late summer/early autumn snippets

just some random events from the last few months...

our first charity date- for the XP Family Support Group at the Carvalho winery in Clarksburg.

best part of the night? fresh (FREEEEE) mini donuts.

mary and erik are expecting! some pics from the baby shower... now 40 1/7wks and counting!

our annual trip to apple hill- we were fortunate enough to be joined by the laws and the kunkels. pictured below, the cutie pie kiddos and their families. mmm... nothing like celebrating fall with apple cider and fresh sugary apple cider doughnuts. oh, and of course the good company ;)

and finally, just last weekend, a CME trip to Houston... our family's first visit to Texas!

despite a rocky start (red-eye flight + sudden onset food poisoning for the hubs = bad news bears), we rallied to explore houston a bit. below, discovery green, this large park in downtown houston, was lovely- only slightly humid, temps in the high 80s, fledgling farmers' market, marketing for the volt, lily pads... very nice.

and what trip to texas would be complete without bbq?

sign of authenticity- stacks of wood outside your local bbq joint.

i can't believe it's autumn aka boot season. our warm indian summer gave way to crispy, shivery cool days... and it's only ONE MONTH TIL THANKSGIVING!!! one interesting aspect of this year-long rotation is the change in how i mark the passing of time nowadays, vs. before when all i cared about was finishing up any given rotation (e.g. just 4 more weeks! just 2 more calls!). now i'm all about the holidays. and atrocious sentence structure. . . . i think it's about time for me to switch back to FP :P

concrete jungle dreams

ah, new york. this past week, the hubs and i indulged in a laid-back jaunt through the big apple... eating good food, doing whatever we wanted to do, sleeping in - all in all, a grand vacation. i know being on vacation in a city is far from the reality of living in a city, but my experience this time (and in prior visits) makes it hard to think logically about the differences- when i fantasize about living in a city, i think of manhattan.

without further ado, organized roughly by themes, a pictorial mash-up of our Summer 2010 NYC tour.

museums: we hit up the king tut exhibit that we had missed in SF, the museum of natural history, the new museum (pics yoinked from the web below), and walked museum mile past the guggenheim, whitney and the met. particularly enjoyed watching Hubble on IMAX at the museum of natural history, and rivane neuenschwander's exhibit at the new museum- her piece Rain Rains pictured below.

Broadway: spent an evening watching sean hayes and kristin chenoweth in promises, promises. we had pretty awesome orchestra seats- so close that i was driven to distraction by something that resembled a bindi on kristin chenoweth's forehead... googling after the show revealed that it was a microphone, which wouldn't have been noticeable from further away.

the sweets: there was so much in the way of good eats that i have to split up the desserts from the rest of the food pics. pictured below, two little red hens- a cute little bakery on the upper east side, with really great red velvet and brooklyn blackout cupcakes. also pictured (with pic stolen from the web), sugar sweet sunshine bakery which offered up an ok red velvet, but an outstanding strawberry cream cheese cupcake which andy proclaimed "the best cupcake i've ever eaten". the cupcakes looked so unassuming i didn't even taken pictures of them... also hit up some candy stores, including economy candy (my pic) and dylan's candy bar (web's pic). we also visited gramercy tavern for desserts, though i really wish we could have stopped by again for dinner. i had great aspirations for tracking down various dessert trucks, including the wafel truck, the cupcake stop truck, the big gay ice cream truck (not making this up)... but ended up incidentally having ice cream from the van leeuwen artisan ice cream truck in the village, and the lone remaining cupcake (s'mores) from chikalicious dessert club. at some point, even i had to admit that i had to stop trying cupcakes everywhere, because EVERYONE made cupcakes... including convenience stores on every corner.

the food: pictured below- shake shack with daniel & mike, rickshaw dumpling bar, le cirque (pre fixe lunch for restaurant week), rare, katz's deli (best pastrami ever), alice's tea cup chapter II (tastiest scones ever), and babbo (best. pasta. ever.). not pictured- mad for chicken (deliciously fried chicken wings of the bonchon/kyochon-esque variety), lunch at le bernadin with kay & steve, falafel at taim, pizza at motorino with molly, thai delivery food to our hotel (i just might be most jealous of the delivery service in nyc), random street cart fare. i could wax rhapsodic about most of our eats, but the most memorable dish was part of our pasta tasting menu at babbo (i have to thank my college roomie jenny for recommending this!)... we had the pasta bolognese replaced with the beef cheek ravioli, which is according to our waiter, the signature pasta dish of babbo. o. m. g. this dish would definitely be one of my picks for my "last supper"... rich, decadent, ridiculously good. and that's all i have to say about that.

random happy thing: so it just so happened that we were walking on fifth avenue one afternoon... and waddaya know, we found eataly. it had been open for about an hour, and it was packed. we could hear italian spoken everywhere, and the store was enormous, and then all of a sudden we see people whipping out their cell phones and taking pictures... yes, mario batali in the flesh.

but perhaps the happiest thing we experienced there was the gelato. andy proclaimed his pistachio gelato to be BETTER than the gelato he'd had in italy, and my pear and vanilla gelato was delicious. their desserts were also pretty tasty- pricey, but tasty. the standout was the monte bianco- a concoction of chestnuts and meringue.

yay for sporting events! the timing was wonderful... we planned our trip without thinking about the US Open, but a few weeks ago realized that we'd be there during the 1st-2nd rounds. so one lovely evening, we headed out on the 7 train to flushing and watched some good tennis. we had tickets for arthur ashe stadium, and we were in the middle of the djokovic vs. petzschner match when a fight broke out amongst the fans a few sections over. we couldn't really see anything because everyone was standing up, so we saw the fight on youtube after the match. ridiculousness! we're hoping to visit wimbledon someday as well, and i just can't imagine something like this happening there- at least, let's hope not. in any case, it was an awesome experience and i'd love to attend again if given the chance.

other random moments: trekking all the way out to the colbert report studios only to find that the show was on hiatus for the whole week :( , shopping in soho for a jacket (restaurants apparently have dress codes that they actually stick to out there... what a concept), shopping desperately along our walk on the UES for more suitable footwear and finding some $7 sandals at H&M (not all shoes, no matter how comfy they may seem, are NYC-worthy), washington square at night, and strolling in central park. oh, and finding out that the hubs is now BOARD CERTIFIED. :)

*sigh*

i heart NYC

it was a much-needed break, and has helped tremendously with providing some perspective. i DO feel refreshed (even if i did catch a little cold over the past few days). i've been able to realize, yet again, that there will be a life after residency which will start in less than 2 years... a life that is full of possibilities.

that being said, i still really don't wanna go back to work. don't suppose there's any solution for that.

summer escapes

this year, the summer weather in sacto has been... ok. temperate, even. ironic, then, that we've spent a lot of time traveling this summer... to even HOTTER climes.

before we spent time wandering about the country, however, we did hit up the california fair for the 4th year running! one more year to go...

i've also been "escaping" various things, including the tedium of clinic by eating lots of yummy lunches with my partner-in-crime, betza... occasionally her hubby and adorable kiddo join us, then it's REALLY hard to go back to work.

i was fortunate enough to represent our FM/psych program at the aafp conference in kansas city this year-

pictured- the convention center, kelvin (fellow FP resident) at our booth, and some combined folks. it was hot and humid, but it was actually really nice to meet other combined residents, hang out with some of the UCD network residents, and wander about kansas city. twas SUPER nice to be away from work for a bit too, i can't lie. in between all the schmoozing and trolling for swag, we ate some awesome bbq at jack stack's, and one of the best steaks i've ever had at the capital grille. i gotta hand it to kansas city... they know meat.

as far as our other travels- the hubs went back to michigan, and also got to spend some time in haiti on a medical mission trip... and we just got back from a glorious visit to NYC. more pics to come!