Cereal for big kids

My favorite cereal is Cocoa Krispies. Although these days I usually at least classify it as what I* like to call dessert cereal.

Tonight I had to pick up a few things at the store, and splurged and bought a box of it. As I was riding the elevator up to my 5th floor apartment, I was looking at the box poking out of the grocery sack, and saw that on the entire back of the box was devoted to the description of a contest to "win a kitchen makeover." Picture:

My first thought was about how lame cereal is compared to when I was a kid. (Seriously. What ever happened to the free toy?!) The progression of the thoughts in my head that followed went like this (I'm being completely serious):

* Why would a kid care about this?
* Maybe it's for the adults....
* Why would an adult would buy this cereal?
* Oh...wait...

I guess I answered my own question.**


* And when I say "I," I actually mean that I stole this phrase from Auburn, one of my college roommates. It's a brilliant description. She explained it on her blog.
** This being despite the fact that I have much improved from my college days of a steady diet of (award-winning Western Family) mac and cheese and Banquet fried chicken dinners. "There's no food in your food!" as my roommates would say. Ah yes, I've much improved.***
*** I can hear those same roommates having the same reaction they did when I came home from the grocery store and told them how the checker had asked me if I was "feeding a lot of kids," based on the food I was buying.

Grab Bag

I've taken a few random pictures that I wanted to post. Rather than giving each a separate post (although some might deserve it), I'm posting a random grab bag of them here. It might give you a snapshot of my life, or it might be more of a snapshot into my random brain.

#1. A few months ago, I invited a boy to go with me to see Beethoven's Ninth. (Which, if you know me, I kind of love that piece a lot.) He waited until the last minute to tell me he could go (and even then, I had to check in). It was a concert in DC and the tickets were expensive, so I didn't want to buy two unless I knew two of us were going. I checked the website often, including up to the day he finally told me he could go. And, of course, when I went back to actually buy them, the tickets were sold out. (I even checked craigslist, to no avail.) I was super bummed out, and during an IM chat with a good friend, I made the following declaration, which my good friend dutifully turned into a bumper sticker for me. It goes nicely next to the Beethoven bust I bought at a flea market for 25 cents. (And I am aware of the irony of it currently sitting in a picture holder a boy I once dated bought me in China. Or London, I forget.)


#2. Two weeks ago, we had an amazing spring-like day with temperatures in the high 60's (my Australian officemate wore a Hawaiin shirt and shorts). Three or four days later, it snowed like 6 or 7 inches. Bleh. While I was walking home the night it started snowing, a random guy ran past me in shorts and a Tshirt. Oh, and he was barefoot. Did I mention it was snowing? And yes...that's his footprint in the snow.


#3. Another weather-related grab. I like the weather feature on my Mac's dashboard. It's usually accurate, but sometimes it's not. I took these pictures the day Hubble proposals were due, so I think I thought this was funny more due to my need of a two minute break, especially since I was running on no sleep. So Exhibit 1: it says it's mostly sunny, although it's clearly raining:

(That's right! I can't be fooled now that I have an office with a window!)

Exhbit 2: 2 hours and 20 minutes later, it tells me it's raining, when it's actually stopped.


#4. I mentioned Hubble proposals were due last week. This is a stressful time for everyone at STScI, except the few lucky ones (mostly theorists who don't rely on data) who aren't writing any. (They may be involved, but they're usually not PI.) One of the newest theorist post docs said she felt a little guilty seeing everyone working so hard on proposals when she wasn't. So the day they were due, she made cupcakes and brought them around to everyone's offices. Now THAT is nice! And they were pretty:

And surprise! There were two kinds of cake inside! (Maybe she actually bought these....I was too hungry and excited to care...)


#5. My friend Lauren seems to keep amazing track of the pulse of this city. (Maybe that's appropriate, since she is a med student....har har!) I don't know how she knows about half the stuff she does, but she sometimes tells me what she knows. A couple weeks ago, we found ourselves down in Little Italy making homemade ravioli. This was part of a volunteer effort at a church who was having a ravioli dinner/fundraiser the next weekend and needed people to help make it.



#6. On my way somewhere (I think it was when I was going to Europe; which reminds me of all the posts I've meant to put up and never have), I saw this card in the airport gift shop and bought it. I thought it was funny, and largely true. Except this may be debatable after this post. :)


Happy March everyone!

Marin Alsop

Most of you know how much I love going to the Symphony. (For those that don't, I love it a lot. See this, and this for examples of this claim. And countless other blog posts that I started and never posted.)

I don't hesitate to say that the symphony here is one of the best things about Baltimore. Especially Marin Alsop, who is maybe the coolest orchestra director ever. I think I've mentioned her on this blog before, at least in passing. She's incredibly talented and makes the performances so interesting with her commentary, and sometimes does post-concert lectures. (I went to one about Shostakovitch a few weeks ago, and it was great!) She also happens to be the first woman to head a major symphony orchestra in the United States.

I really admire this woman. I love her quick wit, kind heart, and passion for what she does. So when my friend Lauren told me that Maestra Alsop was going to be the keynote speaker at an event for the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine Office of Women in Science and Medicine, I managed to snooker my way in. :) When I got to the School of Medicine, I had to sign in as a visitor and receive a wristband, and signed in on the line right below Marin Alsop! I kind of wanted to take a picture (because I'm sometimes silly like that), but I figured the guard probably wouldn't go for that.

Anyway, her talk was great. She talked about her career, and some of the things she's been doing in Baltimore. (She's really innovative and optimistic, and sees a place like Baltimore as a place ripe with opportunities to really make a big difference.) Afterward they had a mixer, and I got brave enough to introduce myself. I told her I had a PhD in astronomy and that I was currently a post doc at the Hubble Space Telescope. (I'm still not sure why I felt the impulse to throw my credentials out there; maybe so she didn't assume I was a med student, but to know that I was totally legit too?) She thought that was really cool and asked me for my business card.

As a side note: Ah!! Why do I STILL not have business cards?! This isn't the first I've regretted not having them when I was meeting someone I admired and they asked for one. (I'm thinking specifically back to my encounter with Julie B. Beck a year and a half ago. Yeah, she asked me for my card, and I didn't have one.) I need to get them, stat. But she was apparently serious enough about wanting my contact info that she had her executive assistant give me HIS card. Cool.

Anyway, she was gracious enough to take a picture with me too. :)