Queen Mom

Since as long as I can remember we have brought out this well-loved hand-made crown to celebrate my Mom's birthday and Mother's Day. The crown is over 30 years old and has been torn and spilled on multiple times and is held together with tape in many places. It's made out of construction paper, which isn't the sturdiest of materials, and was decorated with magic marker by my Dad and my brothers. It's quite possible that this was made even before I was born, if not when I was an infant. It is, to say the least, a family tradition.

Since the original crown is in quite fragile shape, I decided to make Mom a new crown this Mother's Day. I tried to make the decorations as similar to the original as possible, but I used die cut crowns from Paper Source (layering two of them) as the base of the crown. It's much sturdier than construction paper and will hopefully serve this Queen well for many years to come. The original crown will be retired as the "Crown Jewels" and added to the family archives.

Here's a great photo of Mom with her new crown and some of the flowers she received for Mother's Day. She is the Queen, and I love her! Happy Mother's Day, Mom!

PubQuiz @ DBar

Every first and third Wednesday of the month I usually find myself at Pub Quiz at Princeton's Graduate Student bar, DBar. It's a great excuse to hang out with a good group of folks, have a few cheap drinks and hopefully win some snacks if we're lucky.

The first Wednesday in May we were lucky enough to win Round 1, which netted us a 1 lb. bag of sourdough pretzels and Round 6, where we won Nutter Butters! It was a good night even though we came in 3rd or 4th overall. Pub Quiz doesn't start until 10:15pm, and usually wraps up sometime between midnight and 1am. This means that I'm usually pretty tired on the 1st and 3rd Thursday of the month, but it's worth it.

Adventure Day: NYC

On Saturday, May 1st, Mac and I had another Adventure Day and this time it was to NYC. We got a fairly early train out of Princeton Junction and made it to MOMA by about 11am. We were excited to see two current exhibits, one of photographs by Henri Cartier-Bresson and one that we kept referring to as "naked performance art". The actual title of the exhibit was "Marina Abramovic: The Artist Is Present", and it really did involve naked people and performance art. It sparked a good discussion on the way home about "what is art?", which is truly one of life's unanswerable questions...

Our next stop was to head up to Harlem to see the Carolina Chocolate Drops give a free performance. This band is one of my favorite old-timey bands. What I really like about them is that they know the history of so many of the songs that they play and their concerts are always part history lesson and part performance. It was one of the highlights of the day.

On the way to the Jewish Museum, we decided to take the train part of the way, but to walk through Central Park for about 20 blocks. It was a beautiful day and the park was packed!

It was fun to explore a part of Central Park that I had never seen before, including the Conservatory Garden, which was blooming with tons of tulips and lilacs.

We finally ended up at The Jewish Museum, which is free every Saturday, to see the Curious George exhibit they have going on. It was interesting to learn the history of Margret and H.A. Rey and to see original drawings that were used to create Curious George and other books by the Reys.

From there we walked another 10 blocks south and had a nice Italian dinner before heading to the rooftop at the Met. Mac had never been to the Met before, so we did a quick tour (ha!) and ran through some of the most popular exhibit halls before making our way up to watch the sunset and have drinks on the roof.

We could see kites being flown from somewhere in Central Park (look closely in the photo below). I thought it was amazing how high they looked:

The exhibit on the roof this summer is called Big Bambu. It's an ever-growing structure made out of bamboo and hiking rope. It takes up the entire rooftop and I found it to be pretty impressive.

There are walkways that are only accessible if you get on a guided tour, which were popular tickets to come by on the first Saturday that the roof was open. We'll have to go back at some point and see if we can get a tour.

It was a beautiful night to be up on the roof and watch the sunset.

After enjoying the last daylight hours at the Met, Mac and I headed back to Penn Station and caught a train back to Princeton. It was a long, exhausting, exhilarating and fun day in the city!

Last Day

Friday, April 30th was my last day as a Senior Image Cataloger at Princeton University. I had a good day with fun signs taped to my computer, a nice lunch with my colleagues, cake in the afternoon and one more sign for the end of the day.

It was sad to say good-bye to a good bunch of people, but I'm excited about my new position as a Digital Imaging Technician at Firestone Library. Change can be good, right?

Porch Plants

It's Spring! A few weeks ago I put some seeds into my trusty porch pots and now I have teeny little herb sprouts popping up! I also bought some dianthus and petunias and have planted some of those to get some flowers on the front porch, too.

I like taking photos early on because I'm always amazed at how big plants can grow over time, without you even noticing. So I'm considering these the "before" shots. I'm sure I'll post again once they've grown up a little bit.

The herbs this year are basil, parsley, dill and oregano. I like having them close to the kitchen so that I can use them on impulse as needed. My community garden plot (which will hopefully be turned over soon) is a block away, so having herbs there would involve a little more planning.

Spring has Sprung on Campus!

One thing about working at a university is that they always know how to make the place look good for prospective students, parent's weekend and graduation. Well, Princeton is no exception! The past few weeks the campus has been packed with high school seniors and their parents coming to check the place out and soon it will be reunions and graduation, so of course, everything is in full bloom!

These are some shots that I took over my lunch break today in Prospect Gardens, one of the prettiest places on campus, in my humble opinion.

Love all these tulips!

From the University Website:

"The flower garden at the rear of Prospect was laid out in approximately its present form by Mrs. Woodrow Wilson after her husband had the iron fence erected around the garden’s perimeter. Mrs. Wilson was the one who laid out the garden in the shape of the University Seal, so that, when viewed from above, the pathways define the shield outline. Mrs. Wilson also supervised the planting of the evergreens, predominantly Canadian hemlock, that serve as a backdrop for the flower garden. The flowers are changed at regular intervals throughout the growing season."

Kiddos in Princeton

Last weekend I had the chance to hang out with my nephews and my brother, John, in Princeton. We crammed a lot into one day, but one of the highlights was going to the Geosciences building on campus and getting to see REAL dinosaur bones! Sebastian is studying dinosaurs in school right now, so he was particularly interested in this complete allosaurus skeleton that they have on display:

All three of the boys were pretty interested, and they were very good at being quiet and not touching anything (for the most part). John and I told them we had to act like spies because there were students doing work in the building and we had to be quiet.

After visiting the dinosaurs in Guyot Hall, we walked through campus to Firestone Library to visit the kids' favorite children's library. After spending some good time there, we walked to Labyrinth books and then over to The Bent Spoon for some delicious ice cream.

After sitting in Palmer Square and enjoying the day and our ice cream, the kiddos ran around a little bit, including Nathaniel giving Emerson a piggy back ride. Em obviously thinks this is great. I love his expression here:

All was well until Nathaniel tripped and skinned his elbow on the pavement, at which point we walked back to my house and cleaned him up. Then John packed everyone up and after nearly 6 hours of fun in Princeton headed home with the boys. It was a really fun way to spend a beautiful Sunday in Princeton.