November mayhem

It really hit the fan in mid-November for us.

Peter left for his six-month Germany rotation on the 16th, which was crushing. I have never actually lived by myself so this will be an...interesting experiment. He'll hopefully graduate faster, so that should be worth it, but him leaving wasn't fun.

Luckily I didn't have much time to really think about it right out of the gate. On the 18th I left for NYC, where this year's Engineers Without Borders conference was -- but also to visit my aunt, of course. The conference was great and the project poster I made (pdf) won 2nd place, which meant $150 for the chapter! Sue and I hit up Eataly, which was very fun (especially the fresh mozzarella and fancy pate samples). My mom and Beth Ann also joined in for some hijinks, including going to a Dark Dining dinner where you eat but cannot see a thing. We also spotted some crazy hats at one of the Grand Central Christmas booths and visited Canstruction - which also marked the first time I've seen the world trade center site since I was very little. A busy time for me, with conferencing during the day and hijinks in the evenings, but enjoyable.





Mom and I then took the train down to Newark (along with World's Most Obnoxious Mom, ie "do you want to go to the bathroom? Are you hungry? You should eat, aren't you hungry? What stop are we? Where are we going? That's right, DC? Are we going to DC?" For. Three. Hours. LADY SHUT YOUR MOUTH) on the 22nd or so. I originally had bought round-trip airfare to JFK, but it was a super cheap day and so I didn't feel bad ditching it and buying Amtrak down to DE and Southwest back to Pittsburgh...driving so long by myself would have been more of a pain. Then it was turkey time! Thanksgiving was great (it always is!) and Peter's dad brought down not one, not two, not even three -- FOUR different pies. It was amaaazing. The next day, of course, was a good black friday jaunt with mom.




Despite all this fun, the entire time I was thinking about / working on my research proposal for the 30th - yikes! This was especially awful as the internet at home was failing, dial-up slow, auuugh. Although it's not as big a deal as quals, it was certainly preying on enough of my mind to switch my flight back to Pittsburgh to Saturday versus Monday out of anxiousness. I was really unduly anxious, since it's not as do-or-die as quals, but probably because of all the mayhem leading up to the day I was kind of overloaded. Worst-timed major presentation of my life so far! But although I was sweating it, I did fine on Wednesday, thank goodness! I now am a PhD candidate and have a green light on the rest of my research career...wee.

Although I don't drink beer, I celebrated a bit by going to the GSA-sponsored beer tasting at Phipps. Walking around the gardens at any time is pretty fun, but at night and with some beer it is even more entertaining. I think this photo sums it up rather nicely, and ends on a good note for this post. :)

October & November

Hokay, time to pare down the backlog. Here is the rest of October and November in photos (and captions)!

Ken and Lorna came to visit the weekend after I got back from Orlando. Keeping me on my toes! We visited the National Aviary (which also inexplicably has a very cute sloth), the incline (of course), Soba (yumm), the Heinz chapel (nondemonimational, woo, plus we got a free tour of the organ which was awesome), saw some kids playing Quiddich, and the Cathedral of Learning -- amongst other things. Very fun, and the weather was unexpectedly beautiful!





After they left, I helped SWE (the society of women engineers) host another Pittsburgh Glass Center class. We made glass pumpkins again this time, but I made mine extra tiny to contrast with the nice tall one I'd made last year. It's in the middle!


Peter and I also were able to tour the Pittsburgh observatory because of SWE. They had a very serious slide rule!




We also enjoyed 11/11/11! Here are some shots from the green roof that day..





And Peter's parents visited the following weekend. We hiked Frick park and made monkey bread - low-key and lovely.

I'll leave you with a little pumpkin putrification collage, somewhat seasonal, courtesy of some grad students who left them on the roof. :)

Adventures in a CSA box

In our CSA box last Thursday, we received:
Huge bag kale
Big bag lettuce
Bunch of apples
Bag of parsley
Two acorn squash
Dozen small potatoes
Three zucchini
Three tomatoes
Bunch of green onions

The apples, lettuce, and potatoes were no big deal, we eat them all the time. We used the green onions and tomatoes (and three peppers from the previous box) in a stirfry, so that was easy. Acorn squash is a bit more of a challenge; last time we did the roasting with butter and brown sugar thing which was just okay, and I've also made savory muffins with them, but this time I decided I wanted to try the sweet route. So I roasted the squash, pureed the insides, and ended up with two cups - enough for two recipes, basically. I tried http://www.manifestvegan.com/2010/10/chocolate-acorn-squash-baked-custard/ which was not a huge success - flavor was so-so, it never set (although who am I to decry pudding), and it was too squash-flavored for Peter. At the same time, I made http://peasant-palate.blogspot.com/2011/10/acorn-squash-bread_09.html with half brown sugar, half regular sugar, and an extra tbsp molasses for good measure, and that turned out quite well. So well, in fact, that there was a hole in the middle of the cake before it finished cooling. This is due partly because I was frustrated that it didn't seem to be cooking all the way (it was, but the sugar on top was melting and making it look undone), but it was continued long after there was a reason to dig. Hooray, a squash success! Even if it does involve sugar and eggs. =)

That leaves the kale, zucchini, and parsley. After a bit of waffling, I followed http://simplyrecipes.com/recipes/zucchini_and_spinach_gratin/ except for a few things: we didn't have bacon, so just used bacon fat for the onions; instead of the spinach, so we blanched the kale for about three minutes and then squeezed and chopped it; we used 1/2 cup of cheese in the filling itself, mostly feta with a bit of parm thrown in, and then more parm on top. Also I think we threw in a significant amount of pepper and adobo seasoning. But the cheese and spices (and eggs!) yielded an excellent way to eat kale and zucchini! I was really quite pleased with myself, being 2/3 on experimental recipes. We do have one small zucchini left, but I can always roast it and throw it on something if I don't get around to being creative with it.

Finally, we had a ton of parsley left so I decided to make some parsley pesto. The Internet had about a billion different recipes for that, though, so I took a sampling of ten and did a kind of average over the proportions. The result is below, and it turned out way better than I had expected. For one, the huge bunch of parsley (I made a double batch) reduced down to barely a half cup, which is much less daunting. Also it was really good, not as bitter as I'd expected from so much parsley. My plan is to mix it up with some spaghetti, butter, and chicken pieces. Fancy!

1/4 cup almonds (I had raw, slivered)
1 clove garlic
1 cup parsley
1/2 tsp of lemon juice
2 tbsp olive oil
salt and pepper to taste
1/4 cup parmesan, to taste
optional good ideas that I didn't use: bread crumbs, onions

In the food processor, grind almonds nicely. Add garlic, parsley, and a jot of lemon juice and blend. Add olive oil to desired texture, then salt and pepper to taste. Add some parmesan, bread crumbs, or onions if you want them.

Overall, our solution to having all this good veg in the house is probably not the healthiest, but it's better than getting bored with the greens on your plate each night (which is what we tend to do without the box). Plus figuring out how to use some of the weirder stuff is fun! Peter always threatens to trash any nontraditional vegetable, so in the name of not wasting food, it is my responsibility to prove something edible can come out of things he or I don't usually like. It has turned out pretty well so far!

An Orlando saga, in one

This next section will be about Orlando, attending a half-marathon party in Disney that some of my coworkers were running, a work conference, and a visit with some cousins. Busy busy!

10/1
Flew southwest, and I have no complaints! Amazing, after the previous debacle. Although I did get to the Holiday Inn Express (via bus, bwuahaha cheap!) to discover their complimentary Disney shuttle had already left for the day, but at least they gave me a bucket full of goodies (water, granola bars, popcorn) for being a Gold member. Pretty nice I guess. And I figured out the local bus system and didn’t need the shuttle anyway, and hit Epcot at 7:30pm with my fancy $55 half-marathon after-party pass, which I now know only really pays to cover after-hours admission since it didn’t really come with much in the way of food money. We got a $10 voucher but all the food was $2-8 so that was a fleeting victory. Ate until the big Reflections of Earth (hello, high school band flashback!) fireworks presentation and then they closed everything from 9 – 10:30 to boot normal people out of the park. There was otherwise nothing else to do, so after being sufficiently weirded out by a Disney display without people, I took a short nap in China. I also saw a bridge up in Epcot, which I’m sure rarely happens during normal hours, so that was neat.

I then ate some more (the tally was up to Australia, Singapore, Ireland, Poland, and maybe more?) and wandered, since it was a nice night and the booths were pretty well done. I did go on a few rides after quaffing some mead, which was not my best life decision especially regarding Mission:Space which is one of those lame screen-simulated rides, but by then it was time to wait by the runner’s entrance for my coworkers. Miraculously, I did find Ben and his cousins and a few others, and then we milled around before meeting up with Spyros too! Then I got a tiny Belgian waffle to top it off. Weeee. It was a pretty good night even after holding back a potential migraine, and luckily I got a ride from Satoshi, a previous CMU student, versus an expensive cab fare. Plus I took full advantage of the fact that Priority Club members get late checkout, and napped a good bit up to 1pm (necessary, since I didn’t get in until ~2:30am!)

10/2
Not much today, mostly full of sleep, figuring out supermarkets can be kind of expensive if they’re in the middle of nowhere near a hotel (hello, food deserts), getting to the conference hotel, the Rosen Shingle (which sounds like a disease), napping some more and then going to Publix (“across the street” means a half mile, apparently) with friends to stock up on food and booze versus buying very expensive food and drink at the resort itself. Then I slept a lot more that night. Weeeee!

10/3
Happy birthday to me, I get to take a human aerosols exposure tutorial and then wander around! Actually the day was very fortuitous – after some stalling about paying $14 for a taxi to the Florida mall (which seemed like the nearest Thing To Do In Two Hours, since I had to be back at the hotel by 6pm), I started out walking with Ben to get his poster printed and lo! We saw the mythical 58 bus, which the concierge had mistakenly told me wasn’t running! Okay so we found out it stops running between 10am – 2pm but still, an accomplishment, since $2 and free transfers is way better than some alternatives at the resort. The mall was just a mall, unfortunately, so I didn’t really get much, but it was nice to move around. Came back to a pretty good Careers in Aerosol Science talk + plus a free pizza dinner, hoorays. Then met some old CMU members and played volleyball with an extended posse – which, given my disinclination for all things except tennis that involve projectiles coming towards me, really just degenerated into chatting and drinking wine out of a water bottle. Classyyyy. But it was the best case scenario for the day, really.

10/4
Hello Monday – it’s the first real conference day! Again indoor air quality was the subject of the plenary, which was nice. Not sure how much I got out of the ensuing morning sessions other than I should have brought a damn sweater to Orlando (wonder why I didn’t think of that one…) because it’s freezing in the halls. But I’m sure I caught some at least, and it’s fun to see what other people are doing. The poster session was kind of overwhelming, but I did find a person who did research on clean cookstove emissions comparisons, which could end up being useful to know (considering that would be AWESOME to do). There were more talks in the afternoon, then a reception with short-lived food, drink, and a lady in a bear suit to remind us about next year’s MN conference (yeah, it was weird, but funny). Pretty exciting to chat with everyone, from professors to people who’ve graduated to people I just recognize based on their citations. I missed the chocolate-covered strawberries at the Women in Aerosols meeting (“Aerogirls” according to Spyros) but did get to spend quality time with Kaytlin, Gabi and Kristina so it was worth it.

10/5
Poster day, and group dinner day! After some seminars, they gave us a boxed lunch and because I was one of the poster people, I stood by my creation for about two hours and chatted with whoever was interested. It’s still so weird recognizing people by their last names, from their published work. A little bit like rockstars since I’ve been citing them in MY paper too! Neat to finally meet the face behind the name, and be reminded that all of these researchers are just normal people with normal imperfections, no matter how many papers they have under their belt. This should not be surprising, but somehow it is.

Everything else was pretty normal, except for one notable exception: while we were waiting to get into the restaurant for the 25+ member CMU dinner, a large black guy came up and made some interesting comments to me. He started with “Out of the whole group you’re the best looking one” which is acceptable, but each comment got more and more inappropriate until he ended with “and now I’ma have to go to church” and I was like dear lord. Where did you learn that was appropriate for anyone, ever. ESPECIALLY if I’m standing in front of my advisor and my whole research group. So embarrassing, but at least he left. Kristina said he went into a bar, and I hope he was already drunk because my faith in humanity would be sad if he said those things sober. It kind of put a weird spin on the whole evening (my kinda wimpy wimpy salad and very salty lobster bisque didn’t help) but it was still fun to chat with the folks who were at my table. Pretty good day, anyway.

10/6
A fairly normal conference day, except – shhh! – Gabi and I left after lunch to go to Universal Studios! The hotel had some after-2pm admission deals for the parks – ie 2- park admission for $70 instead of $140 or so – so we took them up on it. Still expensive, but it was my birthday gift to myself. =) I kinda wanted to go to Disney’s Hollywood Studios myself, but Gabi wanted to do Harry Potter World and I wanted someone to go with. It worked out REALLY well. The first park, the Studios part, had a few coasters – the music one and the Mummy were both pretty good – but also some pretty lame ones. The Twister walk-thru ride sticks out in particular as fairly terrible, but it was at least worth it for the “we waited for THAT?” kind of hilarity. The Simpsons ride was also bad in that it was terribly nauseating, with a lot of jarring and a simulator screen to boot. I should have learned after my Mission:Space adventure in Epcot that I should avoid it but we didn’t. Oh well! We did leave that park after that, having done most of the rides and not particularly enthusiastic about doing any more immediately.

Islands of Adventure proved to be pretty awesome, and I’m really glad we got the two-park tickets for a few reasons. One, we split our time equally between parks, but Studios closed early to reopen later with some sort of fright-night scenario. This meant that everyone was going there instead as we headed out of it, and because it was a Thursday, the lines were short anyway – which means the lines were even shorter, overall! We rode the Hulk, which was a little too jerky still, and then decided it was Harry Potter time. That’s on the other side of the park so we took a leisurely walk through Seuss-town and others before arriving. And man. They really did a good job on HP World. All the little English houses are covered in snow, which was funny in sunny Orlando but did kind of make me feel cooler, with a lot of the storefronts you read about in the books. They also sell owls, robes, and wands (amongst all sorts of other things) in the correct places, and the goods didn’t look too shabby. But the first thing we did, of course, was get some butterbeer. And like its corresponding article (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jim-hill/butterbeer-how-universal-_b_893654.html), I do think it was one of the best things. We both had the frozen version (the non-frozen came later…hehe) and it was super refreshing and hit the spot. Then we wandered around for a while in a little kid state – “look at that! Look at that!” – which I found truly impressive. I mean, Epcot was pretty ace, but I’ve seen most of it before. It was nice to find another one of those first moments when you’re really excited about exploring a new section of the park. And because the lines were so short, we hit the main screen/ride combo quickly (hello, single rider line), and I forgave the fact that it has a screen because it was pretty stinkin neat. Then we went on the hippogriff kid’s ride twice because there were no lines and it was calming after the first one. Also, the second time we boarded the ride as soon as we got to the gate – no waiting! Plus I wanted to take pictures, but Gabi thought she heard the attendant tell me to put it away, and when I didn’t (not like he could see anyway) we were like “take pictures take pictures take pictures!!!!” before someone found us out and/or the coaster got to moving too quickly. It was a little hysterical moment that you probably just had to be there for, but it was pretty cute.

I do have to comment on the new cubbies for your stuff while you ride especially strong coasters – they have a fingerprint-scanning bank of lockers that holds your stuff for free for the duration of one ride. Pretty nice! Of course, it says 31 minutes (or up to the length of the line for one ride) are free, and we weren’t really paying attention, so we did the dueling dragons coaster twice (no lines! Front row! AWESOME!) before we went back. Of course, then it holds your stuff hostage for $3, unless you look shocked and draw the attention of the attendant, who probably gets that a lot. But whatever, he cleared our charge, and we switched lockers and rode the coaster one more time because it was just that good – not jerky but full of twists and turns and loops! =) Then it was almost time for the park to close – five hours passed so fast! – so we booked it to the Spiderman ride thinking it was a good one. Turns out it was a screen one again – womp wompppp – but the running with butterbeer part was hilarious.

When we booked our tickets with the resort, the lady gave us two 2-for-1 drink tickets at certain places around Universal’s CityWalk, which is the Downtown Disney equivalent. Darn ucb was having a company party on most of it and didn’t invite us (we were all, the nerve! we’re hotel group buddies! haha) but we did find a latin place that would take it. Turns out the cheapest option was no-name well drinks, so we each got two fairly strong rum&coke//fuzzy navels for 5$. I figure, it’s no small feat in this town to get ANY drink for 2.50, especially an alcoholic one, so huzzah! The food was also good, and we ordered strategically so Gabi would be able to use her company card and reimbursed – woo free meal! When we got back (after having been in a cab behind one that had a laser show inside, which was pretty interesting) we met up with some others and hit the hot tub. So conference, rollercoasters, sun, food&cheap drinks, then hot tub. Pretty dang awesome day.


10/7
Attended a few good talks in the morning today, but fewer than I had anticipated because a few of the speakers never showed up (!). Split the cab with a few other people going to the airport (one of whom was a professor and got the whole fare, woop woop) and it was time to rent a car! Except not quite. We actually got there over an hour before my reservation, and since I wasn’t going to be able to get back that early on Sunday I just sat and caught up with some things in my trip log until it was time.

Since I was a savvy traveler, I had signed up for the Hertz free #1 Club Gold Plus status a while ago (usually $60/year, also came with a free weekend rental day) and got my own desk to approach. They also initially gave me a really nice Nissan Sentra, with 11 miles on it, but the GPS I brought wouldn’t charge in it (or, after I got an attendant, any of the three cars near it – curses!) so I had to move to a different rental with a mounted GPS. That one was a Toyota Corolla, supposedly dependable but this one at least was terribly annoying to drive. Maybe someone really beat on it, but it required constant steering attention as it wanted to blow all over the road. I didn’t even think it was that windy, although I did drive through three short, intense storms on the way down. Guess that’s just how Florida is.

I arrived a little before Natalie at the gated community where her boyfriend Peter (ha!) lives, so I spent a little while catching up on stuff on my phone (hee! Still novel) while waiting for the rain to stop before getting out of the car. Peter has two kids from a previous marriage, and I was staying in the 4-year-old son Jordan’s room; the kid was going to stay with his sister (8-year-old Rachel) across the hall. It worked out well, and the kids were cute if not a little whacky (although that part is not really unexpected given the age and that their parents are divorced). After meeting Natalie’s six cats (or so), we went to an Italian place for dinner (aka kid-friendly pizza!) and then Peter made a “blend” or healthy smoothie, including greens, afterwards. I’ve always been curious about the superfood smoothies and it was pretty good! So now I feel like maybe I might try it…although our blender is not half as powerful as the one he has, so it might not be as successful. Still it was reassuring to know I was eating more veggies. Peter seems like a pretty cool guy and he and Natalie seem happy together, which was great to see.

10/8
So much sleep, so good! After breakfast we hit the science museum with the kids and Rachel’s friend, and it was neat to watch them run around and remember how totally rad that kind of stuff is when you’re that age. I also learned about the huge-ass spiders that make gigantic webs between the palm trees here, and seeing them float overhead is something I was considerably less excited about. But no matter. We had lunch at CheeburgerCheeburger, which was an amusingly customizable experience, and then did a little shopping in the mall complex. There was a small purchase-related meltdown on Rachel’s part, who is very much a girly girl at this point, but the storm passed soon enough. We dropped her friend off and hit the pumpkin patch just as it started to rain – the kids grabbed their respective squash and we booked it for an afternoon of hanging out (and Thor!). I do appreciate being able to catch up to speed with what’s current in the lives of those under ten, and also catching up on my action movies. Peter made chicken curry for dinner which was great too.

10/9
Although my flight wasn’t until 5:15pm, to be on time for the rental (and to be there two hours ahead for the flight) I had to leave by 11:30am, which was earlier than I had anticipated. So we spent a slow morning in, and I had an excellent cappuccino (whipped cream & cocoa on top) and smoothie for breakfast -- I love these food options! =) Plus I laughed at the Scorpion King movie and played with the kids a bit. It was rather less than I thought I would be able to accomplish in a weekend, especially given all the go-go-go business I’ve been doing recently, but maybe that’s what I needed. I also would have liked to meet up with the other two cousins as, but that will have to be saved for another time.

I manhandled the car through three more storms, kinda figured out the cruise control with a bit of magic, and finally got to Orlando. I needed to fill the tank and ended up going through the $1 toll a totally unnecessary amount of times due to not knowing where a gas station was, but I finally figured it out and got back fine. After a nice salad in the airport, I tried to get through more Greece picture editing (they’re coming, someday!), then it was time for a flight and bus to home! My desk, upon arrival, was basically an explosion of mail, laundry, gifts, and stolen tea boxes (hey, the resort was so expensive, I took what I could get)…let’s not even talk about all the receipts I need to submit for reimbursement. But now I have five weeks or so before peter leaves and I go on my next adventure…ahhh, it’s good to be home!

9/29 - 9/30 (final greece days!)

9/29/11
After a beautiful sunrise and a painless checkout, I met with Spyros and got to the airport. This was a day of quite a few airport-related firsts, including admission into the Delta lounge at the Athens airport. They had coffee, pastries, and mini ice creams (and a lot more besides) and it was pretty neat to see, since you’d have to have flown way more than I have to consistently get in. Our flight was a little delayed (air traffic wasn’t officially striking, but doing a “white strike”, where they just drag their feet and take the maximum amount of time to do anything) but it was fine. I read some of my book, started editing my photos on my computer until the battery ran out, and tried to sleep – pretty standard. But once we landed, I discovered that traveling with Spyros is awesome for more reasons than lounge admission – a person carrying a sign with his name on it met us after we deplaned, and help us cut through not just the line to get to customs, but the customs line itself. This easily saved us an hour or more of standing around. Plus, my checked bag had priority status! So that went well.

The JFK lounge was way more crowded, and had fewer pastries, but it was still pretty cool. But then everything went to hell in a handbasket, so to speak. First the flight to PIT was delayed a bit. Then they said they had mechanical problems, but boarded us after that so I figured it was fixed. Not so. After an hour and change on the plane (like flying to Pittsburgh, but with no movement!), the pilot declared the plane unsatisfactory. So they canceled that flight, and some freak weather thing canceled the last Delta flight after that. Then, of course, there was mass rebooking chaos – if you have several attendants on two phones at once, you are doing something wrong. And Delta, it seems, was doing everything wrong. Finally (way longer than I had expected Spyros to have to wait, really) we were booked on an 8am flight out, and with a hotel booked. Except the hotel was way out in the boonies, and the voucher said Holiday Inn (great, I get points!), but when we got there, they told us nobody booked with them, and that our tickets are actually for the Rockville Inn across the street. Rockville didn’t want to take our vouchers with the wrong hotel name on them, though, so we sat around and waited some more (and also for an ordered pizza, because the food vouchers we received weren’t helpful at a hotel at 11pm when they don’t have a restaurant). Finally, around midnight, we got a room, in which I would probably spend four hours sleeping before it was taxi time again.

I was impressed by Delta’s twitter account, however – I had complained about the situation, and they gave me a $50 voucher good towards any flight, fees, or whatever for the next year. Social networking hooray! This will probably go towards a trip to Ecuador, if I do another before September (which is likely).

9/30/11
Shower and back into the same clothes time, what fun. I’m now kind of a biohazard when I take off my shoes to go through security, but not exactly what the TSA are looking for. Also, whatever taxi company accepts Delta vouchers is the rudest I’ve ever had to deal with, but we got to the airport without much fuss. Before the flight we had three $10 and three $6 vouchers ($48!) to burn in food, so we had a fancy sit-down breakfast. Woo French toast and fruit! Also I stole the little jars of maple syrup (you never know), and spent $12 in vouchers on three dark chocolate toblerones (with Spyros’ full support, hehe. Plus he had some still for his flight this afternoon!). Finally we boarded and took off towards home! I sat next to a IBMer about my age who works on food systems and we had a delightful chat about live, Elizabeth Warren being a rockstar, and other things.

By the time we landed, Spyros was kind of sweating the trip to CMU, since he technically had a presentation to give to the first-years at 10:30am and wasn’t sure if he had been switched to 11:30 as he had requested the previous night. So Spyros got the car, I got the bags, and I made a bunch of calls while he drove to confirm the pres had indeed been switched. Everything was a success, and Spyros was kind enough to let me take his rental to the apartment briefly. He has to drive back to the airport to get to Orlando today so I had three hours to go home, freshen, launder, eat, and then I needed to come back briefly to make some arrangements for next week anyway. Also SWE was doing a tour of the nearby power plant that I wanted to attend, so I did that as well, although given my sleep level I was probably functionally drunk at that point. No matter! Except I killed or found husks of about seven roaches in the apartment, of varying sizes. Electric bug zapper racket purchase: justified. Nerves: shot. But I made it through the travel marathon, and after a bit of tiny packing prep for tomorrow’s Orlando flight (all I could manage) I slept for a really long time.

9/26 - 9/28

9/26/11
Non-Greek news, but important: my publication is finally finished and final! Observe: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1352231011008521. I suppose some of you may not have journal access so I will try to send out a pdf when I remember.

Greek news: this whole trip has just been really weird. Not sure I’ve detailed how Spyros is giving a talk at a conference in Paris now, and how he won’t be back until late Wednesday night, and especially how I haven’t actually met with him about my proposal yet and we’re flying out on Thursday. There was the opportunity the first Monday, but I wasn’t sure where to meet him or when, and then he came in at 4pm and said he was going home. So turns out that was my only chance, I guess. Ultimately I guess I came all this way to sit next to Spyros on the plane home and discuss my project? It’s an 8-hour flight, though, and if he doesn’t like what I’ve done so far (in my vacuum of instruction) I will have 6-7 hours left to sit next to a disappointed man.

It’s this kind of frustration that made this kind of a fail day. I worked on my proposal, then took a break for the local cookies ice cream (which is a favorite) and the last Patras sunset photo op (although I missed the full glory by a few minutes). I wandered around, collected some sea glass, and found myself accidentally in a drinks-only kind of place (no food!). Whoops..oh well, got a frappe as is customary and thought about life. I got a recommendation from Andrea and ate there, at a cute seaside place that was nicely insulated from the winds that were kicking about. They had a paper menu that I was able to draw all over (proposal ideas, lists of ideas to fix the apartment here, working on my greek, etc), which was nice, but the food was just okay – a chicken, tomato, cheese and spinach quesadilla really, but for 10E. Plus no nice free desserts or drinks at the end like they have in Crete. So that makes me kind of lukewarm on the places here – the first night I went to the busiest place and the food was, accordingly, pretty good, but I didn’t think I should go back to the same place again when there were so many other restaurants. I guess that was a mistake. Peter was saying that I’m having so much trouble because as one person you can’t order that much. I need to eat with someone else so my sample size increases! Ahh, food and math.

Before doing a bit of internetting, I returned home to do some laundry in the sink (very important underwear and socks!) since the washer is still inexplicably non-functional and, other than one phone call to the institute who owns the place (which of course was not returned) no one seems to want to help. So I’ll be a little smellier than intended, but whatever. Hopefully the underwear and socks dry before I have to leave tomorrow. Spin cycles are wonderful things after you have to do it yourself…

Fun take-home lessons I’ve been thinking about:
- have a bazillion plans and bring enough underwear and socks even if you think you’ll be able to do laundry
- strikes are super common here
- related to strikes: education shouldn’t be free (just like implementation in developing countries, a thing needs to cost at least 3-7% of average income for people to take it seriously)
- don’t expect people who measure air quality to be concerned about their own health (most of them are smokers!)

Thus ends my barrel of sunshine post.

9/27/11
Second-to-last packing day (for this trip, anyway)! My most useful recent purchase was plastic wrap last night (since they didn’t have tape); now the olive oil is secure, and I packed a bunch of baklava into my sandwich box and wrapped it up nicely too. I am the food smuggling master! As long as customs doesn’t catch me, that is. Any food I couldn’t finish, I brought into work. I will be leaving some ice cream in the freezer though, since it won’t go bad and I imagine whoever stays here after me will appreciate it.

After I did a bit of work, I cleaned up the apartment and got all ready to meet spyros’ wife, Angeliki, who is driving me to her family town Mati near Athens as a kind of staging for the flight later. Spyros said she plays the bouzouki, a traditionally male-only string instrument here, so I take that to mean she’s a badass and I’m kind of scared. But I had some time to kill, so I read a book outside to work on my tan. I also finally tried a fig from the tree outside and thought it was okay – funny how I’ve never really even thought about how popular figs aren’t in the US.

Anyway, eventually it was time to go, and we returned the apartment keys and were off! Fun conversation snippets: she and Spyros met in undergrad in Patras, married and then went to LA for grad school. She is in civil engineering teaching, and has always wanted to be a teacher. She learned bouzouki when she was younger, but then took up tennis in LA, met a lot of friends, and was competitive so hurt her arms and now bouzouki is more difficult. Her mother lives in Mati, where we’re going, in the family home that her father built. Angeliki likes sweets (we had some of her favorite kind at a rest stop on the way! Woot!), Spyros is trying some weird atkins diet or something and eats American chocolate for lower calories (and taste). She doesn’t like how often Spyros is away (“I’m taking dance lessons, but for what? To dance with whom?”) and how he doesn’t even leave the cell phone they got him in the car (which would have been useful one night when his car actually did break down) and how some days she isn’t sure where he is until he calls her. So she can’t travel as much as she’d like because someone has to take care of Nikos. Kind of sucks, but she seems happy enough to be in Greece and not Pittsburgh, and to be teaching.

So, not so scary after all! We also stopped and got some sweets for her mother in the biggest bakery I’ve seen here… we SO need one in Pittsburgh. If this PhD thing doesn’t pan out… well, anyway. I ate dinner with her at her mother’s house since there is apparently not much to eat around the hotel. It was chicken, sauce and noodles but very delicious. The mother knows no English but is a good cook. It was a kind of awkward evening, what with the translation barrier and all, but I tried! Then I got to Hotel Myrto totally exhausted and gave up for the day.

9/28/11
Almost there. Last full day in Greece! As is fitting, after breakfast I started a walking-around journey to seek my fortune in yet another new city. Well, town. I discovered that there is not much to Mati aside from a grocery, three restaurants, three hotels, and lots and lots of beaches. It’s a summer home kind of place, and they consider September strictly fall, so most people have left already. But the beaches – there seemed to be about one per person, lots of little coves with windy cement staircases that reminded me of the Myst games. One path (more or less) on the coast united all of these walks and I spent a good few hours walking up and down, hair blowing around in the fierce wind, going down to find some seaglass, trying desperately to get a tan to prove I was actually in a sunny country. It was pretty successful, really.

After a pizza lunch (the pizza shop is the largest of the three restaurants, and the most open) I headed back to finish my poster for next week’s Orlando conference. After a bit of this (and some disagreement with Spyros about sentence structures on posters, blah blah) I walked over to see the church where Angeliki and Spyros got married, which isn’t far from her mother’s house. A lot of the houses are beautiful here and the church was no exception. Although concrete building isn’t the cheapest or most sustainable, it looks striking with a new coat of paint and some sun. A little while after, I got a call from Angeliki asking if I wanted to go for a walk. The answer is always of course! It was more of a drive than a walk, though (too windy and cold for Greeks! And actually, for Americans too after the sun set), as she took me to some of her favorite beach places, drove me around the old American base that’s now a kind of cultural center, went through Nea Makri (the large city nearby with like 7 supermarkets), and on. We ended up at her mother’s place for a simple dinner, which was great – especially since I suspect the pizza place would have been my alternate option. I am very grateful to Angeliki and her mother for their wonderful hospitality -- even though I am, due to being in the states, partially the reason why her husband is away all the time.

Now for the final packing! Until I get home, and must pack for Orlando, of course…but then I won’t have any liquids to carefully arrange in my checked bags, so it’ll be easier.

9/23 - 9/25

9/23/11
Today was probably the weirdest day yet. I had packed a bag just in case I stayed in Plaka with Andrea, but I had already kind of decided that her coming in to Irakleio would be easier for everyone. Plus there was the detail that when we came in, we also lead in the electricians, who were trying to quickly diagnose and fix whichever instrument kept tripping the system. Unsurprisingly, that lead to no electricity and no internet for much of the day, which meant nobody was really doing much work. It was nice to sit around and talk up to a point, but a lot of it was conducted in greek so that was kind of difficult.

Also, the food issue. Hanna, a newly-anointed post-doc from Finland, had recently arrived and hadn’t eaten anything for the entire day – and everyone was still dragging their feet about lunch. So finally it was after 2pm (which is what they had told me) and I put my foot down (I hadn’t brought anything either, because they had promised lunch!). Spyros got Michael to drive us into Plaka to check Hanna into her room and get some food, but we had to be back by 5pm to go back to the city. Fine, I thought – it was 2:30 or so by then. Michael was like “we will have to get fast food” but then drove into Elounda, a neighboring town with more options than Plaka, and we sat down at a place. Whaaaatever. I got a crepe (although a strange one because the stuffing bits were in large chunks of cheese/sausage/tomato) and then we went to get calchunia (sp??) cookies since Michael seemed surprised we hadn’t tried them yet, and THEN we headed back. This is when I learned that Michael’s birthday was the previous day and he had stayed up super late, and navigating those back roads is really stressful just for the passenger so I can’t imagine driving it. But we did arrive at the site by 5:05 – except, there were no cars. Big WTFFFFF moment. I thought they had left without us, but it was weirder than that – they had left for lunch maybe an hour after we had. If they had TOLD me that was happening, I could have just waited instead of having Michael waste his time. BLARGH. Oh, Greeks.

We actually didn’t end up leaving until about 6:30, so…so much for that. But it did give us time to see some of the sunset, and a group of about eight huge gliding eagles. They circled once or twice, perhaps expecting some bodies to start piling up at the site? =D I also made plans for Andrea to meet me in Irakleio tomorrow night, and told her the hotel would put a cot in my room for 20E. Sounds like a steep price, but it’s pretty reasonable compared to booking another single room, which was ~50-60E. Shrug! Plus now it’ll be like a slumber party.

Since I got nothing done today, clearly, I decided not to stay in Finokalia on Saturday. I’d rather be somewhere I can procrastinate by sightseeing, at least, and also be free to get my own food and use a dedicated bathroom. Rustic living. Anyway the drive back into the city brought a crazy bit of info from Spyros – he discussed his Plans A through D regarding how the potential strikes on Sunday could really mess things up. I hadn’t realized that the conference in Paris he’s attending lasts until Wednesday. This is totally bizarre, because I haven’t actually met with him about proposal the whole time I’ve been here, and now he won’t be here for the rest of the week! What am I actually doing here, then?? Anyway, he mentioned that as it is, he would have to drive to Patra on Wednesday night, repack, then wake up ~6am and pick me up to go to the airport on Thursday (why you would schedule that for yourself, I do not know). So if there are strikes, we discussed whether I should (or can) really go back to Patra or not. I don’t particularly like the idea of him or one of the other students coming into the apartment and getting my stuff, which is kind of strewn around… he said he’d call on Sunday when he knows more. Iiiinteresting. By the time we got back, I had just about enough energy to have a gyro at ol’ Izmir Kebap and surf their free wireless before wandering a bit and going off to bed.

Speaking of Patra, if you’re curious about the bridge I’ve been talking about, I found http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dmwIjpjcPv0&feature=player_embedded# today. It is all about the bridge, but with so. much. drama. I personally find it HILARIOUS – “this has never been done” dun dun DUN – with music like they’re voting someone off Survivor. I don’t know how the announcer kept his face straight.


9/24/11
Yay, morning in Irakleio! The weather was beautiful, much more like what I had expected versus the previous two days where I actually needed a long sleeved shirt after dusk. After getting some prerequisite pastries, I basically just wandered from shop to shop. It ended up being only successful food shopping, really, because like before I didn’t really see anything I wanted to buy that wasn’t super expensive. Maybe Andrea will be able to talk me into something when she gets here.

I mostly wandered some old haunts, seeing which cafés have changed and what’s new. There’s now a parking lot across from Irini Hotel, where I stayed with the 2007 study abroad – a big improvement from the huge hole that was there when Peter and I visited in ’09. The area on the whole is a bit nicer looking than I remember, actually, although that building by the Lion’s Square is STILL under construction, four years later. After satisfying my wandering curiousity, I went back to drop things off and rest a bit. Andrea’s cot is adorable and feels pretty comfortable, hooray! I did nap on my own bed, though. =)

Then it was walking to the port / Venetian castle time. On the way out I grabbed a double hot dog and cheese pastry topped with sesame seeds, which is so much classier than a plain hot dog on a bun. Around 6pm I met up with Kostas and we walked around, eventually settling at a waterfront café for some coffees (of course). He finished with the army a few months after we left last time, and has since worked at a water bottling facility and then an oil company before being recently laid off. Although Spyros has a generally optimistic outlook regarding his country’s crisis, Kostas is feeling some more dire effects. He said he did get an interview with a company that makes the sun-tracking bases for photovoltaics, which is pretty awesome, so hopefully that will work out! It was really nice to sit and chat as the sun set, and he brought me another 1.5L of olive oil! Wee! We left when it got surprisingly chilly, and anyway it was almost time for Andrea to show up. Before he left, Kostas helped pick a restaurant – Peri Orexeos, if you’re keeping track at home – and place a dinner reservation, which was great! I hope to see him again two years from now (!)…hehe. Unless this is a rule of threes thing and this will be my last trip…but I won’t think about that.

Unfortunately Andrea’s car was delayed in getting here so we didn’t end up eating until about 10:30pm (only a half hour late on the reservation, but the front desk in the hotel assured me that Greeks don’t worry about such things). The dinner itself took a good while, but it was really awesome. We had a fancy salad with manouri cheese (yum), a huge moussaka/salad/tzatziki combo plate, a roast chicken with pistachio crust and honey sauce, raki and watermelon, and finally a chocolate lava cake with ice cream. Freaking great, and Andrea got some leftovers for lunch tomorrow. =) And it was equally (if not more) excellent to have someone to TALK to during dinner, and also during my quick city walking tour afterwards. It’s okay once and a while, but especially as a traveler it’s infinitely better to have someone to share everything with. So glad I talked her into coming. We didn’t get back to the hotel until after 1am – and had decided to wake up early to see things before we both had to leave – but the lack of sleep was totally worth it.


9/25/11
Soooo…I should have known better, but I totally forgot that almost everything is closed on Sundays. I was super disappointed with myself, as I was hoping to get her to a grocery and do some shopping. =( Luckily I had thought to at least buy her some peanut butter (which I knew was at the top of her list) and Happy Hippos (of course) the previous day, and we were able to window shop and wander around in another lovely day. And of course we solidly crossed off having boughatsa and various greek coffees off our list, so hooray for that!

The visit came to a rather abrupt end, though – 10am was about when Giorgios was going to pick up Andrea to go to the site, and also when Spyros said he’d call me to update on the plans for the week. I was hoping they wouldn’t happen at exactly the same time, but of course they did, and I was half on the phone and half hugging Andrea when the time came. Aaack. Didn’t look like either one of us forgot anything, though, so I consider that a success. Also, Spyros has a new plan: his wife needs to drive into Athens on Tuesday night, so I might go with her and stay near her parents (?) so it’s close for Spyros to pick me up on Thursday. He said it was “non-optimal” – maybe his wife isn’t super thrilled to babysit one of her husband’s students? – but we’ll see what happens. I would at least be able to check off more of Greece at that rate. Also he mentioned that the strike today had been declared illegal, although to expect some delays.

I had a few more hours after I was done with the call, so I checked out (after carefully packing the water bottle full of oil and some other spillables) and wandered around one last time. There was some danger of premature I’m-traveling-oh-noes freakout, so I bought some souvenirs and gifts and tried to just relax, because hey – it’s nice out, and I’m in Crete! It worked pretty well. =)

Then began my odyssey back to Patra. The bus to the airport was 1.10E and absolutely painless. They have lighted signs now to say when each line is coming, which was neat. The flight was 45 minutes delayed, but that’s not bad at all considering what I had been expecting. In the meantime I heard about my 95-year-old great-grandfather’s death via text message, which made the trip even more surreal than it already was. I also talked to my seatmate about how he grows fish and makes extracts for some cosmetics company in Connecticut that has a new line coming out. Life is weird sometimes.

Taking the X93 bus from the airport to the inter-city bus depot was only 5E and also easy to find. The trip itself seemed pretty long, though, and I took some mininaps (no danger of missing my stop, as I wanted the end of the line). The depot is “part of Greece that isn’t in the European Union” according to the guy I sat next to on the plane, and it was indeed not very pretty, or in a good area. Plus the workers weren’t very helpful – the ticket guy gave me an express ticket when I said I wanted the slow (so I could stop in Rio) and then switched me to a seat that I later learned was already spoken for. Jeez. The farther away from the city center, the less English people seem to know, I think. Anyway, I got some nice sunset pictures on the ride, but soon realized it would be very dark by the time we got to Rio. The lady next to me said maybe a taxi would be easier, and called her preferred taxi company to check the rates for me (how nice is that!). The taxi would only be 12E, which is fine – Spyros is paying anyway, and it was quite dark. Made me feel a little foolish for switching to the slower bus, though. Oh well. After a bit of nail-biting about where to get off, I saw a stop with a bunch of taxis and indeed the fare was only 12E (including tip) to get home. Well, “home.” I really don’t trust that there aren’t secret wiggly creatures in this apt, although it does look like someone cleaned while I was away. Anyway, after starting out to the airport around 1:30pm, I arrived at 9:30pm. Ordinarily it should take only 4 or 5 hours… blargh. Anyway. Thank goodness for kind strangers and thank goodness I’m freaking done with strange, unexplained public transit for a while.

It looks like everything in my suitcase made it all right, although the baklava (collected for Peter as per his “Greek baklava can’t possibly be like Pittsburgh baklava” testing campaign) are now more like pancakes. Still delicious, I imagine. It was also long past dinnertime, although I had at least remembered to pack some snacks for the trip. I think tonight is the best night for cooking all that stuff I bought last week…. But, okay, everything is frozen, so that makes it hard to cut tomatoes…

Anyway. What do you make with two shallots, two tomatoes, a slice of leftover restaurant bread, a slice of lunch cheese, and two eggs? Surprisingly good mush! And because of the bread, you don’t necessarily have to wait for all the tomato juice to boil off. I could have also made a salad but let’s face it, A) I’m tired and B) it’s frozen. Instead I had apple-peach-orange juice as my fruit/vegetable. Mmm dinner of champions.

Man, I WAS going to go check my email tonight due to a bunch of reasons, but I am a zombie. Maybe I’ll stop in really quickly and hopefully there’s nothing my phone can’t handle, because I am not prepared to bring the whole laptop. Zzzz.

9/21-9/22

9/21/11
Today is the Crete flight day! I tried to pack up before leaving for the university so I’d be prepared. It was also cool enough to wear pants in the morning, but I soon realized that it wasn’t helping my bug bites from previous dinners outside – I now have 15 on the left leg and 5 on the right. Hardly balanced, and far from not itchy. Oh well, what did I expect.

The most eventful thing I learned while working today was that on Sunday the air traffic controllers are calling for a 24-hour strike, which would complicate matters significantly. Not that I’d be sad about another day in Heraklion, but it probably will be annoying to figure out. Although livingingreece.gr/strikes says “Wait for confirmation, as strikes of this type can be declared illegal. Airlines typically announce cancellations and rescheduled flights with less than 24 hours notice for this reason.”…what? I didn’t know you had to clear strikes with the government. So confusing. In learning about this, I also found that there is a strike today in one of the ATH terminals until 5pm (our flight is at 7pm!), and tomorrow all of the public transportation in Athens is on strike – yikes! Hopefully we will get lucky.

The drive back to Athens was pleasant, though. We discussed airline miles, and Spyros was telling me that Aegean airlines serves moussaka on their longer flights, which is awesome. He also told a few jokes (plus some history) about how Greeks don’t really work well in large groups before the infighting starts. Kind of interesting to hear it from a native. Otherwise, our flight was uneventful (probably the newest plane I’ve ever been on, actually!) and we were met by Nikos (statistically high that we meet a Greek named Nikos!) who works with the Crete university. He drove us in, but had to drop other people off. Spyros and I had dinner along the market street I’m familiar with (at “h agora”, which does indeed mean “the market”), which was good – and we avoided the rain! – but it started at 10pm and we didn’t get back until 12:30! The waiter took forever… couldn’t take the check because he hadn’t delivered dessert, and then appeared to forget about us for a while. Way to make it a very awkward advisor-student dinner, dude! There are only so many things you can talk about with your boss! Oh well – it turned out fine, we had brownies and ice cream, and the raki cleared out my nose.

The hotel is very nice, by the way. I meant to do a little more blogging but I fell asleep in my clothes… one glass of wine and some raki really knocked me out. Whoops!

9/22/11
Breakfast at the Marin Dream is a pretty impressive event… it takes place on the rooftop of the building, which has an excellent view of the port. While appearing more extensive than most breakfasts in Europe, I didn’t ultimately eat much differently – toast, jam, fruit and an egg. But hey, it’s ok. I was to meet Spyros at 11am (having foregone the opportunity to go to the university at 8am…) but the traffic was bad enough that they didn’t come until 11:30 or so. Too bad, because I could have explored a little! Anyway, we arrived at the Finokalia measurement site around 1pm, which isn’t too bad time-wise, but definitely reminded me of driving up in the Andes at times. Very full of small switchback roads. If you can see three lengths of the same road twisting toward you, you are in a questionable place to be driving. But that’s why they chose this for measurements, so they wouldn’t have any interfering local emissions to complicate the air quality.

As remote and hard to get to as it was, it did certainly have a great view. I mean, it’s basically on the side of a cliff, with the Mediterranean opening in all directions in front of you. I also understand the clouds were in rare form today because of last night’s rain, which was great as a photographer. It was also great to see Andrea, who had been semi-isolated from English speakers except for another American who was there. It’s not the jet lag that gets you, but the food lag (2pm lunch, 9pm dinner, my stomach!!) and the planning lag. Which is to say, the total lack of concrete directions regarding what time things are happening or where to go or anything. Spyros says this makes them relaxed, because they know they will figure it out when they need to and do it, but for someone used to considerable planning it is a very anxiety-inducing game of chicken. How long until we go back to Irakleio? Are we coming at the same time tomorrow? What’s the plan for the weekend? All of these questions are not relevant – if you are asking about sometime farther out than four hours, it is probably too early. This precludes things like plane tickets, but not bus tickets. So planning whether I’m staying with Andrea tomorrow so we can go exploring in the evening, or whether she should come to Irakleio on Friday or Saturday evening or not, is a little difficult. I’m sure it will work out, as they say, but it is difficult to wait to know!

At 9:15pm we met with Nikos, his wife Maria, and the two Japanese students to go to dinner at Erganos, which is a little out of the city. It was AWESOME. I may or may not have revealed my true glutton colors to everyone present, which is not necessarily a card you want your boss to be aware of, but too bad! We ordered tons of things – cooked veggies, a salad with greenery that didn’t have an English translation, several kinds of meats, an omelette and many more things. The most delicious – or at least the newest to me – was staka (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roux#Cretan_staka), which appears to basically be superfatty goat butter. It looks like hummus, though, which is very different than what it really is! Anyway it was a great dinner and it was nice to have a 3:3 english-greek ratio to have a bit more guarantee of English spoken. I was super super stuffed at the end for sure.

9/19 & 9/20

9/19/11
The apartment bed is not very comfortable! It looks like a queen so I might try and find a pad for it later. Anyway, my apple pie was a nice breakfast, and Spyros drove me to the university. They are having a student protest at the moment (of course), but Spyros’ group is in a new building that the undergrads presume is empty, so they are not affected. Spyros’ office, on the other hand, is on lockdown, so he cannot access it. Kind of hilarious. This time, he says, the government passed a bill that cuts down the maximum time to graduation to 10 years (instead of infinity), puts a maximum on the percentage of votes from students go towards a new dean, and other things that are considered commonplace in the US and much of Europe. This is the same theme as last time, more or less, except this time all three political parties agreed on it so it’s unlikely that it will be repealed. Spyros is worried this will mean a more serious protest – it’s the end of their exam period at the moment, and if they’re still protesting in two weeks there’s danger that the next semester will be cut altogether. I can’t really understand why you’d want to delay finishing your degree so long for what appears to be very little back on your protest. 10 years seems more than generous, as it’s double the time a normal undergraduate program needs here! Must be a very different mindset.

Anyway. The office is in the “blue building” and has a great view, and you can even see the bridge from there. I spent the day making a poster for the upcoming conference and meeting people in a kind of oblique “we’ll say hi but not much more” way, possibly because they were busy or maybe because their English isn’t so great. Very hard to make small talk when you don’t speak the language. One of the girls did give me a pastry and her guest lunch pass, which was nice. I thought I would finally walk back to the apartment at the end of the day (I missed the footpaths this morning) but it turned into a surprise oh-we’re-taking-the-motorbike last minute kind of conversation. So much for that. So much, also, for cooking myself dinner; the supermarket offered very little English labeling and so I was afraid to buy much, and also discovered a woefully understocked kitchen on my return (the suspicion of which had also put me off large purchases). There’s a Panini press but no cutting board or sharp knife (or any durable cookwear, really) so I gave up and just made a damn sandwich. I had also inadvertently let in a gecko, which is annoying since they’re so fast and creepy. Hopefully he will let himself out (ha).

But at least I had some fresh limes. And when life gives you a lime tree and a fridge stocked with some leftover vodka, make… lime simple syrup and vodka drinks? The proportions are probably terrible but it gets the job done. Plus Alice in Wonderland was preloaded on my phone, so I read that as well. This may be yet another night I don’t make it to the internet café out of laziness. Oh well.

9/20/11
This morning was successful for a few reasons. #1 – I remembered to turn on the water heater before I took a shower (can’t leave it on due to “danger of explosion”…!). #2 – I had a more-or-less-proper breakfast of yogurt, cereal, and honey from a pouch. #3 – I only experienced one shower. To explain that last one - up to now it’s been the dry season, says Spyros, but yesterday before he left he mentioned I’d want an umbrella today because they were expecting “the first rain.” Luckily it didn’t rain at all on my (slightly confusing) walk to school, but I was in the office not twenty minutes (most of which were spent looking at the crazy clouds) before the sky let rip. Good thing I packed my lunch. This does hamper my plans to do laundry, as there’s a washer but no dryer in the apartment, but maybe I’ll just do a few things tonight before the Crete trip and hang them in the bedroom with fingers crossed.

I did some work and then decided I couldn’t wait to watch the Castle premiere any longer. Problem is, hulu and their ilk restricts media access based on the location of your IP address, which is annoying and doesn’t appear to do much good for anyone. After fiddling around with my work VPN, which was glacially slow, I found a program called TunnelBear that is not only cute and well designed, but gives me a US IP for a certain number of MB downloaded. Woo! TV: check!

After watching the clouds with some consternation I decided I better head out to the Makro, which I had hoped would be a larger supermarket where I could buy a few things for myself and Andrea. It was a little out of the way but not much, and it was fairly hilarious once I was there. I suppose you could say it was basically a small greek costco, complete with 10 kg tubs of greek nutella (that’s 22 lb! a small child of hazelnut paste!), cooking equipment, two aisles of wine, and some other assorted things. Very little of it was in English, of course, and I spent enough time confused about why this country does not seem to stock tissues or Ziploc bags to escape another downpour. Terribly convenient! I also found a bottled mixed gin drink which I didn’t know existed, so we will try those out later.

Since my shopping trip was more or less successful I talked myself into eating dinner out again (it's a bit perilous to walk where everything is at night, since there are no sidewalks), and went to a place Spyros had mentioned he liked. I probably ordered the wrong thing, because it was not my favorite at all – I thought I was getting chicken souvlaki with bacon (awesome, right?) but it was actually a slab of fried chicken with canadian bacon and cheese all over it. It was the greasiest non-Greek thing on the menu, probably. Sadfaceeee. I did get a free dessert somehow, but I don’t really know what it was - something like a flan covered in some kind of bitter-ish honey? Oh well. Next time I’ll remember that bacon means different things in Europe and to choose something more traditional.

Since it was too early to turn in (really, too early for real Greeks to have finished eating, oops) I finally headed to the internet café, which is only around the corner from the apartment. And here I was lucky with rain for the third time – which, by the rule of threes, means I should get dumped on at some point soon, but I’ll take it for now. I also got a free drink (which, in turn, meant I paid nothing for my internet since there was no hourly charge) because I mentioned I was a friend of Erica’s, a previous coworker who had spent a lot of time there. I also found out I can get seven more classic books for free on my phone (had already finished Alice in wonderland) so I have downloaded them just in case. Wee. Pretty successful all in all! Even if the washer didn’t work when I got home…ah well, just will have to get creative with what I brought.

First three days

Pictures to come later, but for now, here's what I've been up to:

9/16/11
The adventure begins! Andrea and I rode a SuperShuttle in to PIT at 7am to make handling her bags full of equipment easier. Once there, we did a few last minute errands – electrical converters for the equipment, post office for her, gum and coffee and free Godiva club chocolate for both of us – and still had 3 hours left until our flight (as per airline recommendations for int’l flights, of course). I could’ve done with a bit more sleep, having slept little and fitfully the night before, but it was nice to be early and think we had that much control, at least. I also brought leftover vegan pineapple-coconut-banana bread plus a sandwich, so I didn’t need to buy much. It was probably best that I avoided greasy food as long as I could, because the JFK-ATH flight had really shiny pasta that made the plane into one big fart machine. I wouldn’t think it would be so hard to optimize long-haul airline food for certain desired characteristics – like, you know, not making everyone smell bad in close quarters – but that’s just me. We both did queue up Midnight in Paris to watch at the same time, which was cute but SUCH a Woody Allen movie. I read a bit, I tried to sleep a bit, but the airline got very cold by the end and everyone was just ready to get off. Another day in the life of an economy class traveler, I suppose.

9/17/11
We had one minor scare when Andrea’s bags didn’t appear after customs, but it turns out they had been checked on to Crete without anyone telling us. How nice that a screw-up actually made things MORE convenient! Also none of our debit cards appeared to work for a while, but it ended up being probably user error. A pretty uneventful beginning to our adventure, to be honest – nothing went drastically wrong!

After sticking around to make sure Andrea didn’t have any trouble with her flight to Heraklion, I struck out to get to the city center for the night. As often happens with international travel, I found another group doing the same thing – a family of five from Australia on a 2-week vacation! That was fun and we got to Syntagma square just fine. It was a bit of a haul to the hotel, but not too bad – I didn’t even get lost, thanks to the map I uploaded to my fancy new phone! It was a very small room, but it’s just me, so it worked out. The most hilarious part is the bathroom, which seems like basically an oversized shower stall with the toilet right in the corner. I took a shower and a short nap before setting out for what would ultimately be four hours of exploring, which surprised me, but once I got walking I felt good enough to keep on. Regardless, I had to hit the free parts of the Acropolis and definitely the aereopagos, where I sat for about an hour, just taking it all in. Otherwise I was mostly just wandering around with no particular aim in mind except not to get irreversibly lost, though. This included some chocolate baklava and a gyro with fries in (of course!). I thought I might try and go back up to watch the sunset, but I ended up too bushed (to no one’s surprise but my own, probably). Plus I needed to be up early to catch the metro back to the airport and meet Spyros and start Patras Part I of the trip. Woohoo!

PS - Aside from the AmEx “I don’t care just where you go, as long as you’re with me” song (which we heard approximately 50 times in JFK but I still like), I’ve been listening to Typhoon’s “A New Kind of House” and it is excellent. In case you were wondering, I suppose. =)


9/18/11
Slept soundly despite being on the first floor by both the road and reception (although sweaty because of whatever plasticy bed liner existed, even though the AC was on) – earplugs and wearing myself out worked well. Breakfast was about average for low-budget hotels (hardboiled egg, roll, pretoasted toast, butter, jam) but they did have a few weird fruits that I tried. One might have been a fig, but perhaps not ripe? Anyway it was enough to get me on the metro and to meet Spyros! We talked a lot about his childhood on a Peloponnese island, how to approach grad school, and a lot of other things on the way to Patra, which was nice! We then got the key to my apartment – which appears to be on the intersection of Kolokotroni and Somerset? Maybe? – and he showed me around a little.

The apartment has a good sized kitchen/dining room (fridge, clothes washer and oven most important) plus a double bed and a bathroom much larger than the one I just left (although that isn’t saying much). It doesn’t seem much smaller than my Pittsburgh apartment, which is surprising. It also has quite a few lime trees and one (what I think is a) fig tree. Plus, there’s leftover vodka in the fridge, so once the supermarket opens (any day that’s not a Sunday) I think I might try my hand at making some simple syrup and, thus, superlocal lime drinks. =)

After Spyros left, I took a nap and then set out to find my way around. There’s an internet café around the corner, and in the other direction is a road that runs all the way to the beach. There are only intermittent sidewalks, so it’s kind of precarious, but I made it down without incident (except sweating) and wandered the beach, the very beautiful bridge, and the mysterious Rion Fortress. I had initially walked all the way around it, finding some sea glass on my way (!) before figuring out what it was. It looked like some sort of party was happening as I showed up, but no one kicked me out and it was free so woo! For those interested, it was built in 1499 to control the west of the Corinthian Gulf, and was alternately owned by the Ottomans and the Venetians. This basically means it looked like a Myst game. =)

The wind really liked to push all my hair in front of my face, so I guess my recent haircut was a little too short. But I got mistaken for a German and someone who speaks Greek today, so pretty good for a bumbling American! I really tried to hold out on dinner so as to be more culturally appropriate, but by 7pm I just couldn’t wait any longer. Not many places were open, but I stopped by one that looked like a few people were in it (a good sign) and got “chicken in tomato sauce” (a whole leg&thigh stewed in what must have been very greasy tomatoes) and “potatoes” (fries). Oh, and red wine, which came out chilled (?). Whatever, it was good, gave me some time to rest, and was only 7.50E! I also stopped by a bakery to stock up on breakfast. The internet café might be next, or I might just sleep… work (or, at least, going to the University) starts tomorrow!

August stories

Quick post to catch up before I leave for Greece for work! Ok go:

Willy's memorial service:

Midway through August, Peter and I drove to Ithaca for Willy's memorial service. It was the first time I'd been back since he died, and it was a bit touch and go at parts. His only facebook description was "Love the blues, old rock and Southern rock. Hot cars, fast boats." and we had all of those - and a bunch of friends - down at Myers Park. Even the Corvette came, although dad couldn't exactly figure out how to disable the alarm system. Plus you could even hear some Journey from the next tent over during the sermon (which was welcome). I bet Willy was laughing. It was nice to meet up with Angie's kiddos, plus Florida cousin Jeff brought my great-grandfather up. He did very well for being in his mid-nineties! Made a couple prerequisite stops - wineries, Taughannock Falls, and the old lake house. That last one brought back a lot of memories, especially poking around for lake glass (which, I maintain, is still the best of the beaches I've been to anywhere). I was a very lucky kid, going up there during the summer. Anyway. Amidst what felt like a NY monsoon, Peter and I stopped by the Corning Museum on the way back. Still quite a cool place, considering I didn't remember much about it from my last visit years and years ago. Also we can check off another not-so-scenic overlook off the list. Woop.

Crazy weather lately:

First time the patio as actually flooded into the building! Excitement.

Apartment plumbing fiasco:

I mentioned to Wayne that our tub didn't drain one morning, and after clearing the plug he told us he was surprised at how much water was leaking out of the tap (duh, I've told him that since we moved in), and to move everything away from the plumbing access panel in the bedroom so they could fix it. I believe his words were "we may have to knock a hole in your wall." And they did. But in doing so, instead of being tidy about it like any reasonably person would expect, they sanded the hell out of the wall and didn't cover up anything. So when we came home, everything was gritty and covered in a ton of drywall. Including the sheets. My OCD and I were not happy campers but I think I've gotten most of it up by now. The new faucet isn't a terrible improvement, but it doesn't leak a gallon an hour now so I guess that's good!

All-Clad tour:


I took the All-Clad folks up on the tour they mentioned at the Seconds Sale, and brought 13 SWE (and other) people to check out what was happening. It was a really interesting site, and WAY less automated than I would have guessed. They're apparently working on that, though, and had ordered a huge new machine for the multi-gallon clambake pots and such. A lot of machine oil and a lot of buffing dust in the facility, and a LOT of really shiny awesome cookwear. Not everything is made at that site, but a fair amount is, and I was pretty impressed. I hope to plan one for next summer so we can see the new press!

Dorm burn:


CMU decided to show the efficacy of having a sprinkler in your dorm, so did two burns: one in which a wastebasket fire totally engulfed a mock dorm (complete with sofa and posters) in 2.5 minutes (!), and one in which the sprinkler went off about 30 seconds in. Pretty dramatic, but what's more, I later arranged a meeting with one of the guys in charge to talk about maybe measuring the air quality during next year's burn. He was super excited about it and also told us about other air quality efforts on campus, including what instrumentation they had and that not much of it is done on a regular basis. More interestingly, he said that a lot of the fume hood exhaust is exempt from regulation because it's low-capacity and is a research institution. Interesting! We'll see what else we learn in about a year's time. =)

Incubus concert:

Bought relatively expensive tickets for the recent Incubus concert here... this would be my third or fourth time seeing them, although Peter swore he doesn't recognize any of their songs. I thought it was a good concert, although the new CD is not as good as previous releases. Unfortunately, Peter was bored, and it seemed like every smoker in Pittsburgh was at the show, so it wasn't the greatest time ever. But still. Good.

Health:
I've been curious about a few of my biological details and finally got around to checking off a few. I got my blood sugar, cholesterol, vitamin D and probably other things tested for maybe the first time - everything was fine except that my cholesterol was higher than they would prefer. Since I don't eat that badly, I'm going to blame this one on genes (and possibly too many empty carbs). I also got my eyes tested again and it was pretty consistent with what I heard two years ago. This time I got a prescription, though, and although it's pretty weaksauce, I ordered some cheapo glasses off zenni.com and will have to go see a movie to test them out when they come. Wee!

Also:
As of Friday, I am a new Droid Incredible 2 owner! Yes, I will now be one of those addicted smartphone people. In preparation for my upcoming international travel, I wanted something that A) made international calls and B) could store maps and other useful things that could be zoomed in and out. Having all sorts of fun things to play with stateside didn't hurt either. I am currently in transition from utterly confused to passable noob, but hopefully that kicks in before next Friday.

Yeah, so here's the deal: Sept 16-29 I'll be in Greece meeting my advisor's lab, helping with a new experiment campaign (as much as a modeler can?), working, and sightseeing. I'm back in the burgh for one day, then I'm heading for a week of conferences in Orlando (also, my birthday!). So, busy busy! I now must pack!