Salmon Burgers!

It has been a while since I had a cooking post. They will start back up, though, as Top Chef starts back up soon so MC and I are reinstating our cooking for Top Chef night. I mean, it is HARD to watch them make all that yummy food without eating something yummy ourselves! :-) As you can see from the title, this exploration was salmon burgers! As one should begin all good cooking endeavors, we laid out all the ingredients and the recipe before starting.
We didn't think about asking the Publix people if they could remove the skin, so MC decided to brave it and fix up my salmon for me.After I prepared the wasabi sauce, I just had to mix the remaining ingredients and form them into patties.MC had cut up the salmon for me and the recipe asked for 1/4 inch cubes. As you can imagine, trying to pack cubes of fish into a patty is a bit tricky. It said they wouldn't hold together very well until we started cooking them. They were right, but it was still pretty tricky to keep them together. Two turned into "loose" patties, but I think cook times that were a little low were definitely a contributing factor.We paired it with some some steamed asparagus, and I must say it turned out to be a pretty scrumptious meal!This was also a cool night for cooking because we got to try out the kitchen computer that I set up for MC for the first time! I just got a new monitor for my computer not that long ago, so I had a 19" LCD available and I had an old computer that I had fairly recently gotten from home. The only thing I had to get was a keyboard/mouse (actually found a completely washable/waterproof one online that was an open box item and on sale) and a new wireless adapter (old one wasn't WPA-capable) and we were set! Since the first recipe we tried was actually from a book, I scanned it first and put it on the computer. I haven't figured out the best way to keep things organized as of yet. Right now we'll just have bookmarks for online sites and images for the scanned recipes, but I would like to set it up where it would be easy to include notes about how it was, things we need to do differently next time, etc. I'm thinking there's probably an open source recipe program that I could find. Any suggestions? Either way, it should be handy!

Miami and the Rambo Escapades

So at the end of my last huge post, I had just returned from my Bristol-Tally-Boston-Tally-Bristol trip and was enjoying the fact that I had like 4 whole days until I traveled again. I got some research done during the week, but definitely took it easy and enjoyed not being on the road. Thursday MC and I met up with Derek, Matt, and Lynn for some Karaoke at Bird's (since Matt had been dying to go for while). I usually need a little liquid motivation (read: beer) before I'm much for Karaoke and since we were shooting to leave at like 6 Friday morning, I just enjoyed Matt's performance. While he loves the Karaoke, he would also prefer not to be the sole performer, so I told him that I would come back next week and we could close the place down :-)

So Friday we got up bright and early to head down to Miami. MC and fam were having a family vacation that they let me join in. Nothing too crazy (got a hotel at the beach about 45 minutes from the house), but we had a lot of fun. We first went to MC's house and grabbed gear and food (LOTS of food) and people then headed over the hotel. Luckily we had left early enough that we still had some sunlight left for some swim time, though the reduced light may have made MC more susceptible to getting eaten by a wave ;-)Got back to the hotel room and I decided I wanted to start playing around with the panorama function on my camera a little bit more and got a cool pic of the view from the room.
It had been a long day for us so we decided to just have a chill evening at the hotel and crashed fairly early. And by crashed, I mean tried to fall asleep in the oven a room that we were in. The hotel had a problem with their A/C and had just fixed it, but apparently our side of the hotel was still having problems getting started back up because it was definitely roasty. Even MC was so hot she couldn't sleep. After many phone calls and failed promises to fix it, we finally got moved to a new room at about 1 in the morning. Needless to say, our opinion of this hotel was not the highest thus far. Anyhoo, the view turned out to be nicer at the new room. The windows just look odd because of me tilting the camera when I panned, but hopefully you can see there is a lot more beach view to go along with the city view in this one.Since Saturday was our main beach day, we got out fairly early to play in the ocean. After a little swimming we realized there were a decent number of little fish that liked to swim around our feet. It is definitely an odd feeling to keep accidentally kicking fish! Good thing I brought my waterproof camera!While the service wasn't the best (except the first guy who helped us with our luggage. I think he thought our womens were hot because he was offering to get us a rollaway for free and being very helpful), the hotel was a decent little hotel. Here's a beach view.Though there wasn't really much for waves, it was still a lot of fun to just hang out in the water. I made sure to put on lots of sunscreen so my gringo butt wouldn't get fried ;-) A lot of it was just hanging out and trying to catch some of the little fishies, but MC found the time to tear up the water with some of her newly developed swimming skills.And here's most of the crew enjoying some time in the water.After a full morning out in the ocean, I took it easy in the room for the afternoon (sunscreen can only do so much!). It turned out that some of MC's friends live not to far away, and MC thinks their son is the cutest thing in the world. So Lisa brought Noel over for a little play date.He and MC had a lot of fun playing around in the kiddie pool. Especially when he got a hold of a volley ball that I think he wanted to eat.I thought it would be cool to encompass a little more of the scene so I did a 2 shot panorama, which I thought turned out pretty well. Especially because of the craziness in the background that I didn't even notice until I got the pics on my computer. See if you can find it. (you may need to click on it to enlarge)Did you catch it? Did you see the person on the shoulders of the person on the shoulders of the person on the shoulders of the person in the pool? How frickin' nuts is that!? And I didn't notice at all at the time. Anyhoo, we had another pretty relaxing evening. We played Cranium once the regular way, then two times a speedy way that we developed. It was a lot of fun, even if our team barely got nudged out in the 2 out of 3. ;-)

We got a late checkout on sunday so we packed things up and still got to have some beach time. I had noticed from the room, that a little ways farther out than we had been looked a little darker, so I decided to borrow MC's goggles and explore. Note: Swim goggles aren't that great for snorkeling-type activities. I could see better than without the, but the visibility still wasn't great. My favorite pic I got while was out there had some little fishies (maybe Sargent Majors?) that I didn't even see until I got the pics on my computerAs always, I had to snag a picture of me and my sweetie too!Then we had a session of trying to get some underwater pics of MC with her brother and cousin, and this was the one that turned out the best.Then we got an above-water picture once her sister and other cousin joined inWhen Julie's boyfriend Richard joined us, he brought out some noodles (as you can see with Julie and Kary above) and we started getting a little creative. According to Mikey, it actually worked semi-decently as a snorkel!After we finished playing at the beach, we got everything settled with the hotel, packed up the cars, then headed out. Mikey, MC, Kary and I went to the mall while the rest of the crew went straight back home. We had to stop by the Mac store (the makeup place) so she could get the free lip gloss she had been waiting months for and we snagged some food while we were there. Went back to MC's house where we mostly took it easy while Mikey and I played the bejesus out of some Rock Band: Metallica. Good times!

Woke up bright and early and packed everything up, including Rambo! That's right, MC's little fella was going to join us in Tallahassee! He doesn't do well on car rides, so we gave him a sedative, loaded him in his crate, and hit the road. I don't know what kind of "sedative" the vet gave us, but I have a sneaking suspicion that it was just a sugar pill because it seemed to do nothing. After about an hour, we gave him the little extra the vet said we could if we needed to, and it still seemed to have virtually no effect. He was still barking like crazy. Luckily after about 4 or 5 hours, he started calming down and the second half of the drive he was actually quiet most of the time. We got him settled in the new place, and it didn't take him too long to make himself comfortable.I know I posted that pic already, but figured I would post it again with more context :-) He's gradually been getting used the place, and we've gradually been trying to break him of some bad habits. Since I'm home a lot, we hang out a good deal and he makes a nice little work-from-home companion. He can also have a lot of fun playing with those toys of his!So anyhoo, I managed to get some research done this week, which was handy because Jonathan, the professor I will be working with in the fall, is here for the week to try to get things settled for the move. Had a couple meetings to solidify things with the work I will be doing over the next few weeks and caught Gary up on some of the stuff we did while I was in Boston.

Thursday I kept my promise to Matt and we headed out to Karaoke at Bird's. Derek joined us (though he wouldn't participate :-P), and we had a lot of fun. Sang some good songs (we had made a few requests for songs last week and he actually got all but one).

Friday I took it easy, picked up MC and had lunch at New Leaf then watched Clerks 2 (yes, I had never seen it). MC got back from work early and we got to hang out a little bit before dinner. We met up with Jonathan at Pitaria then we headed over to Brew and Bean for a few beers and to hear my buddy Austin play a set. Live music is always fun, especially when it's someone you know!Everyone had a lot of fun and it was cool hanging out with Jonathan and letting him meet MC. I think we are gonna have a lot of fun, inside and outside the lab, when he gets down here. Dropped him off at his hotel, then came back to the apartment to crash not too long afterwards.

Currently, MC is off running 8 miles with Julia (the half marathon training continues!) while hang out, blog, and try to keep Rambo from leaving his excretions where they don't belong (something he hasn't quite fully grasped the concept of). Speaking of Ramboni (or Ramalamadingdong as I sometimes call him), it turns out that he will actually be going back home to Miami this weekend. It was a lot of fun to have him visit, but he is missed at home and MC and I really weren't quite ready for the responsibility of pet ownership. If you read this you know we travel constantly and that wouldn't be too fair to the little fella. We loved having him up for a little "vacation," but I know he'll be glad to be home. :-)

Holy Huge Post Batman!

So I've been all over the place over the last week and a half. I've had a lot going on and I haven't had a chance to post anything on here, but I could just feel all the content that I wanted to include steadily increasing in size. Luckily, I have no scheduled events today (other than bringing my sweetie lunch) so I am going to just power through it and make a super mega post. Get ready. You may need hydration for the trip.

We'll start out with 4th of July weekend. The last few years I've had a pretty good group of people up to Bristol for 4th of July (usually around 20-22 people). I've loved it because it's always been pretty hard to coordinate getting people to the lake, so it was awesome to have so many people show interest and actually show up! This year was more back to the olden days of many invites, few attendees. I'll never understand why it is so hard to get people to come to someplace so awesome, but oh well. It WAS kinda nice having a more relaxing/chill weekend since there were only 6 of us out there. A lot easier to coordinate a group that size :-)

MC and I drove up after work on Thursday so we could fully take advantage of the long weekend. Friday MC and mom got up and went for a 7 mile run (MC has to get her long runs in on the weekend for her training) and dad and I hit the lake for a wakeboarding set. The water was super glassy and it is always fun to steal a morning run before anyone is out on the lake. I was also pretty stoked because I had been working on a wake-to-wake backside 180 (Here's a reference video for you non-wakeboarding types), and I finally landed one! Since it was just Dad and me out there, I have no documentation, but I promise it happened ;-) Then we met up with the girls back at home and got some things organized and hung out until Giuliana and Juliana (friend's of MC from Miami) flew in then we headed out to the lake. Mostly just relaxed and took it easy and got settled until Brandon and Bopper showed up. Since most people had friday off, it was already starting to get pretty crowded so we just enjoying the relaxing combo of beer and the lake! (no we didn't drink the lake. Drink the beer, hang out at the lake) Later in the evening I went to go see our neighbors to see if Brad wanted to join us for a morning boarding session. Chatted with them for a bit, then when I was walking through the woods to get back to my house, I slipped and landed directly on my left ankle, promptly pulling a Roper and spraining it nicely.Of all ways to get injured at the lake! Jeepers. Oh, and for those that don't know, a few years ago Roper had come out for another fun weekend at the lake and on the way down the stairs to the house he tripped and sprained his ankle. Hence "pulling a Roper." Luckily it wasn't a horrible sprain, but definitely one to get my attention, and it was enough to remove me from the 4th of July Lake Dance-Off 2009 :-) Saturday morning we got up (slowly but surely, even ousting a group of six can be a task!) and my folks came out for an early wakeboarding session (gotta miss the crowds). Luckily the bindings provide enough support that was was able to board with my sprained ankle (with Brad, MC, Brandon, and Bopper observing) I also got a little wakeskating in (wearing a brace of course). Mostly it felt good, but I probably extended the injury a little by tweaking it a couple time (hey, everything doesn't always go as planned). About everyone on the boat got in a set as well, including...

Dad	Giuliana
MC	Bopper

The weather and water were a little cool, but I don't think anyone was too chilly. Everyone seemed to have a good time.We also timed it about perfectly. There were pretty much no boats (except for a couple stationary fishermen) around for the majority of our outing. Boats started trickling out as we finished, but everyone managed to squeeze in their riding before the water really started getting rough. Another nice thing about getting up kinda early for a set is that it leaves tons of time for hanging out once you are done! At first, Giuliana would have none of it and decided to do numerous tours around the cove on the kayak.The weather was at that borderline temperature where it was a little cool in the water when the clouds were out, but pretty comfy whenever the sun decided to show up. While Giuliana was paddlin' around, MC and I swam around a little closer to home. It didn't take two awfully long (it never does at the lake) before the Giuliana and Juliana let loose and learned how to really relax :-)MC and I seemed to start a trend with the swimming, but by the time it was catching on we were ready to get out of the water :-) Squiggy is still alive and kind of well and Bopper and Brandon brought a snazzy foam Spongebob frisbee to add to the water activities. Juliana was happy hanging out with Arturo (our new inflatable turtle).While swimming around in front of the house is a lot of fun, sometimes people want to see a little more. Some swim. Some paddle around in a kayak. Some just hitch a ride.Another great part of relaxing at the lake usually includes playing a little old school Nintendo. Sometimes it's a hobby. Sometimes it's a fun activity. Other times, it spirals into a virtually uncontrollable addiction ;-)At some point in the afternoon, we were able to pull the Dr. Mario junkies away from the TV and we had a little early birthday celebration for my sis. Cookie cake and wine? I'm in!Lauren and Mom prepared a bunch of super food for the grill and we all enjoyed one of the most amazing lake dinners that I can remember. It was scrumptious! After dinner, we fell back into the old beer and relaxing routine for a wonderfully inactive evening. It is always fun to just relax and connect with friends, old and new.One thing we did forget to do during the day was go buy fireworks. I thought I might be able to find some around the house, but I guess Roperdink was pretty good about exhausting the supply that he usually brought. We DID manage to find one little one, so this was the entirety of our 4th of July fireworks.Hey, something is better than nothing, right?! :-) It was a long but awesome Saturday for sure.

Sunday was mostly organizing, cleaning up, and travel. Nothing really too fun an exciting, but I hope all guests had a blast like I did! As busy as things have been, a chill weekend away is always welcome. Especially when it is the beginning of a crazy travel week for me. So we got back into Tallahassee later in the evening and I was here about 7 hours before I needed to be at the airport to fly out to Boston. Not much of a "layover" haha. I was heading up there to get started on some research with a professor who will be starting at FSU in the fall. He is a Biologist, so it will be really interesting and fun to work on some of the projects he has in mind. Basically we are looking at chromatin and evaluating the effect of the DNA sequence on nucleosome positioning (among some other epigenetic features). We're also looking at the effect of these various attributes on gene expression as well as trying to devise ways to evaluate the effects of mutations on non-coding sections of DNA. It is looking to be some pretty interesting work! Jonathan picked me up from the airport and we went straight to the office to get started! His boss was not in so we got to work in his office. Can't complain about the view!
Had a productive day, then met up with some family he had in town for dinner. In total there were 13 people (Jonathan, his wife, his twin daughters, his 9 week old son, his older brother's family (the brother, wife, son and daughter), his younger brother and wife and me) so it was a helluva time! Everyone was a lot of fun and the food was awesome as well. The younger brother, Christopher, volunteered to take me to my hotel while Jonathan wrangled the majority of the group off to home. Talk about a long day! I played around on the computer then had NO trouble passing out.

The next day I walked about 6 blocks to the subway and headed up to North Station. Weather was a little rainy as I waited to meet up with Jonathan so we could walk a few more blocks over to his office. Figured I would document a little as I waited.We had another productive day in the office, then a really cool part of the trip happened, My mom flew into town! Since we haven't been able to run many races since I've been in Tally, MC and I thought it would be cool to make this a Mother-son trip, in addition to getting work done. I met up with her at the hotel and we relaxed a little then took a cab over to the Prudential Center. Much to Lauren's chagrin, we decided to eat at P.F. Chang's (eek, a chain!?) since I had never eaten there before. The food was very good, even if it wasn't local ;-) We wandered around and snagged some postcards and stumbled upon the Christian Science Center. It was impressive and even included a pool that would be a frickin' AWESOME winching spot!After we picked up a few things from the store we walked a few blocks back to the hotel and packed it in early.

Got up and headed to the office early the next day to try to get things wrapped up a little earlier so mom and I could hang out. Mom hit the exercise room at the hotel then got to do some shopping while I was getting things together. I had a pretty productive day and we actually wrapped up about everything that we really needed to get done. I have TONS to do, which was pretty much my goal. I learned a lot and I have a feeling that trend is going to continue throughout all this research. I'm just stoked to have some research that I am actually really interested in. Jonathan and I are both really motivated to start churning out some papers on this work so I think it is going to be a really productive second half of the year for me. Yay! I met up with mom and we headed down to the waterfront to hang out a little bit before our Tall Ships tour. Ate at a little place right outside the aquarium and perused some souvenirs before heading over to the dock to board our ship. I didn't bring a camera to Boston because I didn't think there would be much to take pictures of, but I wish I had because the low light of a cloudy day doesn't jibe well with a cell phone camera. Oh well, you can still get the gist of what we were seeing. Saw lots of really cool ships, and even got to see the Constitution from the water. Here's a smattering of the ones that turned out decently.After the tour we went to an Irish pub that wasn't too far away for a few pints. Then it was time to catch a cab back to the hotel and pack it in for the night.

Since I had pretty much wrapped up the work I needed to do with Jonathan the day before, mom and I had the morning to mosey around and see a little of the city and do some shopping. Nothing fancy, but it was fun hanging out.After we wrapped up the little bit of shopping we wanted to do, Mom and I snagged our bags from the hotel then met up with Jonathan at Grotto for a super yummy lunch. We bid Jonathan farewell and caught a cab to the airport. Mom and I were on the same flight to Charlotte, then went our separate ways to catch our flights home. Luckily the weather was pretty nice and the view from the plane was cool.Both our flights both made it home safely, and this time I had about 22 hours before I was going to be traveling again. :-)

Friday I picked MC up from work and we headed straight to the airport to fly up to Bristol. The main reason for the trip was a really fun 8k race that goes on in Kingsport (like 20 mins from Bristol) every year. It is a night race (starts at 9:58 PM) and is through neighborhoods with tons of people cheering you on. So MC and I got in and just took it easy at home before hitting the sack.

I was still having some trouble with my ankle that I had sprained the previous weekend, but I was going to do a short test run in the morning to see how it held up. Unfortunately, it was bothering me a decent amount just running to the end of the driveway so 5 miles was out of the question :-( It was the first year that mom and I had registered as a mother-son team, but I guess we'll have to wait to completely own people until next year ;-) Mom and MC were still fit so I just planned on joining Dad in the cheer squad. We ran some errands during the day and decided to let MC experience her first horseshow. Mosley was riding Lauren's horse, Blinkie, in the show and mom had never seen her show him so we thought that would be a cool experience. On my second try I got a pretty cool picture, with my cell phone no less!!We had dinner at Machiavelli's then relaxed at home until it was time to head to Kingsport for the race. Unfortunately, we weren't thinking and I didn't get to snag a picture our racing women together, but I did get a quick pic of MC ready to race!It was definitely weird for her to run a race so late, but they both did awesome! Hard to believe only a matter of months ago MC could barely run a half mile without walking. She's come a long way! :-) Hung out for a little bit once we got home, then hit the sack.

Sunday we got a morning wakeboarding session in, even if the weather was looking a little rainy. I was stoked that I landed another wake-to-wake backside 180, then landed one with a grab! Wakeboarding probably isn't the best rehab for my ankle, but who knows when I'll be back in Bristol so I gotta get riding in while I can! Dad got in a little set and MC decided to sit this one out since she was having some aches and pains from the race the night before. We had a nice lunch out on the porch then got things together so we could head to the airport. It was weird still being in Bristol at 3pm on Sunday! The airport was jammed and apparently hadn't heard of A/C so the security line was a pain. Once we got through that we got to Atlanta ok and had a 1.5 hour layover, which is about perfect since we had time to grab food and make it to the gate plenty early but not so long you feel like you are in the airport forever. We boarded and seemed to be doing ok time-wise, but then we stopped and the pilot informed us that we were 22 in line for take-off. Oh Atlanta how I loathe you!!!We still got in not too late, but the whole experience going to Boston (where I flew US Air instead of Delta and therefore went through Charlotte instead of Atlanta) was much nicer and smoother. I'll definitely be looking at US Air first in the future. Anyhoo, we went straight to the grocery store, got supplied for the week then spent the evening unwinding/preparing for the week ahead. Luckily I have until friday before I travel again! I'll definitely enjoy having a few days of just being at home (who'd have thought I'd ever say that!?), and now that I've finished this enormous post I'm going to see what else I can take care of on my chores list. Kudos to anyone who actually made it through all this. Hopefully the plethora of pictures helped keep you entertained and split it up over a few session as to not overtax your eyes. ;-)