I love the beach. It is my happy place. Specifically, Pensacola Beach in Florida. I have been going with my family since I was 7. It has changed a lot, especially since Ivan and Opal, but it is still one of my favorite places in the world. I am going to be posting pictures for days, y’all should just prepare yourselves for the onslaught. I joined the rest of the world and got a DSLR for my Birthday! Don’t worry though, I will never give up crappy phone pictures. We had fantastic weather. September, barring hurricanes, is the BEST month for the beach. School is back in, so screaming children and douchey frat bros are mostly absent. It isn’t too hot and there is usually a good breeze. And the beaches are empty. We had maybe 3 other groups within 100 yards of us. I completely expect, wherever we go, for it to be absent of other people. Completely rational. But who cares, here are the two cutest puppies in the world.
Bean. She is out of breath b/c of the huge amount of spazzing she does when M comes home.
Mabel. Fat and sassy. Are you jealous of their awesome star blanket? It really adds something to the décor of my living room, I think.
Look who figured out bokeh on the new camera. Professional photographer right here. The last day we were there the water was so clear and flat! No waves to speak of. I have millions of more pictures of ocean, birds, flowers, grass, and me making funny faces which I will be sharing eventually. Y’all know me, I don’t want to raise standards of this blog by posting more than once a week. Tonight I have to go back to boot camp after a week and a half off. I’m going to die. Though I have been doing crazy boot camp in the back yard, courtesy of the 100+ yo tree that fell. Turns out cutting and moving a tree is really hard.
I've been a terrible poster lately. I kind of just feel blah and like I don't have a lot to say. Unless you want to talk about Harry Potter, in which case I'm there.
So instead, I thought I would just post about 10 pictures of the insane chinese dinner we had in Toronto. I just embraced my white girl-ness and just took pictures of everything. Everyone at my table thought this was funny. Along with my accent.
First up is the random meat course! There were like 4 types of meat. I didn't know what any of them were. Also, you know that Coke and wine are mine! I was so psyched for coke and alcohol, y'all don't even understand. I started stealing cokes from other tables by the end.
Course 2: Shrimp/Crab? Poof! There was rice in there. It was not terrible.
Course 3: scallops and some veggies. That is a little fried rice noodle nest and is actually really tasty!
Course 4: Shark Fin Soup
I tried this b/c it is a delicacy and super expensive and special occasion food(for example the last time my MIL had this was at her wedding 40 yrs ago!) but I felt really terrible about it. I find the fishing of shark fins to be pretty unnecessary and cruel. I know I also eat meat and dairy, so it isn't like I am being un-hypocritical here. I just had a moral/ethical problem with it.
For the record, it wasn't very good. It tasted like ham/chicken broth but with a gelatinous texture. The texture really grossed me out and I am not someone bothered by mouthfeel (which is a totally gross and awesome word used in my cooking classes that I try to use all the time.)
Course 5: mushrooms. I don't even know. A lot of these courses that look like they have this kind of clear/shiny sauce taste the same to me. I am not a huge fan of the sauce flavor, so it all tasted kind of vaguely the same.
At one point during this course one of my table mates turns to me and says "Do you know what you are eating?" Me: "Oh, God. What? Don't tell me!" Her: "Fungus!" Oh, yeah that's fine. I knew that.
Course 6: Duck
Yes, we are still eating.
Course 7: Lobster and crab.
Tasty, but let me tell you how difficult it is to crack a lobster claw WITH CHOPSTICKS! The entire table was entertained by my efforts. Finally they told me you are allowed to just pick it up and eat it that way.
Courses 8,9,10
Cake-which was amazing and I started looking around at other tables to eat theirs
In the background you can see rice in a lotus leaf and noodles.
Then it was the traditional Chinese dessert of bean paste. It is like a black bean soup with sugar. It is fine, but it is not dessert!
It took roughly 5 hours to eat all this!! I was exhausted from eating. I took pics of everything b/c I find it so interesting and SO different from my regular life. I just embrace not knowing what is going on or what I'm eating. I've learned what to eat and what not to eat!
Anyone had a crazy dinner like this? Have you ever eaten for 5-6 hours?? What is the weirdest food you have ever tried?
ETA-I took pictures of the food for the entire table (10ish people.) So each plate for each course was a very small amount of food. One shrimp, 2 small pieces of duck, etc. Each course was about the size of 1/2 my fist or so. Christina asked how we could eat so much! It is a looooot of food, but spread out over hours (and hours and hours) and in small increments. It is like going to a party and just snacking the entire time. It was still quite a bit of food and I was pretty over it by course 3!
Just got back from a very quick and busy trip to Toronto! We went for M's Chinese side reunion. This side is enormous! I think there were about 70+ Chens all over the place. It is very entertaining to be the whitest white girl at a Chinese reunion. Even better, they all found my southern accent hilarious.
I will recap more later. Mostly it is pictures of food. We had a 9 course Chinese dinner one night that lasted, no joke, 5 hours. We were taking walk breaks in b/t courses. That is just too long to sit and eat! We were so busy. I don't feel like I have slept.
Enjoying a nice Pinot at Happy Hour somewhere on the Harbor. Then we went to play mini golf! Because we are the two nerdiest nerds who ever nerded,
Also, I'm surprisingly good at mini golf. It doesn't really make any sense.
After mini golf we wandered around and eventually ate somewhere lackluster. Oh well. At least it was pretty.
Michael decided to take pictures of me while we waited for our food.
I got tired of it after awhile.
(Also pictured: HUMIDITY)
Here is the secret to enjoying a touristy beach area: GO EARLY. We ate dinner each night at like 5-5:30 (sadly, no senior citizen discounts were granted.) First, everyone is still at the beach. Second, HAPPY HOUR. If you go after 6 there is at least an hour wait.
We went to McGuire's which was having 2 for 1 special. I mean, obviously I had to get two margaritas, right? That's just math.
Ate some delicious mahi mahi and the world's most baconiest baked potato.
So yes, I may have gained 2-3 lbs in Florida. WORTH IT.
Here are a few pics. We took zero of us together, so it is mostly pictures of me drinking to be honest.
Beach! As you can see there was a bit of seaweed. Y'all seaweed freaks me out. I just can't stand it touching me.
Oh my gosh you guys. We went to a restaurant on the harbor to kill some time before we could get into the condo. But, it had to be somewhere dog friendly b/c we took our puppies with us. Yes, we are those people. I love taking them with us on vacation. I researched and found a place that would let us sit outside with them. They even brought out doggy bowls and treats!
So we are there, just going to have a late lunch and waste some time. Our waiter takes our order and as he is leaving just lets it drop that, oh by the way, we have bottomless champagne FOR $7 for the next two hours. SOLD. I'm pretty sure that sitting in the sun, on the water, with my husband and dogs, drinking bottomless champagne is my very own personal heaven. I want to live there forever.
After refilling my glass for the eleventh time I say "oh, why don't you just leave the bottle and save yourself a trip!"
AND HE DID
IT WAS AMAZING
Unsurprisingly, I had to take a little nap when we got to our condo. The restaurant clearly underestimated my ability to get as much as possible for very little money.
Saturday I will be headed south to the beach for a long weekend with my favorite husband and puppies. So excited! M and I rarely go on vacation with just us. We usually go with friends/work, or one of our families. My parents always go to the beach for a week and we usually tag along. This will mark the 3rd time in 8 yrs we have gone on a trip by ourselves!
ahhh. Heaven. I can't wait. I may be a little quiet for a few days. I've put a time limit on internet time for us on vacation!
Boot camp will consist of: walking from condo to the beach; frolicking in the waves; many, many bicep curls of margaritas, snarfing seafood.
maybe that will be my next blog name. It is certainly accurate.
I AM GRUMPY ABOUT STUPID STUFF AND I WANT TO YELL ABOUT IT.
--My back is killing me right now. I haven't been sleeping well, either. So less sleep=more pain. Ugh. It isn't so much the pain as it is the anxiety-like I will never, ever be comfortable again. It is completely irrational, but the longer I am uncomfortable, the more hysteria rises. Pain makes your brain process things incorrectly.
--This one won't make sense to non-dog people or people with actual kids: I thought my Bean died yesterday. We have this enormous leaf pile where our yard guy just puts all the leaves (our backyard is huge and mostly forest.) So earlier I had seen her emerge from under this pile, but in a weird way. not up through the leaves, just like out a tunnel. I don't even know. I called for her to come in and she didn't, so of course I start worrying. I decide she is trapped in the leaf pile and smothering. So I'm freaking out, trying to dig through like feet of leaves convinced I'm just going to find her body. My dog died traumatically in my arms 2 years ago, and I clearly still have issues. Eventually I unearthed her and she was fine, but I was a mess.
--My husband has been working too damn much lately and it is annoying me. Also, it isn't a good idea to bitch to your husband about how his working so much is negatively affecting you. Just a helpful tip. Turns out, he isn't very sympathetic to my pain. Can you even believe that?
Ok. I'm hoping by just ranting I will get it out of my system. I can objectively look at it and realize none of these things are big deals and I am a little crazy.
I love Chicgao! I'm really not a city vacation person. I would rather sit on a beach drinking. The sitting part is pretty non-negotiable. But this year has been all about the city vacations. We have actually gone more places this year than we have in the previous 7 yrs of our marriage.
I'm not going to do a day by day recap b/c I'm lazy and easily distracted. Mostly just pictures and commentary.
Monday
Flew out bright and early and got to Chicago at 11 am or so. Checked in, etc. M had to check into his conference and then had a resident meeting (where he did NOT win a free Ipad), so we had lunch and split up. We went to Billy Goat's Tavern which is under Michigan Ave in a sketchy parking garage. It is famous though because of the SNL skit
which you should really watch b/c it is classic and hysterical. The owner was exactly like this. I got the death glare and "No coke, PEPSI. No fries, cheeps." It was a fun experience, but not amazing. Just a good, greasy cheezeborger and cheeps.
Then I went shopping and M went back to the hotel for the rest of the day. We went out to dinner with like 15 of us to an Italian place that I can't remember and didn't take a picture of. But it was good.
Tuesday
My husband is seriously adorable, y'all. He kills me. I swear, he was the Social Chair of this whole trip for all 20 or so residents. He picked where we were going, got tickets, arranged everything. He was on top of it. Which was huge for me b/c I HAAAATE doing things in groups where no one can make a decision and we stand around for an hour only to go to the first place.
During the day I went back to Michigan Ave to shop. I have my priorities. M went to the conference.
That night, M had planned and procured tickets for everyone to go to Second City. There were 24 or so of us. M kept calling and adding people-we got a group rate there were so many of us and Social Chair was on it. We had gone when we were there in Dec and had a great time, so he organized a second trip.
Another place we found last trip was Ra. Y'all. This place. We love it. They have a 3-7pm happy hour with sake for $2 (!!), $4 martinis, and so many half price appetizers and rolls. I can't emphasize how much we can eat and drink there for like $30. I drink the lemon drop martini and it is so tasty (and seemingly devoid of alcohol.)
Both of these are mine. Yes, I order them 2 at a time. there are a lot of us and we were on a time constraint. I took pictures of the entire group doing sake bombs, but it occurs to me that these doctors may not want sake bomb pics out there. The staff of this restaurant was awesome b/c we were loud and drinky.
Then Second City! It was great. They did a hysterical Obama skit to open. You can't take pictures of the show, but I took one:
I had to. Come on.
Michael and I at Second City. And an attending creeping on us, obvs. Fun story: this is the guy who did my CT guided SI joint injections (basically he puts needles in your spine, shoots you into the CT to see if they are in the right place and then adjusts. It is almost as fun as it sounds.) so this guy has just straight up seen my ass. Awkward. I was glad the injections had occurred before I saw how much fun this guy could have. He is hilarious.
We somehow ended up at a bar with karaoke.
Other guys started hitting on my husband.
they both would kill me if they saw me posting this. We won't tell them. No names are named, so it is fine.
Then things get a little fuzzy, so I'm sure we went back to the hotel and crashed.
This is long and I'm tired of typing-so posting for now!
M is on call tonight for the county hospital-he has been swamped. He has seen almost as many patients from 8pm-11pm as he sees on an average 16 hr shift. They are getting patients from all over the state from the tornadoes. He says it is some of the worst trauma cases he has ever seen.
The tornado missed the hospital/downtown by a few miles. I can't imagine what would have happened if it had hit the hospital. All those brick buildings at the forefront are hospitals. Our house is about 3 miles due East of downtown.
I swear, this weather has been insane. The tornado sirens started going off at about 5:30am. About 20 mins after M's pager went off...even though he wasn't on call last night. So I basically haven't been to sleep yet. Soon! Ours was mostly strong wind and rain and nothing too bad, thank God.
This is the flooding in my hometown right now.
My parents' house has about 6" now of standing water in the basement. The entirely finished, carpeted, and furnished basement. They have been non-stop wet vacuuming up the water, but it just keeps coming. This is after my dad has built drainage ditches all around the house, built sidewalks to divert water, and put down rocks and various other tricks to keep this from happening. It has never been like this before.
A town in AR about 20 mins from where I went to college had crazy tornadoes.
Ugh. I just feel awful for my friends and family in AR and worried about the storms on their way to us. I am a complete non-reactor to storms. Thunderstorms and tornado sirens are just part of spring. I don't take cover or worry. But this is worse than I have ever seen a season in my 20+ years of knowing wth was going on.
Please pray, or think good thoughts, or send love for all those affected.
Husband is on home call tonight, so he is in the other room occasionally reading CTs.
I'm watching a commercial for Oreos. I yell at him from the living room "You're my Oreo Fudge Cream. But not in a dirty way." We like to call each other whatever random thing we've just heard, especially if it is rude or funny. He called me a coronal reformat earlier today. And then giggled uncontrollably.
Then I hear in response: "Hey Dr. Whoever, this is radiology..."
Got a few pictures from Bhavik. He and M had an epic romance on their month away. He seriously texts more sweet things to B than to me. Joking texts...
Capital Building
It was fricking cold. And windy, obviously.
I hadn't seen him in 3 weeks so I got a little handsy. I didn't know Bhavik was taking this which explains why I'm climbing M.
Another sneaky shot. We had been kind of short with each other that morning, so we were talking and making up . And by making up I clearly mean 'M apologized for being wrong.'
I promise these are the last DC pics. You will get Chicago pictures next month! I swear we have traveled more this year than our entire 6 years together combined. Next month is also M's birthday and our 8 year anniversary. Dang, 8 years sounds like a long time. We are old!
I have a lot of pictures, mostly of random nature.
Random high school band playing in front of the World War II monument. I totally got choked up. I also cried at the Vietnam Wall. Oh man, that one was sad. Seeing the flowers, notes, and obituaries broke my heart. My dad was in the Army during Vietnam (he didn't go, he was training at the tail end of it) and it made me even more thankful.
We did a lot of fun things. We went to the Museum of Natural History which has all kinds of fun dinosaur bones ( a la Night at the Museum) and various other amazing things. I touched a meteorite that was over a billion years old. A BILLION. It was super fun for a museum.
The Hope Diamond. Hard to get a good picture of b/c it is under a mile of glass and rotates. M wouldn't buy it for me. Cheapskate.
I also went to the Smithsonian art museum by myself. It was amazing. I mean, yes, there were hundreds of landscapes of the French and English countryside by people I have never heard of. But there was quite a bit of Renaissance art including the only da Vinci painting in the US. I saw so many famous paintings and sculptures. I don't really have pictures b/c I think amateur pictures of art are lame. It isn't going to capture the piece. So I tried to just absorb. Picasso, Renoir, Rembrandt, Matisse, Monet, Van Gogh, etc. It was like being in history! I felt that way all week-like I was in history.
We also went to the zoo. Zoos are our thing. We go anytime we go to a new city. It was freeeezing, but we soldiered on. Apparently, it was too fricking cold for a bunch of the animals, too.
There is a huge line of these ropes going across several little islands of land across the zoo. They were out and walking across and playing for quite a long time. Luckily none pooped on me. I stayed out of the splash zone.
The lions were great. There were about 5-6 cubs running around playing and the dad just looking bored. The cubs were so adorable--all wrasslin' and rolling and rough housing. The moms would come break it up and they would just start right back up.
I'm a fat panda. I like bamboo.
The Cherry Blossom Festival started our last weekend there. When M signed up, I was hoping they would be blooming while we were there. Yes, I'm a nerd. It had been pretty cold so I didn't think they would be very good. Happily, they were out quite a bit. They are mostly around the tidal basin of the Jefferson memorial and were beautiful!
Here are just a few of the like 100 pictures I took of flowers.
So so many pictures of cherry blossoms. You're welcome. This concludes all the pictures I took in DC. There are more with my actual face in another camera.
I'm not really a city vacation person. I'm more of a lay on the beach drinking margaritas type person. But, it was really great. The metro system was so convenient. It would blow my mind that I could just hop on and go anywhere, and those places were amazing! Walk off the metro and you are 100 yards from the Capital and Washington Monument. I'm not used to being able to just walk everywhere either.
We went so many places. The first Saturday I was there it was a balmy 62 and super windy but sunny. I wore a long sleeve shirt and fleece. Locals were all in tank tops and shorts. We walked around the National Mall which is the area where all the monuments are. It is this enormous yard almost where the Capital, Washington monument, Lincoln, all the Smithsonian museums, everything.
I have so many pictures, y'all don't even understand.
Everything was starting to bloom
Bhavik bombed our self portrait. But he took a lot of pictures of us, so I forgive him.
Lincoln
All I have of us is self portraits. Bhavik and his sweet DSLR took actual pics of us.
I'm looking at my pictures and realizing I have a lot of pictures of random things. Like art. And the Hope Diamond. And monkeys.
