Road Trip: Niagara

After hitting the wings in Buffalo, we pressed on to Niagara.

Well, we TRIED to press on to Niagara.

Figure: Instead, we hit every red light in Buffalo.

No really, I counted. EVERY light. In a stick shift car. It was painful.

But several hours later, about 7pm, we made it to the American side of Niagara. I would like to note that Eehern didn't actually know where Niagara WAS, he thought we would just punch it in as a "Point of Interest" in the GPS.

I consulted a map.

We got out at Niagara and walked around the Niagara side first.

Figure: Observing from the spot where the first French guy saw the falls

Figure: Picture of me in front of the American falls

Figure: Large photo without me cluttering up the view

We walked around the island in the middle of the American side, across the river that feeds the falls.

Figure: Me trying to be artsy. Do you see the spiderweb? I want credit for the spiderweb.

Figure: Looking back at the American falls side.

After we had our fill of walking around, we headed through customs to the Canadian side. I had my passport out and ready, prepared to answer whatever questions the guard thew at me.

The customs agent started with the easy ones - where are you from, where are you headed. Then he threw this out there:

"That's a lot," he gestured wildly in the direction of the car, "of STUFF in there." Peering into the windows, he continued, "What all do you have?"

I turned confidently to Eehern, waiting for the answer.

"Uh...." he stammered, "Well, I have a lot of.... clothes.... and, um, clothes...."

Craning his neck toward the stuffed back of the car, he tried to recall what in the world he had packed in there.

"Oh!" he exclaimed, "and a laptop... computer.... and, um..... clothes."

Thankfully, the guard let him go at that. I have no idea why all of a sudden Eehern could no longer recall what was in his car, but I (and the guard) can only assume the boy has a lot of clothes.

Once through that hurdle, we stopped quickly as the light was fading to gaze at the Canadian falls.

Figure: Or, you know, gaze at me in this pictures.

It is indeed true - the view is prettier from Canada. The horeshoe falls are gorgeous. (So like America to call it the "American falls" while Canada calls theirs something useful....).

Figure: Apparently, they turn the falls off at night to harvest the water. Strange to think of all that power being shunted away. Go engineering!

Tired after the long day (and I had run out of my roadtrip drink), we headed to the hotel in Niagara.

I was in charge of booking the hotel. I picked a "Travelocity Top Secret" hotel, which means you get a great deal and they don't tell you which hotel you are getting until you buy. We got this one, which works because we aren't picky.

I noticed this sign on the way in:

Figure: It was a passing thought, "oh that's nice."

The friendly hotel receptionist at first couldn't find our reservation, and then to apologize (and since it was a slow weeknight) he offered to upgrade us.

Well sure!

So, upgraded room key in hand, we parked the car and gathered our bags.

Well, I gathered my bag. Eehern dug around for 15 minutes trying to find a shirt. Apparently he didn't think to put a change of clothes in a reasonable location....

Then we made our way to the room.

Let's see... one bed? Flowers on the table?

And what's that in the corner? Oh yes, a heart shaped jacuzzi. We'd been "upgraded" to the honeymoon suite of sorts.

Figure: Oh yes. Those are mirrors. Eehern considers this turn of events.

We decided to put aside the matter of the jacuzzi, and head to the casino. Eehern was convinced I was a good-luck charm, since I had never played craps before.


So we played craps.


Well actually, first we watched for a while as I tried to understand the rules. Craps in an insanely complicated game! I played for a bit, couldn't figure out what was going on, and promptly lost.


So we wandered around the casino, observing the local night life while I tried to iron out how the game was played. Buoyed by new understanding, we hit the craps table once more.


This time, I understood EXACTLY how I lost.


Apparently, I am not a good luck charm. Sorry Eehern!


But the night did end well for somebody. On Eehern's last roll, some guy at the other end of the table bet $800 on the "Do Not Pass" line. As I understand it, that means if the shooter craps out, you win.


Eehern sevened out.


The other guy won $800.


So at least somebody was happy!


Back at the hotel, I took a shower to rinse off the long day. When I came out (and I swear my showers aren't THAT long), Eehern was already fast asleep on the bed. I had brought my bathing suit, and I was excited to go swimming. 


But when I tried to fill up the jacuzzi, it turns out there was no drain plug! So any water I put in just drained right out. Not useful at all!


So sadly, there was no jacuzzi. I went to bed.


But all in all, Day 1 was packed full - an excellent start to the trip!

Road Trip!

Author's Note: Last weekend I went on a road trip with a friend from here to Chicago. Here follows an account of the trip.

The adventure begins on Thursday, August 12th. My friend Eehern is moving from Cambridge, MA to San Jose, CA by way of a convoluted path across the country.

I am the designated passenger for the Cambridge - Chicago leg. Note that I am not a designated driver, because Eehern doesn't believe I can drive stick shift. Somehow farm truck != beloved Subaru in terms of driving skill. I maintain that if I can navigate cow fields, I can totally manage highway driving, obviously. Same thing, right?

The plan called for leaving at 7am, but he and friends were out celebrating late the night before - so I had my doubts. So despite myself getting up dutifully at 6:45am, I heard not a peep from Eehern until 8:30am. Turns out after celebrating, he had been working from 2-4am the night before, taking care of such important tasks as delivering odds and ends to lab.

So at 8:30am he tells me: "I'll be over in twelve minutes."

Twelve minutes later he calls, "Did you remember your passport?" Yeah. Got it.

At 9:10am I see the Subaru pull in front of my building - longest twelve minutes I've waited in a while. :)

Figure: The car, packed to the brim. I was allowed one carry-on and one personal item.

We stopped at a gas station, and headed out. I always road trip with a beverage. To me, it's a part of the experience. I have nostalgic memories of driving from Stillwater OK to Tulsa OK, which takes exactly the amount of time to drink a Dr. Pepper.

Figure: Miss Outlier's road trip beverage, morning Day 1.

We drove from Cambridge MA to Springfield MA, where our first stop was the basketball hall of fame.

Figure: My grandfather would be proud. He was a basketball coach.

We wanted to, you know, actually SEE the museum, but it was $17 a person.

Figure: So this is what we did instead. Eehern insists there wasn't much there to see, I think that made him feel better. 

Now, before we go much further - let's establish what I was in charge of. My job consisted (since I wasn't allowed to drive) of the iPod, the EZPass, and the GPS.

Figure: So basically, if we didn't make it to Chicago, it was either my fault or the GPS lady. I'm sayin' the fault would be with the GPS.

But instead of relying wholly on the GPS, I thought it prudent to, you know, have SOME idea where we were headed.

Figure: Thus, I also had maps.

We headed out past Springfield, taking I-90 all the way to New York. About noon, I started to get hungry.

Eehern wasn't hungry. As I would come to find out, the boy doesn't need anything. No food, no water, no rest, no - ahem - bathroom stops. Apparently, I'm a high-maintenance passenger. He's always fine.

But he's also a gentleman, so we stopped for lunch.

Figure: Miss Outlier's road trip beverage, afternoon Day 2

We pressed on, heading to Buffalo and the promise of wings.

But Albany comes before Buffalo, and Albany had the following in store for us: rain!

Figure: Putting the RainX to work. Eehern has a devotion to RainX, to the point where he no longer uses wipers. Out of principle. And because his wipers aren't very good.

In fact, I recorded the occasion (and I was bored, having NO DRIVING to do - ahem). For your viewing pleasure:

At 3pm, we took a break. Once again, Eehern didn't need anything. But I needed to stretch and take a bathroom break. Perhaps those road trip beverages have something to do with it...?

Figure: Didn't stop me from getting another one, though. It's the principle of the thing. Miss Outlier's road trip beverage, late afternoon Day 1.

At this point I'd like to take a side tangent - it was at this rest stop I discovered another quirk. Eehern records all gas purchases.

Religiously, in fact. There is a whole lot of data here.

In face, Eehern once considered making a homework problem out of it - and making the students enter in all that data for analysis. At first I thought that was an awesome idea, then I realized he was my TA, and I would have hated that. In any case, there is a gold mine of transportation data here waiting for some industrial soul. Until then, we have absolutely no idea what all this data means.

Moving on.

I am including this just for A.J. - look what we passed on the road!

According to A.J., the world's best grocery store.

Moving on again.

We made it to Buffalo! Home of the original Buffalo Wing. Obviously, we stopped.

We wanted two toppings, and went for the Original and Mild. I think left to his own devices, Eehern would have gotten Original and Suicide, but we were going to be riding in a car for the next 24 hours. I insisted on Mild. 

It was delicious. We polished it off, with no sides needed save for a few measly celery sticks.

The carnage afterwards.

Full and happy, we checked off the first stop on the trip. Buffalo, been and done. On to Niagara...

Shirt Design

I am an officer in the Mechanical Engineering student club, and my job is to do the orientation for new mechanical engineering graduate students when they arrive in the fall (about 160 of them, I think). World's Best School has a very extensive and involved Orientation period, and it's a big deal with lots of events. It's a good job for me, because I've been hosting events as an RA for a couple years now.

The student club that I am in designed and sold club T-shirts back in 2006, but that was before I was here. I thought it would be a great idea to do T-shirts again this year.

I sent out a department e-mail to the students, offering a $50 prize for T-shirt design submissions. We got submissions from only three people, although one person submitted five options.

I didn't really like any of the designs. So I decided to come up with some of my own. But then the judging is biased, so I decided to call in more opinions. I showed my handful of designs (anonymized of course), plus all the submissions, to a bunch of friends and the club president.

One of my designs was the unanimous favorite! But I'm wondering what the internet at large thinks, as my friends are a small and perhaps skewed data set.

Artwork done in Adobe Illustrator, so it's infinitely adjustable and scalable.

This is the back of the shirt, the front has a pocket design with World's Best School MechE logo on it. Just imagine the front is awesome. Planning to make navy blue ones to sell, and green ones for club officers. Because we can. :)

What do you think? Comments, suggestions? Would you wear this shirt? Is it kinda funny, or just doesn't make sense?

Diving With Sharks!

Last year, I had planned to go diving with sharks. It didn't end up happening, but when the same trip was rescheduled for this summer - you bet I signed up!

Once again, I gathered up all the dive gear. I was carpooling with other people, and they wanted me to be at their house by 4:30. That's AM. The subway doesn't even run that early!

Fortunately, my friend took pity on me and let me sleep over the night before, to avoid having to take a cab at 4 in the morning.

Now, the dive master had sent out a sheet on how to avoid seasickness. I followed those instructions to the letter. One Dramamine the night before, an additional one the morning of (although I contend that 4am is still the night before). No coffee, no acidic juice, a small filling breakfast so as to have something in the stomach. No drinking the night before (easy, of course), and a good night's sleep. The recommendation was to go to bed at 9pm, but I can't sleep that early - but I at least was in bed by 11pm.

There were five of us driving down to Rhode Island for the trip. Nobody else took Dramamine, and everybody but me had coffee in the morning. Two of the girls didn't go to bed until 2:30am, and then got up at 4am. And then they had greasy Egg McMuffins along with their coffee in the morning.

Guess who wasn't sick? And guess which other people were heaving over the side for the whole trip? Yeppers, Miss Outlier was very glad she can follow instructions!

Thanks to Bill Buckley for the following pictures.

Here's me, with the shark cage just loaded into the boat. It's pretty small, no?

Figure: First we loaded the shark cage on the boar, in preparation for the 1.5 hr ride out to sea.

When we got out to a good spot, we tossed chum in the ocean (fish oil and fish guts and chopped up fish) to attract the sharks. The seasick people loved that, let me tell you. :)

And then we waited for the sharks to show up. And fished while we waited.

And waited.

And waited.

And JUST as we were about to give up for the day, this guy showed up:

Well hello! We quickly got into out gear, and jumped onto the shark cage to take a look.

The shark came over to investigate.

At this point we thought we'd better get into the cage. Well, I got into the cage. The photographer didn't want to have the bars of the cage in the photos, so he stayed outside just swimming around.

The shark decided to investigate the camera.

I was watching from that platform. That's my face you can barely see up between the bars. I was plenty close.

But the photographer is even closer. Yikes!

Well actually, I was pretty close too. :) It was so thrilling to watch this shark swimming around me. I just wanted to reach out and touch it - bad idea, of course, but the feeling is there. That big 'ol shark eye staring at me reminded me that you don't mess with these creatures.

Well hello to you too, Mr. Shark! After a while, we tagged the shark with an encoded tag for data collection purposes. That made him irritated, so he swam away.

Here's the group of us, coming up for air after the shark was gone. I'm the back left person - it's hard to tell apart the wetsuits... Such an adventurous crew!

We loaded up the cage, and headed home for the day. I slept on the hour and a half ride home, because, well, I got up at 4am that morning. :)

Fantastic day all around, out between the sky and the waves and the depths below. Who knows, maybe someday I'll do it again!

Side Projects, and Also - Ouch!

A couple days ago I got a comment from a labmate that has stuck with me - and really bothered me. I asked to use his scanner to make .pdfs of some papers, and he of course didn't mind and agreed. As he was scanning the papers, he noticed that they weren't related to research. He laughed and said, "I won't even ask what you are working on now!" 

I said, "Oh don't worry - it's just a small side project I'm finishing up."

And he replied, "I figured. Everything you do is a side project. I don't think I've seen you do 10 hours of actual research in the year that I've been here. I mean, that's pretty impressive."

I think he was joking, and the other two people listening kind of chuckled, and so I smiled and just let it go.

But I'm not sure how to take that. I mean, ouch! I know I've done more than 10 hours in a year, obviously, but it's also true that he spends a lot more hours actually in lab than I have this summer. And yes, I work on a lot of side projects. (Sometimes I get stuck on them.) I have a lot of interests - I'm an RA, I'm an officer in a student club, I work on business ideas, I like to cook, I take exercise classes, I like going on random adventures. And, of course, I write this blog (although my labmates don't know that).

I've talked a little before about how I don't work weekends, and a lot of people do. I think all the things I do are part of a healthy, balanced life. I am happy with my life, I've tried really hard to position myself so I can advantage of a lot of opportunities.

And beside the point of how many hours I spend on actual research - if my advisor is happy with my progress, it really doesn't matter how long it takes me to do my work. The labmate who made the comment also will casually toss into conversation that "well last Saturday when I was in lab," or "on the holiday Monday when I was working on my project." In my experience, people like that who feel the need to brag about working long hours may not actually be getting any more done than I am.

That's why I love grad school, or working in a small company, and particularly dislike large structured workplaces. I like to be free to schedule my time how I see fit, not according to other people's expectations. When I've worked in large companies, people would judge you harshly on how many hours you were at your desk. People would talk about going in to work "just to show my face" even if they didn't have to do anything in particular. I think that's ridiculous. I like the entrepreneur model, where you work as many hours as it takes to get things done, whatever hours those may be, and then you stop.

That being said, I do want to graduate eventually. I do need to work on PhD related stuff. So perhaps I need to swing the pendulum back and focus a little bit.

How many hours do you spend on side projects or your own interests?

Roast Chicken, Parts IV and V

After I roasted a whole chicken, and made two recipes with the leftovers, I only had a chicken carcass and a few scraps remaining. But, the Cooking For One cookbook managed to squeeze another two recipes from that!

So Roast Chicken Part IV was to make homemade chicken stock. I always think of chicken stock as something that only pioneer women did. (That, or modern day people who have excess time on their hands.) But despite my reservations, I dug out my largest stock pot and resolved to give it a go.

Figure: Start with rough chopped onion, peppercorns, a bay leaf, fresh rosemary, and whatever spices you care to toss in.

I added the seasonings to a big pot of water, and tossed in vegetable scraps I had in the freezer, and the chicken carcass. I keep vegetable scraps ever since I read this article, pointing out how you can be frugal and use those wastes.

Figure: At this point, the kitchen begins to smell fantastic.

Then you let that simmer away - I let it go for a few hours in the afternoon while I busied myself with other things. When everything is tender and all those flavors have melded together, you put it through a strainer and get:

Figure: Extract-of-chicken - steaming nutritious goodness!

Then that goes in the fridge, and the fat congeals and rises to the top. In the magic Julia-Child style, I have fast-forwarded to show you:

Figure: Still nutritious, doesn't look delicious anymore. We'll just skim that off and move right along.

I then divided the broth into 1-cup, 2-cup, and ice cube trays. Just like I did when I made vegetable broth.

Figure: Useful for all manner of future cooking endeavors.

I stripped the chicken of the last few scraps, and proceeded to the finale - Roast Chicken Part V, Chicken Soup!

Figure: The remnants. The chicken has given its all.

I couldn't bear to NOT eat chicken soup, after my whole apartment was permeated with the delicious chicken stock aromas. So I put some of that stock, and fresh chopped up veggies, potatoes, and spices back in the pot:

Figure: Actually looks a lot like the stock. But there's no bones, which is key. And the veggies are fresh, not the random tops and scraps saved from the freezer.

Hey presto, dinner!

Figure: Do you see the garnish? I want credit for the garnish.

My big soup pot apparently makes enough for five meals, so for the next week I had soup. 

Figure: More than enough soup. Can we be done with this chicken already?

Fortunately, those pioneer women were on to something - homemade chicken stock is much more delicious than the canned variety. Fuller, deeper flavor, not as salty. I love it.

But I don't love it enough to make chicken again any time soon. Bring on the steak, or something else!