Arboretum Visit

Chad and I visited the Morris Arboretum today for a couple hours. It's great to have a membership because we can go whenever we want. We went back in January to see the Witch Hazels and we went today to see what was blooming in the beginning of spring. There were a number of things out (such as daffodils and crocuses) and a bunch of other things that are just starting to emerge. Here is one of my favorite photos from the day. I'm pretty sure this was a peonia plant. I just think it looks really cool with the little multi-colored tendrils! You can see more photos from today at my flickr site: http://flickr.com/photos/andrewjoslyn/

Crocuses and Mulch

My mother put down mulch this past fall for the first time and I think it made her flower bed look so much nicer. Here are some spring flowers (crocuses?) that are popping up in her garden and I just thought they looked really cool so I took a few photos. I like the way the green parts look with the white line down the center.

Dylan's Couch Mug

So I wasn't going to post a photo of this because I was too embarrassed, but since Chad already spilled the beans on his blog, I figured it wouldn't hurt. This is a photo of the "Dylan's Couch" mug that Chad got me. He gave it to me yesterday because I had a rough term (more like rough end of the term) and I'd been having a somewhat rough week. I had wanted this mug because I started watching Dylan's video podcast and thought it was pretty funny. If you notice on the mug, it says "So that's the show, okay?" at the bottom. This is how Dylan finishes every episode and it's just kind of adorable.

Rain-Free Rainbow

When I stopped at a red light today, I looked up and noticed that there was a small part of a rainbow in the sky, but there had been no rain. The clouds were looking pretty cool too. I wonder what caused it.

Mike Borda

This is a photo of Mike Borda, one of my coworkers. I would argue that he is the most attractive man working in our office, although this photo doesn't really do him justice. He gave a presentation today although most of the attendees were conferenced in via telephone and internet. He looks dressed up, but this is pretty much how he dresses every day. You may remember him from an earlier post where he was impersonating a certain someone. Anyway, I saw him today and was looking at him thinking "Something is definitely different today, but I can't place it." I didn't think it was his hair because I knew he had it cut just a couple weeks ago. And then I realized he had shaved! He hadn't really shaved all winter (he claims it was to stay warm, but I think it was just laziness). His presentation was excellent and sparked quite a lot of interest across the Golder world. I think he's going to do very well at Golder.

Gas Price Update

So you may remember my earlier post where I showed gas prices below $2.00. Well, quite a lot has changed since then on the gas price front. Prices have gone up about 25% since then (about 50 cents) and are now at about $2.42. We are still below the national average in New Jersey, but I've been avoiding getting gas lately because the prices are so much higher than a couple months ago. So today I was so close to empty I might not have made it to work (well, I probably would have but wouldn't have made it home later) so I stopped at Wawa to get gas. They say the prices are going to peak soon and then start falling. That is, of course, if the cost of crude doesn't go up. On another note, I made another outstanding recipe today from Madhur Jaffrey's cookbook. If you want to get into Indian Cooking, I highly recommend this one. You can find it on Amazon here. Thanks to Heather for getting me this one!

Spring is Coming!

Today was a great day! I did laundry and cooked today and also went grocery shopping (at Han Ah Reum) and went to the bank. I felt great because I got a lot done. But I also got to sit outside with Chad for a while and have lunch in the sun. It was lovely. You can see here one of Deb and Bud's helleborus flowers. They bloom in late winter-early spring. They were all in bloom today and they were looking lovely! I'm looking forward to the nice weather (although I'm not looking forward to the pollen coming from the trees).

Couch Potato

This is a picture of our couch. Our upstairs is actually pretty clean right now, which is awesome! I hardly ever sit on this couch, but today I spent about 5 hours on it. It was great! I felt no pressure to be doing anything at all. We did go out a bit today but it was all stuff I wanted to do so that was good. Otherwise we just relaxed. Finally got to watch the Da Vinci Code which was pretty fun. Wish I had more time to have weekends like this more often! Of course, normally I would have all kinds of projects I would be doing, but this weekend is for relaxing.

I Really Hate KYW!

Remember when I posted about how I hate KYW because they don't always announce bridge openings? Well it happened again today. I listened to the traffic report at 5:12 and then again at 5:22 and neither of them said anything about a bridge opening. I got to the toll at the bridge at about 5:26 or so and I saw the tell-tale signs of a bridge opening ... police car lights. The police SUVs drive out onto the bridge in front of everyone to make sure no one drives onto the bridge while it is opening. I thought "Oh Sh*t!" and sure enough, there was a bridge opening. How can they not announce these things? This is something they should look for specifically every single day, especially during rush hour. They should either say "Tacony Palmyra Bridge" is fine or "Tacony Palmyra Bridge is about to open" or whatever the case is, but they could at least mention it. I mean, EVERYONE knows that the Schuylkill Expressway is a nightmare and that 95 around the city is pretty bad, but the Tac bridge is a complete unknown! You would think this would be important to report! Arrrgghhh. At least today I got to take a photo of the drawbridge in the open position. Too bad I was a bit too far away so the picture is kind of grainy.

Lily of the Valley

Check out March's plant! It's Lily of the Valley and it has started to bloom! They are sooo cute!! Pretty soon we can plant the Jasmine outside. The weather was perfect today, I wish we had like 3 or 4 months like that, but we'll probably get one or two weeks at the most. Oh well.

Not Paying the Parking Meter

So if there is one thing I hate, it is paying for parking in the city. Another thing I hate is not being able to find a good spot. So today when I found a spot directly across from the building where my class is, I saw that the meter was flashing "Out of Order" and then "See Time Limit". I was very excited. This was like the two best things! The time limit at this location is 3 hours up until 8 pm and since I was parking at 5:30, that was perfect (after 8 it is basically free and unlimited until 8am). So this made me in a slightly better mood (bad mood was from the fact that I was on my way to a final exam). I've got another final tomorrow night which I should be studying for but I can't get motivated. The end of this quarter kind of kicked my ass with all the work, so I'm feeling a bit rundown and would rather just go to bed than study for maybe one more hour.

Blood Oranges

This is a tiny blood orange I got at Trader Joe's for 35 cents. I really only bought it so I could take a picture of it, but then I sucked the blood, I mean the juice, out of it after I was done with the photo shoot, and it was quite tasty! Somewhat difficult to get the true colors to show correctly in the photo (flash = too washed out, but this is too dark) but pretty neat anyway. I think my mom used to always buy the blood orange juice from a vending machine in the teacher's lunch room at the ASIJ elementary school. I don't think you can find it here in the U.S. very easily, although I think it was made by Minute Maid.

Muji Stuff

Yuki is the best! She sent us a little package and it got here today. It had stationery items from my favorite store, Muji. For those who don't know, Muji is like the Japanese equivalent of Ikea. They make stuff that is relatively inexpensive and is generally pretty simple, but very nice. It is supposed to be the "Un-brand" but it is actually its own brand. They have a store in London and I think there are some places (such as the MOMA stores in NYC) that sell their products in the U.S. I really miss going to Muji. Pictured here are a little tray to put on your desk for pens and pencils and such, a very cute folding picture frame, and a "Cube keshi gomu" That means "Cube eraser". It's like a little puzzle of erasers. Very cool, but also kind of impractical because each piece is kind of an odd shape. But I love it.

Chad's Fabulous Cooking

Chad made some really fabulous food this weekend. Pictured here is a spinach, eggplant, tomato, and chickpea dish with jasmine rice. It is from his vegetarian Indian food cookbook. It was very authentic tasting. Kind of like palak paneer but without the cheese. We had this for dinner. If we had food like this all the time I think I could easily switch to being a vegetarian! Maybe just fish on occasion. Is this a preview of things to come after he is finished with his Master's degrees? Probably not, but oh well. Plus that's pretty far off now that he just started a new one. I know that what he really wants is for me to say that he doesn't have to work at all and can just do house stuff, but I don't think that will ever happen.

Cardboard Drop OFf

So I don't have a lot of time this weekend because I have two finals to study for, a homework assignment, and a project to finish ... but, we did find time to run a few errands including getting haircuts and going to Han Ah Reum to get groceries. So another errand was dropping off our cardboard. We don't have curbside cardboard recycling where we live, so if we want to recycle the massive amounts of cardboard we accumulate, we have to drive over to the local dropoff center. Usually there is a big garbage truck that you throw the cardboard into, but today there was no truck, just a sign pointing to the ground. So that's where we left our cardboard. I didn't show the most embarrassing part which was that almost our entire trunk was taken up by pizza boxes!! Oh well, at least we are recycling them!!

Snow? Again???

I guess I spoke too soon! If you didn't see it, I posted a photo of snow a week or so ago saying that I thought and hoped it was the last snow of the season. The forecast at that time was for increasing temperatures. Well, sure enough, the temperatures went up. They went up into the upper 70's in fact. And then overnight they dropped down to the 30's and we got SLEET all day long. I don't think there was actually any snow, but we got a good 4 or more inches of just sleet - little ice pellets. So maybe I WAS right and that WAS the last snow of the season, but this looks just about the same and has the same general effect. We shoveled the front walk thinking that it was better to get at least some done before the end of the night. Now you can't even tell we shoveled. This is lame! But at least I was working from home today because we had a plumbing issue to take care of ... So I didn't have to drive in this. I wonder if we'll be able to get out tomorrow to get our hair cuts!

No Time for Movies

So I decided to take a photo of this DVD today because Chad and I got this in the mail from Blockbuster over a month ago (I think) and we haven't finished watching it. We watched about 1 hour of it and just haven't found the time to finish. Every time I am using my computer I see the little "Sin City" icon in the corner reminding me that we haven't watched it. I think Blockbuster has recouped all the money they lost when we used to rent a crapload of movies every month for the one monthly fee of like $10. Maybe we should cancel because we just don't have time. But I really WANT to have time!

Revealing the Fridge

So a while back, Adina posted a photo of the inside of their refrigerator and I commented about how exposing that is. She said I should post one of our fridge and I avoided it for a long time. You see, we're not terribly good at keeping the fridge tidy and getting rid of old stuff. I actually spent a little time this weekend cleaning some stuff out, but mostly I just got rid of the stuff that REALLY needed to be thrown away. Plus, when I started wiping the bottom of the fridge, I discovered that there was a layer of water in the bottom that was about 4 inches thick. Chad thinks it's a problem with the cooling system but I was a little afraid it was some liquified lettuce or something. I hope Chad is right (sort of - I guess it isn't so good to have it be the cooling system). Anyway, I thought maybe this would be a good opportunity to post a photo of it looking not too horrible. You can see we have a lot of condiments and some cheese, and we also have the mac and cheese we made last night. We need to get a new fridge soon. This one is so tiny. Only problem is that I'm not sure there are that many good ones that will fit the tiny space that is available. I guess we'll see.

Bon Appetit Recipe #3

With Chad's help I was able to keep up with my resolution to make one recipe from each Bon Appetit magazine. This is a photo of tonight's recipe which was Buffalo Chicken Mac & Cheese. It was quite tasty but there were so many steps that I asked Chad to help me so we would be able to eat at a reasonable hour. If you would like the recipe, you can find it here.

Paper Shredding

I love shredding paper! It's so cool. I shredded a crapload of junk mail this weekend and now it's ready to go out for recycling pick up. There are 3 large bags of this stuff. Totally awesome! Except it's quite a waste of paper ... all those stupid credit card applications!

Party at the Joslyns

So my mom wanted a photo of a party at her house, so here it is. We went over today with Kathleen and Adair and had some great food! Here's my mom. Doesn't she look adorable? That's Kathleen on the left. Sorry, Kathleen, but this is a pretty good photo, I think.

Appletini

Adair is a bad influence. She made me drink alcohol! I haven't seen her in like 3.5 years and it's so nice to see her! This is the appletini that Chad made for me with a maraschino cherry.

The Disaster that Andrew Left

This is a photo of the floor on my side of the bed. I probably shouldn't be showing this since it shows how much of a disaster I am, but I'm too tired right now to find anything else to photograph. My mom used to hate that I did this when I was growing up. She would say that I would trip and fall when I got up in the middle of the night to pee. But I never actually did get up to pee because that's just how I was, so it didn't really matter. Anyway, it's a mess right now because I've been so busy with school and I have all these things that I need to get to from my bed and no where to put them. So they end up on the floor. I think I'll get a bookcase like Chad has and keep stuff on there (even though that doesn't really keep him from doing this same thing!, hehe). I'm going to get this all cleaned up by tomorrow, though. I planned on doing a lot of cleaning tonight, but I got to a certain point and just kind of fell asleep on the couch upstairs, so I think it's time for bed ... I had a long week. By the way, if you are wondering about the title of this post ... one time when I was younger, it must have been right after Hurricane Andrew hit the US coast, my mom cut a headline from the newspaper that read "The Disaster that Andrew Left" and put it on the door to my bedroom. It was pretty fitting!

Three Liters a Day

I had an appointment with the urologist yesterday to review some test results in relation to the kidney stone I had back in OCTOBER! Anyway, he told me that one of my main problems was that I didn't drink enough water and said that I should be drinking 3 liters of water a day. THREE LITERS!! That's one and a half 2-liter bottles (like the ones that soda comes in!). That's a LOT of water! So this is a picture of my new best friend. I estimate that this cup holds somewhere between 650 and 750 milliliters of water, which means that I need to drink between 4 and 5 cups like this every day. Look how huge it is compared to my hand! Anyway, today I drank 4 of them at work and then had a few smaller glasses at Chad's office. I think I got to the 3 liters, but it was hard. I mean, I was uncomfortable for most of the day. I guess it's worth it if I never get a kidney stone again ... but there's no guarantee. Oh the other problem is that my oxalate level was a little high. Things like chocolate, tea, spinach, nuts, and all types of berries are high in oxalate and I should avoid them. But I figure that drinking this much water will take care of the problem by itself so I should be fine ... right?? I can't avoid chocolate!!

Last Day of Snow??

So we got snow for most of the day today. I like snow in the winter, but I'm kind of hoping this is the last snow of the season. It's almost the middle of March and I'm ready for some consistently warm temperatures. There are tons of things we would like to do in the yard this year, such as tearing up more pachysandra and some more bushes. But I'm not sure how much time I'll have because of my classes. Hopefully I'll have time to get outdoors during the few weeks that we actually have nice weather. It seems to go from being freezing cold to being way too hot within a matter of a few weeks around here. It's quite aggravating, actually. I prefer the cold weather, but that doesn't mean I love it. I do like that the seasons change, it's just that my favorite seasons, spring and fall, seem to always be way too short.

As a side note, Chad really liked the way the snow sparkled tonight. I'm not sure why it does that sometime - must have something to do with the way the ice crystals form. Not sure if you can see the sparkles in this photo ...

Macworld Magazine

I got a free subscription (I think it's only 6-months or something) to Macworld magazine when I registered my new MacBook. I've been waiting for it to come and today it finally did! I'm so excited to read it, hopefully there will be some good stuff in there. Of course, I don't have any time to even open it up because I have so much homework and such to do, but oh well. Can't wait till this quarter is over. Of course, I start another 2 classes a week later so there isn't much of a break. I think I'm definitely taking the summer off.

Karaage

This is a picture of one of my favorite Japanese foods. Basically it is fried chicken, known as karaage in Japanese. You buy a powder mix, add water, soak the chicken in it and then deep fry it. Yeah, so maybe it's not the healthiest meal, but it's darn tasty. There is one specific mix that I like the best and we found it at Mitsuwa and bought a bunch of packages. Some of them don't take water (they go on dry) and I don't like that kind because they get grainy. I made up a batch of the good kind tonight so Chad and I can take it to work for lunch for the next couple days. It's very good to eat with Bulldog (tonkatsu) sauce and rice. The piece shown here is no digesting in Chad's stomach!

Birthdays in Delaware

For those of you who know us well, you know that we go to Chad's family's house all the time for every holiday and every birthday. It's always a crazy time with loads of food! Well today we went to celebrate Chad's, Lauren's, and Aunt Beth's birthdays. We sang happy birthday for Chad and Lauren (and Charlie) and then we got to Aunt Beth last and she didn't want us to light all the candles on the cake again. So Veronica picked up one candle, lit it, and started singing (if you can call it that) happy birthday. So Aunt Beth blew out the one candle in Veronica's hand. It was pretty funny and was typical of Veronica.

Pom Juice

I picked up some pomegranate juice at Han Ah Reum today. Are "they" still saying that pom juice is really healthy because of antioxidants or something? That's good because it's pretty tasty. I'm looking forward to mixing it in some other drinks or something. Like maybe a pomegranate martini or something.

Ridiculous Hummer Stretch Limo

I passed this ridiculous Hummer stretch limo today on my way home and just had to grab a photo of it. These things are so absolutely ridiculous looking! How do you even drive one? I guess it's kind of like driving a bus except it is shorter. Unbelievable.

Coffee Swap

Mike Borda and I got to talking about coffee a few weeks ago and it turns out we both had a particular brand we liked the best. Chad's and my favorite is La Colombe, the roaster in Center City Philadelphia (near Rittenhouse Square) and Mike's favorite is Crescent Moon Coffee in Mullica Hill, NJ. We decided we should do a coffee swap. So I brought him a bag of La Colombe a couple weeks ago and today he returned the favor. Chad and I recently bought a burr coffee grinder so we could have it freshly ground! We can't wait to try it, but right now we actually have some Bucks County Coffee in our grinder. How exciting!