Coast-to-Coast and Back Again

October was a crazy-busy month of travelling!  First we headed to Pennsylvania for our dear friends' wedding which was just so perfectly them.  It was held in the small-town brewery where they got engaged with just a small group of family and friends.  We were so lucky to get to share their wedding day with them.  Look how happy they are, it makes my heart skip a beat.

We spent a few extra days in State College where we caught up with friends, closed down a bar after a funk show, and remembered the burning sensation of breathing in 20 degree weather.  During the day, I was able to meet up with some of my ongoing collaborators back in the anthropology department.  Geoff flew back to San Antonio with some equipment they are lending me for our newly funded research (YAY!) and got only a moderate amount of questioning from the skeptical TSA agents.

While Geoff was on his way back to balmy Texas, I flew to Stephenson, WA for a pair of conferences focusing on novel techniques in statistical genetics and genetic epidemiology.  The conferences were jam packed but educational and the surroundings - located on the Columbia River Gorge couldn't be beat.  I even ran into a friend from grad school that I didn't even know would be there.

Between prepping for my presentations at the conferences and all the travel, I was ready for a break.  My mom flew out and met me in Portland for a very relaxing three days.  The only real plans we had were to eat at some food carts and for me to get my first pedicure.  (I've sort of avoided them because I was afraid I would love them too much and want to get them all the time.  I was right!)

Because my family loves museums, we had to check out the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry where we happened upon a kids chemistry lab (they were doing flame tests!), the AAA's exhibit on race which features several anthropologists I know, and the very fun Grossology exhibit where we played a life-size game of Operation.

Of course, when in Portland, you must have Voodoo doughnuts and Stumptown coffee.  Being the loving women we are, we each flew home with a box of maple-bacon glazed doughnuts as carry-ons.

Our last night in town, we had drinks on the 30th floor of a large pink building (I think it was a bank?) and watched the sun set.  It was the perfect ending to a relaxing weekend with mom!

Long Weekend in Dallas

Sorry I've been quiet around here lately, I've been traveling!  Two weeks ago, we met my parents in Dallas for a long weekend.

We went to the JFK museum, but the real draw was the temporary Chihuly exhibit at the Dallas Arboretum.  

Dale Chihuly is an amazingly talented glass artist whose work my family has enjoyed for quite a while.  I've seen several of his large-scale works indoors but this was totally new environment and the first time I've seen so many works in one location.

Some of my favorites were positioned in water, this grouping made me think of Venetian Carnival boats (or what I imagine those are like). 

The glass works have a wonderfully organic feel and the color pops like flowers against the drab colors of Texas in August.  I really can't say anything better than what you can see in this small selection of the 200 photos I took.

If you live near or are visiting Dallas before November 5, check it out!  Admission is only $5 during August, but go early because it is HOT!

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas (inside)

The only gingerbread I had ever made before this year was graham crackers and store-bought frosting, but I set out to make one completely from scratch. I mentioned this to Veronica and Mike on our trip back from Thanksgiving and we all started brain storming what sort of things we could make - trailers, lighthouses, outhouses, post offices....

In the end, Mike stuck with the unconventional theme and made a replica of the Alamo (see also, their chicken coop).

I went a more conventional route, but I love it.

We used a rather bland gingerbread recipe so when I made the leftover dough into gingerbread men, I followed Veronica's request for chocolate gingerbread men by dunking them in ganache.

They didn't all make it out of the ganache unscathed.

With the house smelling like Christmas, it was time to get the decorations up.  I've been slowly growing our Christmas decorations over the years and they are almost all handmade.  I decided to add a pompom garland to the tree this year following the instructions from One Pearl Button.  I used some scrap yarn I had lying around so I ended up with a pink, blue, green, and silver garland.  A bit unconventional, but I like it.  Plus, the non-Christmasy colors mean it can reappear for other festive events.  Birthday garland anyone?

For the past five years, I have made a photo ornament of Geoff and I. This reindeer is for 2011 - just waiting for a nice picture of the two of us.  Here's the whole tree:

I made a few more decorations with scrap yarn.  I get my craftiness from my mom who made all of the decorations for she and dad's first several trees. A few years ago, she made me a set of red crochet snowflakes like the ones that decorated their trees thirty years ago.  I had more than would fit on my tree to I made another garland to show them off.

This is all the snow we will be getting in Texas this year - highs in the 60s and 70s all week!  With the house decorated, I wanted to make a little something for my desk at work.  I used this tutorial that I spotted on Craftzine.  So easy.  So quick.  So cute.

I've also been hard at work making Christmas gifts. I'll be sharing most of them after Christmas (so as not to spoil the surprises), but I did want to point any knitters out there still looking for last minute gifts towards this scarflet. I knit it up in some luxurious Malabrigo Rasta in about three hours. It is sooooo cute in this yarn that it was really hard for me to give up. They had a gorgeous mustard skein too that I am thinking about heading back and getting. Maybe a hat for me?

Christmas is also a great excuse to get out of the house and spend time with friends. We went to the McNay Museum of Modern Art (which is just around the corner from us) to see their Nightmare before Christmas exhibit last week and this weekend we attended a Christmas party at the head of my department's house and then donned our Christmas jammies for another party hosted by some friends we met through Veronica.  And now it is just six days until Christmas!!!

Our Night in the Museum

Last weekend, Geoff, Veronica, Mike and I spent the night at the museum.  Well, actually, we spent part of the evening at the Witte's Cocktails and Culture event.  About once a month they have a themed evening of food, drinks, music and fun interactive activities.  This month's theme was "Primal Instincts."

We got to throw atl-atls (spear-throwers) at a plastic deer.  Based on our aggregate skills, we would have been stone-age vegetarians.  With enough practice, Geoff managed to hit the target, but it was with the side of spear.

Mike did succeed in making fire so we would be able to roast our gathered tubers.  Whenever someone got a spark, the survivalist instructor would blow it into a nest of dried tinder until it flamed up like something something out of Quest for Fire.  It was quite dramatic.

Up next month is "Buccaneer's Ball."  Veronica and I got in the spirit a bit early.  We're loving getting to know San Antonio better.  With Geoff back in school, we're both really busy, but there are lots of fun ways to take a break around town.

Visitors Brave the Heat

My parents and grandma braved the intense Texas summer to come visit us two weeks ago.  They drove down so they could stop and see family in Oklahoma and the next day we put them back in the car to drive back up to Austin.

We hit up IKEA in the morning for supplies for a fantastic trundle bed I'll show you how to make very soon.  Then we headed for the famous Salt Lick restaurant for BBQ.

The food was delicious.  We shared a combo platter with a bit of each of their types of open-pit cooked meats and the special - a brisket burger smothered in queso and roasted peppers. Messy, but oh so good.  Grandma, in her white shirt, spilled not a drop of sauce.  The rest of us were not so neat.

After lunch, we headed to the LBJ Presidential library which had quite a bit of biographical information, but also a great exhibit of the radical movements of the '60s.  It is on the University of Texas campus and free to visit so I highly recommend a stop if you are in the area.

The next stop of our jam-packed day was the Collings guitar factory outside of Austin.  They only offer tours on Friday afternoons, but if you can make it there, it is incredible.

Each guitar takes about three months to make, not including the careful drying and rehumidifying of the wood.  One very experienced man matches the front and back boards based on their sound quality before the blanks are cut. Just prior to final assembly, the pieces are returned to him for "voicing" and he shaves off minute layers from the inside of the guitar top.

In addition to making just 1200 guitars each year, the factory produces 600 mandolins.  The craftsmanship is easy to appreciate even for someone like me who knows nothing about guitars.

While we were finishing up the tour, Grandma was out in the lobby chatting with Bill Collings.  The owner was waiting to see how our tour went.

After dinner, we headed for the Congress Avenue bridge to see more than a million bats emerging to feast on the plentiful South Texas insects.  This spectacle goes on for the better part of half an hour.  If you have never seen this, I can't recommend it highly enough.  It is a bit surreal.

As I watched the ribbon of bats wind across the sky, I couldn't help but wonder what it would take to install a colony in our backyard to deal with the mosquitoes.  Saturday and Sunday, we took it a bit easier with trips to the farmer's market, cool projects around the house, and dinner with Mike and Veronica.   

On Monday, we visited the Witte Museum to check out their Amazon exhibit.  The focus was on the many dangers of the Amazon River.

Mom was so scared  of the piranhas that she headed back to land-locked Kansas the very next day!

The trip was short but lots of fun.  It was a great reminder to play tourist in our own town more often!