New camera

Ben got me a new camera for my birthday! I am still figuring out all its fanciness, but so far I am most impressed with its zoom. Here is an un-zoomed picture from our balcony, with the stadium circled in red:

And here is an all-the-way zoomed picture of the stadium, taken standing in that same spot:

Technology!

I like them apples

Yesterday Ben and I went apple picking!

The trees were shorter than I expected. I thought we'd have to climb ladders or something..

There were a lot of different kind of apples:

Red AND green, woah!

Ben was very proud of himself:

We also got to go on a hayride, drink apple cider, and eat apple cider donuts. It was an excellent day.

Today I am going to attempt to make an apple pie, so in case Frankenstorm knocks out our power for the week we can survive off cinnamon-y apple goodness. We don't have any bottled water, but we have 9 bottles of wine left over from the wedding, so I think we are all set for potable liquids.

Neuroscience

So, I've been pretty out of the neuroscience loop since graduating four years ago, but this nonsense really got my blood boiling. I stewed about it for a few days, before finally sending Dario Maestripieri this email:

Dear Professor Maestripieri,

My name is Caroline Rubin, and I have a BS in Brain and Cognitive Sciences from MIT. MIT doesn't award honors, but I graduated with a perfect GPA and departmental awards for both outstanding research and outstanding academic record. I was hoping you could help me with a question that has been nagging at me since I began my career in science - am I physically attractive enough? I became interested in science, as all young girls do, out of a desire to aesthetically please male scientists, and I am concerned that I may not be doing the job well enough. My current colleagues insist on evaluating me based solely on the quality of my work instead of my sex appeal; it's very frustrating and degrading. I have attached some data to assist in your assessment; I am hoping your finely tuned eye and vast research experience can finally put this question to rest for me.

Best,
Caroline

Here is the data I attached:

Ben said this is me being a sarcastic asshole at its finest, which I am taking as a compliment. I am very curious to see if he writes me back!

Oh, and for all my lady scientist friends, his email address is dario@uchicago.edu. Have fun!

Crafty Congrats

I have always considered myself crafty, but some of our friends really blew me out of the water with their amazing handmade wedding gifts. For instance, these AWESOME putz pillows from the extremely talented Meredith:

I love the flames on the burning man so much I can hardly stand it.

While I thought I had the market cornered on xkcd cross stitching, Alana's sampler of xkcd 943 is absolutely gorgeous:

Look at the flowers! And the rings! And the amazing details in the third panel!

Kathryn made us the best quilt in the entire universe - we can't figure out if we want it on our bed, hanging on the wall, or wrapped around us like a cape at all times:

On the Ben side there is his tail-less dog, the Y combinator, one of his robots, Ben in the CryoFac box, and the hall feed call (you can also see the burning man):


On the Caroline side there is my trombone, ice cream, a Carotini, my flamingo Pete, and the pink dress and chucks I wore to prom (you can also see the chainsaw-wielding marmot):

In the center there is our names as elements (woo, beryllium and calcium!), the burning man and chainsaw marmot you saw above, and the joke 2008 brass rat in amazing detail (you can also see the WaHo crew panel, which is from when Kathryn and I were in high school, and was painted using a real waffle!):

How did I get to be friends with such talented people??

We're married!

We won't get the fancy pictures back from the photographer for awhile, but in the meantime here's a video of our ring-bearer (thanks to Alana for taking the video, and Phil for teleoperating the ring-bearer):


And here's the ring-bearer's point of view (you can even see me and my dad's feet as we come down the aisle after it, and then Ben's feet as I join him at the altar):


Yay, marriage! And robots!

First Greetings

Ben and I ended up with extra wedding invitations, and we read that if you send one to the White House they'll send you a wedding card. We figured we might as well try since otherwise we would just throw out the extra invites - worst case scenario, we'd be throwing one out for the cost of a stamp. Lo and behold, look what came yesterday:

The signatures on the card are obviously just copied, but the envelope was hand-addressed and the card does have a fancy raised White House seal on it. So, I'm pretty sure Barack and Michelle will be showing up tomorrow.

Marching Band Justice League

One of the many great things about living in Philly's Gayborhood is that sometimes you go outside and it's a surprise pride festival. It turns out today is OutFest, yay surprise party on our block!

We spent the afternoon wandering around eating fried food, looking at people in cool outfits, and otherwise enjoying the camaraderie of a lot of friendly people having a party together. Unfortunately, but unsurprisingly, there were some street-corner preachers yelling about sin and whatnot, as there have been at every other pride festival we have attended so far. Usually the crowd just ignores them, but today there was a small marching band that assembled in front of the loudest guy (he had a megaphone) to drown him out with various Lady Gaga songs.

You can't really see the guy with the megaphone, but he is under the blue and white striped umbrella in the background. His friend with the sign walked in front of the band, but then the cymbal player walked in front of him. When we walked by again later, the preacher had moved into the street and was still yelling into his megaphone, but the band had gained members and formed a circle around him so you couldn't hear anything he was saying (although at one point I distinctly heard him shriek something about "licking vaginas," which seemed pretty risque for someone so concerned with Biblical propriety). There were also a ton of people dancing to the band in a circle around them, it was pretty awesome.

The whole thing made me realize how much I miss marching band. I looked up this group's website, and it turns out they practice in the city... maybe after all the wedding craziness is over and I have free time again, I will dig out my trombone and join them. The only thing more fun than marching band is using marching band to drown out assholes!