Some inauguration pics

I was waiting to post about my inauguration adventures until my friend Matt sent his pics (he has some of the better ones), but I'll go ahead and start.

Matt came down from New York on Monday night and ended up getting a call from a friend who had extra tickets to the standing room section by the Capitol Reflecting Pool. This involved having to get up on about 4 hours sleep, and then we went to the metro. The trains were ridiculously full and the station was filling up, so we decided to walk in. We got a shuttle to Rosslyn, and then started the walk into DC.



You can see that there was a big line of people we were following in. At this point we had to crawl through a hedge to get to the Memorial Bridge. Like that you can see the sunrise?



At the far end of that picture you can see the Lincoln Memorial. It's my favorite way to get into the city. It's a breathtaking reminder of the wonders of this city. I never get tired of the history and memorials of this place.



It's the frozen Potomac! It was about 15 degrees at this point. I was awfully cold. We were walking and I was wearing tights under my jeans, and my rear still started going numb.



My pretty picture of the sunrise as seen from the bridge.

We walked into DC, then over to Foggy Bottom to pick up the tickets Matt's friends left us. After that we went to the metro station. And that's when the wheels came off the wagon...

Muffins!

Oops! Hope that post that was just a title is gone... Apparently if you hit enter accidentally, the post gets published.

I made my first batch of muffins from scratch recently. While I was in San Diego for Christmas my mom made some amazing allspice streusel muffins and we talked about how we could change up the spices. Back in DC, I decided some cardamom streusel muffins would warm me up. Cardamom is my second favorite sweet spice, after cinnamon.

The recipe I started with is from Dorie Greenspan's book Baking: From My Home to Yours. Definitely a great book to take a look at!

In addition to substituting cardamom for the allspice I made a couple of other substitutions based on what I had in the house - half and half for milk, light brown sugar for white sugar.

Making streusel is super easy. You basically combine sugar and spices with cold butter.





Yum yum yum!! This stuff is sooo good. Dorie's recipe makes a lot, more than I needed for a dozen muffins, so I put the rest in the freezer right away. Better than eating a bunch of sugary butter with my fingers.

With the streusel I'd be using put in the fridge so it wouldn't melt before the batter was ready, I mixed the dry ingredients together...



And then the wet ingredients (yup, these are buttery suckers)...



And then dry and wet together.



The batter was a bit wet, but that's the great thing about Dorie. Her recipe lets you know that that's the way it should be.

I filled my muffin cups about 3/4 full and then sprinkled and gently pressed some streusel down on each.



As soon as these started baking, they smelled amazing. I would love it if my house smelled like that a lot more often.



This picture isn't that great, and the streusel melted down a bit more than it did with the ones my mom made, but man do these muffins taste amazing! If I make them again, I'll probably add a bit more cardamom to the batter; the amount in the streusel was perfect. You could also substitute other extracts for the vanilla extract. Mmm, maybe I'll use almond next time!

All in all, a pretty good result for my first muffins.

First Snow of the Year!

Now I know for sure I'm back in DC...

Yesterday we had our first snow of the year. It must have snowed during the night because I woke up to everything covered in white and big fluffy flakes still coming down.


Snow in my backyard!

The world gets so peaceful when it snows. Sounds are muffled, less people are out, and the white just makes everything look clean again.




Today, however, the snow was less pretty. Everything had completely frozen overnight and the sidewalks and streets were icy. It was quite something trying to walk uphill on ice on my way to the metro this morning. Now stuff has started to slush, but they say it's going to get cold again tomorrow. We'll see.

Soon I'll be posting about my crazy inauguration adventure! Stay tuned!

Blog Name Change

Ok, I know it's been two months since I've posted, but I'm thinking I'm going to start back up again. But, since I'm no longer in the great state of Hawai'i, the blog's name needs to be changed.

So, I'm just going to remove "Hawaiian" from the title. You'll be able to find me now at colleensadventure.blogspot.com.

See you soon!

My Last Day

Well, this is it. It's time to say goodbye to Hawaii. I'll be back soon(ish) though; I certainly can't stay away from here forever. Thanks so much for following my adventures out here! I'll be back soon with my adventures in DC. Starting with, hopefully, a new apartment asap. To conclude, a picture of me starting to get emotional at my farewell lunch. My boss always gets me making a face =)



Isn't that a cool lei?

Aloha!

Random Moments from Midway

Man alive is work slow today. I'm exhausted (haven't been sleeping well) and don't really have anything to do now that my replacement is here. Plus, everyone keeps asking why I don't just play hooky. Um, because I've always been too much of a good girl? Either that, or I'm too stupid to take advantage of the situation. Anyway, I'm just trying to get ready to go, but some things are making it harder. Like the moped repair guy who I thought was awesome but is telling me now that my moped might not be ready before I leave. I'm selling it to my replacement at work and I'm going to feel so terrible if I can't be there the first time she has to ride it. Oh well, nothing I can do except nagging him.

Today I'm just going to post some pictures of random things that struck my fancy on Midway.



Can anyone explain the significance of this warning? Was grape smuggling a big thing at one time?



Jet fuel. Never leave home without it.



Love this sign from the old machine shed.

My Last Two Weekends

The weekend before this past one I headed downtown on Sunday to get pictures of the things I see everyday at work but never stopped to immortalize. Above is a picture of Iolani Palace. It's beautiful and its grounds have been made into a big park. On Fridays the Royal Hawaiian Band plays concerts during lunchtime in the park which is fun. I've eaten my lunch under those big trees many times.



I also grabbed a shot of the state capitol building, but it's hard to get the whole thing in frame, at least without standing in the middle of traffic.



Hmm, I thought I had a better picture than that one.

There's also the beautiful Hawaii State Art Museum, a great place to check out on your lunch break (eat at the ASAP! counter at the restaurant).



I grabbed a quick picture of St. Andrew's cathedral, but it had started to rain so I was focusing on getting back to my moped.



This past weekend I went up to the North Shore on Saturday, to say goodbye. It was mostly overcast and sprinkly but the sun came out sporadically. Unfortunately the 10-12 foot waves from Friday had died down significantly. But, it's still a beautiful place and I loved just sitting on the beach watching the water and the surfers.





Unfortunately, on weekends all the tour buses dump people off at the beaches, so it got more crowded than I like. The most interesting part was when I was befriended by a dog. This little Truly looking dog came trotting over to me and plopped himself by my feet, wanting petted. He had tags, with the name Kona, and I asked him, "Kona, where's your mom? Go find your mom!" Now, if you tell our family dog, Truly, to go find her mom, she'll run off to find my mom. This dog just looked at me.



After a few minutes he trotted off across the beach and I thought he was going back to whoever brought him. A little later though he was with another woman and she was trying to call his owners but only getting voicemail. Kona, I hope you found your family!

One minor adventure from two weekends ago was my first attempt at making focaccia. I made a couple of mistakes (like forgetting the oil and then trying to knead it in to a finished dough...) but it came out ok. It was a bit bland though. I think I'll add more salt to the dough if I make it again. It's not the prettiest bread, but it'll do.



It snowed in parts of DC today. It didn't stick, but still, it snowed. I'm going to freeze to death.

Midway, Part VII

Happy Monday everyone! Midway sure is ending up with a lot of parts, isn't it? Hopefully I'll wrap it up pretty soon.

This is the start of my last work week in Honolulu. I fly back to DC on Friday. I'll likely continue writing when I'm back there...guess I have to figure out what to do with the title of the blog =)

As you can see from the picture above, I got to ride in the Midway fire truck! One of the firefighters took me out for a spin on the runway. When I got done with that, it seemed like some of the men in my group were a little jealous. "He even had the lights going while you were in it!"



One of the highlights of our last day at Midway was getting to see a Laysan albatross. Only two had come back to the island when we were there, and one was hanging out by a house, so we trekked off to see him.




Pretty cool looking bird, isn't he? Since I got here I've been wanting to see an albatross in person, mostly because I'm a total nerd and love the Coleridge poem "Rime of the Ancient Mariner." Just one of the many things that makes me special.

We also biked around the island to look at more of the historical stuff. There are still old cable buildings from 1903 that were built for the first around the world telegraph. Hopefully there will be some money for restoration, but it's likely only one will be saved and the others will go to ruin.




I have so many pictures of things from Midway that I never could post them all. I'm thinking I'll give you some more of the beautiful scenery and then use the rest of the pics as kind of "pictures of the day" when nothing particularly exciting is happening in my life. That way we'll get this series all wrapped up.



Beach at one end of the runway. It's closed to humans.



Looking back on Sand Island from one of the piers.



Crab in a hole.



And an appropriate photo to go out on. This is a view of the sunset from the plane while we were flying back to Honolulu from Midway. Beautiful. A wonderful way to end an amazing trip.

So what's my next adventure? You up for a post on packing suitcases? I'll try to come up with something more interesting than that.

Midway, Part VI

WWII gun on Eastern Island

One of the amazing things about Midway is the history of the atoll. The Navy had presence there for quite some time and there is still a lot of WWII era stuff on the islands.

My favorite story is about the resourcefulness of the men stationed there during WWII when they knew the Japanese would be attacking Midway. Japan wanted the atoll for strategic purposes. The men didn't have a lot to defend themselves with, being in the middle of nowhere, so they made do with what they had. One thing they had were old WWI tanks. They took the tops off the tanks, partially buried them, and used them as protective turrets to shoot at invading forces.



Underneath this hunk of metal was a hole they dug so the men could fit under there. This is what it looked like when I stuck my camera in there.



There are also ruins of old buildings and piers and the like left on Eastern:







There's also a memorial to Marines on Eastern:



All very cool.

Well, I know that was a brief post, but work is pretty busy today. Apparently they're trying to squeeze me dry before I leave. I can't believe I only have a week left. It's pouring rain today so I'm really hoping it doesn't rain tomorrow. I want to spend the day at the North Shore before I have to go pick up my PMF replacement at the airport. The rest of my week is going to be filled with packing and errands. This is really bittersweet for me.

Midway, Part V

Eastern Island. The yellow flowers are verbesina, an invasive plant they're trying to control.

Before the group split up and I got to go check out the beach, we went to look at one of the duck seeps with Laysan ducks.



Part of our visiting group consisted of avian disease specialists, there to check out the Laysan ducks and talk about a botulism outbreak that happened a few months ago. There used to be about 400 Laysan ducks in the world. A researcher took about 40 of them, brought them to Midway, and they're now flourishing there (with the exception of the ones who died from botulism). The happy news is that no one found any sick ducks on this trip!



Now for some random bird pictures. I'll label each underneath.



Above is a bristle thighed curlew in flight. Mom, Dad, and I saw a couple of these standing still at James Campbell here on Oahu. Take a look at its long, curved beak.



This is a red footed booby in the naupaca. It's not the best picture of him, but I think his face is hilarious. Naupaca is a native plant. Nene, the Hawaiian goose, eat the naupaca berries. The berries also make excellent defoggers for snorkel masks.



These are sooty terns in flight. Apparently Alfred Hitchcock recorded the sounds of sooty terns to use as the bird noises in his film, The Birds.



Two white terns and one sooty tern.



White tern in flight, closer up.



Black footed albatross. We were pretty close to this one. Then he decided it was time to readjust and waddle away.



These guys have a pretty hilarious walk. Everyone on Midway says it looks like Richard Nixon walking. Their wings are hunched up by their heads and they waddle away, swaying a little from side to side.



Apparently this bird is the holy grail. A short tailed albatross. There are about two hundred living on an island off of Japan, but there's only one that hangs out on Midway. Click on the picture. From the left, there are two birds standing one in back of the other, then one more, then the short tailed albatross. You're seeing his back. This is the only actual bird in the picture; the rest are decoys. In the hopes that he would stick around and maybe others would come, they've put up decoys and have a solar powered iPod out there that plays the call. Pretty cool.

Well, that almost concludes Wednesday on Midway...there's still some WWII stuff to look at, but I'm going to put that in a separate post. Thursday involved more history, and the first Laysan albatross to return to the island.