Anniversary adventures!

Keegan and I spent the past week on vacation, partly to celebrate our one year anniversary, and partly just because we wanted a vacation :-) Luckily we were able to plan this trip around attending the big Brochufest (my name for it, not the official title) in Hardwick, VT that is always held the Saturday the weekend near July 4.

Weekend/Monday travel day
Our adventure started on Friday, June 25. Keegan and I left around 5 to drive to my dad's house in Hillsville, VA. We hadn't been able to see him in awhile and since we were already driving up north anyway, we were able to stop in a visit a bit. It was nice to just hang around, watching TV (the World Cup and NCIS marathons), chatting, and generally having a good time. We also played some mini golf and toured around the area a bit, visiting a nice home-made candy store.

Also my dad does live in VA, he lives in western VA, so our trip to Rhode Island on Monday wasn't shortened by starting at his place rather than ours in Raleigh. We got up at 3:45 and were on the road by 4:15 on Monday morning. We're aware this is extreme but we wanted to be there to enjoy our first evening of official vacation! We arrived in Newport around 5 p.m. and got all checked into the hotel. Our room was small, but we weren't expecting a giant room in a hotel that was a historic building. In fact, the bed filled most of the room, but MAN, it was comfortable! After arriving, we set out to explore the town and find something for dinner. There was a crazy thunderstorm that only lasted about 10 minutes and we were able to watch it from inside the pub we found for dinner. After eating dinner, we (naturally) found the first creamery in the place and had some very tasty locally-made dessert, mmmm. (Side note: we had decided the end of May that we wouldn't be eating any more ice cream until we were on vacation because we'd been entering the dangerous "Let's buy some ice cream -- I mean, it's half price!" region) While we enjoyed the treats we walked down to the coast line to take in the Rhode Island coastline. Coming from North Carolina beaches, it's insane to see a coast that has no sand and is all rocks and cliffs. I knew it would be like this, but it was still neat to see it first-hand. We wandered the town a bit more then worked our way back to the hotel.


Tuesday
We started out the day on Tuesday by wandering the town some more on our way to see The Breakers, one of the big Newport mansions we had come to tour. As a couple who has been to the Biltmore, we can certainly recommend these houses to other people who enjoy touring old/obscenely opulent homes. The house, grounds, and view were gorgeous! Also, since The Breakers is the most popular house to tour, The Preservation Society of Newport provided audiotours to this house so people could walk it at their own pace, lingering where they wanted. There was also a lot of extra info on the audiotour that you could spend more time listening to. It took about 90 minutes for us to walk through the rooms on the tour and listen to all the extra information.

After exploring our first house, we walked about half a mile down the Cliff Walk to the The Chanler Hotel where we had lunch at their restaurant on the cliff face. The view was stunning, and that's really why we went there, but the food was also quite tasty! We were definitely in need of some sitting time after standing stiff and mostly still for such a long time in the house.

The passes we bought (the "Newport Mansion Experience") were $31 to tour 5 homes, which was an insanely good deal considering just a ticket to The Breakers is $19. Also, the tickets never expire, so we could have come back in years and still been able to go in to any of the houses we wanted. For our second house, we toured Marble House, another ocean-front home. The inside of the home is ENTIRELY marble, which was beautiful, but a bit overwhelming also. This house (and others) also had a room where gold leaf had been used on the walls instead of paint or paper or plaster. It is was it sounds like -- thin leafs of 24 carat gold were used to cover the wall and all of the sculptures worked into the ceiling and along the walls. This house also had an audio tour, since it was pretty popular. There was also a little asian prayer room type thing that the owner had put right on the water, which was neat, but looked a bit ridiculous and out-of-place. But whatever, when you've got so much money you have to cover your walls in actual GOLD I guess you can do whatever strikes your fancy.

The third and last house we toured on Tuesday was called Rosecliff. This house was also very grand, but didn't have a guided tour. It had been owned by a variety of people but all the interior decorations that were original to the house were sold off during the Great Depression, so it was a bit of a shell of it's former self. The preservation society has been able to restore some of it's glory and fill it in with stuff from other homes and stuff that has been donated.

After touring this last house, we hiked the Cliff Walk, which is something I wanted to do even more than touring the houses. The walk was a lot longer than we thought it would be and it took FOREVER, but the views were absolutely amazing. I've never seen anything like that in my entire life and I can't wait to get the pictures off my camera so I can post them on Facebook for everyone to enjoy! We were able to see the sunset at the very end, which made it even more beautiful. The houses on the water are so spectacular and it was neat to be able to see the more residential side of the town than the side that's geared towards all the mansions' visitors. There was then a 4.5 mile walk back to the hotel after the end of the 3.5 mile Cliff Walk, so we easily walked 10 miles on Tuesday. Which we celebrated by eating our weight in more locally-made ice cream :-D

Wednesday
On Wednesday morning we saw our last two houses. My favorite house that we toured, The Elms, also had an audio tour and while it was spectacular also, it was less in-your-face about it. There was still marble and gold accents, but it was much more subdued and instead the house was filled with windows that let in the light and the views of the huge garden in the back. It seemed more like a place someone would actually live (granted someone ridiculously wealthy) and it was less crowded than The Breakers so I could linger looking at everything I wanted to see. :-)

The last house we toured was called Chateau sur Mer and it is the oldest of the houses we saw. This tour was nice and small, which was good, and the house also still contained a lot of its original furnishings, making it even more interesting.

Keegan and I highly recommend visiting this town if you're interested in this sort of stuff! After finishing our tour, we drove to Chelmsford, MA, about 2 hours away, to spend time with Keegan's aunt, uncle, and cousins on our way to Bar Harbor, ME.

Thursday
We hit the road on Thursday morning around 5, trying to make it to Bar Harbor with plenty of time to take in part of Acadia National Park. We got there around 10:30 and then we drove the Park Loop Road, a 20 mile loop that circles Cadillac Mountain (among other things). We were able to park and hike a lot, right along the coast, which was really nice after spending all that time in the car. Plus it was only 70 degrees and completely sunny so it was really easy to just stand there and take it all in. We spent about 6 hours in the park exploring this road and the trails around it. Then we went to Bar Harbor to check into our hotel and look for some dinner.

For dinner we found a little Italian restaurant where I had -- no joke -- the best pasta of my life. I'm really drooling about it right now just remembering it. It was chicken broccolini, but with garlic and some sort of four cheese sauce that most likely took 5 years off my life, but oh man. Keegan and caprese chicken that was also amazing, and we shared some herbed goat cheese brushetta. Then, of course, we found some more local ice cream about 4 hours later for a late treat. We were able to look into the local shops and take another little walk called the Ocean Walk that just went around the harbor a bit.

Friday
On Friday we had breakfast at our hotel and then went to hike around Cadillac Mountain before making the drive to North Conway, New Hampshire. In the winter months, the Cadillac Mountain is the first place in the United States to be touched by sunlight, which I found pretty interesting. The views of the ocean and surrounding park from the top were breathtaking and just going to this park has even further intensified my desire to visit more national parks. After taking that trip with my grandparents a few years ago, I knew I wanted to explore more of the United States, but after seeing Acadia I'm already plotting family vacations in my mind... a bit premature, I know, but I can't help it!


Last weekend and drive home
We drove to North Conway, NH to spend the night before heading up to Hardwick, VT for Brochufest on Saturday. We stayed in North Conway so we were able to drive the Kancamagus Highway in the White Mountains on the way up to the reunion. The drive is very scenic and we'd heard about how beautiful it was from Keegan's family and some of the members of my family. We were able to hike a bit and enjoy more of the 70 degree weather before spending the day with his dad's side of the family. After the reunion, we drove to Gloucester, MA to spend time with one of Keegan's cousins at Keegan's aunt's family's (whew!) beach house. We were able to just relax on their porch, walk the (teeny tiny) beach, and spend time with some of Keegan's cousin's family on his mother's side. They were all really friendly and with the house having 9 bedrooms, there were a lot of folks around! We watched Boston's insane fireworks show and then hit the road Monday morning at 6a.m. 15 hours later, we were home!

2877.5 miles from Raleigh to Raleigh and 13 different states visited. What an adventure! Our trip was rather whirlwind, but it was still relaxing because we were together and not worrying about all the stuff going on in our lives back home. Now I get to tackle the laundry we brought home, and eat through all the preserves and taffy we bought in Maine (MMMMM!!!).

#20: Chicken pot pie

One of my friends is pregnant with twins, so she recently went on a cooking mission where she made about 6 months worth of dinners and froze them all so that when the babies come she and her family will still be able to eat homecooked meals even though they'll be crazy-busy. One of her recipes was just a simple chicken pot pie, which I've never made before, but I thought it would be something nice to do. I actually made two and froze one of them, so now Keegan and I will have another one for some other day down the line! And we only ate half of the first one, so there are plenty of left overs for lunches, mmmmm. It was also pretty economical because I was able to get the chicken on sale (half price!), the soup on sale with a coupon, the mixed veggies on sale, and the pie crusts on sale with a coupon. All in all to make both meals the cost was about $12; I know I've made meals that cost much less than that, but I sort of made this on a whim and I bet if I plan in advance I can buy all the stuff on sale with more coupons and save more money to bring the cost per meal down. But I guess really we get two meals from each pan, so it's like $3/meal.

The recipe is just milk, a can of cream of chicken soup, frozen mixed veggies, and cubed chicken all mixed into a pan with a pie crust over the top. I used skim milk and the healthy choice version of the cream of chicken soup, so really the unhealthy part of the recipe was the pie crust. But that's okay, it's a small portion of the actual meal. It was really hearty and I was stuffed by the time I ate what I had served myself, which really wasn't that much food. Keegan was able to eat a much bigger piece than me AND he had seconds. And there was still half of it left in the pan! I can tell this will be a good meal for when we have kids.

Giant mixing bowl with two pies worth of ingredients!




Ready to start baking (or freezing)








Mmmmm, dinner








Now I'm looking forward to trying out a few Crockpot recipes I found online. I have a Crockpot but I've never used it; I bought it for like $2 at a yard sale when Keegan and I were getting ready to move in together, but I never got around to using it. I guess I'll just see if it works first, and if not, then I know what to buy for our kitchen next. But for such a cheap price I figured I'd buy it, just in case. I got a lot of nice kitchen stuff at yard sales actually, really nice baking sheets and casserole dishes.

SEM

I'm getting trained on the SEM today and I'm pretty thrilled. This means I should be able to look at the stuff I've been making in my experiments and hopefully I'll be able to confirm that I've actually been doing what I think I've been doing. If these images are good and support my work then I'm most likely going to regard them with the same level of reverence as ultrasound images. I'm just saying.

Edit:
I was trained on both the SEM and the sputter coater; I don't have any images yet because the SEM is totally booked this week, and next week I'll be out of town. Booked time for 7/6/2010, so hopefully then I will have exciting pictures!!

BMES and P90x pause

I found out yesterday that I'll be presenting a poster at BMES in Austin in October! I was already going to go to Austin since I bought tickets to ACL, but now I get to go for free (at least the flight, most of my nights in the hotel, and most of my meals). Keegan will be there after the conference to go to ACL also, so he and I have our own room for after the conference is over. I'm a bit concerned about missing class for the conference, but I'm sure teachers will understand.

I have been trying to sign up for this class at UNC, synthesis of polymers, but in order to do that I have to have at least 3 credit hours at Duke because I can't take more hours at visiting institution than I'm taking at my home institution; the course I'm taking this fall is only 2 credit hours, so I need to find another seminar or 1 credit hour class to take so that I'll be able to take the class that I really want to take. It's a vicious cycle. I only need 3 more hours to be finished with all of my required coursework, and I really want to take this class at UNC, which essentially means I have to take 6 hours guaranteed. Oh well, at least these courses will be useful to me down the line.

I've also been keeping up with P90x pretty well (missed 2 days but at least kept the order of the workouts) but I'm going to have to probably restart the whole 90 days after Keegan and I get back from our anniversary trip. Today through Friday I'll be house/pet-sitting at my family's house in Raleigh and although I could take the DVDs with me, Keegan also needs them and I can't really take all of my weights and mat and pull up bar with me. Then Friday-Sunday we're going to a wedding at the Outer Banks, then next Saturday we leave for our trip. I will just be so messed up with the schedule that I might just want to do what I can, then really start over from the beginning. I could be hardcore and take these things on vacation with me, but I'd rather enjoy our anniversary trip and just go running in the hotel fitness centers or something :-) I think for now I'll just do the ones I don't need any equipment for, like the yoga and the plyometrics. Maybe I'll take one set of weights with me to do the arms workout while I'm at my family's house, but we'll see.

I'm super-excited to go to the Outer Banks this weekend to see Jen and Philippe get married! And on the day before our wedding anniversary! How romantic :-) I also can't wait to take an entire week to spend time with Keegan in relaxing locales! It will be wonderful to see some beaches that aren't 95 degrees (but then I will probably be cold, but oh well) and to see a part of the country I've never been to. I'm sure there's a lot of history there for me to soak up :-)

This year's confirmed new state tally:
Kentucky, Indiana, Washington, Minnesota, Rhode Island, Maine, Texas

I'll be 32/50, only 18 from my goal (assuming I don't go to any other states this year)!

Ahh, what I'm looking forward to:

Newport, RI




Bar Harbor, ME

#19: Strawberry vanilla "muffins"

This is the same deal as the previous muffin recipe post -- I made more of a cake than a muffin, but that's okay. For this recipe we were also able to use fresh berries, which is great. They were also on sale, double great!

I think this recipe would have done much better as muffins because the dough was so thick it took about twice as long as the recipe said to cook. It still tasted great though!

#18: Lemon blueberry "muffins"

Keegan decided he would like me to make a breakfast food this time, so he chose two muffin recipes and I made them both so he could have some yummy breakfast food. I made them in cake pans because that's how Keegan wanted them, that's why I call them "muffins" because it was a muffin recipe but I made more like a cake of each of them.

This recipe was very tasty, made with lemon yogurt, lemon juice, and fresh blueberries (among other things) but even with all that lemon it still had only a hint of lemon taste and I would prefer more lemon taste. I really like lemon poppy seed muffins too, so maybe I'll make them some time. I didn't make any icing or topping for this recipe although that was an option. I'm really looking forward to eating the rest of the blueberries this week because they were super-tasty! I always feel like blueberries are hit-or-miss but these are really good AND they were on sale, mmm, the best kind!

P90X, day 6

I forgot to write about the last program I did, a kickboxing exercise video kenpo x. It was also pretty intense -- I was sweating a lot and my heart rate was around 180 by the end so I guess I was at least working myself. I've never really done any kickboxing and it was a bit difficult for me to follow their various punching and kicking patterns. Jab, cross, hook, uppercut! Baaah!!

Now I'm into my second round of the workouts and they're going pretty well. I'm going to have to take the time off this week, or try to do them at my family's house since I'll be house/pet-sitting for them Tuesday-Friday. At least they have a treadmill so I'll have somewhere to run that's not outside in 95 degrees.