Memorial Day weekend 2012, lab reunion

My graduate adviser started his lab in 1992 so the 20th reunion was held in Austin, Texas over Memorial Day weekend.  The whole weekend was fantastic.  It was amazing to see so many folks that I worked with-it was way more meaningful than a high school reunion would be, not that I have been to any of mine.  People are exactly the same as I remember or better.  It was so nice to see the great work people are doing now, everything from academic or industrial research, to doctors, lawyers, parents and just interesting folks.

Friday
Getting off the plane I saw a man in as shorts suit!  It was totally a suit, but shorts instead of long pants-perfect for this weather, which turns out to be hot and sticky.  The Fun Bunch arrives in Austin and eats at the Roaring Fork.  We sort of planned ahead to see what we might want to eat, but the 'best' places were far away, or hard to get tables.  This was the best for us because we walked, they had a table for us, we were able to chat, and even though it was fancy, the toddler in the group was not a problem!  We pretty much ate all their specials-green chile stewed pork, huckleberry margaritas, big ass burger-all fantastic.  But my favorite was the Mexican street corn.  I think I like it that someone cuts the corn off the cob for me :)

Saturday
Tonia arranged that we would meet up for breakfast at the Central Market, which is a large fancy market (reminded me of Jungle Jim's in Cincinnati) right next to a play area.  Brilliant!  As we are sitting on the patio as old lab mates come up and there is much *squee*

In the afternoon we meet on campus for a casual lunch and then talks by the alumni.  At the end Andy's boys had a very short presentation that was of course adorable and included about 10 seconds of singing.
We had our own area of Abel's on the Lake for our group to hang out and chat which was perfect.  I got to talk to all the folks I overlapped with and some of the new one.

Sunday
More talks in the morning, but the afternoon is free and I am going to Schlitterban!
I had heard about Schlitterbahn from my friend Kyle, a Texas native.  And one thing in particular stuck out for me in his description-the water for the park comes from the river.  Even in Minnesota (all those lakes) the water parks I have been to use chlorinated pool water that leaves you dried out at the end of the day.  Plus a number of reviews call it the best water park in the country.  After visiting, I have to agree, this place is amazing and I could easily spend 3 days chillaxing here.  We knew we didn't have enough time to do the whole park, so E- and I only went to the 'original Schlitterbahn' figuring the lines would be longer for the newer, fancier rides.  Classic Ichiro and Michiko who came with us did check out the new park and said it lived up to expectations-longer lines for the Master Blaster, but well worth it.

Monday
Goodbye brunch at the Taco Joint.  Oh our Austin friends picked some good eats!  I love breakfast.  I love Mexican food.  And who doesn't love a hole in the wall.  The group was much smaller now, but it was the only time we were able to see Sabine.

Yay reunion!!

Fava bean harvest June 5, 2012

Saw the transit of Venus-lots of folks at E- workplace brought their telescopes so we saw a really clear view-nice!
Also, the 2012 fava bean harvest.

Bay to Breakers 2012

Finished the Bay to Breakers again...seemed like fewer people (101 not as popular as 100), but more naked people.  No after party, which was a little sad.  And the registration was confusing to me, because I did not sign us up for t-shirts.  We have definitely seen the end of an era.  When we started running B2B, we got to see the tiki bar and drunken frat boys pushing kegs in grocery carts.  Now it is cheaper to clean up after, and safer, but less flavorful for sure.

Best costumes?  Nyan cat, Settler of Catan ('Catan or Bust', 'Will Trade Wheat for Sheep'), and the Greendale  Community college mascot the human being.  No ponies-how sad!

The Bay                                                            The Breakers

Solar Eclipse, May 2012

In case you missed it...there was a partial solar eclipse.  Remember that you shouldn't look into the sun!  Instead, make a pinhole camera.  Or just use the leaves of a tree as your pinhole camera-the effect is neat-o!

The pinhole camera version

Turning your fingers into claws

The images are very diffuse and the crescent has a very wide angle.

 In areas where there is a lot of background light, he crescents tighten up, shadows look like flowers.

Areas with more shade, the crescents come through as bright spots.

NYC March 2012 James Beard Dinner

Weekend trip to NYC with the Fun Bunch!

We planned a trip to New York because of  dinner, a special dinner obviously!  We went to a James Beard dinner by Lon Symensma, world famous Asian fusion chef who currently owns/runs Cholon in Denver.  Of course we are not going to let a trip to New York go on without adding in a extras-this trip was two Broadway plays, two world-class museums and food food food!

We land in Newark and E- starts the food fest with a slice of Famous Famiglia's blanca.  Pizza purists will snear at Fame Fam's...but it was the college pizza we grew up with and my first non-tomato pizza so even a late night slice at the airport is nostalgic.

Why Newark?  Our hotel, Eventi, is right near Penn Station and the train is super easy.  They were having trouble with our room reservation, so E- and I hung out on the cushy couch, drinking strawberry water and using to free wifi to catch up on the Bronies!  Best. Night. Ever.

Saturday
Gotta have bagels at least once in NYC!  Then a day at the Met including our favorite classics Temple of Dendur, the Jain hall, Chinese garden, snacks in the American wing and exhibits we haven't seen in a long time.  We spent some time in the Monet rooms (okay, they are not JUST Monet, but he is my personal fav), at Washington crossing the Delaware (forgot it was so big...how do the painting logistics work???), the Stein exhibit (which I saw at the SFMOMA, but new to everyone else-SF was better laid out, but this still got the point across and I still like Picasso's chicken sketches), and finally, finally! the Islamic rooms are reopen.  I didn't appreciate the Islamic room until just before leaving NYC, and then they have been closed for practically ever!  I am drawn to the designs which are completely regular but intricate. But they now have much better displays of the weaving/hanging/rugs.  As always I love how they have a complete room that you can look into and my only disappointment is that there is just one peep window into the sitting room...

What to do for food?  We got a fun tip from a local friend to go to Eataly a combo marketplace/restaurant/snackbar.  You can sit down and eat, then grocery shop.  At the center are stand up tables where we get a bottle of wine and the cheese and meat plate.  It is lovely, just lovely, I bet everything is good.  Just note that it is currently popular and you will either have to wait an hour for a table at a restaurant, or hang out in the middle and pounce when a table opens.

Tonight we have a pair of tickets to see the oh so popular Book of Mormon...but we are 4.  What to do what to do.  Michael decides it is worth it to try for some of the last minute options-you can wait in the line for folks who return their tickets or are no-shows. You might be disappointed if you try it, but he was third in line and for 2 hours of waiting got fantastic seats-woo hoo!!  I certainly enjoyed it, but it really couldn't live up to all the hype, so I don't understand the folks who want to go see it over and over.  The songs are spot on, but I spent much of the show thinking-meh, yes Mormons are funny, but is there more?  There was more, but I had to wait until the end.  The performances and staging are very well done, but I don't believe it will become a classic.

Sunday
The rest of the fun bunch arrives Sunday morning and we go for a classic diner brunch at the Skylight diner.  We ear ourselves silly because they have ridiculous options like my chocolate chip banana pancakes drizzled with peanut butter!  On to the Highline!  Beautiful spring day, so it is filled with folks-good people watching.  Sadly my two favorite art installations are gone-the portal-like snippets from the water fountains and the Bells of New York.  but the day is lovely and the flowers are blooming and you can see everything from up here.

A quick peak into Times Square because we have a NYC virgin on this trip and who doesn't want to see Times Square?  Next up is Memphis.  My friend James is in Memphis and of course is the most wonderful part of the show.  He just somehow steals his scenes. Afterwards he lets us on stage-neat-o!! And then we all have dinner with my Dawn-Dawn!  Lovely Daniela Restaurant lets us sit upstairs so that we essentially have our own room and can chat for hours.  On the walk back to the hotel, Dawn 'makes' us stop for cupcakes the size of a quarter at Baked by Melissa.  We bought a dozen, but by the time I got out the camera exactly two were left.  Seriously, these are amazing.  One last drink at our hotel bar before we turn in for the night-weird giant tv outside...

Monday 
We took the subway to get to the Natural History Museum and accidentally got on an express, so we took the 'scenic' route of going up to 125th, crossing sides, and back down to 79th.  But when you get off, the entrance to the museum is right there-you don't even go above ground. How cool is that!  The museum is of course HUGE but we managed to do most of the exhibits.  We saw the planetarium show, the special space exhibit, dioramas, butterfly house, dinosaurs, snack bar and gift shop-phew!  My favorite part in the dinosaur exhibit was the video showing how they reconstructed the T-Rex when Science changed its mind about how we believe the dinos stood and walked.  The exhibit had been up for decades, but with scaffolding and planning they were able to make the changes in place.  Nice job curators!

My next favorite exhibit is the 'order of magnitude' exhibit (my name, not theirs...).  It is on the walkway outside the planetarium and takes you though  something like 70 orders of magnitude by referencing a few physical objects in front of you.  The size of space of mind boggling.  We are a little starving and have time for a quick pizza snack at Pizza Pete's just up the street (recommended by the security guard, turns out to be busy with after-school kids) before heading back to the hotel to change.

Dinner is at the James Beard Foundation which is in a brownstone that used to be James Beards, so we go early to look around.  We poke around the library, only one overlap between his library and mine, not really a surprise.  We say 'Hi' to a lovely random couple who are here for her birthday and the important people that Tonia knows, including Angelo from Top Chef!  How fun is that-he was totally like you would imagine from the show, full of teasing and flirting.

Dinner is of course amazing, we take notes on the food and the food/wine pairing-aren't we fancy.  At the end Lon answers questions and we learn some amazing stuff, like the shrimp chip?  Actually a pounded, soaked, freeze dried, deep fried beef tendon...um, seriously!?!  And the bubbles in the bubble tea?  Not tapioca.  Fruit juice held into bubble form by alginate (or some such...notes are a little fuzzy).  Finally before leaving we grab photos with the James Beard portrait behind us-Thanks James Beard and your foundation for being here and thanks Lon for the amazing meal!

Tuesday
E- and I get up stupid early to catch our flight and take a cab to Newark because it is a once in a lifetime chance to do so without traffic :)

Cheese and Wine in San Francisco, April 2012

A quick trip up to the city with Mandy and Krista to taste California cheeses and wines-brilliant idea!  Turns out that if you want to become a cheesemonger (not a profession I but on my list when I was ten, but maybe now that I am 40 my list should be revised) there are classes for that!  The Cheese School in San Francisco for example-who knew!

And if you want to be a knowledgeable cheese eater instead, you can take classes on that too!  The first available class happened to be all about California cheeses and wines-nice!

The space is small but nicely laid and they don't bring in too many people so it feels intimate, not crowded.  We got to taste 4 wines and 9 cheeses and a bunch of yummy extras (raspberry champagne jelly!).  The instructors were knowledgeable and engaging, one for the cheese, one for the wine.  First they explain about the cheese/wine-where exactly it came from and what was special about it, what to look for during tasting, why they paired this wine with that cheese.  But then they encouraged us to try different pairing, because you just never know what will taste good to you.

We had a fantastically fun time, all the cheese and wine was lovely, we learned interesting tidbits and more about what we liked in wine and cheese and we got to be a bit tipsy and silly.  What's not to love about that!

Jelly Belly factory, April 2012

Took a day off work to go with the neighbors on a trip to the Jelly Belly factory!

If you go on the weekend, you can visit the gift shop and buy Belly Flops, but if you go during the week you can see everything working-way cool.  There are lines of rollers that move boxes, conveyors that move the jelly beans, 60 rotating drums where they add coatings, the shaker/sorter that tosses out the wrong sized beans and stacks of plastic trays holding the beans while drying.  No photography allowed, so you will have to go see for yourself! On the tour you also see a number of portraits made out of the beans and you taste unfinished beans.  Oh, and you get to wear this spiffy hat!

The tour really only takes a half day so we stopped by Tilden park for the afternoon.  Ate a picnic lunch, fed the animals celery, sat in the butterfly garden, walked to lake, skipped stones, and played on the jungle gym-phew!