i went on an adventure!  well, really i was just stir-crazy and googled "hikes in houston" and this appeared and i went with it.  a 30 minute drive to the other side of town, and i found cullen park, with a 6.5 mile long paved trail that is mostly in the shade (this is the ONLY way to walk outside in houston in july).  i saw a dozen or so people walking and biking while i was there, but otherwise had the trail to myself.  just me and my ipod and my sweat.  i only walked 3.5 of the miles, but in the 90 degree heat and humidity, this was a good enough workout for me.

the best part is that the path goes by a 19th century cemetery!

one of these guys fought in the "indian wars"!

excellent adventure.  now i will stay inside for days on end until i forget about how truly hot it was and venture out again.

a photo a day

after i finished reading 400 essays yesterday, my friends angela and tamasine and i drove into the mountains near salt lake city and went on a mini hike.  the temperature dropped as we got higher in elevation, so it was in the 50s at 7pm as we were walking around.  beautiful!  and we saw a moose!  afterward, we went into park city and had dinner (taking some crazy mountain roads to get there), then headed back to salt lake and to bed.  hooray for a little excursion away from civilization!

it may be fall in other parts of the country, but it was 91 in houston today.  and my air conditioning broke.  and the AC repairman couldn't fix it today, but gave me a few-hours-on, one-hour-off scheme to keep me semi-cool, which is actually working, and my apartment is no longer 85 degrees.  more like 80.  but i have a fan, and if (when) i get through the night the repairman is coming back tomorrow to fix me up for real.  ruby spent the day being semi-happy (purring when petted) but not moving from the cooler parts of the apartment where she lay sprawled out.  good kitty.

oh, the fun of living in houston.  fall starts on tuesday, huh?

wild rice salad

For dinner last night I made a salad that I cobbled together from other recipes:

Wild rice

Kale

Tofu

Tomatoes

Avocado

And an improvised tahini dressing (tahini, water, olive oil, vinegar, salt and pepper)

It was delish!

a ruby a day

Saturday afternoon: kitty + tulips.

a photo a day

Happy Memorial Day weekend - welcome to summer!  (I have three more days with students before my summer really begins, but I'll take what I can get.) Five of my Houston/Austin friends and I went to Kate's family's house on the bay south of Houston. It was incredibly relaxing - reading, lying in the sun (or under umbrellas), drinking, talking, laughing, eating. The weather was PERFECT. Low humidity, highs around 90, the evenings so cool I needed a sweater. If only every weekend could be like this!

i had such a great visit to atlanta this weekend!  i miss these fantastic people (and many more) already:

visitors!

my mom, sister, aunt monica, and cousin sara came to visit me in houston!  hooray!  um, this was three weeks ago and i am just now getting around to posting about it.  oops.

things we did:

ate: we tried new restaurants and liked them all!  a hard thing about hosting when you've only lived somewhere for a month - and don't have many friends yet - is that i haven't had a chance to try many restaurants, but i got recommendations from coworkers and friends and was able to piece together a pretty good list of restaurants for us.  we also went to el bollilo, an awesome mexican bakery where sara picked out all sorts of pastries that were (delicious) mysteries to all of us (no labels - just dozens of shelves of different colors/shapes/sizes of pastries).

mom stayed a day longer than everyone else, and she and i also bought yummy cheese and bread from houston dairymaids, a tiny little fancy cheese shop.

we all went to the butterfly center at the natural science museum, which was steamy hot even though it was indoors...

so that was the thing: it hadn't broken 100 degrees since i'd moved to houston, but there it was, the day everyone was in town, at 104.  sigh.  i guess they got an accurate picture of what texas is like...  since then it has broken 100 a couple times, but mostly hovers around 97.  i hide inside.

we went to the turrell skyspace on the rice university campus, which is this very cool light show at sunset.  you sit in this auditorium thing and look up at a square in the ceiling, through which you can see the sky.  the way the lights shown on the ceiling contrast with the sky makes the sky look BEAUTIFUL and different all the time.  it's hard to explain, but was totally worth seeing.

my apartment is furnished, but i hadn't put anything on the wall when they came to town.  i enlisted their help in deciding what should go where, as well as, you know, physically putting it up for me.  thanks, aunt monica!

there was also scrabble, a game i love.

hoooooooray for a fun girls' weekend!  we're already plotting about getting together again next year...

such a fun 4th of july!  we went to this outdoor amphitheater for what i thought was just fireworks and turned out to be fireworks + houston symphony performance!  for free!  miss claire was in heaven.

tracy's new cooler (full of beer and snacks) was defective.  the wheel fell of approximately 20 times (no exaggeration) between where we got dropped off and the amphitheater.  it was hilarious for the first 5 times and moderately hilarious for the following 15 times.

tracy had gone early to stake out GREAT lawn spots for us.  front and center.  yay!

we drank and snacked and made friends with the people around us, and then we listened to a VERY good symphony performance for over an hour.  i love patriotic music.  no battle hymn of the republic, but i survived.

and then there were fireworks!

people, i will be doing this every year from now until i no longer live in this city.  there were thousands of people there, such a multicultural audience, everyone so friendly, with free music and sing-a-longs (i need to learn when to clap during "deep in the heart of texas" PRONTO).  when they played the medley of hymns from each branch of the service, the conductor encouraged people who had served in each branch to stand for their hymn, and it was such an incredible reminder of how many veterans there are among us.  i am thankful for them and america and friends.

houston continues to treat me well.

observations about houston

the mornings and evenings are lovely - 70s, breezy.  let's not talk about the middle of the day.

strangers are friendly - hooray!  welcome back to the south, miss claire!

i've been waking up BEFORE EIGHT AM because my bedroom window faces east and my blinds aren't the best.  shockingly, so far this hasn't made me too grumpy and i've gotten out of bed - this morning i was on a run/walk on a 3 mile trail in a nearby park at 8:45am.  pick your jaw up off the floor: it's true.  when it's 85 degrees by 11am you have to get yourself in gear early.

i have emptied every box from my move!  i use the word "emptied" instead of "unpacked" because there is a huge pile of things on my dining room table that need to be organized and/or put away.  but progress is being made.

i made some yummy lentil stew from a recipe my friend nigel gave me; he made it when i was visiting him and nora in DC a couple weeks ago and i kind of went nuts for it.  seriously: delicious.  when i made it this week i ate it with some crusty bread and brie.

French Lentil Stew 
2 T butter
2 med onions, thinly sliced (2c)
1 sm celery stalk, cut into ¾ in pieces (½ c)
1 carrot, chopped
3 or 4 lg garlic cloves, coarsely chopped
2 t curry powder
1 c canned crushed tomatoes, or chopped, canned plum tomatoes
1 c lentils
3 c vegetable broth
3 c water
1 bay leaf
½ c coarse bulgur wheat
salt & freshly ground pepper
1.5 – 2 T freshly squeezed lemon juice (or lime juice)
½ c sour cream, crème fraiche, or plain yogurt (opt) for garnish
1/3 c thinly sliced green onions (opt) for garnish

Melt the butter in a large soup pot set over medium heat. Stir in the onions, celery, carrots & garlic; cover the pot and cook the vegetables without browning for about 5 minutes, stirring occasionally. Stir in the curry powder and cook, stirring, for about 30 seconds. Add the tomatoes, raise the heat to high, and cook for 1 – 2 minutes more. Stir the lentils into the pot.

Add the broth and 3 cups of the water, and bring to a simmer. Add the bay leaf, partially cover the pot, and simmer until the lentils are almost tender, about 30 minutes.

Stir in the bulgur wheat and continue to simmer, partially covered, until the lentils are tender and the bulgur is tender-firm, about 10 minutes more. Season generously with salt and pepper.

Stir up to 2 T lemon juice into the stew and serve it in a warm terrine or bowl. Stir the sour cream to liquefy it slightly and drizzle about 1 T over the top of each serving. Give each a good grind of pepper, sprinkle with scallions, and serve very hot.

Makes 6 – 8 servings.

From “Come For Dinner” by Leslie Revsin

Note from Nigel: We like to add a wad of spinach at the end (either fresh or frozen) (~1/2 lb).

random thoughts

1. most of the time i very much prefer books to their movie remakes.  like, if you enjoy a book you should never see the movie because it will ruin the experience for you.*  exception to the rule?  the remains of the day.  really loved the movie; thanks to jen for encouraging me to watch it!

2. my parents leave for work every morning by 8am; i roll downstairs between 9 and 10:30.  it is glorious.  initially, it took the dogs a while to realize i was here and thus they should bark and scratch at the door to be let in.  then they got wise to the fact that this was going to happen EVERY DAY and were much quicker on the uptake.  this morning?  both dogs were inside when i woke up; abby greeted me in the kitchen and stella appeared a little later from under mom and dad's bed.  it's like they told my parents this morning, "no need to let us out - claire will be up in a couple hours!"

3. i have received my first email from a professor...with about 100 pages of reading attached that i need to read for our first class.  i've done about half of it - it's both exciting and daunting to think about this year ahead.  i've also made the transition to doing my reading on my computer, highlighting and making comments to myself right in the document.  welcome to 2012, miss claire.

4. you know how apparently the whole country is in a drought?  um, not our little corner of the country.  it's lush and green and gorgeous here, and hasn't been too hot - i remember august being the WORST in terms of heat and humidity when i was younger, but it's perfectly fine this year.  highs in the 80s, pretty humid, but i can sit inside without air conditioning and be just fine.  hoo-ray.

5. and yes, these ARE the only things going on in my life right now.  a little boring, yes, but i'm enjoying the ability not to be ON all the time.  disconnecting for a little while is a good thing.


*next up in my netflix queue: pillars of the earth.  anyone seen it?  i've heard mixed reviews about the miniseries version...

i'm home in north carolina!  i've been here for a week now, but it was a very busy week, full of getting the house ready for 18 of our relatives to visit, which happened this weekend.  that's the reason i haven't posted in an embarrassingly long time...i've been very busy.  apologies!

to fill you in on some of our excitement: last week mom was weeding on a hillside near the house...and out slithered a copperhead!

eek!

dad came up from the shop with a tool that is apparently called a bush axe (shown on the right).  he killed it with one hack.

i stood on a picnic table for safety.

then it dripped blood everywhere.  i did not like that part.

the end.

(file this under "things that do not happen when you live in atlanta.")

i went to the olympics and it was better than i could ever have imagined.

my friends philippa, mike, larry, and larry's son jakob got tickets through the online (authorized) resale market that is only available to the brits (phil and mike are both british and thus able to buy these tickets).  tickets would pop up and then disappear as people bought them, so we stalked the website a lot hoping to find something good.  this popped up a couple weeks ago and we pounced on them.  we liked that we got a lot of tennis, too - 8 hours for a 40 pound ticket.  we bought the "B" class tickets, which meant we wouldn't have the best ("A") seats, but the next level up (the classes went up to "E").

olympic tennis is at wimbledon, and on monday when we went there were matches from 11:30am-8pm on 12 courts!  12!  you could buy one of three kinds of tickets: tickets to centre court, tickets to court 1, or tickets that didn't allow you access to either of those courts but allowed you to sit at any of the other 10 courts on a first come, first serve basis.  we had court 1 tickets, which meant we had an actual seat at court 1 but could walk into any of the 10 other courts (except centre), too.  (i feel like i'm making this explanation very confusing, so i hope you understand.  actual seat at court 1; ability to see matches at 10 additional courts if there was a free seat.)

we arrived at noon, and i did the smartest thing i could have possibly done: i took photos of the big board that showed which matches were being played at which court.  i am a genius.

(one of many such photos.  apparently the dutch fans like cheese hats just like wisconsin fans.)

throughout the day we would refer back to the photos to decide where to head next.  first stop, court 2 to watch andy roddick play (he won).

next stop, our reserved seats at court 1 to watch serena play!  court 1 was much bigger than 2 - and let me take a minute here to say that the courts ranged in size from "oh, is that a match?" with benches to seat maybe 20 fans on the pathway between the larger courts...to a couple hundred...to several thousand seats.

serena killed this tiny polish girl.  poor polish girl.

do you see the sun?  THERE WAS SUN ALL DAY!  I GOT A SUNBURN ON MY NOSE!  incredible weather.

then we went back to court 2 because the afternoon match there looked amazing - williams sisters!  my (excellent) plan was that we would get there before the williams sisters played their doubles match because i figured that would fill up quickly.  we arrived in the middle of a match between a german dude and a serbian dude that was really fun (probably my favorite match of the day, actually - the serbian fans were crazy and there was lots of banter - and the two men were pretty equally matched.  also!  as the german lost he had a hissy fit and slammed his racket into his shoe four or five times, breaking it in half.  omg!  eek!  we were near his (pregnant) wife, who was not amused with him).  the crowd was pretty small when we arrived, so we walked ALL THE WAY TO THE FRONT ROW AND SAT DOWN.  after about two minutes i realized it was too close (too close!  i was too close at the olympics!) because it was right in the line of the serve and i genuinely thought i might get hit in the face by their 200 km/h serves and die.  we moved back one row.

so i watched venus and serena play doubles from the second row - with this view:

incredible.  the place was entirely full by the time the match started, and my get-there-early plan was a huge success.

hi ladies.

if you, like me, are not a huge tennis fan, you might think "i can't tell venus and serena apart!"  you are kidding yourself, as i was.  you just haven't been paying attention.  serena has probably 40 pounds on venus.  i was scared of serena.

the five of us in our seats!

then it was off to court 1 again to watch federer play doubles.  while court 1 was bigger, i loved the intimacy of court 2, especially when it was full...and being in the second row DID NOT HURT MATTERS.

the swiss playing the japanese.  stop wearing the same colors and confusing me.

it got cold.  we put on our jackets.  federer served at 211 km/h.  omg.  there was a tie breaking point thing that i had to learn about.  earlier in the day i learned not to call deuce "a 40-40 tie" [jenny is totally rolling her eyes at this - sorry, jenny!].  philippa and mike were excellent teachers.  i decided i like the fast pace of doubles much better than singles.

honestly?  one of the most fun days EVER.  excellent company, amazing seats, fun matches, great atmosphere, sunshine, understanding in the moment that i was incredibly incredibly lucky to be able to experience all of this.  i'm not a huge tennis fan, but the ability to be so close totally hooked me.  we couldn't have asked for a better day - better tickets - better matches - better anything.  (actually, wrong.  better vegetarian food.  i could have asked for that.)

40 pounds incredibly well spent.

claire and claire's ireland adventure!

oh, get excited about what i have made for you:

(yes, i know it is a little too large for this window, but you wanted to be able to see it all in detail, right?)

i've explained to so many people where i'm going this summer and when i'll be there and i know it's all very confusing - and i'm a really visual person, so this map pleases me.  if you're interested, here is our itinerary:

june 21 - depart atlanta for an overnight flight to london
june 22-24 - london (blue pinpoint on the right)
june 25-26 - belfast (A and G on the map)
june 27 - enniskillen (B), still in northern ireland
june 28 - galway (C) - we'll cross the border into the republic of ireland

(brief interlude to sing this song.)



(claire and i often go out to a irish pub in atlanta called limerick junction that has live irish music / covers of whatever you want him to sing, and our favorite musician plays this song.  I THOUGHT THIS SONG WAS OLD AND TRADITIONAL AND SUCH BUT SOME INTERNET RESEARCH HAS REVEALED THAT IT WAS WRITTEN IN 2000 BY AN AMERICAN.  wowsers.  internet, thank you for teaching me that.  i still love this song.  okay, time to get back on track.)

june 29 - doolin (D)
june 30 - dingle (E)
july 1 - dublin (F)
july 2 - drive back to belfast to fly back to london.

(google maps tells me that our week-long road trip in ireland will require us to drive 683 miles.  in terms that i can understand...683 miles is roughly the distance of a one-way trip from atlanta to washington DC.  or atlanta to miami.  or just a little bit longer than a round trip home to see my parents.  there.  i've put it in perspective for myself. now back to our regularly scheduled programming.)


july 3 - i travel to oxford (the blue pinpoint to the west of london), where i'll be working and hanging out (at this job they are sometimes the same thing) until august 8
august 9 - travel to london; fly back to atlanta

(august 10 - start work at my real job.  eek.  let's not think about that right now.)

i'm off to the airport now, dear friends.  as i've said before: when i'm far from home and can't talk to friends and family in person or over the phone, i have LOVED having this blog and sharing my adventures that way.  for those of you who read regularly, please know how much that connection means to me.  and please share your adventures, too!  and comment.  i love comments.  happy summer, all.

my next post will be from the uk!

you see that wednesday there?

i'll be in london on that wednesday.

eeeeeee!

last night i sat on a patio AT NIGHT and sweated and sweated.
today i volunteered at world peace and sweated and sweated.
wednesday?  wednesday i won't be sweating.
that was, honestly, the most profound difference i noticed during my first summer in england.  the day i returned to the united states and stepped out of the atlanta airport and it was 90 degrees and the air was HEAVY and the heat enveloped me and sweat sprung out on my back and i realized: i hadn't sweated in six weeks.

so so so excited about my coming trip.  and missing atlanta already.  wtf.

i'm at the beach for the weekend for ANDERSON'S BIRTHDAY WEEKEND!  (if you are here, you are required to say that several times a day in an excited manner.)  anderson is the first of the duke crew in atlanta to turn 30; we wanted to have a big celebration and planned a surprise beach weekend.  hooray.  the little house we rented is adorable (and the air conditioning works quite well; mr. air conditioning man is coming to my house in atlanta on monday...).  the beers are plentiful.  the weather is excellent.  all is well in the universe!

in other news, i am reading the immortal life of henrietta lacks and it is INCREDIBLE and I CAN'T STOP READING IT.  (mom and nora: this is right up your alleys.)  this is a minor problem, as i've read 200 pages in two days and, um, may finish this book today.  what will i read for the rest of the weekend?!  eek.  i did not plan well.

schedule

i've decided that summer in atlanta is all about this:

wake up in the 10 o'clock hour.  watch tv / read book.
eat lunch.
be productive for a couple hours (i ran errands today and stopped by work for a bit to tie up some loose ends there).
go to the gym.
come home during the hottest part of the day - while sweaty from the gym (not a good combo, i know) - and just LIE AROUND.  it is too hot - even in the air conditioned house - to do anything else.  (this is where we are in my day right now.  outside temperature: 91.)
shower.
do something social when the temperature allows you to be outside and not be constantly sweating (today: dinner at taqueria del sol with friends).  drink some sort of delicious summer beverage.  current favorite: mojitos.
sleep.

this will be my life for the next two weeks (minus this weekend - trip to charleston to celebrate a friend's 30th birthday!) and i'm pretty pumped about that.

cherries!

mom and i picked a couple gallons from the cherry bushes in the backyard - this is half of the amount we picked - and tonight we'll pit them.  i am a little bit skittish around cherries - one sour one negates all the delicious sweet ones you eat - but add enough sugar and all is well (cherry pie is pretty yummy).

i'm home in north carolina for the weekend, where it is warm during the day but oh-so-lovely in the morning and at night.  this was the view from our front porch this morning - dad working hard, me having a bagel and reading my book and watching:

there are birds!  there are stars!  there are cherries to be picked and made into a pie!  i love home.

oh, and my dad joined facebook.  omg is right.

what sounds really fun in principle: free yoga class led by my favorite instructor in piedmont park on a thursday (that would be today) evening.

in practice... well, since it's 94 degrees outside right now and i am instantly covered in a thin layer of sweat upon exiting the house and walking to the car (which i did at noon to go to my eye doctor's appointment), um, what would it feel like to do yoga outdoors for an hour and a half?  tragic?  probably so.  especially since i sweat buckets in the climate controlled yoga studio.  yeah...i just decided to watch the finale of season 1 of dexter in my air conditioned house instead (how is dexter going to save deb from the ice truck killer?!? i MUST know)...and go to the air conditioned gym later this evening.

this is the smart move, i promise.