Cheese making and vacation time!

A couple weeks ago I tried making goat cheese with a little DIY kit that I received as a Christmas present. I would have tried making this sooner, but it took a really long time to track down non-homogenized goat milk! I finally found some at the Union Market (where Crafty Bastards was held) so the time was right to try my hand as a cheese maker.

I followed all of the steps, but ultimately this was a failure. I had a fun time trying to make cheese, but the end result was a slimy wet mush that slipped out of the molds and into a salty puddle. Oh well!

On a completely different subject, I am leaving soon to go on vacation with my sister! We are having another sisters' trip to Walt Disney World (we had our first sisters' trip 2 years ago)! Shannon arrives in DC tomorrow afternoon and we leave for Orlando the next morning. We will be there for 8 days total (woohoo!) and I plan to blog about our adventures after I return. Ohboyohboyohboy~

Crafty Bastards and Navy Barracks Street Fair

I thought I had already posted about this, but it looks like I haven't written anything about Carlos' and my festival adventures from a couple of weekends ago! On the same day (a Saturday) we went to the Crafty Bastards arts and crafts fair (which we have been to every year since we've lived here--this was our fourth one!) and after that we visited the fair happening in the Eastern Market area near the Navy Barracks.

Honestly, Crafty Bastards was a bit of a let-down. The new location (Union Market, where it was last year, but not the previous two years) is way too fancy and is really a hipster haven. We have to walk through a really sketchy neighborhood to get to Union Market, which is kind of like an uber-fancy food court. Also, we had to pay admission ($5/person) to attend the festival. It was really crowded and full of annoying people so I really don't think we will be going back again next year (not that we will still be living here in October of next year, but I will post more on that a little later). We wandered around for about an hour, found a couple of gifts and decided to head back home.

After a little break, we walked to the Navy Barracks Festival and it was so much fun (we should have just skipped Crafty Bastards and spent more time here instead!). We went to the petting zoo, saw Chesty the bulldog (mascot of the Barracks), saw a cooking contest, watched an ice sculptor, and lots more! The group hanging out here was more diverse, fun, friendly, and decidedly less hipster-y than the lot at Crafty Bastards!

From there we took the metro to our friend Terry's house and we all drove out to the Maryland countryside for a BBQ at a friend's house. We didn't get home until around midnight--such a busy day!

Birthday fun 2013

On the weekend before last I celebrated my 32nd birthday (as my Dad would say, I am now "well into my 30's!") and it was pretty great. Carlos and I made a peaches and cream cheesecake the night before so that we could have a proper birthday breakfast (This cheesecake is also known as Jungle Pie as we made it in the wild jungles of La Selva, Costa Rica for a past birthday with Mom and Judy).  I opened up presents from my family and friends and everything was so nice--I took some pictures of my awesome loot:

We spent the day (it was a Sunday) relaxing and playing video games (something I rarely get time to do these days!) and it was awesome to take a break. That evening, Carlos took me out to dinner at Founding Farmers (this is a Kuprewicz family tradition that started about a year and a half ago when we celebrated my Dad's birthday with dinner there). We had too much tasty food and wandered home after a fun, mellow day!

Costa Rica pictures

Things have been super busy (hence the dearth of posts as usual!) but here are a bunch of pictures (in chronological order) detailing some of the highlights from my two months in Costa Rica this summer.

Things are gearing up for the academic year here in the museum, but I really like the new people I am working with and my job is great so far! I hope Carlos and I will be able to find some fun new things to do in DC this year that I can blog about.

Back in DC

If you couldn't tell from a dearth of posts on this poor blog, this has been a pretty crazy/busy summer for me! I returned to DC from Costa Rica about 2 weeks ago and I am getting settled back into DC life and starting my new Smithsonian position. I don't know if I've talked about it on the blog yet, but before I left to teach my last grad field ecology course with OTS, I interviewed for and got a position at the National Museum of Natural History. I am the coordinator for the Living in the Anthropocene group that involves scientists/curators across all Smithsonian organizations. I will be working with a really enthusiastic group of people and things are going along well so far!

Other than that, Carlos and I have been enjoying the last few pieces of summer in and around the city. We've been visiting farmers' markets and we even went to the Holocaust Museum last week. I am really excited that it is starting to turn into fall weather around here (we haven't had to turn on the air conditioners for about a week now!), which is my favorite season in DC. I am also planning my next trips: maybe Mexico with Carlos in October and a "Sisters' Disney Trip II" with Shannon in November (we are going back to Walt Disney World for a week-long vacation).

I hope to get back to regular-ish posts on this blog now that I am back and not yet really swamped with work!

Las Cruces -- land of the agouti

This summer has been really flying by and unfortunately I haven't had much time to post on this blog! I have been teaching the graduate OTS course since the first week of June and we are nearly done (2 weeks left). We have just spent a week in Las Cruces and there are still plenty of agoutis running all over the garden here. Tomorrow we head up into the mountains (2600-3000 m) for six nights in Cerro de la Muerte. I can't wait to rejoin Carlos and our good friends Deedra and Bob there. I also really love that station and the nearby paramo habitat.

We won't have any internet there and after Cerro we travel to Las Alturas (no electricity there). We finish up the course on 29 July. After that I have about a week in San Jose (with Carlos and my co-coordinator Ana) to finish up all the paperwork/reports/accounting of the course. After that, Carlos and I return to DC on 5 August whereupon I start my new position at the Smithsonian! I am very excited to have an official position there now. I will have more information about everything once get back to the states~

In the dry forest: Palo Verde, Costa Rica

I have been in Costa Rica for about two weeks now and I am currently sitting in the classroom working on data analysis and preparing my presentation for the 2013 Association for Tropical Biology and Conservation conference. I am leading one final graduate-level tropical biology course (8-weeks in the field with 22 students and a gaggle of every-changing faculty resource people) and things are going well so far.

We have been in the tropical dry forest (in Palo Verde National Park) for 10 days now and the air is thick with swarms of mosquitos (we abut a huge wetland where the mosquito larvae hang out) and hot, humid air. I really like this site in the dry season, but it is a little more challenging in the wet season (the season we are in now). I will be very happy to head up into the mountains tomorrow morning. We set out for Monteverde at 0700 h tomorrow morning and it should only be a quick 2-3 hour drive to the station. We will meet our resource faculty at the station, eat lunch, then set out for guided hikes in the cloud forest reserve and around the biological station.

My posting might be a bit sparse during this trip (internet, or even electricity, is not consistent between sites). I will try to download some pictures to post soon, but things are very busy! I will be in Costa Rica until 5 August and the course will be visiting five more sites before we finish at the end of July.

New York City trip - Day 3

We started our final day in New York City with pastries and coffee at a cute coffee shop near our hotel called Gregory's. It was really crowded (like everything in NYC) but we managed to snag a table.

Our big journey of the day was to visit the Metropolitan Museum of Art: a museum made famous in the muppet masterpiece Don't Eat the Pictures! We took the subway to the Natural History Museum stop and walked across Central Park to get to the MET. It was a beautiful, cool, sunny day and we had a nice time seeing a bit of the park on our way to the Museum.

When we arrived at the MET, the front was covered in scaffolding (kind of a running theme for this trip), but there were plenty of hot dog stands out front (like the one that Cookie Monster eats at the end of Don't Eat the Pictures). We entered the museum (bypassing the $25 entrance fee again because we are affiliated with the Smithsonian) and headed first to the Egyptian exhibits. There were so many amazing artifacts (and reconstructed temples) here. Except...the one exhibit I really wanted to see, the Temple of Dendur--featured prominently in Don't Eat the Pictures--was closed! Grrr, oh well, we saw plenty of other neat things.

After touring ancient Egypt, we left the MET to have an early lunch at Papaya King, a well-known hot dog place. We had some tasty dogs (I had one with cole slaw and pickles on it!), which we ate in Central Park before heading back in to the museum.

We toured the entire place and made sure to see more highlights from the Don't Eat the Pictures tour, including the medieval armory and Washington Crossing the Delaware. We had a really great day at the MET because there is so much to do and see!

After a full day of art-gazing, we headed back to the hotel for a break before our dinner at Eataly (I told you we would return!). We started our meal with some tasty bread. olive oil, and a cheese plate. After that, Carlos had a seafood pasta dish and I had one with pancetta, basil, and tomato sauce. Everything was very fresh and tasty. We shopped a little (for souvenirs) and couldn't resist bringing a couple of little pastries back to the hotel for dessert/breakfast the next morning.

That does it for this trip report. We left the next morning on our 10 am DC2NY bus and everything went well. Carlos and I can't wait to plan another trip to New York City in the future--it is such a cool and vibrant city!