Greg and Kat's blog

I haven’t blogged in a LONG time. Looking back, I think my last blog entry was at Thanksgiving. Sorry. I guess I just felt like I wasn’t doing anything blog worthy before my trip home. My life was pretty much school, dinner, sleep, repeat. Then I went home for December and I was too busy to blog.

My trip home was great. I think Greg and I cooked once, or at most twice, the entire time I was home. I got to everything on my list except for Feenies. Maybe in the spring. A few highlights:

• Spending time with Greg and my family.
• Hot Pot Birthday dinner for my Ama.
• Christmas Day at Kelly’s
• Body Worlds 3 – You’d think that with 7 Biology degrees among Tina, Oli, and me that we would actually know something about organs and stuff. Not so much. Thank goodness Pam was there! It was pretty spectacular though.
• Bubble tea!

Going back to Vancouver after getting used to being in North Carolina has made me realize how lucky I was to live in Vancouver. It’s a beautiful city with tons of stuff to do and extremely good food. The one thing that I did notice though was the dampness. It was freakin’ cold! Being back at SFU also made me realize what a great lab the Williams Lab is. I’m extremely happy to have been part of the lab. I’m also really thankful for all of my Vancouver friends. I miss you guys! Luckily Kelly and Suyoko are coming to visit me in Chapel Hill in about a month. Yippee!!

Following my month-long working vacation at home, I went to the annual meeting of the Society of Integrative and Comparative Biology, which was held in Phoenix this year. Oh, and Francois flew out from Holland, so it was really good to be able to hang out with him. And, Dana drove out from Tuscon, which was also great. It was also fun introducing the Williams lab to the UNC group. It was like a huge Williams lab reunion! I think everyone got along really well. I stressed a lot about my talk and ended up giving only a mediocre talk. Oh well. I’ll do better next year.

Being back in NC has been okay. I’m in the middle of my main experiment, and all is going well.

My friend Lisa and I have resolved to go to the gym this semester. We’re starting slow with 2 trips per week: a yoga class on Mondays and a spinning class on Thursdays. Tomorrow is our first day. I bought new pants and shorts. I think I may get new shoes this weekend. Hopefully we’ll be able to motivate each other to keep going to the gym.

I’ve also been going over to my friends Matt and Kyla’s place on Wednesday nights with Lisa and Brian to watch Top Chef. It’s a great show – kind of a mix between America’s Next Top Model, Iron Chef, and the Real World. It’s nice to have something fun to do in the middle of the week. Plus, it means that I have friends in NC! Yay! 🙂

That’s about it. Now you can see why I haven’t blogged in a while. Nothing too exciting… but hey, I’m still alive!

… was definitely interesting, in a good way. I was invited to Thanksgiving dinner at Mukta’s place. She’s one of Sabrina’s (my boss Keith’s wife) grad students. She’s from India, as were the majority of the dinner guests – either grad students or post-docs. The other guests were Mukta’s Japanese friend from Duke and her boyfriend and another guy from the Duke lab. Both Duke guys were African American, making the two of them and me the only Americans there. So, throughout the night we were asked “is this right?” or “are we doing this right?” referring to the set-up of the food. It was the first Thanksgiving for many of the guests, so things like the canned cranberry sauce were a mystery. I had to explain that it just gets put in a bowl and is eaten with the turkey, well in our case chicken. Apparently they don’t have turkeys in India (at least noone at the party had had turkey while in India, and had only heard of them when they came here). So, I think they were all a bit intimidated to try to cook a turkey. Had I known I would have offered to cook it, but alas I didn’t know. Oh well. Instead we had roasted chicken which was just as good!
After dinner there was dancing. Salsa music was played, and one of the guys who had been taking salsa lessons taught a few a steps. Then Punkabi music was played and Mukta showed us how to dance to that, and then the hip-hop came on and Marcel took over the dancing. It was a good time.
Today I exercised a lot of control and did NOT go to the after-Thanksgiving sales. The stores were open at 5 am, but I was good and didn’t go. Instead, I spent my day doing laundry, mailing Christmas presents, and feeding the birds. I’d say that took a lot of willpower on my part.

Only 12 days until I go home!

In no particular order:

1. Hang out with Greg
2. Visit the family
3. Bubble tea! Bubble tea! Bubble tea! From Pearl drops on Willingdon. Bubble tea, oh how I miss thee.
4. Chana masala and butter chicken with naan from Bombay Bhel
5. Sushi from Toyotomi, and from Sushi Town, and from Yummy Yummy Sushi, and from…
6. Deep fried salty prawns, gai lan, and spare ribs from Top Quality Chinese Food.
7. Feenies – I still haven’t been!
8. Go to the dentist. Sucky, but essential.
9. Haircut with Niel at Halo. Yay, good hair!
10. Following Bad Girl Chocolates around to all of the local Christmas markets and craft fairs!!! Can’t wait!
11. Shopping at Granville Island. (mostly to get the bread; see 12.)
12. Yummy pumpkin seed bread from Terra Breads
13. Lattes from Renaissance. Drool… NC has amazing BBQ, but the coffee sucks.
14. Gingerbread decorating at Kelly’s (it’s a tradition, right?)
15. IKEA! This is the first time I’ve lived somewhere where the closest IKEA is like 5 states away! I don’t even need anything. I just want to go. Ooooo… and I can get meatballs with lingonberry sauce!
16. Boxing day shopping! Who wants to brave Metrotown with me? Warning: Boxing Day 2003, I may have broken Suyoko. She may or may not have needed 2-3 days to recover. Shop with me at your own risk.
17. Pad Thai with prawns, spicy eggplant, and red curry with tofu from Thai Cafe
18. Lab party at Tony’s
19. Moderne Burger: Steak burger with bacon and cheddar, fries and a chocolate-cherry shake
20. Multiple Christmas celebrations!
Everyone is welcome to join me on my food tour of the GVA.

The fun starts Wednesday, December 6th!

I must say one of the things that I really miss is not being able to be home for the holidays. I know Canadian Thanksgiving is not as huge at American Thanksgiving in terms of people flying home to their family’s for the weekend, but I still miss it. In particular, I miss how Greg and I usually get 2 dinners.

1. A Chinese version of Thanksgiving at my grandma’s house, complete with turkey and some sort of Chinese noodle dish. Gotta love the fusion. Usually this dinner happens on the Friday or the Saturday of the long weekend – God forbid that the family has dunner on the holiday Monday. Most of my family is retired, so it’s not even like they have to work the next day. Anyways, this year the dinner was held on last Thursday. Don’t ask me why – my family’s weird.

2. Then there’s Thanksgiving dinner at Kelly and Paul’s. I REALLY miss this dinner. This year Kelly’s doing leftover Thanksgiving dinner. She did this last year at Christmas, and it was amazing. She cooked the dinner ahead of time (like the day before we got there), and then we made up our own reheated traditional dinner plates and made turkey sandwhiches. So, from what I’ve read in Kelly’s blog, that’s the plan for today’s dinner. And, since it’s Kelly, there’s always at least as many desserts as there are people.

mmmm….

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! Eat something yummy for me!

p.s. What’s the story behind Canadian Thanksgiving? In the states Thanksgiving is usually taught as the native Americans helping out the Pilgrims when their crop failed. The native Americans shared their food, and so the Pilgrims gave thanks. It would be funny if it was similar in Canada, but just a month and a half earlier! Or, is it just giving thanks for a bountiful fall harvest?

I’ve been invited to my first bonfire party. Now, I’ve been to parties where there’ve been small fires built in small fire pits, and I’ve been camping and have enjoyed a few campfires. However, I’ve never been to a party where the whole point of throwing the party is to have a LARGE bonfire. Bonfires seem to be a big thing here. They had bonfires on Franklin Street after the Tarheels won the national championship for basketball in 2005. So, I feel as though by going I will be submerging myself into the Chapel Hill lifestyle. I just hope I don’t fall in!

Nothing much is happening, but I feel as though I should blog just so people know I’m alive.

All summer people kept telling me that the humidity is only really bad in July and August. Seems as though they actually knew what they were talking about. Since I’ve been back, it’s either been nice and sunny but dry, or cool and rainy. Not too bad. Thank goodness. Not sure I could stand any more humidity.

Other than working on grant applications to try to get $$ so that I can stay for a second year, I haven’t really been doing much. So, I don’t have much to blog about. I’ll try to do something blog-worthy this weekend. I think I’m going to the Farmers’ Market with Buddy (from the lab) and Mukta (from Sabrina’s lab) on Saturday – maybe something exciting will happen then. We’ll see.

I’m back in North Carolina now. As Greg blogged, I wasn’t able to do everything while at home because there was just too much to do, too many people to see, and not enough time to do everything or see everyone. Sorry to those I missed. I promise I’ll see you all in December.

My trip home was slightly crazed. Greg and I woke up at 3:30 am to get to the airport by 4:30 am for my 6:00 am flight. Because of the new security measures, they want you to be at the airport 1 1/2 hours before a domestic flight. This would ordinarily make sense. However, security at YVR doesn’t actually open until 5:00 am, so being there any earlier is just dumb. My mistake #1.

My mistake #2 could not have been avoided. My original itinerary was to fly directly home to Chapel Hill from Toronto (after Tina and Oli’s reception near Halifax). However, since I decided to add a trip home to Vancouver, my two flights (Vancouver to Toronto, Toronto to Raleigh/Durham) were on separate itineraries. Bad. Bad. Bad. They wouldn’t check my bags all of the way through to RDU. So when I got to TO, I had to go to baggage claim and get my bags, which is outside of security, instead of heading directly to Terminal 2, and claiming my bags there to take them with me through customs (if they had been checked all the way through), which is still inside the secure area. Instead, I had to re-check-in at the Air Canada counter. Normally this isn’t a big deal. However, for some reason it was a zoo. The check-in kiosks were 5-deep, and the line to check baggage stretched far enough away that you couldn’t actually see the counter. So, even though I was there 2 1/2 hours before my flight, I only had 30 minutes from the time I actually checked in to the time my flight was supposed to leave. Luckily customs was super short, as was security. I got on the shuttle bus to go to Gate E (for the record, I HATE Gate E). I was so relieved when I got off the shuttle. But then I stepped into the small terminal that houses 13 gates (E254 to E266). It was pandemoneum. There were people everywhere and planes at every gate, but the screens weren’t displaying any relavent info on which gate to go to. Apparently, Air Canada’s computers had gone down that afternoon. This was after the morning flights were all delayed to due bad weather on the East coast. So, everyone was in this small terminal, nobody knew anything, and random flights were being cancelled. My 4:00 pm flight was cancelled. However, the 12:30 pm flight was not, and it was delayed. So, I was the second-to-last standy-by from my flight to get on to the “earlier” flight, which finally left the terminal at around 5:30 pm. From what I gathered, that may have been the only flight leaving the terminal for the new few hours. They weren’t sure whether the “later” 9:30 flight was going to be cancelled or not. So, I got to RDU only 2 hours later than scheduled (although a lot more stressed out that scheduled!). Bad news, my luggage did not get on the plane. Oh well, no big deal – I still had clothes back at the log cabin. So, I took a cab home, took a shower, and went to bed. My luggages were delivered to me by 11:00 am then next morning. Not too bad. The worst part was that I was stressing about missing my 4:00 flight while I was in the check-in line because the screens said that my flight was on time. They knew that the flight wasn’t going to be on time – heck the 12:30 flight was still there! They could have at least changed the status to delayed, and I would have had a slightly less stressful day.

Anyways, I’m back now. I just finished my abstract for SICB, the conference I go to almost every January. Keith is looking over it now. It seems wrong to me that the title of my abstract has both “telencephalon” and “starling” in it. I think I’ve made a horrible mistake. I think I’m going to go home now.

We were in three provinces today: Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Prince Edward Island. Weird. Less that a week ago I was in the states! It seems so long ago!

Oli and Tina’s wedding was on Saturday (there are a few highlights in the Gallery). It was TONS of fun. Crazy hectic, but fun. Tina looked gorgeous, Oli was dashing, Francois was in a suit (and looked quite good!), and everyone and everything else was beautiful. Tina and her father arrived at the church in a white vintage car. During the ceremony we held gold crowns over Tina and Oli’s heads (let me tell you, I’m glad Tina isn’t any taller or else my arm would have fallen off!!!). Afterwards we went to the Chateau Vaudruil (spelling?), had pictures taken, and then enjoyed one of the best meals I’ve ever had: roasted vegetables and bocconcini with tomato appetizer, mushroom rissoto, berry sorbet, filet mignon (perfectly cooked) with potato and veg, arugala salad, and then yummy wedding cake and a dessert table! During and after dinner we danced, ran around during a scavenger hunt (Greg can take his belt off in record time, but not his socks – go figure!), hula hooped, and danced some more. Tina and Oli definitely know how to throw a fun party! Can’t wait until Vogler’s Cove!

We’re now in PEI. Going to drive around the island tomorrow, and then head back to Nova Scotia on Wednesday.

This past weekend Greg and I rented a car (as our POS can’t go on the highway for fear of losing it’s back axle and killing us spectacularly) and went on a BBQ mission: to attempt to compare the Eastern and Western styles of North Carolina BBQ. On Friday night we stayed local and had what Adam said was the best eastern style BBQ around – Bullock’s BBQ. We had tried to go to Bullock’s the week before, but were detered by the long line-up at 7 pm on a Friday night. So, this time we were prepared. We went at 5 pm and even beat most of the older people in the door. We had the family platter, which was BBQ (chopped pork), fried chicken, green beans, coleslaw, fries, hushpuppies and brunswick stew (shredded chicken and pork in a light tomato-basted stew). It came family-style. There was a ton of food. I must say though, I wasn’t totally impressed. The BBQ was okay, but not really all that tangy for Eastern style, the chicken was bland despite being deep fried (no 7 secret herbs and spices there) and the green beans were soft and mushy even though we think they weren’t canned. Now, to remind everyone, Adam is from Lexington, the capital of Western-style NC BBQ. So, maybe he doesn’t like the tanginess that’s supposed to accompany Eastern-style BBQ, and therefore this place is his favorite of Eastern-style places. It was okay, but not great.
On Saturday we headed to Lexington, which is about 2 hours west of Chapel Hill and hosts a yearly BBQ festival. After getting a little lost trying to find it, we started off with lunch at Lexington Barbecue, another recommendation by Adam. We each had the BBQ sandwich, and shared an order of hushpuppies. I got an order of skins to go. Oh, and I tried Cheerwine, a NC cherry-flavored soda, which is sweet and pretty good. We finished off lunch with a slice of lemon meringue pie and a slice of chocolate pie. Everything at Lexington BBQ was good. It was also the place I got my first BBQ souvenir shirt. I’ve decided to get shirts from some of the places I go in NC and then afterwards make them into a souvenir quilt. We’ll see if that actually happens!

We did a litte sightseeing in Lexington (drove down Main St.) where we took some pictures of the decorated pigs they have on the street (thing whales in Vancouver). Then it was off to Winston-Salem, the home of the first Krispy Kreme. We went to the only Krispy Kreme in town, and got 4 doughnuts. Upon looking around the store, we realized that they didn’t have any historic plaque or anything saying that this was the first store. Sadly, I don’t think it was. Oh well…

In attempting to do a little local sightseeing we found a part of town that is a preserved (read touristy) Moravian village, complete with people in period costume. The Moravians were apparently the local settlers from Czechoslovakia (I think) via Germany. We walked around the town (only a few buildings – most of which you have to pay to get into and see re-enacted displays) and went to the bakery where we bought crispy-thin Moravian cookies.

Then it was back to Chapel Hill via Greensboro, where we stopped to pick up dinner to go (more Western-style BBQ). This time is was back to Stamey’s BBQ, where we had already gone with Greg’s parents. We got a sliced BBQ plate with beans and hushpuppies and a chopped BBQ plate with fries and hushpuppies to go.

On our way home with stopped at JR ‘something’ (‘outlet’, ‘liquidators’, something like that). On our way to Lexington we kept seeing billboards for JR. Greg figured this place was probably crappy, but may be interesting. It was. This was the first place I’ve been where you could get miscellaneous crap (the liquidation part), cigarettes, discount books, collectible dolls (the whole back of the place was dolls), or cigars (a room-sized humidor) all under one roof! Needless to say, we didn’t buy anything, but it was worth the stop just to see it all.

Once we got home we had our BBQ plates, and then later that night Greg didn’t feel so good. I think having that much meat in 2 days didn’t really sit well with his stomach, and he thought he was going to throw up. But luckily, that didn’t happen. So, Meatfest 2006 was a success.

So far, Western-style NC BBQ seems to be our favorite, but we’re going to give Allen and Sons BBQ another shot. This time we’re going to order the BBQ sandwich to make it more comparable to what we had a Lexington BBQ and Stamey’s BBQ.

Last night we were sleeping quite soundly and peacefully. Then all of a sudden I felt something on my arm. In my sleep I swatted at it. Then I felt it again on another part of my arm. Again, still mostly aspeel, I swatted at it. Then when I felt it the third time, realization hit and I bolted up, more awake than I’ve ever been, swinging my arms around like a madwoman. I think I even let out a little scream, which woke Greg up. He thought I was having a nightmare. “There’s a bug!” I yelled. I think it’s on the floor. Greg, who was now half-awake had the brilliant idea of turning on the lights. I did, and we didn’t see anything. Then, out of the corner of my eye I saw something dart under the covers. “It’s in the bed!” I yelled. We threw back the covers, and there it was. A 2″-long cockroach! That’s what was on me!!!!!! GROSS!!!! Greg ended up getting a plastic bag, catching it, and squashing it. I say it was a near death experience because I almost had a heart attack. At first all I could picture was a black widow spider. Only now do I realize that if it had been a spider, I probably wouldn’t have felt it. Anyways, once Greg’s in Vancouver I’m carrying a can of Raid around the house with me. GROSS!!!!

All of this happened after we had already had a bug incident the evening before. I saw a roach- or beetle-like thing crawl under the desk. We think it was a cicada, but now after looking at pictures on the web, I’m not so sure. Anyways, Greg vacuumed it up, and taped the hose end shut so it wouldn’t get out. I think maybe whatever was in the vacuum may have been the cockroach that attacked me. It was probably pissed that we had vacuumed it and somehow got out and attacked me.

Anyways, that was my near-death experience. I’m happy to be alive.