Dinner tonight

On my way into Austin tonight I stopped at the store and got some tasty items to make some meals. I started with a recipe Jamie sent me and added a bunch of stuff with brown rice and quinoa and chickpeas. I am excited to try all sorts of combinations!

Pickles for Kyle!

Since I doubt that Kyle will see this, I thought I'd share a shot of some pickles I bought for him. I got the Cochon pickles in New Orleans and the pickled okra at the farmers market in Bryan. I hope he likes them!

Sunday in BCS

Sunday Jamie and I went running at the Lick Creek park, and covered all of the trails. Then we got coffee and then frozen yogurt, and it was all fun! We did our own things for a while and then went out to a bar in Bryan called Revolution and saw open mic poetry night, which was surprisingly good. And smokey. People can smoke at bars in Bryan but not college station or in Austin.

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Slushies and dinner

Jamie and I walked a few miles down the road to try out a drive through alcoholic slushy place. They have these places in Texas apparently! They put tape over the lids to make it legal. It is ridiculous, but we walked into the store and got them that way. And we even drank them on the way home, and they were pretty good!

We had picked up some cheese to enjoy with our jams and then made our beet salad too for dinner. Delicious!!

Hullabaloo

Jamie and I picked up some of her geology friends and we had lunch at Hullabaloo, which is a diner sort of place that was featured on some dive and diner show on the food network. It is very Texas-y in that it sits on a big lot with places to sit and drink and listen to music while you wait to get into the actual restaurant. It was a pleasant wait and we enjoyed large mimosas. I found the graffiti on the tables and in the bathroom to be religious-themed.

Saturday morning in Bryan

Since I arrived back in Bryan/College Station late Friday and Kyle is out of town also anyway, I stayed in BCS for the weekend. One of my roommates, Jamie, and I spent it together and it was fun! Saturday morning we went to the tiny Bryan farmers market and bought beets and butter lettuce to make a salad for dinner, various jams from the Jammin' Granny (blackberry habanero, red onion, and herb garlic), pickled okra (for Kyle!), and honey. We got to chat with each of those vendors too (turns out that honey is a laxative if you eat too much!).

Afterward, Jamie and I wandered past every nook and cranny in downtown Bryan. It is rather cute for a few blocks, and then has odd empty lots and buildings. It was a beautiful day and we enjoyed walking and chatting. I took pictures of the more empty areas.

NOLA -> College Station

I wanted to see what I reasonably could while driving back from New Orleans. Rob and I drove to Lake Pontchartrain which is a huge lake next to New Orleans, and also drove through the very cool City Park. We also visited several cemeteries, which are interesting because the graves are all above ground due to the excess water everywhere and they have rather grandiose mausoleums in some cases. Some were definitely nicer than others. 

At the suggestion of Katie in Seattle, who grew up in Louisiana, we took highway 90 instead of 10 for awhile to drive through swamp land, and then had lunch in New Iberia at the Bon Creole Lunch Counter where we each had a shrimp po boy, which was good. 

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More Thursday night

Random sights + tarot card reading

Thursday in New Orleans

I gave my talk at the conference last Thursday in the morning, the first talk of the session. It went pretty well I think, but there are things I'd like to improve on next time. I think I fielded the questions pretty well, but I also learned some things afterward to help.

I didn't feel much like going to talks afterward, but I stayed for the rest of the session I had spoken in and then went to lunch with some of the people, which was a great opportunity.

That night, I went out to dinner and to explore with Rob, Kristen, and Samantha, the last two I know from UW. We had dinner at a great place (Cafe Amelie) and then went to see music at Preservation Hall. The music was great and we even recognized some people from the Maple leaf from my previous trip to New Orleans, but it was short and a bit hokey. Afterward we went to try Absinthe at a bar, which was actually pretty neat to learn about. Not the best tasting, however.

Algiers ferry

Yesterday I caught the ferry across the Mississippi to Algiers point which is a neighborhood. The ferry was free and runs on a set schedule so I took it across, ran on the other side, and then took it back. I saw some neat birds on the dock and then a bald eagle on a tree very close to me, which was really neat! I've never seen one so close.

Just in case I was lost...

Back in New Orleans

I drove to New Orleans yesterday with my boss rob and it was a decent drive. We saw some of the back areas of Louisiana trying to find the Creole Nature Trail.

This morning I went for a quick run and went along the river, and through some of the French quarter and down Frenchmen street. I found several neat parks and lots of pretty houses, but also some stuff that may be leftover from Katrina damage.


Conference all day!

Back to College Station and on to New Orleans

Yesterday I drove back to Bryan/College Station in the late afternoon since today, Monday, I am driving to New Orleans with my boss for another conference. We are leaving in a few hours. I am looking forward to seeing more of this area of the country and I am doing a talk at the conference, too. Kyle is in Austin today but he flies out Wednesday for NYC to work with some colleagues and then will be at a conference in Boston next week.

Just as I was coming into BCS yesterday, there were tons of vehicles on the highway with flashing lights. It was rather disorienting and I thought something had happened at the airport since I was passing it. Eventually traffic stopped and the police cars, ambulances, and firetrucks kept driving by. There were a lot of them, but it was hard to capture with a picture. I called Kyle and he found online that two fire fighters had died Friday night at a fire in Bryan at the Knights of Columbus. Very sad.

Valentines Day dinner

Kyle and I made dinner together for valentines day. I made some rosemary biscuits (which are actually quite easy and pretty low calorie!) and dessert (homemade chocolate parfaits). Kyle made coconut curry braised kale, which may look bad but is very tasty, and chicken with Marsala sauce! It was fun to spend some time together in the kitchen!

Grey in Texas

College station is reminding me of Seattle today! I enjoyed looking at the clouds out the window today!

Cupcakes! Valentines day

I got a cupcake recipe book for Christmas and finally got around to trying a recipe! I figured that valentines day is a good excuse. So, I made the book's valentines day cupcake which is all by hand (a surprising amount of work!) and included rosewater as an interesting flavor addition! Kyle and I both brought some to campus today to share.

Samoas == caramel delites

Who knew Girl Scout cookies are ever so slightly different in different places??

Cadet corps at Texas A&M

Over 2000 students at A&M (mostly boys) are in the cadet corps, which seems like a military fraternity and does not have an obligation attached to it (like the ROTC does) but does involve a lot of tradition and ceremony and hierarchy. They are the source of a lot of the oddities at the university, or at least the differences from other universities. About the time for questions after the weekly seminar in oceanography, we can hear the cadets yelling "meatball!" from outside the building (a name for the freshmen cadets maybe?). If I run through campus in the morning, I pass the marching band practicing, which is a brigade or company of the corps. I sometimes see the color guard pass to take down the flags at the end of the day. Mostly, though, I see the guys in the brigade that marches with fake guns. I forget what they are called, but I think they are also supposed to be the governor's infantry, for fun, I guess. I have seen them lots of times, but this past Monday I watched them from my sixth floor window at work as they marched around in lots of little groups practicing being in step with each other while twirling their guns in intricate patterns. Honestly, any synchronized movements like that are always cool-looking, but I don't think I'll ever get used to have such a constant military-like presence around. They all wear their uniforms all the time, and I just don't share their military enthusiasm.

The weekend

Kyle and I have been working a lot and it has been hard to keep updated on this blog. I also keep forgetting to take pictures at the few places I have gone! We worked through most of the weekend, but we did have some fun too. We went for at least a short run each day, which included a walk afterward to get Girl Scout cookies (I hadn't seen any yet!!) and then some delicious coffee ice cream from Amy's.

Saturday night, Kyle and I met Kristina and Rebecca at the Hyde Park theater for the FronteraFest best of the week show. They do short plays all week and then the top five for the week are shown on Saturday night.

Half of the shows were quite odd and the others were pretty good. Afterward three of us went out to catch up more!