A Few More

These are just a few more pictures from our day with Matt in LA - we stopped into a Mac store and used the photobooth demo software on one of the computers to take these. Fun!

Home Improvement, AGAIN!

Yes, we have undertaken the next home improvement project, one that has been on the table for no less than three years now: hardwood floors! When we moved in four and a half years ago, the carpet in the living/dining rooms was relatively new, relatively unstained, and still relatively cushy. But given the fact that it was probably the CHEAPEST carpet available (except maybe the thin, gross carpet-like floor coverings in my college apartments) and that we maybe abused it more than most homeowners would, with the knowledge that we wanted hardwood eventually anyway, it ended up matted and discolored and destined for the dumpster.

A couple weekends ago, Nick and I drove up to Los Angeles to look at some floors that I had been eyeing online for a while. As it turns out, we got an even better price at the showroom than I would have online, so it ended up being over 50% off retail. Here's a swatch of what we chose: it's handscraped carbonized bamboo. Bamboo is becoming more and more popular out here in California, and maybe even in the rest of the country. It's as hard as wood, is more fire-retardant than wood, and is completely renewable in 4-7 years (most hardwoods are renewable in 50 years).

While we were up there - you know, ALL the WAY up there in LA, we spent some time with one of Nick's college roommates, Matt. His goal for the day was to show us the parts of LA that most tourists don't see. In fact, I think he billed it as: "LA - Only half as shitty as you thought." We took his doggie up to this park in the hills with views of the entire city, Griffith Park, and the Hollywood sign. It'a great leash-free park with plenty of walking trails, and you end up pretty high. Check it out - we're at smog level. Iewwwww.

(That's Matt in the foreground)

This past weekend, we started DEMO! Saturday we packed up the living room and dining room and moved all of the furniture but the couches out. We then ripped up all the carpet and padding in preparation for Sunday. What was Sunday, you ask? Ceiling scraping time! For those who have not seen it, our place has the popcorn acoustic ceilings that were so very popular when this place was built in 1980. I've scraped and retextured most of the upstairs, but the downstairs was going to be the biggest project, so we had been waiting ... but no more. In most cases, it's a weekend job: you get the ceiling wet and scrape off the popcorn, sweep up, and then fill all of the nailhead holes and maybe re-tape the drywall joints. Prime, paint, done. Welllllllll in our house nothing is simple. See, another thing that was irritatingly popular in 1980 San Diego construction is radiant ceiling heat. Anywhere else in the country that this was used, a smart homeowner probably replaced it with forced heat in the 5-10 years after construction. But here ... well, we never NEED heat. Or A/C. So it never gets used and therefore has never been replaced.

What IS radiant ceiling heat? Ermmm ... probably the least efficient heat possible. It consists of wires embedded in ceiling panels that are connected together. Not such a big deal for our purposes, except that these panels have a very rough gravelly texture (not something you just want to paint over) and you can even see the indentations where the wires are. Whiiiiiich is probably why they just sprayed acoustic texture over them. sigh. Basically, I have to replaster the entire ceiling. But hey, after that, the floors will be no sweat!!

Here are some pictures of us during the scraping process. I'm spraying warm water on the popcorn, and Nick is scraping it off.

Now we're waiting for the floors to arrive. Actually, that's EXACTLY what I'm doing right now - waiting at home for the delivery of the floors. It'll be a couple of weeks until we are ready to lay them, though. It's going to take a couple weeks to retexture the ceiling, since we'll just be working at night, it's a big space, and it'll need several coats. And Dad, just in case you're reading this, we even went out and bought a darby last night! =)

We'll keep you all updated as we progress!

Trip Part II: Solomons, Maryland

After my meeting in D.C. was over, I drove about an hour and a half south of the city (well, in my case, it took more than 2 hours because of terrible rain) to Lexington Park, MD. For those who aren't intimately familiar with the geography of southern Maryland, it's at the mouth of the Patuxent River, just up from the mouth of Chesapeake Bay. It's a region of surprisingly rich history: even though we tend to think of Jamestown and the surrounding areas as the first settlements, St. Mary's County (just south of Lexington Park) was the site of the first official settlement. Nick is out there every month or so at the Patuxent River Naval Air Station, better known as "Pax," which is best known as the site of the Naval Test Pilot School. On a cool side note, the two competing designs of the Joint Strike Fighter aircraft are displayed here (though Boeing's design was not selected, the plane used for all of the trials and tests rests on the grounds of the museum at Pax).

Just across a very tall and very narrow bridge from Lexington Park is a beautiful and quaint peninsula (though everyone calls it an island) called Solomons (see the website: www.sba.solomons.md.us/ ). Replete with charm and marina slips, it's a Chesapeake boater's paradise. Thankfully, we were there at the very start of the season, so it was still sleepy and calm. We stayed at this adorable B&B, the Victorian Inn ( http://www.solomonsvictorianinn.com/ ), which is run by a lovely couple who truly make it feel like you're a guest in their home. This was only the second time Nick had stayed there, but they treated him like an old friend and Helen adopted me soon, too. Every morning, we woke to the quacking of ducks outside our room, just waiting for their free morning meal.

Nick still had to work on Thursday, so I set out on a walking tour of Solomons. Helen had recommended that I check out the Calvert County Marine Museum, located about a mile up the road, so I figured it would be a good way to kill an hour or so. I mean, how big could a museum housed in an old boat warehouse be? Wow - I could not have been more wrong. It being the off season, I was one of only a handfull of people in the entire place. Given my frustrations with crowds, this was a godsend. I was encouraged by the attendant at the front desk to sign up for a tour of the old Drum Point Lighthouse, which used to sit at the entrance of the Patuxent River but had been moved by barge to the museum grounds. It was a different kind of lighthouse than we're used to seeing - it's a screwpile lighthouse with seven legs, intended to sit in and indicate shoal water by beaming red blocks of light on the dangerous shoals, preventing ships from running aground. I was one of two people on the tour - hooray for the off-season!!

I knew as soon as I started exploring the museum that my mind was about to be blown. The first exhibit I checked out after the lighthouse tour was called "The Secrets of the Mermaid's Purse." It was, in fact, an exhibit on rays and their cousins skates, both of which are indigenous to the Chesapeake Bay region. Skates lay eggs in a leathery-looking scarob-like pouch (the "mermaid's purse"). In fact, they had several purses backlit in an incubating tank, and you could see the developing skate moving around inside! Highly impressed, I moved on to an exhibition on fossilized whale excavations nearby, and then onto the history of the area, from the Native Americans to colonization, the importance of the Naval Bases during World War II (one of the bases just across the river was where the landing crafts used in beach invasions were built, for example), the advent of pleasure boating on Chesapeake Bay, the crab picking and oyster shucking industries (complete with personal histories and audio diaries of workers), and more. Just when I thought I was heading for the exit, I turned a corner and entered an aquarium exhibition featuring native fish and wildlife from the Bay ... and when I thought I was exiting THAT, I came across a very large enclosure with two river otters who were happy to perform. All told, my "hour excursion" turned into nearly 4 hours!

I strolled leisurely back to the Victorian Inn, ducking in and out of shops to a) well, SHOP and b) avoid the intermittent sprinkles. One of the cutest things about the island is that all of the fire hydrants are painted with Solomons-themed designs! Beach scenes, seahorses, crabs, and even a man in an underwater submersible in front of the Chesapeake Biological Laboratory! But this one was my favorite:

Walking back, I noticed that the Tiki Bar, right next to our Inn, was opening for the season, and only later did I find out that the Tiki Bar is quite a destination for Chesapeakeans ... and boy, did it attract all walks of life. Stoners, yuppies, retirees, and cougars decked out in bedazzled jeans and tops that 20-year-olds shouldn't wear. (not sure what a "cougar" is? Click here) Sadly, Solomons cougars are leagues apart from SoCal cougars. Let's just say that people watching was the highlight of that evening. Unfortunately, my spoiled California lungs couldn't handle all of the cig smoke (Seriously. With the wealth of information out there about secondhand smoke ... if FRANCE can ban smoking in bars, friggin Maryland can!) so we didn't spend too much time there. I went for my crab trifecta that evening - three days of crab in a row! We ate at Stoney's (a Solomons institution) and had crabcakes the size of softballs. I think there must have been cake in there somewhere, otherwise it wouldn't have held together, but I certainly couldn't find any! After dinner, I took this picture of Solomons bridge from the boardwalk (As it was almost 10 pm at the time I took this, it was completely dark out; this was an 8-second exposure taken by propping the camera on one of the posts along the boardwalk)

Just about the only other tourist activity on the island is AnnMarie Gardens, which we visited on Saturday morning. It's a winding mile-long footpath through a forest sprinkled with large-scale sculptures on loan from the well-known Hirshhorn Gallery in D.C. We were so lucky to be there while the azaleas were in full bloom. They had dozens of azalea hybrids in colors I had never seen before. But the best part was the surprise trunk art: replicas of famous paintings in scars and naked patches on random trees alongside the footpath. This was my favorite.

On Friday and Saturday we were able to get together with the Kaciaks, our old Pensacola next-door neighbors. The last time I saw them, the older son was just 3 months old ... and now he's almost 5 - and has a new baby brother! Despite the years that have gone by and all the life-changing events, it was like we still lived next door. I love it when you can pick up right where you left off and it feels like no time had passed.

Our last night was spent up at the Doubletree near the airport. We had decided to just go up to the top floor lounge to grab drinks and a very light dinner, since it was supposed to have panoramic views and was even supposed to rotate. Sounds cool, right? Welllll, after being hit with a surprise cover charge added to our bill for electing to stay past 9 pm (not by choice - the service was painfully slow) and receiving a soggy nasty pizza, we were about to call the night a failure. We knew there was a Legal Seafoods (a famous Boston chain) in Crystal City, but did not anticipate the wait for a taxicab to be over half a hour (it was Cinco de Mayo). But a wonderful porter grabbed the keys to the airport shuttle van and took us right there. We had an awesome meal (more crab cakes, OF COURSE!) and cocktails and both marvelled at the fact that we somehow managed to salvage the evening. It was a great cap to a nice trip, and though it never felt like a REAL vacation, at least we were able to turn work into fun.

Vacationing with Work

As promised, here's the latest from our travels. Nick and I spent 10 days at the end of April/early May in Washington, D.C. and southern Maryland. Oddly enough, it wasn't a REAL vacation - we were both there for work. I attended the Experimental Biology meeting in D.C., which ran Friday to Wednesday, and Nick needed to be down in Lexington Park at the Patuxent River Naval Station for work from Monday to Friday ... so we rolled the two together and made it a mini-vaca. (click here for more pictures)

We flew into D.C. together on Friday the 27th and got to spend two days together playing tourist around the city. We had some great meals, visited a pub called the Brickskeller which boasts over 1,000 beers by the bottle from over 30 countries, and (of course) made the touristy rounds. We saw a fantastic exhibition at the Natural History Museum featuring the best wildlife photography (I loved looking at the shutter speeds, aperture, and lens descriptions almost as much as the photographs themselves!). We hit the requisite Air and Space Museum, although we just stopped into the parts that had been redesigned since our last visits. This is the sculpture on the front steps of the museum - you can see it was a very overcast day.

We also headed out to the Eastern Market, an historic building that hosts butcher shops, fish markets, fresh flowers and produce, and vendors of every kind of handmade good and ware you could imagine. We ate lunch at Market Lunch (best known for its pancakes, although we were a bit late for breakfast). The crazy part is ... the day after we were there, it burned down. Pretty much gutted; last I heard, the fire was caused by an electrical problem (though Nick likes to insist that it was all my fault).

We spent a good part of Sunday at the Holocaust museum, a place that is so haunting and just covered in words: written testimonies, histories, and even the unspoken kind that have the most impact of all. Understanding how a society can be persuaded to turn its back on the kinds of inhumanity that make us believe that it could never be us ... the propaganda, the incremental lies, the ability of one charismatic leader to convince people that personal suffering and hate are natural bedfellows and one social group makes a pretty good scapegoat ... it makes us realize that we aren't as far removed from that German society as we like to think we are. I really think it's a place that every person should have to see, because its lessons extend so far beyond the Holocaust.

We took a loop around the tidal basin and saw the Jefferson Memorial and the Roosevelt Memorial, both of which also echoed some lessons that I think are lost on us today: Jefferson's writings on civil rights and the meaning of personal freedom, and Roosevelt's beliefs that Americans helping Americans is what makes our country great. I forgot how beautiful the Jefferson memorial is - I've only ever seen it in the summer, when it's mobbed by tourist groups who infiltrate by the busload. It's great to be able to spend time and actually enjoy the architecture and the writings.

We finished up our loop at the Lincoln Memorial and the World War II memorial, which neither of us had seen since its completion a few years ago. The WWII memorial was beautiful and symbolic, but perhaps not as poetic as the Vietnam or Korean Memorials. I found it so much more beautiful at night, when there were fewer people and it felt more haunted.

On Monday, Nick left for Pax River, and I devoted my days to sessions at the EB meeting. Monday night I joined some ladies from my program at UCSD for a great dinner at an Ethiopean restaurant (that was the second night in a row that I had Ethiopean). I'm addicted to injera, the sourdough flatbread that the meal is served on and that you use to scoop the food up with your fingers. I had another great night on Tuesday, when a graduate student from my field recruited some of us to go bowling (!) - many bloody marys later, I was throwing fast ones (okay, too many of them ended up in the gutter), and we were having a grand time. Science geeks having fun. What can I say.

After my poster session on Wednesday morning, I headed down to Pax River to meet up with Nick, which will have to be part II of this blog post, as it's getting late and I have a lot more to write!!

Whew! Long time, no update!

I can't believe it's been almost 2 months since I posted a blog entry ... For the 0.5 of you out there waiting breathlessly for a Sinnokrak update, I apologize profusely. I can only say that we have been very busy lately, so at least it gives me plenty of material to write about!

April didn't exactly bring showers (it being San Diego and all), but it did bring out-of-town guests! Our friends Tom and Tracey, former San Diegans, paid us a very fun visit on Easter weekend. We had a great time helping them relive their downtown San Diego lifestyle ... steakhouses, beer, and cocktails, oh my! Fate (er, the Navy) saw fit to send them to Nowhere, MS, a hot and sweltery destination complete with three Wal-Marts and zero Starbucks, so coming back to San Diego must have been like finding an oasis in the desert. Anyway, we were happy to help them quench their thirst for civilization!

The following week, my mom came out for a long weekend - just 'cause. Little did she know how much I had planned for our five days together! We hit the best outlet mall in San Diego - it's right at the Mexican border (you can literally see the border fence) - and found some great deals. We also went to the Art Museum for two very cool exhibitions: a collection of Annie Leibovitz's most famous and most personal photographs, and this annual show called "Art Alive," in which local florists create elaborate live floral arrangements inspired by pieces in the museum's collection. The arrangements are displayed alongside the inspiration art piece, and some were quite literal while others were very loose interpretations. The best ones carried themes and colors from the piece into the art arrangements without trying to replicate the paintings. We also attended my coworker Deirdre's wedding - it has been great watching her meet and fall in love with her (now) husband, and the whole lab had a great time at the ceremony and reception.

The "chapel" at University of San Diego where the ceremony was held:

Mom, Nick, and me at the reception:

Mom, Nick, and I also spent a great day up at the Quail Botanical Gardens in Encinitas, a place that we visit almost every time Mom is in town. Everything was just starting to bloom, and even though we dealt with some light drizzle (Oh my GOD, it's RAAAAAAIN!), we were inspired to get home and garden.

Well, I have a whole lot to tell about our recent trip to Washington, D.C. and Pax River, MD, but I'll save that for the next blog post.