Can you guess which of these is MA and which is MD?

or

I’ll give you a hint: our new house has two malls and at least four large shopping centers within 15 minutes of us.  Our old house had one small shopping center and the mall was a thirty minute drive. On the plus side, we have already found some good restaurants nearby and have both a Trader Joe’s and a farm stand with fresh produce quite close. We also have bike trails close to our house, although we haven’t explored them yet. I think we’ll get used to it in time!

(The pictures above may be a slightly biased comparison. There are in fact some nice green areas nearby and it is not all shopping centers!)

The lack of posts to this blog has been due to Megan and me being a bit busy—in the last few months we’ve defended our Ph.D.s, gotten new jobs, and moved to Maryland. Leaving Amherst and all the great friends we’ve made there over the last six years was tough, but we’ve already had some visitors to our new home and hope to have many more in the future!

From a BBQ after Megan’s defense:

and from our going away party:

We spent most of our time in Asheville visiting the Biltmore, a French chateau style mansion built by a Vanderbilt descendent (with way too much money on his hands). The architecture was quite impressive, and we did both a self-guided tour and the Architect’s Tour which took us to the balconies and rooftops for extra views of the property. The home was built in the 1890s at the height of the Gilded Age, and really shows the splendor of the nation’s wealthy at that time.

It was interesting to see the technology in the house; it was built on the cusp of the electrical revolution so it has a mix of old and startlingly modern features (e.g., an elevator and indoor swimming pool). The gardens and wooded grounds around the house are also quite pretty, and we ended up coming back for a second day to see the gardens. A storm thundered through just as we headed to lunch, and we barely made it inside before the worst of the downpour (it even briefly took out electricity in the restaurant). Later we stopped by the Biltmore vineyard to sample some of their wines.

We spent our other days in Asheville wandering the streets and browsing the stores and cafes. It was quite a lively town and seems to be going through a nice artsy revival. Hopefully we’ll head back someday!

See also: Part 1 and Part 2. Or more photos.

You can see the tag clouds (and all the related emails) here. Use the slider to scroll back in time, and click on the dates inside the box to read the full e-mails.

Enjoy, but sorry, the tea and cookies advertised in the emails are only available to members of my department.

Our next night was to be spent in Asheville, but we had a long ways to go first. We were reaching the end of the Blue Ridge mountains, and we made a stop at Grandfather Mountain, highest of the Blue Ridge. Grandfather is a privately owned mountain, and feels a bit like a tourist trap. They have a fudge shop to fatten you up before you visit the animal enclosures where you can see bears and a cougar. The animals watched us hungrily.

Near the summit is the “mile high” bridge that stretches from a parking area to a large rock outcropping. It was fairly crowded and touristy, but all that doesn’t detract too much from the views off into the Blue Ridge, which are the real reason to go up there. We were pressed for time, so we didn’t get to do any of the hikes to the true summit. This was probably just as well, because just as we crossed back over the bridge, a cloud rolled in and made the whole place disappear.

We continued on our journey south, stopping at overlooks when the weather permitted (rarely). We were clearly being followed by storms, so we were unable to do some of the hikes we’d hoped to do along the way (Linville Falls, Craggy Gardens, and Crabtree Falls). Eventually we reached Mount Mitchell, highest point east of the Mississippi, and hoped that the weather would stay clear as we headed up.

We pulled into the parking lot to the sound of thunder. It did not feel wise to be quite literally the tallest thing on this half of the country during a lightning storm, but luckily the rain held off. We practically ran up the half mile path to the summit where an observation platform gave us a magnificent view of clouds, but not much else. We’ll have to go back some day.

We continued our drive on towards Asheville, NC. After an hour or so, we finally escaped the storms and got the first sunny view of our trip!

More pictures here, or see the previous post.

We started our honeymoon by heading south on the Blue Ridge Parkway from Roanoke. The Parkway is a winding road that goes from Virginia down to Tennessee, and passes not only through the Blue Ridge mountains, but a number of other chains as well before ending in the Smokies outside of Gatlinburg, TN. The parkway can be amazingly scenic, with frequent overlooks providing beautiful views. Or so I had been told. Our first day on the Parkway was spent in the clouds and we could barely see ten feet in front of our car as we drove.

We ended up exiting off of the Parkway early to take some roads at lower elevation. This turned out to be a good idea, because we got to drive through picturesque farm country rather than a dull haze. We spent the early afternoon in the town of Floyd, VA, a small town trying to keep up a lively arts and craft community image. We looked through a few galleries, but the town was mostly dead since it was a Sunday.

Late in the afternoon we checked in to our first lodging: Miracle Farm B&B. We had a very quaint cabin beside a small creek. We were the only guests for the night, so we had the B&B’s 25 acres of woods and farmland all to ourself. It was amazingly peaceful and quiet–a perfect spot to rest after being busy with the wedding for so long.

The next morning the inn keepers left a basket with breakfast on our door step. We enjoyed delicious omelets made with many ingredients picked from the farm, as well as freshly made juice and jam. Later in the day we took a tour of Chateau Morrisette, one of the older vineyards in Virginia. Older doesn’t mean that old though–it was started in the 70′s, but at the time most of Virginia’s vineyards had long since shut down and switched to growing tobacco. The tour guide was informative and showed us the various steps of the wine making process before leading us in a tasting of a number of their wines. Quite a few of them were very good, particularly the sweeter whites.

The next day we continued our trip south on the parkway, and were relieved to find that the clouds had taken the proper position of being far above us, rather than all around us at the overlooks. We stopped at a scenic mill and many of the overlooks. We did several short hikes, but the weather still didn’t give us great views. The walk around Cumberland Knob was particularly disappointing, but later on we got a nice view of some cascades.

More pictures are here and here

Here are a few of the great pictures that our photographer, Sam Stroud, took.  We’ve also posted a ton to Facebook, so check there too.

I should have been better about taking more pictures of the people and food, but I was busy grilling.  Megan also made a chocolate almond cake topped with cheesecake topped with dark chocolate frosting with raspberries on the side that was every bit as delicious as it sounds!  Here are some of the recipes so that I can repeat them some other day.

Spiced Chicken and Grape Skewers

These were fun because most people haven’t had grilled grapes before. They go really well with the chicken, and their juiciness makes up for the fact that I tend to overcook everything when I grill!  This is pretty much identical to the recipe from the Food Network.

Ingredients
2 tablespoons olive oil
1/2 tsp lemon zest
1 tbsp lemon juice
2 cloves garlic, minced
1/2 tsp ground cumin
1/2 tsp salt
1 pound chicken breast, cut into cubes
1 1/2 cups green grapes
8-10 skewers

1. Whisk together the oil, lemon, garlic, and spices in a small bowl.
2. Pour over the chicken and let marinate for 30 minutes (I kept it in a plastic bag for easy mixing).
3. Alternate grapes and chicken pieces on the skewers
4. Grill for about 3 minutes per side

Veggie Kebabs

A simple vegetable marinade with some middle eastern spice that goes well with the grape chicken above.  This recipe is also similar to one from the Food Network.

Ingredients
2 bell peppers
1 onion (I forgot to do this)
1 zucchini or summer squash
a few handfuls of grape tomatoes
1/2 container of mushrooms (not sure how big the container was…)
2 tbsp olive oil
1 tsp ground cumin
1/2 tsp paprika
1/2 tsp cayenne pepper
1 1/2 tbsp honey
1 tbsp lemon juice
salt and pepper

1. Chop up all vegetables into skewerable shapes, cut mushrooms in half
2. Place vegetables on skewers
3. Whisk together all marinade ingredients
4. Brush marinade over vegetables and sit for 10-15 minutes
5. Grill for about 3 minutes per side

Deluxe Israeli Couscous

This is basically the recipe you get on the back of the box from Trader Joe’s Israeli Couscous, but it is even better if you use their Harvest Grains mix since it has couscous and a few other colorful grains as well:

Ingredients
1/2 cup chopped onions
1/3 cup pine nuts
3 tbsp butter
1 stick cinnamon
1 bay leaf
1/2 package TJ’s Harvest Grains(or just Israeli Couscous)
1 3/4 cups chicken broth
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup raisins
1/4 cup dried cranberries
optional: lemon rind, parsley, etc
(Note: this is from memory, and may be wrong… if in doubt, follow the package)

1. Fry up 1 tbsp butter and the pine nuts until golden (2-3 min), then set aside.
2. Add remaining 2 tbsp of butter and fry up onions until tender
3. Add cinnamon stick, bay leaf, and couscous. Fry 5ish minutes, stirring occasionally
4. Add chicken broth and salt and bring to boil, then reduce to low heat
5. Wait until liquid is all absorbed (10ish minutes)
6. Turn off heat, add pine nuts, raisins, cranberries, and any other goodies you can think of

Back in May we bought some plants from the town farmers’ market to grow in pots on the porch.  We started with three types of flowers, two Early Girl tomato plants, and some cilantro.  We added basil a few weeks later.

Many of the plants have been growing well since then. The tomatoes started sprouting tomatoes a few weeks ago, although they haven’t grown much since then. The pansies and “pink” flowers have been doing great, although the snapdragons lost all their flowers and didn’t seem very happy after a week. We haven’t had much luck with the cilantro either… it quickly shot up very tall and sprouted flowers.

Originally we planted everything in pots that were much too small. Last weekend I repotted all the herbs and fed them and the tomatoes with some organic plant food. I did an experiment with the basil and only gave half of the plants the food… after one week its pretty clear that it does make a difference!

I’ll let you guess which is which…

The biggest surprise in our garden came the morning after we had a very violent thunderstorm at the end of May. We went down to check how the plants were doing and found this little guy hiding among the flowers! I have no idea how we got there–our porch is 10 feet above ground level and cement on all sides. My only guess is he was up in one of the trees to the side of our porch and parachuted down.

In the hopes that my messages will be remembered beyond the department’s spam filters, I’ve decided to record some of them on this blog.  So here is this week’s Thursday T-Mail.

This week’s tea is graciously sponsored by XXXX, and will start in the atrium at 4PM sharp. I apologize in advance for the length of this email, as I attempt to combine our recent themes of history and astronomy, along with the story of perhaps the most unlucky researcher in history. I’m also sad to report that this will be the final tea of the semester!

Edmund Halley (he of the comet [1]), was an astronomer and scientist born in 1656. One of Halley’s many contributions was to suggest a way of measuring the mass of the Earth. Via a circuitous path of equations (with thanks to Newton), Halley pointed out that by measuring the time it took for Venus to pass across the face of the Sun during its orbit, one could calculate the universal gravitational constant, G, which in turn could give you the mass of the Earth [2]. Unfortunately, Venus does not pass across the sun very often, and to make the calculation would require measuring the time of passage from multiple view points across the world.

As a result, in 1761, the first significant internationally cooperative scientific venture was formed, with scientists across the globe setting up their telescopes and Timex watches to record Venus’ trip. If you’ve experienced the “joy” of attempting a research project overseen by multiple advisors and with collaborators in different parts of the world, you can predict how well this worked out: disastrously. Not only did the participants fail to gather sufficient clean data to reach any reliable conclusions, it led to one of the most unfortunate research stories I’ve ever heard, the story of Guillaume Le Gentil [3,4].

Le Gentil was a French scientist who planned to observe the transit of Venus from India. He set off on his journey a year ahead of time to ensure his timely arrival, but met so many misfortunes en-route, that he was still on the ship when Venus passed by the sun in 1761, and thus was unable to make any measurements. However, the nature of Venus’ orbit meant that it was to pass the sun again 8 year later, so Le Gentil continued to India to be ready for the subsequent passing. For 8 years he arranged his viewing station and prepared his instruments. On June 4, 1769, Le Gentil’s nearly ten year journey was to reach its climax, and he prepped his equipment under clear blue skies. Then, just as Venus was about to start passing over the sun, a cloud appeared and completely blocked his view of the event [4].

Things only got worse for poor Le Gentil. He packed up his gear and headed home, but was further delayed by dysentery and hurricanes off the coast of Africa. When finally he returned to France, more than 11 years after his departure, he discovered that his relatives had declared him legally dead, and had happily looted his estate.

I hope that this tale puts any of your own research disappointments in perspective. And remember: never, ever give up, because the harder you work on a project, the more comical and ironic your failure may be!

[1] http://csep10.phys.utk.edu/astr161/lect/comets/halley.html
[2] http://www-istp.gsfc.nasa.gov/stargaze/Svenus1.htm
[3] http://www.amazon.com/Short-History-Nearly-Everything/dp/0767908171
[4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guillaume_Le_Gentil

-Tim