Hard Drive Bliss

Pictured here is one of my birthday presents from my parents. It is a 500GB external hard drive. I've been craving one of these for a long time! I wanted a place I could store all my pictures, music, etc. files on so I could have easy access to them at all times! I hooked this up to our desktop computer and got it set up on the network so I can access it wirelessly from my MacBook. Now I can have all my photos loaded in iPhoto and I can have tons of music stored on it. Crazy cool!

Beautiful Presents

My family and our neighbors came over last night for dinner to celebrate my birthday. Everything was wonderful. The food was great - my mom made these awesome curried chicken dumplings and Chad made a pork roast. All the presents were exactly what I wanted so it was fantastic! And pictured here are my presents from Chad. He used pages from a West Elm catalog to wrap them. Isn't he sweet? I LOVE West Elm! We had tons of dessert too - my mom made a chocolate chip cookie ice cream cake thing as well as a gluten-free apple crostata for Deb.

(Note: This is my photo from Saturday, September 29, 2007).

Can Google Go Green?

Here is a photo from work on Friday. Heather wanted to print out a map from Google so she pressed print, walked to the printer, and found these two pages. The first page is the map, and the second page has the address on it and a lovely message from Google telling people to go green. We found it funny because this second page of the printout is practically worthless and a complete waste of paper. This happens all the time with websites. You'll print them out and then get the last page almost completely blank except for maybe one line of useless text at the top, or sometimes nothing but the URL of the site. Totally ridiculous.

(Note: This is my photo from Friday, September 28, 2007)

Sorry

Pear Jam

We bought some awesome Bartlett pears at Kauffman Fruit Farm last weekend and I really wanted to try making jam from them, since my peach jam went over so well. So tonight I made the jam and I think it's pretty good. I can't wait to try it on some toast!

More CSA Veggies

Know what this is? It's a carrot! I don't think I've ever seen a carrot this color before. It's orange once you get past the first centimeter or so, but it was quite interesting to get carrots like this with the CSA! We only have a few more weeks left for the season though. What will we do over the winter??

Restaurant Week - Fork Restaurant

Heather, Greg, Chad and I went to Fork Restaurant in Old City, Philadelphia tonight for dinner. This week is restaurant week, which means you can get a 3 course meal at any of the participating restaurants for $30. This was probably the most "pretty" dish of the evening. It was the beat salad with pears and ... ?? not sure what the green is. Everything was quite good. If you'd like to see more photos of the food, you can check out my Flickr page.

Ruth Blends In

Oh I know she's going to kill me for posting it, but I just couldn't resist. This is Ruth, the director of first impressions at our office. I couldn't believe how closely the color of her outfit matched the walls of our office. It's like she was trying to disappear!

Flowers from Whole Foods

Chad's mom had to have some surgery last week so we went down to visit her in the hospital (it's going to take about a week to recover fully) yesterday. We got these flowers at Whole Foods. They have these nice little berries and also a cabbage-y looking thing. I think it was a really nice bouquet.

(Note: This is my photo from Sunday, September 23, 2007)

A Day in Amish Country

Chad and I spent the day in Lancaster county shopping at the outlets. Our first stop was this Waffle House where the person who greeted us at the door introduced himself as Frank and asked if he might have one of our first names for the waiting list. He was very friendly to everyone who came in, it was kind of bizarre. Haha. Anyway, we went shopping crazy and got quite a bit of good loot and nice deals. It was quite an enjoyable day, although it was ridiculously hot outside.

Crazy CSA Veggies

Since Chad and I weren't around on Thursday, Matt picked up our veggies from the CSA for us. So we went over to pick them up on Friday night. This is one reason I love the CSA - we get veggies, such as the eggplant shown here, that are not the normal ones you would find at Acme. There are so many awesome veggies I didn't even know about!

(Note: This is my photo from Friday, Sep. 21, 2007)

Ohio For A Day

On Thursday I went with Steve Finn to Twinsburg, Ohio (near Cleveland) to meet with one of our clients, the US EPA, and the Ohio EPA to discuss one of our projects. We flew out there in the morning, had a meeting all day, and then flew back that night. It was a long day, and it was extended a bit when our plane was delayed by about an hour. The meeting went well though, so that was good!

(Note: This is my photo from Thursday, Sep. 20, 2007)

Yummy Vegan Cookies

At the current time, I am consuming the delicious cookie you see before you. It came from Whole Foods and it is a Vegan Ginger/Molasses cookie. It is soft and chewie and a bit spicy and so so tasty. Chad and I stole them from my parents when we were over there on Monday. Yum! If only I could make vegan cookies this good, I would do it all the time!

Trolley Bus?

On my way home from work yesterday, I saw this crazy trolley bus thing at a gas station. I always pass this gas station and wonder whether it is even open because there's never any activity. Well, finally some activity! Pretty interesting.

(Note: This is my photo for Tuesday, September 18, 2007)

Kitten Chopstick Rests

On Monday night we took some soba and shumai to my parents' house so that Chad could try on the pants that my mom is hemming for him. It's a long process! Anyway, my mom had these really cute chopstick rests that are little cats. Love them!

(Note: This is my photo for Monday, September 17, 2007)

Rug Protector

We decided, somewhat on a whim, to go to Ikea today after doing some work around the house. We needed a plastic chair pad to put under our desk chair in the library as well as a couple other things. Luckily they had them (we didn't find them until we were about to leave) so this is it! Now we can roll around without damaging the oriental rug. Yay!

Opinions on Suits

Yesterday (Saturday) Chad and I went shopping for new suits for Chad. He has to wear one every day starting on October 1 because he switched positions at his work. We wanted a second (or third, I guess) opinion on how the suits looked on him, so we asked my parents to come over and help us. We decided that we would make some dinner for them since my mom agreed to try to hem Chad's pants for him. Anyway, we haven't had anyone over in a while so we decided to light the candles and everything so it was nice.

(Note: This is my photo for Saturday, September 15, 2007).

Brownies!

On Friday night I made brownies for us. We LOVE brownies but haven't made them for quite a while so it was a very nice treat. I put mini chocolate chips in them for a little extra chocolate kick. Yummmm.

(Note: This is my photo for Friday, September 14, 2007).

Cover Flow in iTunes

As I was watching Steve Jobs's presentation last week about the new iPods, I saw the Cover Flow feature for the first time. I hadn't used or heard of this before, especially since I have an old iPod that doesn't even have color. Anyway, it looked pretty cool and I was playing around with iTunes and realized that you can use that feature in iTunes as well. It's pretty awesome. Here is a snapshot of what it looks like to see the album covers along with the songs on that album. I dream of someday having appropriate album artwork for every single song in my collection! Most of them it can find automatically, but others I will need to load manually. Maybe by the time I actually get a color iPod of some kind I'll have it all set to go!

Tea Infuser

I really wanted to make myself some tea at work the other day using my strainer/infuser thing from Han Ah Reum, but I couldn't find it. So I don't know where the heck it went, but I was at H mart last night and bought myself a new one anyway. I think this one is a better size anyway so maybe it was just meant to be!

New Hair Creme - Effects

As requested (by Adina), here is a photo of my hair using the new cream I featured on yesterday's post. It might be hard to tell the difference, but it isn't as flat as usual. I have to experiment with it more, but I think I like it so far. I just have to be careful not to touch my hair because whatever you do to it just stays. So I can't run my fingers through it, which is probably a good thing anyway.

New Hair Creme

I've been thinking that I would like to experiment with my hair a little bit because it always seems so flat. So we bought this new hair creme stuff that I'm hoping will help. It's going to take some getting used to but I think it will work. I used it today just to see what it felt like. Very interesting.

Suit Shopping

Check it out! Chad is shopping for new suits for work. The new job he is starting on October 1st requires a suit every day. Crazy, huh? But he looks good, right? Hehe.

(Note: This is my photo from Sunday, September 9th)

Home Sweet Home

So I got home on Saturday and what did I do? Go to Cosi! Of course!! It was practically empty and at first we thought it was closed, but it wasn't! Then my parents showed up because they knew we were there so that was kind of nice.

(Note: This is my photo from Saturday, September 8th)

The Bagdad Theater

Yesterday (Friday) I spent the entire afternoon and evening exploring Portland. I spent the early afternoon at Washington Park checking out the Japanese Gardens and the World Forestry Discovery Center. I then headed over to an area I had read about known as the Hawthorne district. It's a kind of up-and-coming artsy area. One of the most famous landmarks in this area is the Bagdad theater. They show recent movies (although not the newest ones that are out in major theaters) and you can get beer and pizza during the show. They also have a pub and restaurant, so I just went for the food, not wanting to stay out too late on the night before flying home. It's a pretty popular spot - you can see the line of people waiting to get in for the 8:00 movie.

(Note: This is my photo from Friday, September 7th)

Making New Friends

I love meeting new people. So when I realized that someone I knew from the internet (bceause of the Feast of Fools podcast) was living in Portland, I decided it was a great chance to meet someone to hang out with so I wouldn't have to be all alone. This is Daniel or Adelheid. We went to Powell's Bookstore, which must be the biggest bookstore I've ever been in (other than maybe Kinokuniya in Tokyo). It was pretty crazy.

(Note: This is my photo from Thursday, September 6th)

Every City Has Something Unique ...

... in Portland, it's never ending water fountains. These water fountains are placed throughout the city and the water runs constantly. This is a bit alarming because it either means that they are wasting a ton of water, or, it means they are recycling whatever lands in there ... Well since I'm pretty sure there are regulations about that, it must be the former, but that's kind of a shame...

(Note: This is my photo from Wednesday, September 5th)

Good Southern BBQ

On our last day in Nashville, Steph took us to their favorite BBQ restaurant so we could get some more FOOD. Adina had some kind of allergic reaction so she was all itchy with hives so she didn't want to leave the house. We picked up our food and took it back to the house. It was quite yummy. But then we had to go to the airport and fly away, which was sad. Chad and I were in different terminals because we were on different airlines, so we had to split up when we got there, so that was sad too. Then I spent the rest of the night traveling to Portland. Craziness.

(Note: This is my photo from Tuesday, September 4th).

Cute Kittens

Adina and Steph's cats are soo cute. They were playing with each other all weekend, but the little kitten was crying all the time so we could never tell if he actually liked it. But they were adorable.

Extravagance

We drove around a bit yesterday and looked at crazy huge houses. There were a couple of developments we drove past/through that are brand new or not yet done. The houses were ginormous! It was ridiculous. Here is a photo of one of them. One of the houses had a one page info sheet out front that we picked up. We can't figure out why they listed "Heated Salt Pool" as one of the special features. Who wants that?!

(Note, this is my photo from Sunday, Sep. 2)

Oh The Crazy South

Oh you have to love it here. I could have posted a few different photos of our first day in Nashville, such as the awesome Pancake Pantry, or the Parthenon, but instead I chose to post a photo of this guy we saw while driving along the highway. He was just sitting there in the back of a pickup truck, like he was meditating or something. It was hilarious.

(Note, this is my photo from Saturday, Sep. 1)