Conditioning is extra fun here...

I was walking past this square in Philly, which is raised slightly above street level, and saw all these heads bopping up and down. I went to check it out and discovered a human-sized game board and a handful of high-schoolers doing plyos on the big blue checkers. In DC, we get to run stairs on the Lincoln Memorial... but this would be a pretty great place to do conditioning too!

City Hall, Philadelphia

I felt bad for not taking any pictures in Philadelphia, so took this one with my phone. Nothing special, just an "I was here" shot.

Success!

Scott's surgery went swimmingly, and he is now peacefully sleeping off the general anesthesia.

WonderProm photos!

Here are some photos from the party Scott and I attended on Sunday night. A HUGE thanks to Jerry (below) for being the official Prom Photographer.


And many thanks to our hott hosts, Donovan and Sara.


Here's Kenneth, who stole the show in his vinyl pants and (homemade) (fake) fur coat.

All the girls...


All the boys...


Scott and I


You can see all the photos here!

So easy to wake up on Sunday, so hard to wake up on Monday

Pretty fun weekend! Spent several hours on Saturday down by the Reflecting Pool playing in the Winter League frisbee tournament. We managed to lose all of our games, but I had a good time - especially after the ground thawed so my cleats could grab on to the mud. Here's a picture of my team, Minimum Flair. They're terrific.



I only played three and a half games, but I was beat by the time I got home. I got cleaned up and played Scrabble with Scott, had dinner and checked in with the parents and was in bed around 10.

Somehow, Scott and I were bright-eyed and bushy-tailed at 5:30 on Sunday morning, so we made eggs and were eating them over a Scrabble game by 6. After our second game, we talked about going toa climbing gym out in Rockville. Paul drove us all the way out there, but we couldn't find the gym anywhere, nor were they answering the phone. We decided they had closed due to the snowy weather and accompanied Paul on his REI shopping trip. I got a nice lime-green rain jacket on sale and some socks and a lantern top for my Nalgene.

We got home, started another game of Scrabble, got dolled up and headed south to a Prom party. Cheesy photos, top hats, a Prom King and Queen, it was great. We taxied home, finished the game and went to bed.

Two nights ago I dreamt that I was talking to the Devil, in the form of a thick-ish woman wearing spandex. Last night I dreamt that my bike was stolen, and I was VERY relieved to wake up and realize that I still have my lovely, zippy, yellow bike.

CBS Press Release

It's official! We just got a $7 million investment! Here's the Reuter's story.

Winter is back!

New Moon event!

New Moon (the very cool girls' magazine I worked for when I was younger) is having an open house in DC on Wednesday, March 21st! They just published an issue filled with girls' letters to Congress, so this open house is to celebrate girls' voices in the political arena. It's going to be held at Busboys and Poets from 4-6 pm.

More info here.

Read some of the letters here.

Make-a-Tape

I'm part of a pretty cool music club. There are 24 of us in it, and every two weeks, one person makes a mix and mails it out to everyone else in the group. It's my turn to send out the next batch of CDs, and I'm pretty excited about the songs I assembled. The theme is Spring Break - things that remind me of warm weather and beaches.

The playlist:
1. Peter Gunn Mambo by Jack Costanzo & His Orchestra (Ultra-Lounge Vol. 2: Mambo Fever)
2. Wimoweh by Yma Sumac (Ultra-Lounge Volume One: Mondo Exotica)
3. Chica Chica Bun Chic by Carmen Miranda (The Brazilian Tornado)
4. Olerê Camará by Alcione (O Samba Brazil Classics 2)
5. Ask Me Why I Run by Calypso Mama (Calypso Mama With The Lad Richards Orchestra)
6. Country Girl by Mighty Sparrow (First Flight: Early Calypsos from the Emory Cook Collection)
7. Campanitas De Cristal by Olga Guillot (The Originals - Olga Guillot In Concert)
8. It's Now or Never by Elvis Presley (The Number One Hits)
9. La Verdolaga by P18 (Urban Cuban)
10. Ticket To Ride by Brazilian Tropical Orchestra (The Beatles In Bossa Nova)
11. La Cotorrita by Tania Libertad (Costa Negra)
12. Absolutely Cuckoo by The Magnetic Fields (69 Love Songs, Pt. 1)
13. Somewhere Over the Rainbow/What a Wonderful World by Israel Kamakawiwo'ole
14. West of Samoa by Speedy West & Jimmy Bryant (The Slaughter Rule)
15. Across the Sea (Ukulele Version) by Sean Fournier (Put the World on Stop)
16. The Island Where I Come From by Laurie Anderson (Life On A String)
17. Obsesión by Aventura (We Broke The Rules)
18. Ambiance tropical by Decibel (Section Zouk All Stars vol. 2)
19. Jumbie by Black Lyrics (Hot Caribbean Hits)
20. Blue by 3 Canal (Hot Caribbean Hits)
21. Wonderful Night by Fatboy Slim
22. Dance With Me by Hepcat
23. Aue (Wail) by The Tuis (Pacifica)

I'm happy to make a few extra copies. Let me know if you'd like one!

Also, I included a recipe with the CDs that I mailed out. Jay was making this soup while I was working on the mix, and it was too fitting (and tasty) to leave out.

Caribbean Shrimp & Vegetable Soup

Prepare a feast for the senses. This rich, aromatic seafood soup features the dazzling colors of the Caribbean and exhilarating tropical flavors of lime, coconut, chile, and cilantro to tingle your palate as well. Serve with a multicolored salad and Anadama Bread (with its molasses-flavored hint of the tropics) for an exciting Daily Special.

Using peeled and deveined shrimp makes it a quick dish to assemble. Unpeeled shrimp take a little longer to prepare, but the shells can be used to enhance the flavor of the stock.

Serves 6
Yields 8 cups
Total time: 30 minutes

1 cup chopped onions
2 garlic cloves, minced or pressed
1 minced fresh green chile
2 teaspoons grated fresh ginger root
1 tablespoon canola or other vegetable oil
¼ teaspoon turmeric
½ teaspoon dried thyme
4 cups vegetable stock
1 cup peeled and diced sweet potatoes
1 cup chopped tomatoes
1 cup diced red and/or yellow bell peppers
10 to 12 ounces fresh or frozen small peeled shrimp
1 tablespoon chopped fresh cilantro
1 to 2 tablespoons fresh lime juice
1 cup reduced-fat or regular coconut milk
Salt and ground black pepper to taste
A few fresh cilantro sprigs

Combine the onions, garlic, chile, ginger root, and oil in a soup pot, cover, and sauté on medium heat for about 5 minutes, until the onions begin to soften. Add the turmeric and thyme and continue to sauté for about 5 minutes, stirring occasionally, until the onions are translucent.

Add the stock and sweet potatoes, cover, and bring to a boil. Lower the heat, cover, and simmer for 3 to 4 minutes, until the potatoes are just tender. Add the tomatoes and bell peppers and cook for another 3 to 4 minutes. Add the shrimp, cilantro, lime juice, and coconut milk and simmer until the shrimp just turn pink. Season to taste with salt and pepper. Top with fresh cilantro sprigs.

Nutrition info:
Per 12.5 oz serving: 128 calories, 12.2 g protein, 6.6 g fat, 18.3 g carbohydrates, 2.8 g saturated fatty acids, 89 mg cholesterol, 248 mg sodium, 2.3 total dietary fiber

Good news!

Scott just got a phone call from a professor at UC Davis telling him he's been accepted! And they're offering funding!

Now you see it, now you don't!

Winter is gone! Suddenly, it's nice out! It's over 40°F when I wake up in the morning! It rained quite a bit last night, which did a number on the snow and ice and grit in the roads. They're still messy, but much nicer than last week.

Scott and I managed to have an incredibly lazy long weekend, barely moving from the couch. We went to CrossFit on Sunday morning (which was fantastic), made carrot hummus and parsnip cake, and brought them to Peter and Bethany's for dinner. We played Scrabble and bought plane tickets to Las Vegas for our climbing/raftinghttp://www2.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gif adventure. I finished my book (The Manticore, by Robertson Davies) and did my taxes.

Fun stuff this week:
Tuesday - CrossFit, which was almost as much fun as Sunday's class.
Wednesday - Coppi's, for a belated Valentine's Day dinner.
Thursday - Ultimate pick-up
Friday - Twelfth Night. One of my teammates is performing in it!

Introducing the book.

Snow and lots and lots of ice.

DC got some snow early in the week. Not a ton, but it was wet and heavy and hard to clean up. The federal government shortened their hours, schools closed, etc. That's fine, we're a southern city, people freak out over snow. But I'm impressed by the city's lack of effort in cleaning things up. Many of the side streets (including Delafield) never got plowed. Even New Hampshire Ave wasn't plowed! This makes for slow, annoying, potentially dangerous biking. With so much snow layered up on the side of the traffic lane, there's no bike lane. So we have to ride in the traffic lane, which annoys the drivers, who do stupid things to try to pass us. Ug. Scott and I bused to work most of the week, but it's an hour commute. Biking only takes 20 minutes. It does, however, make me appreciate (1) The New Yorker and (2) the fact that DC is very bikable the rest of the year. It might get as warm as 41°F today, so I'm crossing my fingers for nicer roads and wider lanes on Monday.

Travels!

Today is incredibly lazy. Our Ultimate game was canceled, because the field is too icy to play on. Scott and I got to play two games of Scrabble this morning, and I completed a Thursday NYT crossword, mostly by myself. We're heading out to a party tonight, but for now I'm perfectly happy to sit at home and do whatever I feel like doing.

That said, I've spent the last week planning a pretty busy spring, that I'm pretty darn excited about. A brief run-down...

February 27-March 1: Philly with Scott. (Not a super fun trip, as he's getting surgery.)
[Edit] Scott says it's going to be lots of fun. We're going up a day early, so we'll get to spend some time hanging out in the city with his friend Erica.

March 28-29: NYC with Scott, to see his sister Julie perform in Prometheus Bound.

March 30-April 1: Fredericksburg, for the first tournament of the season! I'll be playing with a women's team, which I'm looking forward to.

April 4-18: Italy, for Paganello (an incredible Beach Ultimate tournament) and a tournament in Rome, and lots of other traveling around with Scott, Jay, Paul and Bucci.

April 21-26: Tampa, for the Electric Sheep Spring Break! A company meeting, really, but we get to stay at beach houses, so it's kind of like spring break.

May 11-13: Wellesley (maybe) for the alum game.

May 25-28: Denver, for Nate and Jess's wedding.

June 25-July 4: Grand Canyon rafting trip with Scott and his parents.
[Edit] We're flying out on Friday so we can spend the weekend rock climbing before the rafting trip!!

Puff and Shackleton

The latest cute picture from my mom!

I've got nothing to complain about.

From my mom: "The Duluth school children got to hear the wonderful news this morning - no school because of the frigid cold. The temperatures this morning were -35 with a wind chill of -50."

Here in DC, it's a balmy 14 degrees. I pulled out the big guns for my ride to work this morning: my double-layer windproof polar fleece pants and an extra pair of polar fleece gloves.

Anxiously awaiting spring.

Long underwear, long days.

This week was cold. I wore long underwear on the ride to work and to bed at night. Any given twenty-minute bike ride ended with frozen, stinging block-of-ice hands. It was a week of highlights and lowlights:

Last Saturday, I finished Scott’s quilt! I had finished just the top of it over Christmas, so I trekked out to my aunt and uncle’s house to do the actual quilting – sew the three layers together. My aunt has a really fancy sewing machine, which was fun to use and which I fortunately did not break.

Saturday evening was the Apple Gala (get it?) at Delafield. We had people over and served them as many apple dishes as we could cook up. (Someone brought us 2 big boxes of apples for MLK, but not nearly enough of them got eaten that weekend!) Apples and potatoes, spinach salad with apples, sliced apples with cheese, apple crisp, apple cake, apple sauce. Good times.

I baked an apple pie on Sunday and brought it to Paul’s house where Aaron, Jesseca, Ann, Towzer and Paul and I played board games, including Carcassone, which I thoroughly enjoyed. Aaron was kind enough to post some pictures in his write-up of the event.

Monday morning I got a sad e-mail from one of my friends. I wanted to help, but relationship counseling is not one of my fortes, and I didn’t really know what to say… which was frustrating. The previous day was the first anniversary of the death of one of my friend’s fathers. A melancholy time overall.

Tuesday I got to go to CrossFit. I love it. I got home, cleaned up and met two potential housemates: Chelsea and Elizabeth. After an hour of tea and conversation in the kitchen, they headed home, and the rest of us decided to invite them to come live here. Happily, they accepted! Sadly, Elizabeth will only be here for about six weeks – she’s waiting for paperwork to allow her to work in Tanzania for a year.

Wednesday, I announced to the Sheep that our next company meeting will be in Tampa, Florida. Jean-Ann had done a huge amount of legwork and found a beautiful pair of beach houses for all of us to stay in. I’m pretty excited.

Ann organized a lovely “ladies night” at Mama Ayesha’s for Wednesday evening. Michelle, LT, Jesseca, Alexia, Ann, Ashley and I managed to talk about Ultimate just part of the time, and let the conversation run elsewhere over the rest of the evening.

I worked from home on Thursday, baked apple bread, went for a run, and metro-ed down to DCA to meet Scott’s flight. Absolutely wonderful to finally have him home.

On Thursday evening, Chelsea and Elizabeth moved in, and we had a nice big house dinner… with apple cake for dessert of course.

Friday was finally warmer – in the upper 30s! After work, I headed up to Tryst for a surprise celebration of Bethany’s last day of work at the I Do Foundation. Some tea with Scott before bed (because it’s still not THAT warm out) rounded out the week.