Some wedding pics

Nadim and Sima's wedding was wonderful! Everything was well planned out and fun. I really liked Sima's dress and hair, it was a very romantic look, which I prefer over the more strict hair-dos and dresses.

Other things that I thought worked really well were the choice of band playing at the reception they played music that everyone enjoyed dancing to, the cocktail hour outside before the dinner allowed people to catch up and the country club setting was really pretty, transportation from hotel to chapel, and from chapel to reception prevented people from getting lost, getting stuck in traffic, being late, etc., and the welcome pack that included water, granola bars, and mints, kept me from getting dehydrated in the heat, provided a quick breakfast the next day, and helped breath after wine and food, perfect!!

The capital

The weekend in D.C. was amazing! The weather continued to be warm and sunny, the wedding we attended was amazing, and I got to sped all of Sunday with my parents touring the Smithsonian museums. This time around I got to see the American History Museum, the National Archives, and the Air and Space Museum. Loved them all! Wish I had even more time to spend there!

I also tried some of the "local" culinary treasures :) Ramzi and I had wonderful crepe at the creperie across from our hotel and my parents and I shared a pitcher of Yuengling after a long day at the national mall.

Springtime in Haddonfield NJ

No surprise to me, my mom took me on a tour around her garden before the pancake breakfast... :) She had planted lots of flowers and some fruit trees, and everything was starting to bloom this weekend. The weather was gorgeous, sunny and really hot!

I post these pictures as proof that there is more to Jersey than Newark... :)

 

A propeller plan!

After waiting and reading my pop sci magazine, it was finally time to board the plan to Philly. I have to say I was a little surprised when I had to walk out on the run way and board this little propeller plane! It was very cute! It only had nine rows of two seats, and luckily the seat next to me was empty. Needless to say, I slept all the way from Newark to Philadelphia!

Once I got there, I was greeted by my sweet parents who took me home for a pancake breakfast :)

Painful morning

It's 5:40 am and I'm at the Newark airport waiting for my connection
to Philly. That means that it's really 2:40 am for me and I didn't
sleep enough at all! The flight here was overall smooth but (1) too
short, I don't mind it being longer when it's over night, (2) painful
for my knees, my tendinitis didn't like sleeping in a chair, (3) there
was a child crying his lungs out two rows in front of me for the last
2.5 hrs.

Got myself some coffee and pop sci to get through this morning!

Menu of the week

Today I did something I typically do on Sundays, which is make a whole lot of food to last us through the week. The big batches this week consist of curry chicken and kafta with potatoes. 

I don't ever follow recipes, so I'm don't ever know the amounts of things I use, but I'll provide almost-recipes for the curious ones!

Curry Chicken

Onions

Oil

Curry powder

Dried cranberries

Chicken breasts

Chicken bouillon

Milk

Flour

Apples

Salt & Pepper

Stir fry the onions in oil and add the curry powder and the dried cranberries, when the onions get soft, add the diced chicken pieces. When everything looks golden, add the bouillon and apple pieces. Let it cook for a while. Last step, to get the creamy sauce without using any cream, is to mix the milk with some flower and add it to the stew, let it boil up and then take it down to a simmer for a minute, and voila -- it's done!

Kafta with potatoes

Potatoes

Ground beef

Onions

Parsley

Diced tomatoes

Salt, pepper, allspice, cinnamon

Cut the potatoes in coins and place them in a non-sticky form so that they cover the bottom, I usually put a couple of levels of potatoes. 

Mix ground beef, small cut onions and parsley, and the spices in a bowl. Make little sausage-like things from the mix and place on top of the potatoes. Then cover it all with dices tomatoes. Put the form in the oven until the potatoes get soft. And done! Big disclaimer: this is probably not how they do it in Lebanon, because it seems way too easy, their food must for some reason be more complicated... :) but I like this dish the way I make it, and it's super easy since most of the work is done in the oven anyway.

Questions that will remain unanswered

I am thoroughly annoyed with the Registrar's office! I think they might just be the most inefficient office on campus, and probably the least service minded too. 

I had to go there yesterday to register a friend for research units. She had talked to them before and cleared it so I could do this for her. Not a big deal, I'm on campus anyways, it should be a quick drop-off of the add card.

I get there at 1:05 right after my lunch, and go up to the window, only to find out that there is a $3 charge to add a class. Ok, fine, that's not a big deal either. But then I find out that I have to walk across the hall and pay at a different office, the cashier's office. I walk over to the cashier's office only to find out that they are closed between 1-2pm, the current time was 1:15pm. Great! I walk back to the Registrar's office, to see if they can't just take my $3 and get this over with, I mean there must be a way for them to get the money to the right office at the end of the day? Aren't they synced somehow? The guy behind the counter looks at me like I'm retarded asking them to take care of a task that's sooo obviously not theirs....

I didn't bring any work with me because I thought this was going to be a quick task, just drop off the add card and leave, but now I find myself stuck in the student union for 45 minutes! This ended up with me getting 5 colored pens I didn't really need from the bookstore.

Finally it's a couple of minutes before 2 and I head back to the admin building, but now a line formed for the cashier's office! Well of course! If one office is closed for an hour and being able to do errands at the other office is dependent on going to the closed one, there will be a line at one place and the other will be empty (see pics above). Why doesn't the Registrar's office also close at the same time? I mean, what can they possibly do while the Cashier's office is closed? Play solitaire, point people to the Cashier's office, pick their teeth... the list is long... and why can't the Registrar's people and the Cashier's people do the same tasks? These are probably questions that will remain unanswered. 

Hot game!

Easter Sunday was spent at the Angels baseball stadium watching a super exciting game between Angels and Red Sox. It was a close game until the last minute, and luckily Angels managed to keep the Sox down. 

You wanna hear about the Swede that holds on deep inside me? I was a little cold in the morning, looked outside and saw clouds, and figured we might get really cold sitting outside for so many hours... I put on three sweaters, a jacket, and a cashmere scarf, told Ramzi that we have to bring a wool blanket because we might get cold after a while, and he is so cute instead of arguing with me that I'm being ridiculous, he goes and gets me the blanket!

We get to the stadium which is in Anaheim, a little inland from Irvine, and it's sunny and warm. I still kind of think we should bring the blanket with us into the stadium, because it might be cold if we're in the shade, but I agree we can go to the car and get it if I get cold. We get inside and it's like 90F where we're sitting. We're completely in the sun, there is not much of a breeze and there is not a cloud in sight! I end up wearing only a t-shirt the entire time, wishing I had shorts instead of jeans, and carrying a bag full of sweaters. 

Note to self: Southern California is warm in April, no need for blankets and jackets in the middle of the day!

Easter egg coloring

Today was spent coloring eggs for Easter followed by a wonderful lunch outside. I think we are quite artistic! I like Ramzi's Lebanese flag and Mazen's world map, very creative!

Dinner & a movie

Isn't it the simplest but best of dates? The bf and I went to dinner at Yardhouse followed by watching "Duplicity" the new Julia Robersts movie. The dinner was excellent! I usually go for the lettuce wraps at Yardhouse, but yesterday I decided to venture out from the safe choice and I tried the burger with gorgonzola, mushrooms, and caramelized onions instead, and I'm so happy I did, because it was amazing! With the burgers we had two different IPAs. Yardhouse is perhaps most known for the large variety in beer, more than 100 different kinds on tap.

Happy Easter!

Make a Smilebox greeting

Focus!!! Where is it?!

This is the gloomy view from my office and what I have been staring at for the last two days.

I've had two completely unproductive days and it's driving me crazy! I can't seem to sit down and do work. There are so many things happening right now, managing 7 undergraduate project teams, taking a pedagogy course, waiting to hear back from a company regarding an internship for the summer, which btw determines everything this summer, will I be on the west coast or the east coast?, when will I be where?, how long can I travel for in August?, will I make it to Sweden at all or just Lebanon?, will my friends be able to come visit me and when and how long can they wait on me letting them know?, will I blow all future chances with extension services?, my topic defense paper, my topic defense presentation, my ASE paper that I haven't started on, a potential job talk that's really scary and coming up in two weeks and completely out of the blue, the development of my research tool, the case study, what domain am I looking at? And then come the thoughts about the future... where is all this going? where will I be a year from now? what do I want? I don't even know what I want!!! How pathetic is that?!

It's all making me dizzy and right now for some reason I can't think about any of it. I really hope going to the movies tonight is the right kind of distraction to put me back on track tomorrow. 

is looking forward to a big brunch!

April Wine Night

So, it was time for another wine night. For some reason, I think we kinda forgot about it until a couple of days before, so on Wednesday (I think...), we created the facebook event and sent out all the invitations. Amazingly, the party was packed! I think we had around 60 attendees at some point during the night. 

This wine night was also amazingly fun! It went through several different stages, from five people chatting in the corner over some wine, to 30 people drinking wine in the corner of the room, to 30 people dancing to loud music and disco lights, while the "quieter" (or overheated) crowd moved outside. 

There was also the suspender and the cowboy phenomena that no one can really explain to this day. Why did the Pomona crowd all show up wearing suspenders, and what was up with the cowboy?!

is using ping.fm

Walking home from campus

One of the things that I love about living in California are the bright flowers. These pics were taken on my 10 minute walk home from campus. It's those little things in life that make all the difference!

Red, black, and white party

Last night we went to Tijana and Vesna's red-, black-, and white- themed dessert party. Unfortunately we couldn't eat any of the desserts, since we gave up sweets for lent, and those desserts looked amazing! It was fun nonetheless, great people and great music (lady gaga)! 

Tacos from the Barrio

This week offered a trip to Santa Ana for authentic tacos. The place we went to, El Gallo Giro, was so authentic we had to order in Spanish. Luckily tacos and salsa are part of our vocabulary... ;)

The food was great, and there was a lot of it. I went for the safe choice of carnitas, chicken asado, and carne asada, whereas the bf's order also included tongue (or lengua).