Hooray penguins! At the Philly Zoo no less! I really do have to visit again some time soon.
Posts Tagged ‘fun in Philly’
Penguins chasing a butterfly
Wednesday, August 18th, 2010Health Journal #15
Saturday, August 7th, 2010August 1
- Breakfast: apples and caramel from Wawa
- Lunch: crab cake sandwich on the boardwalk in Ocean City!
- Dinner: roast, salad with avocado, smoked salmon and cheese. Ice cream for dessert!
August 2
- Breakfast: honey bunches of oats
- Lunch: cherries, omelet with sauteed tomato/arugula, smoked salmon and cheese
- Dinner: roast, ice cream =)
- Exercise: 2.5-mile run w/ a break half-way, outside in the nice weather! =D
- Weight: 118 lbs? Maybe my scale is broken, I’ve been eating way too much crap lately
August 3
- Breakfast: honey bunches of oats, tea + milk + sugar
- Lunch: salad with smoked salmon, apple and cheese
- Dinner: falafel sandwich at Local 44 – pretty good =) I think I prefer Maoz, though, particularly since I can get the falafel without the huge side of fries, which I also finished. Ugh. No more empty starches!
August 4
- Breakfast: honey bunches of oats
- Lunch: omelet with sauteed tomato/arugula, crab and cheese
- Snack: large iced chai
- Second snack: small vanilla frappuccino
- Dinner: fancy pizza at Mama Palma – pesto melanzane and santa fe!
- Exercise: weights – 10 pull-ups w/ 20 lbs assist, 36 rows, 20 triceps dips, 20 triceps extensions, 20 back extensions, 25/25 r/l crunches. This took about half an hour. I guess I’m not as motivated to lift if I’m not already sweating from some sort of cardio.
August 5 – Combined Retreat Day
- Breakfast: pumpernickel bagel with cream cheese, coffee, orange juice
- Lunch: hello college dining hall. Tomato soup, cheeseburger, lo mein, plain yogurt with raspberry topping, vanilla-chocolate twist soft-serve ice cream on a cone! and 2 sugar cookies.
- Dinner: spring mix salad with crab, apple, cheese, and pecan-cranberry mix. I think I had a bowl of honey bunches of oats, too.
August 6
- Breakfast: honey bunches of oats
- Lunch: roast, spring mix salad, ice cream
- Dinner: the calamari appetizer at Mixto for Philip’s birthday! ‘Twas very filling. Also had the Lulo fruit smoothie – not sure what the fruit is, but the drink was green and tart. Then onto Valanni for drinks and desserts! I had the bread pudding and a little bit of Chris’s mojito. I’ve been to Valanni a few times over the years and the food and drink have always been excellent.
August 7
- Breakfast: French toast. It turned out GREAT.
- The batter: 3 eggs, 1/3 cup of milk, 1/4 tsp nutmeg, 1/3 tsp vanilla, 1/4 tsp cinnamon, and a dash of ground clove.
- I sliced up three slices of bread into strips (4 strips per slice) and let them soak really well.
- Then I fried them in butter over medium-low heat.
- Add the maple syrup, and done.
- Lunch: roast.
- Dinner: pad thai, made by me! I followed the outline of this recipe, modified for my cheat using pre-made pad thai sauce i had bought. It turned out pretty well for a first-timer. I will definitely keep experimenting.
- The noodles: these are the toughest part. I used tapioca noodles rather than rice noodles and soaked them in hot tap water for about 30 mins while i prepared the rest.
- I sauteed garlic in vegetable oil on medium-high heat, and then drained the noodles and tossed those in. As the recipe says, you have to keep stirring or it all sticks together.
- Once the noodles softened, I added the pre-made sauce – I’d say about 1/4 cup, but obviously adding a small amount and taste-testing is the way to decide whether to add more. I didn’t quite like the taste so I stirred in 1 tbsp of sugar and added the juice of one lime. I also added about 3 tbsp pickled cabbage, which is used as a garnish in some Vietnamese dishes and maybe others as well.
- Following the guidelines, I pushed the noodles to one side and scrambled in two eggs and then sauteed the shrimp in one side of the pan before stirring them into the noodles as well.
- Lastly, I added a plum tomato, sliced into wedges. As they cooked, the inner flesh fell apart so I was left with tomato strips instead of wedges.
- Dessert: vanilla ice cream and chai tea =)
Health Journal #13
Wednesday, July 21st, 2010July 16
- Breakfast: frosted mini wheats
- Lunch: a large iced chai tea latte, fruit fro yo with gummy bears
- Second lunch: pasta with seafood sauce
- Snack: gelato
- Late night dinner: sunny side-ups
July 17
- Breakfast: tea, an orange
- Lunch/Dinner: pasta with scallops
July 18
- Brunch: the protein platter at the Continental: scrambled eggs, bacon, sausage, ham, and tomato
- Snack: large iced tea lemonade
- Dinner: frosted mini wheats =)
- Exercise: ran a mile. Too hot to go any farther, even at 9am!
July 19
- Breakfast: fiber bar
- Lunch: 2 dozen little neck clams =) got them from Reading Terminal Market, one of my fave places in Philly. If you like to cook, you must come here. Abundant fresh meats and produce await!
- Snack: risotto
- Dinner: more risotto
July 20
- Breakfast: cheerio with nut clusters. Don’t ever let me get this again, blech, I’d rather have plain cheerios.
- Lunch: phyllo-wrapped salmon and side salad at Day By Day – great little brunch/lunch place =)
- Snack: pumpkin bread and large chai latte
- Dinner: salad with apple slices and fish (sounds weird but I needed a protein), ICE CREAM =)
July 21
- Breakfast: honey bunches of oats.
- Lunch: large coffee frappuccino, a banana, a small yogurt
- Dinner: ginormous Hickory burger and onion rings at New Deck Tavern. I swear the burger size was not intended for a single person.
Pendergrass Dinner!
Saturday, June 12th, 2010By chance, the grad students in the Interfaces imaging program had the opportunity to go the Radiology Department’s swanky annual Pendergrass dinner, a semi-formal event. I am ALWAYS up for fancy dinner =D It was held at The Four Seasons. The appetizers were awesome, except for the piece of salmon that fell down my (non-existent) cleavage while we were talking to my PI, Jim Gee, at which point Jim quipped “Nice catch” as I retrieved it and ate it. Chris approved of the steak – that’s all the approval I need, the boy knows meat. Here are some pictures! More in the photos section here.
It was great to see everyone all dressed up, and even better to see people get down on the dance floor =) At one point I started tipping my school mates out of their chairs so they would come dance too. Doing theatre certainly has made me less inhibited about bopping around, although I think my year at Disney really fixed that. (Once you dance in costume, you learn to go all out and not care about anything but having fun.) Plus, a total stranger lady told me I had the best dress of the night! It’s all about penguin-style =)
Health Journal #5
Friday, June 11th, 2010- Breakfast: frosted mini wheats
- Lunch: salad with smoked salmon, blueberries, cheese and cranberry gorgonzola dressing – YUM!
- Snack: ice cream! and a piece of cheese, and a piece of smoked salmon, and 5 everything crackers from TJ’s
- Dinner: don’t know, but we’re going to The Four Seasons for a fancy dinner courtesy of HUP Radiology!
- Exercise:
- cardio: 21 mins on the elliptical, 2.5 miles at level 8
- arms: 15 pushups, 30 triceps extensions
- back: 30 extensions, 30 lat pull-downs
- core: 25/25/25 situps
- stretching: splits and bridges!
- Vital signs, cuz i happened to go to student health today: T 97.9 F, P 56, BP 103/68
Yay done with classes!!
Saturday, May 8th, 2010As of 11:31pm last night, I finished my coursework for the semester. Unless, of course, the profs are unable to download my report. But let’s assume my server hasn’t failed them. And I already celebrated end of classes anyway; Chris took me out for dinner at FridaySaturdaySunday on Thursday. We had outdoor seating on a beautiful evening, and we even had Henry along! The waitstaff were great, keeping his water dish full and giving him treats. He was pretty well-behaved, considering how difficult it is for a 90-pound golden retriever to sit still when so much food and so many delectable aromas are around. You MUST try the goat cheese-honey-walnut salad. The softshell crabs were satisfying, too; I forgot that I’m not that big a fan of red bell pepper which was in the sauce, but the crabs themselves were great.
To recap since Pirates: since I had to take a whole week off from school for daytime rehearsals plus some extra mornings for shows, I had to catch up on work and basically did nothing but lab and class, with a little soccer thrown in. For the computer science class, we had presentations on our semester projects instead of final exams. As I listened to my classmates describe their work, I realized two things:
- My project was a heckuva lot easier than everyone else’s because it didn’t involve any novel programming challenges, just implementing stuff that had already been developed.
- I felt very acutely for the first time in a while that this class was about computer science, and I was not a computer scientist. And evidently a flow chart of your algorithms is a key component of your presentation if you are a computer science person, but I, not being one of them, was ignorant and had no such chart. Who knew?
Fortunately, I got good feedback from some of the postdocs in my lab who had come to the presentations, so I guess it’ll be okay.
So, I can relax somewhat for the next month, sort of. I have qualifying exams (QE’s) this summer, so that will be stressful. My buddy Ingrid suggested I try to get my committee members to argue with each other during the oral exam, as she did, so that they’ll be distracted from actually grading me :p
Oh, and being the well-intentioned but myopic do-gooder I am, I accidentally volunteered to work on a poster on our lab software for a Penn research retreat next Thursday. This is the trouble with being accustomed to busy as my normal pace – I keep finding more work for myself. I think my friend Anne has lost her faith in me to grow out of this habit. Not that she should talk; she’s starting general surgery residency next month. We had dinner at Supper last night. Amazing multigrain bread, and the duck and waffles was worth the plunge. Yes, that’s right, duck and waffles. My adventurous epicurean appetite can rest easy for a while.
Thoughts and pix from How I Became a Pirate
Sunday, April 18th, 2010Being an extra (i.e., water people and shark with Serena!) at this children’s show at Walnut Street Theatre was an incredible learning experience. Yes, the material resources of a professional theatre are impressive; I loved how the cabin and sandcastle could be unfolded to transform into other set pieces, and the costumes and props were great. Yet to my surprise, the thing that stood out to me the most was just how hard the cast, crew and production team work to iron out every detail, and how much energy they put into their jobs. Obviously, I know that people who become professionals in their field have to work their butts off, no matter what they are doing. But it was really rewarding for me to see how this is true for theater as well, to see the nature of this work. Because I have learned over the past several years that I am not afraid of work. I am afraid of failure, but I’m not afraid of work.
In no way does this mean I’m ready to drop medical research and pursue a career in the arts. Rather, I appreciate that my experience with How I Became a Pirate reinforced the idea that a good chunk of your success in any field – any field, even one such as theater where success can be so subjective – depends on how much heart you put into your efforts. The director, Rob McClure, and choreographer, Sammy Reyes, shared their experiences with us, and it was clear from observing them in action that they possessed a clear focus, were not afraid to try switching things around, and cut no slack for anyone, including themselves, even when they gave the cast a break. They had fun, but they were serious about their work. That intensity resonates with my general outlook. In some way I don’t quite understand, it was a comforting relief for me to see all of this about the theater world and its inhabitants. They’re incredibly talented, but they’re not so different, and they are human.
Pondering my experience in a cultural light would be a whole nother discussion, but that’s enough for now. And so, to the pictures!
Carousel photos – come see our show!
Saturday, March 13th, 2010I’ve had a change of heart about Carousel. At the time of the audition, I didn’t care much for the show; I really just wanted something to do that wouldn’t be too time-consuming (HA! like any show is not time-consuming) and would be a tolerable commute. But now that I’ve seen it, and felt it, and lived it, I really find it a charming and beautiful show, with much thanks to the production team.
Dave Richman, one of our cast members who does photography, took some lovely rehearsal pictures that he generously distributed to us. I collected my favorite moments and put them up in my Photos section. Enjoy! And come see us! Details are on the Narberth Community Theatre website.
Horses and buggies in Lancaster!
Monday, March 8th, 2010Today Chris and I went to visit our friend Philip in Lancaster. I’ve never been there, and I especially wanted to see the Amish (or Mennonites, or PA Dutch) as they interact with our car-driving, machine-fabricated, lightbulb-burning, electricity-consuming world. We saw several horses trotting along, pulling buggies of both tourists and bonnet- and beard-sporting locals. Here’s a video!
Apparently there are horse-hitching posts! And they don’t lock their horses either – I wondered aloud about whether horse/buggy theft would be a concern, but all I got was a laugh from Chris and Philip. One of the buggy’s owners came back, and as she assembled her ride, two things caught my eye: her footwear, and the sliding front windshield of the buggy.
Along our travels we stopped by a farmhouse for homemade root beer. Chris is evidently fond of root beer. Here he is purchasing it from the stand, which was at the end of a long driveway onto the farm property. They also sell dresses for $10…but I don’t think any were my size!
Fortunately, we did plenty of shopping at the outlets =)
Go see The Rock Tenor!
Sunday, July 19th, 2009Today, Kara and I went to see The Rock Tenor, a concert of five vocalists performing medleys that blend rock anthems with everything from Puccini to Les Mis. It is an AMAZING show. The vocalists are incredibly talented, thrilling to see and hear. The soprano, Morgan James, trained at Juilliard, and damn it shows! And another one of the vocalists, Alex Keiper, went to school here in Philly at UArts. She dances around like she’s having a blast, and she’s adorable Plus, the two bac…
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