Phelpsian is fun to say.

Woo, Michael Phelps won! And won...and won...x8.

ANYway, that was awesome to watch. In honor of his Phelpsian swims, I bring this adorable print from Cakespy:

 

(In the interest of full disclosure, though I adore Phelps, I really just wanted an excuse to post that print.) 

Never gonna let you down...

Oh my goodness. There are no words. Prepare to be Barackrolled.



I can't imagine how long that took. Hilarious.

Strange holidays and neglected sports

Wow, it's been a looong time since I've posted. Summer weather/family visits/vacation/computer fatigue have all combined to make me really not want to devote the time to typing. But today is too big a day to miss. It's huge. An epic day. Global even.

The Olympics, you say? No. It's "Sneak Some Zucchini Onto Your Neighbor's Porch Day." Well, I don't care much for a few of our neighbors (Muffy) and those that we like we've already donated plums to. I say we keep our zucchini and make zucchini bread. Yum...epicurean selfishness.

If you're wondering, of course I'll be enjoying my bread with a little Michael Phelps on the side. LOVE the Olympics. Gymnastics, hot swimmers, sad stories about drought-ridden Ethiopians who could still kick my tail at swimming, despite the fact that they've seen a swimming pool once? I'm so there. Plus, when else can you watch table tennis on national television? Go Team USA!

I hate thieves.

Someone stole my money! Stupid, stupid person. Somehow someone in PA got a hold of my debit card info and charged up a storm. Luckily I checked it today and now have a new card on the way, but still...What a hassle. And I still physically have the card, so I'm not really sure how they charged hundreds of dollars worth of stuff at a 7-11. Bizarre. Anyway, hopefully my bank won't play around and not refund my money. The guy on the phone was super nice, but you never know. Today has been something of a messed up day.

Alas...apartment search tomorrow (which is even more not fun than restoring a bank account) and then on to AR. That should be fun at least.

The Food of Love

Since I finally organized my pictures from my Christmas baking exploits, I figured it's time to share.

This is sort of a tale of the good, the bad, and the ugly. Since I'm all about inverting expectations, I'll cover the ugly first.

First, a back story. When I was little, every year at Christmas my great-grandmother would make this fabulous coconut cake. We're talking amazing, bakery-quality stuff. She'd crack open a real coconut, spread the icing just so, and apparently would even use tons of toothpicks to make the layers stand right. After she died, my dad's mom attempted to re-create the masterpiece. It sadly never lived up to the memory, always tending to fall on the dry side.

Well, this year I decided to try my hand at the famous cake. I will preface the following pictures to say that this cake was absolutely delicious, if a bit too sweet. I subbed coconut milk for regular which was a bit much. I'll go half and half next time. Also, I didn't use real coconut, but I'm not sure that made too much of a difference. The real problem with this cake was the absolute disaster that came from trying to get it out of the pan and standing up. Mom tried to dump it out, with little success. Still. It was not dry. This was almost more of a coconut cake soup than anything. Here's the recipe and the pictures. Look for my second go next year. I will not be defeated!

“Thunder is good, thunder is impressive; but it is lightning that does all the work”

Ooh, Abrams (of Abrams and Bettis) also just let me know that this week is Lightning Awareness Week. I posted that simply for the opportunity to put up this picture (via lightningphotography.com). So cool!


...but, you know, stay inside and all that jazz.

(Also, I don't want to hear the mocking of my watching the Weather Channel. It's informative! Back off.)

"Turkey is undoubtedly one of the best gifts that the New World has made to the Old."

Why is Turkey Lovers Month in June? Wouldn't November make a lot more sense? Nevertheless, I do love turkey, so I felt the need to celebrate.

I made a quite tasty sandwich for dinner tonight. A couple of slices of deli meat, whole wheat bread (granted not homemade - my bread-maker and I are at odds at the moment - but still tasty), lettuce and tomatoes, and half a wedge of Laughing Cow cheese (sooo creamy and low-cal!) = yummy. Unfortunately, it looked so good, I neglected to take a picture before I ate it.

A few other ways to mark the month:

Turkey, Cranberry, and Brie Panini
Turkey Taco Salad
Grilled Cheese, Pear, and Smoked Turkey Sandwich
Turkey Florentine
Turkey Wild Rice Casserole

Shockingly enough, most of those blog posts were written right after Thanksgiving when, naturally, one would have plenty of turkey on hand. But, hey, who am I to question those crazy folks over at eatturkey.com? I mean why not go full-on crazy and celebrate apples in June? Or snow in August? Or Christmas in July? Oh wait...that one's been done:


What is the world coming to?

This little piggy went to market...

Ack! So cute. The pig was afraid of mud, so his owner gave him boots! Adorable. And ironic - a pig afraid of mud. Sometimes life is just wonderful.

via A Cup of Jo and Now Voyager

"What kinda man are you?"

"Courage is not a man with a gun in his hand. It's knowing you're licked before you begin but you begin anyway and you see it through no matter what"

I do not care for my choices for president this year. In the category of "If only they were real..." (currently occupied by Josh Lyman and Frederick Wentworth), I have decided Atticus Finch is my write-in candidate. Particularly if he appears in the form of Gregory Peck. Who's with me?

A Love Letter to London

London is a hard city. By that, I don't mean it's difficult. It's...gritty. A little rough around the edges.

When you think of Paris, you think smoke and cafes. Proposals. Patisseries. Washington, DC has a much higher crime rate, but the impression it typically leaves is a bit impersonal, politicians with their heads in their Blackberrys. Cold marble buildings. Wide streets with plenty of room to avoid your neighbor.

London is a huge city, but in a way it's also quite small. The streets are narrow, the buildings are small. It's crowded. It's easy to get overwhelmed here. It's also, however, quite easy to love once you settle in. Everyone can be a Londoner. There are probably more nationalities here than anywhere in the world.

The parks are lovely, the bridges imposing, the buildings charming. There's never a lack of things to do or see. Samuel Johnson said, "When a man is tired of London, he is tired of life." I'm definitely ready to go home, but part of me will always miss this city: wandering down streets with three names, popping around a corner and seeing another famous facade, catching a ride home in a famed double-decker bus. It's easy to get used to, but leaving a place always makes you realize the things you'll miss.

So, on that vaguely annoyingly sentimental note, here are a few photos from my last tromps around London. See you all across the pond!

God Save the Queen

I just had the perfect last day in London. I decided I wanted to see Buckingham Palace this morning, so took my double-decker bus down across the Waterloo Bridge.


Then I walked down the South Bank and across to Westminster.

As I approached St. James Park I kept seeing all these police officers. Then I started hearing drums. As I neared the Palace there were tons of people lined up along a parade route.


Turns out it's the Queen's birthday celebrations. 15 minutes waiting and a mini-bus with reject royals rode past.


Then Harry, William, and Camilla passed in a carriage. Unfortunately Camilla's hat blocked William from me. Looks like I'll have to enchant him with my beauty some other day. Cough, cough.
Then! Then the Queen rode by. She looked...old. But her blue outfit was quite fetching.


I was just thinking that I was bummed I hadn't gotten to see her while I was here. I went to her church back in October, but she wasn't at Windsor that day. Definitely an awesome "right place at the right time" moment this morning.

Tomorrow is Maryland! But now I must pack. Boo.

Presumably once you pop, you will stop...

Ha! Pringles Can Inventor Buried in Pringles Can. Now that's going out in style.

(via Serious Eats and The Cincinnati Enquirer)

The things we see...

This is the craziest thing I've seen in a long time. Try it.

The thing he was trying to prove? Worked completely on me.

So. Weird.

Exams, bread, and books...well that just about sums up my life lately...

3 exams down, 1 to go! Unfortunately it's the one with the most boring reading ever. Blah, political convergence theories.

In better news, I just bought a bread machine! Woohoo! It was cheap, had free shipping, and was well reviewed. If you're interested, find it here.

I believe my first attempt will be this whole wheat cinnamon raisin bread. I just finished the most fabulous book, Gilead, in which one of the characters eats an apple butter, peanut butter, and raisin bread sandwich which just sounded amazing. (By the way, just as warning, Gilead is going to turn me into that annoying book pusher. It's just wonderful. Check out a good description here.)

Well that was certainly all over the place. Forgive me. I spent three hours writing today on why socialism failed in the United States, the differences between Teddy Roosevelt and Wilson, and why Lincoln failed to compromise with the south in 1860-61. It's been a long day.

News of the Weird

Buh? PBS has a new show premiering this fall, Spain...On the Road Again, which stars Gwyneth Paltrow, Mario Batali, Mark Bittman, and Claudia Bassols, and appears to be about the group driving and eating through Spain.

Am I crazy, or is that A) a really weird group of people...Gwyneth, really?, B) a strange show to be on PBS, and C) a potentially awesome thing for me to watch next year when I won't have cable?

Here's a sneak peak:

Controversy!

Hey, it's Children's Book Week! Or...not. This link says it's in October. Huh. No matter! It's always a good time to reminisce on all the fab books of our childhood. This is a new volume, of the much loved If you give a... series: If You Give a Cat a Cupcake. Sounds right up my alley. Excitement in kid-lit.

***Addendum: apparently the second is in the UK. I'm so sick of my browser searching UK sites first. It should know I'm still a self-centered American. Geez.

These are strange ways you have.

Many of you may be celebrating Cinco de Mayo today. To be honest, if margaritas weren't the equivalent of $15 here, I might celebrate a bit too. Instead I'm experiencing the wonder of a Bank Holiday. It appears to be the UK equivalent of Memorial Day or Labor Day, only they're held several times a year for no apparent purpose. I kind of like that. Instead of commemorative days getting corrupted by the fact that everyone only remembers them because they get work off, these are holidays specifically designed to...get work off. Nice.

There is one significant difference between these holidays and their semi-comparative days in the US: all the shops are closed. Odd. Although it did mean I could wander across streets this morning without fearing I would be run over by a crazy motorcyclist on his way to work, so that's a plus.

That's what (he) said...

London has a new mayor, Boris Johnson. This article includes a few of his past sound bites. My favorite?

"I have not had an affair with Petronella. It is complete balderdash. It is an inverted pyramid of piffle" - on press reports of his relationship with Ms Wyatt

Note to self: Must work the phrase "inverted pyramid of piffle" into conversation this week.

"There are two kinds of people in the world: those who love chocolate, and communists."

While I'm on the travel report kick, I thought I'd write a little post about Paris and chocolate. I thought I was going to be writing this post in February after coming back from Belgium (mmm waffles and chocolate.) Due to my forgotten passport, a couple of impossibly late ferries to/from Calais, and yet again waiting for ages in a disturbingly empty station in northern France (I'm sure Nicholas remembers our experience with this 2 years ago...it wasn't any better this time), I didn't actually ever make it to Belgium. Whatevs...wasn't meant to be. I did get the better part of an 850-page novel read!

I ended up satisfying my chocolate lust in March with possibly the only better substitute for Belgian chocolates imaginable...the Nutella Crepe.


Mmmm, I've had this on my list of things to do in Paris for ages. I vividly remember the first taste of Nutella I had three years ago, incidentally in Paris. So good. It's a dangerous thing for me to have around though, so I save it for special occasions. The market down the street from me here in London has a vendor who sells crepes. I have remained resolute, however, and my Paris crepe lived up to my imagination.

The crepe was not the only awesome thing about Paris. Here are a few other pictures from the trip:

"Fair land! of chivalry the old domain, Land of the vine and olive, lovely Spain!"

After Italy, I was seriously ready for an actual tourist office in the train station, a clean public transport system and wide streets. Barcelona delivered! I wasn't expecting much from it, so maybe that's why it turned out so great. Regardless, I have nothing but good things to say about it!

Our hotel the first night (long story involving weird opening hours at the second hostel) was super nice. It was located right on the water, so I took advantage of that the first morning:

It was too cold for a swim, but lovely to walk along! Once we'd figured out where to drop our bags off for the next night (another nice hostel, though slightly less posh than the hostel), we wandered down the main street in the city, the Ramblas. It was so crazy. There are all these street performers lining the road. In addition to the people, the vendors are our in full force. You can get flowers, food, and roosters. Yes, roosters. No, I don't know why. Here are some of my favorites (the scene in the back is actually a pair of women dressed in serious makeup. It reminded me of OM.)


Here's me at the beginning of the street:

We saw the cathedral next. I have no idea why this thing is not more famous. It was one of the first cathedrals in a while that I was actually awed by. There were these amazing gardens inside the walls and the inside was really unique. These pictures don't do it justice. Nicole took better ones, so when I get them from her, I'll post them. It was incredibly beautiful.


We navigated the metro with complete ease. Signs are in Catalan, Spanish, and English. Maybe it's arrogant to hope for English to be spoken and used in foreign countries, but it just makes things so much easier. They're clean and even have video monitors of public broadcast. Here's an awkward picture (the guy didn't seem to pleased, but I wasn't sure if I could legally take photos, so I was trying to get it done quickly):

The next day we went up to the Olympic Park (via funicular) to see the stadium and the Olympic museum. It was so. cool. There were video screens where you could access all the old Olympic video, so I watched loads of opening ceremonies, the Magnificent 7 (gymnasts) from Atlanta's games getting their medals, and the Thorpedo. There were histories of all the sports in the games, including those that went back to ancient Greece, which was really neat since we'd just been there. The gift shop sucked, which really was the biggest indication that we weren't in the States.

It had started pouring by this point, so we went on to the airport. I boarded my train to the airport and left Nicole to go on to see another friend in Spain. I guess it should go without saying at this point that my plane was delayed getting out of Barcelona. But I eventually made it back to London. Home sweet (sort of) home! I will say that the cold was quite a shock to my system.

All in all, the trip was a lot of fun, but I wouldn't really call it relaxing! I needed the week before classes start again to actually rest! I think that's just a family tradition though... Relaxing is overrated, right Dad? : ) We saw about as much as we could have in the time we had though, so it was a great vacation. I'm just avoiding airports for awhile.

"You may have the universe if I may have Italy."

...Well Giuseppe Verdi, I will gladly take the Universe. Have fun with Italy. On that note, I saw this sign while walking around London today:

and realized that was an awesome strategy. Because honestly Italy has a lot of things going for it - beautiful scenery, really old stuff, pretty architecture - the problem is Italy itself. Suffice it to say I was not terribly impressed with country. Nicholas and I had issues in Rome, but I thought that was just Rome. (Plus, in interest of full disclosure, at that point in our trip I was rocking some hard core homesickness and a wicked sunburn). Well, it's not just Rome. The people staffing the sites were rude, the train was needlessly complicated and crowded, and the city just lacked charm. (Of course all of this in my humble opinion; many, many others have nothing but nice things to say about the city.)

Anyway, putting all that aside, I did get to see some things I've wanted to see for a long time. Ever since I read The Agony and the Ecstasy, I've had a minor obsession with Michaelangelo, so getting to see his city was pretty awesome.

Here's the Basilica of San Lorenzo, where the Medici tombs are:


I wasn't able to take pics inside the chapel, but here's a photo of the tombs I got off the internet:


I seriously could have spent all day in there. They were absolutely beautiful. I did snatch an illegal picture of these awesome statues:


They were crazy intricate in person. There's actually smaller statues inside the bigger ones. The photo doesn't do them justice.

After that, we went to the massive Duomo, which was quite impressive. I went up into the dome, but only to the second level. I kinda freaked about the height there, so decided not to go up to the outside edge. I was sooo glad when I saw that the rail around the viewing platform? Yeah, not so much with the height on that. Anyway, I did peer out of a window and the view was awesome. Tuscany is famous for a reason.


The rest of the day and the next morning we just wandered the city. The famed bridge is kind of crazy looking. There are actual stores built into it. Cool, but odd. I also did quite a bit of shopping at one of the markets near our hostel. That was a lot of fun.


The second day we were there, we left mid-day and took the train to Pisa. The clouds there were very threatening, so I basically did another bad dash through the city just to see the Tower. Some day I'll actually spend more than three hours there. (Nicholas and I actually ran the distance though. I learned better this time and took the bus. Much better decision.)

After that adventure, we headed out to the airport in Pisa to wait for our flight to Gerona, a small town an hour outside of Barcelona. This is the point where things got absolutely insane. (Even more than than our ride from Milan to Florence two days before during which we got kicked out of our seats an hour before reaching the city because they failed to tell us we needed reservations for seats. And yes, we bought the tickets from an agent. Sigh.)

The flight was delayed. And then delayed some more. And wait...delayed some more. We were very concerned about actually being able to catch a bus into the city that late at night (it was nearing 11pm at this point) and I was quite sure I was going to spending the night in the airport. Luckily, the buses waited on the plane. We got into Barcelona around 2:30am. Other than a taxi driver who ripped us off, things went much smoother from there on out. More about Spain next post!

And a long strange trip it was...

Well I can't promise this will be a comprehensive tale of my journeys (darn that essay I've been putting off!), but here are a few pictures from Greece, Italy and Spain.

I'm pretty sure I inadvertently deleted the one I made on the flight to Greece upon which I spent 5 hours sitting on the tarmac waiting while the snow melted outside, then for a new flight crew because ours had been working for too

many hours, then for them to replace the snacks that had gotten warm while we were waiting. I wish I was kidding. But. I did eventually make it on the ship:

It's kind of hard to see in the second picture, but our ship ends where the lettering starts on the big ship behind it. It was a teeny ship. The cool thing about that though was that we got to sail through the Corinth Canal, which big ships can't do. We also got to dock at some smaller ports. All in all, what we got for the price was not bad. The food was decent (though I'm def glad we got the meal plan. Individual prices were steep.) The room was small, but good enough. I do wish we'd had a pool though.

The excursions were the best part.We saw LOTS of ruins. We had tour guides for each day, plus a resident expert, Heinrich, on the ship to answer questions.

This was was Ithaka, the only port that we had a completely free day:




















My favorite excursions were Olympia and Delphi.

This is me on the first Olympic running course. Olympia was where the first Olympics were held and where the torch is first lit before every Olympic Games. It's a beautiful area, with blooming purple flowers, grassy fields, and old ruins. I could have easily spent all day there.

Delphi was a couple of days after that. It's the site of the famed Oracle and a really old theatre space and arena. It also had a wonderful juice bar. The strawberry slush was just what I needed!

Our last day in Greece was spent in Athens. Here's the famed Parthenon:


It was impressive, but Athens is seriously polluted. Apparently they've instituted driving bans where cars with odd number license plates can drive M/W/F and evens can drive T/TH. People are buying two cars according to the tour guide, but at least they're trying!

Anyway, here's a collage of some of my other favorite Greece pictures:


This entry is seriously long, so I'll save Italy and Spain for later (along with the tales of my airport and train woes.)

Confused

It's 7:15am and there is a van parked directly under my window loudly playing an Indian version of the macarena over its speakers. What did I do to deserve this?


image via flickr user susan & her 5d's

"Strange is our situation here upon earth."

Ah, Earth Day. Vindication for the hippies, an excuse for the PR machine to work overtime for oil companies, a day to celebrate our world with the other 6-some odd billion people humans here. (Aside: Did you realize that the world population has nearly tripled in the last 50 years? Crazy!)

Anyway, as pollution really is gross and we really should pay attention to recycling, driving less and walking more, and other small changes that are good for the environment, I offer, in the truly American tradition, a chance to buy something to help the globe.

Aren't these reusable bags adorable? I want one in every color. I already love grocery shopping; now here's an excuse to carry a plethora of cute bags with me. I think this graphic one is especially stylish:

My current reusable grocery bag is this adorable cupcake one:

It's oh so me, but I do realize that not everyone wants to display knitting baked goods while they shop. (Although, why not? : ) )

Happy Earth Day!

(source: fashion is spinach and cakespy)