Schnee in Germany!

Gutentag from Germany!  I arrived last Thursday morning to a beautiful sunrise and lots of snow on the ground!

So much snow in fact that we've had to stay at home for almost four days straight!

Here are Jessica and I posing in front of the huge mound of snow in the front yard. I look like an eskimo and the locals are outside in light weight jackets!

We got to take a walk around the block one day after a big snow. This is the sign leading into my sister's town, Hermersberg.

The town was beautiful blanketed in all that snow!

View from the backyard. Did I mention that there was a lot of snow?


Every branch of every tree has snow on it! These little berries are frozen solid!

Yep...it's still snowing.

The sidewalk and driveway must be shoveled and Jessica decided to help her daddy out using the dustpan.  The best part was that she was actually taking snow from the yard and dumped it into the driveway....

She's really proud of herself for helping!

It's not all work and no play though....we've been able to do some sledding too!
Jess in the snow on her little red sled.

  Chris and Jess take a break from sledding to pose for a photo!

 Rich enjoys building big sculptures out of the snow that's piled up.  He's really good at it too- he's done the Eiffel Tower and a big snow bunny.  This one was going to be a tug boat, but he ran out of time!

 Remember the saying "don't eat the yellow snow"?

 We've made lots of Christmas cookies- Jessica is an excellent little helper (even if she and the dog ends up with more flour on them than in the bowl)!

Here's Jess wearing one of my favorite shirts.....

 One thing that I love about international travel is noticing the small differences between cultures...like packaging the milk with cows of various weights based on the fat content!

 Chris, Rich and Jessica have their house decorated for Christmas- here's their Christmas tree!

 With a two year old around, there's always constant entertainment!  Jessica helps her daddy sing while he plays the guitar for Rock Band! 

 We played dress up...

 ....and danced around the kitchen!

 Once the snow stopped, we were able to get out of the house and we headed to Kasierslautern to visit the Christmas market.  Even though the roads were clear, the fog was really heavy....hey, where's the road?

 Here is a nativity scene made out of metal sculptures.  Can you tell which one is Mary?

 Jessica rode on the carrousel and rang the fire engine bell!

 One reason that I like the Christmas markets is getting to warm up by drinking gluwein- this one came in a Santa mug! 

 The Kaiserslautern Chrismas market has lots of stalls with food and homemade crafts.  You can find everything from toys to jewelry to candles to wind chimes to scarves.

 Even the gargoyles on this church look cold!

 Cromwell poses which his Rudolph headband on....silly dog!

Here's Claude all snuggled up for a warm night's sleep! 

 

Catching up...

There's been a lot going on lately.....first, it's not been two months since I fell and fractured my tailbone.  While the bone is healing nicely, I'm still experiencing some pain and discomfort from the extensive bruising.  I've been given some stretching and exercises to do to help regain some of my flexibility and get me moving again.  It's been such a slow process and I still have good days and bad days.  But, I'm hopeful that I'll be back to normal by the new year and I'll get back into field work soon (just in time for the cold water!).

Second, I've been getting to spend a lot of time with friends.  Ben and I went to Art Basel in the art district of Miami.  It happens every year and there are lots of galleries and art shows going on.  It's fun to go through and see how different art can be while sipping wine and talking about how the composition of that painting is reminescent of the early works of .......anyway.  Ben and I got to have dinner with his dad and stepmom while they were in town for the event.  We met at Hakkasan inside the Fontainbleau hotel in South Beach.  It's an Asian fusion restaurant and it was absolutely delicious.  It may be some of the best food I have ever had...lettuce wraps, dim sum, black pepper beef tenderloin, wild mushroom with water chestnuts, garlic scallops, etc.  I highly recommend eating there if you ever get a chance (but it may need to be for a very special occassion based on the price!).  Ben's family was very nice and didn't even mind that I had to take a donut with me!

My roommate, Brittany, turned the big 3-0 this year.  We celebrated in South Beach on the actual day.  We went for dinner at the Pelican on Ocean Drive.  They have delicious homemade pasta!  Then, we arranged (and actually pulled off) a surprise party for her!  Our friend, Kristen, hosted a blue crab dinner at her house.  We went through 25 lbs of crab!

We had a little lab happy hour to celebrate the holidays.  We met up at a wine bar in the Gables and got to pretend to be wine connoisseurs.  I do like getting to try different types of wine and figuring out which ones I like and dislike.  I can't believe it's already the holidays....feels like we were just doing this last year!

I've been working hard to complete some manuscripts...I just heard that I got one paper officially accpeted into Pacific Science.  It's work that I did in Hawaii and I'm the first author...my first first author paper!  I have a few editorial things to take care of, but it should be coming out early next year!!! Yay, me and congrats to my co-authors who helped me through the whole process!

And, finally, I'm writing this now from Germany!  I flew over last Wednesday (12/15/10) to visit my sister, Rich and Jessica for Christmas.  I was really nervous about the transatlantic flight and having to sit down the whole time, but I got an aisle seat, took my donut and just got up to stretch a lot!  The flight went well and I was fairly comfortable for most of the trip except for the last 2 hours.  Then, I had a short layover in Paris and ended up in Frankfurt around 11am the next morning.  Unfortunately, I didn't get much sleep so it's taken me a little time to get into the groove of being in a new time zone (like always).  But, it's been awesome being with my family and getting to be Aunt Nee Nee!

My first Chanukah 2010

So, what do you do when the guy you are dating is Jewish and it's Chanukah? 

You make enchiladas, of course!

And latkes.  Ben had me and two friends, Paul and Lisa, over to celebrate the beginning of Chanukah.  Paul helped out shredding the potatoes for the latkes (this was their second time through the food processor since it was on slice the first time)....

....while Ben used the appropriate kitchen tools for making cracker crumbs.  It was definitely a challenge having my camera ready for all the "mishaps" that happened during the making of this meal!

What can be better than fried potatoes?

How about sugar cookies shaped like dreidels with blue frosting.  Everyone got a cookie with their name on it....well, kind of.  Let's just say that Ben, Paul and Lisa all have easy cookie names while I on the other hand ended up as "Sbo".  Don't quit your day job, Paul!

Here Ben and Lisa light the menorah.

Our very brown Chanukah meal.  It was delicious though!  The enchiladas were perfect and the latkes were tasty too.  I enjoy mine with both applesauce and sour cream!

And what do you do when your face is burning from touching it after cutting up the hot peppers for the enchiladas?  You wear a sour cream moustache!

Pottery 2010

My pottery class is over and while I'm disappointed that I had to miss two whole weeks of class (one week I was in the Dry Tortugas and then I hurt my shoulder and couldn't throw), I am happy with the five pieces that I did complete!

We had a kiln opening party where everyone from the session met, brought food and drink and then we opened the kiln.  It was a cool experience to see the pieces come right out of the kiln and then we set everything out for everyone to look at!  The ooohs and ahhhs were fun! 

 It was also a chance to get to know people from other classes and ask them how they got some of the pieces to turn out the way they did! 

 Some examples of everyones pieces!

 Here's Britt showing off some of her favorite pieces.

 This lopsided bowl was a bit of a mistake, but I think it actually turned out pretty cool!

 I'm thinking this should be used for miso soup!

 This bowl was a glazing trial.....some of it didn't turn out so well!

This is one of my favorite pieces.  The glaze turned out really cool.

Britt's 30th Birthday

My friend and roommate, Brittany, finally joined the realm of us "old" people and turned 30 on Monday.  Her friends, JoJo and John, were in town and we all met on South Beach for dinner.  

We started off at their hotel for drinks on the balcony and then walked down Ocean Ave to the Pelican for some great wine and delicious pasta. 

We each got a different dish and got to try a variety of pasta and we had the nicest server who made a lot of nice recommendations.

The highlight was the chocolate mousse with sparklers (well, the sparklers wouldn't stay lit due to the wind), but it was a nice idea. 

Happy Birthday, Britt!

Thanksgiving 2010

I was invited to spend Thanksgiving with "extended" family this year and it was so much fun! 

If you remember from last holiday season, I attended a traditional Danish luncheon with my friend's (Claus) family and family friends.  This year, a very nice couple who are friends with Claus's dad and stepmom, Maureen and John Harry, invited us all over for their first Thanksgiving dinner (they are British and Maureen had never cooked Thanksgiving dinner before).  Since, I had originally had plans to go to Claus and Michelle's for dinner, I was included in the invitation to the Harry's. 

For a first try at cooking Thanksgiving dinner, Maureen went all out!  We started with drinks and erbbie derbbies (otherwise known as h'ors d'oeuvres).  Then we all sat at the beautiful table to start our meal with delicious butternut squash soup.  Then we had a delightful salad with homemade vinaigrette dressing.  Next, came the meal complete with turkey, brussel sprouts with chestnuts, peas (you know how I like peas), carrots with parsley, potatoes, sweet potatoes, homemade cranberry sauce, and sausage stuffing.  As if that wasn't enough, we then had pumpkin pie with fresh fruit and topped everything off with a cheese plate and port. 

I was stuffed.  Literally.  I haven't had a big appetite since I fell (a strange side effect of going from active and hungry to sedentary and not hungry), but I ate more that night than I think I have in all six weeks since the accident combined!

The company was absolutely delightful and we all had a fabulous time telling stories!  Thanks so much to the Harry's for including me in their Thanksgiving!

After our big meal and an excellent night's sleep, Claus, Michelle and I motivated to take advantage of some Black Friday deals at Macy's.  We weren't the crazy ones up at 3 am, but we had a list of two things, went in, found them, bought them and left!  Excellent.

Since we hadn't eaten enough the day before, we decided to make dinner that night.  And not just any dinner, but Beouf Bourguignon a la Julia Child.  If you've seen the movie Julie and Julia then you'll have an appreciation for this dish. 

Claus tackled the majority of the cooking with Michelle and I helping out when needed. 

Look at the concentration!

Claus performs the necessary taste tests to the sauce!

The main ingredients waiting for the red wine sauce to reduce.

Michelle and I use some spare time to pose for a photo!

Here's Morris eagerly awaiting the fantastic meal!

It took almost 3.5 hours to complete, but it was delicious.  Pure and Simple!

To end my stay, we put up some Christmas decorations!  Since I'll be going to Germany, I won't put up any of my own decorations, so it was fun to help out and get into the Christmas spirit!

Claus and Michelle "fluffing" the tree!