Victory!
Ha ha! My socks are done! And they fit! I’m so excited about them. Can you tell?
Posted in Knitting.
Some tidbits
Life’s been rather busy here, but here are a few quick tidbits.
1) Go to my sister’s blog to enter her contest. It’s her 500th blog post, and you have a chance at winning one of these adorable goats that I made:
or 
2) I’ve been trying to cook more. We’ll see how long it lasts, but I recently made my own naan, french toast, and stuffed bell peppers:
The peppers were inspired by a friend’s blog. Sadly, I didn’t have any avocados, so the photo is lacking a little green, and my stomach was missing avocado. Still, tasty, and not too difficult, even for someone like me.
3) I’ve also been keeping up with a photo of the day again. I haven’t been posting them here, though I probably should. You can see them on my flickr page, but I’ll give you today’s. The classic, “I’ve run out of ideas” daily photo of my dog. I love her.
So that’s it for now. I’m excited about tomorrow – we’re off to see Tori Amos. It’ll be great.
Posted in Random.
Austria Day 2: Tour and Sleepy Rehearsal
Day 2 – our first full day in Austria – began with a bus tour of the city. We learned about the ring structure of the city and visited the outer areas. We crossed the Danube a couple of times, and I was amused to see Vienna’s UN building, after having just visited the New York one.
We stopped at one point on the tour to get out and see this:
This is the Hundertwasserhaus. Hundertwasser wanted to make a building that you couldn’t tell existed if you looked down upon it. So, it’s covered with greenery, has uneven walls and floors, and even trees growing through some apartmens. It’s quite fascinating. Still apartments and private space inside though, so we can only glance at the exterior of this unique building. I love it.
We also stopped at the Belvedere Palace:
It’s currently a museum – it has a large collection of paintings by Klimt including “The Kiss.” We didn’t get a chance to go in as a group, but we could explore the grounds a little, including the garden and the view down to the Lower Belvedere. The garden was quite flat – apparently the Viennese were fond of this type of garden – from the Upper Belvedere it would appear as a large, colorful carpet, certainly not high enough to obstruct the view of the Lower Belvedere.
After our tour, we ate lunch at the Rathauskellar – the cellar of the town hall. I was excited about this, since Madison had it’s own version in the union – the Rathskellar. Good times. We had our first Wiener Schnitzel here, as well as the famous chocolate cake – the Sacher Torte. Delicious.
After lunch we had our first rehearsal for the Requiem. It was good to finally practice with men and the rest of the chorus, and to get to know the conductor. On the other hand, we’d had a busy morning, and most of us were still pretty jet-lagged. The conductor could tell, and let us go a little bit earlier than planned; the scheduled 3 hour rehearsal would’ve been a bit much. After the rehearsal, our tour guide showed us a little more of the city, including a stop to see the famous Lippizaner horses of the Spanish Riding School grazing and playing:
These colts will grow up to be white, and will be part of the famous dancing horse team.
Our days were packed in Austria. After such a busy day, we were treated to one of the festival concerts at the Musikverein, home of the Vienna Philharmonic.
There was a lot of music on the program, but the one group that really blew me away was the Atlanta Boy Choir. I can’t find my program at the moment, but there were some absolutely gorgeous pieces, and it was a beautiful setting, too.
Shortly thereafter, we all headed to bed to prepare for the next day.
Posted in Random.
Canning Adventures
Last week I spent Saturday experimenting in the kitchen with my friend. She was going to teach me how to make jam and then can it. How exciting and domestic! We started with a nice peck o’ peaches and tried to blanch and peel them. (They were a little underripe for easy peeling, but we made do.)
Pit and cut the peaches, add some sugar, and lots of heat and stirring.
Once it gels and sheets a bit, you pour it into warm jars and close them. You boil them for 10-15 minutes and then they’ll seal when you take them out.
A peck of peaches and some extra raspberries (plus 32 cups of sugar) make an awful lot of jam:
We ended up making two batches that day – the first was a pure peach jam that we boiled a little too long. It turned out rather tasty, but it really ended up more of a caramel than a jam. It doesn’t so much move if you turn it upside down, and it’s hard to actually get out of the jar. But, it might be good microwaved and put on ice cream.
The raspberry peach stuff was a little better, but still not so spreadable.
It was fun though. Not sure whether I’ll try again anytime soon, but I think in the meantime I have enough “jam” to last me awhile.
Posted in Cooking.
Austria, Days 0-1.
There was a lot to see and do in Austria, and I’m sure I’m only going to be able to cover a part of it. We stayed quite busy, and it was over before I knew it – just like July is going to be!
On my last morning in New York, my friend and I headed out to the site of the World Trade Center. It was a little surreal; it was a construction site, and although it was quite a large area to be flat in the middle of skyscrapers, it wasn’t unlike any other major construction site. I’m not sure what I expected, but a seemingly ordinary construction site wasn’t it. Afterwards, I grabbed my luggage and hopped on the subway to catch my plane. A mariachi band got on just before the Queens tunnel and played for us. I was amused, but not all of the captive audience was.
It was a long, relatively uneventful series of flights to Vienna, and though I got snippets of sleep, there was little substantive rest, and I arrived in Vienna mid-morning already quite sleepy. I had to try and last through the afternoon though, in hopes of getting over the jet lag quickly. Once we made it to the hotel, I ran into a couple of other Glee girls who had come the day before, and we headed out to explore the city a little bit. We wandered through the Rathaus (the old town hall), where they were set up for a film festival of sorts.
After a light lunch, we found our way to the Albertina, one of Vienna’s many museums. I probably wasn’t in quite the right state of mind for a museum after so little sleep, but I did see some things I recognized – some Monet, Picasso, Lichtenstein, and some creepy mouse paintings by Helnwein. After exhausting the museum and the staterooms, we wandered around the city and made it back to the hotel, where they eventually sorted out the rooming situation and we could get settled. And, by that time, many more glee club girls had arrived, so it was exciting. While we were quite tired, we did go out one more time to find our first Viennese dinner. I ordered what the English menu called gnocchi, complete with cheese and fried onion bits on top. It wasn’t gnocchi as I expected it, but it was a glorified comfort-food mac and cheese, and therefore quite tasty after a long day (or two!)
I meant to include more, but it’ll just have to be a series of posts – otherwise they’ll never get done. So. Sorry for the delay, and my relative quiet recently, but it’s been busy, and there will be more later.
Posted in Travel.
Quick Austria Update
Hey all –
So, after an amazing week in Vienna (albeit without cheap internet), I thought I’d give y’all a quick update. I’m home safely, after being up for 24 hours with only marginal airplane sleep, and I’m more or less settled back home. I haven’t gone through and edited/dealt with a lot of photos yet, but here are a few to whet your appetite.
Posted in Photography, Random, Travel.
Chillin’ in NYC – Day 4
This morning I was on my own for awhile – what with it being a workday and all. I didn’t end up planning well, though, since the Met is apparently closed on Monday. Instead, I explored, and ended up doing a fair bit of walking. I grabbed a cupcake at the famous Magnolia Bakery – thank you SNL! – and then wandered through a bit of Central Park. It’s gigantic though, and I barely scratched the surface.
Once on the east side of the park, I started walking down 5th Avenue. I was tempted to walk through the zoo, but didn’t really feel like paying admission. Perhaps another time. Continuing down, I found the Plaza Hotel, where Mariah Carey was apparently shooting a music video, and a crowd of people was standing around trying to catch a glimpse of her. How terribly exciting. I kept going, and made it down to Saks Fifth Avenue and the Rockefeller Center. Saw the space where the skating rink goes, and stared up at the giant tower.
I continued over to the United Nations. I meant to go on a tour, but the next one was almost 2 hours later, and by that point I was kind of tired and dehydrated, so I did what little exploring I could do on my own, and headed back to my friends to relax for a little ’til she was done with work.
When she returned, we decided to take the Staten Island Ferry to get a closer view of the Statue of Liberty and to grab some Italian. In front of the ferry terminal there was a little breakdancing performance.
Once the performance was over, we did get onto the ferry, and I got my first close(r)-up look at the statue:
We enjoyed our dinner (and garlic bread!) at the local vegan-friendly, gluten-free friendly, corn-free friendly, option-friendly Italian place, grabbed the ferry back and called it a night. Good times.
Posted in Photography, Travel.