The Borowitzes

AAAS Conference: Jeff's Perspective

2012-02-21T01:42:00.000-05:00

I was at the AAAS conference with Mariel over the past weekend. It was an incredible and invigorating experience! And I have to give Mariel credit -- a few years ago she went to the AAAS conference and came back so excited and was like "Jeff, you HAVE to go to this - you would love it!". Once again, Mariel knows me better than I know myself!

Anyway, I want to just mention a few things that I thought I enjoyed about the conference. I learned something about the types of symposia that are more enjoyable to attend, but altogether I think I could have been happy going to the AAAS symposia for a week or more.

One set of lectures that I really enjoyed was about quantum computing. I wrote a kind of literature review paper on quantum error correction back in college, but I hadn't thought about any of the concepts in a while. It was definitely a happy occurance for me that a lot of it came back when I saw the lectures. And quantum computing definitely has a lot of very awesome potential benefits. One set of benefits is that it can solve computationally hard problems quicker than a classical computer of the same power. Another set of benefits that I'd forgotten about, but that are really pretty cool, and were discussed by one of the speakers, is that the quantum computer can be set up to simulate quantum systems really well. The speaker showed a whole bunch of intricate quantum systems of many atoms that he simulated which had a lot of weird unexpected properties which could be really useful with some creative engineering.

Another great set of lectures that we went to was about particle physics. There was a guy there from the Large Hadron Collider, which is currently engaged in searching for the Higgs boson. He talked about how by the end of 2012, they'd have enough data to either statistically find the Higgs or know that it didn't exist. One of Mariel's favorite parts of this lecture (and then when she mentioned it, mine too!) was when someone in the audience asked the speakers to reflect on the complexity of experiemental equipment like the LHC, and how much engineering must go into them. The completely sincere reaction of kind of all the speakers was a really condescending "some of my best friends are engineers"-sounding quip. This was such a throwback to MIT for us! We hear a lot about how great engineers are - they're the ones that are so smart that they can build all the amazing toys we have today. But the particle physicists felt that it was so OBVIOUS that they were SO MUCH SMARTER than engineers, that it was really big-hearted of them to give engineers credit for their necessary, if fairly rote and unrewarding work! It's also a great contrast from the policy world, where engineers are pretty much considered the best thing since sliced bread: I guess policy-makers didn't realize that engineers are to be looked down upon for doing boring, meaningless work! [Mariel Comment: While this was a fun throw-back to MIT life, we should mention that Jeff and I love engineers. 50% of the people in our marriage have a degree in engineering.]

We went to a talk about realizing the promise of the human genome. The most interesting talk to me there was an oncologist from the Mayo clinic whose basic idea was to sequence tumor DNA and then apply the standard cancer treatment that applied best to the cancer cells. So he cured a whole bunch of people this way who had like a renal cancer that metasticized to the lungs, and everyone figured was lung cancer. He was able to cure really a large fraction of people by just testing the genomes of the tumors and then applying the right therapies from standard remedies. This was also a cool experience for me because I think it was really the most similar thing I'd seen to the sort of talk that my parents might give professionally.

I don't think I quite understood everything, but a guy did a great analogy between a very simple theoretical near-optimal silicon-transitor based computer and a cell. The smallest logic gates and memory stores were like 4 nanometers. And he looked at a computer made of these little bits that used the same amount of energy and was the same size as a human cell. And he calculated sort of the amount of computation necessary for a cell to reproduce. Cells reproduce in 40 minutes, but if you try to make the perfect silicon computer do the same amount of computation, it takes like 6 days. So our body is way more effient than the best computer we could possibly make. And he mentioned some of the tricks that he thought the cell used. While our computers store memory by applying voltage and trapping charge, the cell stores information by proteins being created or folding up in particular ways. The information is accessed only gradually, as proteins diffuse through the cell and collide with the folded protein. So it's using kind of heat and diffusion which happen anyway, rather than applying a voltage, which takes a lot of energy. It was an awesomely different way to think about electronics. And it's so heartening that we've evolved these really crazy-complex biological computing mechanisms, so there's somewhere for us to turn to design new stuff.

AAAS on Sunday

2012-02-21T01:31:00.001-05:00

On Sunday, I attended a couple of panels in the morning, and presented my poster in the afternoon. The first panel I went to was about accelerating scientific process through the public availability of data. Speakers were showing statistics to prove that data-sharing resulted in more research being done for less money, less mistakes being made, and more visibility for the person releasing the data. For example, they argued that $400,000 put towards research results in about 16 peer reviewed papers, but the same amount applied to creating a dataset shared in an open repository can result in 1000 papers. They looked at statistics on the use of data that is currently shared and showed that though there are a few "super star" data sets that are used the most, many of the datasets were used at least a few times - so every dataset has the ability to make a contribution. When data is made available, the statistics showed that the paper using the data is cited 70% more often. However, scientists often don't want to make their data available, because it takes time to format it correctly and to include the relevant meta-data, also, there is some concern that others will do the research they are doing or planned to do. So, one of the biggest challenges is trying to devise carrots and sticks to get scientists to actually share the data.

I wanted to attend a climate talk featuring James Hanson from NASA GISS, but the room was so full that there were many people standing in the hallway, straining to listen through the open door. I did get into a workshop about science communication (though this event was also full – with about 300 people in the room, 30 of them standing or sitting directly on the floor). Experts, including a science correspondent for the New York Times, talked about best practices for scientists talking to the media. The science communication talks are interesting, with some good suggestions - think carefully about your audience and what they want to know (not just what you want to tell them), use appropriate language, prepare your message ahead of time, utilize your PR department, etc. My only issue with the science communication panels at the conference is that they really don't get into the intricacies of the issue. When is a scientist being "muzzled" or censored and when is it really better to direct an organization's message through one central department that employs experts in communication and media? Should all scientists be communicating their information directly to the public, or is that something that should be done selectively based on inclination, aptitude, or position? Surely we can all benefit from improving our communications skills, but the overall issues of science communication are more complicated than that.

I spent the afternoon (from 1pm to 5pm) standing by my poster and talking to people about my work. I was presenting about the problems in the U.S. Weather Satellite Programs. For example, despite the system being more than double its original budget, the United States is now sure to have a gap in weather satellite coverage that will directly affect the quality of 3-5 day forecasts. We will have a year or so during with the satellite that monitors hurricane development will have no back-up in orbit, a situation not experienced for decades.

A number of people came through, and I had a good amount of interest in my poster. Weather was an issue everyone could relate to and understand, and people were interested to learn what was happening with the program. People were also interested to learn about the Space Foundation in general (the logo was prominent on the poster), and I was also able to show a number of people a copy of The Space Report. And, even though weather satellites are not exactly what draw kids into space, I did have a boy about 10 years old (who was visiting the exhibition center with his parents) stop to look at the “satellite” poster. I told him to let me know if he had questions. He stood and stared at the poster for a while, reading thoughtfully, and finally turned and asked, “What’s that word?” I helped him sound out “geosynchronous” and then used another diagram to help him understand what it meant.

I wasn’t able to attend the afternoon panels, because I was at the poster session, but there was another quantum information panel that Jeff went to, and two of the three speakers talked about quantum information experiments being done in space, which turns out to be an ideal environment for quantum communication. One is QEYSSAT, developed by the Institute for Quantum Computing, ComDev, and the Canadian Space Agency, which act as a trusted node in a global quantum network. Another involves similar research being done on the International Space Station.

The plenary speaker for the evening was Ismail Serageldin, the director of the New Library of Alexandria. His topic was science and democracy. Because of everything happening in Egypt, he wasn’t able to attend in person, so the talk was pre-recorded. Surprisingly, this really didn’t diminish his ability to engage the audience, and he was able to integrate video of himself talking with particular images or videos to support his speech. The most interesting aspect of his talk was his experience in Egypt’s revolution. He talked a bit about what was happening in the movement, and how, though protesters had burned down a government building only blocks away, students and others had joined hands to form a circle around the library to protect it. He is currently very involved in trying to form a free and democratic Egypt. Again, it was a pretty inspiring speech about how the open exchange of information and ideas (as promoted by science and scientists) have an important role today.

Our Quantum Valentine's

2012-02-20T13:01:00.001-05:00

The first panel Jeff and I attended on Saturday was called “Aging: Cells to Society.” There was an interesting presentation by Mark Mattson from the NIH Institute on Aging (also a professor at Johns Hopkins). He’s doing research on "Caloric Restriction and the Aging Brain and Body." Essentially, in animal studies they found that reducing calories by 30% overall or putting mice on every-other-day fasts significantly increased their lifespans. It also increased their cognitive function. Initial studies in humans show that you get similar benefits. For example, but cutting calories significantly two days a week, people improve their brain function. It turns out that these effects are most important or have the biggest impact early in life. (Also this is still in the research phase, with some voluntary human trials - but not something you would want to implement yourself without a doctor monitoring the results.)

Another talk was about the effects of exercise on the brain and cognition, given by Arthur Kramer from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. He showed that exercise improves brain function – memory, speed, and other types of thinking. It’s well understood that exercise is good for your body – having a healthy heart, etc. – but it’s interesting to hear that it has such a positive effect on your brain, too. And unlike the caloric restriction research, exercise seems to have important impacts even very late in life. They did experiments with people in their 60s-80s and showed that increased exercise (15-45 minutes a day of cardiovascular exercise – e.g. walking) had statistically significant effects on brain function. Really interesting panel – made me think I shouldn’t have skipped the gym this morning. ☺

They also showed a video that showed that active/ fit children are actually better at reasoning and at multitasking. And they did it with a crazy experiment where the kids are (virtually) run over by a car if they fail the test. Yikes. Video here.

For lunch, Jeff and I ventured out to the West End, where there are some great asian restaurants. We went to Motomachi Shokudo, which is supposed to be one of the most authentic Japanese noodle places around. It's really small - there were less than 15 seats total, but it was very tasty!

It was raining and super windy when we walked to lunch - Jeff's umbrella turned inside-out twice on the way - but once we were back at the conference, there was a moment of blue skies out across the water.

After lunch we went to "Quantum Information Science and Technology: A Global Perspective." The first speaker gave an overview of recent advancements in quantum information. He provided a quick overview of quantum mechanics, noting that the laws of quantum mechanics are completely different from what we’re able to observe in the macroscopic world including the fact that observing the photons changes what they do, and that one photon can be in more than one place at once. He said that the holy grail for this area is a quantum computer, and we aren’t there yet. However, there are a number of important advances being made. He mentioned quantum dots (which Jeff used to work on!), ion capture, etc. There was a really interesting talk about quantum cryptography, and how quantum mechanics might make it possible to have an unbreakable cypher through physically perfect key exchange - if you managed to observe the secure key that's being sent, the act of you getting (i.e. measuring) the key would actually make it unusable - so there is just no point in trying.

A panel on retention of engineering students in universities focused on three major recommendations: integrate everyday examples that are familiar to students, improve and increase faculty-student interaction, and improve spatial visualization skills among students. This panel was decidedly less interesting (more just talking about very general ideas rather than presenting any specific research or insights), so we quickly headed back for more quantum information.

The evening plenary panel was titled “Science is Not Enough” and featured three famous science communicators talking about the importance of not just having the data, but being able to communicate it to the media and the public. The panel was run more like a show or an event rather than a regular panel. The panelists were introduced using video clips (Jim Hanson being introduced on Letterman, Hans Rosling giving a TED talk, etc.) The moderator, Frank Sesno (from the GWU School of Media and Public Affairs, did a good job of keeping the conversation lively, fast-paced and meaningful. There were multiple breaks to bring in video clips to introduce new issues or topics. Hans Rosling was a great speaker – he’s extremely animated, but also very effective in portraying important data. He was up, running around, doing visualizations on stage.

They also had little remotes at every chair for audience participation.

I think this panel was less inspirational than the one yesterday, but it was extremely entertaining and still provided a good amount of useful data.

Again, AAAS made the whole lecture available, so you can check it out!

Here's Jim Hanson on Letterman:

And Hans Rosling giving a TED Talk:

If you don't have time to really watch those whole videos, at least check out this one of Hans Rosling on the BBC - it's only 4 minutes long, but definitely gives you the idea:

After the panel, Jeff and I stopped by a couple of receptions hosted by AAAS and open to all registrants – an international reception and a social media reception. I actually ran into the president of the Canadian Space Agency, Steve MacLean, at one of the receptions. I was able to chat with him for a bit. He is actually attending quite a bit of to the conference – he had arrived Wednesday night and planned to leave Sunday morning. (Which I think is really a testament to how awesome the panels are here). We talked about Earth Observing satellites, and he told me a bit about how Canada is progressing in developing new satellites, and offered to put me in touch with someone who could tell me more about CSA’s data sharing polices, an issue I’m very interested in.

From there, we headed to our official Valentine’s Day dinner. (It wasn't really Valentine's Day, but it was our Valentine's Day dinner, so you could kind of say it was both Valentine's Day and not Valentine's Day at the same time... hence the blog title.) Anyway, we had been excited to do one fancy night out in Vancouver, so I chose one of the fanciest and most highly rated restaurants around – Blue Water Café. Gayot gives it a 15/20 and ranks it high on its “Romantic Restaurants in Vancouver” list. The food was awesome.

We started with a dozen oysters - mostly from the West Coast. They seemed more delicate and small than the East Coast oysters we're used to, and they were very tasty. Then we had Jellyfishstir fried with pork jowl, lotus root, chili and green onions in hoisin sauce and pea shoot salad. That's right, despite my fish-and sea-creatures-phobia and my particular dislike for jellyfish, I did eat this, and it was very good. We had Dungeness Crab + White Asparagus Panna Cotta, which had celery, peanuts, sultanas, and green apple froth. Our main course (which we shared) was Arctic Char with braised leeks, fennel, wakame seaweed, dungeness crab noilly prat beurre blanc with trout caviar and pearl couscous. The fish was great, though I wasn't a fan of the bed of greens - Jeff was more than happy to finish those off, though. Then we finished with lemon grass creme brulee with carrot cake, papaya salsa yoghurt, and ginger sorbet. And we paired everything with some British Columbian Pinot Blanc (for me) and a Chilean Chardonay (for Jeff). Awesome.

We spent most of the evening talking about how interesting and fun the science talks had been, and ended up mostly focusing on the quantum information panel. Jeff had learned about this while studying physics at MIT, and had even written an essay on it, so he gave me a good update on the basics of quantum physics. I found a couple short videos that also explains some of the basics of quantum physics, so you should check it out! (Though I don't think they do nearly as good a job as Jeff!)

We walked all the way home - a couple hours. And we saw that we're back in "pop" country - yay!

Also, we walked down Granville Street - the cute pedestrian street that seeemed to have transformed into Canadian Las Vegas for Saturday night.

AAAS Day Two

2012-02-18T00:41:00.002-05:00

Today was the first full day of the AAAS Annual Meeting, and Jeff and I attended a very full day of lectures.

The first panel I attended was “Developing Integrated Understanding of Global Climate Change Using Dynamic Visualizations.” It was really focused on climate change education tools, especially in K-12 schools. The first speaker, Amy Pallant from the Concord Consortium, talked about a really interesting (and freely available) program that allows students to work with data and models to develop an understanding of the scientific process and how to deal with uncertainty. They look at climate models and then make a scientific claim, they then justify the claim – explaining what evidence they’ve used. They rate their certainty on a 1-5 scale, and then give a rationale for their choice. This helps students recognize the source of their uncertainty, and think about how scientists deal with these unanswered questions. The second panelist was Mark Chandler from the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, and he talked about their efforts to make an educational version of NASA’s global climate model. The model is available online and gives students and teachers access to hundreds of variables and about 50 different programs (teacher training is required to make use of all this material).

The second panel I attended was “Conquering the Final Frontier: The Importance of Space Technologies in All that We Do,” which included Canadian Space Agency President, Steve MacLean, as a panelist. The event was in a small break-out room like all the others, though it was a packed room, with people sitting on the floor along the back wall. All three panelists did a very nice job of conveying the value of space to an audience of non-space experts. Dr. MacLean said that Canada was really at a turning point where many of their research programs are now becoming operational. They are using Radarsat and other data to detect illegal fishing, provide warnings of land slides, monitor illegal ship dumping or oil spills, and a number of other interesting applications. I asked about how they were balancing this shift towards operational projects with the continuation of new research. He said that the budget realities mean that they’re looking for more inexpensive ways to do research, and they are using a program called “FAST” that develops and tests new instruments using balloons and sounding rockets, costing only a few million dollars. He stated that CSA has 720 civil service employees (a number we may want to add to TSR, since we haven’t covered this yet). Also, there are over 8,000 people indirectly employed by CSA, since they contract out about 75% of their work. Another fact we may want to investigate further for TSR is that Dr. MacLean stated that (similar to the U.S.) less than half of the overall space budget for Canada is actually found in CSA. About a third is in their budget, the Department of National Defense has another third of space spending, and the remaining third is divided among about five other agencies. Dr. MacLean told me afterwards that the exact number is very difficult to find – even he wasn’t able to get it exactly – but he is confident it’s over $1 billion. The next speaker talked about space weather – what it is, why it’s a concern for satellites, airplanes, and power stations, and the efforts underway to improve forecasting capabilities. The last speaker was from the European Commission Joint Research Center, and he talked about GMES, though he didn’t really address current funding issues for the program.

I went to a talk about the latest discoveries in particle physics, with updates given by some of the top physicists at both Fermilab and CERN. Sergio Bertolucci, from CERN, was a great speaker – both funny and verygood at explaining the conceptual advancements occurring in this extremelyhigh-tech field. One of the things they’re trying to do is discover the Higgsparticle. He gave this analogy: Searching for the Higgs particle is likefishing. If you’re a fair fisherman, you get your rod and your bate and youfish in the lake. If you catch a fish, you’re happy. If you don’t catch a fish,you have to assume that either 1) there aren’t any fish in the lake, or 2)you’re not a very good fisherman. But we’re not fair fishermen: we’re removingthe water from the lake. And when the water is all gone, if there is a fishthere, we’ll catch it. They believe that by the end of 2012 they will have either found the Higgs-Boson or they will be able to announce with confidence that it doesn't exist. (His analogy about their progress to date was pretty funny too - he showed a picture from Jurassic Park of Dr. Alan Grant surrounded by three velociraptors. He labeled the velociraptors with the acronyms for the different particle colliders (like the Large Haldron Collider where he works), and labeled Dr. Grant "theorists," and he said that their experiments were doing a good job of killing a lot of theories. Not all the theories, he said, pointing to a forest clearing behind the character, the theorists still have some escape routes, but we're working on it.

Jeff was feeling nostalgic with all the physics talk. He even liked how the particle physicists clearly looked down on engineers. Someone in the audience asked about the role of engineers,and the physicists were a bit (unknowingly) condescending. “Oh, no, engineers aregreat, they work really hard too, and we appreciate their efforts.” [i.e.They’re not physicists, of course, but the work they do is really cute, and its nice that they build the machines so we can do the important work.]

Another talk was about fulfilling the promise of the Human Genome Project. The latter talk included a doctor showing examples of specific patients, the types of cancer they had, and how they had used gene sequencing to successfully diagnose and treat them. It was really interesting. Then the next two speakers talked about the actual transportation mechanisms for gene therapy, and I didn't even really understand the title slide.

The plenary lecture (from 5-6pm) as very well attended – probably about as many people as attended the opening ceremonies. The speaker was Mike Lazaridis, the founder of RIM (Blackberry). He also created the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics and a Quantum Computing research center. He was a great speaker – talking about his own life story and then about the importance of basic research in general (focusing on physics, which is his area of interest). It was a very inspiring speech that had people leaving the room very excited about science and the possibilities of the future.

AAAS Actually made a video of the speech available online - check it out!

AAAS Annual Meeting in Vancouver, Canada

2012-02-18T00:27:00.001-05:00

On Thursday, Jeff and I flew to Vancouver, Canada for the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Annual Meeting. Space Foundation sent me to the conference to present a poster on Issues in U.S. Weather Satellite Development. It's a great venue for us, because it's a large conference (1,000s of attendees) filled with people who are interested in science, but are not necessarily experts in space issues. Presenting here lets us access a new, but likely interested audience.

Jeff decided to come to Vancouver with me since the conference is over a long weekend and he wouldn't need to take much time off work. Also, since it's only $90 for a student to register, he decided to actually come along to the conference, too!

We arrived around mid-day on Thursday, checked in at the hotel, and headed to a pub for lunch. We walked on the pedestrian Granville Street for a while, but it was cold and rainy (Vancouver in February, what did we expect?), so we didn't sightsee long.

I was a bit nervous anyway, because I was focused on my upcoming interview with the BBC. They are doing a story on the state of science in America, and how it compares internationally. They wanted to highlight space in the story, and saw that I was attending AAAS as a representative of the Space Foundation. They contacted my company and asked if they could interview me. Of course, I said I'd love to do the interview, so we set it up for 6pm on Thursday evening.

I didn't know quite what to expect, so I chatted with Jeff about current developments in the U.S. space program, about the recent budget release, and about other countries' efforts, just to keep it all fresh in my mind.

The interview was pre-taped for radio. The interviewer was Pallab Ghosh, a science correspondent for BBC who has also interviewed people like Neil Armstrong and Stephen Hawking. (And he has his own wikipedia page!)

The interview ended up being quite long - about 30 minutes. He asked me all sorts of questions - about what's happening at NASA right now, about the James Webb Space Telescope, about the future of Planetary Science, about China's space development, about what the end of the Shuttle era means for inspiring the next generation of kids. He noted that I was quite positive, when many others seem to be very negative. I think that's pretty accurate - overall I think NASA, and U.S. space in general, are doing pretty well. Of course I'd love them to have a larger budget and to be able to do more things quicker, but keeping a stable budget in a harsh budget environment like we're in now is pretty good. NASA has had to make difficult choices to maintain their flagship programs (commercial crew, SLS, Orion, James Webb Space Telescope), but I think they've made good decisions. Things may be delayed as the budget difficulties continue, but I think there are really exciting missions in the works.

The segment that would include my interview should be on the BBC World Service sometime on Monday, so keep an eye out for it! I know they won't keep 30 minutes of material, and I'm really curious (and a bit nervous!) to see exactly what they use and how. I hope it turns out really well!

After the interview, I wanted to get a beer and relax for a bit, but for some reason beer is super expensive in Canada (at the pub we went to for lunch, domestic beer was $7 and cocktails were $6.75), so instead, Jeff and I decided to just go straight to the opening ceremonies, which had just started.

Opening ceremonies were really interesting. The AAAS President, Nina Federoff, gave a speech. She talked about her life story – how she’d come from a Russian family with Russian as the first language, had a baby at 17 and dropped out of school, talked her way into college and ended up working on genetics with Barbara McClintock (who later won a Nobel Prize for her work), became the science advisor to Condoleezza Rice, and a number of other experiences. Part of her lecture was a very technical description of the genetics work she had done, and part was a discussion about science communication and the issue of genetically modified organisms. It was an interesting and very substantive start to the conference – though it was a bit odd to have a scientific lecture at an opening ceremony event, you got the feeling the conference was started and you were already learning new things. The science communications issues she brought up really had people buzzing at the reception afterwards.

Some appetizers and a cash bar were available at the reception. During the reception, the Canadian Governor General spoke, and they lit the huge Olympic torch sculpture outside the Convention Center, which was very impressive to see.

They also had a couple of Canadian Mounties - awesome.

Jeff and I had dinner at a restaurant called "Coast" near our hotel. They had amazing sushi, and the gourmet prawn mac and cheese was great - a little sweet, very creamy, and ridiculously filling (it's just supposed to be an appetizer!).

Valentine's Day

2012-02-18T00:05:00.002-05:00

Jeff and I had a trip to Vancouver planned for the weekend of Valentine's Day, so on the actual holiday we decided to just cook a meal together at home. We found a good recipe for Pan-Seared Scallops on Linguine with Tomato-Cream Sauce. There were no sea scallops at Whole Foods, so we ended up going with Bay Scallops, but I think it still worked out well. The sauce was very subtle and a bit tangy - not like your typical cream sauce.

Jeff also picked up some cheese (brie - my favorite!), and we opened a bottle of Prosecco we'd been saving for a special occasion.

After dinner, we watched, "Midnight in Paris," which I loved. It isn't exactly a love story, but it's pretty happy (had me smiling and laughing throughout), and it's very quirky and interesting (it's a Woody Allen film, so that's not surprising). I'd highly recommend it! (And so would the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences - it's nominated for an Oscar for Best Picture!)

Budget Day!

2012-02-17T23:58:00.001-05:00

The President's FY 2013 Budget Request was released on Monday. I was at work by about 7:45pm and stayed for twelve hours just reading through, analyzing, and reporting on the budget. At work we always track the budget and provide a comparison among the various proposals (last years' numbers, the President's proposal, congressional numbers, etc.). This time I had the idea to add graphs so that you could really see what's happening to the budget at a glance. I think they turned out really well!

Overall NASA's budget is basically flat (down 0.3%), and most of their programs are doing okay. James Webb Space Telescope got increased funding, which should allow it to be completed and launched in 2018. Ensuring James Webb got enough money required reductions in other areas, which is definitely a very difficult decision, but I did argue earlier this year that the program should be continued.

Planetary science is one of the areas that saw the biggest cuts, so while we'll have a couple exciting Mars missions in the near future (Curiosity rover landing in August!), there isn't much in the pipeline - the president essentially canceled the two missions we had planned to do in cooperation with Europe.

Karaoke with the CEA

2012-02-17T23:51:00.001-05:00

I mentioned in my last post that Jeff had been at work late all week working on the Economic Report of the President. Well, on Friday of that week, they finally finished the very last draft and sent it off for printing. To celebrate, he and a bunch of his coworkers planned an evening out at Muzette in Adam's Morgan - a Korean Karaoke place.

Unlike normal karaoke in a bar, at this place you get a private room to do karaoke with just your group of friends (just like in Japan and Korea!), and there is a button in the room to press anytime anyone wants to order food or drinks. Jeff and I got food there - the Korean Spice Ramen and the Soon Dubu Jjigae was really spicy and great, too.

Everybody ate, danced, and drank for about three hours!

After we finished up our reserved time, a bunch of us headed over to Grand Central for some dancing. I've had a few bad experiences going out dancing in Adam's Morgan (over crowded bars with lots of out-of-control undergraduates), but I actually liked Grand Central. There was no cover, we had plenty of space to dance, the music was good, and they were playing Spiderman and Spiderman 2 on the TV's on the dance floor.

Happy Hour at 19th

2012-02-17T23:44:00.000-05:00

Last week we went to happy hour at 19th, which is at the corner of 19th and I Streets. The bar seems to have changed owners every year that I've been here, so even though I'd been to a bar in this location, I'd never really been to 19th. I thought it was a pretty good place - modern design with big open windows. The happy hour specials were pretty good ($3 shock top), and I enjoyed their nachos (though they would have been better with more toppings).

The main reason we chose 19th for this week was because it was nearby George Washington University, and the GW Space Society (GWSS) was hosting a movie night later that evening. So after a couple beers at happy hour, I headed down there with a couple friends for pizza and "Spaceballs." I'd only seen Spaceballs once before, but I remember thinking it wasn't that funny, but apparently all my other space friends love it, so I thought I'd better give it another try. After seeing it again, I really think I was right the first time. Ah well, I enjoyed the pizza!

Jeff was planning to come to happy hour, but didn't actually show up until after the movie was completely over - he's been at work really late all week finishing up the Economic Report of the President!

Super Bowl XLVI

2012-02-17T23:38:00.001-05:00

Last Sunday was Super Bowl XLVI, and Jeff and I had some friends over to celebrate. Whole Foods had an awesome deal with two (very large) pizzas, 30 wings, two bags of chips, and two 2-liter sodas for $30. Other people brought snacks and beer too, so we had plenty of food!

The group that arrived before the game started all participated in a Super Bowl squares gambling game - there is a matrix with a 100 squares, each representing the ones-digits of the score. At the end of the first three quarters, you find the person whose name is in the square matching the score at that time, and they win $20. The person whose name is in the square matching the score at the end of the game gets $40. Our friend Kate won the first two quarters (one team scored 10 points and the other 0 in the second quarter, so it was the exact same winning numbers!), and I won the third quarter. We didn't have an even number of people playing, so we had actually only filled out 98 of the 100 squares. And, believe it or not, despite the fact that there was only a 2% chance, one of the blank squares had the winning numbers at the end of the game. We hadn't planned for that, so we divided the money among the players still left at the end of the game.

The actual superbowl was a pretty entertaining game - it stayed pretty close throughout. The strangest point was definitely at the end. The Patriots were up by two points, but the Giants had the ball near the Patriots end zone with about a minute left. They wanted to run down the clock and then kick an easy field goal to win the game. But the Patriots knew the Giants didn't really want to score, so on one play near the endzone, the Patriots defense just got out of the way and didn't defend at all. The Giants running back, Ahmed Bradshaw, got the ball, started running, realized he no one was trying to stop him, and then sort of tried to stop and sit down at the one yard line before tipping over slowly into the endzone. Strangest Super Bowl-winning touchdown ever. (The Patriots did get the ball back with some time left, but didn't manage to score.)

Hunger Games

2012-02-11T22:04:00.000-05:00

Since I'm on book-reviewing roll at the moment, I thought I'd add in one more. I actually read all three books in the Hunger Games Trilogy while Jeff and I were on our honeymoon, but I was thinking of them recently because Mamie is now hooked on the series, too. I helped her set up the Kindle app for her iPad, and connected it to my own account, so she has access to all the same books I have. She doesn't usually read a lot of fantasy or scifi, but that's mostly what I have, so she decided to try out "Hunger Games." She really liked it, and has read the whole series in just about a week.

The books are set in a distopian future world (clearly geographically modeled in the U.S.), in which 12 districts that surround the Capitol, each specializing in a different industry. In the past, there had been an uprising against the Capitol, and now every year each district has to send one boy and one girl (ages 12-18) to participate in the "Hunger Games" - essentially a televised fight to the death. It sounds like a very dark premise (and it is), but the books are actually pretty light reading - they're actually written for teens.

In addition to chatting with Mamie about them, I have also had Hunger Games in mind because they are making a movie out of it that's due out in March (can't wait!). There have been two trailers so far:

The Help

2012-02-11T21:42:00.001-05:00

Since the February book club book was a repeat from December, I ended up spending the month reading "The Help" by Kathryn Stockett. It's a book about a group of African American maids in Mississippi in the 1960s, and about a white woman who works with them to write a book about what it's like to be a black maid in a white household at that time and place in history. The topics dealt with in the book are important and interesting to read about, though the book was not particularly serious or heavy in general. Overall, I thought the book was pretty good - I read it at the gym and it kept me entertained.

I thought the note from the author at the end was interesting, too. She actually did grow up in Jackson, Mississippi and had an African American maid that she was very close to, though she never actually did ask her what it was like to be a maid. She eventually moved to New York City. I really liked this excerpt about how she'd respond to people's comments after she told them she was from Mississippi: 'To people who smiled and said, “I’ve heard it’s beautiful down there,” I’d say, “My hometown is number three in the nation for gang-related murders.” To people who said, “God, you must be glad to be out of that place,” I’d bristle and say, “What do you know? It’s beautiful down there.”'

It's not that I think it's good to always be contrary, but I know that feeling of always wanting people to have the full story - appreciate the good and the bad.

East of Eden

2012-02-11T21:09:00.000-05:00

While I'm blogging about book club books, I thought I'd skip back to an earlier one. Beth had chosen East of Eden by John Steinbeck. I had read the book before, but it'd been so long that I didn't remember what happened. (Though I did remember that I liked it.)

The book takes place primarily in the Salinas Valley in California. It follows the Trask family through multiple generations, exploring the relationship between brothers (first Adam and Charles and then Caleb and Aron), fathers (first Adam and Charles' father, who is obsessed with the military and loves Adam more, and then Adam as the father of Caleb and Aron, who also seems to love Aron more), and husband and wife (Adam and the super creepy Cathy). The story doesn't just have one big arch that it builds up to and then resolves - it's rare that you're reading anxiously, flipping the page to try and figure out how things will turn out. On the other hand, the writing is just so beautiful and interesting so you want to keep reading. He develops the characters well. My favorite character is Sam Hamilton. He's just a fun, upbeat character, and is at the heart of teasing out the issues going on in the various relationships.

Overall, definitely a book I would recommend!

All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten

2012-02-10T18:09:00.005-05:00

Our most recent book club book was "All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten," a collection of short stories by Robert Fulghum. I thought it was a really nice book - I laughed quite a bit reading the story about "Jumper Cables and the Good Samaritan" [...Besides, this guy only asked me if I had jumper cables. He didn’t ask me if I knew how to use them... So I get out my cables, and we swaggered around being all macho and cool and talking automobile talk. We look under the hood of his rig, and there’s no battery. “Hell,” I said, “there’s your problem right there. Somebody stole your battery.” “Dang,” he said. “The battery is under the backseat, dear,” said his nice sweet wife. “Oh.” So we took all the luggage and travel-junk out of the backseat and hauled the seat out into the parking lot and, sure enough, there it was. A battery. Right there. Just asking for jumper cables to be laid on it. Anyway, the sum of our knowledge was that positive poles and negative poles were involved, and either one or both cars ought to be running, and six-volt and twelve-volt batteries and other-volt batteries did or did not work out. I thought he knew what he was doing, and kind of went along with it. Guess he did the same. And we hooked it all up real tight and turned the ignition key in both cars at the same time. And there was this electrical arc between the cars that not only fried his ignition system, it welded the jumper cables to my battery and knocked the baseball cap off his head.]

I also really loved the story "Crayolas," in which he talks about getting his young grandson a starter box of crayolas, and then gets himself a set, and then basically starts buying them for everyone he knows, arguing "Crayolas plus imagination... these make for happiness..."

"Grandfather in Training" is also really cute, where he talks about all his childhood thoughts about the grandfather he wish he'd had, and how they've now morphed into thoughts about the grandfather he wants to be. Very sweet.

Anyway, there are a bunch of fun stories, and it was fun to discuss in book club which ones people thought were really good and what drew them in!

Oh, and if you're wondering if the author's name seems familiar - one reason might be that he was the author of one of our wedding readings! Here it is, if you want to see it again:

Union by Robert Fulghum
You have known each other from the first glance of acquaintance to this point of commitment. At some point, you decided to marry. From that moment of yes, to this moment of yes, indeed, you have been making commitments in an informal way. All of those conversations that were held in a car, or over a meal, or during long walks – all those conversations that began with, “When we’re married”, and continued with “I will” and “you will” and “we will” – all those late night talks that included “someday” and “somehow” and “maybe” – and all those promises that are unspoken matters of the heart. All these common things, and more, are the real process of a wedding.

The symbolic vows that you are about to make are a way of saying to one another, “You know all those things that we’ve promised, and hoped, and dreamed – well, I meant it all, every word.”

Look at one another and remember this moment in time. Before this moment you have been many things to one another – acquaintance, friend, companion, lover, dancing partner, even teacher, for you have learned much from one another these past few years. Shortly you shall say a few words that will take you across a threshold of life, and things between you will never quite be the same.

For after today you shall say to the world –This is my husband. This is my wife.

Pre-Blog Blogging

2012-02-10T13:04:00.001-05:00

In my previous post, I mentioned that if I had kept a blog while I was in Morocco, I bet I would have mentioned tagine. And that got me thinking... I didn't keep a blog while I was in Morocco, but I did used to send occasional email updates home, which is sort of like a blog. (And it turns out I didn't specifically mention tagine in my Morocco email... but I did talk about how great the food was in general!) So now I've been scouring my old computer files and very old (pre-gmail) emails to try and find some of these, and I've added them to the blog with the correct dates attached!

Book Club, Wine Club, Club Club

2012-02-10T10:23:00.005-05:00

Kris and Emma hosted the February Book & Wine club get together. Since the Super Bowl was on Sunday, they opted to change the meeting to a Saturday night. And since we were getting together for dinner and wine on a Saturday night, we figured we might as well all go out dancing afterwards.

The evening started with great appetizers - bacon-wrapped dates and assorted cheeses. Quite a few people were able to make it this time, so we ended up with nine different wines to try (Malbec this time!). Since there were so many, we started the tasting while dinner was still getting ready.

Ready to start the tasting!

I don't think my comments were very complex (or even useful), but I try!

We chatted about the book - "All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten" by Robert Fulghum. It was one of Kris' favorite books, and it was fun to hear which of the short stories people enjoyed most, and what they connected to.

Book & Wine Club!

Probably talking about the book... or the wine.

For dinner, Kris and Emma made Vegetable Tagine - a great Moroccan dish (kind of like a stew) that is made in a special container (called a tagine). If I had kept a blog back when I traveled in Morocco, I'm sure I would have mentioned it!

Tagine and Couscous!

Great host!

After dinner, we finished the wine tasting and revealed that Jaisha was the winner! Yay!

Proud to take home first place!

(And, surprisingly, the cheapest bottle of Malbec we could find - $8 - did not come in last. I think the main thing I learned from the Malbec tasting was that I just really like Malbec - I thought they all tasted great!

All good.

After wrapping things up at their apartment, we headed to Policy, a club just down the street. There were enough of us that it was economical to get table service, so we had space to put our things and sit if we wanted to. And it came with a couple bottles of Prosecco and vodka and mixers (these things were probably less necessary at this point). We all had a fun time dancing at the club, though I think the consensus was that between book club, wine club, and the club club, it was a little too much adventure for one night! I think in the future, we'll be back to relaxing Sunday evening book and wine club.

West Wing Tour!

2012-02-10T09:34:00.000-05:00

Quite a while ago, Jeff offered to give one of our friends from the French Embassy a tour of the White House. He was going to bring his co-worker, Etienne, but then due to some changes in plans among other people, he got dropped from the roster. We told him to make it up, we'd plan a tour on his birthday (January 29th) and he could bring his own friends. Then, the morning of his birthday, we got an email that all West Wing tours had been canceled. (Sad, but also kind of cool - how many people can say that the President of the United States interfered with their birthday plans?)

We rescheduled, and were hoping that the third time would be the charm... and it was! We had a very nice tour of the West Wing. (One of the security people even spoke French, which was kind of cool for them.) It was Etienne's birthday tour, but he actually brought Jeff and I a gift - a really nice bottle of French champagne!

Lose It

2012-02-04T15:40:00.002-05:00

A couple weeks ago, my friend Stephanie blogged about a website called LoseIt.com. It's a website where you can track the number of calories in everything you eat and also track calories burned through exercise.

I had recently been thinking about trying to track the number of calories Jeff and I eat, because our diet changes so often. I know our regular meals - lunch Jeff makes in advance and packs for us to have at work and simple dinner like pasta or Indian food - makes for a pretty healthy day of meals. But I also know we often go out to eat with friends, or grab fast food, or eat at happy hour. The problem was, I didn't have a sense of how often we're doing each - mostly regular, healthy days or mostly unhealthy exceptions - or how many extra calories we were generally getting when we went out. So when I saw Stephanie's post, I thought I'd give it a try.

I've been using Lose It for almost two weeks now, and I really like it. Even though I'm trying to use it just for tracking, just knowing how my calories are adding up probably makes me eat a bit healthier, too. (And I entered a weight loss goal when I signed up, because I figured it couldn't hurt!)

Every day or so, I just log into the website and put in the foods I've had - most of them already exist in their database, but you can also add new ones. If I have a particular brand in front of me with all of the nutritional info, I usually enter it exactly.

Here's a couple examples of what the interface looks like:

Healthy day last Monday!

That lunch at Brasserie Beck definitely added up, but it was worth it - so tasty!

Married Filing Jointly

2012-02-04T15:21:00.000-05:00

Jeff and I did our taxes this morning - our first time doing them together as a married couple. We started using TaxAct.com, because it's cheaper than TurboTax, and though the user interface doesn't have quite as many bells and whistles, it's basically the same.

Filing jointly was pretty straightforward - we just entered all of our W-2 and other info into one long list, rather than doing it separately. The only crazy thing was when we got to the DC taxes part. For federal taxes, there are two options for married couples: married filing separately or married filing jointly. For DC taxes, there are three options: married filing jointly, married filing separately, and married filing separately on the same return. We just assumed married filing jointly would make the most sense, but the TaxAct program suggested checking the return for the various types of filing, and when we switched to "married filing separately on the same return," it saved us about $1000! Crazy!

Externs' Last Day

2012-02-04T15:04:00.002-05:00

For the past month, we've had two MIT Externs in the office. (Extern basically just means they're interns, but found their internship position through this special MIT program.) They've done a tremendous amount of high quality work, and they seem to have really enjoyed the experience, too. I'm planning to write more about the whole program in a later post, but for now I thought I'd just talk about their last day.

We spent almost the whole morning meeting with both of them to get the full summary of some of the independent research they'd been doing - Senthil (who is in the MBA program) looked at how the type of thinking that venture capital firms use might be applied to distributing funding for NASA projects, and Zaira had looked at the recommended technology roadmaps in a number of past NASA-related reports, looking for intersections among the recommendations. They had also just completed an indexing task for The Space Report, and walked us through the method they'd used.

By the time we'd finished all of that, it was time to get in a cab and head to the restaurant for their good-bye lunch. We went to Brasserie Beck, which has a great menu. I had the Spicy Red Thai Curry Mussels, which came with a big bowl of Belgian frites and three dipping sauces. The mussels were great, and the sauce was so good, I probably ate half a loaf of bread just getting the sauce.

Brasserie Beck also has great Belgian beers on tap, so I had their Antigoon Double Blond and the Brabo Pils. The guys all had Delirium, which is another great Belgian beer.

We were having such a nice time chatting about how things had gone over the past month and hearing their reflections on the experience (they learned a lot from editing the Space Report, they said, and they really appreciated the chance to sightsee, go to events, and meet people in the space community, in addition to their tasks in the office), that we even stayed for dessert. A few of us shared the Belgian Waffle with cinnamon apples and dolche de leche ice-cream.

The restaurant is right across from the Tesla store - it's the sister-company of SpaceX, and they sell electric roadsters. The interns had never seen it, so we headed in, and they got a picture in the showroom car!

Tesla Roadster

Happy Hour: Ceiba

2012-02-04T14:35:00.002-05:00

After the big work event on Wednesday night, everyone in the office was pretty tired on Thursday. Our CEO and a couple others from the Colorado office had come into town for the event, and were headed home that afternoon, so we all went out for lunch together. After that, the boss told everybody to feel free to go home early, so I was able to head home to rest for a bit. I probably could have just fallen asleep at 5pm, but I figured since I'd planned the happy hour, I better get up and go.

The place we chose this week was Ceiba, which has Latin Fusion cuisine. At happy hour, which only goes until 6pm, the bar food menu is half price (a great deal) and the traditional cocktails (martinis, mojitos, etc.) are $5. Sangria is $5 all day on Thursdays. I got there just a few minutes before 6pm and ordered Beef Empanadas Argentinas, which have olives, egg, raisins, and spicy rocoto dipping sauce, and Guacamole de Molcajete, which is made fresh to order. Both were very good (although I was a bit surprised later when I looked up the calorie count and found that empanadas usually have 200 or more calories a piece - and there are four in the appetizer! So it was a pretty high-calorie snack. Ah, well. I also had their white sangria, which I thought was very good. And they put these cute little plastic bulls on the sides of the cups as decoration.

Two other people in our group ordered the “Hot Lava Stone” Queso Fundido, which was bubbling hot Oaxacan cheese with chorizo, chile poblano, caramelized onions, served in a molcajete. I tried a bit of that too - just as good as you would imagine hot, melt-y cheese to be!

We got a great spot in the window, and for the most part the service was really good (the servers were very nice and accommodating, and quick on food and other things, though a couple times they mixed things up and forgetting to bring us our drinks).

We had a fun group of people, too - Kate brought another friend, Eric, from NOAA, and Beth and Bryan were there from NASA, and we had a really interesting conversation about the actual process of putting satellites together and how they try to implement lessons learned from project to project. Al was there too, and was a bit out of the loop on some of the satellite talk, though I think he still had a good time. Jeff and Angela both showed up a little later on.

Space Foundation and Australian Embassy Event

2012-02-04T14:17:00.002-05:00

Wednesday evening there was an event co-hosted by the Space Foundation and the Australian Embassy in DC, held at the embassy (which is conveniently located just about a block from our apartment). It was a really nice reception, with a number of friends attending (and Jeff was able to come, too!) Zaira and Senthil, our interns, also had a nice time. I was able to introduce them to a wide variety of people in the space industry, including the NASA Administrator, Charlie Bolden, who spoke with them for a good five minutes - pretty cool!

The reception only went until about 9pm, and then a fairly large group headed over to Beacon Bar and Grill down the street, and from there on to Bar Code. It ended up being quite a long night!

Embassy of Australia

West Wing Tour with Coworkers

2012-02-04T13:31:00.001-05:00

We've had two MIT Externs, Zaira and Senthil, working in our office for the month of January, and Jeff set up a West Wing tour for them for Tuesday night. My coworkers Tommy and Ryan, and Ryan's wife Kay, also came on the tour. Since there were a few hours between work and the tour, Tommy, Zaira, Jeff, and I headed back to our apartment and ordered Chinese for dinner. I think everybody had a really nice time!

Mariel Cooks Monday: Spicy Corn Salad and Vegetable Enchiladas

2012-02-04T13:15:00.002-05:00

This Monday, I cooked Mexican food for dinner - a spicy corn salad and vegetable enchiladas. The enchiladas were really easy to make, which is why I decided to do the salad, too. Neither one took much time, but they were both very tasty. (Healthy, too - 343 calories in a serving of enchiladas, 115 in the salad) If I did it again, I think I'd use a spicier enchilada sauce (I bought mild at the store), but that's just personal preference.

Spicy Corn Salad

Ingredients
1 ripe avocado, seeded and diced
2 cups grape or cherry tomatoes, halved
1 cup frozen whole-kernel corn, thawed
1/2 cup chopped fresh cilantro
1/4 cup finely chopped red onion
3/4 teaspoon salt
1 (2.25-ounce) can sliced ripe olives, drained
1 poblano chile, chopped
1 jalapeño pepper, seeded and minced
3 tablespoons cider vinegar
1 teaspoon grated lime rind
2 tablespoons fresh lime juice
Curly leaf lettuce leaves (optional)

Preparation
Combine first 9 ingredients in a large bowl; toss gently.Combine vinegar, lime rind, and juice. Drizzle over salad; toss gently to coat. Let stand 10 minutes. Serve salad in lettuce-lined bowls, if desired.

Vegetable Enchiladas
Ingredients
1 tablespoon vegetable oil
1/2 onion, chopped
3 qts. baby spinach
1 cup frozen corn
About 1 can (19 oz.) enchilada sauce
9 all-corn tortillas, quartered
1 cup refried beans
About 1 cup cooked rinsed black beans
1 cup plus 2 tbsp. shredded Monterey jack cheese
6 tablespoons chopped green onions

Preparation
1. Preheat oven to 375°. Heat oil in a large frying pan over medium heat. Add onion and cook until translucent, about 4 minutes. Add spinach and cook, stirring as needed, until almost completely wilted. Add corn and cook until hot. Set aside.
2. Put 6 ovenproof baking dishes* (each about 12-oz. capacity) on a rimmed baking sheet. Working with one dish at a time, spoon in 2 tbsp. enchilada sauce. Top with 2 tortilla quarters, 2 rounded tbsp. each refried beans and black beans, 1 tbsp. cheese, and 2 more tortilla quarters, pushing tortillas down gently as you layer them over cheese and beans. Spoon in 1/3 cup (packed) vegetable mixture, then 2 more tortilla quarters, 3 tbsp. enchilada sauce, and 2 tbsp. cheese. Repeat layering with remaining dishes.
3. Bake enchiladas until bubbling, cheese is melted, and tortillas are starting to brown on edges, about 30 minutes. Sprinkle with green onions.
*Or use a 9- by 13-in. baking dish, spreading one-third of sauce over bottom; top with one-third of tortillas, the beans, one-third of cheese, one-third of tortillas, the vegetable mixture, remaining tortillas, remaining sauce, and remaining cheese.

Superdesk

2012-01-29T19:31:00.000-05:00

This has been a very productive working weekend, which was great. Things have been very busy both with work and with school since at least December. I figured after going home for Christmas break, I would be refreshed and ready to tackle all that work again in January. But instead I came back in January and felt like, "Oh man, all that work is still here waiting to be done? Ugh." So not really particularly motivated. And then, because of the nature of my schedule - Monday through Thursday at the Space Foundation, Friday through Sunday for PhD work - if I go out of town for a couple weekends, or if I tackle some non- school or work project, I can easily go weeks without making real progress on my PhD research.

Somehow, this situation leads to the least logical reaction: I feel like I have so much work to get done, and so little time to do it (not even sure it's possible to get things done by the deadlines/plan), that I just can't get my self to start working on it. The feeling reminds me of when you eat something completely normal - like oatmeal - and then get sick. Then anytime you even think about eating oatmeal again, you feel ill. You just have a completely illogical aversion to perfectly normal oatmeal. (To be clear, for me, oatmeal is work in that story.)

Anyway, the stress of needing to get work done but never feeling that I'm really making enough progress was pretty acute this past week. Jeff was really motivating, though, and kept me positive. I managed to have some good days at work, but it's been the weekend when I really made great progress.

I mentioned in an earlier post that everything I was waiting on for a project at work seem to come in on Thursday. I'm writing the first section of The Space Report 2012, our annual publication at the Space Foundation - it's the first year we've done this in-house, rather than working with a contractor. I've had most of a draft done for two months, but there were a few pieces of information I needed. I wanted to interview a space spin-off company. I needed a copy of NASA's Spinoff 2011 book, and I needed an English version of JAXA's spinoff report (I had it in Japanese... not that helpful). I'd been working on getting these things for weeks, maybe months, and then all of them arrived, one way or another, on Thursday.

I don't normally work on Space Foundation stuff on Fridays (it's my day off, and meant for PhD work), but to keep the whole project on schedule, it just made much more sense for me to finish up the draft over the weekend; then others could look over it and start editing on Monday. I worked from home and really got into it. Other than breaks for meals, I mostly read and wrote from the time I woke up until almost 11pm. But by the end, I had a complete, well-researched, decently-written draft. Such a great feeling!

Then on Saturday, Jeff helped me tackle a big project I'd been wanted to work on related to my PhD - gathering, updating, and cleaning my data. I'm looking at all of the climate-relevant satellites that existed between 2000 and 2020, including lots of attributes about the satellites (their orbits, inclinations, agencies involved, etc.), the instruments on the satellites (resolution, accuracy, etc.), and the measurements (what they do, how they're used). I needed to stitch all of this information together from three separate databases. (They're actually all organized by the same organization - CEOS, but for some reason, they really aren't very well coordinated, and need careful work to put together.)

It was a big task, but Jeff set up what I like to call the "superdesk" (really it's our kitchen table pulled out to full length so we can work side by side), and we worked on the data from the time I woke up until around 9pm. And at the end, I had a wonderful, updated, clean dataset to work with for my research, and a great table that I needed for a project for my graduate research assistantship. Yay!

There is still a lot of work to be done, both for Space Foundation and for my PhD, but it feels so awesome to have made all of this progress this weekend!

Kennedy Center - National Symphony Orchestra

2012-01-28T21:54:00.002-05:00

I've had events almost every weeknight this week, and Thursday was no exception. After a busy day at work in which almost every piece of data or document I'd been waiting on all appeared at once (awesome, but slightly overwhelming!), I headed out with both of our MIT interns to attend JAXA's New Year's event. They began by presenting an update about their budget and plans for the coming fiscal year, and then there was a reception with lots of sushi. It was a nice event, and Jaisha, Stephanie, and other friends were there, so it was a great opportunity to catch up. I also had the chance to introduce the interns to many friends and colleagues in the space community.

Jeff met me at the JAXA event and we took a cab from their to the Kennedy Center. That was not part of the original Thursday plan, but one of his co-workers had tickets to see the National Symphony Orchestra from the President's Box, but couldn't use them. Jeff and another co-worker both responded at the same time that they'd be interested in using them. They flipped a coin for it, and Jeff lost. Judd (the coworker that one the coin toss) texted a friend about going. But then it turned out that friend couldn't make it either, so he gave the tickets to Jeff and me (Yay! Thanks, Judd!).

Even the tickets look exciting!

Inside the president's box!

The NSO performed three different pieces. The first was Armonica by Jörg Widmann. It was written for the glass harmonica, an instrument invented by Benjamin Franklin that's only played about about five people in the entire world. The piece was really eerie-sounding and dissonant - interesting to listen to.

The second piece was Clarinet Concerto in A major, K.622 by Mozart. The Clarinet soloist was actually Jörg Widmann, the composer of the first piece. He was really incredible, and he also kind of danced and moved around while he played, which was fun to watch.

The last piece of the evening was Schubert's Symphony No. 9 in C major, D.944. It was a familiar song, and fun to see live.

I really enjoyed the show (and the presidential chocolates, M&M's, and champagne and intermission), but I feel like I don't know nearly as much about orchestral music and performances as I do about theater or dance. Or maybe it's just generally harder to understand and appreciate. With theater or dance, I'm really engaged and noticing all of the little developments and changes. At the NSO, it sounded like really nice music the whole time, but I couldn't really differentiate any small changes, it was just music, and then more music, and then more music. I wouldn't be able to call out any particular part of the movement to comment on it afterwards.

This is actually one of the reasons I was really excited to stay after the show and attend the discussion with the conductor, Jörg Widmann (the Clarinet soloist), and Christa Schönfeldinger (the glass harmonica player). I just couldn't imagine what they'd have to say. With a play or dance, you are interpreting things differently, you make decisions about costumes and sets and all sorts of things. With the symphony, it seems like you just play the songs, and it's pretty straightforward.

The discussion was really interesting. They started by talking about the Glass Harmonica, and how Christa had her instrument made specifically for her and learned to play because she and her husband had randomly taken an interest in it. It's a very expensive instrument and rare, so there are no teachers and no students - only about five people in the world play it. She played a short piece Mozart had written for the glass harmonica, which was really interesting because it was so different from the eerie sound of the first movement in the show - it sounded much more like traditional classical music.

Someone asked the conductor if they ever change the piece - adding or subtracting instruments. He said that you really shouldn't do that, and he never does. The music should be played as the composer wrote it. He did talk about how he has the instruments spread out differently than many other orchestras - organizing things in a way more like they would have been in Mozart's time (the standard organization changed with the advent of the radio to make the sound work better for microphones).

Jörg Widmann talked about how much he enjoyed doing the Clarinet solo, and how much he loves Mozart's Clarinet Concerto in A major. He said he thought it had surprising and interesting moments. "You'd think it would go, dum-dum-dum-dum-dum major, but no, it's minor!" That was really interesting, because it's exactly the kind of detail I don't really pick up on. I'll have to brush up on my musical education.

After leaving the theater, we stopped off at Happy Hour (I'd planned it, so I thought I'd better drop by, even if it was late). Alaina was back in town for the weekend, so we got to see her, along with regular DC friends like Tommy, Jaisha, and Shirag.

Burns Night

2012-01-28T21:09:00.005-05:00

Wednesday night Al invited a group of people over for a scotch-tasting party. Then, during the day, I happened to find out that he had inadvertently planned his scotch tasting on Burns Night - a major Scottish-themed holiday in the UK celebrating the Scottish poet Robert Burns! [Al pointed out that it was also the day that the question for the referendum on independence was introduced in the Scottish Parliament - so a big day for Scotland overall!]

I celebrated Burns Night when I was studying at Cambridge University - I even had real haggis (and liked it)! Then about a month later, I actually traveled to Scotland with my mom. (It was an awesome trip, we took the train there, stayed in a hostel in Edinburgh with a bunch of Venezuelan students, and took a day-trip around the Highlands. It's a beautiful country!

That's Loch Ness!

And then less than a month after that, I went to Scotland again, for the World Model United Nations conference. And Al was there too!

Out on the streets of Edinburgh!

Anyway, back to last Wednesday. I got excited about the idea of celebrating Burns Night. Cooking real haggis wasn't really an option, since you can't really get a sheep's stomach to cook it in, not are sheep heart, lungs, or liver readily available. (And let's be realistic, since I almost never cook meat, what are the chances I'm going to attempt heart, lung, and liver?) However, I found an awesome recipe for vegetarian haggis (which, as far as I can tell, is only related to haggis in that it is a combination of a bunch of random things and looks like a big, tasty mush at the end). The traditional sides for haggis are "neeps and tatties" (turnips and potatoes), so those were easy.

Al agreed to shop with me after work, and we picked up all of the ingredients, went back to his place, and started cooking. The vegetarian haggis was actually pretty involved, so between that and the sides, we probably spent about two hours preparing dinner.

Al made the "neeps"

Monitoring the haggis

Once everything was in the oven, and Jeff and Sol had joined us, we decided to start the scotch tasting.

I'm not a big scotch drinker (and we were tasting before dinner, remember), so I had just the tiniest glasses, and added a bit of water. Al had really nice bottles of scotch to choose from though, so it was a fun way to do a tasting. I actually did like some of them. The Talisker was really smokey and fun, and the Glenmorangie was really nice and smooth.

Some of the Scotch collection

The guys tasting Scotch (Al also pulled out all his other "old man drinks")

After the tasting, we all had dinner. Everything turned out really well! The haggis was a bit dry, but quite good with gravy. Departing from tradition, we also tried it with a cilantro, lime, and garlic Indian chutney Al had, and that was even better than the gravy, in my opinion!

Traditional Burns Night dinner!

Haggis, Neeps, and Tatties!

We spent the rest of the evening relaxing, chatting, and continuing the tasting. We even watched/listen to the recitation of one of Burns' poems. It's written in old English, so it's only partially understandable, but it was still fun. Tina showed up with friends later in the evening, and we found out that she and Sol had just gotten engaged three days earlier! How fun!

State of the Union

2012-01-28T15:23:00.001-05:00

Tuesday night was President Obama's third State of the Union address. The SOTU always creates a bit of a buzz around DC, but this year was particularly exciting since Jeff is working at the White House. The speech had economic elements that he and his coworkers had been doing work relating to - leading to a number of late nights and weekend days in the office.

At first, we thought we might go out with all of his co-workers to watch the speech in a bar, but apparently all of the preparatory work made everyone feel burned out, and nobody wanted to stay out late. Instead, Jeff and I watched at home.

I thought the speech was pretty good. It was a little vague and a little laundry-list-ish, but I think that's just the reality of SOTU speeches. The most exciting part for us was the announcement of an effort to increase the mandatory schooling age to 18 in all states - that's what Jeff's been working on! He put together an info sheet about the issue, and I'll try to post it when it becomes publicly available!

Mariel Cooks Monday: Grilled Gruyère and Olive Tapenade Sandwiches

2012-01-24T16:49:00.002-05:00

This week I cooked grilled Gruyère and olive tapenade sandwiches for dinner, along with some roasted asparagus. I just used regular bread (which is what the recipe calls for), which doesn't look very fancy, but the taste was incredible. This is definitely one of my favorite dishes we've done so far, and it's really easy to make and healthy - only 346 calories per sandwich (though Gruyère is a little expensive).

Grilled Gruyère and Olive Tapenade Sandwiches
Yield: Serves 4 (serving size: 1 sandwich)
20 Minutes

Ingredients
1 (8.5-ounce) jar oil-packed sun-dried tomatoes
12 pitted kalamata olives
2 garlic cloves
8 (1-ounce) slices multigrain bread
1/4 cup (1 ounce) grated Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese
8 (1/4-inch-thick) slices large tomato
2 ounces Gruyère cheese, shaved

Preparation
1. Remove 4 sun-dried tomatoes and 2 tablespoons oil from jar. Reserve remaining tomatoes and oil for another use. Set 1 tablespoon oil aside. Combine tomatoes, 1 tablespoon oil, olives, and garlic in a mini food processor; process until mostly smooth, scraping sides of bowl once.
2. Brush one side of each bread slice with remaining 1 tablespoon olive oil. Spread 1 1/2 tablespoons olive mixture on each of 4 bread slices, oil side down. Top each bread slice with 1 tablespoon cheese, 2 tomato slices, and 1/2 ounce Gruyère. Top each with remaining 4 bread slices, oil side up.
3. Heat a skillet over medium-high heat. Add sandwiches to pan. Place a cast-iron or other heavy skillet on top of sandwiches; press gently to flatten sandwiches (leave cast-iron skillet on sandwiches while they cook). Cook 2 minutes on each side or until cheese melts and bread is toasted.

NFL Playoffs

2012-01-24T16:30:00.000-05:00

I spent most of the weekend reviewing applications, but on Sunday Jeff and I headed out to run errands and to join his friends to watch the NFL playoff games. The first game was the Baltimore Ravens vs. the New England Patriots (we had a house full of Raven's fans!), and the second game was the San Francisco 49ers vs. the New York Giants.

Sadly, the Raven's lost - only by 3 points - but it was a pretty depressing lost. In the last minute, they had the ball near the endzone and seemed like they would score. One touchdown pass was caught and then stripped by a Patriots player. Then they had to kick a field goal from 32 yards, so we were disappointed that instead of catching that pass and winning, we'd now be headed to overtime. And then we watched as the kick went wide, so the field goal was no good, and everyone's face was just completely blank. The players on TV seemed to have the same reaction (except for the Patriots who pretty quickly snapped out of it and started cheering). I couldn't believe it was over!

I cheered for the 49ers in the second game, and they did go into overtime, but I guess it was my day for disappointment, and the Giants won in the end.

So now we'll be watching another Giants'-Patriots' superbowl in two weeks, which doesn't seem nearly as exciting to me as Ravens-49ers. But there's always the commercials...

Reviewing Freshman Applications

2012-01-24T16:22:00.002-05:00

Most of my time over the past week and weekend was spent reviewing Freshman Applications. The students I'm reviewing have already been accepted to the University of Maryland, and I'm trying to help establish whether they should be invited to join a "Global Communities" freshman program. I'm essentially looking for some interest in international issues, cultures, or diversity.

I did this last year and found it to be fairly similar. It can get a little tiring reading 100s of essays about how "Soccer has taught me everything I need to know about life." (e.g. I learned it's important to pass the ball, just like it's important to think of others in everyday life. I go to practice at 5am, and I learned that when you fall down you have to just get back up; I now know the value of hard work and persistance.) It's not that I don't think that high school sports teach students important lessons, it's just that I'd like to see a little more awareness of issues outside of your high school.

The other essay topic that came up over and over, which I don't remember from last year, is people saying that their calling in life is to "help others." Seriously, it's like the entire freshman class is just going to be out on the quad trying to help each other.

That said, some students have amazing stories of overcoming adversity - deaths and illnesses of loved ones, friends, or themselves, or some kind of news event or occurrence in their own area that made them think about who they are or want to be or made them aware of larger issues in the world. There are definitely essays that made me cry. Though I think good writing probably matters even more than what's actually happened to you - you can do a really good essay if you just spend some time really explaining things well and thinking deep enough about a specific experience that affected the way you think about things (even if the experience was related to playing a sport).

Since I'm interested in students' views on international culture and diversity, it made me think about the degree to which those issues were on my radar when I was younger. I remembered a couple specific stories. In Minnesota there is a relatively high proportion of people from Laos (Hmong), and I remember one time in grade school (maybe second grade) this really shy, quiet Hmong girl was crying. And I found out that people on the bus had been making fun of her, asking her why her hair was so black and straight, and things like that. I remember thinking it was crazy that people would make fun of such a nice girl, who obviously never did anything mean to anyone else, and I tried to cheer her up. I can't remember if I told a teacher or not, and I'm not sure how much I realized that the 'making fun' was racially motivated and why that might matter.

I also remember that my brother was good friends with a Hmong neighbor, and that kid was teaching my brother the language. But then there was some crazy thing where the dad got arrested or something, and the family moved while we were all still young.

The other story I remembered was from high school, when we did a lesson on Asian literature in English. There were some older readings and some contemporary readings about what it's like to be a minority in America. I remember finding it really interesting, and then calling up my one Chinese-American friend, Carey Ma, to ask him about his experience. I wrote about all of this in my reading journal for class, and I remember being surprised that the teacher seemed very happy about it - looking back on it, I imagine this cultural awareness/ introspection is exactly what she was trying to spark.

Happy Hour - Vidalia

2012-01-24T15:50:00.000-05:00

For Happy Hour last week we went to Vidalia. It's a nice restaurant with upscale southern food, and it's located right around the corner from my work. The entrees can be a little expensive, so I've never been there, but their happy hour deals are great. They have $3.50 beers (and an interesting selection), and a number of $3 appetizer options - we tried crab cakes, onion rings, and deviled eggs - small portions, but all really tasty! The wines were still priced $8-$10, though that may actually be a deal, since the wines on their main list are often $15-$20! Cocktails were also around $8-$10 on happy hour. They had a nice lounge space with black leather couches. Definitely a spot I'd go back to!

Pooja Visits DC

2012-01-24T15:43:00.002-05:00

Pooja came to visit DC last week and stayed with us a couple of nights. It was really nice to see her, and Jeff and I are pushing hard to convince her to move here. I think that's already her plan, since the trip was to attend networking events and presentations. She graduates from the Harvard Kennedy School of Public Policy this spring, so she could be here as soon as this summer (though she's more likely to start in the Fall so she can take some time off to travel). Hopefully she finds something she's excited about, and moves here soon!

Pooja had events to go to most nights she was here, but we did get to hang out on Thursday. She came to our weekly happy hour, which was nice because she got to see everyone. Afterwards, she and I went to a Yelp Elite event at the Atlas Theater on H St. NE. The event had free food and drink (though the food ran out before we got any - sad!), and a show put on by SpeakEasyDC. They're a group that tells true stories as their show - some funny, some sad. I thought they were good. It was also cool that Pooja got to see an area of DC that she'd never been to before.

Heading Home

2012-01-24T15:35:00.001-05:00

On Monday morning (Martin Luther King Jr. Day), we didn't have time for much more than just getting packed and ready to head home. We did manage to squeeze in watching Janet's long wedding video (which had finally downloaded).

We had breakfast, and said goodbye to Mamie and Grandpa, and then started the trip back to the airport. The end of a nice visit with my grandparents, and another great get-together with Neera and Janet!

Texas Vacation - Sunday

2012-01-24T15:31:00.000-05:00

On Sunday, I woke up before Janet and Neera, so I chatted quietly with Mamie in the kitchen. After a while we decided to Skype with Brian and Wally, and that wasn't so quiet, so Janet and Neera woke up.

We had bagels for breakfast again, and spent more time watching wedding videos - we watched most of mine, and Janet's was still downloading.

Then we decided to bake cookies. Neera and Janet had really loved the Million Dollar Cookies that Mamie had made for the wedding, so we put together a batch of those. I probably ate four or five of them during the baking process - they're amazing when they're still warm for the oven. Even with everyone eating them as they were made, there were enough for each of us to take three dozen home.

In the afternoon, we headed to the Mall. None of us do much clothes shopping on our own (Katie does almost all of mine now, which is definitely what I prefer!), so the trip to the mall together is one of the few chances to find new clothes. I actually managed to pick up some exercise pants and black pumps, which I'd been needing for a long time. And then I got a few sweaters, which I really didn't need, but which were on sale.

From the mall, we headed to "On the Border" for dinner. I had been excited for Mexican food, but for some reason my stomach was feeling really off (couldn't possibly have been the many cookies I'd eaten that morning...), so I just munched on the chips and made-at-your-table guacamole.

We spent our last evening chatting (of course), and we did eventually manage to watch "Crazy, Stupid, Love." It was a good movie, though I knew I'd like it as soon as I saw Ryan Gosling, since I've loved him ever since he was Young Hercules.

Texas Vacation - Saturday

2012-01-24T15:18:00.000-05:00

Saturday, January 14th was our first full day in Texas. We started the day with a walk on the beach - definitely the best way to start a vacation day in January.

Mamie and Grandpa had cooked bacon and eggs for breakfast, and there were bagels and cream cheese, too, so we had a nice big breakfast.

We realized in our chatting that we had all seen each others short (2-3 minute) wedding videos, but hadn't seen the long versions (15-20 minutes), so we all started downloading the long versions to share. Neera's was ready first, so we watched it just after breakfast. (And then we watched the short version of all three, too.)

Since it was a beautiful sunny day, and we still hadn't started getting ready to head out, we thought we'd go for a midday visit to the pool. We laid in the sun and relaxed while Mamie played Mahjong with some other ladies from her building.

Time to relax!

Playing mahjong by the pool

Mamie's Mahjong Set

Eventually I convinced Neera to join me for a quick swim in the (heated) pool, and once Janet saw how much fun we were having, she decided to join us.

We planned to spend the afternoon walking around "downtown Corpus Christi." We could see there was a downtown area on the map, and the girl manning the front desk at Mamie's condo had pointed out a couple of bars and clubs we might like that were in the area. We figured if there were bars and clubs, there are probably also restaurants and little shops. We were wrong. Downtown was very small and mostly seemed to be empty streets, windowless bars, and boarded up buildings. We decided not to spend the afternoon there.

Instead, we went to the Omni hotel, right on the water, and had a snack. For some reason the service was very, very slow. I ordered coffee, and the waiter brought it back to me about 15 or 20 minutes later, in a Starbucks 'to go' cup. Janet said she'd seen him on the escalator when she went to the restroom, so I'm pretty sure he actually just went and got it from the Starbucks in the lobby of the hotel. Odd.

We walked along the Corpus Christi downtown water line, which was very pretty. It was all familiar, because the condo Mamie and Grandpa had lived in the last time I visited them (with Jeff and Katie), in Spring 2004, was right in this area.

For dinner, we headed to Carino's, which is Italian chain, kind of like Macoroni Grill. Neera had been to one she'd really liked on a trip a long time ago, and hadn't seen one since. The food was good (especially love the free bread), and the portions were huge. We ordered a bottle of Malbec to share, and, as usual, we got to talking (about families, sibling relationships, marriages, and the book "The Five Love Languages). Dinner lasted three hours.

It was actually lucky that dinner had gone late, because by the time we were finished, it was late enough to check out one of the clubs that Alma, the girl working the front desk at the Island House, had recommended. The place we had chosen was called "Ropers." Alma told us they played mostly country music and that you could do the "Texas Two-Step" there. She said they sometimes played other types of music, too.

There were a fair number of people at the bar, though it wasn't crowded. There were a lot of cowboy hats and big belt buckels - none of them being worn ironically. They were playing country music and couples (mostly older people) were dancing (presumably the Texas Two-Step) on the dance floor.

We grabbed drinks ($8.50 for three drinks!), and found a table near the dance floor. We watched everybody dance, and then went on the floor ourselves when they played some non-country, non-partner music. After three songs or so it went back to country, and we headed back to our table. As we continued to chat and watch the dancing, someone came up and asked Neera to dance, and she said yes. Eventually, we were all asked to dance a couple of times, so we all got to try our hand at the Texas Two-Step. We had a great time - it was definitely the most "Texas" thing we did all weekend.

When we got home, we put on the movie "Bridesmaids." It was pretty funny, though I wasn't a huge fan of some of the gross-out humor. Janet didn't like the movie at all, because she thought none of the characters were very likable. You're supposed to feel bad for the maid of honor, whose friend is moving on and getting married while her own life is still a mess, but actually that character is kind of a jerk, too. The movie wasn't supposed to be very realistic, but I thought her character was particularly odd - she seemed to get worked up and go crazy over the strangest things.

Arriving in Corpus Christi

2012-01-24T14:38:00.001-05:00

Wow, time flies! It was more than 10 days ago now that I took a weekend trip to Corpus Christi, TX to see Mamie and Grandpa and have the sixth annual get together with Neera and Janet.

We all flew in to San Antonio on Friday morning - I arrived first, at 11am, Neera was there by 12:45pm, and Janet got in at 1:30pm. Since we're flying in from three different cities (DC, Chicago, San Francisco) in three completely different regions, there is always the risk that someone will be affected by weather or some other issue, and our plan of having a perfectly coordinated arrival time at the airport will fall apart. Luckily for us, not a thing went wrong.

So, once we were all there, we just rented the car and headed to Corpus. We thought we'd stop for food on the way - Panera or McDonalds or something like that. We weren't hungry right away, so we waited an hour or so. But once we left the suburbs of San Antonio, there was nothing. Really, just flat, empty grassland on both sides of the car as far as you could see (a few cows, maybe). And the road just stretched out flat and straight ahead of us. It reminded me of the time Jeff and I took a road trip from Minnesota to Nebraska - if you want to stop for something, you better do it near a major city!

We did manage to find a Dairy Queen in the middle of nowhere, which was perfect for me, because having a French Silk Pie blizzard for lunch was awesome.

We made it to Mamie and Grandpa's house by about 5:30pm. They're staying at the Island House, which is cool, because it's the same place they were staying when my family went to visit them in 1995. (They've moved multiple times since then, but just happened to be back there for this winter.) They had a whole guest area set up for us with a queen bed and a twin bed.

View from the balcony

Inside Mamie and Grandpa's condo

Mamie had dinner warming in the oven, so shortly after putting down our things, we had dinner. There was BBQ chicken (Neera substituted some butternut squash soup and a boiled egg), potato salad, and regular salad with dressing. Everything was very good!

Mamie and Grandpa went to their bedroom after dinner, and Neera, Janet, and I just sat around and talked. Janet's co-workers had been surprised that she was going to Corpus Christi for the weekend, and asked her what she was going to do. "Talk" had been her answer. "For a whole weekend? Just talk?" they were pretty incredulous. But as it turns out, that is really pretty accurate. When you only see your good friends a couple times a year, there is a lot to catch up on.

This is the first get-together we've had as three married women, so we talked about the weddings, about married life, and about future plans. (Everybody seems to be liking married life, though Neera is really looking foward to actually living in the same city as her husband - he's teaching in Waterloo, Canada, while she's finishing up her PhD in Urbana, IL.) We talked about kids (how fun is it going to be - probably in just a few years - when we can bring the whole family along to these annual trips, and our kids can be friends!). We talked about school and work - everybody's busy, as usual. We talked about Climate Change, and I ended up showing them Part 1 of the lecture I had given. They seemed to find the lecture interesting (as interesting as a science lecture can be at midnight, at least), and were happy they could report back to their husbands that we were not only chatting and catching up all weekend, we were also discussing important science and policy issues. :)

At 8pm, we thought we might want to watch a movie that I had brought on my computer, so we headed to Best Buy to get the necessary cords. (I needed an HDMI adaptor for my MacBook Air, and an HDMI connector to plug into the TV. Annoyingly, these things were $50 at Best Buy compared to the $5 you can find them for on Amazon.com, but I didn't realize that at the time, and we really wanted the cords now.)

We got home and queued up "Crazy, Stupid, Love," and then paused it during the opening credits to chat about something. Somehow, we ended up talking for another three hours and never actually starting the movie.

Fool Me Once, Shame on You...

2012-01-16T17:04:00.002-05:00

When Mariel went to Corpus Christi for her girl's weekend, I was home alone and felt like cooking. So yesterday I made a veggie dish with quinoa. After eating it, I felt pretty sick to my stomach. And I'm pretty sure there were a couple ingredients that were suspicious. Some white sweetish potatoes from the Central American supermarket were at least a couple months old, but seemed OK. And there was some veggie broth that was open in the fridge since before Christmas, but really smelled and tasted fine.

Anyway, today I thought I should try the leftovers again. Normally if Mariel were around, she would say something like "just throw it out - it's not worth making yourself sick." So partly to take advantage of my bachelor-for-a-weekend status and partly because I didn't want to waste all the leftovers, I tried it again today for lunch.

It made me sick again. Nice work, Jeff.

Polenta-crust pizza

2012-01-11T22:54:00.001-05:00

We had all the ingredients for a polenta-crust pizza just around the house, so I whipped that up for dinner. The crust is pretty simple - polenta with salt, pepper, and parmesan cheese. For toppings, I used ricotta cheese, caramelized onions, mushrooms, and arugula. It was really good! If I do it in the future, though, I would cook the crust by itself for 15 minutes or so before adding the toppings, just so it was a bit more crispy.

Restaurant Week: PS7's

2012-01-11T22:49:00.000-05:00

On Tuesday, after work, I made a quick stop up in Woodley Park to say Happy Birthday to my cousin, Liz. Her husband had arranged a surprise birthday get together for her at Hot N Tasty Crawfish. They had an amazing happy hour - $1 for each of your first three beers (with really fun micro-brew options). I tried one of Liz's shrimp, and those were great too.

I didn't want to have too much, because that night we had dinner plans with Jeff's parents. They drove up from Baltimore to join us for a Restaurant Week dinner at PS7's. It's a restaurant we really like, and once again, everything was great! I had cauliflower soup, a very tender steak filet, and a rich chocolate mouse cake for dessert.

Mariel Cooks Monday: Potato-Stuffed Grilled Bell Peppers

2012-01-11T22:34:00.000-05:00

This Monday, I made potato-stuffed grilled bell peppers. It's basically the same as a twice-baked potato, but with peppers instead of potato skins. I paired it with a bit of arugula salad and some mushrooms sautéed with cilantro and garlic. It was all really tasty, and very filling!

Potato-Stuffed Grilled Bell Peppers

Ingredients
4 large baking potatoes (about 3 1/2 to 4 pounds)
4 large red bell peppers
1 (16-ounce) container sour cream
1/2 cup shredded Gouda cheese
1/4 cup sliced green onions
3 tablespoons butter
3 tablespoons chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley
3/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon ground pepper
1/4 teaspoon paprika

Preparation
Pierce each potato 3 to 4 times with a fork, and place directly on oven rack.
Bake at 450° for 1 hour and 30 minutes. Let cool slightly, about 15 minutes.
Cut bell peppers in half lengthwise, cutting through stems and keeping intact. Remove and discard seeds and membranes; rinse and pat dry. Set aside.
Cut baked potatoes in half. Scoop out pulp into a large bowl, discarding shells. Add sour cream and next 6 ingredients to pulp, blending well with a fork or potato masher.
Spoon potato mixture evenly into bell pepper halves. Sprinkle with paprika.
Grill peppers, covered with grill lid, over medium-high heat (350° to 400°) 18 minutes or until peppers are blistered and potato mixture bubbles around edges. Serve immediately.

Book Club - Perfume: The Story of a Murderer

2012-01-11T22:26:00.000-05:00

On Sunday evening we had our January book (and wine) club meeting. Catherine was the host for this meeting. The book she chose was Perfume: The Story of a Murderer by Patrick Suskind. It's a German book written in the 1980s that became an international best-seller. It has a pretty crazy premise. It's about a guy who has an incredibly good sense of smell, but doesn't give off any odor at all himself. He's completely alienated, and everyone he does come into contact with dies not long after. And then he becomes a serial killer, stealing the scent from his victims, and creating the ultimate scent. And all of that doesn't even include the weirdest/ creepiest parts. That said, the book is really interestingly and intricately written. The story sucks you in, and it's a really a quick read. Apparently there is a movie, too (made by Dreamworks in 2006, with Alan Rickman and Dustin Hoffman), though I haven't seen it.

Catherine put together a really amazing dinner. We started with Vietnamese spring rolls dipped in peanut sauce and sriracha. Then, she gave us this amazing mushroom amuse bouche. She made it by boiling down four quarts of mushrooms, adding cream, and then serving the concentrated result in cute little shot glasses - it was incredibly flavorful. The main dish was a Vietnamese beef and rice dish with a whole bunch of different spices (I'm working on getting the recipe). Dessert was banoffee pie.

The wine for the tasting was rose, and it was really interesting. Jeff actually picked out the winning one - a Spanish rose (rioja) he picked up at Trader Joe's. We also through a $3 Charles Shaw white zinfandel into the mix, and, surprisingly, it didn't come in last - it was just very sweet.

Twilight Movies

2012-01-11T21:58:00.000-05:00

When I told Stephanie that I was reading the Twilight series, she suggested that we do a movie marathon when I finished them. And since I finished the last book over the holidays, we could schedule the movies for the last weekend I was here. And we managed to (just barely) do it in time to watch the most recent movie in the theater!

Stephanie came over on Friday after work to watch the first two movies: Twilight and New Moon. Twilight was not very good. The couple of good things were: I thought Kristen Stewart, who plays Bella Swan, did a nice job of capturing her character - she's just pretty normal, and believably clumsy. (The only exception is her super-poor performance in the scene late in the movie when she's in the hospital bed. Wha- no - you're - wha- no! Ugh.

I also thought the people who played her regular high school friends were pretty good - particularly Anna Kendrick (from Up in the Air fame), who plays her fair-weather friend, Jessica. They did a good job of playing believable high school students, and Anna was often hilarious.

The two biggest problems, in my opinion, were that, first, Robert Pattinson, who plays Edward, is supposed to be this confident, mysterious, unobtainable, amazing guy, and instead he comes across as super emo and sometimes weird/creepy. Second (and maybe because of the way Pattinson plays Edward), the fact that he and Bella are deeply in love comes completely out of no where. All of a sudden they're just in the meadow, and as far as the movie-watchers are concerned, they're still essentially strangers, and then she says that she doesn't care if he's a vampire and she loves him. What? In the book there is so much build up: flirting. mutual attraction, and suspense leading up to that point - and they really just skipped that in the movie. They say they're in love, but the whole movie you're asking, "what? why? when did that happen?" And it takes the power away from a lot of what happens afterwards.

New Moon was definitely better. (Part of this, to be fair, may be because the first movie was made before the Twilight books were super popular, and it had a significantly lower budget.) Also, I had heard of the "Team Edward vs. Team Jacob" debate, but I never understood it. In the book, it's clear that she's only truly in love with Edward, and Jacob is kind of a jerk sometimes anyway. After watching the movie, I'm sure that's where the Team Jacob people are coming from. Cause he's very sweet in the movie (and also has a million ab muscles, and doesn't seem to own a shirt...)

I enjoyed Eclipse also - there is a lot more action, which I think works really well for movies. And I like all of the cute scenes with the Cullen family. I thought Dakota Fanning was awesome, also - she so good as the evil vampire Jane, I couldn't believe it was the cute little girl from I Am Sam!

On Sunday, Stephanie and I headed to one of the only theaters in the area still playing Twilight: Breaking Dawn Part 1. I thought the movie did a good job of capturing everything in the book. There was a lot more action and less love story, which I think works better for the movies. It was considerably creepier than any of the past movies, though - I think the visuals are much more strikingly disturbing than what you think of in the book.

Visiting Eric and Lindsey

2012-01-11T20:46:00.000-05:00

Two of our good friends, Eric and Lindsey, invited us (and Stephanie and Arthur and Emma and Kris) over to their house for an evening of playing the Battlestar Galactica (BSG) strategy board game and the Dance Revolution game for Kinect.

Jeff and I rode over with Kris, arriving in the afternoon. We relaxed and chatted for a while, and then started the BSG game around 5:30pm. The game has a million rules, but since we'd played once before (a year ago!), it came back pretty quickly. It also helped that we worked in teams (we had eight players, and the max for the game is six). We picked teams randomly (numbers in a hat), and Arthur and I ended up together, and chose Apollo as our character. I thought the game was even more fun this year, since we didn't spend as much time just learning. We also played just a bit quicker - this game took 5.5 hours compared to last year's 6-hour game. (We had to break for dinner - awesome vegetarian chili - and again for dessert - ice cream sundaes.)

After finishing with BSG, we started playing the Dance Revolution game - you can have a dance-off between two people, so we played a bunch of rounds of that. I actually did really well. Kris and Jeff had a little more trouble, though they definitely tried!

Stephanie and Arthur headed home not long after midnight, but the rest of us stayed the night. It turned out to be a great decision, since Eric and Lindsey had an amazing Sunday brunch ready for us the next morning. There was a french toast casserole and an egg bake, along with coffee and mimosas. Awesome way to start the day!

Happy Hour - Phillips After 5

2012-01-11T18:41:00.000-05:00

Our first happy hour after the holidays was at Phillips After 5. It's a once-a-month event held at the Phillips Collection in Dupont Circle (an Art Museum). In addition to having the museum open, they have live music, sell wine and beer, and provide free food.

I thought it was a really fun event. We spent a little time looking at the exhibits, and then looked for the food and drinks. We knew from the flyer they gave us at the entrance that food would be on the first floor, but we couldn't seem to find it. We eventually ended up asking, and it's good we did. The man told us to, "go up the stairs, turn right, go behind the Matisse, and then down the stairs to the music room." (Emma thought it was funny that you had to have at least some art knowledge - what a Matisse looks like - to follow these directions and find the wine.)

Once we made it to the food and drink, (only $5 for a generous glass of wine) we found a great little table near the free food. We set our things down and made that our meeting place as people arrived.

We had a really fun time - as long as we didn't get too close to the paintings behind us. (There was a museum worker watching us like a hawk, and we just wondered why they set up a table so close to the wall if it's almost impossible to stand there without getting in trouble?)

After leaving Phillips After 5, most of the group headed to Urbana for dinner. We haven't eaten there in a while, and I forgot how good their food is! Jeff and I shared carrot soup with sumac berry and turmeric (I don't even know what a sumac berry looks like, but the mix of flavors was great), brussel sprouts with olive oil and sea salt (I hate brussel sprouts, but these were actually very good), eggplant with harissa, tomato, honey and pine nuts, and a flatbread pizza.

It was great to have a whole evening to catch up with everyone after the break!

Being a Writer

2012-01-03T22:35:00.000-05:00

I would really love to be a writer some day. It’s actually one of the things I wanted to be very early in life – I’ve loved writing stories since I was in first grade (basically, as soon as I learned how to write at all). I used to go to creative writing seminars, and once spent a whole summer writing up cover letters and reading about publishers at the library. I’ve even come up with book ideas as recently as the last few years, though I really don’t do much creative writing these days – too busy working on technical things. I just think it’s so amazing to be able to create an entire world and entirely new people out of scratch. Unlike reading, you get to decide what happens, and what the characters are like, and how things turn out in the end.

Who knows if I’ll ever have the time or talent (or luck) to actually get something written and published, but I’m hopefully that there’ll come a time. In the end of each of the Twilight books, there is an interview with the author, Stephanie Meyer. She was an English major, but never really planned to be an author. She was a mother of two young children when she got the idea for Twilight – she just started writing one day, and was actually surprised to find that when she’d finished, it was a book-length story. Her sister was actually the one who encouraged her to publish it. And that made me think of J.K. Rowling, who had also never written any books before she wrote Harry Potter. So that sort of inspired me to not give up on this dream, even if I’m not really on a traditional path to being a writer at the moment. You never know!

Twilight

2012-01-03T22:34:00.000-05:00

So, I read the Twilight Saga – all four books, and I really enjoyed them!

I feel like people are always putting this series down, and pre-teen girls are the only ones who seem to unabashedly love it. Though actually, when I think back, I do have a couple of good friends around my age who have (usually sheepishly) told me that they’ve read it and enjoyed it. I’m not sure exactly why this series has gotten such a bad rap, but I really enjoyed it, so, I’ve decided to be a vocal supporter of Twilight.

So, let me tell you a little about what it’s about, what I like about it, what I think about the usual criticisms, and who I think would like it (I’ll concede that it may not be for everyone).

First, one thing that I think might throw people off is the genre. I think the series is most comparable to Princess Bride – it’s really a love story that just happens to be set in a fantasy/adventure kind of world. So there’s going to be a lot of talk of true love and things like that, but also supernatural challenges and adventures. (And Princess Bride is one of my all-time favorite movies.)

The series, as most people know by now, is about teenager vampires (or at least vampires who are teenagers in appearance and who go to high school and interact/ fall in love with teenagers). The first book, Twilight, is about a girl named Bella that moves to a new town and then starts noticing that something mysterious is going on with this really attractive, but reclusive, kid at her high school. The book is basically about her unraveling that mystery (spoiler: he’s a vampire), falling in love, and then the challenges of dating a vampire. In the last 20 percent of the book or so, there is some danger/action/adventure. I actually really enjoyed the middle section of the book (which is about the challenges of dating a vampire) quite a bit – I just thought it was all very cute. I read it at the gym, and I would just be on the elliptical with a big smile on my face for 45 minutes every morning. [I think this might be partially a reflection on my own likes and dislikes – I’m a big fan of mystery and adventure, but I don’t really like drama. So a book where people are discovering things, but for the most part everyone is happy, is really appealing to me. I don’t really want there to be a lot of interpersonal drama among people in the shows I watch or the books I read – I like it when relationships are happy and strong and its external things causing difficulty.] That said, if I had read the short description that I just wrote above, it probably would not have convinced me to read the book, so I think there is also something about the way she writes and how she brings the characters and the situations to life that was just really fun to read.

The following three books continue to center around Bella and Edward, with an increasing portion of the book focused on action rather than love story. I don’t want to go into any of the details, since it might spoil outcomes of earlier books.

One of my favorite things is that by the end of the fourth book, I felt really absorbed in the characters – I just really liked them, and I was really hoping things would work out. The last time I remember feeling like that was when I read The Lord of the Rings – I’m not sure if it’s something about the way it’s written, or something about the particular traits the characters have, or maybe some combination, but when I wasn’t reading, I found myself thinking about what was happening in the book, or thinking about what the characters would do. [To be fair, it might also have to do with the fact that I read the book over break, so reading was often the main activity of the day – I may not have had anything else to think about…] The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, by contrast, may be a better book overall, but I never really cared strongly about, or particularly liked, any of the characters in the book. It was much more about what’s happening next in the story and how the mystery is unraveling. Or in the Hunger Games, you want the main character to survive, but it’s more a general feeling about wanting the protagonist to do well, rather than really loving the particular character (I can’t even think of her name!).

One negative comment I’ve heard about the series is that the writing style is not very good. However, this is not something that I noticed at all while I was reading through, even though I was looking for it. It’s simple to read (Carey’s teacher website said it’s a 4.2 reading level, which I think corresponds to 4th grade – very similar to the early Harry Potter books and Hunger Games), but I couldn’t point to any particular section where I found the style annoying or distracting. I’d love to be a writer some day, and until I’m able to write and publish my own novel, I think I’m going to steer clear of criticizing other (actually successful) authors’ writing styles.

So who would like this book? I think if you’re looking for something fun and simple to read, you like character-driven books, you enjoy the fantasy genre, and you don’t mind a strong love-story element (that can get pretty sappy), then I think you’d really enjoy this book.

(Then again, to be fair, George Takei disagrees with me. And he’s pretty awesome.)

2012 Arrives with a Bang

2012-01-03T22:26:00.000-05:00

It’s officially 2012! We started the day with a relaxing morning at the house we were staying in – enjoying the sunny weather and a cup of coffee. We headed to Marilyn’s for lunch – hot dogs and potato chips – with a collection of cousins. Apparently many of Barbara’s cousins live around Three Rivers – the house that Marilyn was staying in shared a driveway with their cousin Cindy, and she wasn’t the only relative on the block. They jokingly refer to the street as “Crain Lane.” (That’s Barbara’s family name.)

Then, in the afternoon, Jeff’s uncle Mark and cousin Rob offered to take us out to the gun range that is set up in a friend’s back yard (one of the benefits of living in a place with wide open spaces). I’ve never been shooting, and Jeff has just been once, for his bachelor party last year, so we thought we’d try it out.

It turns out I’m a pretty good shot! I had a fun time learning about the different guns and trying different things out. It’s interesting how different each of the different guns is. I was definitely able to do the best with the .22 rifle (I was voted best out of the novices – Jeff, his dad, and myself), though I loved the laser-scope rifle, and shooting the wild west-like. 45 six-shooter was pretty fun, too.

I’ve never been shooting before, but I’m not really surprised to find out that I really enjoyed it. I’m not a violent person at all, but to me, the shooting range is the equivalent to doing archery or tomahawk throwing – or maybe even kind of like fencing. It’s just a fun sport of precision and skill, and the fact that guns can (and often are) used for actual violence is just a sad fact that doesn’t really bear any relation to me trying to knock down bowling pins.

I tried out almost every gun that brought along – I figured since I’d never done it before, I might as well get the full experience. I didn’t shoot the 30/30 rifle or the shotgun, but I used the .22 rifle, the .22 pistol, the .357 pistol, a 9mm, and the .45/six-shooter. The big pistols are definitely fun to shoot – they’re so loud and they kick a lot – but I’m not very good at actually hitting the targets. With the .22 rifle, I was able to knock down all six bowling pins with just one round (10 shots).

After the excitement of the afternoon out at the range, we were happy to just hang out and relax at Margie’s house for the last big family dinner!

New Year’s Eve 2011

2012-01-03T22:06:00.000-05:00

Marilyn had planned a fun girls spa day for New Year’s Eve – so we left the guys at the house and headed to the spa in Three Rivers. Barbara and I arrived first, so I got started on my mani/pedi, and she went off to get her facial. I’d never gotten a manicure or a pedicure before last year, but now I’ve had a whole bunch of them, mostly as part of bridal showers (another one of the many benefits of getting married, I guess). It’s definitely a great, relaxing way to spend a couple hours.

Other than me, it was all the sisters at the spa –Margie, Marilyn, Barbara, and Bev. Taylor was planning to come, but ended up staying in Arizona and missing out on the California trip overall. Marilyn’s daughter Melissa is not a “spa day” kind of girl, so she opted to sleep in instead (which, to be fair, is also a pretty relaxing activity.)

Once everyone had their nails or other spa treatment done, we headed back to meet up with the guys. We actually passed Jeff and his dad on the road on the way back. They were on their way to explore the shops, so we joined them. (Actually, I was so close to the end of my book at that point that I just stayed in the car and read while they visited shops.)

New Year’s Eve dinner was at Margie’s house again – we had ham, with a great fruity (but not too sweet) topping that Margie had created from two separate recipes. After dinner, I watched a few episodes of Doctor Who with Melissa (she’s just getting started on the 2005 version!), and then we all watched the coverage of New Year’s Eve in New York City. Margie has the New York feeds on her cable TV, so the ball actually dropped at 9pm, and we celebrated with champagne!

Around 10pm, we went back to Jeff’s parents’ house, had another glass of champagne (a nice bottle Dave had brought with him), and Dave, Jeff, and I just barely made it to actual midnight. (We didn’t have many channels, so we just watched the ball drop in NYC again.)

Sequoia National Park

2012-01-03T21:49:00.000-05:00

Our big activity for Friday was a trip to the Sequoia National Park. The park is very close to Three Rivers (Jeff guesses its three to five miles to the entrance), though it’s really big once you get inside, so most of the driving happens after you’re already there.

It’s a pretty surreal area. From far away, you can’t really tell that the trees on this mountain are any different than other trees. And as you start your way up the mountain, it’s mostly just regular pine trees, which are pretty tall themselves. Then, you start seeing these extremely massive, very red trunks mixed in, and they get more and more common. It’s like you just skipped to the Giant Level on Mario Brothers. It made me wonder whether some of the first explorers to find this forest were worried about seeing giant squirrels, rabbits, or bears. If the trees in this forest can (and did) get this big – who knows what else might be giant? I think it would have been a reasonable concern.

We walked around the General Sherman tree, which is the largest tree, by volume, in the world. Jeff and I think the cross section is pretty close to the same size of our apartment. (Which made me think that this must be the kind of tree that the Barenstein Bears lived in. I always thought it seemed unreasonable that they could all fit inside, but that makes it seem more likely.)

We then drove to Waksachi Lodge for lunch. It was a really beautiful wood lodge, and the restaurant was cute. I thought the Panini and Reuben that Jeff and I ordered were both very good. Bev got a grilled cheese and a goat-cheese-and-tomato soup, which also looked great.

After lunch, we drove to another part of the park. We saw the “auto log,” which is a huge tree that fell over in 1917, and which many vehicles have driven along. The roots are enormous.

From there, we went to the tunnel log, which another fallen redwood that people had carved a chunk out of so that cars could drive through it.

After a full day at the park, we enjoyed a roast beef dinner that Marilyn had prepared at the place they were staying and then called it a night!

Three Rivers, California

2012-01-03T21:08:00.000-05:00

We had a 7:15am flight to Fresno, California, so Jeff and I (and my parents, who drove us) were up bright and early on Thursday. And when we arrived in Fresno, it was still only about 10am. Jeff and I got our luggage and then read until Jeff’s parents arrived.

We jumped in a rental car, and made the hour and a half trip to Three Rivers, where Barbara’s sister Margie lives. After dropping by Margie’s to say hi and get out of the car for a bit, we headed to the rental house where we were staying. It was a really nice place with three bedrooms – plenty of space for the whole Borowitz family. It even had a nice deck with a view of the mountains, though we didn’t end up spending any time out there.

Dinner that night was lasagna at Margie’s place – somewhat of a Christmas tradition now. It was very good, and very filling! After dinner, everyone just relaxed, chatted and read. By 8pm, the east-coasters were having a hard time staying awake, so we called it a night.

Last Day in Minnesota

2012-01-03T20:52:00.001-05:00

Wednesday the 28th was Jeff’s and my last day in Minnesota, so we didn’t make any real plans. We figured we’d just hang out around the house, relax, and visit with family. We did end up going out for a while, though, when Katie suggested that we all get lunch with Grandma John. We drove over to her house and picked her up, and then all went to Panera. (I had chicken soup in a bread bowl – soooo good!)

It was really nice to see Grandma John over lunch. We had only seen her on Christmas, and between the number of people and the amount of things Grandma is trying to coordinate, we hardly get to talk to her. At lunch we could all just chat. Grandma John told us about a brunch she was planning with neighbors – everyone was coming over to her house on New Year’s Day, which sounded really nice. It was good to hear that she was feeling more relaxed after the stress of the holidays!

After lunch with Grandma, we dropped Katie and Tom off at the airport, and then headed back to my parents’ house, where Brian, Emily, and Wally were already waiting. We played with Wally a bit, and I went through boxes of keepsake things that my parents had pulled out of storage. I have about 10 big plastic bins full of things – I didn’t believe my parents when they originally told me that, but it’s really true! And it’s all stuff that’s really hard to get rid of – baby clothes, favorite clothes from when I was older, favorite books, scifi stuff I collected over the years, pre-computer school work, etc. I didn’t do very well on culling things down, but at least I know what’s there. Wally liked playing with an old doll that I’d loved when I was little – it was pretty cute to see him playing with it now.

We ordered food from P.F. Chang’s, and my dad went and picked it up. We all ate up at the table (we were all a little tired, so if we didn’t make the effort to actually sit down at the table, the temptation to just watch TV and not talk is just too strong.)

Brian and Emily had to head out after dinner – they said Wally’s sleep schedule had been totally off over the holidays, and they were really trying to get things back to normal. So we said our goodbyes – it’s tough not seeing family for months at a time, but especially hard with Wally since catching up over the phone isn’t an option, and because he grows and changes so quickly!

We spent the rest of the night hanging out with my parents, carefully packing our suitcases (Christmas is always tricky, since you never really know what to expect), and watching the third episode of the BBC miniseries “Sherlock,” with my parents.

Annual Holiday Get-together with Carey, Rachel, and Paul

2012-01-03T20:31:00.001-05:00

After meeting up with Kathy, we headed to Rachel’s house for our annual holiday get together with Carey, Rachel, and Paul. It almost didn’t happen, because Carey got food poisoning the day before, but luckily, he got better quickly, and came to join us. We got gyros from a little place near Drew and Rachel’s house. Unfortunately, Jeff somehow lost the keys to the van (they weren’t inside, and nobody could find them on the ground or in the little store – complete mystery!). Drew offered to drive with Jeff over to Maple Grove to pick up the spare key.

Carey, Rachel, Paul, and I stayed at Rachel’s house and chatted. We usually end up watching shows or movies, but we seemed to have so much to talk about this year that we never made it that far. Plus, Rachel’s son Ari was really excited about having Paul there, because he shared his French fries and bounced him up and down on command, “Jump?” Ari kept asking Paul. He likes Carey, too, though he calls him “Car Keys.” I think it’s a good nickname.

Carey is teaching high school seniors now, instead of middle schoolers (he teaches English at a school in Harlem, New York). He said he really likes it – they’re definitely more mature, he said, and they can read more advanced books. Right now they’re reading 1984, and soon they’ll be reading an Ayn Rand book (though Carey said book selection is mostly driven by what the school already has a lot of copies of and/or what they can get for free).

Paul is still constantly traveling back and forth to New York City to visit his girlfriend Kristin, who is doing her residency there. Apparently she’ll be back in Minnesota by this summer, though, and then she’ll be staying here for two years – which will be great for them. (After that, it’s two more years in New York, but they’ll just worry about that when it happens, he says.)

Rachel is keeping busy with two year old Ari and the new baby, Theo. Theo is the smiley-est baby I’ve ever seen – he just gives you this big, toothless baby grin any time you smile or coo at him. Rachel seems to be really enjoying being a mom. She’s also started back at the hospital as a nursing assistant, and is planning to start a nursing program soon (she was enrolled to start in the fall, but since Theo was due to be born in early September, she thought that wouldn’t work).

Eventually Jeff and Drew got back, and brought ice cream! (Actually, they forgot the ice cream the first time, but went right back out to get it – so nice!) We all had a little snack, and then figured it was about time to head out. I’m happy we were able to keep up our traditional holiday get-together, though!

Girl Scout DC Trip Planning

2012-01-03T20:07:00.000-05:00

Last spring, I talked to my cousin Stacy’s daughters’ girl scout troupe about space and the type of work I do. Now their troupe has decided to take a trip out to DC. They’ll come in June, so Jeff will be able to take them on a tour of the White House and we’re planning a bowling day, too. I’m going to show them around the Air and Space museum. Their dad, Matt, has a brother that works at the Pentagon, so they’re going to tour there too.

Jeff and I met up with my Aunt Kathy and one of the other troupe leaders to go over the plan. I told them that I would come up with a basic schedule/itinerary for them (I love planning!). They range in age from about 10-12, so I’m thinking it shouldn’t be too heavy on museums and monuments. I’m planning to balance things so that they have one museum/monument tour each day and one more active/ fun activity (like the National Zoo, bowling, or some other activity). Still looking for good ideas!

They rented a house just a block away from the metro in Columbia Heights, so they’ll be able to have breakfast and dinner at home. I think that will save money and also just be really convenient with a group of 11 people (six girls, five parents).

Here’s my current itinerary for the girls – I’d love feedback and ideas from any DC people out there!
Girl Scout Visit Itinerary

Saturday, June 16th
Afternoon-ish: Arrive (Mariel and Jeff meet at DCA, metro to house)
Evening - Settle in at house, make a trip to Target, Cook dinner, evening in

Sunday, June 17th
Morning: White House - West Wing Tour/ Lincoln Memorial/ Washington Memorial/ WWII
Lunch: Picnic on Mall
Afternoon: Paddleboats, Canoeing and/or shopping in Georgetown

Monday, June 18th
Morning: White House - East Wing Tour/ Natural History Museum
Lunch: Penn Quarter (McDonalds, Chipotle, etc.)
Afternoon: National Zoo
Evening: Screen on the Green (Outdoor Movie) w/picnic

Tuesday, June 19th
Morning: Air and Space Museum and/or NASA Visit
Lunch (1pm): Bowling with Pizza
Afternoon: National’s Game (Baseball) - about $5 per person

Wednesday, June 20th
Morning: Pentagon Tour
Lunch: Pentagon City Mall (food court)
Afternoon: Spy Tour of DC ($14 per person)

Thursday, June 21st
Morning: Capitol Building/ Library of Congress/ Supreme Court
Lunch: Eastern Market (lots of little shops to grab food)
Afternoon: Rock Creek Park (walking trails, etc.)

Friday, June 22nd
Morning: Bureau of Printing and Engraving
Lunch:
Afternoon: Girls’ Re-visit favorite place OR Outdoor Concert
OR
*New York Day Trip

Saturday, June 23rd
*Pack everything up, head to airport!

Watching TV with Paul

2012-01-03T20:01:00.003-05:00

On Thursday, Paul Colling had invited us over to his house to join in a “Cage Rage,” which is what he and his friends call it when they get together and watch three Nicolas Cage movies in one day. The only one I had even heard of was Face Off. Jeff was a little wary about the bad-movie-marathon, but I love that stuff, so we compromised and showed up a bit late. When we called for directions, we found out that the event had fallen through, so we just went over to hang out with Paul anyway.

We all just wanted to relax after the busy Christmas holiday, so we all watched TV together. Paul and some of our other friends somehow got hooked on “Walker, Texas Ranger,” just because it’s so ridiculous (Paul told me that in one episode, there was a hot air balloon chase, and Walker jumped from his balloon on to the top of the other hot air balloon, slid down the side of the balloon, and kicked the bad guy right out of the basket.) I’ve actually seen a lot of the episodes, back when they were originally aired (I still know most of the theme song by heart!) We watched the Christmas episode ("A Ranger Christmas"), which consisted of Walker telling a story to a bunch of orphans. One of the orphans had argued that “Christmas wasn’t real,” so Walker was telling them about a Texas Ranger a hundred years ago that learned the real meaning of Christmas (which in the story seemed to be that it was better to shoot to wound, rather than shoot to kill…). There were a lot of hokey transitions, and all of the characters in the story were played by the main characters in the show. I thought it was pretty hilarious. Jeff wasn’t very entertained. Maybe enjoying watching bad movies/TV is an acquired taste?

After that, we watched an episode of “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelpha,” which I thought was hilarious for the first few seasons, but then got less funny. Apparently this season has been really good. The episode we watched was about an elaborate three-stage drinking game that they had made up to play together. Definitely funny.

After that, we had just enough time to watch Hot Tub Time Machine. The premise is that a group of friends go to the ski resort where they had their wild younger days, but now it’s kind of a dump. Then, when they spill a weird Russian energy drink on the controls while hanging out in the hot tub, they are transported back to the 1980’s, and get to relive a weekend they had there. Definitely not the best movie I’ve ever seen, but it did have us laughing. Chevy Chase was definitely the funniest character, though he was barely in it. Rob Cordry was pretty hilarious, too.

Christmas Exchange with Annette and Paul

2012-01-03T19:50:00.000-05:00

After spending the whole day with the family, Jeff and I headed to Maplewood for dinner with Annette and Paul. We went out to Jake’s in Maplewood Mall for dinner, and told each other about our respective Christmas celebrations.

Back at Annette’s apartment, we exchanged gifts. We’d gotten Annette and Paul each a Doctor Who shirt (I’m so excited that they’re fans!) – Annette has a Dalek Exterminate shirt and Paul got a Doctor shirt (it just has a fake pocket with a sonic screwdriver sticking out).

We also got them a gift certificate to Biaggi’s, which is a place we’ve gone out to eat with them a few times. It was extra special because the last time we were there, our waiter kept mentioning to us that he was usually a bartender, not a waiter – many times, for no apparent reason. “Here are your drinks, bringing drinks is easy – I’m usually a bartender, here.” “Just appetizers, no problem, that’s what people order in the bar all the time, and since I’m a bartender, I’m used to it.” “Need ideas on what drinks are good? I’m usually a bartender, so I know all about them.” (This is really not an exaggeration!) Anyway, when I went to get the gift certificate, they told me its easiest to just buy it in the bar, and guess who was working there! So I was able to not only give them the gift certificate, but also confirm that our waiter was actually a bartender. Double gift.

Annette and Paul gave us a really cute basket full of things for a romantic movie night – it had popcorn that pops up into a little box (so it looks like you’re at the theater), a bottle of Yellowtail Moscato, a box of chicken and a biscuit and cheese-wiz, and some after dinner mints. I’m excited to pick out a movie and enjoy the spread! (Apparently there’s another part to the gift, too, but it didn’t arrive in time, so we’ll have to find out what it is next time.)

To finish off our Christmas get-together (and going along well with their new attire), we decided to watch the Doctor Who 2011 Christmas Special. It was a cute hour-long episode loosely based on The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. The Doctor surprises a woman and her children by taking over as Caretaker in the country home they’re visiting over Christmas, and decorating it “Doctor style.” His gift to the family (a box that takes them into an alternate world/time where Christmas trees grow naturally), goes a little haywire, and adventure ensues. It was a fun episode, though I didn’t think it quite topped last year’s episode (a Doctor Who version of A Christmas Carol).

Day at the Zoo and Flat Earth Brewery

2012-01-03T19:38:00.000-05:00

Everyone is still in town and off work the day after Christmas, so we decided to plan a family activity – a day at the zoo. We all got together for lunch at Hazellewood’s near Brian’s house (half price burgers, yay!), and then drove out to the zoo.

It was Wally’s first-ever visit to the zoo, so people were most excited to see how he would react to everything. He seemed fairly interested in the monkeys, which were really close by – just on the other side of the glass – and moved around a lot. However, he seemed about equally interested in the wall, which was made of spun fibers and probably had an interesting texture.

The lions, tigers, and bears were too far away and/or slow moving for Wally to be really interested, but they were fun for the rest of us to see. The male lion was pacing back and forth and roaring. I’ve never heard a lion roar in real life before – it was very loud and very deep – not really like the Disney style.

The zebras and giraffes were a bit more interesting for Wally, though he seemed ready to nod off in his stroller by then, so they couldn’t have been that great. I enjoyed watching them, though – the giraffe walked right in front of the giant ruler, so I could read his height.

After seeing the animals, we went for a quick walk through the Conservatory. They had a large poinsettia display set up in the main area, and that was very pretty to see. The only problem was that the sun was low in the sky, and streaming in exactly at eye level, so the rest of the family didn’t spend long in that room.

After seeing the zoo, we drove down Snelling to get to Flat Earth Brewery in St. Paul. Brian wanted to stop in and buy a growler, because he’d heard it was good. My mom, Tom, Jeff, and I all joined him, which turned out to be a good decision, since they offered to pour tastes of whatever we wanted to try. We tried a bunch of things - they have really great beer! Eventually, we thought we’d had enough free samples, and we’d better buy something. The guys pouring though, asked us if we were sure – “there isn’t anything else you want to try?” How can you say no to that? They told us that they once had a group in tasting for three hours – the law is that you can’t pour more than four ounces at once, but there’s no limit to how many you can pour overall. We didn’t make it quite that long, though – we had people waiting in the car. My favorite was the Lost Planet Ale, which my mom bought. My brother got a Cygnus X-1 Porter (named after the first black hole) and a specially-made porter infusion that tasted like smores – it was pretty neat. Jeff and I got a red ale to share with Paul Colling when we saw him the next day. Great pit stop!

Christmas 2011

2012-01-03T08:36:00.001-05:00

This year, once again, we followed our traditional Christmas schedule: open presents with the immediate family, have brunch, gifts, and games with my mom's side of the family, relax for a while, and then go to Grandma John's house for dinner and gifts with my dad's side of the family. I think this may have been the best we've done in a while in actually sticking to the schedule!

Brian, Emily, and Wally were at my parents by 9 or 10am, and we started opening gifts. I was really excited this year, because I thought Jeff and I had thought of really fun gifts for people. For my parents, we were chipping in on coffee tables, but we also got my mom a Doctor Who T-shirt (just the logo, so you probably wouldn't recognize it if you weren't already familiar with the show - exactly the kind of 'undercover nerdy' style both my mom and I like), and we got my dad some White House golf balls. We found Emily a gift certificate for the Minneapolis Photo Center - they had a bunch of really cool options for classes we thought she'd like. Brian got a Beer of the Month Club membership that will deliver fun craft beers to his house every other month for most of the year. (Both Brian and Emily's gifts were also from my Mom and Dad since they were a little expensive.) For Wally, we had a collection of books and a xylophone, but the main thing was a stuffed "Bo" (the Obama's dog) and a book about the "First Dog's First Christmas." I thought it was pretty cute. Brian and Emily went in with us to get Katie the dress form that she's been wanting for years - it's just stayed on her Christmas list since she originally put it there. Jeff picked out a nice White House work out shirt for Tom, and we gave him an Amazon.com gift certificate. I got Jeff the overcoat he's really been needing since his old winter coat is way too big and not formal enough to wear with a suit (which is what he wears every day now!). Jeff gave me a cute, pink White House workout shirt, and also a home-made collection of coupons for a "very good" backrub (I always give him a hard time because he'll agree to rub my back, but then get distracted after just a couple minutes) - very cute!

Brian opening gifts from Emily

Tom's new White House shirt

One of Katie's gifts from Mom and Dad - Angel Perfume

Wally helping Dad open his gift (Wally likes golf balls, too)

Mom's Doctor Who shirt

Beer of the Month Club!

Not that interested in playing with (or reading about) Bo right now... gotta get back to that xylophone!

Work out shirt from Jeff

Jeff and I really liked the gifts that we got, too. Katie had gone shopping on behalf of my parents and got me a fun collection of cute, new clothes. Jeff also got clothes from my parents (which I had actually picked out while shopping with my mom). Katie and Tom gave me socks from Katie's current company "Little Miss Matched" and gave Jeff and I an Amazon.com gift certificate - definitely useful! Brian and Emily gave me camera things - a remote control and a lens hood - which I'm excited to use. They also found a really cute mug with my initial from Anthropology. Following tradition, they gave Jeff and Tom each a matching collection of ridiculous T-shirts, a "team redneck" camouflage hat, a snuggy blanket (which I fully intend to use, actually), and a hardware mug. It's amazing that they're able to find this stuff every year!

New clothes from Mom and Dad (picked out by Katie)

New clothes for Tom and Jeff!

It was also Wally's first Christmas, which means it was his first experience opening gifts. He didn't seem all that excited about the idea. When I helped him unwrap his gifts, slowly pulling on the paper to rip it, he would occasionally reach out and lightly tug on a loose end. He definitely had gift preferences though. He enjoyed seeing the books come out of the wrapping, but after he got a little red car and a xylophone, he'd mostly just push anything else you put in front of him out of the way.

Seems interested now...

This is a great toy!

Always loves the Christmas tree!

David's family showed up for brunch around 1 or 2pm, and we all sat down to enjoy the egg bake, cheesy potatoes, sausages, and belgian waffles. I love all of the dishes, so it's one of my favorite meals of the year! It didn't take long before we'd all gotten completely full. I called Mamie and Grandpa (who are in Corpus Christi, TX) on Skype, so that they could have a chance to say Merry Christmas and we could all chat a bit. It worked pretty well, and it was fun to have the whole family together for a bit, even if some of it was only virtual.

Natalie brought cookies

Ready to eat!

Visiting with Mamie and Grandpa Ray

New Clothes!

After dinner, it was time for gifts again. Up until last year, it had always been that my parents bought gifts for Drew and MacKenzie, and David and Natalie bought gifts for Brian, Katie, and me. I'm not sure how we got away with being the only ones getting gifts until I was 27 (and Brian was 30!), but we finally decided it was time to change the system. This year we did an exchange where everybody chose someone else's name, we set a $40 limit, and did a secret santa. It was really fun!

Apparently I thought something about this was very funny. Or I'm yelling...?

I had Drew, and I gave him a collection of stuffed sushi's (he speaks Japanese fluently and is in the Japan Club at school, so I thought it'd be kind of a funny thing to have around - maybe they could even use it to decorate their booth when the club sells food at their spring festival.) For his main gift, I gave him an Amazon.com gift certificate (a popular item for our family in general this year). Drew actually had me in the exchange, too, and gave me a "stampler," which both staples and stamps at the same time, creating a smily face using the stamp as a mouth, and says "Have a Nice Day." And, following the trend, I got an Amazon gift certificate too!

Drew and his new plush sushi!

Excited to use my stampler!

After gifts, we moved downstairs to start up a board game. We played "Buzz Word," which is a game where you break into two teams, and the reader tells their team the buzz word (for example: ball), and then reads ten clues where all of the answers will include that word. Clues might be things like: inflatable sand toy (Beach Ball), on top of spaghetti - (meatball), a psychic stares into one - (crystal ball). If the team misses some or doesn't get time to read all 10 clues, then the other team can steal those points. Both teams were really good - it was neck and neck - but in the end the other team won by a couple points.

Game time!

After finishing that game, we fired up the Kinect to give that a try. We played the river raft game again - this time working as one big team to see how far we could get. Mackenzie and Natalie even tried the dancing game (and they were really good!). Eventually, we finished up game time, and said goodbye to David, Natalie, Drew, Asami, and MacKenzie!

River raft game

Best dance team in the family

After a bit of lounging around in the late afternoon, we all got our things together and headed to Grandma John's. Grandma had been decorating and preparing and cooking all day, and everything looked and smelled great. We chatted with the rest of the family, and everyone had their fill of lots of great Christmas classics - ham, potatoes, rolls, deviled eggs, and lots more. We took the big family Christmas photo (Wally's first one!) and then opened gifts. Grandma John got me a Vikings shirt and a Twins T-shirt, which is exactly what I wanted. Jeff got a sweater, tea, and lotion, which is perfect for him! By the time gifts were over, we were all pretty tired, and people started heading home. We made a bit of a detour to look at some Christmas lights, and drive by our old house, and then headed home to bed!

Everybody at Grandma John's

Wally likes Grandma's earrings

Christmas Eve 2011

2012-01-02T16:54:00.002-05:00

Saturday was Christmas Eve. We slept in, wrapped gifts, and then headed over to Brian and Emily's house for a Christmas open house. She had all of her extended family over - parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins, and our immediate family (Mom, Dad, Katie, me and significant others) joined in. They had a fun collection of snack foods that everyone had brought.

We watched the end of the Vikings game (they lost - this has not been a great season for them), and watched Wally play with his cousins Colin and Ryder, who are both very close to his age. The three little boys are all very cute and have very distinct personalities. Emily's dad gave his grandsons (Wally and Colin) little sleds with big red bows. Wally was happy to sit in the sled, grabbing both Colin's and his own bow and waving them like pompoms. Colin was squirmy, and after a moment of sitting in the sled wanted to get back to playing with toys.

Some of the family hanging out upstairs at Brian and Emily's

Cousins!

Back at our house, we had an early Christmas Eve dinner of BBQ ribs, baked potatoes, fruit, and salad. It was nice to sit down for a small dinner with the family (though Brian and Emily couldn't make it this year, unfortunately).

After dinner, Jeff and I went with my parents to the Arbor Lakes movie theater (Katie and Tom had wrapping they wanted to finish up). It's become a Christmas Eve tradition to see a movie together as a family, partly because it's a fun activity, but more because it's functionally necessary. Before we started going to a movie, everybody would start relaxing after dinner and then just get more and more tired, so that when it was time to go to midnight mass, it was almost impossible to get yourself motivated and moving again to go out into the cold. Now we're able to time the movie so that it fills the time between dinner and midnight mass almost perfectly, so we just go straight from the movie to midnight mass, and it doesn't feel difficult at all.

The movie we saw this year was Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol (the IMAX version). It was pretty good - an interesting story, and lots of fun gadgets and intricate plans. The scenes that they shot at the Burj Khalifa in Dubai were pretty incredible. It's the tallest building in the world, at 2,716 feet, and Tom Cruise (he performed his own stunts) scales the outside of the building near the top. I'm not particulary afraid of heights, but still. Yikes.

After the movie, we headed over to St. Barts, which is my parents' new church. They have really nice music - the choir is accompanied by a band with both strings and brass. Jeff really enjoyed the sermon, which was about King Wenceslas and Vaclav Havel (they have different forms of the same name, and lived in the same place) and how they both worked to help regular people. I'm pretty sure the first time I've ever gone to midnight mass anywhere but Presentation, and it was strange not to see all of our friends after church, but it was a very nice service.

Family Kinect Game Night

2012-01-02T16:26:00.003-05:00

On Friday, we kicked off the family Christmas weekend with a game night at my parents' house. Usually we play board games, but my parents' had just bought a XBox 360 Kinect, so we thought we'd play that. Not everyone would agree to playing the dance game (which I think is the most fun), so instead, we broke into teams of two and competed for the highest score on the river raft game. After that, we tried out a bunch of different games, just to see all the options. It's a really fun game system - some of the games really give you a work out!

Brian trying to collect coins while rafting down the river

Jeff playing a brickbreaker-ish game

Mariel trying to keep the game going

Tom plugging holes in an acquarium

Emily has multiple cracks in the glass to fix!

Dad's in on the fun

We also had lots of snacks (including fun cheeses that Jeff's parents had sent as a gift!) and my mom made mulled wine (she has a great recipe that makes it a little more sweet and makes the Christmas-y spices really stand out). And on top of that, we decided to order pizza. Fun way to start the holiday weekend!

Taco Night with Annette and Paul

2012-01-02T16:08:00.001-05:00

On Thursday, December 22nd, before all of the Christmas excitement started up, I headed out to Maplewood to have dinner with Annette and Paul. Annette pulled together all the fixings for a taco night, which was really fun.

After dinner and catching up on the happenings since Thanksgiving, Annette mixed up some eggnog and Bailey's and we watched the "Blink" episode of Doctor Who. That's the episode with the weeping angels (a great episode, if you haven't seen it!) We watched the preview for "The Hobbit," which is supposed to come out about a year from now (Paul is very excited, Annette not so much - she tried reading The Hobbit years ago, but didn't really like it, and she never read Lord of the Rings. But she agreed to a Lord of the Rings movie marathon on New Years' Eve with Paul and his friends, so maybe things will change...) After that, it kind of devolved into watching funny YouTube clips - I showed them the Hastily Made Cleveland Tourism Videos and the various Drunk History videos (warning - there's a bit of bad language in those, so don't click while at work!). They showed me the Talking Dog video, and we all re-watched the classic, Little Girl Explains Star Wars.

Play time!

2012-01-02T15:49:00.000-05:00

On Thursday morning Emily picked me up, and we headed to Naomi's house to meet up with her and Rachel. Since Emily has Wally, and Naomi and Rachel both have two kids (Naomi's twins, Micah and Caleb are three years old, Rachel's older boy, Ari, is two, and her younger boy, Theo, is just a couple months old), I thought it would be nice to get together someplace where they could all play, too. Naomi and Brian recently moved to Circle Pines, MN, so we went to see their new house. It was a really beautiful place! All the little boys had a fun time playing. Micah and Caleb have train tables in their rooms (they're really into Thomas the Tank Engine), and lots of other toys, so we went up there. Wally seemed to be having a very fun time watching the older boys and playing with the trains. At one point, Micah and Caleb had enough of the "little kids" playing with their toys, so they took a box of things, went in the other bedroom, and closed the door. So funny.

Naomi made lunch for everyone, so around noon, we all sat down to a very nice lunch of chicken salad on croissants, chips, and fresh fruit salad. Caleb had dinosaur-shaped mac and cheese, but Micah had hot dogs (he actually wanted mac and cheese, too, but he only likes the "worms" shape - which is what he calls the regular macaroni shape - and they were all out.) It was really fun to see all the little kids play together and to get to catch up with Naomi and Rachel!

Jeff's New Office

2012-01-02T10:30:00.001-05:00

Jeff was still in DC working, while I spent the week in Minnesota. He's getting more settled in his new office now, and still enjoying the amazing view. Here's some pictures from inside his office and of what he can see:

Jeff's space in the office

His office is shared with a bunch of other staff economists

White House and North Lawn

Washington Monument

Washington Monument closer up

White House and the North Lawn

Side of the White House (West Wing)

White House and South Lawn (where the president's helicopter takes off from)

View south - seeing another part of the Eisenhower Executive Office Building and the Jefferson Memorial

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

2012-01-01T14:50:00.002-05:00

The American version of "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" was released on Wednesday, Dec. 21st, and since my mom and I had both read the book and seen the Swedish version of the movie, we were really excited to see it. We figured since it was opening day for a blockbuster movie, and people were free because of the holidays, it might sell out, so we looked for tickets online. Already, it wasn't possible to buy tickets to the 7pm show at the Arbor Lakes Theater. We looked at Rogers, and their 7pm show was also gone. The 8pm showing at Rogers was still available, though, so we grabbed three tickets to that (we figured Dad would want to go too).

We were worried about getting good seats and being able to sit together, so we told my dad to meet us at home at 7:15pm. When we got there, we got our popcorn and asked if the movie theater was open yet. The girl working at concessions said she wasn't sure, but we could just wait in the lobby for a while to be sure. "We just want to get good seats," my mom told her. The girl just kind of shrugged. And so then we noticed that we were the only people in the lobby. Which is kind of strange for a sold out movie.

I checked the theater, and the previous showing was still going, so we waited outside. When it ended, and people had shuffled out, we went in and got seats. Over the next 20 minutes, others trickled in slowly. In the end, other than us, there were probably about seven other people in the theater. My dad is still giving me a hard time about this - "Do you think we should head to the grocery story early? Could be sold out!" Though, to be honest, I have no idea what happened, or why the 7pm shows were unavailable at both theaters. Oh well.

As far as the movie went, I thought it was really well done. Daniel Craig was good as Mikael Blomkivst - just a mildly charming, but pretty unassuming journalist that gets wrapped up in crazy events - no sign of his James Bond persona. I thought Rooney Mara was very good as Lisbeth Salander also, just the right amount of difficult and unrelateable, but still interesting. The movie followed the book fairly closely (more closely than I thought it would in some places - it has some pretty intense story-lines). It wasn't possible to capture all of the details that make the book so interesting, so the mystery aspect was nearly as intricate or possible to follow. They also changed one aspect of the end, though I think they got the gist of it right.

I liked the American version better than the Swedish version - I thought it captured the excitement and drama of the book better, and Daniel Craig is just a better actor. Fun to see them both, though!

Mom and Mariel Day

2012-01-01T14:36:00.000-05:00

Wednesday, Dec. 21st, neither my Mom nor I had any work that we needed to get done, so we planned to spend the whole day just hanging out. My mom went to a doctor's appointment with my dad early in the morning (he's been having issues with his bone-anchored hearing aid (BAHA) and was hoping the doctor could get a solution), and we headed out soon after she got home.

We started the day by meeting up for lunch with Emily, Tom (who had arrived a couple days earlier and was staying with Emily and Brian), and Wally. We ate at Champs - all splitting nachos, and then I shared a buffalo chicken sandwich with my mom (though I barely ate any, because I really didn't think it was very good.) The most entertaining part of lunch was definitely seeing Wally discover crayons for the first time - he picked it up really quickly!

After lunch, my mom and I headed to Ridgedale Mall to do a bit of Christmas shopping. My mom wanted to pick up hand soap and a couple other things for the house. I bought Jeff a new overcoat so that he would have something that looked good over his suit.

From there, we went to Dania for more furniture shopping. My parents are really focused on getting the perfect furniture for their new house, and are taking their time finding exactly what they want. The plan for Christmas was for the kids to go in on some coffee and end tables for the basement, so my parents were searching all over the Twin Cities to find something they liked. Their style is very contemporary - glass, chrome, and black, and there are just a few places specializing in that type of furniture. We'd already been to Rosenthal Contemporary Furniture and the International Design Center, so Dania was kind of the last stop. Dania had really cool options, and much more reasonable prices than any of the other places. We found some good options, and my mom was excited to come back with my dad. As far as I know, they still haven't made an actual purchase, but this Carolina Coffee Table was the most recent front runner.

Night out with Mom

2012-01-01T14:17:00.000-05:00

Originally, my mom and I had planned to each work a half-day on Tuesday, and then hang out in the afternoon and evening. Before leaving for work, though, my mom predicted that neither one of us would really be done by lunch time, and she was right. Instead, she got home from work at about 5:30pm, just about the same time I was finishing up the last bit of work on my dissertation. So instead of going for lunch, we went out to dinner.

We chose Biaggi's, which may be my favorite restaurant near their house. It's a nice Italian restaurant with big portions, reasonable prices, and good food. It's so hard to choose just one thing - we decided to get a pizza and a pasta and share them both. We almost got an appetizer, too, but then decided that since there was no way we'd even finish the two entrees, it really didn't make sense. The bread, which is served with olive oil mixed with parmesan cheese and freshly-ground pepper, is amazing, so that I'm rarely still hungry by the time the entrees come.

My mom and I each ordered a glass of Malbec, too - a nice way to start a relaxing evening. The Mediterranean pizza we ordered turned out not to be that great - the crust was too thick, and the toppings didn't seem like anything special (which is weird, because I could have sworn I liked the pizza I had the last time I came). The pasta, however, we both really loved! It was Penne Sardi: Penne pasta tossed with grilled chicken, wild mushrooms, caramelized onions and a sun-dried tomato cream sauce. Finished in the oven with a topping of crispy garlic and oregano seasoned breadcrumbs. Yum!

After dinner, we went back home, opened a nice bottle of Pinot Noir, and I showed my mom the first episode in the BBC miniseries 'Sherlock.' Jeff and I watched it on Netflix a couple months ago and really liked it. I was sure my mom would like it too, and I was right! She showed it to my dad later, and by the end we left Minnesota, they'd seen all three episodes. Relaxing on the couch with a glass of wine and watching TV really made Tuesday night feel like the holiday break had truly begun.

My Dissertation Followed Me Home...

2012-01-01T14:02:00.001-05:00

I was really hoping to finish up a draft of the first two chapters of my dissertation before heading off for the holidays, but things started really piling up in the last couple weeks before leaving, and I didn't quite get there. So, on Monday and Tuesday (Dec. 19th and 20th), I decided to focus on finishing up that work. The dissertation is on International Cooperation on Climate Change Monitoring. For the first chapter, I had read a whole bunch of reports and information about how we monitor climate change and why satellites are important for this work, but I needed to actually synthesize and write about all the things I had learned as they apply to my work.

Then, for the second chapter, I had gotten together a bunch of data about all of the climate-relevant satellites that do exist (or already did, or are planned to exist) between 2000 and 2020. I needed to take that data and make it into useful graphs and tables that could allow others to see some of the interesting aspects of the data. There are only about 240 satellites included in my dataset, but when I look at the number of unique types of measurements taken, or the number of unique types of measurements taken in each year, the dataset expands to more than 10,000 lines. Jeff has been helping me work with the data using Stata, a program that's good for working with big datasets, and I've been using Excel to actually make the charts and tables.

Over the course of the two days, I was able to complete those two chapters (or at least a first draft of them) and send an email off to the professors on my dissertation committee, so that they could see the current status of my work. Now, when I go back to school after the holiday break, I'll be focusing on collecting information on the data-sharing policies for each of those satellites. (I know what satellites exist, and what types of data they collect, but it's also really important to know whether countries are sharing that data, and to what extent they're doing so.) I also want to read more about the existing organizations that try to promote international satellite data sharing.

It was great to get that work done early in the trip, so that then I could use the rest of the trip to just relax and hang out with friends and family!

Christmas Shopping and other Errands

2012-01-01T13:42:00.001-05:00

Sunday was pretty much just a day of errands. The first half of the day was all focused on Christmas shopping. Jeff was visiting his parents, so we just chatted over the phone and did all of our shopping online (mostly on Amazon.com, and a bit on thinkgeek.com). The only things we didn't order online were gifts from the White House gift shop. Since this is Jeff's one year there, we thought it'd be fun to get everyone at least a little White House themed thing.

When shopping was over, my parents picked me up at home, and I went with them to look at furniture, and to get lunch at Panera. Then we all spent a long time looking at kids books at Barnes & Noble, trying to pick out things for Wally. I didn't buy much there, but I looked at some books that I'd been thinking about getting online - a lot of the kids books sold on amazon don't let you virtually page through them.

Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows

2012-01-01T13:36:00.000-05:00

On Saturday night, my parents and I headed out to see Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows. We had seen the first Sherlock Holmes movie two years before (at the Mall of America in a theater with moving seats). This one is about Sherlock chasing after Professor Moriarty. I thought this movie was pretty similar to the first one, as far as the style and quality. It was fun and entertaining; it definitely made me laugh. They start almost all of the fight scenes with Sherlock going through what will happen mentally, and that's a kind of fun device, though there are still some chase scenes that went a little long. Overall, still recommended as a fun, mystery/adventure movie!

Family Dinner

2012-01-01T13:16:00.000-05:00

After a long lunch with my mom and her friends, and a quick stop to browse at the Rosenthal furniture store a couple blocks away, it was already time to start planning for dinner. Brian, Emily, and Wally were coming over, and I had offered to cook.

I picked up the ingredients for the Loaded Potato Soup I'd made for Jeff and myself a few weeks ago. It's a pretty quick and easy recipe to make, though both times I made it I had a hard time getting the milk not to burn on the bottom of the pot - maybe I need to stir a little more vigorously, but you also need it to come to a boil, so I'm not sure. In any case, it still tasted good, and it looks fun with all of the little garnishes on top.

Everybody seemed to enjoy the food! Dinner was relatively quick (Brian and Emily wanted to get Wally home in time for his 6:30pm bed time), so mom, dad, and I still had an evening free to go out to a movie!

Lunch with Mom and Friends

2011-12-28T14:00:00.000-05:00

The second day I was in Minnesota, my mom had a lunch planned with her college friends, and they decided to bring along their daughters. We ate at Rosa Mexicano, which just opened up in Minneapolis a couple months ago. The food was really good (especially the table-side guacamole). They had a good lunch special, where you could have an entree and an appetizer (or dessert) for about $15. We also tried the pomegranate margaritas, which is there specialty drink - they're very good (but also pretty strong!) - I shared one with my mom. Lunch was really nice - it was fun to hear what my mom's friends Cindy, Debra, and Mary were up to. I see Cindy's daughters fairly often, but I can't remember the last time I saw Debra's daughter. We had so much to chat about - we ended up staying at lunch for almost three hours!

Heading to Minnesota for Christmas

2011-12-28T13:44:00.000-05:00

My flight was at 6am Friday morning, and I hadn't packed yet, so when I got home from the AGI Christmas party at about 1am, I pulled some clothes out of my closet and put them on a pile on the floor, hoping that was approximately what I'd need. When I got up a few hours later, I got ready, packed those things into a suitcase, and headed out. Jeff got up to join me outside in finding a cab, which was sweet, even though he was pretty zombie-like (he doesn't do well with sleep deprivation). I got to the airport in plenty of time! Reagan National Airport was all decorated for Christmas - very pretty!

Somehow, I was feeling pretty awake, so I had breakfast at the airport and read a bit. I slept on the plane, and still felt pretty good when I arrived in Minneapolis at 8:15am. I grabbed a Caribou Coffee (They had a really cute deal where each day a certain number is chosen, and if that's the number of your row on the plane, you can show your ticket and get a free coffee. It wasn't my row this time, but I still thought it was cute.)

I caught the light rail to Nicollet Mall in Minneapolis, and met up with Emily and Wally there. We decided to head to Ridgedale Mall, so that Wally could play and Emily could do a bit of shopping. Wally really likes playing on the little indoor playground. He likes all of the other kids, and he especially likes playing with the giant tick-tac-toe board and going on the slides.

After being at the mall, we headed home, where Emily whipped up a great tomato and peanut-butter based stew. After having lunch, I finally crashed, and took a long afternoon nap. I woke up when one of Emily's piano students came over. Wally was loving the music.

He also thinks the mom of the girl getting lessons is very funny. He was cracking up!

Finally he noticed that I was filming, and decided to take over the operation.

My mom came over when she was done with work, and Brian came home from work around the same time. Bri and Em needed to pick up a new kitchen table they'd found on Craigslist, so my Mom and I watched Wally for a bit. As always, he was very cute.

Dinner time!

Baby sign language for "more" - you can really see the question on his face, too!

Story time! So cute that Hazel is sitting on my mom's feet - she wants to be a part of story time too!

Time to read!

Serious reading time

That's the sign for "all done!"

Christmas Apartment and Honeymoon Tree

2011-12-28T13:15:00.000-05:00

December seemed to fly by, but Jeff and I did do a bit of decorating for Christmas. We even went out and bought santa pillows for the couches and icicle lights to put in the window!

Apartment decorated for Christmas

Christmas cards on the fridge!

When we travel, one of our favorite choices for a souvenir is a Christmas ornament. Often, it's something that wasn't even intended to be an ornament (like a little charm or keychain), but we make it into one. When we were on our honeymoon, we bought one ornament from each country we visited. Since we just had a small tree this year, we only decorated with the honeymoon ornaments - I think it turned out pretty cute!

Christmas tree with ornaments from countries we visited on our honeymoon - Iceland, Denmark, Estonia, Russia, Finland, Sweden, Germany, Turkey, Thailand, and the USA (Napa)

The Last Space Christmas: AGI Holiday Party

2011-12-28T13:07:00.002-05:00

The last Space Christmas party of the year, for Jeff and me, was the AGI party on Thursday night. Jeff actually beat me there, since I was running so late after grading finals. I didn't arrive until after 9pm. Luckily for me, the party was still going strong. It was at the House of Sweden, which I think is part of the Swedish Embassy (I know it's technically foreign soil, because that was on the invitation), and it's located right on the waterfront in Georgetown. It was a beautiful building, with lots of glass, and was decorated really nicely for Christmas. There was lots of great food - I loved the scalloped potatoes - and an open bar. I opted for champagne again.

AGI Party at the House of Sweden

Lots of our friends were there - Stephanie, Arthur, Emma, Kris, etc., so it was like having a big, fancy goodbye holiday party with our normal friends, but with someone else paying.

Jeff and I enjoying the party!

Hanging out with Stephanie and Arthur - I took this one!

Stephanie and me!

They closed the party down a little after 11:30pm. Jeff was exhausted, since we'd been up until 3:30am the night before working on Christmas Cards, and he had his bike with him, so he decided to take the last bus back to our neighborhood (which has a bike rack), and which left at midnight. The rest of us headed to Mr. Smith's - a little pub nearby. The party hosts ordered more food and drinks for everyone, and we continued to hang out until after 1am. It was a great night!

Global Environmental Problems - Final Exam

2011-12-28T12:54:00.000-05:00

On Thursday morning at 9am, the students in the Global Environmental Problems class I was TAing had their final exam. I was proctoring the exam - sitting up front facing all the students, doing work on my computer as they took their test. It was strange to be at a final exam, feeling the tension, hearing just the busily writing pens, but being completely free of that stress myself. I wasn't excited about getting up really early to be in Maryland at 8:45am, but other than that, the morning wasn't really different than any other for me.

The final ended at noon, and the professor treated me to lunch at the cafe nearby, to thank me for my work over the course of the semester. Then we started grading. The exam was made up of two short answers (half a page), three medium answers (usually a page or two long), and two longer essays (usually a few pages). We graded from about 1pm until 4:30pm or so together, and then Nate had to head to another event. I wanted to finish up, since I was flying home the next morning and couldn't take the exam booklets with me. I ended up grading until almost 8pm! (Luckily, the only thing I had left to do after that was go to another Space Christmas party.)

I really enjoyed TAing. It was interesting to grade papers, and it did provide me with some general insight into writing style. I thought giving a lecture was really fun and interesting too. I have ideas for different activities I would do or patterns I would do if I were actually the professor of the class. I like getting the students involved, I like discussing the readings (so that people actually do them), I like following a clear overall plan for the class, and also having very clear goals for what we'll cover in each lecture. I would have a grading system that's very straightforward, so they people can have a good idea of how they're doing throughout the course. If I do get the opportunity to be a professor at some point in the future, I think I'd really enjoy it!

Christmas Card 2011

2011-12-28T12:38:00.000-05:00

I wrote up our annual Christmas letter fairly early in December - usually I try to keep it to just one page, but with the wedding, the honeymoon, my PhD stuff, and Jeff's new job at the White House, it didn't seem possible this year, so I just gave up on that and let it be three pages long. Following our plan from last year, we just printed the letter on regular stationary, and then ordered a photo card from Shutterfly so that we'd have some pictures to go along with the letter.

Joy Love Story Holiday

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View the entire collection of cards.

Putting those things together takes some time, but it's not really the most time-consuming part of the Christmas card activity. The most time-consuming part happens after you have all the pieces. It's taking each photo card, writing a personal note to the person it's going to, folding up the letter, and then putting everything together, addressing it, and sealing it, so it's ready to go. It got down to the last week before I was heading to Minnesota, so Jeff and I knew we needed to get started.

We planned to do this on Monday. We spent a couple of hours trying to figure out how to print the addresses directly onto the envelopes (like we did for the wedding), but our printer was not cooperating. Eventually we gave up on that plan, but by that time, we were too tired to start writing notes, so we gave up on the project for the night.

Our second attempt was on Tuesday night. I came home from my last day of class, and we ordered pizza (to make it a sort of Christmas Card-pizza party). We were too hungry to start before the pizza came, and we couldn't write and eat pizza at the same time, so while we were eating pizza we put on some of the Christmas episodes of our favorite shows (Parks and Rec, The Office, Community, etc.). Then we were so full of pizza and feeling so relaxed watching TV, that we never actually started on the Christmas cards.

Our last chance to get the cards done was on Wednesday evening. I got home before Jeff and started printing up the address labels and laying things out so we could get started. Jeff brought home Chipotle, so we didn't need to do any cooking, and we got started almost right away. Leaving everything for one night was definitely difficult. We ended up working on cards until about 3:30am. But when we were finished, we were completely finished - everything was written, folded, stuffed, sealed, and addressed.

Jeff took all the cards to work on Thursday morning and mailed them out, and that was it!

Exercising Success!

2011-12-28T12:02:00.002-05:00

After Thanksgiving, I posted about my plan to exercise before work Monday through Thursday for the three weeks before heading home for Christmas - the twelve days of exercising before Christmas. Well, I thought I should report that it was a success! I had to switch days once or twice to accommodate early morning events, but I did exercise for 45 minutes four mornings a week for three weeks! Exercising in the morning is definitely much better logistically - no work has gotten out of hand yet, and events are almost never scheduled that early, so there's really no excuse not to go (besides the fact that it's morning, and I don't like to get up in the morning generally). That results in me just actually making it to the gym much more frequently, which is probably the most important thing. And I feel like my evenings are much more free.

So, even though I'm not really a morning person, I think I'm going to try to keep up this plan when we're back in DC after Christmas (and Jeff says he is, too)!

Elliptical machines at my gym

Mariel Cooks Monday: Cheesy Polenta with Mushroom Saute

2011-12-28T11:48:00.001-05:00

On the second Monday in December, I decided to make cheesy polenta with mushroom saute (with fresh mushrooms, this time!). It's really just what it sounds like - cheesy, creamy polenta topped with some flavored, sautéed mushrooms. Which means it wasn't too difficult to make, and it was really healthy. I didn't have any cute gratin dishes, so I just used pie plates, but it turned out really well, and was very tasty (and filling!).

Cheesy Polenta with Mushroom Sauté
Ingredients
2 tablespoons olive oil
2 (4-ounce) packages exotic mushroom blend, chopped
1 (8-ounce) package presliced cremini mushrooms
1 teaspoon minced fresh thyme
1/2 teaspoon minced fresh oregano
3 garlic cloves, chopped
1/3 cup organic vegetable broth
2 teaspoons fresh lemon juice
1/8 teaspoon black pepper
2 cups 2% reduced-fat milk
1 1/2 cups organic vegetable broth
3/4 cup instant polenta
1 cup (4 ounces) shredded fontal or fontina cheese, divided
1/4 teaspoon salt

Preparation
1. Heat oil in a skillet over high heat. Add mushrooms; sauté 4 minutes. Add herbs and garlic; sauté 1 minute. Stir in 1/3 cup broth, juice, and pepper.
2. Bring milk and 1 1/2 cups broth to a boil. Stir in polenta; cook 4 minutes, stirring constantly. Stir in half of cheese and 1/4 teaspoon salt. Divide polenta among 4 gratin dishes; top with remaining cheese. Broil 5 minutes. Top each serving with 1/2 cup mushrooms.

Diana and Marco Arrive (again!) and West Wing Tour

2011-12-28T11:41:00.002-05:00

On Saturday evening, Diana and Marco flew back to DC from Florida. They had come back to go on a White House tour that Jeff had scheduled for Sunday evening. They were slightly disappointed that it was 80 degrees and sunny anymore (Marco had just swum in the ocean that morning), but they were excited for the tour.

We all hung out on Saturday night at our place, and heard about their time in Florida. They had stayed with a person they found on "couch surfing" - which is a website that allows people to sign up and offer to host travelers for free in their homes. The person they stayed with was into hashing, which I'd never heard of, but apparently is a running club that also involves drinking. One or two people set up a path around the city that the rest of the club runs around. At checkpoints they stop, relax, have a drink, and figure out how to get to the next check point. Then they usually end up at a bar at the end. Diana and Marco said it was interesting, and they had fun.

On Sunday, I spent most of my day grading papers, so they would be ready for the students on their last day of class. I hadn't done any grading the week I taught the lecture, so I had more than 80 papers to go through. Diana and Marco relaxed around the apartment. Diana watch the movie "Morning Glory," with Harrison Ford, which was pretty cute, but a bit distracting compared to grading (I probably should have just put on headphones...).

At about 5pm, I took a break from grading, and we all went to Cafe Soleil for a drink and a snack over happy hour. I think Cafe Soleil is a really cute restaurant - it's pretty little, and feels very warm and cozy. The calamari and nachos we had were good, and the $5 house wine they offered for happy hour was good, too.

Our West Wing tour was around 6pm, and we were joined by some friends from the French Embassy - Teddy, Philipe, the French Space Attache, and Philipe's wife. While we were checking in, we hit an unfortunate snag - Diana's name had been entered wrong, so it didn't match her passport. We worked for about half an hour to try and fix that - calling and emailing people that might be able to re-enter the name. Unfortunately, though we did manage to get in touch with the right people, it turns out that there is nothing to be done on a Sunday night when people aren't in the office. Diana went back to Cafe Soleil to have another drink and wait for the rest of us.

Though we were sad to have Diana miss out, the rest of the tour went well. The West Wing wasn't nearly as thoroughly decorated for Christmas as the East Wing was, but it still had a few Christmas trees and other decorations around, which was really fun to see. I was able to practice using the guide that I had written up to lead the tour. The West Colonnade and Rose Garden was closed for a bit while we were touring (maybe the president or someone was out there?), but it did open back up, so people could see that part, too. As always, we took a bunch of pictures after exiting from the tour!

Jeff's building was decorated for Christmas, too!

Space Christmas: GWSS Holiday Party

2011-12-18T22:50:00.001-05:00

On Friday we went to the George Washington Space Society Christmas party. It was at GWU - where I went to get my Masters, and was more centered around people around my age - particularly people who had gone to GWU. Jeff came to the party and brought his friend, Judd, from his office. We had sandwiches and holiday beer and hung out with friends. Nice way to round out the week!

Space Christmas: DLR Holiday Party

2011-12-18T19:45:00.000-05:00

Just one day after the great Arianespace party, Jeff and I headed to the Army Navy Club for the annual DLR (German Space Agency) Christmas Party. As always, they had great German food - sauer kraut, sausages, German chocolate cake, and lots more, and good wine and beer. Again, Jeff and I enjoyed celebrating with our friends. It was especially warm and cozy, because freezing rain was coming down outside (not literally freezing, but it felt like it!)

It was only two days since I'd given my first college lecture, but I had my first professor-like discussion. I ran into a group of my old professors from my Masters program at GWU, and I mentioned that I had given a lecture the other day. We had a whole discussion about lecturing and grading and student excuses and all sorts of things. It was so fun!

Space Christmas: Arianespace Holiday Party

2011-12-18T19:42:00.000-05:00

On Wednesday, December 7th, Jeff and I headed to the Arianespace Holiday Party. It's always a great party, and this year was no exception. We enjoyed great food and drinks with friends. I mostly had champagne (when the French throw a party, that's got to be the drink of choice!), though they also had a fun signature drink that was light blue (Hpnotiq, citrus vodka, and white cranberry juice), with coconut along the rim - very cute. Jeff and I had our photo taken at their photo booth, which we'd forgotten to do the year before.

Arianespace is also the only space Christmas party to which whole families are invited, and it's always fun to meet everybody's kids. My boss has two adorable little girls (last year Elsa invited me over to play lightsabers, though I never did make it...). I also got to meet the son of the Japanese representative in DC - a very cute, slightly shy, three year old. The party has Santa Claus and the Sugarplum Fairy, which the kids love, and the there are some arts and crafts, too. The best thing is the kids food table - pizza, chicken fingers, grilled cheese, etc. Though the adult food is pretty amazing (duck, risotto, etc.), it's hard not to take a second look at the kids' options, and grab just one sleeve of fries while nobody's looking.