Friday, October 31, 2014

Travel Food

I just finished the 3 consecutive weeks of travel part of my fall, and am embarrassingly excited to sit at home and do as little as possible for the next few weeks. When I travel for work I am mostly working the whole time I'm in whatever place, but I did manage to squeeze in a little bit of non-work over the past few weeks.

The night before my St. Louis conference began, I went with some work friends to Lambert's Cafe - aka that place where they throw rolls at you across the room and walk around ladling out fried okra from a giant bucket. It was a two hour drive from St. Louis, and it was worth it!
Yes, that is the "small" drink size.
After that conference ended we had about two hours to kill before our flights left, so of course we went to the (free) St. Louis zoo, where we ate pumpkin funnel cake à la mode and drank beer as we walked around.
Living in PA has made drinking in public a very surreal experience for me.
This past week I was in Milwaukee, and I flew in a day early so I could spend time with my work friend who lives there. It was totally worth it because I got to go trick or treating with her ADORABLE niece and nephew.
Anna and Olaf
Best day ever!
Then we pretty much worked forever (I was there to execute a big project with her), but we did eat this:
Monkey bread!!
And this:
Ethiopian food!
And - finally - we got to try PUMPPLE!! Pumpple is the infamous "turducken of cakes" made here in Philly (it's a pumpkin pie baked into a chocolate cake layered with an apple pie baked into a vanilla cake), and when this friend was in town over the summer we tried to get some, only to discover that it is seasonal and only available in the fall (I guess because of the pumpkin part?). Anyway, I got a slice before I left and brought it on the flight to Milwaukee, and we had it for breakfast the next day. Each of the constituent parts was good, but having four different cakes/pies in your mouth at once was just kind of... weird. Oh well. It still doesn't deter me from wanting to try this.

Saturday, October 25, 2014

Moose and Giraffe

Another wedding tonight! Here was the sampler for the happy couple:
(Their wedding had a moose and giraffe theme, since he grew up in Maine and she grew up in Botswana.)

We just got back, and in a mere five hours I get to wake up and head to the airport to fly to Milwaukee for week three of work travel - woo!

Thursday, October 23, 2014

St. Louis

I'm here for a conference this week - and while I've been at conference sessions pretty much the whole time, the view from my hotel room is awesome. This was the sunrise this morning:
Heading home to Philly tonight and will be there for two whole days before the next trip!

Sunday, October 19, 2014

Dogfish Head

This weekend we went with some of Ben's grad school friends to Rehobeth, Delaware to visit the Dogfish Head Brewery and generally hang around the beach. The brewery itself was quite neat - we got to see all the fancy equipment for brewing and bottling, the vast amounts of beer awaiting distribution, and of course try lots of samples.
Beer goggles!
Apparently this is a "low amount" of beer since we were there on a weekend.
We ate at their brewpub, where they had all sorts of elaborate beer-related food. The grand finale was bacon chocolate cheesecake with beer-infused whipped cream.
Delicious!
We walked it off on the beach, which was cold but still pretty.
Hooray, mini-vacation in the middle of work travel madness!

Monday, October 13, 2014

Under the Weather Wedding

We had another wedding this weekend! We dosed up on dayquil so we could power through it, and had a great time - although we slept for 12 hours afterward so clearly our bodies were not happy with us about it.

Wedding highlight - they had FIVE wedding cakes! Each more delicious than the last.
Wedding sampler:
(The couple got engaged in Australia, the bride is a physician's assistant, the groom is a musician, and they really like alpacas - they have a bunch of alpaca art in their house.)

Off to sleep for another 12 hours before getting up early for a flight tomorrow - I've lost my voice, which always happens when I get a cold, but since I'm supposed to spend this week interviewing applicants I hope it comes back soon...

Saturday, October 11, 2014

Legos!

The volunteer list for the middle school robotics competition Ben and I volunteer with got a great email last week - they were running out of time to assemble all the lego obstacle courses before the season starts, and needed volunteers to take some home and assemble them. Um - YES! What followed was the greatest week since my office got all new Ikea furniture and I got to build all of it.

Beginning of the week:
That's a lot of bags of legos.
End of the week:
Look at all those expertly assembled lego obstacles!
Seriously, every day at work I couldn't focus because I was so excited to come home and build intricate lego contraptions. Now they're all done and turned it, and I am sad.

Ben and I also both caught nasty colds this week, which didn't really put a damper on sitting at home and playing with legos, but is going to make my upcoming travelpalooza pretty miserable if it doesn't go away soon. Blergh.

Monday, October 6, 2014

Puzzle Pals

Our pen pal shenanigans continue! We got this in the mail a few months ago:
We inserted it into a laptop and discovered this game, which when defeated led to a URL.

We responded with a lovely gift:
And when we were in Boston this weekend, we saw that our friends had completed it:
Yes, that is my hand spelling a URL in sign language.
Onwards and upwards!

Sunday, October 5, 2014

Boston and belated wedding sampler


We went to Boston this weekend! We were mostly visiting our friends who just had a baby, and swooning over said baby, but I also delivered a wedding sampler. A few friends got married before I started making them so I'm slowly working through the "backlog," and was able to give one to its owners this weekend:
Closer up:
The martini is self-explanatory, the bottle is the husband's favorite bourbon:


I really wanted to make something for the new baby, but had to stop myself because it's hard enough keeping up with all the weddings, so if I start doing all the babies my fingers will probably fall off.

Friday, October 3, 2014

Shades of emsque

I was looking at my schedule for the next few months and realized that, like emsque, I might need to create a sidebar to keep track of my insane travel schedule:
  • October 3-5 Boston for baby party (yay!)
  • October 12-13 Maryland for a wedding (yay!)
  • October 14-16 Boston again for work
  • October 17-19 Rehobeth with friends for the weekend (yay!)
  • October 20-23 St. Louis for work
  • October 25 wedding in Philly (yay!)
  • October 26-29 Milwaukee for work
  • November 1 Friends staying with us in Philly (yay!)
  • November 17-20 Houston for work
  • November 26-December 1 Chicago for Thanksgiving
  • December 2-7 San Francisco for a wedding (yay!)
So... yeah.  There might not be too many updates here for the next few months...