What goes up, must come down

On New Year's Day, I get in the car to run an errand. As I closed the door, the back windshield just crumbled in. I walked around to see this:

I had no idea what could have caused it. I sent Justin out to survey the damage and clean it up, and what do you know, this is what he found on the back dashboard:

Yep, our first bullet in West Philly! Someone must have shot their gun up into the air at New Year's and the bullet fell on our back windshield. We are just glad it didn't hit anyone - glass is easy enough to replace.

Da Bearsss

Ok, so it's been a reeeeeally long time since I've posted. Sorry about that. But after the cliffhanger I posted last time, I finally have a pic of the Bears hat I made for my brother:

I think I made the letters too big since it's hard to read when it's on, but he loves it and doesn't seem to mind. There are a few other things I would've done differently but I won't mention them since I don't think he'll ever notice. I'm working on one for myself now too but after the disheartening season I'm not quite as motivated. There's always next year though...Go Bears!

MIA

For all two people out there who read my blog, sorry I've been so MIA. Not having internet at home and having a job that keeps me busy all day really kills my blog life. Anyway, I will be posting soon about something that combines two of my favorite things: the Chicago Bears and knitting. If that isn't a cliffhanger, I don't know what is. Also, you'll now see a shout-out to my little bro's blog. He's in Thailand for the next 2 years with Princeton in Asia, teaching English at a university, getting hit on by ladyboys, etc. I miss ya Phil!

Homemade Ice Cream

For the second annual City Church Ice Cream Extravaganza, we made some homemade chocolate and chocolate peanut butter ice cream. It was actually a few weeks ago, but we've been really busy with getting ready for our trip and haven't had time to post the pictures until now. (We're in New Braunfels, Texas now, and will be here for a week.) Anyway, here are some pictures of the ice cream-making process.

On the left is 1/2 cup of whipping cream and 2 squares each of semi-sweet and unsweetened baking chocolate, melted. In the middle is 1 cup sugar and 1/3 cup unsweetened cocoa powder mixed. On the right is 2 cups half and half, heated until just before boiling. Then you beat 8 egg yolks in a mixing bowl and add all of these things in.

Once they are all mixed together, you pour it back into a saucepan and bring to an almost boil again, so the eggs won't be raw. I always get really stressed about how to bring something to an almost boil, since I never know if it's close until it starts boiling, and then it's too late. I try to keep a really close eye on it and as soon as I start seeing bubbles on the outside I remove it from the heat. Then you add 1 1/2 cups whipping cream, 1/4 teaspoon salt, and 4 teaspoons vanilla. Now it is officially "ice cream batter." Since it's been heated up, you have cover it and put it in the fridge overnight.

The next day, you take the ice cream mixing bowl (which you have frozen overnight) and pour the batter in. This is called the conversion process. As the batter is stirred, the sides of the bowl freeze it gradually, and pretty soon it thickens up and looks something like this:

Once it looks pretty frozen, you put it in the freezer for the ripening process. You could eat it like this, but it would be a little soupy. When it comes out of the freezer after the ripening process, it looks just like ice cream you'd get at the store. But, of course, it tastes much better! We like to stir in peanut butter at the very end of the conversion process to make chocolate peanut butter ice cream. Yum!

Cicada Invasion

As we prepare to go to Chicago as the first stop on our road trip, I've been thinking about some of the things I've missed and want to do while we're there. Most involve food, but one involves really gross bugs. When I was 7, the suburbs of Chicago experienced a cicada invasion. For those of you who don't know what a cicada is, it's a locust-like bug that looks like this:There are annual cicadas every summer in Illinois, and also here in Pennsylvania, but not many so you usually don't see them. You can hear them up in the trees, though, as they make a very distinct noise which has always sounded to me like someone shaking a maraca. When there are only a few cicadas making it, I think their sound is very relaxing, probably because I associate it with laying on a raft in my pool on a lazy August afternoon, with a symphony of faint whirring vibrations coming and going from the treetops lulling me to doze off.

There is a species of cicadas that is periodical: their eggs sit underground for 17 years before hatching, and there are hundreds of millions of them in the Chicagoland area. The summer of 1990 was the 17th year in Illinois, and trees everywhere became infested with cicadas. Even if you could hear yourself think over the noise made by the thousands of cicadas within hearing distance, you couldn't look at any greenery and not spot tons of cicadas.
As a 7-year-old tomboy who was not afraid of bugs, this was the coolest thing ever. My brothers and I spent countless hours in the backyard playing with them - trying to see who could collect the most molted cicada skins (see pic below), planning ways to gross out our babysitter, and trying to get our dogs to play with/eat the cicadas. For those good at math, you may have already noticed that 2007 is another "summer of the cicada" in Chicago. Unfortunately the cicadas have mostly already laid their eggs and died, and I am quite sad that I missed out on it. My friend Ethan brought me back a dead cicada from Chicago, which made me really happy, but of course it's not the same. Maybe in 2024 when I'm 41 I'll visit the western suburbs of Chicago and get the chance to re-live my cicada-filled youth.

My first (sort of) triathlon

[click on image to see entire album]

This past weekend I took part in the Philadelphia Women's Triathlon. Five weeks ago I randomly googled triathlons in the Philadelphia area because I decided I needed something to train for, and why not a triathlon, since I either swim or run when I go to the gym. Once I saw there was a triathlon just for women, that the route was along the bike path Justin and I like to ride, and it was the shortest competitive distance, I was convinced. The distances were 1/2 mile swim, 17 mile bike, and 3.1 mile run. Granted, most people train for a lot longer than five weeks, but I felt the distance was such that I didn't have to worry about not finishing but I would still be challenged.

Three weeks ago, I actually got the chance to compete in a triathlon that was about the same distance, which is why this technically wasn't my first triathlon. When I was telling some coworkers about my training, one invited me to a triathlon he hosts every summer in south Jersey. It was great to be able to do one sort of as practice, since the transitions were very new to me. I finished 20th (out of 67 women) in the swim, but 63rd overall, so it was also good to realize I needed to work on my bike leg.

On Sunday, I finished 429th overall (out of 671) with a time of 1:52:50, which includes transition times. I was 113th in the swim with a time of 13:01, 556th in the bike with a time of 1:06:08, and 344th in the run with a time of 29:50. So apparently I still need to work on my bike leg...but I just tried to make sure I kept my heart rate up the whole time during the bike (since I absent-mindedly started coasting a lot during the first one I did) and even when I did that people were whizzing by me. So I'm either a bad biker or I don't have a fast bike, and most likely a combination of both. Justin got me a nice hybrid bike about a year ago, and at this point I'm not willing to invest in a nice road bike, especially because I prefer to bike for leisure and to swim and run for fitness.

The whole event was a blast, and I can see why people (like my old doubles partner Lorraine) get really into triathlons. I got to swim in the Schuylkill River, which I've always wanted to do, and the water was actually quite nice. Apparently if it doesn't rain for a few days, the water quality can be decent. It was really cool to swim under a cool bridge and bike in front of the Art Museum. The atmosphere was so positive the whole time with women of all ages and fitness levels competing, and friends, sisters, kids, husbands, boyfriends, etc. all lined up along the sidelines cheering. I just might do it again next year!

Milo's Baby Blocks

I finally finished the toy baby blocks I've been knitting for our former neighbors Scott and Erin who just had a baby named Milo. They are 3" x 3". It was easy to knit little squares for the sides, and even the letters weren't too hard to do once I figured out how to carry another color behind the main color. The hardest part was finding foam cubes to stuff them with! I ended up having to make a trip to JoAnn Fabrics (and there are none within 20 minutes of our house) where they sell foam by the yard. I had Justin use his saw to cut them into cubes for me...he was pretty pleased to get to use such a manly tool for a craft, and now he gets to say he helped make them.

I really like how the mix of colors turned out. The two blue colors (unfortunately the sky blue looks more like white in the pictures) I had leftover from a striped belt I made, and the two green colors were given to me. At first I was sceptical of the greens, because I thought the one was too olive-toned and the other too dark, and I thought bright and pastel colors would be better for a baby gift. But I wanted to use colors I had, and I'm glad I did because Scott and Erin are artsy and like darker-toned colors. I also wanted to do the same pattern for each block, but at the last minute decided to mix up the colors. I thought it would look more artsy, but I had to plan out a specific rotation for the colors because I can't handle sponteneity (which is why I'm an engineer). I love how things only turn out cool when they're not how I initially want them to be.

My great aunt Phyllis was the one who gave me the green yarns. She was my mom's dad's sister, and my brothers and I were pretty much her grandkids since she didn't have any family of her own. She taught me how to knit when I was younger, and although I forgot and had to re-learn a few years ago, I like to think that I'm carrying on her tradition. In the summer of 2005 I visited Aunt Phyllis in Dearborn, Michigan on my drive from Chicago to Philly after spending a month at home after graduation. She had a stroke a few years earlier and hadn't been knitting, and I told her how I had taken up knitting again and asked her if I could have her yarn, knitting needles, and accessories. She didn't answer me, and I don't know if she understood me, but I like to think how happy she would be to see her knitting things being put to good use. This project is dedicated to her, and hopefully there will be many more to come.