evanston for the day. In the morning I met up with a colleague who works at Northwestern and enjoyed a library tour and some good professional catching up. We also took a lovely walk along the shoreline and got one of my favorite views of Chicago from up there. It was a lovely morning.

For lunch I met up with a photographer friend, Katie, who I hadn't seen for years! (And we did't take any photos while we were hanging out!) It was great to get the scoop on some local photographers and see photos of her kids from the last 4 or 5 years. We did a little shopping and then ate lunch at Cozy Noodles, again one of my favorite places to eat! I got my favorite Rama Special, which I literally dream about sometimes, but no one does it like Cozy. Mmm...

(As an aside here: I tell people when I think about Chicago the first thing I think about is all of the awesome people I know there and the second thing is the food. There is so much good, affordable, delicious, unique, wonderful food in Chicago! I'm so happy I got to go back to some of my old favorites and try some new places, too.)

After having lunch with Katie, I met up with another old friend, Mariko and one of her friends in downtown Evanston. It happened to be Mariko's birthday, so we enjoyed a sweet treat and a lovely walk around town. It was a particularly nice day and great to be out and about. She had to get along to previously planned birthday events and I had to head back down to Chicago to meet up with Matthew.

Once we reconnected, Matthew and I headed down to Hyde Park to pick up our good friend Suz from work and head to dinner at Medici in Hyde Park. We got to sit outside on their patio (have I mentioned it was a beautiful day?) and thoroughly enjoyed our meal and catching up. Here's a quick photo of us after dinner:

After dinner, Matthew dropped me back off at Mike's apartment and I caught up with Mike and Mac who were just getting back from their conference for the day. They hadn't eaten dinner yet, so I joined them on a lovely walk through Mike's neighborhood, the West Loop and we found a great Indian restaurant that was nearly empty and had a wonderful music selection. We thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. Mike and Mac had one more day of conferencing to attend to on Thursday, so we pretty much headed to bed fairly early.

Thursday was another early morning for the guys and also one for me. I met up with Amanda and her twin girls for brunch at the Bongo Room in the South Loop. They are regulars there and when I got there first and told the hostess that I was meeting up with my friend and her twin girls she knew exactly who I was talking about and set me up at their favorite table! The last time I had seen the girls, they were only teeny babies when Amanda and I both happen to be living in Cambridge, MA.

Well, now they're 3 years old and have wonderful little personalities of their own! We walked from brunch to the Shedd Aquarium and got in for free since Amanda had thought ahead and gotten the pass from the library. It was quite a fun visit! Here's one of the crazier images of the day: a cricket on a frog on a frog:

Here are the girls watching the big fish go by:

Here's a shot of me outside the Aquarium with the beautiful skyline behind me:

And here's a cute shot of Amanda and the girls after our Aquarium visit:

And those cute, smiley girls!

After the aquarium, we walked back to their apartment and had a fun time playing and reading stories and attempting to put them down for a nap, which worked for a little bit and gave Amanda and I a chance to catch up, but the girls were not in a napping mood and were soon up singing songs and showing us dances. It was so fun to get to see them. And they have a great view, too! Here's a shot of Grant Park and Navy Pier from their apartment! Wow!

After spending the morning and early afternoon with Amanda, I headed back up to Mike's apartment and met up with Mike and Mac. After Mike serenaded all of Chicago from his balcony, (again - the view!):

we headed out to another great place, The Handlebar, for dinner with my friend Nick. I introduced Mike and Nick because they were both recent PhDs, Mike from Princeton, Nick from MIT and both ended up moving to Chicago. They've hit it off nicely and seem to enjoy each other's quirky personalities. It was a really fun dinner and afterwards we took a nice stroll through Wicker Park and ended up stuffing ourselves into this British phone booth:

and then getting a sweet treat and some coffee at Wormhole. This coffeeshop is super 80s-themed and even has a Delorean in the front window (a la Back to the Future). It was quite fun. So after hanging out there for a bit we said Good Night to Nick and headed back to Mike's place for another early bedtime.

Even though Mac and Mike had to go to their conference Tuesday through Thursday, it was a great chance for me to catch up with tons of folks I hadn't seen in way too long! It was so fun to be in one of my favorite cities again, but what I was really looking forward to was getting to show Mac some of the city and my old neighborhood. That's was Friday was for!

Road Trip, Part 1: NJ, PA, OH, IN

2011-09-26T15:36:00.000-04:00

Mac and I left for a week-long road trip adventure to Chicago after work on Friday, Sept. 16th. That first night we drove to my Grammy's house in Jeannette, PA and I got to show Mac a place full of many happy memories for me and my family. On Saturday morning I went to Enrico's Bakery, where my dad worked when he was in high school, and got some tasty treats for the road. We also stopped at the restaurant where the Eat'n'Park used to be and had a great Southern brunch complete with grits and even mac and cheese. It was a good quick visit to Jeannette and since it was the beginning of football season, Mac got to really understand what being in Steelers Country means! There was Black and Gold proudly displayed everywhere we went!

After leaving Jeannette we headed toward Mac's grandparents in Sardinia, OH. We took some back roads and ended up stopping at The Wilds. The original plan was to find a place that did ziplining, but it seemed that any options we had in that area were either booked for the day or closed at 4pm, so we missed our chance. Even though we didn't pay to get into anything at The Wilds, we did go to the snack bar and had a good afternoon snack and some local beer while sitting out on the open patio watching wild animals roam around and people zipline through the park. It was a perfect break for a long day of driving. The snack bar also randomly had these huge locally grown watermelons for sale, so we picked up two of those as well.

We finally made it to Sardinia and Mac's grandparents' place later that evening and even though we had told his Grandma that we were stopping to get dinner along the way she had a full meal prepared for us! We ate some more and had some dessert and had a nice evening sitting in the living room and chatting. I was exhausted and ended up going to be kind of early, but Mac enjoyed having the chance to catch up with his Grandma and Grandpa.

In the morning we had a big breakfast with eggs and toast and cantaloupe and then moved on to the activities of the day. First, Mac's Grandpa wanted Mac to look at an old rifle that he had and make sure it was working. So after cleaning up, the best way to make sure it's working is to actually use it. So Mac fired the first shells and then passed it over to me. I had never even been that close to a gun before, let alone actually fired one! But I have to say, it was kind of a thrill to hit a milk jug full of water and watch it explode! Here I am with Mac's Grandpa:

We were shooting milk jugs off of the old chicken coop in the yard:

And off of milk crates. It's amazing what you can do when you own acres of land in the middle of nowhere Ohio and don't have any neighbors close by!

After target practice, Mac and Grandpa and I got in the car and did a grand driving tour of the surrounding area. We drove past a bunch of land that Grandpa owns and he told stories the whole way about different things that happened in different places throughout the area.

The most exciting stop was at the Serpent Mound. It's a serpent effigy believed to be built over 1,000 years ago by Native Americans. It was really fascinating to see. They have an observation tower that's about 2 stories high that you can look at it from above:

The day we were there, there were some scientists doing some sort of research to learn more about what is contained in the mounds. While Mac and I stopped to talk to the researchers, Grandpa decided to chat with these cowboys:

Every curve in the serpent is aligned with a sunset or sunrise on an equinox or solstice:

We enjoyed walking around the park and talking with the folks in the gift shop, too. It's quite a fascinating place and apparently draws quite a crowd for solstice celebrations. That would be quite a sight to see!

We came back from our drive and did a little bit more target practice with paper targets that we picked up along the way and then enjoyed a nice dinner together. After dinner Mac and I walked around the property to look at some of the old buildings and just enjoy the evening. Here are some photos of the old barn:

The former garden, now weed patch, next to the old farm house:

After dinner we went to the local grocery store and picked up a few snacks for the road, including a huge local cantaloupe. We did a little more visiting and then headed to bed. We left after breakfast on Monday morning and drove through Indiana to get to Chicago. We stopped in Indianapolis for lunch at the Eiteljorg Museum of American Indians and Western Art. One of the main draws for me was an Art-o-Mat Machine!

They also had an interesting, if broad, collection and a great cafe where we enjoyed our lunch while watching it rain outside. From there, we drove through the rest of Indiana, including this HUGE windfarm that went on for miles and miles in both directions:

After a long day of driving we finally made it to Chicago on Monday evening! Man, I love Chicago...

Hurricane Irene

2011-09-02T08:48:00.003-04:00

Mac and I and some friends had planned on going canoe camping the weekend of August 27-28, but Mother Nature had other plans. She decided to hand us Hurricane Irene instead of a beautiful weekend for camping. Surprisingly, it ended up feeling a little like camping when the power went out at my apartment on Saturday night and Mac and I resorted to wearing head lamps to do our crossword.

The weather was very dreary and windy on Saturday morning, and it started raining in the afternoon. Around 6pm Mac and I went out for a stroll around downtown Princeton just to see how things were going. Most of the stores were closed, but one very nice Italian restaurant was open, so we ended up having a wonderful dinner in a schmancy place while wearing comfy clothes and crocs. Having a hurricane approaching = anything goes!

We made it back to my place before it got really bad, but the power ended up going out rather quickly, then coming back on for about an hour, then going out again and not coming back for two days. This was the view outside my apartment on Saturday night. One emergency light was on in Princeton:

The storm rolled through overnight from Saturday into Sunday and it was still raining on Sunday morning, but by the afternoon the sun had actually come out. Mac and I decided to go check on his kayak, which we had moved to higher ground on Friday evening, and it's a good thing we did! The place were he usually keeps it was completely under water. But this beaver seemed to be enjoying his expanded territory:

This is the chimney were we usually have our bonfires. And that horizontal line in front of it is the top of a picnic table. And this a dozen yards or more away from where the lake usually is. The water was at record levels.

Since we had to move Mac's car, we decided to do a little tour around town to see what else was going on. Here are some rowers looking at the flooded boathouse off of Washington Rd:

And of course, a huge rainbow appeared that afternoon.

We also drove down to Alexander Rd, which was completely flooded out. Here is a little video showing the water rushing under the bridge. Mac and I have canoed under this bridge before. You can tell that at one point the water was rushing over the bridge as well.

And here's a still image of a big log/tree up against the bridge. There was a lot of debris in the water and it was moving really fast. Needless to say, we're glad we decided not to go camping.

And because of all of the local road closures, the University decided to close on Monday and had a delayed opening on Tuesday! It turned into quite a fun and productive weekend. Mac and I cleaned both of our apartments, finished a crossword or two, met up with some local friends, and generally enjoyed a surprise three day weekend.

Cape May 2011

2011-08-14T08:34:00.000-04:00

The day after getting back from Christa and Kyle's wedding, Mac and I headed down the shore to Cape May to catch up with my family. They had been there since Saturday, but we arrived on Monday. We took two cars because Mac could only stay for one night.

The week was filled with all of our usual activities: all the ladies going out for tea, spending lots of time at the beach, reading, playing board games, etc... Here's everyone's beach shoes lined up on the picnic table out back:

And the boys always come up with something new to keep themselves entertained. This year Nathaniel figured out how to make a ninja mask out of a long sleeved shirt. He and Sebastian came ninja-ing down the stairs looking like this one morning:

And all the gals went out to get our spa pedicures! The best way to spend a dreary morning at the beach. Ahhh:

We did a lot of walking along the mall and generally enjoying each other's company. Aunt Angie has been able to make it down the past couple summers and it was a treat to have her with us again. Here she is with my mom (her sister - can't you tell?):

And yes, all the boys now thoroughly enjoy spending time in the sand, in the water and at the ocean. We went out early one morning to do our family photo and they really liked conquering this lifeguard stand. They're all getting so big!!

And here we are - the big happy family. Special thanks to Aunt Angie for taking this photo! She took tons of them with all different cameras and this one was the best, and one of the first taken:

On our last morning at the beach, I headed out to watch the sunrise and caught these scenes:

As always, it was a lovely time at the beach. It's something that I look forward to every year. We already have the same house booked for next year...

Christa and Kyle get Married!!

2011-08-01T15:59:00.002-04:00

The last weekend in July was one of my favorite of the whole summer! My dear friend Christa got married to her best friend Kyle on a beautiful farm in Western Massachusetts. Mac and I arrived on Friday afternoon and got to work helping out with the wedding prep. We arranged flowers, set up tables and chairs, and did pretty much anything that needed to be done to make their day perfect. We also got to hang out with some amazing folks including the bride and groom and college friends Jerri and Mark and their daughter Zoe. It was a bit of a humid, dreary afternoon, but we made the best of it and ended the evening knowing that Saturday was going to be a beautiful day. Mark, Jerri, Zoe, Mac and I all headed into Northampton to get dinner, but Jerri ended up taking Zoe "home" to put her to bed, so Mark, Mac and I enjoyed our dinner at Haymarket, got some take-out for Jer and then picked up some beer for the wedding.

We all ended up staying at a co-op community were Christa's friends Steve and Lena live. Mark, Jerri and Zoe stayed in their house and Mac and I stayed in the spare bedroom in the community house. It all worked out for the best and we were even able to store the beer in the community house fridge.

Saturday morning we all went out for breakfast at a little coffeeshop in Amherst and then headed over to the farm to finish prepping. Mac helped out getting things set up and I took some pre-wedding photos of Christa and Kyle and their families. In the photo at the top of this post you can see Christa and Kyle and the beautiful barn where they held the reception. As you can see, it turned out to be a beautiful day!

The first thing that Christa and Kyle did for their guests was serve them homemade pie. It was their way of saying Thank You to everyone for coming and supporting them.

Here you can see the adorable aprons that someone made for them, and all the delicious pies:

Once everyone had a chance to eat some pie we all made our way to the wedding ceremony site, which was just a short walk down the farm on a beautiful hillside. The ceremony was very unique and included a Ring Warming. The rings were passed around to all of the guests and they were asked to hold them and give them their blessings and warm wishes. The rings were held in the wings of this adorable hand-made bird:

Christa and Kyle sat together during the ceremony, facing the guests:

Guests were also asked to share their thoughts and well-wishes with the couple in a way that was similar to a Quaker sharing. Whenever you felt moved to speak you just said what you had to say, or in Jerri's case, sang what you wanted to sing:

Mark also chose to share:

Then Christa and Kyle exchanged vows that they had written themselves, put on their gorgeous rings and were MARRIED! It was a beautiful ceremony on an absolutely perfect summer day.

After the ceremony we got the Syracuse crew together for a quick photo. Mark, Mark, Jerri, Christa and I were all RAs in Shaw Hall:

Mac took a nice shot of me with Christa and Kyle:

And Kyle returned the favor by taking a nice shot of Mac and I up at the ceremony site:

Once most of the guests had left the site I got to do a few more photos of just Christa and Kyle at the ceremony site.

On the way to the archery field, Mac stopped to show Zoe how seeds come from sunflowers.

And then we all got to shoot a few bows and arrows! Kyle and Christa teach archery at the farm, so they decided to have it available for the guests between the ceremony and the reception.

It was so fun!

After archery, we all headed back to the barn to watch a fun skit that their families had put together about Christa and Kyle. Then we were all treated to some live bluegrass music and a home-cooked meal. It was great to catch up with friends and do some dancing during the reception.

Once it got dark, we all wandered over to the bonfire site and watched a fire dancing performance which was really cool, then sat around the campfire and made smores and told stories. It was the perfect end to an awesome day.

On Sunday we all met up back at the farm to help clean up and eat some of the left-over food. Once the clean-ups were done, a bunch of us headed to Puffer's Pond in Amherst to take a dip in the water and enjoy one last hurrah with good friends. We spent about an hour at the pond and then went into town to get some ice cream.

It was the perfect end to a really lovely weekend.

Then Mac and I got in the car and drove all the way back to Princeton so that we could do a load of laundry, re-pack and head to Cape May on Monday morning to hang out with my family.

Mystic before the Wedding

2011-07-31T15:58:00.003-04:00

Mac and I took our time getting up to Christa and Kyle's wedding in Western Mass. The wedding was on Saturday, but we left on Thursday to see some sights on our way. Our first stop was to see some of my colleagues and friends at Yale in New Haven, CT. We got a tour of the Haas Arts Library (no relation to Mac) and an insider's view of the Beinecke Rare Book Library and where they digitize materials. We had lunch at the food trucks in New Haven and then headed on our way. It was the perfect way to break up our drive.

Mac's extended family was vacationing in New London, CT, so we stopped to see them on Thursday for dinner and enjoyed a beautiful evening. It was great to get to meet more of Mac's family. After dinner and lots of catching up, we drove to a B&B in Mystic to spend the night. The highlight was the hot tub! We sat in there and watched shooting stars and satellites go by above our heads. It was great!

This was our view from outside the B&B. It was in the more "industrial" part of Mystic, right down by the water:

After checking out from the B&B, we drove to Stonington, CT, which is only a few miles from Mystic to have breakfast at a great little place called Noah's. It was recommended to us by my friend at Yale and it didn't disappoint. After breakfast we walked all over Stonington (it's not that big) and then drove back to Mystic to check out Mystic Pizza. Mac had to deliver on a bet that was made long ago and actually mailed a slice of Mystic Pizza to a friend in California. It was pretty hilarious. The pizza itself was HORRIBLE!

After mailing the pizza slice, we took a little bit of time to walk around downtown Mystic and see the sights. This is the view of the drawbridge:

And this is Mystic Seaport.

We didn't have time to actually go to the museum or the village because we had to get up to Western Mass to help Christa and Kyle out with setting up for the wedding. It was a bit of a dreary day on Friday, but you'll see from the photos of the wedding that Saturday turned out to be beautiful!

Grammy Gramps Camp makes Pickles!

2011-07-12T15:46:00.003-04:00

The week after I was in Boston for the weekend my parents held their annual Grammy Gramps Camp. In the past, this week has been just for John and Nathaniel, my two oldest nephews. This year, Sebastian got to join the fun. My parents brought all the boys up for a fun evening in Princeton. The first thing we did was make pickles at my apartment. Sebastian declared from the beginning that he was not a pickle fan, so he chose to just watch, but John and Nathaniel were pretty excited to make their own.

Mom helped out so that we could each watch while one of the boys was using the knife to cut pickles. She even made a jar or two for herself! Here are John and Nathaniel with their packed pickle jars before the brine went in:

And here they are again. They were quite proud of their pickle-making prowess.

After making pickles, we went to have breakfast for dinner at a little diner on Nassau Street and all the boys ordered French toast! They were so excited when the hostess asked if they wanted powdered sugar. So after getting them all sugared up, we took a little walk around campus since it was a beautiful evening.

One stop was to see the Tigers outside of Nassau Hall. We got lots of fun photos with them:

Earlier in the week, they all had gone to the Constitution Center in Philly and Sebastian got an Abraham Lincoln hat while he was there. He really did wear it the entire time we were hanging out in Princeton.

Here you can see Mom and Dad in the middle and the boys still hanging out on the Tigers.

It was so fun to get to see them all while they were doing Grammy Gramps camp! I can't wait until next year!

Boston for the Weekend!

2011-07-10T14:49:00.006-04:00

Mac had a conference at MIT starting on Sunday, July 10th, so we went up for the weekend before and I got to show him some of my old haunts from my grad school days. We drove up early Saturday morning and stopped at Mark and Christi's place to pick up keys since they were so graciously letting us stay there while they were both out of town. Then we parked the car in Cambridge and walked around Harvard and then had lunch at Veggie Planet! Not only do I enjoy the all-vegetarian menu at Veggie Planet, but I used to volunteer at Club Passim, so it was good to be back in the space and see how things have changed. And the food was delicious!

While in Cambridge, we also stopped by Harvard Bookstore and lo and behold my dad's books were on the shelf! He's written two young adult chapter books for my nephews and both of them were on the shelf of books that have been printed on the store's on-demand book printing machine, Paige M. Gutenborg. It was cool to see them in the store (they're the thinner cream and green colored books in the middle of the photo).

We met up with Mac's friend Mike and Mike's friend while we were in Cambridge and all headed over to Ann and Lee's house in Somerville. We got to meet Ann and Lee's new dog, Violet (so cute) and our friend Allison met up with us there, too. We all had a beer in their back yard and then walked to a great Peruvian Restaurant where we met up with even more folks (Mike's brother and his friends) and had a huge table with about a dozen people. It was a good time.

After dinner some of us went candlepin bowling and met up with my friend Matt. Phew - it was whirlwind of a day, but I got to catch up with lots of folks and introduce Mac to some of my best grad school friends.

After bowling Mac and I drove Allison home and stayed the night at Mark and Christi's super-adorable apartment in Roslindale. We had a lazy morning on Sunday and got brunch at a little diner that Mark recommended and then packed up our stuff and headed back into Boston.

We parked under Boston Common and strolled through the Common and the Public Garden for a bit before meeting up with Mike again. Here's a shot of Mac and I enjoying a lovely day with Swan Boats in the background:

After we met up with Mike, we walked through the garden past the famous "Make Way for Ducklings" statues. This was too much of a photo opp to pass up. Mac and Mike weren't the only kids on the ducklings, they were just the biggest:

Mike likes Mama Duck:

Mac showing off his Texas roots and riding her rodeo-style:

We also took some time to sit in the shade and listen to this great jazz duo playing in the park:

But our favorite musician, by far, was the one man band. In the photo below, you can see Mike playing some instruments and me hula hooping on the right side:

Before the song was over, Mac handed me the camera and did some hula hooping of his own:

Here's Mike and Mac feeling victorious after the song was over. It was quite a sight to see.

And here's a little video of the one man band in action:

After the one man band, we walked all the way down Newbury St. to The Other Side Cafe and had a tasty lunch and some local brews. We walked back to the car and then it was time for me to drop those two off for their conference and then drive back to NJ on my own. It was a great whirlwind tour of the city.

From Arugula to Zinnias: Garden Update Early July 2011

2011-07-07T09:26:00.007-04:00

So despite the presence of some yellow tomato leaves, the garden is doing well. In fact, I have more cucumbers than I know what to with, but will probably post something about that soon. In the above photo you can see most of what I'm growing in about half of my garden. Our plots are a little bigger this year, 10'x12' instead of last year's 10'x10', so I had a little more room for experimenting with things I haven't grown before, like okra, brussels sprouts and zinnias.

Here's the rundown, with photos, from Arugula to Zinnias:

Above you can see that I've let the arugula go to flower or "bolt". I read recently that salad mixes with arugula flowers are selling for big bucks at farmer's markets in NYC, so I might go ahead and try to eat some of those flowers. Otherwise, I'm going to attempt some seed saving and try a second crop of arugula later in the season. They may also go ahead and reseed themselves. We'll have to wait and see.

Here's some teeny little bell peppers. I forget if these are the yellow or the green/red ones, but either way they're looking good!

And the cucumbers. Oh my the cucumbers! These guys have just gone crazy this year! I took this photo after picking a dozen cukes, so this was one of the bigger ones on the vine. I've already pickled 4 big jars, made more Raita and Tzatziki than I know what to do with and am planning on making Cucumber and Hendrick's sorbet soon. I might try to pull together a blog post on what to do with so many cucumbers!

Okra. Hmmm.... Okra is a mystery to me. Mac and I saw the plants at a farm stand and he convinced me to try it, so I did. I've already cut a few, but I'm not sure what to do with them. We'll have to see how that turns out. But they do look like little space ships, sorta, which is cool.

My sunflowers are going well, but are not as big as I thought they'd be. They're only about chest high and it looks like they might bloom in the next week or so. This one is planted right next to my garden gnome.

And tomatoes... The tomatoes have been interesting this year. They started out well, then got some blighty-looking leaves, then I sprayed an organic fungicide on them and it looks like they're doing OK. You can see in the photo above some of the yellow leaves, but more importantly, some of the nearly ripe sungold tomatoes! These things are like candy. It's kind of amazing. And the plant is already as tall as me.

Above are some San Marzano tomatoes. I got these because they're supposed to be the best for making tomato sauce. Last year I made sauce with some Early Girls and it was really good frozen and used up over the winter. I'm hoping to do the same thing with these guys this summer.

And here is my little volunteer tomato plant. Actually this in one of two volunteer plants. The other one is right in the mix with the other tomatoes, but this one sprouted in a row right next to the basil, so I put a cage around it to remind me that it wasn't a weed, and we'll see what happens!

In addition to these tomatoes, I also have an Early Girl and a Celebrity tomato plant. Four plants that I planted, and 2 volunteers. Hopefully it will be a good tomato crop!

And last but not least, on a whim this year I decided to plant some Zinnias. I have never grown flowers in my garden, outside of a couple of sunflowers, so this was kind of a new adventure. And I LOVE them! They make wonderful cut flowers, as you can see below, and they last a long time. I love the way they look as little buds, too, as in the photo above. I'll definitely plant these again in the future!

So overall the garden is going well. I'm waiting to see how the Brussels Sprouts turn out, and I've already picked a handful of green beans, but I'm sure I'll get more as the summer goes on. It's been a little different this year because I live much further from the garden then I did the past two years, but it's been really fun to ride my bike over with my gardening gloves and snips in my bike basket, and ride home with it full of goodies!

Happy Father's Day

2011-06-23T12:34:00.002-04:00

The weekend of Father's Day, I posted this photo to my facebook page and got a lot of really fun comments. That's my brother Dan, me and my Dad in our Scooby Doo pool ca. 1980. You can also see my brother John's feet in the lower left corner of the photo.

So, Happy Father's Day, Dad and thanks for all the fun times we've had, and all the fun time we continue to have! The pool's a little bit bigger now, but the family still fills it up!

Art All Night, Trenton

2011-06-20T12:33:00.001-04:00

On the same day that I got to see Nathaniel get his Jr. Black Belt, Mac and I went into Trenton at around 10pm (I know, not something I usually do!), and went to Art All Night. It's a 24 hour art exhibition, from Saturday afternoon, straight through to Sunday afternoon. There was a lot of art exhibited in a huge old building, The Roebling Wireworks. The artists ranged from professional all the way down to school kids. It was pretty impressive. There was also music and a food court.

One of our favorite exhibitors was Glenn Moore, who makes these awesome metal tikis. He also makes custom kazoos! Pretty amazing.

Not only were their lots of people out and about on a lovely spring evening, but there were LOTS of bugs! I think every bug in Trenton was attracted to the huge lights they had set up. Here's a fun shot with a slow shutter speed showing some of the bugs.

I'm glad we went to check it out. It's always good to see positive things happening in Trenton and I like to support them when I can.

Junior Black Belt

2011-06-20T12:11:00.004-04:00

It's been over 2 years since I last posted about Nathaniel's Tae Kwon Do adventures and he's really come a long way! On Saturday, June 18th, I headed up to Montclair to see him test for his Junior Black Belt!

The testing was (obviously) much more involved than the last one I saw and I was super impressed with Nathaniel's skill and concentration.

Here he is after the testing getting his new belt tied on:

We was very proud indeed! As he should be!

Here he is with one of his favorite teachers:

And with the proud parents, John and Jill. It was so fun to see Nathaniel achieve this goal.

Afterwards we went back to their place and I got to see Sebastian and Emerson, too. Jill and I exchanged birthday gifts and since I got her a nice bottle of gin, we promptly made gin and tonics to enjoy in their back yard. It was a lovely way to spend a Saturday!

Birthday in the Hudson Valley

2011-06-13T16:02:00.015-04:00

Some people prefer to keep their birthday celebrations low-key, but I like to go all out! This year it was a great excuse for Mac and I to spend a weekend exploring the Hudson Valley. We left Princeton early on Saturday morning, June 11th, and headed straight to the Stone Barns Center for Food and Agriculture, which is about a 2 hour drive. We got there a little early for our 11am Insider's Tour, and took the extra time to stop at the Blue Hill Cafe and grab a little breakfast. Blue Hill Cafe is the more casual, less expensive part of the Blue Hill restaurant which is on the property of Stone Barns. They work closely together, but are actually two different entities. I was hoping to do the full Farmer's Lunch at Blue Hill, but it was booked nearly two months in advance. In the end, the Cafe and the tour was the perfect option. Above you can see the amazing brioche that I had for breakfast.

Everything about Stone Barns was really lovely. We were there on a somewhat cloudy day, which made the light very soft and pretty. Zach, the head vegetable farmer, was our tour guide and he started the tour in his vegetable patch:

He talked to us about how he has a 7 year plan for his crop rotation and how he prefers to plant on the full moon to increase the gravitational pull on the seeds. He was very willing to answer all of our questions and did a great job taking us through all of the parts of the farm on our 1.5 hour tour.

This is the view of Stone Barns from the vegetable garden. It was built for the Rockefellers at the end of the 19th century. It has had various uses, from storage facility to cattle farm, throughout it's history and opened to the public as Stone Barns in 2004. It's a beautiful property, both the building and the land and I'm happy it's being used in such a great way now.

The next stop on our tour was to see the egg-laying hens. And boy, were they excited to see us! When our little tour group walked up all of the chickens rushed over to see what was going on. It was really neat. They are free range hens, as you can see there is just a little wire fence keeping them in. And sometimes one or two get out. Zach mentioned that there was one very determined hen who kept escaping and trying to roost next to the front gate.

Next we saw the little lambs. Oh my goodness these guys are so cute! Seriously, how can people eat these little guys?! It was a little creepy to know that most of the livestock we'd be seeing would end up on plates eventually.

Then we took a lovely walk through the woods and came to the pig sty. The thing about going to the farm in the spring is that all the baby animals are around. So yes, there were even cute little piggies. The interesting thing about the pigs is that they are moved to different spots in the woods so that they don't completely destroy one particular spot. They do a really nice job of clearing out all of the vegetation and rooting up the soil as they look for food. This works well for the farmer, too, since they are trying to cultivate specific plants in the forest, so once the pigs clear everything out of one spot, the farmer can move in and plant what they want there, in this case rye grass. They also use the pigs in the meadow, if invasive species are overtaking the native plants, they can move the pigs to that area and then re-plant the native plants that they want growing there. It's amazing how everything on the farm works together.

Speaking of working together, the next stop was the compost piles. Everything that can be composted on the farm, is. They not only create enough compost of their own farm, but enough to sell by the truckload for neighboring farms and to sell in bags to the home gardener. This is our tour guide and farmer extraordinaire, Zach, talking about the compost.

We also made a stop at the green houses where they grow the more fragile crops like lettuces and herbs. All the different colors of lettuces made it so pretty.

We also went to see the chickens and turkeys that are raised for meat. It was kind of sad to see the cute, fuzzy, clueless little turkeys that are destined for Thanksgiving tables. Mac made sure to use of the odorless, composting toilet that was on the premises.

We went back to the stone barns to visit the gift shop and grab a delicious lunch from the cafe. They had an amazing bean salad, quinoa salad, stuffed bread and one of the best frittatas I've ever had. We washed it down with fresh brewed iced tea and topped it off with a cupcake! The food really was outstanding:

They have a terrace garden where they hold the farmer's market, which we also stopped to check out. This is how they trellis their peas! It was so pretty, and functional:

We picked up some french breakfast radishes at the market. They were a little too spicy for me, but perfect for Mac:

Then we took some fun photos by the awesome pea trellises:

Our next stop was the Tuthilltown Distillery, which was about an hour drive north. We stopped at a viewpoint to see the Hudson River from above:

It rained for most of the drive up to the distillery, but had let up when we got there. The parking lot was still really muddy, though. In this photo you can see the distillery on the right:

We got there just in time for our 4pm tour and tasting.

This is our tour guide, Cordell, and he was very passionate and knowledgeable about making whiskey. The two stills you see here are the smaller and older stills, but still functioning. The brand-new larger still is next to them and had to be installed with a crane that lowered it through the roof of the barn. They also had to build a cupola on top of the barn to make it fit. They needed the new still because they just signed a deal for worldwide distribution of their whiskeys!

After the awesome tour, we were ready for the tasting. We were only allowed to have 3 tastes per person, and you couldn't share. Mac and I tasted different things and smelled each other's other tastings that we weren't allowed to taste. This is a NY State law, by the way, not just something weird that they came up with.

These folks are running out of space, fast! Here's actual whiskey being aged in barrels in their tasting room and store. They'll be building a new storage facility soon to keep up with the larger demand.

And of course, we couldn't walk away empty handed! We got 2 bottles of whiskey, one bottle of rum, our tasting glasses and some empty glass bottles. It was a great way to spend the afternoon! And these whiskeys are outstanding!

After leaving the Distillery, we headed to our bed and breakfast and checked in. We then headed to the Walkway Over the Hudson, which is a cool pedestrian/biking bridge that used to be a rail bridge. It was a cloudy, drizzly evening, but it was still cool to see. We'll have to come back when it's sunnier.

And this was the perfect chance for Mac to teach me about Froude numbers. What do you mean you don't know what a Froude number is? Look it up here.

After leaving Walkway Over the Hudson we headed into New Paltz for dinner. We stopped first at Guilded Otter Brewery for a tasting flight (I know - we did a lot of tasting that day!) and then headed to Rock Da Pasta for dinner. It was fun to see some of the nightlife in New Paltz. After dinner we headed back to the B&B and rested up for another packed day on Sunday!

Sunday morning we woke up kind of early (for the weekend), enjoyed a nice breakfast at the B&B, checked out and headed down to Beacon Docks for our 10am cruise on The Hudson River Sloop Clearwater! There is so much to say about Clearwater, about how Pete Seeger and some friends built it and launched it in 1969 to draw attention to the horrible pollution that was ruining the Hudson River, about how ship-board education programs the world over and based on this idea of taking people out on the water to see it with their own eyes, and about the mainsail on the sloop that's the third largest sail in the US today. The ship is a historic replica of sloops that frequented the Hudson for trade purposes in the 18th and 19th century.

The crew asked for help in raising the sails and Mac was a willing volunteer. Actually most of the people on board were willing volunteers, so I decided to just take photos.

Here's our Captain, Nick, letting some kids help with the steering. It was so funny to hear him yell "Midships!" (which means to bring the tiller to the center of the boat) and to hear them answer "Midships" in return with their little kid voices. He and the whole crew were wonderful and willing to answer tons of questions.

Mac took a turn steering the ship, too. Here he is with Carlos, another crew member, talking about the wind on the river. There really wasn't much wind that day...

Mac on the tiller:

And I took a turn steering, too. It was a fairly calm day, so it wasn't too hard. Capt. Nick said that in rough waters it sometimes takes the whole crew on the tiller to turn the boat.

But I did it all by myself. It was really neat to learn even a little bit about how such a big boat navigates the river.

We also got to see the downstairs of the boat where the crew sleeps. It was tight quarters, for sure! One thing that caught my eye was the bookshelf full of literature and sea-faring titles, and an entire shelf devoted to "Songs and Shanties". Pete Seeger definitely left his mark here.

Here's a nice shot of Mac and I toward the end of the cruise when the sun actually started to peak out of the clouds for a little bit. Believe it or not, I got a little sunburn on the cruise. It's amazing how, even on a cloudy day, having no shade can still get you.

And right before they took down the sails, we observed a moment of silence to appreciate our surroundings, the sounds of the river and to think our own thoughts. At the end, one of the crew members played a tune on her mandolin. Every cruise that the Clearwater takes includes those two opposite things: silence and music.

As we were pulling into the dock, the Sloop Club's other boat, the Woody Guthrie, was setting out. The Woody Guthrie is a 1/3 size sloop replica, so it has the same shape, but holds fewer people.

And, just for my birthday, Beacon was having it's annual Strawberry Festival! So after saying goodbye to the crew and leaving the Clearwater, we walked over to the festival and had some lunch, topped off with some amazing and generous Strawberry Shortcake! This was totally worth the wait in line!

After stuffing ourselves on shortcake, we walked over to Dia: Beacon, a contemporary art museum. It's housed in a huge old factory and the space is quite amazing. Mac was less impressed with the art, but it was still fun to see, and admission was included in the price of our cruise, so it was worth checking out. We weren't allowed to take photos in the museum, but on the way out we saw this snake in the grass. Looks like he just ate an egg or something. Mac said "That was the most interesting thing I saw at this museum today." Not a huge contemporary art fan...

After the museum we headed back to the car and drove a little out of our way (OK, completely out of our way) to this place we saw advertised in a local paper that claimed to have the World's Largest Garden Gnome AND Farm-themed Mini-Golf. We were only an hour away, and had the time to spare, so we went to check it out.

It did not disappoint! Homegrown Mini-Golf was amazing. The whole course is planted with edible plants and they encourage you to taste as you golf. The best was that the strawberries were ripe! But we also tried lettuces and different herbs, too. It was really cool. Here's the entrance to Mini-Golf, with the gnome behind:

And a photo of me with Chomsky, the World's (formerly) Largest Garden Gnome:

Apparently some overly ambitious people in Iowa have built a larger gnome since this designation was bestowed on Chomsky, but it was still pretty cool to see.

I had an amazing birthday weekend! Even though it was cloudy for most of it, Mac and I managed to have a good time and dance through what raindrops there were. I'm looking forward to an awesome year ahead!

Phillies Game in the Rain

2011-06-10T15:52:00.005-04:00

On June 9th my parents and I and my friend Karen all went to the Phillies game. It was a hot humid day, with highs nearing 100° and humidity to match. But we all made it and found our seats.

Sometime in the 3rd inning (I think), the wind picked up and this huge black cloud moved over the stadium, then the wind REALLY picked up! It blew the hat right off of my dad's head! We, and everyone else in the seats, ran for cover. It was total choas as a violent, windy, thunderstorm blew through:

Here's Karen and I trying to stay dry:

And me with my parents. If nothing else it was a memorable game!

After about 20 minutes the rain died down and the grounds crew got to work uncovering the field:

There was A LOT of water on the field, but they're obviously equipped to deal with this.

The game picked up where it left off. You know the storm came on quick because they actually called the game in the middle of an at bat. So they picked it up at a full count. We stuck around until after the 7th inning stretch, but it was nearing 11pm by that point, so we decided to call it a night, especially since I had to drive Karen back to Trenton and then myself back to Princeton. The amazing thing is that the game was still on when I got home! It had gone into extra innings and the Cubs eventually won.

Certainly a night to remember!

A Quick Visit with Todd, Jocelyn and the Kiddos

2011-06-08T15:18:00.003-04:00

On Monday, June 6th I had the wonderful opportunity to hang out with my good friend Jocelyn, her husband Todd and their adorable kids Meadow and Beckett. They were in the Washington, DC area to celebrate Jocelyn's Grandma's 90th birthday, so I took a couple days off work and drove down to see them. I drove down Sunday evening and had a great dinner with Sylvie and Miriam and spent the night with them.

On Monday, I met up with Jocelyn and her family at Brookside Park in Maryland. This is a great botanic garden with a butterfly house. We went to the butterfly house first and the kids had a good time. It was especially fun when a butterfly landed on Beckett's head:

It was a warm day, but we enjoyed exploring all the different gardens and just getting to hang out. Here's a cute shot of Meadow:

They also had a kid's garden with little places to go, like this little "gnome's house" that was just Meadow's size:

After enjoying the morning at Brookside, we all went around the corner to another part of the park that had a pavilion for a nice picnic lunch, a carousel and a miniature train! Here's a shot showing that Jocelyn is tall enough to ride alone, but Meadow still has some growing to do!

Todd took the kids on the carousel multiple times. Here his with Meadow in their cool shades:

Meadow also got to ride the train a couple times. She went once with Jocelyn and I and then again with Todd, Beckett and Jocelyn's parents:

It was actually a longer train ride than you might expect and went all through the woods. The kids really loved it.

Here's Todd on the carousel again, this time with Beckett, too. Meadow is clearly loving it!

After a nice afternoon with rides and ice cream and a nap for Beckett, we headed over to Jocelyn's Grandma's apartment for a bit and then headed out to dinner with the whole family. Here's a cute photo of Beckett at dinner:

The restaurant gave Meadow and Beckett balloons and when we got into the parking lot Meadow wanted to let hers go. Here she is watching it fly away. You can see its shadow in the upper right:

And here's Todd and Beckett watching the balloons fly away.

Right as we were getting ready to leave, I realized that I hadn't gotten a photo of Jocelyn, Todd and the kiddos. So here they are next to their rental mini-van. What a cute family!

And then Todd was nice enough to take a cute photo of me and Jocelyn. It's so great to get to hang out with old friends. Jocelyn and I lived in Chicago together, with Jerri and Mark, over a decade ago! Amazing!

Here's the kiddos getting ready to go. What cuties! It was great to finally meet Beckett and to see Meadow again.

It had been way too long since I saw Jocelyn. Hopefully we'll get to see each other again soon!

After saying goodbye to Jocelyn, I headed back to Sylvie and Miriam's and spent the night with them again, and drove home Tuesday, stopping at my parent's house to have lunch with my Dad. It was a awesome way to spend a couple days!

Canoeing fun

2011-05-30T15:15:00.003-04:00

On the Sunday of Reunions Weekend some friends from Philly came up to go canoeing. Mike was still in town (on the left) and Tyler joined us, too (at the bottom). It was the first time we'd been out this season, and it was a lot of fun. And after that we all met up with even more people and went to Winberie's for a fun dinner. It was a great way to finish a long and fun weekend.

Princeton Reunions!

2011-05-29T15:01:00.004-04:00

Ah yes, it's that time of year again, when all the orange clothes get pulled out of Princeton Alum's closets and they all converge at the University for a weekend of drinking and donating money.

The recent grads of Mac's program don't quite fall into the category. They prefer to come back and play softball with those who haven't graduated yet. On May 28th a bunch of current grad students and recent grads got together for the first MAE Reunions Softball Game. You can see the Motley Crew gathered above.

Below is Mac's old roommate and recently former grad student, Mike, AKA Dino-Mike, in his standard slugger stance. The team lost a great hitter (and heckler) when he became Dr. Mike and moved to Chicago. It was fun to have him back on the team for a day.

And of course, there had to be a way to pick which team would choose first and get home-field advantage, so that was determined by the winner of a dizzy bat race. If you've been to a minor league baseball game, you've seen a dizzy bat race, but not one that included shotgunning a beer after running to and from third base. It was reunions after all...

After the game, Mac and I headed into main campus to catch the end of the P-Rade. We caught the end of it and also some of the aftermath!

The amazing part is that the grounds crew was right behind the parade cleaning everything up. It's amazing how they've got this whole weekend down to a T.

And that evening we had a picnic dinner with friends and watched the best fireworks I've ever seen. This is a million dollar fireworks show! It even comes with a program so that you can pay attention to certain fireworks that are used that are particularly interesting or rare. Did you know that orange fireworks are hard to come by?

And of course there was dancing. Lots of dancing into the wee hours of the morning. Reunions is fun, but I'm glad it only happens once a year. It's a lot to keep up with.

Nathaniel on the Drums

2011-05-27T14:55:00.006-04:00

On May 24th, I took the day off work and drove up to Montclair to see Nathaniel in his school's choir and drum corps concert. On the way, my muffler nearly fell off on the NJ Turnpike, but a very nice guy at a gas station put it back on for only $10 and I was on my way. I didn't get to have lunch with Jill, as planned, but we did get to see the concert! As you can see from the photo above, Nathaniel played a bass drum way in the back row, but he loved it!

Below is a photo of most of Hillside's Junior Drum Corps. Nathaniel is soon auditioning for Drums of Thunder, the famous Hillside Drum Corps that performs in places like Madison Square Garden and the White House. (update: Nathaniel was accepted into Drums of Thunder! The next two years should be exciting!)

After the concert I got to take Nathaniel home and he and Sebastian enjoyed showing off their biking skills in the cul-de-sac near their house.

They are such cute brothers.

Wait, did I say "cute"?

Sebastian was very proud to be able to ride with one hand.

And Nathaniel practiced popping wheelies.

Emerson was at a friend's house for a play date, but Nathaniel, Sebastian and I had tons of fun. And when it was time for me to go, Nathaniel and Sebastian wanted me to stay. Here's Nathaniel posing like me.

I stayed long enough to see John and Emerson, but I did leave in time to beat the rush hour traffic home. It was a great use of a vacation day!

Dmitry and Mel's Wedding!

2011-05-17T16:38:00.004-04:00

Last Sunday Mac and I and some friends from his lab headed up to Rutgers Garden to celebrate the wedding of Dmitry and Mel. Dmitry is Mac's friend from his lab. A fun time was had by all!

Mac found bubbles in his jacket pocket from the wedding we went to last July, and they came in handy throughout the afternoon. Some of the kids in attendance really got a kick out them, along with Dmitry and Mel:

Here's the folks from Princeton who were there:

And Mac and I were having a blast on the dance floor. Only a few other folks were dancing, but we definitely had a great time. These were taken at the end of the day when we really were the only people out there:

We had a great time and we're so happy for Dmitry and Mel!

Already looking forward to dancing the night away at Christa and Kyle's wedding coming up in July! This was just a warm-up for that!

Brooklyn!

2011-05-12T13:14:00.002-04:00

It's so great to have an excuse to go into NYC. This past Sunday I was invited to my friend, Mike's housewarming party and I figured I'd kill two birds with one stone and stop by to see my cousin while I was in Brooklyn. My cousin Aaron and his girlfriend Becky moved from San Francisco into this sunny one-bedroom less than a week before I visited them. For only having a few days to get settled, the place looked great!

It used to be the owner's apartment, so there are some fancy details, like the stainless appliances and granite counters. For city living, this is quite the sweet set-up. We have another cousin, Laura who is studying at Columbia (Barnard, actually) and she made the trek out from Manhattan to join us for a home-cooked brunch. The food was wonderful and the company was even better. It was great to catch up with these guys and it's nice to have them on the East coast.

After brunch we took a nice walk through the neighborhood to a nearby park. It was a beautiful spring day and people were out enjoying the weather in full force.

After saying good-bye to my cousins, I drove just a few minutes down the BQE and caught up with Mike, his partner Ty and some of their friends to celebrate their new digs. It was fun to catch up with so many different people in one day. After leaving Mike's I took advantage of the nice day and strolled through his part of Brooklyn, too. I do enjoy a lovely day in the city!

Startin' the Garden

2011-05-12T13:05:00.000-04:00

So the garden got off to an early start this year. Last year the plots weren't turned over and marked until almost the end of May, but this year I got in to plant on May 7th. Mom and Dad came to help out and we had quite a productive afternoon. We planted tomatoes, cucumbers, Brussels sprouts, basil, and pepper plants and arugula seeds.

The plots were nicely marked and even had our names on them, even if they were misspelled! I feel like the Community Garden is a little more well organized this year. We even got piles of compost to add to our plots.

It was a great way to spend an afternoon with my parents, and the help was much appreciated. And since it was the day before Mother's Day, I also got to give my mom her card and gift in person.

Since that first day, I've gone back to water and plant some green bean plants that I had sprouting in my apartment. When I was doing this, a little girl, Hillary, and her mom came through to look at their plot and Hillary was very eager to help me out with my green beans. The mom thought that her daughter was intruding, but I showed her what to do and she did a great job. That's one of the joys of community gardens. It's rare that a stranger walks into your backyard garden and offers to help.

Here's hoping for a good, productive growing season!

Sunrise climb

2011-05-12T12:53:00.000-04:00

The top of the tower at the old Graduate College is one of the highest points in Princeton. Every year there is a traditional sunrise climb to the top of the tower, with mimosas to follow. Mac and I signed up to partake in this tradition with about 30 other folks. It's 200 very small, narrow concrete steps to the top, but we made it.

It was a bit of a cloudy morning, but the view was still nice. Here's Mac looking off into the distance:

In this photo, you can see Nassau Hall on the right and Richardson Auditorium toward the middle on the left. It's amazing how big all of the trees are on campus.

The requisite shot of Mac and I. It was crazy early, but worth it.

Here's the view over the rest of the Grad College. Yes, graduate students still live here.

And this is my attempt at making it look like Mac was wearing a funny hat. That's one of the spires at the top of the tower. You can see that my humor didn't go over very well that early in the morning.

The bagels and mimosas were much appreciated. Mac went home to go back to bed, but I had to go to work. It was a fun way to start the day.

I'm a winner!

2011-05-12T12:40:00.000-04:00

So you might remember that a few weeks ago Mac and I went to a lovely place called Terrain. Well, when we got home, I "liked" them on Facebook and then saw that they were having a drawing for this beautiful set of mini hydrangeas. I went ahead and entered and lo and behold, I won! It was such a treat to get this little set of spring goodness in the mail and to set it up in my house.

It's a little smaller than it looks, but it was still very nice. I ended up giving it to my parents because the plants could be transplanted into the ground. So now my parents have three mini hydrangeas around their shed, and I get the empty pots to grow herbs on my windowsill! Win! Win! Win!

I also recently won another drawing for 5 cookbooks! Now if I can only win that Trader Joe's drawing for bringing my own bag...

May Day Weekend with Sylvie and Miriam

2011-05-06T09:18:00.004-04:00

At the very end of April/beginning of May I headed to DC to visit with Sylvie and Miriam and see their new house. It was a beautiful weekend! I drove down Saturday morning and we had intended to go to a museum, but it was too nice out, so we decided to spend some time outside instead. We had brunch in Takoma Park and did a little shopping and then headed to Kenilworth Park and Aquatic Gardens.

We enjoyed being outside, taking the paths between the different ponds and walking along the boardwalk through the marsh. It was so fun to get to catch up with Sylvie and Miriam!

There were lots of cool things in the park, like these seed pods:

And these beautiful yellow irises:

The lily-pads were not in bloom, but I image that would be beautiful to see.

More irises, not quite in bloom:

And a nice little family of geese. This protective momma gave us quite a look when she thought we were getting too close:

The park was very close to Sylvie's school. We stopped by and got to go inside and see the library where Sylvie works. It was great to see the school that I've heard so much about.

When we got home I took a few family photos of Sylvie, Miriam, and their dog Kugel in front of their cute house:

We decided to stay in for dinner and had wonderful grilled food! This is such a treat because I don't have a grill at my apartment. We had potatoes and veggies and veggie burgers with toasted buns. It was a perfect meal, and the company was even better than the food! We all stayed up late chatting and playing Bananagrams and Yahtzee, which we did a lot when we all lived in Cambridge. It was just like old times.

On Sunday we made a wonderful breakfast of egg, zucchini and dill fritatta and peanut butter and banana smoothies. We didn't have a plan for the day, but ended up doing a little exploring in nearby neighborhoods and hitting some garage sales. Before I headed home we grabbed lunch at a local pupusaria. It was the perfect way to end my quick trip.

It's always so fun to hang out with good friends. I love when you show up and it feels like you just saw each other yesterday. I have the funny feeling it will always be like that with Sylvie and Miriam.

Easter with the Fam!

2011-04-25T12:27:00.008-04:00

Easter turned out to be a warm and sunny day, perfect for lounging in the hammock, which just happens to be one of Mac's favorite things to do at my parents' house. Emerson is a big fan of this, too. They have no trouble sharing some space on this big comfy hammock. The only downfall of early spring is that the leaves on the trees haven't grown in enough to provide good, solid shade. Thus the hats.

The highlight of Easter at my parents' is always the backyard egg hunt. We give the little guys (not so little anymore!) a head start.

Then Sebastian gets his own go-time:

And then John and Nathaniel start last. They are not only the biggest and quickest of the crew, but John is pretty observant. Here he is noticing the egg right next to the deck:

Nathaniel is a very physical egg gatherer. At one point he made a diving grab for one that Sebastian was about to get, but paid the consequences when he later tripped on his shoes and Sebastian and John scooped up some of the eggs that fell out of Nathaniel's basket:

All of the baskets were pretty even, but Sebastian topped out with 27 eggs! All of them had either candy or money in them.

Everyone enjoyed being outside. Here are my siblings (and siblings-in-law) playing Blokus on the back porch and enjoying the view of the kiddos:

We also ate a somewhat rushed dinner on the back porch. It was only rushed because it was starting to rain. After such a beautiful day, we had quite a rainstorm blow through.

And before we left we squeezed in one more board game: Boggle! An oldie, but a goodie! Mac had never played before, but caught on quickly, especially the shaking up the letters part:

It was a really fun day to spend with everyone! Everyone is now less than 2 hours away from my parents' house, which makes these gatherings easier for everyone. I'm sure we'll all be visiting more often once summer rolls around and the pool is open. Already looking forward to that!

A Walk in the Woods

2011-04-25T09:34:00.003-04:00

The Woods behind the Institute for Advanced Study (aka The Institute Woods) are a great place to literally take a walk in the woods. Mac and I had never been there, so on Easter morning we decided it would be a good idea to do a little exploring. It was a beautiful, cool morning, which quickly turned into quite a warm and sunny day.

The Woods have some famous links to history. Washington marched through here with his troops and rumor has it that Einstein used to walk through here to think. It's also popular for birding and general nature-watching. I loved that all of these little flowers lined the paths. It was a great way to welcome spring!

Mac is always one to notice the little things like deer tracks in the mud or busy ants along the path.

The woods also include this swinging bridge over the Stony Brook. It's really quite rickety, with some repairs here and there. We walked over it, but the other side was really muddy, so we decide to explore that another day.

Here's a video of Mac walking over the bridge:

It was a great way to welcome spring! After getting cleaned up we headed to my parent's house for a big family Easter afternoon!

Matthew in town!

2011-04-19T12:04:00.005-04:00

This past Sunday I had the pleasure of meeting up with my friend Matthew from Chicago! He was in the area to sing at Carnegie Hall with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. Yes, that Carnegie Hall! He decided to turn it into a week-long spring break, including a quick stop in Princeton and Philly. He took the train to Princeton and I had a chance to give him a quick tour of the town and University (that's him in front of the chapel, above) and show him my apartment. It was great to have him see where I live and work. He had never been to Princeton before.

We then drove down to Philly to meet up with Kim for dinner. We went to a great Thai place and then stopped to pick up some ice cream on the way home. We enjoyed sundaes with fresh strawberries with Alex and Mike, too. It was a fun evening, and so good to catch up with Matthew!

Dan and Mo's new house!

2011-04-12T20:51:00.005-04:00

After we left Terrain, we headed to the Victory Brewery to pick up a housewarming gift for Dan and Mo. Then we headed out to their house in the woods. It's a lovely house on a wooded lot and the kids especially loved exploring the property.

After an afternoon of running through the woods and enjoying some good food, we all gathered around the fire pit. The only thing missing was marshmallows, but Mo promised to have them on hand for next time.

Here's a great shot of Dan and his son John (my oldest nephew). They all seem so happy in the new house.

And my brother John and his son Emerson (my youngest nephew):

And my mom telling Liam a secret.

We all enjoyed the house, the outdoor space and an afternoon together. I'm sure there will be plenty more family gatherings in this great space!

Terrain

2011-04-12T19:37:00.009-04:00

I usually only get one weekend day off and I like to make the most of it! Last Saturday my brother invited everyone over to his new house in PA. Mac and I decided if we were going to drive an hour and a half into PA, that we should find something fun to do in the area before heading to my brother's to meet up with the rest of my family. Our original thought was to go on a brewery tour at Victory Brewing, but then I found out this amazing garden store/cafe/nursery called Terrain was having a Dig Into Spring event and we decided to do that instead.

This place was gorgeous! There were so many great things to see and it made me really excited about getting my garden spot going again. It also made me a little jealous of all the folks who have yards to play in. Someday...

It was a beautiful spring morning and the sun was shining bright. This place is huge and has tons of nooks and crannies, showing off everything from big outdoor pots to furniture to potted herbs and flowers to naturally made soaps to homemade pickles to books to garden clogs. Total garden overload! I loved it!

These were some bulbs that they had growing in a birdbath. They seemed pretty happy, and kinda looked like snails.

One of the outside walls of one of the buildings had these pots attached to them and lined up in perfect rows. I like the way they look, but I imagine it will be pretty amazing to see them all filled with plants, which I think is the intention. Upon a closer look, each pot had a little watering tube that I think was fed by rain run-off from the gutters above. Pretty amazing.

We also stopped at the cafe and got some tea and a wonderful ginger cookie. Our baristo was hilarious. Apparently they have to wear plaid shirts, but he said he would wear one anyway. We left smiling (and a dollar coin in the tip jar).

Here's Mac enjoying the sun at the outdoor cafe seating.

The event that they were having involved a little farmer's market and some tastings of local goodies. We got some beautiful farm fresh eggs. I love all the colors!

I also picked up some heirloom arugula seeds that I'm looking forward to planting in the garden. I also learned how to save my arugula seeds to plant next year, or let them re-seed themselves for continued arugula goodness. We tasted some Root and Snap from Art in the Age and some beer from Victory Brewing. We also enjoyed this great display of cyanotype photograms and even talked to someone about how to make my own! I'm pretty excited about trying that out this summer. Mac was more interested in the vintage lightbulb.

It was a wonderful way to spend a beautiful spring morning! I'm sure we'll be back.

Minneapolis for work and fun!

2011-03-31T16:32:00.005-04:00

Last week I had the pleasure of attending a professional conference in a city full of wonderful friends! The conference was excellent and it was great to reconnect with colleagues from all over the country as well as my favorite Minneapolitans! The conference kept me busy. I acted as a session moderator, co-chaired a committee meeting and am member of a national implementation team, not to mention all of the other great programs I got to attend. It was wonderful to reconnect with colleagues from Harvard and to meet new folks along the way. But this conference going can be exhausting!

Paul and Trinity scooped me up from the conference hotel and took me out to brunch/lunch at a great little place called The Sample Room. It was delicious food, and more importantly, was a great chance to catch up with them. Jerri and Mark introduced me to these two many years ago, and then when I moved to Boston they were pretty much the only people I knew in town at first. We both left Boston around the same time and now I get to see them when I make it out to Minneapolis. It was a perfect little escape toward the end of the conference.

I stayed in the conference hotel with my good friend Allison for two nights and then stayed at Jerri and Mark's house for the other nights I was in town. This worked out well and gave me a chance to be NBB (as Jerri would say, stands for Nothing But Business) while I was deep in "conference mode". And then at the end of my stay I was able to enjoy some fabulous home-cooked meals and get in some quality kiddo time with Zoe. It's so fun to see how much she's grown since the last time I was in town!

Jerri and Mark invited our friend Joey over for dinner on Sunday night and we had a great time catching up. Jerri and Joey are both coupon clippers (coupons are HUGE in Minneapolis) and they enjoyed going through the coupon book that I got with my conference materials. Here they are laying claim to different offers:

Something cool about Jerri and Mark's neighborhood is that there is a little diner around the corner that does Pie Happy Hour. Pretty much all evening, every slice of pie is only $1! Joey and I went over while Zoe had her bedtime and picked up cherry, blueberry and pumpkin pie slices, and a few cookies as a post-dinner sweet treat.

I didn't have to go back to the conference on Monday morning, so I had a chance to sleep in and got to have some more fun time with Zoe that morning. Her room gets really great sunlight in the morning and I took some photos of her brushing her hair and playing with her toys.

She's really into dinosaurs. And I loved this great green carpet that she has in her room:

Here's a video of her dancing with her dino:

After we all got cleaned up and dressed, we headed out to brunch at Cafe Barbette. It was, again, really delicious food. It was fun to see Zoe's good manners at the restaurant, and good to catch up more with Jerri, too. After brunch we did a little driving tour of a cool neighborhood and then I had to get to the airport for my flight home. The visit was too short, as always, but it's nice to know that I'll be seeing Jerri, Mark and Zoe again over the summer when our good friend Christa gets married in Massachusetts.

You can see Jerri's blog post about my visit - with a picture of Mark - here. And Trinity's post about our lunch out, here.

Nephews in Princeton!

2011-03-24T16:22:00.001-04:00

Last Sunday, my brother John and his kiddos came out to Princeton to spend the afternoon with me! Jill was off to a conference and this was a good chance to give John an extra hand with these three boys.

We got take-out lunch at the Italian Market and ate in my apartment, then we walked around Princeton, stopping at Labyrinth books, Starbucks, The University Store and Twist. Nathaniel and Emerson picked out some great books at Labyrinth and Sebastian picked out a little stuffed tiger at the University Store. He promptly named it "Whiskey"! You can see him holding Whiskey in the photo above. John got his afternoon coffee at Starbucks and the kiddos and I got frozen yogurt and fun toppings at Twist - and all of this within two blocks of my house! It's fun living downtown.

After our walk about town, we drove over to a great playground that's around the corner from my old house. These guys are old pros at this playground and had a great time on the roller slide and the tire swing!

It was a nice day, maybe a little chilly, but they didn't seem to mind. It's always a fun change of pace to host these guys for an afternoon.

Longbeard Contest and Mustache Day

2011-03-22T21:38:00.006-04:00

Every year, the A&B hosts the Longbeard Contest. On Feb. 1st, you show up clean-shaven to register:

And on St. Patty's day, you show up with the longest beard you can grow:

Mac and his labmates have been doing this for a few years now, and as you can see, it's always a good time. This year Mac won "Ugliest Beard" (I have to disagree with the judges here)!

This was a great way to spend St. Patty's Day, and it's all for a good cause. Every year the A&B picks a charity that receives all of the donations.

And to top it all off, Mac's department has Mustache Day the day after St. Patty's Day, where you can shave down your beard to something more interesting. The entries are all by photo, and this year Mac went with a Samurai theme. Shockingly he didn't win (probably because he won last year and they like to spread the love).

Never a dull moment here in sleepy little Princeton. :)

Michael Jackson themed Ice Skating

2011-03-04T09:31:00.002-05:00

Last night Mac and I and some of his friends from the lab decided to go to the Free Skate at the ice hockey rink here on campus. The University hosts these every once in a while and they always have a theme. Well, last night's theme was Michael Jackson. They hired an MJ impersonator to perform in the middle of the rink:

With crotch-grab and all:

They also handed out sparkly gloves when you turned in your skates. It would have been cool to see tons of people skating around with sparkly gloves, but they realized that the sequins were falling off pretty easily, and that's not so good for an ice rink. Here's Mac and I enjoying the fun:

And here's our skates. Mac has his own hockey skates and I had to rent the oldest, most uncomfortable skates in the world. But it was still a ton of fun.

Library Bag

2011-02-20T15:17:00.000-05:00

My mom's library system recently switched to selling reusable bags instead of giving away plastic bags to patrons. The slogan for the library is "Explore the Possibilities" so she thought it would be a good idea to have patrons take photos with the bag in various locations. She gave us a bag to take with us and these are the photos we took featuring what came to be known as "The Blue Bag" throughout the trip.

We used the bag throughout the trip and it was actually the bag that we accidentally left at the ranger station in Playa Grande and had to drive back for.

We used it as a grocery bag for most of the trip, and it actually ended up being one of Mac's carry-on bags on the way home.

Piper thought it was a pretty cool toy:

And last but not least, we had to get a couple shots with Bush Senior and the bag:

If you're lucky, maybe I'll come to a town near you with my library bag in tow and we can take some fun photos! Thanks, Mom for giving us an excuse to be a little goofy. I hope we did a good job!

Costa Rica, part 5: Houston and heading home

2011-02-19T13:13:00.000-05:00

After we landed in Houston, we were picked up by Mac's sister Val and her boyfriend Will. It was definitely cooler outside than in Costa Rica, but Houston acted as a good intermediate climate. I think I would have cried if we went straight from the 80s of San Jose to the 30s of Newark. The sun had already set when we landed and the temp in Houston was in the low 60s or high 50s.

On the way to Mac's parent's house I got a quick tour of the neighborhood where he grew up. Once we got there, we almost immediately headed out for dinner. The next day was Valerie's birthday, so she got to pick the restaurant. We went to a great Italian place and all enjoyed some really good food. After dinner we headed back to Mac's parent's to give Valerie some presents. We had picked up a pretty bracelet for her in Sarchi and a little wooden cat carving.

Unfortunately, Mac's brother was out of town for work while we were there, but Val was watching his cats. So we actually stayed at the guest room in his house. I have to admit, his cats were really cute and Mac enjoyed having some quality cat time. We had a fairly early flight, but Mac squeezed in some early morning cat lovin' with Piper:

Piper and Remy, the darker cat, were both excited about our shoelaces as we were getting our boots on. Here's Mac attempting to tie his shoes:

Valerie drove us to the airport, which was really nice of her to do early on a Sunday morning that also happened to be her birthday! Here's the view of downtown Houston from the highway:

We had just a few extra minutes at the airport and we thought this statue of George H.W. Bush was pretty amusing. The airport is named after him and he and I share a birthday, so I thought it was worth getting a photo together:

Our flight was quick and easy and we were both kind of sad to see snow on the ground as we flew over New Jersey. We flew right over Princeton and we able to pinpoint some landmarks. That was pretty cool, but the snow, not so cool:

We took NJ Transit back to Princeton Junction and our friend Mike picked us up there. We all went out to lunch and then it was back home for us. After a nap the reality set in that we were back in Princeton and shortly had to be back to "real life".

We had an amazing trip. Worth every penny, and truly an experience that I'll treasure forever. I wonder where we'll go next...

Costa Rica, part 4: San Ramón & Playa Grande

2011-02-18T12:46:00.007-05:00

We made it through San Ramón with just one little accidental detour into the barrio, but soon found our destination: Casa Amanecer. It's just outside of San Ramón, but offered a perfect stop over point on our way to the beach. We got in a little earlier than expected and with the help of one of our hosts, Alberto, went back into San Ramón to grab some lunch and pick up some postcard stamps.

During lunch we decided to take the afternoon and check out a nearby town called Sarchí, which is known for its artisan crafts. We took the long way there, back on the PanAmerican Highway and ended up having to drive through Grecia. The most notable thing about Grecia is that there are cars for sale all over the place! New cars, used cars, you name it. If you want to buy a car in Costa Rica, Grecia is the place for you. We especially got a kick out of all the signs for Autos Houston. When we finally passed it, this was the best shot I could get from the passenger's side out the driver's side window:

We finally got to Sarchí and stopped at one group of stores and picked up quite a few souvenirs. The prices were very reasonable and in fact, I wish I had picked up more while I was there. I got myself a great sarong that came in handy at the beach and Mac and I both had some birthdays to shop for, so we got quite a bit accomplished in a short time. The area around Sarchí is known for handpainted oxcarts, some of which were on display in the courtyard of the building where we did our shopping. Apparently this used to be a popular mode of transportation all across the country, now it kind of seems like a tourist attraction, like how you might see covered wagons at touristy spots across the American West.

On our way back to San Ramón, we tried to stop at a place in the guidebook for dinner, but we later found out that it had changed its name, so we stopped instead at Cafe Delicious, which was, indeed, Delicious. I had a Grecia Salad, which we assumed would be a greek salad, but it was so much better! We realized later that it must be a kind of salad made in Grecia, the town we had just driven through. It was served in a crispy tortilla shell and had warm black beans at the bottom with lettuce, cheese and sweet corn piled on top. I also got it with a side of guacamole, which made it even better. After dinner we headed back to Casa Amanecer and I wrote out some postcards before heading to bed.

Good thing we were in the habit of going to bed early! Our lovely room with windows on three sides was very bright the minute the sun came up! Here's the view through the blinds at around 6am:

And here is the view out of our door into the adorable little yard. Hello Sunshine!

The yard also featured these amazingly beautiful flowers growing along the fence. The blooms were few and far between, but different than anything I'd ever seen:

The yard also had an amusing group of bunnies. This one hopped right up while we were packing up to leave.

We had another great breakfast and enjoyed the company of Alberto, one of our hosts. We got to ask him a few questions about life in Costa Rica and he was happy to chat with us in English. We were curious about when the schoolyear started because we had seen a lot of "back to school" things in the stores in San Jose. Turns out that school starts in mid-February, so we were there for their last week of summer vacation.

We left shortly after breakfast because we knew we had at least a 4 hour drive ahead of us. Mac was a great navigator and I was, apparently, a speedy driver. The top speed limit in all of Costa Rica is 80 kilometers per hour (kph). That's just under 50 miles per hour. Yes, even on the PanAmerican Highway, this is the top speed limit. We were cruising along, listening to Costa Rican radio, chatting away and all of a sudden this guy walks into the middle of the lane ahead of us. My first thought was "No way am I going to stop for some crazy guy in the middle of the road". Then Mac pointed out that it was a cop, and I slammed on the brakes. Uh-oh. He came up to the window and asked for my license and passport (yeah, he knew we were tourists because of the rental car). He said he clocked me going 95 kph (59mph) and went into this whole spiel about how a speeding ticket is hundreds of dollars, insurance will go through the roof, and because it's a rental car it's 30% additional, blah blah blah... Then he basically told us we could bribe him. So Mac pulls out his stock of dollar coins and hands him a few rolls while letting him know that "We're doing all the Presidents! These are James Madison!". He seemed pleased enough and gave us back our documents and sent us on our way. Dollar Coins to the Rescue!!

The rest of the drive went smoothly and we arrived at Hotel Las Tortugas looking forward to our beach time. And the beach was amazing! Playa Grande is a huge span of beach on the Pacific Ocean. It's part of the Las Baulas National Park and is protected because it is an important nesting place for leatherback turtles. More on that in a second...

The hotel, on the other hand, was less than what I expected. We opted for a "budget" room that was half the price of the regular hotel rooms and if it was anywhere but right on the beach (location, location, location) would have been worth about a quarter of what we paid for it. It felt like we were in a cinderblock bunker with a terrible bed, private bath with a mostly warm shower, dingy curtains and the real bonus was a surf board rack! For one of the first times in my life I thought "I'm too old for this". Mac convinced me that it was going to be fine and that we weren't going to spend too much time in the hotel room. This was very true and in the end, the room didn't matter that much anyway...

After checking in, we headed out for a bite to eat at Kike's Place, which was also less than appealing. If every vacation has to have "one of those days", this was certainly shaping up to be that day. After eating we headed back to our room, changed into our swimsuits and took a nice, long walk along the beach. Mac actually went in swimming, but I just enjoyed walking along the beach through the rising tide. There is nothing that relaxes me and soothes my soul quite like walking along the beach.

So after that we got ready for our evening activity: Waiting and hoping to see a female leatherback turtle come up on the beach to lay her eggs. We met at the ranger station for the Las Baulas National Park at 6pm with a bunch of other people, probably 40 or so. We got all bug-sprayed up and then saw a very informative presentation about the turtles and the area. The beach is closed from 6pm to 5am every day during the turtle egg-laying season, which runs from November to mid-February. The turtle population that visits this beach has dropped from about 1500 turtles per season in the 1980s to currently less than 100 turtles per season. This is due to egg poachers, environmental changes and fishing practices that can kill both baby and adult leatherbacks. It takes 20 years for the leatherback to grow to maturity when it can start mating, so efforts that were started 10-15 years ago to save the leatherback won't be seen in the breeding population for another 5-10 years. The hope is that this current time is the low-point and that more turtles will start arriving to the breeding grounds in 5-10 years. The female turtles travel from the Galapagos Islands. Each turtle will make the trip every 3-4 years and during their time in Costa Rica they will lay 6-8 times, laying 60-100 eggs each time. The survival rate for the baby turtles is staggering: Only 1 in 1,000 will make it from being an egg laid on Playa Grande to a living baby turtle in the Galapagos. There are efforts being made to help the baby turtles have a better chance of survival. Most importantly, there is an egg hatchery on the beach. Scientists work every night of the egg-laying season to track each turtle that comes to shore to lay eggs. If they consider the eggs to be in any danger, they are removed from the hole that the mother dug and brought to the hatchery. Here's a shot of the hatchery that we took the next morning. The marked squares in the dirt are where different batches of eggs are buried. When the turtles start to hatch, they are brought to a holding area and released into the Ocean at night, which increases their chances of survival:

There are also efforts being made to control the amount of light that hits the beach, because both the female and the baby turtles are attracted to white and yellow light and can get confused about where to go if there is unnatural light present. Each year there is a leatherback turtle (Las Baulas in spanish) festival to help raise awareness of and money for the efforts being made to keep Playa Grande as an important nesting area for the turtles.

We were disappointed that a turtle didn't arrive for us to see before the volunteers closed up shop at 10:30pm. What would have happened is this: the ranger station is in walkie-talkie contact with the folks on the beach who are watching for leatherbacks to come out of the water. When one comes out, the ranger station is notified and groups of 15 people are led to the beach by trained volunteer guides to watch the turtle in the egg-laying process.

We headed back to the hotel a little disappointed and hot and hungry. The last thing we ate was our crappy late lunch at Kike's Place and we split a granola bar while we were waiting. So we got back to the hotel, hoping that the restaurant would be open, but instead found that it was closed and there was just a guy sitting in there watching a soccer match. We convinced him that he could give us a cold beer and a cold club soda and charge it to our room. So we went back to the room and had our cold drinks with some cheetos and a banana for dinner. Not the best meal of the trip, but it strangely hit the spot. We then unpacked our sleep sacks to slept on top of the most uncomfortable bed in Costa Rica.

Even though we weren't lucky enough to see a turtle in action, on our early-morning beach walk the next morning, we did find a track in the sand indicating that a turtle had come ashore. If you look hard you can see it to the right of me in this photo:

The width of the track gives you an idea of how big these animals are, and this one was actually on the smaller side. The tracks are sometimes up to a meter wide! Here's a shot of the whole that she dug at the end of the track. This is where she would have laid her eggs and then covered them up to hide them. Apparently, these eggs were dug up by the scientists and brought to the hatchery, leaving just the hole where they used to be.

We walked all the way to one end of the beach, just enjoying the sound of the water and the sun coming up. It was a really beautiful morning:

The seashells on this beach were so beautiful, and plentiful:

We also saw lots of birds on our walk. Here is a snowy egret looking for food among the waves and the tidepools:

And a pelican in a nearby tree doing the same:

The water was ridiculously clear and we could stand in the tidepools up to our knees and see everything that was going on. We also saw little scuttle crabs and even hermit crabs along the beach:

On the way back to the beach, we noticed that the surfers were out in full force. Here's one shot of a guy catching a wave:

The best part about our hotel was the restaurant. We walked straight from the beach into the restaurant and order the typical Costa Rican breakfast. It was quite tasty and gave us the energy for our next adventure! We rented a canoe and paddled through the estuary that exists behind Playa Grande. We had to drive to Hotel BulaBula which faces the estuary (and looked really nice, by the way), and then the canoes were waiting for us there. They had an easy put-in spot, which we found out was also the pick-up for water taxis and other estuary tours. We decided not to have a guide with us and instead went out on our own. We ran into a guide who was taking some other hotel guests out on a canoe tour and he told us all the good stuff was to the right. So...we went to the left.

For a while it seemed like we had the whole estuary to ourselves. We had open water, clear views and saw tons and tons of amazing birds. It's a saltwater, tidal estuary that empties into the ocean and we were there pretty much at low tide. Again, the water was amazingly clear and we could see to the bottom, which was only a few feet down in most spots.

After our quiet tour of the left side of the estuary, we headed to the right side to where all of the bigger tourist boats were. They were mostly motor boats, so they made bit of noise, but there weren't too many of them and they actually helped us figure out where the Howler monkeys were! We came around a corner and saw a boat pulled up to a path. We had heard that you had to get out of the boat to see the monkeys, so we figured this must have been what this empty boat was up to. Sure enough, as we were paddling up to the shore, a group of about 10 people came out of the woods saying that they had seen the Howlers. So we tied up the canoe and headed in that general direction.

Mac is amazing at spotting wildlife. About 5 minutes in he said in a whisper, "Shh...there's a male monkey looking for a place to nap." And then we looked over at the next tree and there were about 15 monkeys just lazing around in the mid-day heat.

The adults were especially lazy. There were a few younger monkeys who were happy playing around and finding some stuff to eat:

We were very quiet and still and enjoyed just watching them move around. The monkeys are most active in the mornings and later afternoons when it's a little cooler, so we just let them enjoy their quiet, lazy time of day.

And here's a little video of one finding a good place to rest:

They seemed to really like just finding a good branch and letting all of their limbs hang loose:

After about 10-15 minutes we quietly walked away and left them in peace. While we were walking back to the canoe, though, we heard them start to howl. What a noise! We aren't sure what set them off, but I'm glad it wasn't us. This distinct noise that they make can be heard for up to a mile and a half. I'm kind of glad we got to experience that, but I would have felt bad if we had made them do it. We also passed another group of tourists heading in that direction. I'm glad Mac and I got to see them quietly and with just the two of us.

Here's Mac in the little fiberglass canoe that we rented, getting ready to set off from where we stopped to see the monkeys. I'm holding the rope and about to hop in:

The other big sight to see in the estuary is the American Saltwater Crocodiles. We saw one scoot into the water quite a bit ahead of us, so we knew we were in the right place. And there were lots of little sunny beaches where you might imagine a crocodile would enjoy sunning himself. And then we turned a corner in an area that was too shallow for the tourist boats and were treated to the sight of this guy:

He was probably 7-8 feet long and just hanging out in the sun. We let the canoe just glide and that offered us a chance to get a good look at him. What teeth!

Here's a shot including the end of the canoe so you can see how close we were:

And after a minute or so he crawled into the water:

I have to say, we were quite proud of ourselves for having taken a much quieter, smaller canoe and no guide and seeing everything we hoped to see, probably in a more intimate setting than what the bigger tours would have offered.

We spent a total of about 4 hours on the water and after we brought the canoe up, we treated ourselves to lunch and a huge mango margarita at Hotel BulaBula:

It was a particularly hot day that day, so the food and especially the cold drinks tasted great! We then headed back to our hotel and immediately hopped in the ocean. We were a little dirty from the canoe trip and it felt good to rinse off in the perfectly warm water. My guess is that the ocean water was at about 75-80 degrees, which felt great compared to the 90-95 degree day! With the low tide, the beach was especially wide and even far out, you could still stand and have the water be just above your knees. It was perfect. We then hopped in the hotel pool for another version of rinsing off and then finally got back to our room for actual showers.

Once we were cleaned up, we headed to the hotel restaurant, which is where the free wi-fi was, and did a little research about what to do the next day. We also eventually ordered dinner and this amazing dessert. I'll mention it yet again, but the fruit in Costa Rica is just outstanding! This was just a dish of but up fruit and vanilla ice cream, but it was outstanding and probably tasted even more amazing at the end of a hot day!

In fact, we were so distracted by dessert that we missed sunset over the ocean. We could kind of see it from the restaurant, but this was what it looked like by the time I got to the beach:

We spent another evening waiting for turtles, again with no luck. This time though, we came a little more prepared with books and a little snack. We sat through the presentation again, this time with a different guide who was quite nervous about her English (I'm glad we saw the one the night before, it was much more informative). And then waited and read and journaled and chatted with other folks who were waiting and then finally, hours later, the volunteer came in and said "So sorry, no turtles" and made a sad face and that pretty much summed up our leatherback turtle experience.

The next morning Mac slept in a bit and I took a solo walk along the beach. No turtle tracks this time, but still lots of shells:

And lots of surfers:

I think there was a surf lesson going on because there were lots of people just bobbing around in the water for a while and then one guy caught a wave, apparently to show them how it's done. There was also a small group on the beach, including this photographer. Hey, if all else fails I can move to Costa Rica and photograph the surfers, right?

Just outside our hotel was a little taco stand that also advertised surf lessons:

And here's the entrance to the beach known for turtles and surfers. They seem to co-exist quite well:

When I got back, we packed up our bags but didn't check out quite yet. We decided to take a water taxi to Tamarindo, a beach town nearby, to have breakfast. We drove back to Hotel Bula Bula and got picked up by Enrique, a local estuary guide and water taxi driver. He said he's been working on the estuary for more than 20 years. Right before we docked in Tamarindo we saw a troop of howler monkeys in the nearby trees. Enrique tried to make them howl by imitating their sound, but it didn't work. He said he rarely sees monkeys in the trees there and that we were really lucky:

We ate breakfast at Olga's Coffeeshop and it was pretty good. We split a bagel with cream cheese and tomato and an order of Huevos Rancheros which was great. Mac had a good coffee and I had a refreshing iced tea and then a pineapple smoothie. When I ordered the smoothie, the woman walked over and grabbed a whole pineapple and started cutting it up. Now that's fresh!

We also stopped at the grocery store in Tamarindo and then walked back to where the taxis come. On our walk along the main road, we noticed this netted bridge across the highway and when we asked Enrique about it, he confirmed our suspicion that it was a monkey bridge. The electrical wires can be a hazard to the monkeys, so they've tried to give them a better path to get across the street.

During our taxi ride back to Bula Bula, Enrique pointed out some wildlife, like this tri-colored heron:

When we got back to the car after our trip to Tamarindo, we both looked at each other and realized that something was smelling pretty funky in the car. We nailed it down to our Keens, which had been in the estuary the day before and apparently didn't get cleaned off too well. We rinsed them again, and then dipped them in the overly chlorinated hotel pool and then let them dry on top of the car while we checked out:

Before we headed out we stopped to take some photos around the hotel. The parking lot was full of these beautiful hibiscus plants:

We saw this mutant blue jay (about twice as big as a blue jay) hanging out around the hotel quite a bit, and right as we were leaving it landed in a nearby tree and seemed to pose for this photo:

We also stopped at the ranger station for Las Baulas National Park and took some photos in front of this cool mural. The map on the right is of Costa Rica and there is a little square of the left side of the country showing where we were:

Mac wins for most hilarious photo of the trip (this made me laugh while I was taking it, and it still makes me laugh):

After taking these photos, we headed out toward Monkey Park, a monkey and animal rehabilitation center that was about a 1/2 hour drive away. About 15 minutes away from Las Baulas we realized that we left one of our tote bags back at the mural, so we drove all the way back, thankfully it was still sitting on the table where we left it and then we set off again!

We finally got to Monkey Park and enjoyed looking at all of the animals. They attempt to rehabilitate any of the animals that are brought to them, but some have been domesticated and can not be released into the wild. For instance, they had a beautiful ocelot that someone had tried to keep as a pet. She will never be released into the wild because she never learned to hunt for fend for herself, but they are trying to introduce her to the idea of hunting by incorporating a small pond into her cage and putting fish in there that she can hunt if she wants to. It seemed like they were doing really good work for these animals.

There were iguana all over the place, not in cages, but just roaming around.

This one was especially fat, and we eventually figured out why. The animals in cages are fed by leaving food just outside their cages so that they have to reach for it and after the monkeys were fed, we saw and iguana come up and steal some of the monkey food. So these iguanas have a pretty easy life.

The Monkey Park also has a butterfly garden that was small, but nice. This one was my favorite:

We were quite impressed by all of the colors on this toucans beak! Even though they were in a cages, it was neat to see so many animals that were native to the area, right up close.

We especially loved these capuchin monkeys. There were having a pretty good time and getting really excited because they were soon going to be fed. There are lots of places in Costa Rica where you can see capuchins in the wild, but we didn't see any this trip. Maybe next time...

And this video gets the prize for funniest video of the trip:

We stopped at the gift shop and picked up a t-shirt (clean clothes for Mac!) and gave them a small donation. We also had lunch at the snack bar at the park, and the funniest part was that they had Michael Jackson music videos playing the whole time. It was another hot day and we both had wonderfully refreshing fresh fruit smoothies along with our lunch. We got in the car and headed back to Casa Amanecer and San Ramon. We were treated to a glimpse of more howler monkeys over the highway on our trip home - our third time seeing them in the wild. We got in just after dark, around 6pm and checked in and then headed back into San Ramon for dinner. This time we found the restaurant we were looking for the first time. It's a lot easier to find a restaurant when you have the name right. It's called Rincon Poetica and we got a few bocas (small plates, like tapas) and an order of Arroz con Palmito. I had had this dish at one other point during the trip and it's SO good. It's basically rice with hearts of palm and some cream and it's delicious. This one was served with a salad and french fries. If there's one dish I want to try to reenact at home, it's this dish.

After we went home and enjoyed another relaxing evening. This was our last night in Costa Rica and we had some reorganizing to do before packing up. We had a good nights sleep, and it felt especially good after two nights in the most uncomfortable bed in the country. The next morning we slept in, enjoyed our last Costa Rican breakfast, packed up all our stuff headed out of San Ramon.

On the way out of town we saw this great little school. Yes, that's our first president, Jorge Washington:

And one last view of those beautiful orange trees:

We returned the rental car and got a shuttle back to the airport. Here's one of our last views of the mountains of the central valley before we flew out to Houston:

We flew from San Jose, Costa Rica to Mac's hometown of Houston for a scheduled overnight lay-over. So even though this is the end of our trip to Costa Rica, there's one more stop before we actually get home. Stay tuned for a blog about that...

Costa Rica, part 3: Orosi and Irazú

2011-02-17T10:02:00.002-05:00

After leaving Cabinas Cecelia and Santa Maria de Dota, we headed to Orosi. We had a somewhat frustrating time getting through Cartago, but once we found one of the only street signs in the city and figured out where we were on a map, we headed in the right direction. Before we got into town we stopped at Mirador Orosi to get a view of the whole valley. It was awesome to see the river and the town on such a beautiful clear day.

Here's Mac and I at the Mirador, after I figured out how to use the self-timer on my camera:

Once we got into the town of Orosi we got turned around a little bit and asked two teenage boys for directions. After telling us where to go, they offered to sell us some of the avocados that they had with them. We got 5 beautiful avocados for 1,000 colones or about $2. We finally got to the hotel, checked in and had a snack with the newly acquired avocados and the bread that we bought a couple days ago. Our hotel room had a small kitchenette, which worked out perfectly.

Here's the view over town from the balcony of the hotel:

We decided to spend the afternoon doing a circle tour of the Orosi Valley around Lake Cachi. Our first stop was supposed to be the Ruins of Ujarras, but we realized we missed the turn when we came across the dam that was supposed to be our second stop. The signage in Costa Rica is less than ideal to say the least. But we stopped once we had crossed the bridge near the dam and got out to walk across the bridge and see the lake that it creates (Lake Cachi) and the river in the valley below. Here's a shot of the dam and nearby cultivated hillsides:

We got back in the car and headed back to the Ruins. It was really hot, but it was nice to see the ruins and walk through the surrounding park. This church was originally built in 1693 and is Costa Rica's oldest church:

Here's a shot of me at the ruins:

The surrounding area was really beautiful. The orange trees that you see were actually flowering trees that were in bloom all over the central valley:

And this sign kind of cracked us up. The graphic in the bottom right is what makes it really funny:

The next stop on the tour was La Casa del Soñador. It is a house that was built by an artist and woodworker out of wood and bamboo and some parts of it are intricately carved. There are also lots of little carvings for sale inside the house.

It was a little confusing if the guy actually lived there or not (or if he was even still alive), and the space was very small. Both the guy at the hotel front desk and our guidebook made a point of mentioning this place, so I think we had higher hopes. It was interesting, but didn't "wow" us:

Then we stopped at this really lovely restaurant on the lake for lunch. I had delicious crepes with spinach and sweet corn and Mac had ceviche, and yes, we tried some more of the local beer. It was a hot afternoon and the ice cold beer (and the seltzer) tasted great.

After lunch we walked down to the lake to enjoy the breeze and the view over the water:

We had fun taking photos in the pretty scenery. Here's Mac pointing out some cute little ducklings:

And an arm's length shot of the two of us:

And a nice shot that Mac took of me under this great big tree that was at the end of a little peninsula that jutted out into the lake. Mac said he thought it looked very "Alice in Wonderland":

We soon got on our way to finish up the circle tour and head back to Orosi. We had to cross this narrow old one-way bridge on the way back, and it didn't help that this guy was just standing in the middle of it:

We stopped at a grocery store in Orosi to pick up some more bottled water and ran into some Americans who were living in Orosi for a few months. The woman wanted nothing more than a jar of Ragu tomato sauce, but they didn't have it. We had fun checking out what they had to offer and even picked up a can of Rum and Coke to try later.

After parking the car and dropping off some stuff at the hotel, we ventured out to walk around town. Orosi is really quite small and the people are very friendly. We ran into the Americans again and waved Hi. It's amazing how quickly you can find a friendly face in a small town. We walked through a section of town with brand new homes and then found the footbridge that goes across the river:

Here you can see where the old footbridge once stood. The green rectangle on the near shore is completely collapsed into the river. The new footbridge gets quite a bit of use. In the 15 minutes or so that we were here at least a dozen people walked over it in either direction.

Here's a view of the river from on the bridge:

And of the bridge itself:

We walked back toward town and got a closer look at the church in town, which is the oldest still-operating church in the country. It was closed, so we didn't get to see inside. It's fairly modest on the outside, but had a really nice lawn and landscaping:

It sits on the edge of the soccer field in the middle of town. Most towns that we went to had a main church, a park and/or a soccer field. And most of the directions we got involved where something was located in relation to one or more of these locations. For example "It's 100 meters from the north side of the Parque". Not many of the streets are named, so having a map with landmarks is also extremely helpful.

We ate dinner at a restaurant that's known for it's typical Costa Rican food. Mac got a huge plate of fajitas and I got a vegetarian cosado with the standard rice, beans, plantains, veggies, chayote and some tortilla chips. I also got a banana daquiri, which was really tasty!

We wandered through town a bit more on our way back to the hotel. Once we got to the hotel we used the internet connection to make some plans for the beach and looked at some maps to figure out our plan for tomorrow. We also shared that can of Rum and Coke, which was actually surprisingly good for what it was:

We woke up the next morning and had a small breakfast of more avocado and bread in our hotel room, and got a cup of tea and a mug of coffee at the hotel coffee shop. I had to take a photo of the little hotel parking lot. Clearly, this is the standard rental car in Costa Rica. Ours in the one in the middle:

On the way out of town we were stuck behind this truck loaded with fruit. We would often see trucks like this stopped on the side of the road, selling their fruit. We eventually found enough of a straightaway to pass. Another thing about driving in Costa Rica is that there are very few marked passing lanes. When someone knows they're going slow they'll put on their left turn signal to say "I know you're going to pass me, that's cool" or "there's no one coming, I think you can make it now". They will often slow down even more as you pass them to make sure you can do it safely. It actually works out well on these winding mountain roads.

We headed out of Orosi to the top of the Irazú volcano. The drive was essentially straight up a mountain. About halfway up the mountain we came to this "big Jesus Christ" as the woman at the Irazú entrance referred to it. It certainly is a noticeable landmark! It's also the place where you can go left to continue up to Irazú, or turn right and get to another volcano, Turialba, which is currently closed because of recent activity. I guess you have to have someone watching over you when you live or work on the side of an active volcano!

The mountainside (volcanoside?) that we drove up was particularly lush and we saw many farmers working the fields. You would think that volcanic soil wouldn't be good for growing things, but apparently it is:

The cows like it, too! There was a lot of livestock, sometimes tethered, mostly just roaming free, along the side of the road. Mostly cows and horses, but the occasional goat, too. They seem to know that the road is a bad place to be. We saw many very close to the road, but none got in our way:

Twenty-six kilometers past "the big Jesus Christ" and we finally made it to the top of Irazú! There was a very sweet woman at the kiosk who took our money and explained in broken English where we could go and where we couldn't, and also told us that we shouldn't spend more than an hour at the top because the air quality was poor thanks to Turialba's recent activity.

Here is a shot of the main cauldron and the brightly colored water that sits inside it. The color of the water is due to minerals found in the rock. It's a crater lake, so there is no inlet or outlet, it is filled only by rainwater, and we were there in the dry season, so it was pretty low.

We were told by both our guidebook and the front desk of the hotel that it would be really cold at the top. We bundled up, but really didn't need so many layers. It was a lovely day and for the most part we were in the sun above the clouds.

Here's another shot of the lake. This was taken while standing on the fence and holding my camera above my head to get a better view of the lake.

The surrounding landscape was rather "moonlike" with dark soil and ridges that looked like dried lava flow:

Here's Mac getting a better view:

And the two of us. There was a group of tourists coming in just as we were leaving and we snagged one to take this photo. We got there early enough to enjoy an uncrowded and unclouded view and walk along the edge of the crater.

Near the gift shop and snack bar we noticed this trash can had Mac's name on it. Of course we had to take photos.

This one was Mac's idea:

There is another small viewpoint above the main area where you can see the lake. We tackled the poorly paved road to make it up there and it was neat to be at the highest point on a volcano in Costa Rica. Here's the view from there of the main crater:

The clouds really started rolling in while we were up there. Here's Mac at the top. Apparently on a clear day you can see both the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans from up there. Obviously, we were not treated to that view:

The the sign with the official altitude:

After having a snack at the snack bar and doing a little souvenir shopping we got on our way to our next stop: San Ramon. We had a fairly easy drive all the way through Cartago and around San Jose, with only a few moments of not being sure we were doing the right thing. Again, that lack of signage can be a little frustrating. But eventually we made it to Casa Amanecer.