Peeves

And now the list of my 10 pet peeves...

1. Sticky hands - ask me to scoop out the last little bits from a gallon of ice cream. Then watch me do it. I will do everything in my power to keep my hands ice cream free. And it's tough.

2. Slow walkers - I acknowledge that I need to learn to "Stop and smell the roses" - but in general, when trying to get from point A to point B, I walk fast. And if you are in my way, look out. I'll pass you faster than you can say Dale Earnhardt Jr. It's surprising, considering my short legs. But trust me, I'm fast.

3. Caps on pens - when I write with a dry erase marker, I cover the pen when I'm not drawing. As soon as the pen comes off the board for more than 2-3 seconds, the cap goes on. I'm so worried it will dry out!

4. Inefficiency in the security line at the airport. Loosen your laces, get your laptop out and take off your jacket. And PLEASE don't forget your bag of liquids.

5. hmm....I could only come up with 4. Maybe that's a good thing. Here are a few other pet peeves - they belong to various people I know.

... is obsessed with wringing out the sponge. "It's a quick ticket to a moldy sponge."

... is obsessed with squeezing the toothpaste to the end of the tube. Once over Christmas, I couldn't figure out why my toothpaste tube was always "perfect" each night. Because each night, I'd squeeze from the middle. She fixed it, every morning.

Tag

Judy tagged me. So what does that mean? I am suppose to make a list of 10 things I love. Sounds easy enough. But since I can't just make a list of things I love, I'll also make a list of things I don't love for tomorrow.

But for now, here is my list of the top 10 places I LOVED and/or would love to return to. In no particular order.

1. Disney(land or World). Specifically, Splash Mountain. Parents - if you wait and take your kids to Disneyland around 3rd or 4th grade, and they've been asking about going since they were 4 - you will get a child that is obsessed with the place.

2. Florence, specifically the little back alley restaurant where I had the best spaghetti of my life. It's quite possible that the spaghetti was so good because I was starving.

3. Half Dome - I almost didn't make it to the top. But I did. And it was awesome.

4. The Neptune Pool at the Hearst Castle - We heard you could rent it for $6000. Totally worth it. Who's in?

5. Hilton los Cabos - the nicest place ever.

6. Lake Union, 4th of July, on a boat

7. Skiing - in general, as long as it's sunny :-)

8. The pool

9. Boogie boarding in Honolulu

10. On the couch with Nick and Moch

MCI

Also known as the Kansas City Airport.

I'm not a fan of this airport. It's not well laid out. All of the food and drinks are located outside of security. They have individual security lines for groups of gates. So gates 1-6 go through 1 security checkpoint and gates 7-12 go through another. And once you are in gates 1-6, you can't access gates 7-12. And it also means you can't get any food.

It makes no sense. It's a terrible airport.

BTW - I went through one of those full body scanners at MCI. Awesome. And by awesome, I mean, not awesome. I try to avoid this scanners because they take FOREVER to go through. But I must have looked a little shifty. Now, in Albuquerque they tell you to remove all your metal items. They didn't tell me this at MCI, so I had my ring and watch still on. OOOooh, and I also still had on the underwire in my bra. That's right. It must have scanned a little funny, because the nice TSA lady needed to inspect all my metal. All of it.

Lamebook

Can you read it?

It says:

"Went to the career fair today...handed out my resume to find out later that they say I have a bachelor o farts degree...Top that."

I'd love to get one of these.

WebSudoku

Nick and I use to do this all the time.

I'll start with an easy. I did it in 4 minutes and 21 seconds. Bet you can do it faster!

http://www.websudoku.com/?challenge=l13912p4

Taxes!

I did my taxes this weekend.

Taxes are interesting to me. I had a roommate taking a tax course and he showed me the book they have to read. A big book on tax. What's crazy, is that as the book is updated, they don't delete the previous entry, they just add the new one to the bottom. So the book will just keep getting bigger and bigger. Yikes! Being an editor of that book would be super easy!

Anyways, I'm all about doing my taxes myself. Turbo Tax is great, but I feel like I should be able to perform the simple math steps by myself.

But man, it sure is confusing. I'm good, got them finished, should be in the mail tomorrow. But I feel like I'm a smart girl and I really wish it wasn't quite as confusing.

DO NOT BEND

Have you ever written "DO NOT BEND" on an envelope? I've written it before. Usually because I was mailing something fun like photos.

I received this in the mail.

I got a little excited. I mean, what might InStyle be sending me? DO NOT BEND? Holy moly!

So of course I rip it open!

Lame! This is what I found.

Yep, they want me to start a subscription. Deep down, I guess I thought it might be a trap. To get me to open that piece of junk mail. And it sure worked. InStyle 1, Bryn 0.

Mochi the hiking dog

Nick, Mochi and I went on a hike this past Sunday. The Sunol Regional Wilderness Park. We took this hike: http://www.bahiker.com/eastbayhikes/sunol.html

It was delightful, but not recommended for the summer.....a lot of wide open areas with no shade. And the grass will probably be brown.

There were a number of creeks that required fording. Mochi crossed the creeks like a champ!

Dove in head first!

A little wet, maybe a bit annoyed, but he's still got his tail up.

Nick and Moch at the "summit"

Census Time!

So Nick and I were pretty excited to fill out our census form. Why? Well, we were in high school the last time one was sent out and we thought it would be cool. We were wrong.

First of all, "your response is required by law." I'm assuming the barcode on your form is unique

Since you all probably filled it out, as required by law (unless you are a rebel without a cause), you noticed that the questions were borderline useless. I get it, they want to know the population....but that's an awful lot of money for getting the population correct. And what do pregnant women, due on April 1st suppose to do? What if they are early? What if they are late?

I'm also wondering why this couldn't be done online......but whatever. Anyways, for how much this whole thing cost, it seems like a complete waste.

Kansas City

I'm headed to Kansas City for the week for work.

Some interesting facts:

1. It is actually located in both Missouri and Kansas.

2. The Kansas City BBQ Society reports that Kansas City has more BBQ restaurants per capita than any other city in the nation.

3. Kansas City is home to the largest boxed chocolates in the world - Russel Stover.

4. Kansas City's Municipal Auditorium has hosted more NCAA Final Four Championships than any other venue in the country.

5. Hallmark is headquartered in Kansas City.

Returning Friday morning.

Sometimes I dress up like a Geisha

Bon Odori or Obon is a Buddhist festival held to honor the spirits of people who have passed away. It's held during the summer and is a bit of a Japanese custom/tradition....even if you aren't buddhist.

So, once a year I dress up in a kimono or yukata (a lighter, sometimes cotton version of a Kimono). People dance in a big circle and everyone knows the moves (there aren't many moves to remember). It's a smidge harder than the macarena...but most people catch on pretty fast. There's lots of delicious food and a ton of Asian people. In Seattle, they even made up a dance to honor Ichiro. Sometimes you get props like fans or Japanese maracas or a towel. Or sometimes you just use your hands.

There you have it. Random stuff I do.

Rapid Prototyping

It's just want it sounds like. Make stuff fast.

I took a class in college on rapid prototyping. It was fun.

I designed a snowflake in CAD (computer aided design) and then we printed a model of it on the 3D printing machine.

Our machine was like a typical inkjet printer but the paper was a fine powder, the ink was glue and it printed in an extra dimension. Eat that HP.

Then we cast the part in Silicone RTV to make a mold. After we had the mold, we made snowflake Christmas ornaments for all of our friends.

Whose house?

DAWGS HOUSE!

Way to go huskies!

I now (slightly) regret not dropping $250+ to see the game......

But hey, I'll take a W!

Snagged this off the Seattle Times website.

SEM

I'm running out of blog ideas.....so I will temporarily indulge myself by listing the random things I know, can do or have done. While this list includes such silly things as:

1. Wiggle my ears

2. Stand on the actual tips of my toes

3. Paint nails better than the nail ladies at the salon

I'll try and list slightly more interesting/odd things. This may be a 1-2 day only sort of deal....but I'm hoping it might be entertaining at the least.

So, in grad school I had to learn to use a Scanning Electron Microscope. Or SEM for short. Basically, it's a really strong microscope. I think the order of magnitude is in the micron scale (maybe more....but I wasn't very good) - the image scale bar goes from 10 - 100 um for my pictures.

You have to make sure the sample is electrically conductive, so you can sputter coat them beforehand if they aren't.

I think it was a bug and some pollen. How interesting. And there's your daily dose of science...sorta.

Built Ford Tough

I've been a Honda girl my whole life. Yes, yes.....

To be honest, I'm pretty happy with the situation. Nevertheless, I'm slowly being won over by the ford cars. The closest I will probably ever come is a Volvo, but hey, you gotta start somewhere.

While we were on our little road trip a week ago, I took a fun shot of Nick and then the Escape.

That little 4 cylinder has gotten a lot of miles put on it! Including 2 round trips to Seattle, a few trips to SoCal and a few more to Tahoe.

America's Test Kitchen - Light

I like to cook, but I don't like to tweak recipes. I just want recipes that are good from the beginning. I really like America's Test Kitchen. Maybe it's the engineer in me, but they take a very systematic approach to refining their recipes.

I recently purchased their Light version of the cookbook. They have some new recipes and some original recipes that they have lightened.

We've made the Chicken Florentine and the Chicken Piccata. So far so good! I recommend it! Or, if you want to really indulge, get the original. Their chocolate cake and frosting is DELICIOUS!

Best Frosting Ever

I really like to make cupcakes. I love frosting even more. One of my favorites is cream cheese frosting. The combination of the sour and sweet is so delicious!

Recently, I had a small carton of whipping cream in the fridge that I needed to use (because everyone needs to use whipping cream, right?). I had also just purchased a new jumbo frosting tip....so I was looking for an excuse to bake.

I found a recipe for whipped cream, cream cheese frosting and it was delicious! You whip up 1.5C of heavy whipping cream. You need to whip it STIFF! Really STIFF!

In a separate bowl you mix 1 package of cream cheese with 1 3/4 C of powdered sugar and 1 tsp of vanilla.

Then just fold the 2 together. If you didn't whip up your whipping cream to be super stiff, it wont be pipe-able. But mine worked great - and the cupcakes lasted 3 days in the fridge :-)

Everyone was eating the frosting straight out of the bowl. I recommend you try it. It was pretty money.

A beautiful day in Livermore

Some people ask if we'll ever move back to Seattle. This is what it looked like on Sunday. About 70, blue sky, pink flowers, green hills. We walked to Starbucks and went to the driving range.

Aside from the fact that we can't sell our house at the moment.....it's tough to leave weather like this. Don't get me wrong, a beautiful day in Seattle is pretty incredible (although infrequent).

And Mochi doesn't like the rain. It rained a lot last week (and by a lot, I mean a little, but a lot by CA standards). Mochi barked at the door to be let out, he saw that it was raining when we opened the door and went back inside. Held for a few more hours.

Pi

It's Pi day!

I have a Pi Pie Plate.

It's irrational.

He looks angry, but I think he's actually enjoying himself

Sometimes we let Mochi stick his head out the window while we drive. He typically looks a bit happier than this pictures shows. But hey, it's tough to take a picture in a moving car with a dog in your lap.

Why Hockey is like the Opera

1. If you don't show up before the game starts you have to wait for a break in the action. When you arrive late to the opera or a musical, you have to wait until the first number is finished.

2. Lean back in your seat. Otherwise the people behind you can't see.

3. Smoke and fancy lighting - when the Sharks score a goal.

The Sharks game was a lot of fun. My first NHL game. Fresh off the Olympics, the Sharks had 3 gold medaling Canadians and 1 silver medaling American. They had the medals for people to see. Good times.

No fights, but it was a super high scoring game 3-4. The Sharks were down 0-4 going into the 3rd quarter but scored 3 goals in 3 minutes. Exciting stuff and I lost my voice a little.

Fro yo

Nick and I love frozen yogurt. We are especially fond of the places that let you serve yourself and add your own toppings. We like them so much, that we try out new places while we are on vacation.

We stopped at Bali's Yogurt in SLO. It was WAY cheap compared to some of the other places we've been - but in general, we still prefer our local Fro Yo shops.

Tried belgian chocolate, vanilla swirl with crushed andes mints. Quite tasty.

Hearst Castle

We went to the Hearst Castle on our way back from San Luis Obispo.

It was INCREDIBLE. It tool 15 years to build and there is so much attention to detail. A couple cool notes:

1. The architect was a former civil engineer and also female. She knew the castle was being built in earthquake country so the buildings are all steel reinforced concrete. But that's ugly. So they covered it with stone.

2. Hearst was a big collector and incorporated his collection into the actual buildings themselves.

3. There are 4 tapestries (gigantic) that hang in the main living room/entertaining area. The Louvre has copies, Hearst had the originals.

The tour was great and our docent was funny and had lots of interesting stories. I recommend stopping by this place to take a look around. I liked it so much, I thought the terrace would be a great place for a wedding....wink wink. But it costs $10,000 to rent for 50 or less and $20,000 for 50-250. Not gonna happen.

Cal Poly

I do a lot of recruiting for Sandia and was asked to give a little tech talk at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo (say that 3 times fast). They call it SLO for short.

In any case, I gave the presentation to a group of ME grad students and then had lunch with one of the profs. Delightful afternoon.

I log onto my email and find a note from one of my sister's good friends from Elementary/Middle/High School, Marissa.

Marissa's boyfriend was in the seminar I presented and had casually mentioned that he saw a presentation by a girl from UW who worked at Sandia.

In any case, we had dinner and it was fun to catch up. I'm always amazed at how small the world can be.

Why computers were invented...

Computers are great.

They check your spelling and they hide awful handwriting.

Recently, I spent some time in Reno at the outlets. The green dress was getting retired and I was in search of a dress for wedding season 2010.

I've never had much luck at BCBG - it's a little high end and a tad snooty and the dresses are usually well over $100, but figured I'd give it a try. A very sweet and adorable sales girl helped me find a wonderful, one shoulder, navy blue number. It would do the trick and it was even on super sale for < $40 (did I mention it was the last one on the rack). I had struck BCBG gold! How could I pass that up. Ok, I was done.

And then I got this letter.

Like I said, the sales girl was adorable and a great help. I would have had nothing but great things to say about the Reno BCBG...until I got this letter written by a 4th grader. Shall I list the things that went wrong? Of course I will:

1. A cOstumer is someone who makes, sells or rents costumes. A cUstomer is a person who buys things. I haven't made, sold or rented any costumes lately.

2. She mailed this to me. So she has my address. So she knows I'm not from Reno.....so she probably should have put the area code on the phone number. I'm still a little unclear on the whole appt. thing as well.....why do I make an appointment if I can just walk in whenever I want.

3. The hand writing is not very good at all. And by not very good, I mean really bad.

I totally get why she did this. It's "good customer service." But in reality, it's really unfortunate. I guess in the end it doesn't really matter. She did a great job helping me find a dress....and that's really where she should have stopped.

UPDATE: Stace also pointed out that appointment is typically "appt" - this girl has asked me to "make an apartment with her."

The joys of home ownership

We have a problem with animals. Not Mochi. The wild kind.

During our first year in the house we had an ant infestation and a bird problem. The bird problem is actually really entertaining and may be the subject of another blogpost at a later date.

Last year we saw a mouse scury across our counter. I plugged up the holes with steel wool and chicken wire and we've been mouse free.....until.....

Friday, we found a mouse turd in the closet. Eff.

As of Sunday evening, we have removed 3 mice from our house. We have narrowed down the points of entry and are currently stuffing towels under the doors to help ensure a "tight" seal to the outside world.

Unfortunately, Mochi is not a mice catching Shih Tzu.

Enchiladas

I started making enchiladas with my roommates during grad school. They are really easy and can last for a few days. This makes lunches and leftovers a snap. You can make them as healthy or as unhealthy as you like :-)

Start with 1 can of corn (you can use frozen corn if you prefer), 1 can of black beans and a can of green chilies (the green chilies come in a small can and we use 1...you can use more if you like). Then I add 2 heaping Tbs of sour cream and about 3/4-1C of shredded cheddar cheese. Mix well :-)

Then, butterfly 2 chicken breasts. You don't have to butterfly them, but they cook faster and are easier to shred. Then pull out your trusty George Forman grill. You know the one, the one that was banned from the dorms. Put some garlic salt and pepper on both sides, and grill until cooked.

Once all the chicken is grilled, it's time to make pulled chicken. Take 2 forks and pull the meat apart.

Add the chicken to the rest of the filling, stir and then start assembling the enchiladas. I use corn tortillas, but you can use flour. These are the mini tortillas and I ended up making about 10.

FIRST - pour a little enchilada sauce on the bottom of your glass baking dish (we forgot to buy the sauce, so I just sprayed some Pam). This will keep them from sticking.

Then start assembling! Put a heaping Tbs of the mix inside the tortilla, roll it up and put it in the pan. Continue until the pan is full or you run out of mix.

Pour the rest of our sauce over the finished rolls, sprinkle with some cheese and bake for 15-20 minutes at 350. Everything is already cooked, so you're really just warming it all up.

We serve it with sour cream and avocados. We also use light sour cream, but feel free to use the full fat stuff. We sometimes buy the mahatma saffron yellow rice to go along with it. It's sold in little baggies in the rice aisle.

I'm sure this is not authentic, but it does the trick and is pretty darn tasty. Enjoy!

I think it might have drugs in it

I'm not sure if I've blogged about these before, but it doesn't matter. They are way too good. Trader Joes White Cheddar Corn Puffs. I swear they are a drug. I can eat an entire bag by myself in one sitting. They are actually not that bad for you as far as calories are concerned. But I'm pretty sure that all goes out the window if you eat the entire bag over the course of a few hours.

Try them. You'll love them. Nick doesn't like them....but I think he's crazy.

Mochi and Pico?

While we were in Reno we amused ourselves by playing carnival games. I won a leopard print teddy bear racing against a bunch of kids and adults. You had to roll a ball and make it land in a colored hole. Depending on the color, your little horse would gallop further. In any case, I rocked it.

Then we played skee ball and realized that one of the prizes was a mini Pico. Pico is Mochi's best dog friend.

Here he is when Mochi was a puppy.

After 3 attempts at skee ball, we won Pico! We won the small prize twice and then traded up for Pico!

Smoking Ban

Having just spent the weekend in Reno, Nick and I realized how much we enjoyed the smoking bans in both WA and CA. In fact, many states are following suit. Wikipedia says:

As of February 2010, 25 states have enacted statewide bans on smoking in all enclosed public places, including bars and restaurants: Arizona, California, Colorado,Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Iowa, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan (effective May 1, 2010), Minnesota, Montana, Nebraska, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Ohio, Oregon, Rhode Island, Utah, Vermont, Washington, and Wisconsin (effective July 5, 2010).

It's so nice to leave a restaurant when your clothes don't smell like smoke.

Our little neighbor girls (5 and 3) have been taught that smoking is bad (as all children should be taught). We took them out to dinner and as we left the restaurant, we passed by a man smoking outside. While still in ear shot, our neighbor says "Smoking is bad, why is he smoking?" Love it. Nothing like the guilt from a 5 year old.

We have a gambling problem

Nick and I spent the weekend in Reno for Nick's AKPsi (business fraternity) conference.

There's not a ton to do in Reno. I killed a few hours by shopping at the outlets and getting my nails done. Nothing too exciting.

Nick finished early so we had even more time to kill before the alumni social thingy.

We aren't big gamblers. In fact, we rarely gamble on anything at all. However, we've developed a lovely method for passing the time while at a casino.

We each put $5 into a nickel poker machine. We ALWAYS bet the minimum and play until we're either up or out. In South Lake Tahoe a few weeks ago, we did this for over 1.5 hours and accumulated 9+ drinks between 3 of us. While in reno, we played for about an hour with 4 drinks between the 2 of us. And in the end, Nick was up $0.50.

Nick is hilarious when he gambles. He got a straight flush and declared that he was done. The machine was "done" in his opinion and would not be dispensing anymore good hands.

He was actually really close to a royal flush. Which, had he gotten it, netted him $12.50.

The cupcakes that almost weren't

So a guy at work did something nice for me, so I told him I'd make him some cupcakes. They were doomed. I don't know why I try and bake on Monday nights. But tonight (last night) just wasn't my night.

I was only going to make them for him - we don't need more sweets around the house. So I cut the recipe in half. Unfortunately I failed to cut the entire recipe in half. I didn't realize my mistake until I was about ready to scoop the batter into the cupcake papers and the batter felt like paste. I looked at the recipe and realized I'd halved everything except the flour.

Ugh.

I baked them anyways and ended up with bready cupcakes. They are REALLY heavy. But they taste ok :-) I would have made another batch but we were out of both butter and sugar. How did that happen?

So then it was on to the lemon frosting....CRAP....out of butter. Aha, but I had whipping cream and I remember from grade school that if you shake the whipping cream long enough, it turns into butter. Don't worry, I didn't shake it. I put it in the blender and it came out looking somewhat butter-like. I literally made butter. So domestic.

They came out OK. They need a healthy glass of milk. Next time I'll try not to screw it up.

Origami 103

After the success of chopstick wrapper origami, I thought I'd give it another try. Here are the successful cranes made by blog followers Judy and Jody.

This next origami demonstration is for an origami box. You can put paper clips in it.....or other things that go in small, paper boxes. You can start with a piece of 8.5" x 11" printer paper, or any square piece of paper. If you start out with printer paper, I'll show you how to turn it into a square.

A few notes: the video goes by kind of fast, so I'll try and do it slower next time. Also, Nick suggested I get actual origami paper. Real origami paper is colored on one side a white on the other. It is much easier to see the front/back contrast. So if let me know if this was too tough to follow and I'll do it again once I get better paper.

Good luck!