bugsii

A quick rundown of our first day in Portland (since even though it’s 10:30pm here, 1:30am at home, and I am pretty tired):

It was a really clear and beautiful day today and as we descended into Portland, we had a great (spectacular, even) view of Mt. Hood.

Mt. Hood

Once we were on the ground, Dan and I picked up our rental car at the airport, then picked up Beth from her nanny gig and drove over to Voodoo Doughnuts.  It’s been on some show on the Food Network before and Dan was all about it.  I mean, I wasn’t complaining or anything.  They have all sorts of crazy doughnuts (as you can see).  Dan got a maple bar with bacon on it and their signature doughnut is shaped like a little person and when you bite it, raspberry jelly oozes out.  You can also get married there (they had it on the menu), but I think I’ll just take a doughnut.

Voodoo!

Then, we went back to Beth’s house for a bit.  She just moved to a new place and they have chickens and geese!  Check it out.  I was obviously mesmerized (and also a little worried about the white one, who I hear is mean).

Chickens!

Then, we went to an early dinner with Beth and her guy, Pawl.  Our waiter was funny.

Pawl and Beth

Then, we went to a movie (Micmacs) at one of those cute little theaters where you can eat a meal in the theater (sorta).  We all liked the movie.  Who doesn’t love crazy French films?  Now, bed.  Tomorrow, Eugene!

Tonight, we got to go to our second baseball game of the season.  This one was a Columbus Clippers game, our minor league team.  But first, we had Ben, Rachael and Megan over for dinner.  They brought delicious locally-made veggie burgers and amazing yellow-watermelon.  I made a hummus/veggie tray and two dishes that I was proud of (sorry if you already saw these pictures on facebook!).  First, was a quinoa, black bean and corn salad:

Mmm!

Then, I made Dan’s new favorite, curried carrot bisque (the swirl is a little bit of maple syrup):

Mmmmmm!

I forgot to take pictures during dinner, but it was quite a feast and we had a nice time sitting around and chatting.  After dinner, we put our walking shoes on and headed down to Huntington Park, the new baseball stadium that was just built last year, and one of the many reasons it’s so nice living downtown in walking distance to a bunch of cool things.  Here we are on our way:

Ben, Rachael, Megan and Dan take High Street

When we got to the stadium, we were sitting in the sun for a bit.  But when the sun went down, it was such a pretty night.  Check out the stadium at dusk:

Nice, right?

And, here we are, me and my honey:

A lucky girl

That little old lady next to me was pretty cute too.  It was a good night, even though we were getting killed (8-0) when we left in the 7th inning.  Now, we’re at home, watching UFC 118.  I don’t think I’ll make it to the main event… Night!

Just a quick post before everyone gets here for dinner.  Last night, Knead was delicious!  They have a vegan sloppy joe and the “joe” was all tasty and tomato-y and the bread was a toasted rosemary focaccia and it blew my mind.  I will be back!

Slop V Joe

Oh, and they use local ingredients as much as possible, so they have this cool map showing all of that jazz.

Aw, Ohio.

And then Dan and I both really enjoyed Get Low.  Bill Murray is always great, even though his humor seemed a little out of place in the 1930s (the time period of the movie).  I live in 2010, so it was all good for me.  My pal, Tracey (who knows a thing or two thousand about movies), said it might be a little slow, but I think it helped that I didn’t know anything about the movie and so the whole thing was a surprise to me.  A nice surprise.  The main character is a gem and, it’s about a funeral party.  Yes, you heard that right.  Two thumbs up from Dan and I!

The past two days have been kinda full.  Yesterday I was stuck at home because Dan was in Cincinnati again working on joysticks.  I worked on revising my exams and getting them in a final draft before getting to the work of figuring out how much it was going to cost to print those suckers.  After much too much work in that department, it turns out that our print shop on campus, Uniprint, had the best deal.  $75 for five copies of bound 124-page booklets.  I’m okay with that.

Today, I got up a little late, bought my ticket to Denver for the AESA conference (so excited about that) and got ready to run some errands.  First, I went to drop of and get a few books from the library.  Then, I stopped by campus to drop of my “Notice of Candidacy Examination” form.  That made me feel nervous even though I’m still waiting until October to defend.  It’s just… very official, you know?  After that, I attended my first service at a mosque as part of my “challenge” this week.  I am dying to write about it, but I am going to wait until Sunday when I get to go to an interfaith dinner and evening prayers (I’ll write one long post about the whole experience, which I should say so far has been very nice!).  After the service, I had to get some groceries because Ben, Rachael and Megan are coming over for some dinner tomorrow before we all go to the Clippers game (that’s the minor league team here in Columbus, and they just built a new stadium downtown).

Tonight, Dan and I are headed to Knead (a new restaurant in the Short North) and a movie (not sure what yet, but we’re thinking Get Low, the new flick with Bill Murray)!  Looking forward to it!

The past two days have been a bit crazy.  And my head is spinning and I can’t release the tension in my head muscle (you know what I mean).

Friday morning I had an interview with a small, but prestigious private all girls school in Columbus to be a substitute teacher.  I really miss being in the classroom and I feel like this would be a good opportunity to do it once in a while (since it’s a small school, I don’t imagine there would be a sub needed every day).  But, when I was there, they offered up an after school program, to help their Lego team this year.  The Lego team programs these Lego bricks and other moving parts to get through an obstacle course and then they go to a competition.  It’s a nice-sized stipend and my schedule is much more open this year as I don’t need to take classes, but I’m also gone/busy a lot in September and October what with vacation, five conferences and, oh yeah, my oral defense.  So, I’m not sure they’ll want me when they see my availability, but even so, I’m not sure I should take it since I’ll be super busy.  But, a team of girls who want to do programming?  Hello.  This is so up my alley.  Hmm, we’ll see what they say.

Anyway, after all that excitement, I had to get my 16 mile run in on a Friday afternoon (I usually run Saturday morning) because Dan and I had signed up to run the Crew 5k on Saturday morning and Sunday we are going to Cincinnati for Joyce’s birthday.  Since it was so hot outside, I went to the rec center and alternated between a 1/8 mile track and treadmill.  It was pretty boring, but I did it and it’s done.  Then, I had to come home, shower, and get to work on some analysis for the project I am currently working on with a professor.  I only fell asleep once!  But, it took me until 7:30pm to get everything I wanted to get done finished and I was exhausted after that.  Funny thing is, Dan’s been super busy at work too, and he didn’t get finished with work until 7:30pm either.  We both need spa treatments.  But, instead, I made dinner and went to bed early. Hurrah!

This morning was the Crew 5k and Dan and I finished at a very leisurely pace.  It’s so nice to run with my husband because I don’t have to be jealous of all those perky running couples.    Even though our finishing times were lame, it was worth it for the free shirts.  They were nice this year!  They also give you free tickets to the game in the evening, but Dan has a Street Fighter tournament (What can I say?  It’s the truth.) and there are thunderstorms forecast for the evening, so I am staying home.  After the race we went out to eat at The Best Breakfast and Sandwiches again and the waitress told us that we were becoming regulars.  I like that idea.  Then, I dropped Dan off at his tournament and went grocery shopping.  This afternoon, I made my head spin again by trying to make plans for all five conferences I need to attend.  I’m still not sure if I even registered for one.  The jury and an email is out.  Then, I decided that I should start a Columbus vegetarian food blog, which led me to search the internet and make discoveries (like this Columbus vegan blog and this Columbus vegetarian blog), and also to decide that I didn’t need one more thing to do.  See, this is why Dan shouldn’t leave me alone.  I get ideas!

When it was time for dinner, I called the Happy Greek to get some takeout and walked down to pick it up, only to see that there was some sort of festival blocking High Street.  Turns out, the Gay softball league (or something close to that) is having their world series here this weekend.  There were rainbow flags everywhere and it made me appreciate my diverse neighborhood and the fact that I run into festivals when I’m just trying to pick up some take out.  Everyone loves the Short North.  I can’t blame ‘em. 

Yesterday was such a fun day with my best friend, Marcy, that I was totally exhausted today.  Here’s a recap.

Yum!

1) Got up early to run.

2) Was at the North Market by 10:00am to get a free Jeni’s sundae.  Lemon yo with stonefruit compote and whipped cream.  It was refreshing and fruity enough to be considered breakfast (right?).

Awesome

3) Saw a string band at the North Market.

4) Got a bite of free cake from the bakery at the North Market that was celebrating 7 years.

5) Ate Indian food at the North Market.

6) Got some farmer’s market fruits and veggies.

7) Came home and chatted.

8 ) Got more Jeni’s (we paid this time.  What?).

Double dip

9) Marcy took a mini-nap.

10) We got dressed up to go to dinner and Wicked!

11) Went out for sushi At Haiku and enjoyed every bite.  It was so delicious.

Sushi!

12) Saw a Broadway musical from the fifth row!  It was awesome!*

13) Conked out at home from a good day!

Wicked!

*Will write more about Wicked and my experience tomorrow.  I need to get to bed!  Night!

Marcy got into town this afternoon and we shopped, ate Mexican food and went to see the movie Eat, Pray, Love.  It was a perfectly girly evening.  The movie made me feel lovely and want to travel, which was nice, but I kept getting distracted by the inconsistencies between the book and the movie and how I liked the characters in my head better than on the screen.  I think I shouldn’t have reread the book right before the movie.  Ah, well.  Julia Roberts was charming as usual.

Watching the movie right after reading the book reminded me of Walter Benjamin’s argument in The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction. At one point, he claims that photographs and video as media are subject to misuse more than other media because they appear so much more real than, say, a painting.  Because they look so real, they make a more convincing (though not more true) argument and so can be used for things like propaganda.  This “problem” is made worse by the ease of reproduction in modern times, which means that these convincing images are more likely to seen and further propagated.  So, as I watched the movie, and wished for the characters that I had invented in my head or the scenes as I had imagined it, I thought of Walter Benjamin.  The movie is a rather convincing representation of the book, even though much of it was very different from the book.  I wondered how many people had not read the book and were even more convinced and I thought about how this movie was playing all over the country at this moment, reproduced every hour for the next few months.  Not that this movie is propaganda per se, but the making of a movie from a book argues for a certain version of the book (one with a much happier ending), often watered down, oversimplified, and spread easily to the masses.  Reading a book, like reading a painting, allows more room for interpretation, imagination and play, than looking at a photograph or watching a movie.  The photograph or movie, Benjamin would warn, is more dangerous than the more nebulous, less “real” painting or book because it is much easier to be convinced that what looks real is the real thing, when in fact meaning is always much more illusory.

I guess I don’t have a real point to make, I just had Benjamin stuck in my skull and had to try to get him out.  That’s my life now.

Today was all lump lumping around the house while it thundered and rained outside.  I read, I wrote, I ate.  I like days like this.

Terry's Turf Club

For dinner though, everyone got together and we headed down to Cincinnati (the real and actual city of) to a place called Terry’s Turf Club.  It was featured on Diners, Drive-ins and Dives recently, so my brother-in-law Jeff thought it would be fun to try it out.  The place is a restaurant conundrum if I ever saw one.  It’s all neon signs, cracked paint, giant plastic hamburger, ancient movie theater chairs outside to wait and all sort of other delightfully tacky decorations.  It’s definitely a dive.  But, at the same time it has gourmet toppings for burgers like red pepper and goat cheese sauce, or mango curry sauce or red wine and mushrooms.  It’s confused.  I like that.

Shitake Burger with Mango Curry Sauce

Dan got the burger with red wine and mushroom sauce and, lucky for this vegetarian, they had the option to get a portabella or shitake mushroom burger.  Since I’ve seen and eaten many a portabella burger, I opted for the shitake burger and added the mango curry sauce.  The burger was stacked high with the most enormous shitake mushrooms I had ever seen and the mango curry sauce was delicious, but in my humble opinion, the bun had way too much butter on it.  I felt like I got a mouthful of butter with every bite, which don’t get me wrong, isn’t the worst flavor or anything, but it was almost too rich (in Dan’s words).  So, while I finished the whole burger and enjoyed myself thoroughly, my stomach was really churning for the rest of the night.  Ugh, dive food.  Good thing we stopped at Graeter’s so I could get some mint chip ice cream to calm my stomach.  Oh wait, that’s mint tea that does that?  My bad.

Yesterday was busy.  I spent all day at science curriculum meetings helping to develop model curriculum for the state.  It was sort of tiresome and I’m not sure how helpful it will be in the long run, but it was good to be thinking about something besides exams and it was nice to hang out with some teachers.  Teachers are usually either funny or happy and mostly socially adept, a welcome change from academia.

Today I was on my own.  I had a nice leisurely run this morning (and it was in the 60s!).  Then, I read a good book (The Namesake, finally!  Thanks, Beth!) on the porch.  I even snuck in some academic work I had been putting off… put together a proposal for Bergamo (one of the conferences I loved last year) and resubmitted a formerly rejected article to a different journal.  I’m hoping that both of these turn out well, but if it has been anything like the past, my conference proposals get accepted too often for my taste (as they involve a presentation) and the journal article gets rejected.  Oh well, now I just wait.

This evening, I made myself some kale and rice soup and burned my wrist with steam.  Have you ever heard that steam burns are worse than regular ones?  I have and it sure hurts worse than the burn that I gave myself last week trying to catch the curling iron.  You might call me careless, but I prefer fearless.    Tonight I plan on reading a little more and maybe watching some solo telly.  Tomorrow I go back in the office for the first time in 4.5 weeks.  Wow, time flies.

This blog post is a dud, ain’t it?  Publish!

After a particularly good, long run this morning (I felt fast), I was in the mood for pancakes.  Mmm, I love some humongous pancakes after a hard run.  And, since this week I had watched a show called “Breakfast Special” on PBS, I heard of two new restaurants in the Columbus area that has some good ones.  If you didn’t see this show, you should follow that link and watched.  It was so neat!  They went all over the US and ate breakfast in Columbus, upstate New York (a place on the way to visit Uncle Ray!  I’m so there next time!), somewhere in Georgia, St. Augustine, Florida, San Francisco and (Beth, I know you already know that your town is the king of breakfast, but…) Portland!!  Of the two in Columbus, we decided to try The Best Breakfast and Sandwiches which is in this tiny plaza in the middle of nowhere Westerville.  It has diner food and is run by a nice little family.  It was really crowded (I think partly because the show aired this week) and everyone seemed a little frantic, but our waitress was super nice and speedy.  Dan got an omelette and I got chocolate chip pancakes.  Did you hear that?  Chocolate chip pancakes!  It wasn’t one of my finer moments and for the rest of my day I felt like I had eaten 14 doughnuts covered in ice cream for breakfast, but at the time, it was pretty tasty!  We’ll be back, but next time I’ll make it blueberry.

Beth, the Portland places were Tin Shed and Helsey’s.  Ever been?

P.S. Dan thinks the plural of breakfast is breakfastses.  Say it out loud.  You can’t not laugh.