NYC and back

Last weekend I met up in NYC with my sisters Sue, Julia, and Sue's friend Dawn for a quick, but fun-filled trip. They took the Jet Blue red eye out of SLC Saturday night, and I took a 6am train from Albany Sunday. (It's only a 2.5 hour train ride. Getting to the city from here is so easy!) They met me in Penn Station, we dropped my stuff off at the hotel and the fun began.

First off, we walked across the Brooklyn Bridge. I've never done this before, but it was pretty cool. Here are the three sisters on the bridge.

This makes me feel like I'm in some kind of Escher painting.

That night we saw two musicals, Billy Elliot and Mary Poppins. Good times!

We stayed at the Marriott Marquis right in Times Square. Sue got a killer deal! And split between 4 people, it was even cheaper! Yay! Here I am in Times Square after we saw the shows.

The next day, Sue and Dawn went off to do some shopping and Julia and I went sightseeing. We went to Top of the Rock, which is the observation deck of Rockefeller Center. Here are some views from the top. (The first picture of this post is from Top of the Rock as well.)


Next we saw St. Patrick's Cathedral. Afternoon mass was just finishing up, so we heard the organ playing. It was amazing!

Next we wandered over to Central Park, but got distracted for awhile by these street vendors selling jewelry. Everything was in small white boxes, piled on this table. They had some cool pieces and they were only $5 each. I'm a sucker for this kind of thing. We stayed at that table for awhile, wading through the mountain deciding what to buy. I had to exercise some restraint, and only ended up buying two necklaces and a pair of earrings.

We did actually make it to Central Park though.

We met back up with Sue and Dawn after that and got some lunch at a cute little place called Serendipity. (Famous for their desserts. And I think featured in the movie Serendipity....maybe?) They also had the biggest menu I've ever seen!

Then it was time to go home. They took a cab to JFK to fly back to SLC and I walked the 10 or so blocks to Penn Station to catch my train back to Albany. Such a fun trip!

Chicken, black bean, rice soup

At the risk of making this turn into a recipe blog, I have another recipe. Apparently I've just been in the mood to try new recipes. I got home from the gym tonight and wasn't sure what I wanted to eat. I think I should be eating more protein, so decided to go for the frozen chicken breasts I had. I figured I'd go for boring chicken and rice (tasty, but boring), then I saw a can of black beans and thought, "I wonder what I could do with that."

So I did a Google search for "chicken 'black beans' rice recipe" and after wading through a bit, came across this one. Well, I have another winner! (And the black bean trend continues.) (I have to use all those cans I bought somehow. :) )

Chicken, black bean, and rice soup

Ingredients:

• 1 medium onion, chopped
• 3 cloves of garlic, minced
• 1 tablespoon olive oil
• 3 x 14 oz can chicken broth
• 2 x 15 oz can black beans, drained and rinsed
• 1 (16 oz) jar of salsa
• 1 cup cubed cooked chicken breast
• 1 cup cooked brown rice
• 1 tsp ground cumin

Directions:

1. Saute onion and garlic in oil until tender.
2. Stir remaining ingredients and heat through.

My notes:

• That's it! So easy and so tasty. I like the mix of spices of the salsa plus the cumin.
  
• I only had one can of chicken broth, so I loosely halved the recipe. It turned out just fine.
• I imagine this would be good with sour cream and cheese or something, but I ate it plain and it was still great.
  

Oh, be a fine girl...!

Many years ago, an astronomer named Annie Jump Cannon (who was one of the "calculators" in Edward Pickering's lab at Harvard) classified well over 200,000 stars in the sky based on their spectra. She organized them into a sequence according to temperature that is still used today. It is:

O B A F G K M

O stars are the hottest and they are blue. M stars are the coolest and they are red. The Sun is a G type star. The mostly common mnemonic device to remember this sequence is "Oh, Be A Fine Girl, Kiss Me!"

I gave the final to my astronomy students on Monday. I included an extra credit question: create your own mnemonic device for the spectral sequence. The stipulation was that the words had to flow in some sort of logical order and form a complete sentence. I have some clever students, and there were a lot of great ones. Here are some of my favorites. (My comments are the italicized text in the parenthesis.)

• Only Beautiful And Fun Girls Keep Men (Written by a girl, I might add.)
• Old Billy Ate Fifty Giant Kansas Muffins (What exactly is a Kansas muffin?)
• Oh, Boy! Astronomy Facts Give Me Killer Migraines (Clever, and appropriate.)
• Obnoxious Boys Are Frequently Getting Kicked More (Ha! Love it.)
• Okay, Be A Fighting Guy, Karate Man. (Karate Man...so funny!)
• Overall, Brendon Always Finds Good Kissing Mates (Written by someone named Brendon.)
• Only Behaved And Fun Guys Keep Me (Probably my favorite.)

Try it. It's not as easy as it looks. :)

The Weekend

This last one was among the best of my Albany weekends. My reasons are as follows:

0. I had the house to myself! The Porters were celebrating their 40th anniversary with a weekend trip to Canada, so I was left to hold down the fort.

1. Swing dancing Friday night -- I haven't gone dancing since I've been in Albany. I found out that they only have dances once a month, on the first Friday. So I donned my dancing shoes and headed downtown. There was a live band, and to put it mildly, the dance was an awesomely fantastic time. I don't think I've EVER had so much fun swing dancing before. I was worried I'd be a bit rusty, but it all came back after the first dance. I often worry that I'm not very good, but a lot of the leads I danced with seemed to really enjoy dancing with me. Two of the best dancers there asked me to dance THREE times (each!) and another guy (who also danced with me three times) kept telling me how wonderful I was to dance with, and he was delighted when I said that I lived around here (meaning, I'd be back next month...and believe me, I will!!). I danced a lot, I was completely exhausted by the time I got home. But it was the most dancing fun I've had in a long time.

2. Major workout Saturday morning -- I had a great cardio workout and went to a weights class (that's Body Pump, for you fellow Golds Gym-ers) and it felt great! Yay gym!

3. Saturday afternoon in Albany -- My friend Nathan showed me the Capital Plaza downtown; we went to the top of the Corning Tower (tallest building in Albany), and walked down to the river. Turns out downtown Albany does have some nice spots. Next Saturday we're going to the Tulip Festival in Washington Park.

4. I made my first pot roast -- Sister Porter invited people over for dinner Sunday afternoon before plans were made for them to be out of town. So I played hostess, including making the pot roast. She gave me a lesson Friday morning, and set everything out for me.* (Even the whisk in saucepan on the stove!) She really does think of everything.

And it actually turned out pretty well (even the gravy!) and people seemed happy eating it. (Sorry, didn't manage to take a picture of the finished product and the happy people eating it.)

5. CES Fireside Sunday night -- Elder Bednar. Need I say more? I think not. (But I will.) There was a mingle beforehand...here we are "candidly" socializing. Holly and I were probably having a discussion about Freaks and Geeks. I had lent her the DVDs** at church that day, and when I saw her at the fireside (a few hours later), she come up to me and said, "Oh my gosh! I am in love with this show. I've already watched a couple episodes." Yay! Another convert! :)

6. New shoes -- Saturday night I realized that a Kohls gift card that I had expired that day. So with half an hour left before they closed, I ran over to Kohls and looked around. I ended up buying these shoes. At first I thought they were kind of ridiculous, but kind of awesome. (Now I just think they're totally awesome.) I was debating them in the store, wondering if they were too bold. As I was putting them back in the box (still unsure as to whether or not I should get them), a woman who was nearby while I was trying them on said, "I like those shoes." I said, "Me too! But I don't know if they're too bold." She said: "Oh no! They're great. You should buy them." I bought them. I also bought a long necklace that matched pretty well. I wore these shoes with the outfit in the above picture. (I wish they'd gotten the shoes in that picture!)

7. Maybe less fun, but I actually got my grading done. Yay end of semester projects and papers! (Such a big stack of grading!) Monday I gave my final, so I'm done teaching and now 100% thesis. (Well, after I turn grades in.)

8. Barefoot Ultimate -- Okay, so Monday night isn't the weekend, but for FHE on Monday night, the group from church played Ultimate again! It wasn't raining this time, like last time, and a few of us took our shoes off to play. I was a bit cautious about the no shoes idea at first, but it was great! My feet were filthy by the end, and it was so fun! (And I even survived crashing into my teammate Dan as we both went for the frisbee, an incident that ended with us tangled up on the ground.) (My friend Cathy took a picture of my feet, but I don't have it yet. Otherwise I would have posted it here. Oh well.)

The greatness of the weekend will be hard to top. Of course, this next weekend has a good shot. Tulip Festival Saturday, then I'm taking the train to NYC to spend Sunday and Monday with my sisters Sue and Julia! (They're flying out from SLC along with one of Sue's friends.) (But no shuttle launch in Florida on Tuesday that week...sad. I canceled my plane ticket to Orlando because NASA moved the launch up one day. Boo!)



* Lest you think I made the gravy from the brown gravy mix there, let me set the record straight. She set that out in case I (a) messed up making it from scratch; or (b) ran out and needed to make more quickly.
** We traded off. I let her borrow my beloved Freaks and Geeks DVDs and she lent me her prized Arrested Development DVDs. It's like we're holding each other's stuff hostage, so we'll be sure to get them back.