France Trip Part 1 - Lyon

Ok, I've been horrible about posting lately, I know.  It's just been a crazy busy summer with a total of 4 weddings, 4 trips, and plenty going on at work and home as well.  Let's start at the beginning and I'll try to slowly work my way back to the present.

This past spring my best friend K texted me and asked if I wanted to go to France with her.  Um, of course I want to go to France with you!  A good friend of hers, whom I also know fairly well, was getting married in Lyon over the July 4th weekend and she was hoping I'd be her +1.  Once I checked into my finances and determined how much plane tickets would cost, I was in.  Tickets, airbnb's, and activities were booked and on July 2 I was off!  First stop: Lyon!

I arrived on Friday afternoon and took a cab to the apartment we were staying in (a friend of the bride was out of the city and generously let us use her place) at which point jet lag took over and I needed a nap.  But after that less than fun start to the trip, it was an amazing time.  We had dinner at the bride's apartment that night with some other out of town guests and met some absolutely LOVELY people that I very much hope I will get to meet up with at some point in the future. 

Saturday was the wedding day, which we started off at a nail salon with the bride and a few of her other friends (some of whom I'd met on a previous trip to Lyon with K a number of years ago).  We then picked up a delicious rotisserie chicken and potatoes that had been cooked in the chicken fat drippings and brought them back to the apartment for lunch while we changed. 

We met up with the bride back at her apartment and followed her through town to the city hall for the legal marriage ceremony.  Mind you, it was 105 degrees F in Lyon on this day and very few places had AC, including our apartment.  Luckily it wasn't humid and there was a breeze, but any time spent inside closed rooms (like city hall) was pretty brutal.

 

We then proceeded to walk through town with all of the wedding guests to a park that overlooked the city where the beautiful spiritual ceremony was held. 

After some pictures, we made our way to a nearby bar for cocktails, then back to the bride's apartment to regroup, drink some more, and change clothes (most of us had sweat through our dresses already - it was hot out!)

The evening ended at a colorful Cuban restaurant for the reception.  It was a low-key but still lively affair, filled with tapas style food, plenty of wine, singing, dancing, and speeches.  Overall it was a delightful evening!

On Sunday we (obviously) slept in and then caught a ride to a nearby park where the bridal party was having a pot-luck style brunch.  We sat on blankets in the shade, snacked on a very full table of eats, drank some champagne, and got to play with the bride and groom's adorable little son.  We eventually had a train to catch, though, so we said our goodbyes, exchanged contact information, and ended the wonderful Lyon portion of our trip.

(pictures taken by both me and K)

The Latest and Greatest in Space!

Wow, July has been a crazy busy month, both for me and for news in space and astronomy!  S and I have both been very occupied with a lot of travel.  My big trip and the reason I haven't posted in over a month is I went to France for 10 days with my college friend K!!! (Pictures to come soon!) On top of that, S and I have a total of 3 weddings to go to in the next month, some with associated bachelor parties, etc.  It's all been fun and we're looking forward to our upcoming trips as well, we just have a lot on our plates!

So to tide you over until I can find the time to pick the best of the best out of my 300-something photographs from France, I've rounded up all of the incredible news in space and astronomy that has been flooding the news and internet lately.  I have to say, I am SO THRILLED to see how many people are avidly following and enjoying the recent news about the New Horizons mission to Pluto!  It fills my heart to see that everyone is so genuinely excited about these scientific discoveries. 

• NASA's New Horizons satellite has made it to Pluto and is sending back amazing, high resolution, natural color imagery of our dearly demoted little dwarf planet!  Imagery includes the discovery of a now famous heart on Pluto, 2 mountain ranges, and all 5 of Pluto's moons.  This Pluto encounter will continue to last until January 2016, during which the New Horizons craft will analyze the spacial geometry of Pluto and its moons, perform experiments, and spend a lot of time sending hundreds of gigabytes of data back to Earth.  After Pluto, the New Horizons team hopes to send the craft on to explore other Kuiper Belt objects up close.
• On Monday, famed physicist Stephen Hawking and Russian billionare Yuri Milner announced that they are going to be funding and heading a new project called Breakthrough Listen.  The $100 million venture (!!!) is going towards SETI  - the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence!  This new initiative will only be searching for signs of intelligent life (non-naturally occurring communications in both radio frequencies and laser transmissions) not broadcasting and is scheduled to operate for 10 years.  Such a huge and wonderful boon for supporters of the SETI community!
• Today 3 new crew members will be launched by Russian Soyuz rocket to the International Space Station!  One astronaut, one cosmonaut, and one Japanese crew member will take off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan to join the 3 crew members already on-orbit.  If you want to watch live, tune in to NASA TV as early as 3:00 pm CDT to watch prep work leading up to the 4:02 pm CDT launch time.
• And finally, an amazing video from my favorite astrophysicist, Neil deGrasse Tyson, on A Brief History of Everything from Big Bang Theory, to the creation of matter, to the creation of Earth.  This video is totally worth watching!

That is all for now, hope you enjoyed!

Navigating the Past Week and Tropical Storm Bill

This is what the radar for Houston looks like right now.  Tropical Storm Bill just made landfall south of us, but we're getting socked by that big yellow and orange band from the system pretty much all day today.  So far it's just wet and miserable out, let's hope that's as bad as it gets and we don't see anymore flooding around here...

We've been pretty busy over this past week.  Last Wednesday Pandora had her last obedience training class and officially graduated from Intermediate Training!  She is now pretty good at listening to/obeying commands with distractions (sit, lay down, come, bed), knows how to heel when she walks with us, and even learned a new trick (spin!).  We still need to work on getting her responses more consistent and immediate, and she struggles on focusing outside, especially with "heel".  But overall she did so well and we keep saying how lucky we are to have such a great dog!

We got her a toy to reward her for all of her good work in the training classes.  She LOVES dismantling toys, so usually we get pretty heavy duty ones.  This one had felt pretty sturdy when I bought it and said the squeaker inside would work even when punctured.  Pandora demolished it.  She actually removed the squeaking devices (there were 2) from the squeaker and then proceeded to shred both the fuzzy part and the hard plastic inside.  It took her about 1 hour to get it to the state you see above and there was toy carnage EVERYWHERE!  But at least she had fun.  And on the plus side, this was originally a little gator shaped toy, and I can't say how proud I am of what my little Buckeye puppy does to Gators!!  O-H-I-O!!

On Thursday we had the first night of our summer bowling league, NASA Nerdz!  We regrouped with the rest of our team from last year and proceeded to all actually bowl pretty solid games!  We also won one of the trivia questions and got ourselves a free pizza too.  Looking forward to the rest of this season!

On Friday I had Jury duty for the first time in my life.  It was interesting.  After sitting in a large theater type room for about 2 hours I was called with a group of 64 other people to potentially sit on a jury for the 351st Court.  We left the theater room, had to wait for about half an hour in a freezing cold underground tunnel that leads to the next building over, and then crammed 20 ppl at a time into elevators that took us up to the 14th floor.  Once there we had to wait in the hallway even more, with no chairs.  Good thing I brought a book.  But the entire situation did NOT help the sore/pinching neck issue I'd been having all week.  Finally we were let into the court where the judge explained for 2 hours what would be expected of us if we were chosen for the jury.  It was interesting, however I'm absolutely certain it could have been condensed down into 1 hour instead.  Then we broke for lunch and reconvened an hour later back in the hallway, where we once again sat for over half an hour while we waited for them to let us back in.  Once we reentered the courtroom the judge informed us that the defendant, after staring at a room full of 65 people waiting to judge him, changed his mind and decided to have the judge, not a jury, rule on his case.  So we were dismissed.  It was a lot of sitting in uncomfortable places and waiting and by the time I got home my neck was MISERABLE.  I swung by the grocery store on my way home and we then proceeded to just vegge out the rest of the night.  I was exhausted.

On Saturday we slept in (so did Pandora, thank goodness.  we all needed it....) and then went to help our friend N at his business Wazoo Survival Gear.  Wazoo makes compact outdoor survival gear for people who like hiking, camping, etc, and they just recently got a huge order for 3000 fire-starter necklaces, fire-starting twine bundles, and their specialty burnable gift cards.  We love their products (Pandora wears a Wazoo dog collar!) and so we were happy to help them out.  S spent his time winding the fire-starting jute onto spools and I joined in on the necklace making.  We helped out for about 5 hours and I took supplies to make more necklaces home with me too.  S worked on his car for a while when we got home and I hunkered down in front of the TV and made more Wazoo necklaces while I caught up on my shows.  We had our favorite chipotle, sweet potato, and black bean tacos for dinner and started season 3 of Orange is the New Black (first episode was so-so, but the second one started getting interesting again).

On Sunday S went to the autocross all day, so Pandora and I were on our own.  After I walked and fed her I decided to be productive and get stuff around the house cleaned up.  So I tackled some piles of laundry, put sheets on the bed, eliminated clutter in the kitchen and bar area, and threw away some dead flowers that had been sitting on the piano for a while.  Pandora was super cute and just followed me around the whole time - gotta know what's going on!  Then I watched a movie while I finished up the rest of the Wazoo necklaces.  Around 1 I hopped into the car and drove over to the west side of town to pick up tools and supplies for my intermediate stained glass class!  This is my inspiration picture for my 2nd stained glass project and in addition to getting all of my own tools, I also got to pick out my glass colors.  I can't wait to start working on this new project!  When I got home I buttered, seasoned and wrapped 15 cobs of corn in foil, grabbed the Wazoo necklaces I had completed, and walked with Pandora over to our friend's house for our weekly Game of Thrones viewing party and pot luck dinner.  We got there early so Pandora could play with my friend L's absolutely ADORABLE little 8-week-old German Shepherd puppy, Brew (see above)!  Little Brew is definitely a handful, but he was just so darn cute!  Pandora was too fast for him still, and Pandora is a total toy hog too, but they seemed to get along quite well otherwise and proceeded to wear each other out.  I took Pandora home and gave her dinner then ran back over to our friend's house to eat a delicious pot-luck meal and watch the season finale of GoT.  A little bummed the season is over already...

And in other news, I'm back on my elimination/detox diet for a few weeks to reset my digestive system again mid-year.   My tummy has been acting up again recently and I have a big vacation coming up soon, so I figured that getting everything back on track now would make my vacation more enjoyable later.  Last night we had this delicious prosciutto wrapped peach salad (without ricotta) and I highly recommend it!  It was super flavorful and actually quite easy to make.  My digestive system is already calming down a bit, the effects of food really are quite amazing!

(Wazoo picture from here)

Hill Country Weekend

This past weekend S and I borrowed his brother's truck, packed it full of food, beer, and swim gear, loaded the pup in the backseat, and then picked up our friends N and H and headed out to Texas hill country for a weekend full of tubing, dancing, s'mores, and fun!  We hit the road around noon on Friday and made it to the San Antonio area just in time for an early dinner at Freetail Brewing Co.  Our friend K was in town and met up with us there as well, where we all gorged on some delicious pizza and beer.  Brisket on pizza is AMAZING.  After we were all stuffed we proceeded on the remaining 2 hours of our drive to River Bluff Cabins, which is right on the Frio River.  The last portion of the drive was not stellar for me as driving in the backseat with a fidgety pup on winding, hilly roads gave me a nasty case of motion sickness.  But we made it!

Our cabin was the perfect size and had a grill, firepit, and porch swing outside.  We unloaded the truck and settled in a bit and then meandered down to the river to take in the views before it got too dark out.  This was a truly picturesque little stretch of the river with some shallow rapids, lots of trees, and there were even fireflies!  It was magical!  Oh, and what makes it even better is there were no mosquitoes!  After exploring the river area we headed back to the cabin where the guys struggled to get our fire going with some damp logs.  They managed a small but successful fire and we all roasted marshmallows and cooked up some s'mores before calling it a night.

On Saturday morning S and I woke up semi early (Pandora started whining at 6 am....).  So I took the pup for a beautiful morning walk (see first picture from this post) while S drove to Garner State Park with his brother to get parking passes for the day - oh yeah, S's brother K and his family were staying in the cabin right next door to us!  We noshed on avocado, bacon, and egg breakfast sandwiches and then proceeded to spend the remainder of the day chilling next to the Frio River at Garner.  We had a canopy to protect us from the sun, coolers stocked with picnic foods and beer, and chairs to lounge at the water's edge.  Pandora is not yet a huge fan of water, so we spent some time trying to coax her into the river with us, and everyone also got to do some tubing as well.  It was a lovely day!

All of the noise and water wore poor little Pandora out and she was zonked out for most of the evening after we got back to the cabin.  The rest of us showered up and then prepped some kabobs for the grill.  We brought a tad bit too much food and were all completely stuffed on beef, chicken, peppers, pineapple, and zucchini.  That night we headed back to Garner State Park for their nightly dance!

I wish I'd been able to get a decent picture of the actual dancing, but the lighting situation just wasn't ideal.  People of every age were two-stepping around an open air dance floor under a star filled sky.  We didn't just sit and watch, though (although the people watching there was AMAZING).  S took me on a few two-stepping spins around the dance floor and I also had a dance with both N and K as well.  S and I started getting the hang of the two-step again a couple of dances in (we're so clumsy..) at which point S felt the need to pick up speed a bit.  He dances like he drives - fast and weaving in and out of all of the other people.  One of his many endearing quirks!

On Sunday Pandora let us sleep in to a more reasonable time (I think she was still exhausted from the previous day at the park).  We cooked up breakfast tacos and then started packing up all of our stuff.  Our group then meandered down to the river for a few hours before we took off to relax in the water a bit more.  It was fun to climb on the rocks and try to maneuver through the rapids.  There weren't many other people around and the lack of noise and stimuli left Pandora feeling a bit more comfortable around the water.  She still wouldn't go in further than chest deep, but she did go in that far pretty willingly.  S and N floated down river a bit to jump off a rope swing at one point and Pandora was frantic watching them float away.  S said she reacted the same when I went wading through the rapids to the other side of the river.  Not sure what has our poor little pup so traumatized by water, but we're hoping to keep exposing her to it to get her more comfortable.  We headed back up to the cabin a little after 11 to take quick showers and load up the truck, and were on the road headed home by noon.  Trip home was pretty uneventful, but it was amazing how quickly the weather went from pleasant and cool to brutally sunny and hot.  The weekend reprieve from Houston's muggy, mosquito-y, 90 degree weather was so nice - we truly got lucky with the amazing weather out in hill country.

After unpacking at home that evening we headed back out to celebrate S's nephew A graduating from high school!  We met up with the whole family for a nice dinner out and to congratulate A on his accomplishment.  Overall, it was a very eventful, and very enjoyable weekend!

Happy National Cheese Day! (And other important things)

Apparently today is National Cheese Day - so I now have a new favorite holiday!  Celebration tonight will commence with this spicy goat cheese dip and some sort of cheesy pasta - I haven't decided if I want to go mac-and-cheese or fresh veggie and feta style....

In other food news, we've been using the heck out of our new grill and it is amazing.  I think this is the 5th time we've made grilled corn on the cob so far - soooo good!  I also made a trip this past weekend to one of the seafood markets over by Kemah and stocked up.  These tuna steaks (marinated in freshly squeezed OJ, garlic, and thyme) were perhaps my favorite.  Oh, and the cocktail of the week?  I had some leftovers of the fresh OJ and mixed it up with some tequila and a splash of grenadine for a quick Tequila Sunrise!

And now a few fun space/science links for you this week:

• Answering the age old question of whether toilets flush in the opposite direction in Australia!
• This article is pretty long, but it is a FASCINATING interview with Gene Krantz (famous Apollo era flight director) about the progression of his amazing career.  Definitely worth the read!!
• And on a related note, a blog post about what it was like working in the MER during Apollo (p.s. working in the MER - aka Mission Evaluation Room - is what I do now for ISS!)
• Yesterday was NASA's 50th Anniversary of the First Space Walk!  "While spacewalks have become a relatively common part of modern spaceflight, working in the vacuum of space while moving at five miles per second and experiencing huge temperature swings passing into and out of Earth’s shadow will never be routine."

(cheese image from here)

Have a Lovely Weekend!

I'm trying to start up my summer cocktail tradition again.  First on the menu, these tart and refreshing Cuban Mojitos!

It's been a crazy couple of weeks around here, and I'm primarily talking about the weather!  After 3 dry, drought-filled years in Houston, I am now being told that the norm is actually having a super wet and rainy spring.  Who knew?  And it has been rainy with a vengance lately!  We've been pretty lucky around where I live.  While some of the highways in my neck of the woods have flooded over and stranded people, most of the residential areas in SE Houston have been less severely affected.  We discovered a couple of roof leaks at our place and thankfully that's been the worst of it for us.  All of S's family was similarly unaffected.  I did have a friend who got kicked out of his apartment due to structural instability from water damage, though, and another friend who's living room habitually floods during strong storms, so not everyone I know escaped unscathed.  My thoughts are definitely with all of the people in Houston, as well as the flooding victims in the San Marcos and Wimberly areas west of Houston who are dealing with more extreme situations.

And while not nearly as serious as all of the rain and flooding, my own personal complaint is that the puddles and flooding left by the rains here in Houston are also a breeding ground for mosquitoes, and they've been eating me alive!  I swear, I have over 20 mosquito bites on my ankles, ass (they bite me through my damn workout pants!), and arms and they balloon up so it looks like I'm hiding gumballs under my skin.  Ugh.

In other news, I've been on console all week this week, which as usual has kept me pleasantly busy and my days have been flying by.  This week went so fast!  Super excited that yet another weekend has arrived.  The last couple of weekends have involved being productive around the house (I'm trying container gardening!), taking the pup out and about (Houston is super dog-friendly), bar trivia with friends, Memorial Day weekend barbecues and pool parties with friends, and cooking up some good food around the house and this weekend we're planning more of the same. 

Also a quick shout out to my brother J who just celebrated his 32nd b-day yesterday.  Happy Birthday!

My attempt at an anti-mosquito garden filled with lemon balm, marigolds, rosemary, and lavender.  Pandora LOVES playing with the plastic containers that the plants all came in...  silly dog!

There's also an agave plant that has proven to be quite hardy and some random grass that I'm hoping to replace with lemongrass sometime soon.  Haven't noticed less mosquitoes yet, though.

And my own personal little herb garden.  One thing all of this rain has been helping with is keeping my little container garden thriving.  I'm sure as soon as summer comes in full force that these flourishing little herbs will not be faring so well.

Pandora is such a funny, ball-obsessed goof.  She will happily carry a tennis ball around in her mouth all day, tongue hanging out in this goofy little grin.  She is so cute.

And S is obsessed with turning Pandora into a water dog.  She'll wander around in knee-deep water, but isn't a fan of swimming.  We took her to this dog park after her vet appointment last weekend and she was happy as a clam until she fell into the deep end and had to paddle back to the edge... she got over it pretty quickly though.

Some beautiful peonies I bought myself last weekend at Trader Joe's while we were out and about.  Also purchased about $150 in groceries with a heavy focus on nuts, dried fruits, and frozen vegetables.  Ah, TJ's, I do love you so.

And last night I tried my hand for the first time at a grilled beer can chicken.  It turned out super moist and delicious.  I used this recipe and although I didn't have za'atar for the rub, the seasoning still turned out superb!

So Wonderfully Exciting!

My apologies for being MIA for half of May, but there's been some excitement - B had her babies!!!  The twins were born on Wednesday, May 6 and are both healthy and content!  And therefore I have been whipped into an "honorary aunt" and "hopefully helpful friend" frenzy.  I've been cooking/baking like crazy to make sure the new parents don't go hungry.  Their freezer is currently stocked with black bean enchiladas, chicken spaghetti casserole, spring vegetable minestrone soup, my grandma's chicken soup, my mom's chili recipe, a shepherd's pie, and this shredded pork, which was delivered with tortillas, salsa, and avocado to make tacos.  I also made B some of these lactation cookies.  I'm so happy for them and of course I show my happiness through food!

Other than baby news, we've started up Pandora's intermediate training lessons.  She's already partially on her way to learning "heel" and we're also working on getting her to listen to commands with distractions (aka, squirrels).  She really is such a smart and happy dog and we're keep saying how lucky we are that we found her!  We reward her for her good work by taking her with us to dog friendly restaurants (she LOVES making friends), trying out new dog parks, and giving her fun new squeaky toys that are most definitely not allowed in the bedroom at night.

That's about it for now.  In honor of the two new additions to B and J's household, I present my new favorite YouTube video, an Astronomically Correct Twinkle Twinkle:

(top image from B and J's baby shower invite, as created by the ReigningParties Etsy shop)