Milwaukee

I flew to Milwaukee this weekend to visit my bestie! Here she is rejoicing in front of the world's greatest soup restaurant, which I've been dreaming about revisiting since my last trip to Milwaukee:

The highlight of the weekend was hanging out at her niece's 5th birthday party. There were cute babies and awesome little kids everywhere, and a moonbounce! I last saw her niece and nephew nearly two years ago, when they were 3 and 1, so was surprised when they saw me this time and immediately ran over and gave me a big hug, since I figured there was no way they would remember me. After the hug I asked "do you know who I am?" and they gleefully shouted "no!" before moving on to the next thing. Kids are the best.

The other highlight was singing/re-enacting all of Hamilton over the course of the weekend, but it's probably for the best that there is no record of that particular activity.

We also ate lots of awesome stuff, because that's what we do. My favorite was roasted corn from the farmers market:

And æbleskivers for breakfast:

The weekend flew by in about five seconds, but it was pure happiness to be able to spend it frolicking together.

And at least the pain of leaving was dulled, albeit ever so slightly, by the Milwaukee airport and its delightful post-security signage:

Road Trip!

This week I got to go to a site visit to our Rio Grande Valley region! I flew into San Antonio and met up with my friend/colleague, and we drove down to the valley together. I knew it was rural, but I didn't realize that meant you can drive a looooooooong time without passing a gas station or other place to use the bathroom - hence one of the first things I did there was pee behind a tree. My friend documented my triumphant post-pee return to the car (I'm bringing her a flower for pulling over):

After we got to the region, a lot of the staff laughed and told stories of running out of gas on that road because of not filling up their tank before heading out. The first night there we had dinner on the Rio Grande:

And we hung out with our colleague and her twin babies:

You can see the other baby in the background.

We ate a lot of great food while we were there, but we became particularly obsessed with Taco Palenque, a South Texas fast food taco chain with great (cheap!) tacos and a huge fresh salsa bar:

This fed 4 people and cost about $15.

We ended up eating three meals in a row there, and I have no regrets.

The twins' mom works with us, and her husband works for homeland security, so on our last day he took us out to the border.

It was a weird place to be - it was beautiful with the river and all the trees, but that beauty was criss-crossed by a ton of electrified, barbed-wire fences all over the place. It was cool to stand with a foot in each country, but also humbling how easy it was for us to hop back and forth over that arbitrary line while so many people die trying to cross it each year. When my (Black) colleague and I were driving back North we got waved through the checkpoint, but when she went through it earlier this year with a Latina friend they were stopped, searched, and grilled for a long time before being allowed to pass. I know I always have white privilege, but it was painfully acute there.

Wednesday after work we drove back to San Antonio and met up with another friend. We were only there for a night, but we ate some killer food.

Giant mangonada!

Elote! In a cup!

Thursday we worked from the San Antonio office for the day, and then after work drove to New Orleans (where my colleague lives) - it was an eight hour drive and we got there around 1 am, but it was worth it. We worked from the New Orleans office on Friday, and then had Friday night to wander around the city. We spent a while just walking around looking at all the beautiful houses and yards, and in Louis Armstrong park, which contains Congo Square. We eventually ended up at a place where they were grilling oysters in the street, so we got a big pan of oysters Rockefeller to share:

We ate a bunch of other great food that night, but those were definitely the best. I don't even usually like oysters, but I could have eaten that whole pan by myself.

This morning we went to an awesome breakfast spot, where we had PRALINE BACON and really excellent fried green tomatoes:

We also had a "french toast burrito" (a breakfast burrito where the tortilla had been given the french toast treatment beforehand), a cornbread waffle with sweet potato and roast duck on top, and an egg/cabbage/sausage extravaganza with an ocean of grits:

We walked around some more to try and walk off the food coma before heading to the airport to return home. It was a great week, and now I am done all my eating for the rest of April.

Opposites

Last week I was in Miami for work:

Yes, I'm in business casual on the beach - I only had a little bit of time between conference sessions!

Then this weekend I went to Boston for a work thing on Monday:

These are my feet, in the opposite of sand.

It was all good, though, because I got to see friends in Boston, and because you can't go sledding in sand!

Also it turns out sledding is really exhausting as an adult.

Lazy Thanksgiving

We spent the holiday in Chicago with Ben's family, eating and laying around not doing anything more exerting than going to the movies. I took today off work to hang out with my Chicago friend, and we went to Eataly because we love eating and heard they had a Nutella restaurant. That part did not disappoint:

Yum, Nutella on fancy brioche!

The rest of Eataly was a bit nuts, though. It made Whole Foods look like one of those crappy grocery stores that's also a gas station. Check out their "bulk foods" section:

Yes, those are precious little wicker baskets filled with not-actually-that-much grain/beans each. And yes, that is popcorn for $7 per pound you are seeing in the front there.

SEVEN DOLLARS A POUND.

Tomorrow we go to San Francisco for more friend-visiting and a wedding this weekend - it's also probably the only other place in the world where you can find $7/lb popcorn.

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.

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!

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...

Colorado!

After our mini college reunion on the cape last weekend, we headed to Colorado for a week of vacation. Happily two of the college friends who weren't able to make it to MA last weekend live in CO, so we could see them this week instead:

Yay, e-friends!

Ben's parents own a cabin in Winter Park which they graciously let us use - it's like living in a post card. Seriously, this is the view from the deck:

We spent most of the week reveling in doing not much of anything - just sleeping in, reading, watching movies, eating, and generally being layabouts. But we did get out a bit - Winter Park is right next to Rocky Mountain National Park, so we spent a day there driving along Trail Ridge Road and gawking at the views.

Park entrance

Ben at the bottom

Me at the top

Look how much snow is still there!

Panorama of the top Ben took with his fancy phone

Believe it or not, Ben even convinced me to go hiking one day. And I hardly complained at all.

Hard to complain when it's so pretty

Finally, Ben wants (and deserves) credit for capturing this enormous bee that was in the house:

We're both bummed to be going back to the real world tomorrow, but happily we've got more fun stuff coming up this summer (so many weddings!) to look forward to.

FUTURISTIC SKY TRAIN!!

I am in Madison, Wisconsin for a conference - I flew in this morning via a connection through the Detroit airport. The connection was tight so I had to hustle between opposite ends of the airport, but I wish I could have lingered because holy cow the Detroit airport is awesome! Check it out, they have a driverless robot train that runs inside the terminal:

Picture from wikipedia because I was running through the airport.

Then, to get between terminals, you go through this groovy underground tunnel that has undulating lights and music as you move through it:

Another google image search picture.

My flight home has a longer connection, and I am dorkily excited to hang out in the Detroit airport!

Tulsa

I just got back from four days in Tulsa, for a conference. The conference was fantastic, but I didn't really leave the hotel for most of the time I was there (partly because of all the conference events, and partly out of a fear of cricket swarms). I did manage to get one picture of my time in the Sooner State, though:

This was in the women's room at the airport.

Farewell, Paris of Oklahoma!

Cleaning out my wallet...

... and realizing I spend a lot of time in places besides Philly.

Clockwise from top left: Bay Area, Chicago, Boston, NYC, Philadelphia, San Diego

Also, why can't Philly get with the program and have a nice hard plastic pass, instead of having to mail out a new flimsy paper one each month?

Home at last!

After three long months away, we are finally back home in Philadelphia! The trip home got off to a great start when United printed my name in rhyming form on my baggage receipt:

Caro Charrow!

Then it got kind of weird when we went through security. Ben and I always opt out of the full body scanner, which usually isn't an issue. Except last night there were no women TSA agents to pat me down, so I had to wait a really long time for one to come from another part of the airport. While I was waiting, the guy who stood by the body scanner got really chatty with me (in a friendly way, not a creepy one) - he spoke four languages (English, French, German, and Japanese) and was eager to show off. I'm not sure which one was his first language but it wasn't English, which is relevant because some of his word choice later was a little odd.

After a while I asked him why he thought more women didn't join the TSA, and he had apparently given that question a great deal of thought. He said most passengers aren't "physically normal" - at which point he gestured to me - but are rather "very American" - at which point he used his hands to indicate having a really large belly. He then explained that when you pat down "an American like that" you have to "lift a lot of lard," and the vast majority of passengers are that type of American. "No one wants to be a lard-pusher for their job," but women find it more distasteful than men do. I'm not sure if that was actually funny or if Ben and I only thought it was because we were punchy from flying overnight, but we've spent most of our waking hours since then calling each other "lard pusher."

The other funny thing to emerge from our summer travels was my suitcase wheel. All summer I had found my rolling suitcase to be really heavy to pull, but I figured it was just because I had three months worth of things packed in there. A few times Ben said he thought it "sounded funny" as I was pulling it, but I always swore it was fine, just overloaded. After three months and countless miles of sweatily dragging my suitcase around (Philly -> Chicago -> San Francisco -> Denver -> San Francisco -> Boulder -> San Francisco -> Ann Arbor -> Charlotte -> San Diego -> Philly), I finally got around to looking underneath it.

Oops.

As far as we can tell, something had gotten stuck in one of the wheels and prevented it from turning. My relentless dragging around of the suitcase despite that fact ended up eventually grinding the wheel all the way flat. Here's another shot for perspective:

So, that lard-pusher Ben will never let me live this down so long as we're both alive. Oh well - all is good because we are finally home, and I had this waiting for me upon arrival:

One extra week of vacation! Where will I destroy my luggage next?

Ann Arbor!

Last week was my last in San Francisco; Friday morning we flew to Ann Arbor for our friends' wedding, and I just arrived in Charlotte for a week-long work conference. After that I'll meet up with Ben in San Diego for a few days of vacation before we finally return home to Philly!

We had thought we would spend some time exploring Ann Arbor this weekend, but a combination of rain and jet lag resulted in us only really leaving the hotel for the wedding itself. It was at the University of Michigan, which is home to the fanciest water fountains and coolest-named conference rooms I've ever encountered.

Marble and wood paneling!

WOLVERINE ROOM!

Also, because of this crazy sign in the hallway, I learned that the U of M was initially supposed to be a “Catholepistemiad,” which is an academy of universal knowledge. Vocabulary building!

The bride is even craftier than I am, as evidenced by - among many other impressive wedding crafts - this glorious cake topper:

The cake is giant lego pieces!

However, I did attempt to contribute my own nerdy craftiness in the form of the wedding sampler I made them:

10 points for whoever decodes the binary border first!

We would have liked to stay longer today to keep socializing, but the flight options out of Detroit are pretty limited so we had to head out bright and early. It seems the TSA knew I was coming, though, or at least knew where I was going - check out the liner in the security checkpoint trays:

Cool, but I can't say I'm thrilled to be associated with the TSA.

Two weeks and two cities until we're back home!