Peeps Galor

4.9.10

In the past week or so I've received several interesting website links documenting those amazing little Easter marsh mellow treats we American's affectionately know as Peeps. Personally, I can only eat one of those guys and I've had my fill. However, there are people like my sister and my father who can eat a whole 15 piece box in one sitting. It's also funny to talk to ask people how they prefer to eat their Peeps. Some like to eat the head first and for some they have to be slightly stale.

Anyway, here are the some of the websites I was talking about.

The Washington Post's 'Peep-Show'

National Geographic's 'Peeps in Places'

Peepshi....no sushi

Side note: If you go to the Peeps website, you can sign up to be a member of the fan club! I'm not advocating this one way or the other but just think it's funny that they even have one. :P

Happy Birthday Mom!

3.21.10

Approximately 35 people (family and friends) gathered at Fanny's Banquet Hall to celebrate my grandmother's extra special birthday. Her family knows her as 'Mom' but many friends call her as Janie, which is short for Mary Jane. Everyone seemed to be having a great time and I really enjoyed meeting all of my grandmother's friends. My grandmother often spoke of many of them, but this was my first time actually seeing them in person.

We thought it would be nice for everyone to write a little note to my grandmother. The picture is of her when she was my age.

Mom and I

Mom and her grandchildren (from left to right): Scott, Carolyn, Ryan, Taran, Miranda, and me.

Mom and her children: Diane, Debbie (my mother), and Rob.

Mom and Aunt Diane

Papa, me, and Mama

Sarah Jane couldn't make it to the party. :(

Mmmm Tempura!

2.14.10

We made tempura today!

The Batter

The Veggies

The Shrimps

The Toby-san

Haruo and I were in charge of coating the food evenly with tempura batter while Elliot maned the fryer.

Shrimps!

Mountains of Tempura

Tempura Tendon
(tempura over rice with tempura sauce)

It had been ages since I've had tempura tendon (てむぷらてんどん). When the first batch of shrimp was finished we all popped one into our mouth to see what it was like. The taste was absolutely delicious. I closed my eyes and pictured the little tendon shop in the Kaihin-Makuhari eki. If only Lauren were here. Then the picture would be complete.

I should also mention that the sweet potato was my favorite. Always has been.

Old Pictures...

2.11.10

My cousin Carolyn sent me these old pictures. I guess she found them while she was going through my grandmother's picture box.

Carolyn, me, and Papa

Rocking out!?

Telephone Pictionary

1.31.10

This picture was taken back in December by my friend Ali. While I was staying in Washington DC for the weekend, a bunch of my friends agreed to play this game called Telephone Pictionary. It's one of my all time favorite games because it always makes me laugh. I used to play it with my students in Japan and they would always shock me with their ability to draw and write!

To explain the rules, each player takes a piece of paper and writes a sentence at the top of their page. They hand it to the person on their left and that person draws a picture of what they read. The drawer then folds over the sentence and passes the picture to their left. The second writer must then explain what's going on in the picture using one sentence. The game continues like this until the piece of paper gets back to its original author. It's fun to read them together at the end. Most times the story totally deviates from the initial sentence but there are some exceptions to this.

The picture below is one of my favorites from Washington DC.

I'm not really sure why, but the French guy at the bottom always makes me giggle. He looks so surprised. Well, maybe I would be too given Kate's evil stare.

Me Chalkbag, Yarr

1.17.10

Christine and I were at Eastern Mountain Sports the other day trying to pick her out a pair of climbing shoes when we had a brilliant idea.

Me: Christine, these chalk bags are sort of expensive.

Christine: Yeah, I know. They don't look that hard to make.

Me: Do you really think we could make them?

Christine: Yeah! I have a sewing machine!

And so it began. I found a really awesome website with step-by-step directions on how to make a chalk bag. It was lots of fun and we are both so proud to use our hand-made bags. Not to mention, having chalk makes it much easier to climb. Chalk is especially helpful when you start to slip off the rock/hold because it dries up the moisture on your hands.

Christine and I with our chalk bags. Here's is the plaid one, mine is the black in the middle, and the last one we made for our lab mate Christian.

When you pull the drawn string it looks like a bunny.

I choose girly skull and cross bones fleece for my chalk bag liner. The skulls have bows and heart shaped eye sockets.

You can either use chalk in stick form or powdered form. Most times, powdered chalk is stored in a 'sock' that dispenses the chalk when you squeeze it. If you look inside my back you will see the little sock of chalk that Christine and I also made.

The finished product! All I need is a carabiner to clip this onto a harness.

Two weeks off!

1.7.10

As my first semester of graduate (or maybe gradual) school came to a close, I was looking forward to a break from all the work. In contrast to years past, I decided that this year I would stay inside New York State. I was home in Buffalo for a few days, flew to New York City to stay with some friends, and then went back to Ithaker with Jon Newman. It was nice to spend a few days of my vacation in Ithaker before heading back to work on January 6.

Anyway, I decided it would be best to tell the story of my vacation in pictures. Here it goes!

Since I can remember, we have always spent Christmas Day dinner with my mother's side of the family. My aunt and her family always have a huge tree decorated with bubbling oil lights and heaps of tinsel. The tree looks so pretty in the dark.

Aunt Diane, Mom Hensen, and my mother

Here's Aunt Diane wearing her new, frilly apron. I think she's wondering why I took this picture.

Sarah Jane and Yuki (You will notice all the mashed potatoes on Sarah's plate. She waits a whole year to eat Aunt Diane's famous twice baked mash potatoes--and her fudge.)

Gifts for the Cousin Gift Exchange

Here are all my cousins from front left: Miranda, Scott (husband of Carolyn), Erin, Taran, Carolyn, Tyler, Ashley (sister of Caitlin), Caitlin (girlfriend of Ryan), me, Yuki (friend of Sarah), Sarah Jane, Ryan. There were some really interesting presents but I was very happy to receive sea monkeys.

My sister's friend Yuki (which means 'snow' in Japanese), joined us for the Christmas holidays. Even though she had never played before, she beat us all at Barrel of Monkeys!

I arrived in JFK airport where I was greeted by my friend James. James and I studied printmaking together at Binghamton University. I really enjoyed my stay with him and his girlfriend Nicole in Brooklyn. We watched Planet Earth, played Super Mario, met up with Jon (Jon also knows James from art class), walked around Brooklyn, and caught up. Unfortunately, I was unable to go to any museums with them because they were closed. We did however, see an albino squirrel in the Prospect Park. I should also mention that Nicole is an absolutely amazing cook! One evening, she made us beet raviolis and spinach goat cheese salad. The raviolis were such a pretty shade of pink that I almost didn't want to eat them.

Here is James, Nicole, and me. I was really sad to leave them but promised that I would come back soon; especially since I learned about the fancy Kernel bus that goes to Manhattan every weekend.

Before heading back to Ithaca with Jon, I met up with a whole bunch of other friends including Stephanie, Edelbug, and Yuta. I also met some of Jon's friends from Connecticut. At one point, Jon came down with a 24 hour flu bug so we decided to stay in New York City for an extra day. We ended up taking the bus back to Ithaker on New Years Eve.

Jon Newman's Christmas Present (a t-shirt quilt)

Jon and I

Ta-da! It's Ithaca Falls!

Intense

Jon throwing icicles at icicles.

Spending time with Jon Newman is one of my favorite things. We went climbing at the rock climbing wall, watched several great movies, and he taught me a few things about math and Matlab. Just as he was about to head back to Atlanta, his flight got delayed and he had to stay an extra night. I'm just glad that he didn't have to stay the night in Philly. :)