nature in bloom

After we finished playing/exploring/learning at the Academy of Science, The Boy and I quickly walked through the Botanical Gardens at Golden Gate Park. Not tooting my own horn or anything, but I got a lot of good pictures of the flowers using the macro feature on my camera.










This last one is my favorite photo.

I know I haven't been posting a lot about food, and I'm trying to make up for it. It's coming soon! In the meantime, there is a funny story about food on this outing with The Boy. We had lunch at the Academy of Science in their cafe, which boasted food from around the world. So naturally, we decided to order a little bit of everything. The cafe has a cafeteria style setup and just like a cafeteria in high school, you take your tray and put whatever dish you want and move along until you're ready for the register. And since we wanted a bit of every international flavor, we ordered way too much for two people to eat. There were springrolls, porkbuns, quesadillas, pho, Mexican soda. We ate only half of it and had to brown bag the rest.

So, The Boy was carrying around the bag of leftovers while we were walking around the Botanical Gardens. At one point, I look over and noticed that he is surrounded by squirrels. Seriously, there was like ten squirrels surrounding him. I took one picture from about twenty feet away. Then I slowly sneaked up to him because there was one squirrel that was climbing up his pant leg aiming for the bag of leftovers. I wasn't able to get a picture of the squirrel climbing up his jeans, though, because The Boy flinched when the squirrel started digging his claws into his jeans. The Boy then tore a piece of quesadilla and fed it to the one squirrel. The other squirrels were jealous.

I just gotta say that those squirrels were not the least bit shy of humans. Especially humans with food in hand.

cool images of science

I took about 200+ pictures from our day at the Academy of Science, but these are a few of my favorites.

The Rainforest Globe

a giant squid

The famous white alligator that the aquarium is known for housing.

a prehistoric bird that was even larger than the ostrich




Palm trees that remind me of being on a beach in sunny Hawaii.

how much of a carbon footprint does your food leave?

I saw food on one of the exhibits at the Science Museum and pulled The Boy directly over to that area.
Turns out it was just fake food, but it was fake food with educational materials.
I thought it was funny how each plate was bolted to the table. This plate looked especially humorous with the tomatoes eyeballs and asparagus mouth.

And if you can see it (click on the image to get a bigger picture), this shows what the emission levels of vegetables are. Told you it was educational fake food.

butterflies in the rainforest

Before I left SF for DC, The Boy and I went to spend half the day at the California Academy of Science. I was pretty peeved that day because: 1) we had to wait in line for 45 minutes just to get tickets, and this was on a weekday!; 2) they ran out of passes to the Planetarium, which is one of the main attractions; and 3) the 3D Bugs show was not running. I was looking forward to visiting this place for such a long time that I felt cheated for paying $19.95 per person (student discount) and not being able to see 2 of the 3 things that the science museum is known for.

Okay, now that that's out of my system, we were able to get in line to see the Rainforest Globe. It was full of butterflies flying around and it was humid as heck (because it's the rainforest you know). The butterflies were mostly on the top level of the rainforest, so I got some better close-ups once we were at the top.




I don't know how, but this one lady was able to get a butterfly to land on her fingertips. She quickly became an immediate photo opportunity and everyone starting circling around her while being careful not to scare the butterfly away.


While we were walking up from the bottom of the rainforest, we saw these yellow plates in the tress, but we didn't know what they were for. Well, at the top, you can see the butterflies and birds feeding on these oranges.

More to come with the Academy of Science fun.

party plane in the sky

Now that I'm in DC with reliable internet access that allows quick uploads of pictures, I'm going back to describing my traveling experience on Virgin America.

I got to the airport pretty early because I had a ton of luggage that needed to get checked and I figured if I had to lug all the suitcases myself, it might take me awhile. Surprisingly, it only took me 15 minutes to check in and get all my luggage checked. Pretty quickly if I do say so myself. Going through security, however, was another thirty minutes of my life.

There's the Virgin America plane waiting at the gate.
I hadn't had breakfast yet, so this was my first meal of the day -- Peet's Lemon & Rose hot tea and an almond croissant. I was also reading Julie & Julia while passing the time (the book is really different from the movie, mainly because the book is only about Julie).
The waiting area at Gate A11 waiting for boarding time.
And here is a photo of the interior of the Virgin America main cabin. They have pretty purple lights and "cool music" (their quote, not mine) in the lavatories. I walked by the First Class cabin and was envious of those people. If only I had $200 for the upgrade. Oh well, I sat in the main cabin with a handful of screaming toddlers but no one's complaining about that, are they? (I think children under age 10 should be banned from this airline.)
This is the view from my window seat, somewhere over Nevada or other.


And this, my friends, is the cool individual tv monitor at each seat. You can watch on demand movies for $8 each (apparently this is free in First Class), or a foreign film for $5 (not sure why there's a discrepancy between those categories). There's also on demand tv that ranges from free to $2 per episode. I just spent the 5+ hours flight watching satellite tv (NCIS marathon on USA).

And then there's the food menu, that ranges from $3 to $9...


...I opted for a free coke and brought my own lunch, $2.50 lunchables for adults.
Overall, it was a pretty good flight. In between watching satellite tv and eating, I was also online surfing the web (mostly looking through craigslist ads for apartments). It was kinda neat to email The Boy and keep him updated on my flight status while I was in the air, all the while emailing him pictures of the party plane that he still has yet to experience (he tells me Virgin America is the party plane to take to Vegas).

I really hate layovers, especially on cross country flights. And with non-stop flights from SFO to IAD starting at $119 each way, I'll gladly pay $15 per bag for checked luggage so as to enjoy the non-stop flight, the individual tv monitors, and wi-fi in the air. I am definitely going to use Virgin America again for my trips back to the West Coast.

Don't worry, Southwest, you still have my patronage for flying from BWI to BOS since you still carry the cheaper flights for that travel.

blogging at 35,000 feet

I am sitting in seat 15A on Virgin America Flight VX84, which departed San Francisco about an hour and a half ago and is headed for the nation's capital (Washington DC if you didn't know).

Why am I heading to DC? I'm going to start my year at GWU working on an LLM degree in International Law. Although I am tired of school, I'm actually pretty excited about starting at GWU. And a year flies by quickly, right? So this fourth year of law school should be a piece of cake.

How am I blogging while the plane is flying cross country? For $9.95 per flight, Virgin America allows you to be connected while you're in the air. The only downside I have experienced is that it takes FOREVER to upload photos, so I will save all my photos for another blog about all the benefits of flying Virgin America. (no subliminal messaging here)

The drink carts are coming by so I'm going to log off and eat my lunch while watching NCIS on the little tv screen in front me. Aww yeah!

taco salad

The Boy's mother decided to make taco salad for dinner last night. It was a very simple recipe that hit the spot. A light meal and yet fills the tummy without giving you that food coma aftereffect.
First, she browned some hamburger meat, drained it and then added regular taco seasoning from the packet. Then she added the taco meat to the salad. The salad part consisted of romaine lettuce, cucumber, tomatoes, corn and some jalapenos just for me. She also added shredded cheese to her salad, which I omitted from mine. Last to add is the corn chips (or tortilla chips, whichever you prefer).

She also had these breadsticks you can order from The Olive Garden and bake in your very own oven. The breadsticks were so delicious! It would go especially well with spaghetti. I'll have to see if there's an Olive Garden in SF so I can make some spaghetti and breadsticks for The Boy before I leave for DC.

outrageous brownies

For my birthday way back when (in April), L gave me this cool brownie pan that gives an edge to every slice of brownie.
It is a really nice quality pan, and it comes with a serving utensil!
Included with my gift of the brownie pan was also this box of Barefoot Contessa's Outrageous Brownie Mix. So guess what? I used the brownie mix to make brownies in my new brownie pan!
In addition to the brownie mix, I needed two eggs and a stick of butter (1/4 lb). The directions are on the box, but you can have pictorial instructions here:

First, preheat oven to 350 degrees, butter and flour the brownie pan. Next, melt chocolate chunks and butter over a pot of boiling water...
...until it's smooth like this picture below.
Next, you mix the melted butter/chocolate into the package of brownie mix. Add the eggs and beat on low. (Optional - fold in walnuts.)
Then, put the mix into the brownie pan. This was a bit difficult because the mix fell out into a pile in the middle of the pan. I had to use a spatula to spread the mix around the edges and then try to gauge if it was evenly distributed.
Put the pan in the oven for EXACTLY 35 minutes. Do not leave in any longer than that! This is per Barefoot Contessa's instructions.
Take the pan out of the oven and let cool.
Cut up the pieces and serve. I was able to cut out 20 squares from this baker's edge pan.

Get a glass of milk and enjoy! These really were OUTRAGEOUS; so rich and delicious! YUM!