Another jam packed weekend!

I haven't updated in a bit (other than posting the plethora of postcards we've been receiving), but during the week there really isn't much for me to post. After taking a little break from our travels, last weekend we jumped back into it with vigor! MC's uncle was getting married in Charlotte, so I talked to Bobby and Erin in the hopes that we could visit and they could finally meet MC! They were actually going to be around so it worked out perfectly. I was instructed to take many many pictures while I was there (mostly of 10 month old Emma) so be prepared for a photo-intensive post! :-)

MC took off work on friday and we left in the morning to head to Sherrills Ford (north of Charlotte, where Bobby and Erin live). We got there around dinner time and went to Joel's (a yummy sushi place that we go about every time I get to visit the Fertigs) with Bobby, Erin, and Emma. As always, it was a super scrumptious meal and MC got to meet and chat with them for a bit. After dinner I took MC to the hotel where her family was staying, dropped her off, then headed back to Bobby and Erin's house.

Woke up saturday and had breakfast at a cool little place down the road (had my first hamburger omelet. Yummy!) then hung out at the Fertig house for a while. Since it was the first time I had visited them since I got my D90, I also tried to get at least one good snapshot of every doggie as well. The first puppy dog that I got a snap of was Roxy.I wanted to get some pictures of the dogs while they were relaxing/lying down, but every time I squatted down to take a picture they saw that I was on their level and got up to say hi. Very friendly dogs, but not the easiest to get pictures of! :-) So I had to improvise a little, especially with Tala.Then I transitioned to Emma with a shot of her and Rusty.Luckily, Emma is a little better at posting, though she tends to be easily distracted. So there were lots of opportunities where she was smiling and laughing, but the camera got her attention and she got inquisitive. :-)And she was always interested in what Uncle Fincher was doing with that thing on his face...even when daddy was being a goofball...or daddy and mommy were out of the room and she decided she was gonna come get me!Even at 10 months, she's taken a few steps and getting more steady on her feet. She can get around pretty well while holding on to things, but she will still stop to pose for the camera :-)As you can imagine, she has plenty of toys to play with as well.Also lucky that Rusty knows how to stay cool under pressure, even with the other dogs and a baby running around.While there are plenty of entertaining things to do at the house, sometimes it is good to get outside. This calls for a trip to the playground!!! Also found out that taking a picture of a kid on a swing can turn out to be a challenging endeavor so why not start out with a little video :-) For some reason this video doesn't want to embed correctly in the preview, but hopefully it shows up ok.
Then I snapped some pics too. Surprisingly they came out pretty well!From the swings we moved over to the jungle gym where Emma could check out the slide and the drawbridge.With some coaxing, we even got her to do a little boogie on the bridge!After play/picture time, we hung out a little bit and then it was time for me to head over to the hotel to get ready for the wedding. MC was actually going to officiate the ceremony, so she was busy/nervous. We grabbed some food then started getting ready in the room with her mom, aunt and uncle. As it was a wedding, we had yet another chance to get all dolled up!I wish I had taken more pictures around the hotel because there was an interesting crowd wandering around. It turned out that there was a wrestling convention in the hotel the same weekend. I saw people walking around with folding chairs and title belts and all sorts of stuff. Very entertaining. Right before the ceremony, MC's mom actually got an autograph from an old school wrestler, Mr. Wonderful!It was a pretty little venue right out back from the hotel. It was entertaining how many people were running around them with cameras (just audience members, not the main photographer) and how in the way the photographer didn't mind being. Luckily I was still able to get a good snap of my beautiful girlfriend officiating like a pro!
The happy couple!
Apparently, her uncle works with computers so he had a groom's cake that I was especially fond of ;-)Even at a wedding, my sweetie never ceases to be a goofball (though it was probably accentuated by being done with her officiating duties). Here she is trying to touch the glass heart on her nose with her tongue.That picture was especially funny because she totally got busted by the bride and groom. She thought they were busy setting up for the cake cutting, but that were actually watching her pose for silly pictures. After that, they actually did cut the cake though. ;-)Later they had a funny take on the whole "throwing the garter" tradition. They blindfolded the guy while his girlfriend was on the seat ready to have him put the garter on her. Then, after they were sure he couldn't see, the groom switched places with the girl so he would try to put it on him, all while the crowd was chanting "with your teeth" in Spanish.Speaking of Spanish, it was kinda funny because, at one of the last weddings we were at, MC randomly turned to me and said "I just noticed that I'm the only brown person here." This time the roles were reversed and part-way through the reception she said "I just noticed that you are the only white person here." It was pretty funny. There was definitely a lot of Spanish floating around. I'm gonna have to be better about my practicing!! Anyhoo, we had a lot of fun dancing and such (even if it was pretty toasty in there) and after things started winding down we packed up, said our goodbyes, and headed back to Bobby and Erin's. They were actually awake so we chatted and hung out a little before hitting the sack.

On the way to Sherrills Ford, I started thinking about the route and where we were going and I asked MC to mapquest a few various routes to compare times. (An aside: Since I have a data plan on my phone, I found out that I can connect it to my laptop and use it as a cellular modem. Unfortunately, the money-grubbing bastards at Verizon charge for this, even though I already pay for an unlimited data plan. I also found out that if you initialize this service, then cancel it, you only pay the prorated amount for however long you used it. So while it is stupid that I have to pay at all, paying a few bucks to have internet on the road during a weekend road trip is definitely not bad AND super snazzy! So MC got to actually have internet during much of our transit this past weekend.) Anyhoo, I found that if we took a different route home that would take us by Charleston it would only add an hour to the trip. And if we got close to Charleston, took the interstate that goes around the city, then continued on, it would only add 30 minutes! So I contacted Mark and Melissa to see if they would be around and for once my travel schedule coordinated with them being home. So MC was nice enough to let me add time to the trip (it WAS a little easier for her since it meant I would stop bugging her about how she has to meet Mark and Melissa soon) and we met up with the Macpherson clan at a little barbecue place that was pretty much right on our "add 30 minutes" route. I was super excited to see little Morgan, since I've seen pics of how much she's grown since I last saw her, and little Miles, who was only born like 11 weeks ago so I still hadn't met the little fella! Miles was pretty sacked out most of lunch, but he did wake up occasionally to check things out.I had to get pics of little Morgan and her papa too! Morgan didn't want to give me a big smile at first, even though her goofy daddy was trying to provide a good example.After a little more demonstration from dad, she finally gave me the big smile I was looking for!And even followed it up with some goofy face!Then she "helped" Miles get ready to head out by lovingly placing some stickers on his cheek. Gotta decorate the baby like a good older sister!It was about time to head out and mommy supervised her downing the rest of her yummy drink (which fueled her to give me a farewell high-five to me and fist-bump to Auntie MC!)All-in-all it was an amazing weekend! MC got to meet some of my closest friend (pretty much extended family) that I had been talking about for a while. I got to see the more grown versions of Emma and Morgan and a brand new little Miles! I was really stoked to be able to last-minute squeeze in the pass by Charleston. Got to hang out with more of MC's fam and celebrate her uncle's marriage and all that was packed into a single weekend! While I don't mind driving, I definitely don't mind that we have a few weeks before I have to go on any road trips (who woulda thought that'd come from me!?). Hopefully it won't be so long before I see all the little ones again and I look forward to more little ones being on the way! Now I guess I should actually try to be a little productive at some point today, though I DID produce this massive blog post ;-)

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. :-)