rochester at a glance

New recycle bin

2009-07-23T20:03:00.000-07:00

Yes, it is new...and its exceedingly large

And yes I can fit into it!

First post of 2009

2009-05-02T18:31:00.000-07:00

So, it has been a while again since I've posted. I'll be surprised if anyone reads this anymore!

First, we went to see Godspell last night, put on by Lourdes High School. They did a great job, sounded and looked great, of course. The unique bit was that it was put on in a movie theater. The Chateau theater in town puts up a stage over some chairs in front of the screen. Plays done there are best for ones with minimal scene or costume changes, as well as minimal entrances...since it is still a movie theater. (We saw The Taming of the Shrew there previously, which worked well too.) The funny thing is when other movies are playing next store, all of the sudden, out of nowhere (always in the quiet points in the play) there will be a giant rumbling that sounds over the theater. This time, it was probably from Wolverine. Perhaps it was the voice of God for this play...

Second, I have been wanting to acknowledge an awesome restaurant in Milwaukee, WI that my even more awesomer sister- and brother-in-law took us to. The Palomino is a resturant/bar with a wide selection of entrees including, from what I remember, country fried steak, chili mac-n-cheese, tater tots (!) and many vegetarian and vegan entrees like veg-sloppy joe. I had the chili mac-n-cheese, which was delicious - why didn't anyone think this up previously? Try it out next time you are there.

Third, now that its finally getting warm out, I finished my sweater! (its the knitter's murphy's law) It fits pretty well, not perfect of course as my sweaters never fit just right, but its not too bad. I think the gauge was on, but I just made the wrong size... Either way, I wore it on Sunday when it was 45F, but not that its 60F, its a bit too warm for worsted wool.

And finally, this is one of the most awesome knitting things I've seen in a long time. Way to go.

See you next time.

2008 Garden: pictures I

2008-06-01T17:41:00.000-07:00

Slightly behind, but pictures of the patio garden from mid-May. We are using the planter boxes again for flowers and also peas! Jon helped me find this interestingly awesome wooden stand at a garage sale, so it'll get some of the plants off the ground a bit. Kind of rustic looking.

We also decided to try something new, since none of the pots would ever seem to be big enough to grow pumpkins or cucumbers...so we think at least. We bought a kiddie pool at Walmart and filled it up with dirt. We've got pumpkins, cucumbers, beans and radishes growing in there now. Hopefully there will be enough room for everything!

I must say I'm excited to get a house where I can have a real garden. That will be spectacular. Not that I don't love carting packages of dirt up stairs and filling pots, but I sure was spoiled living at home with the big garden in the back!

Some socks

2008-06-01T17:19:00.000-07:00

As promised, a picture of the finished Strawberry Shortcake socks. They turned out pretty good, a little big, but not too bad. So that is what the knit up yarn that was dyed with Kool Aide looks like. Pretty cool eh? There are so many cool things to try with dying yarn...I'm looking forward to doing it again! Maybe green and pink this time...

This yarn was called "Cloud 9" from Cascade. It was on clearance at The Yarnery a while back, so I got some and finally got around to making the socks. Its a wool/angora mix, so they are quite fuzzy and warm. Plus they are awesome shades of pink.

In the queue now are a pair of light brown lacy socks for work and some pink verigated Tofutsies yarn on two circulars. Good times.

Congrats, Kristine!

2008-05-04T18:27:00.000-07:00

Another job well done!

Dying yarn

2008-03-30T18:09:00.001-07:00

I recently bought some dye-it-yourself yarn from KnitPicks and I thought I'd begin my yarn dying experience with the Kool Aid technique. We got out the plastic bag to cover the table, bought a turkey baster and got down to it.

We had red and yellow colors that mixed together to get some great orangey colors as well. The turkey baster seemed to work pretty well, although it was kinda cheap and was a bit drippy sometimes... Jim did the color mixing for me and he did a great job at it as well!

Once all the color was in and the white *mostly* gone. Then Jim helped with the microwaving to set the color. It turned out really nice. I'll post a picture of the socks once they are finished.

CA Oddities

2008-02-07T19:19:00.000-08:00

So once again I was in California for a conference of The Green Grid. California always seems to be a strange and unusual place to me.

I flew into the San Jose airport. (One nice thing about this...it felt like spring when I got off the plane!) I rented a car to drive to San Francisco, where the first portion of my meeting was. The drive wasn't too bad at first. I was looking for a place to eat lunch, and there was nothing along the highway. I would get off at an exit, drive around a bit, found no restaurants, got back on the freeway and drove around some more. Aparently, people don't eat much in CA. I finally found a Togos, which was pretty good. I seem to be making a habit of going there every time I'm in CA. They are always quite pleasant and perky when I go in there, which is nice I guess.

The drivers in CA are interesting. Some of them go fast on the freeway, but some of them go quite slow! They will be driving 50 MPH in a 65 area. It happened to me getting stuck behind them multiple times, multiple different cards. Crazy. Typically, everyone just flies by me.

So I was driving to San Francisco to my hotel, following my directions from Google like a good girl. It said to take 101 follow the signs to I80, get off at exit 1 and go downtown from there. Well I was driving along, following the signs to I80 - nothing seemed to say I got on it, just going toward it - when I went past a sign that said "last SF exit". There was a lot of construction in the area, so it was hard to see things. I realized as I was driving by that exit, watching it go by, that I should have gotten off a while back...but alas it was too late. I was already driving across THE BAY BRIDGE. So of course from there I didn't know where I was going because I only had San Fransisco maps, not Oakland maps! I made the 5 mile (or whatever it was) trek across the bridge and just figured I'd get off and the first exit and get back on and go back. Well, all the exits were just for more freeways, so I kept getting further and further away from where I wanted to be. After I drove around for 20 minutes, I finally had to call Jim to give him an intersection that he looked up on google for me so I could get back on the freeway. It only cost me $4 to go back over the bridge! But I finally made it to the hotel.

That evening a guy from my work group who grew up in San Francisco showed me around a bit. We rode a cable car down to the wharf, where we had dinner at a nice restaurant with good green beans. We ended up taking an old style street car back up, so I got to ride on multiple types of SF transportation! We saw all of the piers and lots of other cool stuff. Its a cool city, I would like to explore it more some day.

The next day after the meeting I had to drive back to San Jose for the next portion of the meeting, so for something different I took I280 back to SJ. It was quite a scenic drive, very pretty. Once you get out of the city, there are some spectacular hills full of trees and greenery. I also drove past Stanford and their linear accelerator. It is LONG. I also saw some of the said "happy" CA cows. Well, let me tell you, they looked no happier than the cows in WI or MN. In fact, they weren't even Holstein cows, like they show in the commercials! So as far as I'm concerned, its false advertising.

I finally made it to SJ - the traffic wasn't too bad till I was in the city. I had dinner at the place I passed up last time, Weinerschitzel, of a yummy corn dog and chili cheese fries. It was quite good. Kris wouldn't have liked the cheese fries, as they actually had real cheese on them, but I thought it was quite delicious. I also stopped at the grocery store to get some fruit and snacks for the way home. The regular food prices were a little high - but the produce was so cheap! I couldn't get over it. So there you go. I finally stopped at a gas station to fill up my little gold Focus rental. I went to swipe my card at the pump - no swiper. I see a machine in the middle of the pumps - only takes ATM cards. I go inside - sure enough, this gas station only takes cash and ATM cards. How weird is that? I don't get it. So I went somewhere else. Only in CA.

On the plus side, I finished the book club book. I thought it was quite humorous, I quite enjoyed it. A few twists and turns like any good mystery, very silly and unusual as you might expect with a satirical "nursery crime" novel, but not quite as wacky as Shroud of the Thwacker. I think it had a good amount of weirdness vs funny. I am looking forward to the next one!

Pierogies

2007-12-10T19:26:00.000-08:00

Several weeks ago we made pierogies with the remainder of the filling that was frozen from last time. For the most part they were all normal. We did run out of eggs half way through, so we had to make some last minute substitutions using baking soda and such from some recipe we found on the web. They turned out...well, ok...the dough was kinda cakey and fluffy. But interesting none the less.

We had enough dough left to make one large pierogi that kind of looked like a pasty. Jim made it, so he got to eat it.

Yum, yum.

Tubes. Not just for old organs.

2007-12-03T19:41:00.000-08:00

So, in the last few months I have learned a great deal (well, some deal) about tubes from the organ. I have seen this "technology" in what was its prime. I'm sure the organ was very high tech for its day. It is still amazing to me now, not so much how it works, but that it did one day a long time ago, work better than anything else. I am also not surprised that as we proceeded down the technology path, it did not include tubes. They are what you might call...cumbersome. ( In this day and age, at least. I understand there were tube testers in the 60s.)

So imagine my surprise when I walked into a Sharper Image store over Thanksgiving (2007 mind you) and saw this Philips sound system THAT HAD TUBES. It didn't just have tubes, it advertised tubes. I understand that many people think that tubes have a sound quality that just cannot be matched in the digital world. Perhaps they are right. I am not yet persuaded from what I have seen or heard (aka my organ that sounds like an Atari).

Look, its a mere $600.

Anyway, since this is available now, there must be a way to test tubes still somewhere out there. Perhaps Philips has my answer...

http://www.p4c.philips.com/files/m/mcd908_98/mcd908_98_pss_aen.pdf

October Organ Update

2007-12-03T19:32:00.001-08:00

In October, we (we being mainly Jim and Jon, but I did help press some keys and take out some screws) started taking the organ apart to clean and fix. Not knowing exactly where to start, we began by taking out all 59 tubes. Yes, we did label them so they can go back in the correct place. Yes, it was in fact a rather complex numbering system.

After the tubes were out, this is what the back panel looked like. We needed to get to the power cord area to replace the cord, as it was bad (lower right corner). We started by taking off one of the small panels toward the right, to see if we could get to the power cord.

After taking out the screws, this is what we found. Oh my goodness. Turns out we couldn't just take that part off, it was connected to other panels by those curly black and brown wires. And they didn't stretch very far.
After taking off another panel and determining they were all connected together by solder, we figured there had to be another way. There was, in fact. The whole silver section can be slid off, placed on the floor and a front cover opened. Aha! we said. So we did that. And this is what we found there...

Yikes.

Well this isn't something you see every day.

2007-11-05T20:05:00.001-08:00

What a pleasant surprise!
http://wcha.cstv.com/
http://www.ncaasports.com/icehockey/mens/polls

Maybe we'll get to go to St Paul again this year...and not just to see the pep band!

The Organ

2007-10-28T19:27:00.000-07:00

Yes, thats right. The organ.

Jim and I were driving home from Milwaukee today, going through lovely Lannon, WI and we happened to see what looked like a small organ sitting out by the side of the road. We actually drove past it and I slowed down (slammed on the breaks Jim says, but I was gentle!) and turned around to get a closer look. Sure enough, it was an organ. I'm thinking to myself, how can we pass something like this up? Yes, I know we are not typically garabage pickers, but after all that is where several of my favorite childhood toys came from (my slide and my bike). So why not.

Luckily several of the family members of the house were sitting outside because it was so sunny out today (chilly, but sunny), so I called out to them, "Does it still work?" The gentlemen were very nice and assured me that yet it did in fact play and that no one in the house played it anymore and they just didn't need it. So I said, "Perfect!" and three of them, Jim and I placed it into the back of the escape. We had our bags, a case of Sprecher rootbeer, and two bags of grocery's from Trader Joe's - low and behold though, everything fit in there just perfectly. Like it was meant to be.

So the trip home was fine. We got back and I got the vacuum cleaner out and vacuumed it off while it was still in the car (it had been sitting outside by the road overnight aparently), ran an extention cord to the car to see if it did in fact work before we hauled it all the way upstairs...and the thing played! Then, we called Jon. Jon is ever so nice to us and always willing to be our muscle man. So he came over later and him and Jim hauled the thing out of the car, up the front steps and into the living room.

Ok, in the living room, lets plug it in. The cord is a little scary and needs to be fixed, but we take the necessary precautions and no one gets shocked. Turn it on and play up the scale. Haha. The C and the D (a 2nd) actually sound a 3rd. The C and E play the same note. The F plays two notes at once (sounds a bit like an Atari), but the G and A seemed alright. Actually the whole top octive plays perfectly. It has pedals - they kinda work. Sorta.

So we take off the back to check it out. Tubes. My goodness were Jim and Jon excited. They talked about schematics and capactitors and transitors (which were aparently in abundance behind the silver panel) and Faradays and all kinds of exciting electrical things. I started cleaning the keyboard off and got some pledge on the wood.

Needless to say, it needs a little work, but in the end should be fun. If worse comes to worse, it sounds like we can just take out the insides, salvage the keyboards, stops and box, and turn it into something a bit more modern.

The pictures really don't do it justice. Stop by sometime to see it. (After I've cleaned the dust out of the back so it stops smelling when we turn it on.)

And now we have an organ.

Resilient Marigods

2007-10-28T19:13:00.000-07:00

We have very resilient marigolds. At our apartment we have a little patio on top of the garage. There are cement blocks that make up the patio, no dirt, but there are little cracks between the blocks. Apparently there is enough room for marigolds to grow. It was really windy a while back, so as best we can figure, the seeds blew on to the cement and they just started growing. They have survived for weeks now. I mean the darn things are blooming for pete's sake. Unfortunately, the second picture didn't turn out too nice, but you get the idea. How curious!

Weeds in the onions!

2007-10-07T17:49:00.000-07:00

We had onions growing in a window box on our porch this summer. Onions grow with a couple stalks shooting up from the onion...kinda like really long grass. There was about 20 onions in the box, they were packed in pretty well. We hardly noticed when a small little grass like weed started growing. We didn't know it was a weed actually. Low and behold it was though. And it grew to something out of control in like 3 days. I don't know what happened, but somehow we didnt' see it growing. Jim and Jon then tried to pull it out. It wasn't coming. Couldn't figure out why...finally they pull out the roots, and half of the window box with it. That was one big weed.

2007-10-07T17:43:00.000-07:00

As many of you know I have a very cool Disney Princess phone. Unfortuantely, that phone was having some problems. It would ring when someone called, but to wouldn't pick up when you pressed to button to talk. It was very sad because whenever the phone rang I had to either run upstairs or downstairs to answer it, hopefully in time before the person hung up! And then to make the call of course I had to do the running too.

So, Jim and I figured maybe there was a spring broken or popped out. Since the rest of the phone seemed still to work, I really didn't just want to scrap the thing.

I unscrewed the screws and pried the cover off, I don't think I broke anything. There was the little computer bit attached to the antena. Sadly for me, there was no springs, just little sensor touchpad thingies. Darn it. So we cleaned them off, because there appeared to be some glue or something on them. After several tries putting it back together (everything has to go in in a certain order!), reattached the battery, and.... it worked! When the talk shows in the window, that means its working! :) Yay for the Disney Princess Phone!

traveling

2007-08-29T20:05:00.000-07:00

Ok, so I have been in 5 states in 5 days. i'm getting tired tired of airplanes.

last week I went to Poughkeepsie NY for an IPR conference.

the flight to NY was a bit crazy. we were supposed to leave at 4pm from rochester to chicago - we got on the plane at 4pm, but didn't take off until 6pm. We did make it to chicago on time for our next flight, but that one got delayed...and delayed...and delayed...I think we finally took off about 11:30 or so. We got to our hotel at 3:30am Monday morning. ew. it screwed me up for the rest of the week.
the highways in NY label their exits funny. On the plus side, they are labeled things like "3N" or "5W" if there are two exits that go to one direction or another. thats a brilliant idea - you just go to the direction you want to go, and don't have to try to figure out if 6A is east or 6B is east. sadly though, they label them in asending order, not labeled at what mile they are at. so exit 10 could be 5 miles from exit 11, it could be 2 miles, it could be 20 miles, and you have NO IDEA
I heard a German man say "Jamaica" - of course it came out "Chamaica" because German's can say "gee" for some reason. i found it humorous.

On Friday I flew back from Westchester to Chicago, then to Minneapolis, so I wouldn't miss my flight from MSP to Grand Rapids MI. I had to fly to MSP instead of RST because I have really bad luck at ORD airport...its a long story. anyway, I made it in plenty of time, so I work for 5 hours at the airport, then Jim and I went to our Grand Rapids flight. That of course was delayed because of first, mechanical problems, second because a pasenger suddenly decided they were sick and had to get off the plane, the three because there was construction on the run ways at MSP, so there was delays and like 30 planes in front of us.

The wedding was in Mount Pleasant, so we drove there Saturday morning. It has changed quite a bit since I've been there - the college and the town. There is a coney island and a Tim Hortons! Geeze, if I would have known that, I might have stayed there. Just kidding :)

The wedding went pretty well. The was huge - there was 9 couples, plus the bride and groom. Plus about 350 people, at my best guess.

I bet you haven't seen a bride in cowboy boots in a while.

And it was the old gang together again. Its been a long time... Obviously, we are a lot older now :)

Then Monday afternoon I flew to San Jose/Santa Clara/Sunnyvale for The Green Grid technical committee meeting. I have never been to CA before. I must say its a lot different that I expected it to be. There are mountains all around, but they look like they are made of sand. So strange. I have a little 2008 Aveo as a rental car, its really cool, I like it a lot. Apparently its called a sedan, but its really far from it...it is cute though.

So there are strange things here in CA

Buses and some cars run on "compressed natural gas". I have never heard of that. There are little compressed natural gas filling stations - its only $1.29/gallon. I don't know what efficiencies are like though (I guess we call that mpg for cars, don't we? too much green grid...)
I drove by this resturant today: Wienerschnitzel. Now, I didn't go in it, but I'm hoping to tomorrow. It looks awesome. Although I have to say when I first saw it, I thought it was the German fast food resturant I have been looking for....sadly no. Maybe some day.
Aparently people do not read in California. I drove like 20 miles today looking for one and did not see one ANYWHERE. Seriously people. (I finished Persuasion - I thought I hadn't read it before, but I just have a really bad memory...as I was reading it, I realized I remember all the bad parts - ie when people fall off walls. So shame on me. But its a good book. Although I have to say, Anne sometimes just seems too perfect. But I'm glad it has a happy ending.)

I come home tomorrow. With any luck, my planes will be on time and there will be a bookshop at the airport. Otherwise I'll get a lot of knitting done I guess.

another wedding this weekend! best of luck to the bride and groom!

Creme Brule

2007-08-16T19:56:00.000-07:00

So Jon makes a mean creme brule. He got a book a while back, then some ramikins and a blow torch (creme brule torch?), and the rest is history. He was generous enough to let Jim and I partake.

So this is how it works. Jon makes up some little custards, often involving berries, always involving vanilla bean, on a day prior to the torching event. They cool in the fridge for some time. Then get them out and sprinkle sugar on top:

Next, light 'er up. The brule that is, not anything else. (That thing can act as a flame thrower if you are not careful...I'm telling you like 5 foot flames. Well, something close to that at least.)

Sugar melts and then rehardens all together to form a very nice, hard candy top coat on the brule. Its a fine line between getting it all to melt and burning the sugar. Jon is an expert though and we had no burning incidents.

Voila! Pretty as a picture. But tastes much better :) Way to go Jon

Randomness

2007-08-16T19:48:00.000-07:00

Sometimes you just have to throw in some wierd stuff. First of all, Jim's socks. For some reason he felt the need to roll them one day, and I felt the need to take a picture. Then I felt the need to show you all. Second, a sign near Madison. Thank you Wisconsin DOT - once again proving putting up a sign is cheaper than fixing roads. Finally, these are the honeybears I made in my polymer lab in college. I didn't think I needed to keep them all anymore, so I took some pictures of them. Those green ones are made from recycled plastic (not easy to blow mold, let me tell ya...) however the white ones are made from virgin resin and that is why they worked good and turned out normal.

Jim's Birthday Party

2007-08-16T19:44:00.000-07:00

After Jim opened his presents, we went out to dinner to Redwood Room, it was quite nice. We came back and played some cribage, then lots of people came over for cake and ice cream. Omoleye made a great orange cake and we have several kinds of ice cream, including a homemade one by Jim, which involved butter roasted almond coffee or something like that. It had a long name. It also tasted good.

Whew 26! What a fire.

Serve that cake Jim. Yum yum.

Jared enjoyed himself - doesn't he look like he's have a great time?

We then proceeded to listen to Disney hits in foreign languages and somehow moved on to theme songs for cartoon hits of the 80s. Don't ask.

Jim's birthday

2007-08-16T19:38:00.000-07:00

So Picasa is working again and makes it easy to put pics up again! That is why I'm blogging so much now.

Jim's birthday! Made this Superman cake - turned out alright, just a funny looking nose :)

Jim got some awesome presents, which included several pie making accessories.

Looks happy doesn't he? Now he can make me pies all the time.

Summer band concert 1

2007-08-16T19:34:00.000-07:00

So. Sometime back in June before Jim's birthday we had our first summer band concert in "central" park in Rochester. It was a beautiful day, not too hot (actually it was national knit in public day, if I remember correctly. sadly I didn't becuase I cannot play my horn and knit at the sametime. I am not as accomplished as my sister, who I'm sure could if she tried.).

Pretty, eh? The is a fountain off to the left of this picture and halfway through out concert a wedding party came to take pictures! I wonder if we got in the background.

And the story on the hats. Here's the thing - the piece we played was called Tobagan Ride, however people in the band (arrg) thought it would be clever to call it Waterslide instead, because it was summer. Well I thought that was stupid and we horns decided to wear winter hats in protest. The saxophones laughed at least.

Good times.

Playing catch up...

2007-08-16T19:28:00.000-07:00

Ok, so its been a little while. I have lots of pictures though!

This was our "garden" the second week in June. It grew a lot from the little itsy bitsy plants we had before!

Boston day 2

2007-06-20T19:06:00.000-07:00

Boston is indeed an interesting city. And I'm not even in Boston proper, just the burbs. None of the roads are straight. They are all very curvy. Also, they aren't in any certain order, they don't run in north to south or east to west directions, and they are very spuratic. In fact, its almost impossible to get from my hotel to the site without using the freeway, save for going 10 miles out of my way. How strange!

I tried to find a hard ice cream place around here, since there are none in Rochester. But I couldn't find one here either. What is it with people? WHERE CAN A GIRL GET A DECENT ICE CREAM CONE???

There is a guy in the Green Grid from Britain. His name is Angus. hahahahaha. Just like the book. (except he isn't a cat, of course.) He is really quite crazy. Most Brits seem to be.

Today at lunch they served Kaukauna cheese! I couldn't believe it. It had the red swirls in it and everything. I ate a lot of it. I even put it on carrots. It was quite tasty.

I saw the someone using Notes 8 today, it looked quite cool. I have to say I was a little leary about the whole java thing, but he said it worked just as well as any other Notes!

I forgot to say yesterday that I should have known that guy sitting next to me on the plane was from somewhere in the British isles - he had funny shoes. British people ALWAYS have funny shoes. You can always pick them out of the crowd.

I have this thing on iGoogle, How to of the Day. Today there was this: How to talk like a pirate. It is quite humorous.

Yeah. Fun times.

Boston

2007-06-19T19:56:00.000-07:00

So normally I don't post stuff that happens in my day, but today I'm going to. Just for fun. Sorry though, no pictures.

I had to go to Boston today for a Green Grid meeting. I was supposed to leave on a flight at 12:50pm. I checked in online when I got to work in the morning like NWA tells you too. Fine. Got my tickets, seats and such. Got to the airport about 12:10 - right on schedule. I checked the monitors, flight showed on time on the flight monitors. So I went through security, went up to the gate and sat down. No one else was there, but I figured, eh. I ate my sandwich. Looked outside. Still no plane. Still no one else there. At 12:30 I turned on my computer - www.nwa.com said the flight was canceled. Flight monitors still said the flight was on time! I went up to the counter where it took them 5 minutes to help me. I said, "I've been sitting upstairs waiting, apparently this was canceled." And the guy said, "Ohh." Not like a good ohh. Like a ohh, too bad for you. So they put me in a taxi at 12:50 with a guy who had a connection at 2:30. The driver drove 85mph all the way to the cities. He used this interesting technique of flashing his brights at people to tell them to get out of the way. I hadn't heard of that one before...I think I would have been quite peeved if someone did that to me...

Anyways, finally got up there. My connection was supposed to be leaving at 4:00 - it was delayed to 4:18, then to 4:35 then to 4:50. We left about 5. Oh well. In the time I had I was reading And then he ate my boy entrancers, which is an awesome book.

So the flight to Boston was interesting. It was packed for one thing. The flight attendants were literally forcing the bins closed overhead. I was reading the book while we were waiting to go and of course I could not help but snicker...laugh...out loud. Several times. I felt kinda bad for my neighbor next to me, I hope he didn't feel like I was laughing at him. I just couldn't help myself!

So because of "weather" we had to fly north over the Soo in Michigan, north of Ottawa (!) then over NY and down into Boston. It always makes me wonder why people refer to bad weather as weather. For example, the pilot came on the speaker while we were flying and he said "We are heading into some weather, fasten your seatbelts" etc, etc. But isn't everything weather? I mean, the sun is shinning and there is no rain - is that not weather? I find that annoying.

Later in the flight, that guy that was sitting next to me started like poking at his arm rest end - there was a headphone jack in it. He said something to me, something like, "Wheres the leent?" I was like, "what?" He continued to poke at the headphone jack, then went to his other armrest where the buttons were to change the radio (if they actually worked) and started pressing those. "The leent" he said again and then pointed up at the light. Apparently this guy was scottish and tried to say light. But I didn't get it. hah go figure. I showed him then the button with the light bulb on it. That worked.

So why is it that airports on the east coast are always right on the water? It seems so stupid. You are coming into land and there is like water, water, water, 5 ft of land and then runway. Better have really good luck taking off otherwise you end up in the water! I wonder how many have ended up in the water...

We went into the international terminal because we were so late and there were no other gates.
I managed to find my way to the cars and got to the hotel without too much trouble.

I finished the book. It was marvy and double cool with knobs. Did you know fanny means something totally different in British than it does in English? Haha they certainly are not interchangeable!

Rhubarb Pie

2007-06-14T19:01:00.000-07:00

Yes more rhubarb. Jim made a killer rhubarb pie, it was quite delicious. A little tart, but that was just the rhubarb. Seriously.
and we still have some in the freezer...what will we make next???

First Jam of the year

2007-06-09T19:46:00.001-07:00

So I really like to make jam. I have no idea why. I just do. So anyway, we went to the Rhubarb festival and bought a bunch of rhubarb and I thought, what the heck. So I found a recipe and make some Rhubarb and pineapple jam (turns out you HAVE to put fruit in the jam (high acid content) for the pectin to work...since Rhubarb is a veggie, not high acid, it needs something extra). Here is the start...have to get the water boiling because it does take a long time to get everything going.

I cooked the rhubarb mixture up, got it into my sterilized jars. Looks yummyscrumbos.

There is the boiling water bath. Can, little jams, can!
And of course the biggest part of making jam. The mess! That is the worst part about making jam - you dirty sooo many dishes...

But in the end, the jam tastes quite good - a bit tart, but quite good! I like it on toast :-D

Kristine's Visit

2007-06-05T18:21:00.001-07:00

So I wasn't very good with the camera th e weekend of Kristine's visit, but I did manage to take one picture while we were eating breakfast. Jim made us english muffins, which are just divine, and we had bacon cooked REALLY hard and then eggs scrambled in the bacon grease. It was delicious.
Earlier that weekend, we went to the mall of america (even though it wasn't open at the time, we walked around in it...); the Yarnery in St Paul, where my sister told me I was a sieve because I didn't go to the store when her most favorite author of all time was there signing books in April (but I didn't even know!! so it wasn't my fault); potluck supper with "the gang"; Pirates of the Caribbean; brunch Sunday morning; movie Sunday afternoon; Settlers!; Dinner at newts; ice skating; cold stone; more movies; and finally we end with breakfast (as seen above). It was quite an exciting weekend.

Of course she brought 3 or 4 projects with her, because she is awesome that way. This one here is with some amazingly soft yarn, its going to be a hat for her friend who lost her hat last winter.

And those there are socks (sitting on my Grandma's couch, you like?). The yarn is made out of crab shells or something similar, apparently it makes it antibacterial. Isn't that interesting?

She had her shall packed away, I didn't see it all weekend, but she said it was there :)

I had a wonderful time with her and I wish she could be here all the time. Thank you for coming Kristine!!!

A&D Wedding Pt 3

2007-06-03T20:17:00.001-07:00

And finally, the wedding party (from afar)

And the folks at the other table. Adam M (kinda), Lee and Bryant, Kelly and Patrick
Ben, Paula, and Nate
Nate (again), Angela and Ernie (and a bit of Adam M's arm)

A&D Wedding Pt 2

2007-06-03T20:11:00.001-07:00

Here is our table at the wedding.

Jeremiah and Brian

Kira and Becky
Nate, Mike and Kristi

Mike and Katie

A&D Wedding Pt 1

2007-06-03T20:00:00.000-07:00

Andy and Darcy's wedding was last weekend. We all had a marvy time. They looked wonderful and very happy; the weather was perfect and everything went off without a hitch.

Of course there was plenty of dancing, like always. I got to swing dance with Mike Vance, which was way fun, as I hadn't really done it before. Jim and I did our jumping kind of dancing stuff a lot - I'm sure we looking very goofy out there, but we sure have fun! And Jon, who says he can't dance, is obviously full of it, because he is dancing just fine in this picture with Kira. So whatever Jon you so can dance. You two look like pros!

Can you guess what these are?

2007-06-03T19:49:00.000-07:00

I had no idea what avacado pits looked like. Until now, that is.

The "garden"

2007-06-03T19:39:00.001-07:00

I really like to garden, but living in an apartment with no back yard makes it a bit more challenging. So Jim and I bought a bunch of dirt. We're doing our best to make our own! (We took these pictures in the middle of May - the plants look a bit different now)

Jim is filling the pots with dirt, and doing a great job at it!

We bought marigolds, impatiens, snapdragons, gerbs, 3 tomato plants, peppers, onions and several herbs.
We had to plant in the garage because it was so windy outside that day...the plants, the dirt and the two of us would have been blown away if we did it outside.

There is tomato plant 1 - I'll post some more pics of it getting bigger later :)

V Ball

2007-05-09T18:11:00.000-07:00

Of all the pictures I took last night, this one is my favorite. Go Ernie Go.

Painting at Cyndi's

2007-05-09T18:02:00.000-07:00

Went to Milwaukee this weekend to help Cyndi paint.

Jim on the ladder:

Cyndi getting the tight spots:

Jim being really nice and climbing up in the hard to reach areas:

Me fixing mistakes. Yes, i'm short.

Easter Egg Truffle

2007-05-03T20:02:00.001-07:00

Ashley got us these really cool eggs for Easter. It is actually a real egg shell, but it has chocolate inside! Jim and I felt the need to document the process of unshelling. You can see how they cut a hole in the bottom to clean out the inside. The rest of the shell we cracked off and then had a delicious treat. Thanks Ashley and family!!!!

MythTV

2007-05-03T19:59:00.000-07:00

Need I say more?

This has been my life for about two months now I think...

Quilting for Babies

2007-05-03T19:56:00.000-07:00

Get your socks on people, I'm ready to blog...

My church was having people sew together squares to make quilt tops which would eventually be turned into quilts for babies in Rochester. Omoleye and I decided to work together to do a few. They are all fine and dandy...except for the colors. People just donate scraps of fabric, and sometimes the color combinations are not very pleasant. We do the best we can though.

Quilt No. 1:

Quilt No. 2:

Hopefully it will warm someone, somewhere!

Booties

2007-04-28T19:55:00.000-07:00

Its not too often that I blog about knitting projects, mainly because I make them as presents for other people and I don't know if they read this or not. (They get them whether they like them or not...what else am I going to do with the stuff I knit?!?) However, this time I have no one in mind... I found this cute little bootie pattern in a knitting magazine that I just couldn't pass up. I had some extra yarn, so I gave them a shot. Unfortunately, my gauge isn't quite one, and I believe these booties are much bigger than any baby foot where they could possibly end up on. Here is the finished knitting part, but not sewn together:

And here is the (almost) finished bootie - I need to find a button to sew on the side.

Does anyone need some (rather large) blue baby booties?

Ouch

2007-04-28T19:41:00.000-07:00

Jim and I have one of those really neat apple peeler/corer/slicers. It works great, everyone should have one. But for some reason the one we have is aparnetly very sharp. After using it to peel and slice, it needed to be cleaned. I was taking it apart and washing it piece by piece, when the darn thing took a chunk out of my finger. For obvious reasons, I did not continue to wash it at that time, because it took me 10 minutes to stop the bleeding. It even bled through my bandaide! Ironically, when Jim was trying to clean it after me, it also took a piece of his finger as well. The picture was taken a while afterward however...that is why he is smiling. I think.

MTU Final Five Hockey!

2007-03-16T20:24:00.000-07:00

So Tech made it to the Final Five for the first time in many many years. Since its held at the Xcel center in St Paul, we just HAD to go. Adam was kind and smart enough to rent us a 15 passenger van - Jim Jon and I were in the back - there were 3 other rows plus the front seats.

Somehow Nate Rabe was able to find his way to the Zamboni and go for a drive. That's him there in the side seat!

The view from the pep band's seats - they are REALLY high up there. It was so slanted they didn't do 2001 because they were scared they were going to fall. I don't blame them!

All in all, I think we had a good time. even if the didn't win.

Adam, Nate, Patrick, Kelly, Jeremiah, Becky, Nate, Scott and Ethan. Thats Jim's shirt. Jon was out getting ice cream (imagine that! :-D )

Pierogies!

2007-03-16T20:17:00.000-07:00

So I just love Pierogies, and you can't get them anywhere I can find in Rochester (except for Mrs T's, which are good, but not quite the same). So, we decided to make our own. Jim made the dough (the obvious choice!) and I made the filling. Many thanks to Marylin for the recipes!

Jim closing up the pierogie:

Look at those yummy ones.

Jon came over to help. He and Jim rolled, cut, filled and closed up the pieorgies.

I had the job to boil and saute. I must say, I thought they turned out quite delicious. I think we made 4 dozen, so there are a bunch in the freezer now!

Tax Time

2007-03-16T20:14:00.000-07:00

Yuck. I was not enjoying myself. Who wants to do my taxes next year??? Jim took this lovely picture of me:

English Muffin Making

2007-03-16T20:10:00.000-07:00

Jim decided (or maybe was persuaded) to make English Muffins a few weeks ago. They are cooked on a griddle with little english muffin rings to keep them circular.

They were just divine. I could not get enough of them! I think I ate 3 that first day. Yum

And this was our weekend...

2007-03-01T20:41:00.000-08:00

Have you seen chops that look that good before?!?!?

Take that, Mr. Darcy.

Photo courtesy Judy Kaiser!

Ice Skating with Jim's coworkers

2007-02-21T19:29:00.000-08:00

Jim's coworkers from Mexico are here this week. Last weekend they when skiing together - today they went ice skating for the first time. Jon and Jeremiah also came along. I haven't been skating in years...it took me a while to remember! The boys had fun though, and they all did good.

We love skating!

Packzi

2007-02-21T19:21:00.000-08:00

Ok so Jim and I decided to make Packzi for Fat Tuesdsay. It was quite a task. We started the dough right after work. It had to rise 3 times before we could roll it out. We used a biscuit cutter to cut for the top and bottom of the packzi, then put a little strawberry jelly in between. You let them rise again and finally fry them. That is where we started taking pictures. So, here is our setup - thermometer on the stove, pot of oil heating things up.

Safety first! We got the fire extinguisher out, just in case.

Yummy! Paczki in the fry pan.

Looks like fun! They tasted alright. Sometimes the jam could come out when they were being fried, and it would get all bubbily - jam isn't supposed to be fried, aparently. But all in all it worked ok - the only bad side was that our house smelled like deep fry for the next two days!!!!! Its gone now though, whew :)

happy velntines day to me

2007-02-18T18:35:00.000-08:00

Jim made me a chocolate ice cream cake for valentines day. I am so lucky!

He looks happy about it eh?

Thats the inside, chocolate fudge cake (from Alton Brown!), amazing homeaide chocloate ice cream, chocolate cake, and then a yummy ganache chocolate frosting. Thats what, quadrople chocolate?

Yay baby. I even let him eat some ;)

Felting!

2007-02-18T18:23:00.000-08:00

So I decided to make a felted bag. I knit it from a Noro brand yarn. It went pretty quick, knit wise! Below is the unfelted bag - unfortuantly, I wasn't smart enough to put some kind of measuring device down to see the difference in size, but it is quite large.

The bag didn't shrink width wise so much as height wise; the stiches got much shorter. The felting process went pretty well. The water was hot, so it wasn't real pleasant sticking my hand into the washer, but I lived. Not too much yarn bits got outside the pillowcase cover, just a few here and there. I did accidently put a bit too much detergent in, so it was very suddsy, which wouldn't have been bad, except I couldn't see the fuzzies to clean out the washer before the went down the drain.... My jeans got really clean though!

There it is, getting blocked on a shoebox. Finally, sitting on the kitchen table, with my stuff in it!

Winter Carnival 2007

2007-02-12T19:37:00.000-08:00

Jim, Jon and I went up to Winter Carnival at Tech last weekend. We enjoyed it very much. We watched several broomball games, went cross country skiing, watched two hockey games, ate ice cream, went to the KBC, ate lots of food, looked at lots of statues...and drive lots of miles.

Kris and Mark at the broomball rink:

Mark (number 7) going for the ball:

Kristine (number 27!) also going for the ball:

Mark playing with Jazz Lab Band at the Snow Ball. We all got to go to the Snow Ball on Saturday night. It was the first time any of us had been there - ironically after we all graduated.

GTNS

Celery Block

2007-02-12T19:27:00.000-08:00

So I found this picture on my computer internal memory, I had forgotten about it. Our fridge really likes to freeze things. Like celery sticks in water in a tupperware.

2007-02-04T20:16:00.000-08:00

Jim and I made a curtain for our entry way, because it was cold by the door, and I figured we were losing alot of heat down there. So we went to Hancock, got some fabric, made a few quick sews and volia - a thermal curtain:

The fabric is really cool, its brown velvet on one side:

And woven on the other, but it doesn't look like a back.

And it actaully does help, we put our thermometer down in the entry way with the curtain up and there was a 20 degree delta between the living room and the front door. yay for engineering.

a little piece of heaven...

2007-02-04T20:03:00.000-08:00

My mom was kind enough to ssend a piece of Detroit to me, some National Coney Island coney chili. It was frozen (since its so cold, it stayed that way - my thermometer now actually says minus 14F outside), and Jim and I made it up this week.

You may or may not know, but coney island resturants are one of my favorite things, and there are none anywhere near me. Needless to say I was very happy.

It made a lot of sauce, so I was able to refree some after we cooked it up.

We (well Jim) chopped up some onion, slathered on the mustard, and I was ready to go.

yum.

2007-02-04T19:57:00.000-08:00

So two weekends ago now Jim and I went to St. Paul. We heard a lovely concert by the metropolian symphony, went to Red Robin, yum, and were also lucky enough to go to a yarn store called "The Yarnery". It was really a wonderful store, and I can't wait to go back. We got green yarn for some felt for Jon, a verigated one for a bag for me (which is actually all knitted up now, just have to felt it), and the blue is for a present so I can't tell you what its for.

I also have been knitting a purse. I'm making it up as I go, but am doing it in a basketweave stitch. Kristine to you recognize this yarn?

I found the stitch pattern on knitty. BTW knitty has some surprise winter patterns out now.
So anyway, i think it looks pretty cool for just worsted weight yarn and two knitting needles.

2007-02-03T21:46:00.000-08:00

Jon your blogger won't let me post comments. So in response to Finally, something worth Knitting about?

i didn't know you wanted to learn!

(That was the comment I wanted to type.)

PS those are very cool.

PPS Kristine check those out.

FARKLE!

2007-02-01T19:53:00.000-08:00

Jim, Jon and I played Farkle last night, courtesy of course of Erin Hofley. Its a dice game, easy to learn and great fun. You need lots of luck to win!

Jim rolled a nice set...

No farkles! No farkles!

How many points do we have here??? Count carefully!

Yeah baby Farkle is cool.

Snow and thank yous.

2007-01-28T20:31:00.000-08:00

Last weekend we FINALLY got some snow. It started about 5:45 am, then went till about 2pm I think. It was beautiful. Cold, but beautiful.

AND Jim and I finished out thank yous today! Look at them sitting happily in the shoe box. Watch out post office, here we come! Watch for yours in the mail soon :)

Jim Makes Bagels

2007-01-28T20:25:00.000-08:00

Jim was kind enough to make me bagels last weekend. You see, I absolutly love bagels, but can't get them in many places here in Rochester. At least good ones. So he started with making dough, then he rolled them and they had little holes in the middle!

Next we had to put them under the broiler to brown the outside and make alittle crust on the outside. 3 minutes per side!

Then we boiled them in sugar water to give them the bagel texture.

Bake them for a little bit, and then enjoy. They were delicious! I ate bagels for a week! YAY

Programable Thermostat!

2007-01-28T20:19:00.000-08:00

So we decided to put in a programable thermostat (thanks to Jon for the encouragement!)

We got the old one off the wall, with minimal problems. We didn't lose any wires down the wall! This is the new one - the bracket and the wires, at least.

Here is the old one. Aparently MN hasn't outlaws mercury thermometers yet - can you see the bulb of it in there? Crazy.

And here is Jim, trying his best to make sure everything works on the first time...

And it did! Yay Jim.

Ice Cream Maker...

2007-01-28T20:04:00.000-08:00

So we've made ice cream several times, its turned out pretty good both times. Now, one of my favorite things are Coke slurpies from 7-Eleven. Unforutantly, there are none of them around here. I figured we could give it a try ourselves...so we used the ice cream maker, poured in a can of coke, and volia !!!

It was delicious. I throughly enjoyed it.

Ottawa Pics

2007-01-09T18:55:00.000-08:00

I guess I said I would put them out. If anyone is interested...

Scotiabank Place to see the Senators - Go Sens! Sadly, they got their butts kicked.

Joe and Chris - Joe is my mentor and boss in a way. Chris is an IBMer from Toronto. He loves hockey. He's the one who bought me Poutine.

ARRET! However you say it. or spell it. heh whatever.

An example of a Quebec sign all in French. Viva la Quebec.

I tried to take some of the parliment building - it was decked out real nice for Christmas - but sadly my camera isn't good enough. Use your imagination with the lights.

http://www.glasssteelandstone.com/Images/CA/ON/YOW/CA-ON-Parliament-004.jpg

Christmas Cookies

2007-01-09T18:35:00.000-08:00

So I know I'm a little behind, but at least I'm trying ;)

We made Christmas Cookies this year - lots of them in fact. Sugar cookies, molasses (ginger, I guess they actually are), spritz, peanut butter with chocolate stars, you get the point. Here is Jim waving at us all - "Yum, taste these delicious cookies!"

You can see the Molasses (excuse me, Ginger) cookies sitting there in the Tupperware. I think we made sugar cookies that day too. I think.

Below is us making chocolate spritz. We had to make chocolate because we didn't have any almond extract, and aparently that is an important ingredient in all spritz cookies, save for chocolate. Our spritz maker is like a caulk gun, quite nice - one click and you have a cookie!

Here is Omoleye making the batter, yummy!

All in all they turned out alright. Hopefully next year we can make Springerle (I have an ironing board now!!!) and chocolate logs.

Actually, we have a christmas party to go to this weekend...maybe I can make some Christmas cookies for that...

Who says Christmas Cookies are just for Christmas, anyway?

Sauerbraten Take Two

2007-01-05T18:46:00.000-08:00

Several weeks ago we decided to make sauerbraten again. Just for fun.

Here is Jim "seasoning" the meat.

And this time Jon was smart enough to remember to actually take a picture before we ate it. See, we even made the sour cream sauce correctly this time!

No potato dumplings, but we did have red skins and peas.

Yay for Germany!

Ottawa Ontario (and other reasons why Canada is cool)

2006-12-19T20:36:00.000-08:00

Quick update from Ottawa.

BTW, yes I'm here in Ottawa doing another data center with Joe. This one is for the Canadian government. Crazy stuff, its really big...

Anyway. Top reasons why Canada is cool:

1. Tim Hortons. They are on every corner. In fact, one is attached to my hotel. I love their tea, its pre-steeped, so I don't have to mess with a tea bag. Plus they have the best bagels in the world. AND they are cheaper than Starbucks. How can you not like it?

2. Hockey. We went to the Sentators game tonight. Sadly, they lost 7 to 2, but it was still fun. They play at Scotiabank Place. That is cool because:

They have a Tim Hortons in the conssesion area.
Instead of shoot tshirt or coupons into a crowd they had a hot dog cannon gun. I kid you not, it was the most insane thing I had ever seen. Plus it worked perfectly.
The programs were free
I got to eat poutine. (Ever hear of it? Its french fries with cheese curds and gravy on top - sounds disgusting I know, but so do deep fried twinkies at first, right?) Check it out at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poutine
They still have, and actually use, an organ at the game.

3. Everything is written and spoke in English and French. What better way to learn another language?

4. I got to go to Quebec today where it is the law that French must come first on the sign and English is not required. I got my picture taken in front of a French stop sign :)

5. If it were cold enough, we would be able to skate on the canal. Sadly, its only -1C.

6. Everyone is so friendly.

I'll post my pictures later, but unfortuantly I do'nt have my chord ( er cord) with me. It'll have to wait till I get home. But I have some nice shots.

Coming home Thursday night, weather permitting (as I'm flying into O'Hare...)

Did you know the normal Canadian national anthem has French in it? They never sing it that way in the states... Wierd.

Stayin at the Boardwalk

2006-12-12T19:47:00.000-08:00

At DisneyWorld we stayed at the Boardwalk hotel. It was a hotel in the style of the 20s, and had a nice Boardwalk behind the hotel with games and funnel cakes and all kinds of things. This is the front (sorry its hard to see here)

This elephant made of towels was in our room, cool eh?

And this was our room - we had a corner room, so we had two balconies! Thats Jim at one of them, could you tell?

Honeymoon Day 1

2006-12-11T21:00:00.000-08:00

REALLY EARLY IN THE MORNING. We're talking 4:30am. But don't we look excited???

Jim pulling out the suitcase...

Me admiring our 737 safety information card...

Jim admiring the barf bag... you were supposed to put it on your seat when you got up. It says Occupied in 4 languages. aparently you put it there so no one takes your seat. wierd the things that happen on cheap airlines like Sun country.

Wedding Pictures

2006-12-10T20:25:00.000-08:00

Ok everyone looking for wedding pictures...There is no way I can post them all here on the blog, so you'll have to go page through them on our website. http://jim-pam.com/pictures.php

We'll be posting some honeymoon pictures on there (besides the ones Disney took) soon as well. I'll write some details soon! Keep watching!

Food in Hong Kong

2006-12-10T15:25:00.000-08:00

Everyone wonders what the food is like in Hong Kong. Actually there are so many different varieties, anyone can find something. We ate Austrailan, French, Indian, Italian and pizza (Pizza Hut, actually). I did eat once at a real Chinese resturant - I'm not sure what style it was, aparently there are over 50 kinds of Chinese cooking (not including "american" chinese) - but we did have some unique things. I ate:

lotus flower root
lotus flower bulb
pumpkin pancake (which was almost like a quiche...) - it was raw pumpking, not mashed
chili pepper leaves - they were deep fried, I think, very crispy, but little flavor
lychee fruit

Joe on the other hand ate some horrible things including:

jellyfish
unknown chicken parts (he thinks it was the heart and liver, but he didn't know for sure...)
squid
octupus

Eww. Thats all I can say.

On the bright side, they had some wonderful juices, including watermelon juice. I had a great blend of watermelon, honeydew and lychee jucies. It was quite good, except pulpy. Kinda wierd. We also when to this great place that had a salad bar. You got a huge bowl, filled it will all kinds of delcious salads and toppings - things you may never have imagined, but were just delicous - then they put it in a giant bowl sitting in ice, added some dressing and spun and tossed your salad right before your very eyes. Very neat. Another buffet was that we went too was magnificant as well, shown here: Shangri-La Hong Kong

This is kinda neat too, thanks to Marriot. 360 degree tour

Unusual Hong Kong

2006-12-04T21:13:00.000-08:00

So its been a long time, I've been meaning to do this for a while.

Unusual Things in Hong Kong.

1. Everyone wears Converse All Stars.
2. Escaltors are opposite that in the states - down is on the left.
3. It is very, very clean.
4. At Pizza Hut, nearly all the pizzas come with corn as a topping.
5. People generally sleep 4 hours a night.
6. They don't leave work until their boss leaves work.
7. They wear their cell phones around their neck.
8. The newspaper is free to everyone.
9. Kids the the subway to school.
10. There are 7Elevens everywhere (sadly no slurpies)
11. When you pay with a credit card, they wait at the table while you sign, then take the recipet and had you your copy.
12. Cars have 100% tax on them.
13. They have a light/laser show every night.

More later...

Hong Kong hotel part II

2006-11-11T15:07:00.000-08:00

Here is the bathroom of the hotel room. The sink was very unique, the water would come out the side into the basin. Mine worked fine, but Joe's had a little too much pressure - every time he turned its on it arched right out the other side and on to the floor.

Shower stall was nice - ironically it had an American Standard shower head - not something made in china.

Toliet - pretty standard.

This is what gets me most. There was the sign above the sink that reads "Tap Water Not Drinkable" and yet aparently its ok to bathe in...

Oh well! I survied. So far at least.

Hong Kong Hotel part 1

2006-11-11T06:33:00.000-08:00

The hotel we stayed at in Hong Kong was a Holiday Inn Express in Causeway Bay, of all things. It wasn't ritzy, but definitely was nice for what we needed. There is a picture of the room - desk, TV, couch, bed, the usual.

The window looked out into Times Square, a big shoping district, as well as some of the apartment buildings in the area.

Here was one funny thing, in order to turn the lights on in your room, you had to put your room key in this little slot, then flick the silver switch. If you didn't the lights wouldn't go on. If you took the key out, they would go off a couple minutes later. Must be an energy saving thing. I had never heard of it, but Joe said it was fairly common in Europe.

Breakfast was inlcuded each day. It wasn't just a continental breakfast, it was a hot breakfast. But you had 3 choices of meals:

A: The Chinese Breakfast: Rice noodles in a broth with pork and cabbage and a "Glutonous Rice Dumpling"
B: The American Breakfast: Scrambled eggs, toast, ham, sausage, orange juice
C: The Vegitarian: Mixed greens with vinnegarette dressing, baked tomato beans

B came with 3 half pieces of toast, with the crust cut off! I was brave enough to try the Chinese breakfast on Thursday and it actually wasn't bad, so I had it again Friday. I never did get brave enough to try baked tomato beans...

A quickie from Hong Kong

2006-11-09T15:07:00.000-08:00

So I have to make at least one post from Hong Kong. I have been here for nearly a week now and I have to say I am enjoying myself. It is quite a place. I won't get into the details now, but I posted a picture of the HK skyline at nite. Sadly my camera is very crappy and it didn't turn out well, but perhaps you can get the picture. Literally.

I am sad to go, but there is plenty to do when I get back. Will post more pics later. Will post lots more details then as well!

2006-10-31T19:19:00.000-08:00

Getting ready for Halloween yesterday we did two things. First, we carved pumpkins, then we baked. Here is the pumpkin story first:

There was supposed to be a new hire thing of pumpkin carving. You had to RSVP for it to get a pumpkin, and both Omoleye and I did. It was supposed to go from 4:00-5:30. Well, I ended up having a meeting that went till 4:30, so we didnt' get down there till about 4:40. The people were all like "You're late! We've been doing this for an hour and a half!" Umm ok. So you started at like 3:15? Then the other guy was all "Do you have any extra pumpkins?" like we weren't really supposed to be there in the first place. And just as we get ready to put our knives in, they say we have 5 minutes to carve. Right. So we said screw it and just came home and carved pumpkins at the aparment.

Not of course before we borrowed the carving kit and book with designs! So Omoleye picked a bat to carve, and I picked this pictures of several pumpkins. Well we both started digging out our pumpkins and they were some of the meatiest pumpkinds I had even seen. I have never seen pumpkins so thick. So ofcourse its impossible to do intricate detail on pumpkins you can barely cut through. In the end, Omoleye decided to make a heart, and I made 1 of the 4 pumpkin faces I was supposed to. Here is Omoleye's:

And me carving:

We look like happy campers, eh? Se how dirty my pumpkin is? We couldn't get that off.... All in all though, I think they turned out cute.

The baking story will come later.

2006-10-30T21:00:00.000-08:00

THE CHAIR
End of Day 3

Well, at least it isn't gold any more.

2006-10-30T20:57:00.000-08:00

THE CHAIR
End of Day 2

The sides and decking have all been added, with only minor problems/chaois.

2006-10-30T20:44:00.000-08:00

THE CHAIR
End of Day 1

I dont know why this is underlineing, but I can't make it go away.

At the end of the first day, the top half of the chair was complete. There were a few minor alterations to be done before the next day, but all in all it went well.

Jim seems to like it....

A close up of the fabric

2006-10-30T20:40:00.000-08:00

THE CHAIR

Day 1, afternoon:

I started cutting fabric.

and pinning against the chair...

Hard to notice here, but the right and left top side of the chair is sewn differently. I had a lot of left over fabric on the one side, but not on the other. oh well. Take a closer look when you see it next, you'll notice it.

2006-10-30T20:35:00.000-08:00

THE CHAIR
Part I

I have two chairs (well many, actually) that were donated to me by various family members. One particular set of chairs, although quite comfy, are a bit outdated color and fabric wise. I decided I was going to make a slip cover for one of these chairs.

Day 1, morning: Chair before cover

2006-10-23T18:39:00.000-07:00

My sister was kind enough to let me know that I didn't have the allowing of comments on. So I think I turned it on now, so feel free to comment all you like. If its still not on...I guess you'll have to call!

2006-10-23T18:28:00.000-07:00

So quite a bit has happened this past little while.

First of all, wonderful Kathy sent me this lovely oil warmer thingie-ma-bobber. I don't know the exact name, but it is amazing. It can scent up the whole house in like 5 minutes! You put some oil drops in the glass top, then light a tea light that is suspended on the metal base inside the red thing. Clearly I was not meant to be a technical writter, but I think you get my drift. You can see the flame's brightness in the red thing, if you look close. Anyway, it looks and smells wonderful - thank you Kath!!!

Jim's project: File Server. He had wanted to make this file server for a long time, so he bought all the parts from New Egg - case, memory, mother board, 3 hard drives, everything - and Jim and Jon (pictured at right, also mentioned previously in the blog at dinner!) have been working CONSTANTLY on this thing. For 3 weeks Jon came over every Wednesday night and helped, then usually at least once on the weekend, sometimes multiple times. But they sucessfully put it together, got their linux server software installed and we now have a raid5 (whatever that is) server so we'll never loose our stuff. Thank you Jim and Jon.

Finally, the cake plate. Mrs Wilk was kind enough to get Jim and I this cake plate that is beautiful, and Jim made his first cake last Wednesday to go in it. Chocolate, of course. Very delicious cake in a very happy display case. This one definatly needed milk! You can even see it in the background. Thank you Mrs Wilk!!!

2006-10-15T19:06:00.000-07:00

Last weekend was my shower in Wisconsin. We had a great time, Leann was there and my parents, plus lots of Jim's family. We had LOTS of stuff to take home, including presents and things from home that I forgot. Needless to say the car was REALLY filled. Here is Jim being scared:

Here is a pic of the car from the drivers seat. OUCH!

We also stopped at the MN welcome center, here is a pic of the color that weekend, from the banks of the Mississippi:

All in all it was sucessful I think. It was great to see Leann and my family, and Cyndi and Judy were really great with the shower.

2006-10-15T09:21:00.000-07:00

North Carolina

Wednesday - Friday I was in North Carolina for some training for work. It was very last minute, but it seems like everything is last minute around here! I flew down Wednesday morning, plane left at 10am. A layover in Detroit allowed us (my mentor and I, he was also going to this conference thingie) to stop for lunch in the airport at National Coney Island. Aparently no one else in the US has coney island resturtants. Its very sad, but very true. Joe, my mentor, hadn't heard of them before, save for the actual Coney Island in NYC (he was born in Queens, so he knew a little at least). SO we stopped and had a coney dog and some chili cheese fries. It was definatly one of the highlights of the trip.

We continued on our flight and got to NC about 3:30. We had a driver pick us up, his name was Matt - he was originally from Conneticut, but moved to NC when he retired and now he was driving people around in really nice cars. The conference started Wed night with dinner and a lot of talking about stuff I didn't know about or understand. We stayed at a Hilton, which was really quite nice. The food wasn't bad - they had chocolate cake at every meal. That was the second highlight of my trip.

The bulk of the training was on Thursday when we started at 8am and they gave us presentations till about 4. I did learn a lot about powering data centers - good things and bad things. But thats another story.

Every conference thing like this always has some social event in the evening to keep us occupied. This was no different. The only thing is it was a baseball event - fantasy baseball. Let me tell you how much I love baseball. I have never hit a ball in my life before that day, I don't think. Let me tell you how cool I was playing with 20 other guys (old guys, might I add) who were all trying to up each other.

We played our fanasty night at the Durham Bulls stadium. Here is the stadium:
http://www.dbulls.com/stadium/athletic_park.html
We had dinner in a box and then we went down to "play" - someone would pitch, someone would hit and everyone else would catch. Unforutantly there was only about 6 gloves. But the grass was really nice to sit on! I did get a chance to bat - the pitcher was nice and pitched slow for me. I missed about the first 10, then i actually hit a few. Nothing got past the pitcher's mound but still - I actually hit the ball! My mentor was very nice and coached me on how to hit. Fun times. There are some pictures somewhere, we'll see if I can get my hands on them. The third highlight was that we got to ride in a limo(!) there and back.

Friday was nice, we didn't have as many presentations, but got to do some hands on stuff. We then went to IBM Raliegh and met a lot of people. Then we went to the airport and had some fun times waiting for airplanes. I found out Joe likes the same music as I do! Yay for that.

So it was a fairly sucessful trip. My next one might be in Canada, we'll see!

2006-10-09T18:36:00.000-07:00

Jim and I got new shoes last week. It was BOGO at JCPenny. Now we look Brittish! YAYAYAY!!!

Jim's Shoes.

Pam's Shoes

2006-10-01T20:19:00.000-07:00

This weekend we (Jim and I, and Jim's sister Cyndi) went to the MN Rennissance Festival. Here is the entrance:
It is quite similar to the MI Rennissance Festival, mainly because it is owned by the same people. For example, they have the same benches and garbage cans, the same people with giant paper machie bodies on their sholders (know what I am talking about?), same tickets, same program, same food. They have a Maypole, a Quenn's Tea and the Feast of Fantasy. It is also in a castle, and there is a brass group just like Brass Expansion that plays as people come in and during the feast. That's them in the picture, all though its hard to see...

Of course, Brass Expansion is MUCH BETTER, and much better dressed, if I do say so myself. The court had a dancing time, although I didn't see a recorder group much like Flutes For... anywhere. I did see several groups that had a recorder, a guiter, a flute and a bass. Or maybe it was just the same one and they traveled...

There were some differences though. Lots more shops. There were SO many dealers I don't think we got to them all. A few the same as MI, but mostly different. Judy, you would love the place. They also had this "game" called Villification Tennis - there were teams of 2 townsfolk who would lob insaults back and forth to each other. One would "serve" and there was a judge who would decide when one insult was exceptionally good, they would get a point. It was quite humourous. They are very quick witted people.

Finally - and this is the best part - when I was little, and my Grandma and Grandpa would take me to the Ren Fest, I would ALWAYS get this orange flavored ice thing in an orange peel. I don't know how to describe it better than that. It was such a treat, and I loved them. And then...they got rid of them. I couldn't believe it. I had been so sad. Except - they have them in MN!!! I was so very happy to see them.

That's it in my hand there.

In fact they also had them in Strawberry. So Jim and I decided to each get one. The seller dude had two strawberry ones left...and they were stuck together. He couldn't break them apart for the life of him. So he gave me a two for one deal, plus we got an orange one (because that's what I like). So we ended up with 3 orange thingies, when 1 probably would have been plenty! My hands and face were covered with red and orange sticky. But it was fun! Eventually we got them broken apart and minimzed the mess. Here is Jim and Cyndi eating them as well:

Yay for orange thingies! Fun times at the Ren Fest.

2006-10-01T16:38:00.000-07:00

Last week we made our first major dinner using our slow cooker as well as our multi pot with strainer.

The dish: Sauerbraten (a delicious German beef roast marinated in a vinegar sauce for up to 5 days...except we only did it overnight) served with sour cream

The side dish: Potato Dumplings - my first try at making them, and they did turn out quite well. I put in twice as much onion as it called for, so that could be the reason (I love onion).

The veggie: Frozen peas and carrots. Dethawed, of course.

The dessert: Apple pie. Because Jim has A LOT of apples from when he picked them a month ago...

We had die andere Jon over for dinner, the German expert. We used our wine glasses for the first time (THANK YOU DUPONT!) as well as our placemates.

We thought we should take a picture of the roast to show you how good it was. But by the time we thought about it, it was gone. Here is a picture of the empty plate. Looks delicous, eh?

The apple pie:

They have a lot of Honeycrisp apples here in MN - its a hybrid eating apple made at the Univeristy of Minnesota (the other U of M). Thats what this pie was made out of.

All in all, we believe it was a sucessful meal. What do you say boys?

I think they agree - WE LOVE GOOD GERMAN FOOD!

2006-09-27T20:18:00.002-07:00

Here are some more pics from when I first moved in:

Dining Room + boxes!

Living Room + lots of boxes! Yup, thats a fire place back there, can you believe it?

Bedroom 2.

Fun times! I'll take some more pics this weekend.

2006-09-25T19:17:00.000-07:00

A few teasers

Here are the pics from the day after all the stuff arrived. Unfortuantely, today it doesn't look much different. Only a few postsed here, new ones to come soon.

Kitchen - a little shy on cabinet space, but I'm not complaining. I've got enough closets in the rest of the house to more than make up for it.

Other side of the kitchen. Look at my pretty flower pictures!

Living Room view of piano

Also have a couple bedrooms upstairs, the rest of the living room and a den - type - room downstairs. But they just look like big rooms filled with boxes. Stay tuned...

2006-09-20T19:56:00.000-07:00

Welcome to my blog. I'm hoping I'll be able to keep in touch with everyone back home (yes, my real home) a little bit more with this. It will be an easy spot to put pictures, share some stories and hear what you all think of Rochester MN.

Please stop back often. I'm sure my blog won't be nearly as funny as Meg Cabot, or as interesting as anyone's life up at Tech, but I will do my best!

I miss you all very much.